Sorry about the weekend quietness, but I was at a RennFaire. I’m back now!

The American Library Association has nominated another round of books for its Young Adult Library Services Association Award, and as usual, some manga made it to the list of “great graphic novels.” A lot of them are OEL, but here goes:

Let’s see, going down the list from top to bottom:

  • TOKYOPOP’s Avalon High manga, based on Meg Cabot’s novel series.
  • Dramacon, by the much-celebrated Svetlana Chmakova.
  • The Avril Lavigne manga Make 5 Wishes.
  • Anike Hage’s original German-language manga Gothic Sports.
  • Vampire Knight by Matsuri Hino is the first actual Japanese manga mentioned.
  • Yuji Iwahara’s King of Thorn.
  • Hideyuki Kurata’s Train + Train.
  • Mizuho Kusanagi’s Spiral.
  • Yasunori Mitsunaga’s Princess Resurrection.
  • Setona Mizushiro’s After School Nightmare (all four volumes!).
  • Kaoru Mori’s Emma (all four volumes).
  • Sho Murase’s Me2.
  • Aya Nakahara’s Love*Com/Lovely Complex.
  • Noriko Ogiwara / Haruhiko Momokawa’s The Good Witch of the West volume 1.
  • Manga Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet by Richard Appignanesi and Sonia Leong.
  • Yellow Tanabe’s Kekkaishi, volumes 7-9.
  • Yuki Urushibara’s Mushishi.
  • Fumi Yoshinaga’s The Moon and the Sandals.

    The end! And now, some commentary.

    Definitely a few interesting choices on this list– like Yoshinaga’s The Moon and the Sandals, a BL title…and one that YaoiSuki considered to be NC-17…although they’re more conservative on that than the publishers are, I think; even reviewer Jordan notes that the sexual content is “not terribly explicit.” Besides, why bother pretending that “young adults” don’t get their hands on adult content all the time? Yoshinaga is at least a very well-presented form of it.

    Now, did anyone else notice that except for the title (”Avril Lavigne’s Make 5 Wishes“), Lavigne herself is not credited as a writer for the series? I can’t help but be a little amused.

    I’m glad to see Train + Train and After School Nightmare on the list. Both are excellent series and I’m really enjoying them, though ASN can get a little dark and violent at times…but it’s a series all about kids finding their true selves, and it doesn’t pander to a young audience, which is excellent.

    Let’s see…most surprising choice, to me? If not Moon and Sandals, then probably Good Witch of the West. I enjoy it as something of a guilty pleasure, but in a lot of ways it reads like a fanfic or something– the main character is very much a Mary Sue. Quality isn’t the only reason it surprised me by being on this list: it also contains some reference to anal rape and a lot of lesbian undertones…then again, I’d probably have read it as a young adult too.

    And the least surprising choice? Mushishi. GO READ IT. It will blow your mind with its awesomeness. Probably. (Okay, fine, Love*Com was also pretty unsurprising, and it is also pretty awesome.)


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