This is important, paradigm-shifting, world-changing, perhaps even life-saving stuff. And not only are you here, but you have a Titanic/Notebook-hot romance with someone who feels just as out of place in the world as you do.” There’s something revolutionary about telling young men and women who don’t see themselves represented “Here you are. When is a phenomenon ever a coincidence? The world is full of young people who feel peripheral, excluded, “other,” who do not see themselves in the pages of their favorite books, or on screen as they watch their favorite television shows and films. Palacio’s Wonder,the story of a young boy who was born with a severe cranio-facial anomaly) have been as astronomically popular as they’ve been. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that YA books like The Fault in Our Stars (a romance featuring two terminally ill teenagers) and Eleanor and Park (as well as middle-grade heavy-hitter R.J. Make room at the table and pull up a seat for a new kind of normal. Eleanor and Park, an “unconventional” love story with “unconventional” teen leads, is the biggest thing to punch YA realism in the face since John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. When a book becomes this psychotically popular, I think it’s fair to say it’s muscled its way into conventionality. This isn’t a book that feels “message-y” which makes the message all the easier to digest. You just don’t see the big girl and the Korean dude get to star as romantic leads in “classic” love stories and you certainly don’t get to see them star together. I alluded to this earlier, but it’s my belief that Eleanor & Park is a deconstructed, reconstructed, blasted wide open and completely revolutionized John Hughes movie in novel form. The “too hot for teens” refers to Eleanor and Park going to second base… and then making a mutual decision not to run for home. The “dangerously obscene” refers to the foul language Eleanor and Park experience in the form of bullying at school, and in Eleanor’s case, also at home.
And the Asian character isn’t a Long-Duk-Dong providing racist comedic relief, he’s our sexy, nerdy, awesome romantic lead. Except Molly Ringwald is overweight and comes from an abusive home. The novel follows the two eponymous outcast teens (not sexy-brooding-probably-vampires outcast teens, REAL-awkward-uncomfortable-in-their-own-skin outcast teens) who fall in love in mid-’80’s Nebraska. If you’re plugged into the bookosphere, by now you may have heard of the craziness that is Rainbow Rowell being uninvited to speak at Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin school, after members of the district’s Parents Action League deemed the Rowell’s breakout YA novel Eleanor & Park “dangerously obscene.” The”too hot for teens and taxpayer money” novel was ordered off school library shelves and there was a call to discipline the school librarians who chose the book.
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