Title: Beauty Queens
Author: Libba Bray
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Copyright: 2011
ISBN: 9780439895989
Reading Level: Grades 9-12
Genre: Black comedy
Reader’s Annotation: Teen beauty queens crash-land on an island; they practice pageant routines and survival skills; chaos and occasional hilarity ensue.
Review
My enduring impression of Beauty Queens is one of frustration. The setup (teen beauty pageant contestants stranded on a desert island) is ripe for comedy, and as a sendup of Lord of the Flies the book is sometimes very clever. There are some nice girl-power moments. But the book is very sloppily written (lines attributed to characters who are not supposed to have arrived on the scene yet, inconsistencies in characters' backstories) and the author is more interested in hammering home messages than developing characters. The plot is pure silliness--dreamy boys playing at pirates for a reality show arrive on the scene; the drawn-out, frenetic ending, in which the girls rescue themselves from the clutches of an evil corporation, is almost impossible to follow.
More gripes: out of the ten or so beauty queens who are major characters, only one is in pageants because she actually likes them. All the others have ulterior motives, manipulative parents, and/or something to prove. Though a mix of motivations among contestants is realistic, this ratio seems ridiculous. And to elaborate on the character vs. message problem: each girl represents an issue. There's the transgender contestant, the lesbian, the handicapped (deaf) girl, the hyper-religious/emotionally abused/sexually repressed one, etc, etc. Way too many issues, no subtlety. And I found the author's treatment of teen sex frankly stupid. One character gets badly burned when she has sex with a guy she barely knows, but she doesn't take this as any kind of indication that in future it might be better to be more cautious. The hyper-religious/emotionally abused/sexually repressed character (why must YA authors insist on treating religiosity as an affliction? There's so little thoughtfulness around religion in the genre, as a rule) finally realizes the folly of her mother's teachings. When she has sex with a man she's just met, the encounter turns into an epic love story that lasts a lifetime. GIVE ME A BREAK.
I see that I've complained a lot. It may look like I hated the book. I did not hate it. What makes the book so frustrating is that it has a lot of potential. Bray is a talented, imaginative, funny writer. With more vigorous editing this book could have been great, but instead it was mostly irritating.
Challenge Issues: Language, teen sex (not very graphic), death of teenage beauty queens treated flippantly, all adults portrayed as clueless, incompetent, and/or evil
Author: Libba Bray
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Copyright: 2011
ISBN: 9780439895989
Reading Level: Grades 9-12
Genre: Black comedy
Reader’s Annotation: Teen beauty queens crash-land on an island; they practice pageant routines and survival skills; chaos and occasional hilarity ensue.
Review
My enduring impression of Beauty Queens is one of frustration. The setup (teen beauty pageant contestants stranded on a desert island) is ripe for comedy, and as a sendup of Lord of the Flies the book is sometimes very clever. There are some nice girl-power moments. But the book is very sloppily written (lines attributed to characters who are not supposed to have arrived on the scene yet, inconsistencies in characters' backstories) and the author is more interested in hammering home messages than developing characters. The plot is pure silliness--dreamy boys playing at pirates for a reality show arrive on the scene; the drawn-out, frenetic ending, in which the girls rescue themselves from the clutches of an evil corporation, is almost impossible to follow.
More gripes: out of the ten or so beauty queens who are major characters, only one is in pageants because she actually likes them. All the others have ulterior motives, manipulative parents, and/or something to prove. Though a mix of motivations among contestants is realistic, this ratio seems ridiculous. And to elaborate on the character vs. message problem: each girl represents an issue. There's the transgender contestant, the lesbian, the handicapped (deaf) girl, the hyper-religious/emotionally abused/sexually repressed one, etc, etc. Way too many issues, no subtlety. And I found the author's treatment of teen sex frankly stupid. One character gets badly burned when she has sex with a guy she barely knows, but she doesn't take this as any kind of indication that in future it might be better to be more cautious. The hyper-religious/emotionally abused/sexually repressed character (why must YA authors insist on treating religiosity as an affliction? There's so little thoughtfulness around religion in the genre, as a rule) finally realizes the folly of her mother's teachings. When she has sex with a man she's just met, the encounter turns into an epic love story that lasts a lifetime. GIVE ME A BREAK.
I see that I've complained a lot. It may look like I hated the book. I did not hate it. What makes the book so frustrating is that it has a lot of potential. Bray is a talented, imaginative, funny writer. With more vigorous editing this book could have been great, but instead it was mostly irritating.
Challenge Issues: Language, teen sex (not very graphic), death of teenage beauty queens treated flippantly, all adults portrayed as clueless, incompetent, and/or evil