LYDIA: At what point, during either book, did you have a definitive moment where you thought, ‘This is the book I’m going to pick to be the winner”?
JODIE: This is going to sound lame, but it was Reggie’s Dora the Explorer shoes that made me believe ‘Eighth Grade Super Zero’ deserved to win. For those of you yet to read ‘8th Grade Super Zero’ (walk, don’t run) Reggie makes himself some Dora the Explorer shoes because his homeless friend Charlie has to wear Dora shoes out of the donations bin, but then Charlie’s mum gets him some new shoes. Reggie ends up wearing them to school alone, but he still makes a really powerful point about herd mentality and bravery. When someone can make a deep point about bravery and friendship while making me snort I know it’s something special. Lots of books think they’re funny, but very few books make me laugh outside my head. At the other end of the scale lots of books have a serious message they want readers to buy, but they’re so heavy handed about it. I like some levity with my morals.
LYDIA: Summarize the winning book in this bracket in a single paragraph. Pretend you are speaking to a 14 year old boy or girl and this one paragraph will be the deciding factor on if they will read it.
JODIE: Reggie ‘Pukey’ McKnight never intended to run for class president, so why does he find himself standing so a table announcing his candidacy in front of the whole school? 8th grade was going to be a year of reinvention for Reggie, but after extreme embarrassment, on the first day of term, he’s just looking to keep his head down. Then, after getting involved at a homeless shelter, Reggie sees just how much the 8th grade kids could do to help the community. And that’s why Reggie finds himself up on that table. Whatever happened to keeping a low profile?
LYDIA: Right now YA literature is saturated with paranormal creatures, when reading these books it’s easy to get caught up in the drama of teenage relationships. Do you feel as if that’s just a gimmick or do you think that Rachel Hawkins, like Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, has a more meaningful message to impart to teenagers?
JODIE: I don’t really think Rachel Hawkins has a big focused message in her book, like the ones Rhuday-Perkovich built ‘8th Grade Super Zero’ around. Sophie doesn’t really learn a lesson that teenagers can apply to their lives, while Reggie learns a lot that teens could potentially apply to their own lives.
However, I do think Hawkins uses the paranormal aspect of her novel to critique our world and paranormal young adult books. A good example of her subtle critique and correction of both the world and the majority of young adult paranormal books is her inclusion of Jenna’s character. Hawkins makes Sophie’s best friend a lesbian and *shock horror* it’s not a big freaking deal, or a secret that needs hiding from everyone else. By making Jenna a lesbian vampire, who is turned by a girl she loves, Hawkins subverts the traditional romantic vampire story in a sweet, easy way that the young adult paranormal world has just been dying for. Then she allows her lesbian character to begin to heal after that relationship goes wrong and find possible romance elsewhere. With Jenna, Hawkins makes her own move to help correct the sexual homogeneity of young adult paranormal romance and to push a subtle message that being a lesbian is normal.
There are other times where Hawkins use her book to provide criticism of conventions that turn up in paranormal books. Sophie is a big exercise in correcting the lame, passive heroine that can be found in a lot of books featuring paranormal storylines. There’s a black witch in Elodie’s coven, because a paranormal world doesn’t mean race ceases to exist, although if you look out at the current crop of popular paranormal books you’d think that’s exactly what it means. I also think Hawkins uses the different creatures she places in her paranormal world to quietly look at racial differences. That’s kind of overly subtle though and may just be a bi-product of the cultural associations readers tend to automatically put on paranormal creatures, rather than something deliberately written into the text.
Phew, so, to summarise I think Hawkins is definitely using the paranormal genre to showcase deeper issues, rather than jumping on the popular trend for paranormal creatures.
LYDIA: Covers are very important in YA Literature. When you walk down the row at any book store it’s dazzling how many beautiful covers there are. Does this work for or against both books in the bracket?
JODIE: I hated ‘Hex Hall’s cover! In my opinion the cover for the UK edition is looks tacky, with all those silver sparkles. There are little details of interest (look down at the shadows extending from the girls and you’ll see vampires and witches stretching out) but there’s no way I’d have randomly picked it up in a bookshop. Maybe I don’t like it because I’m not a teenager anymore, maybe teens are all over this kind of cover, but to me it looks like the kind of thing the marketing department thinks teenagers are supposed to like.
I was really keen on ‘8th Grade Super Zero’s’ cover, because it looks like an old style comic and it’s bright. I’m in love with retro design so it would have stood out to me, but I think you have to like a very particular design aesthetic to find it appealing. It definitely stands out from the crowd which I think should pull readers to it.
LYDIA: Which book did you read first? And if the order had been reversed, did you think your vote may have been affected differently?
JODIE: I read ‘8th Grade Super Zero’ first because I was still waiting for ‘Hex Hall’ to arrive. I think if I’d read ‘Hex Hall first I’d have been thinking it was a pretty strong contender and the second book would have to be pretty special to win. It’s so much fun and so different from a large amount of the paranormal fiction currently published. It made me think of all the best things about the paranormal fiction I devoured when I was a teenager: the snark, the strong heroine, the funny-yet annoying-yet extremely attractive love interest. In short it was cool.Still, I don’t think I’d have changed my vote if I’d read it first. ‘8th Grade Super Zero’ is that one in a million book where the story is entertaining, the writing is natural, the characters are complex and the message is important.
