l8r, g8r. It made my eyes bleed, but should it be banned? No!
Written: Sep 30 '09 (Updated Oct 01 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Interesting story. Relevant to today's teens.
Cons: My eyes! My eyes! It hurts my eyes!
The Bottom Line: the bottom line has a really hard time writing without punctuation and decent grammar
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| dramastef's Full Review: l8r, g8r |
When one begins a book like Pride and Prejudice or a translation of some Russian classic, it most likely takes at least a chapter or two in order to get into the flow of the writing style. If you just persevere, however, the payoff is often worth the initial struggle. With sincerest apologies to my beloved Pride for the comparison, Lauren Myracle's L8r, g8r is sort of like that. If the payoff is you wanting to remove your own eyes for the murder of the English language you've just read.
It's Banned Books week and just like previous years, I perused the most challenged books list and searched my neighborhood library to rent as many of the books on the list that I could. l8r, g8r is the third in a trilogy about three high school girls, Angela, Zoe and Maddie. There are a few references to occurrences of the first two books, ttyl and ttfn, but nothing that precludes you from reading this book out of order, if you so choose.
Most of the book is written in IMs (Instant Messages) between the girls. Myracle has made it easy to ignore the names before each message (mad maddie, SnowAngel and zoegirl) by printing each girls' messages in a different font and color. Maddie's messages are all bold type, Angela's are blue and Zoe's are 'normal' black font.
In this book, the girls are in their Senior year and their different paths toward the future, as well as their different present day interests (studies, boys) are making it difficult to remain as close as they have been in the past. One antagonist keeps them together when all else threatens their bff status. Evil Jana. She appears to plot against one or all of them at any given moment, giving the threesome something to unanimously despise and plot against. Much of the chatting is irrelevant to the basic plot. Which is sort of the point.
Tangents and streams of consciousness are much of what drive the girls' conversations. Which is what I remember being like as a teenager too. It's what my ten-year-old is heading into. It's what my seventeen-year-old sister is like. Only she knows better than to textspeak to me. I refuse to read anything that looks like some of the chatter in the book:
zoegirl: well... i did it!
SnowAngel: OMG!!! for real? all the way???
zoegirl: get mads into the chatroom and i'll tell all!
You have just entered the room "Angela's Boudoir."
mad maddie has entered the room.
zoegirl has entered the room.
zoegirl: hey, girls. yes, it's true: i'm a woman now.
mad maddie: way to go, u sexy beast!
SnowAngel: *squeals!!!*
mad maddie: just to be clear, we're talking full insertion here?
zoegirl: we made love. it was amazing. and now all i can think is, "holy cow, i'm no longer a virgin! i will never be a virgin again!"
Which brings us to why this book (and the first two in the series) are on the challenged book list. Because the girls talk about what 99% of girls their age talk about. Sex, drugs and some of it with a mild potty mouth. It is a fact that unless you're homeschooling your child, they will be going to school with people who drink, do drugs and have sex (and maybe even if you are homeschooling). Reading about it in textspeak or proper English isn't going to make your child run out and do these things. Or abstain from doing them.
I had a hard time reading l8r, g8r. But I acknowledge that I'm not the intended audience. I will forever think that it is a sad, sad fact that more kids speak like this than with capital letters and proper punctuation, but that didn't make the story less appealing. Well, maybe it did a little bit. I still give it 4 stars. Simply because Myracle got to the heart of what teenage girls are talking about. And doing. In their own language, whether I like it or not! And that's why this is a perfect book for your older teenage daughter. It talks about the myriad things going on in the day to day life of a girl in high school. Any younger than that and I think it would go over their heads. I don't even think the content is so racy that you need to read it with your child. There is 'worse' out there in Judy Blume books meant for your fifth grader.
I read this book because some people decided to try and have it banned. I cannot condone banning books from public institutions. It goes against everything I believe in. Head on over to Patsy's Banned Books Write Off page and check out some more banned books.
Happy reading (of anything you want to read!)
Recommended:
Yes
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