30: Un Lun Dun, by China Miéville (2007 Paperback)

With the surge in popularity for TweenLit (ages 9-12) and TeenLit these days, it seems that every author who traditionally writes books for adults is releasing books for young people.  When I mentioned this phenomena to my sister Sarah last night on the phone, she suggested that these books were always being written, but they were simply found in the adult fantasy and SciFi sections of libraries and bookstores OR appeared on the shelves for younger readers and were ignored by adults; now that Tween and Teen titles are popular--among both their "intended" ages and adults--they are being labeled accordingly and marketed to a wider audience.  When I started to think about that, it made a lot of sense.  Sarah is a librarian, so of course she spends her time thinking about such things, and she is also the person who really got me started on TeenLit and graphic novels in the first place, so I find she is often ahead of me in thinking about these book types.  (Notice I didn't say "genres" here, as comics and TeenLit are NOT genres; like every media form they have many genres within them.)

A case in point to support Sarah's theory is Miéville's Un Lun Dun.  When I spied it at Northtown Books a couple weeks ago, my immediate thought was that this was a new book by an author of adult fantasy that I have read and enjoyed (My first entry in this blog was Miéville's The City & The City.).  And, I had read the book under that premise all along.  When I sat down to write this entry today, however, I finally looked at the publishing information and found that the book was released in 2007, around the same time that Twilight (2005), The Hunger Games (2008), and other books intended for younger audiences began to regularly hit adult reading lists.  (You could argue, of course--and I'd agree you might be right--that the whole age crossover began with Rowling's HP series in 1997.  However, it strikes me that it's in the past 3-5 years that the trend became commonplace.)  Anyway, what I took for a new book by an adult author really appears more likely to be one that was re-released--or has found a second audience--due to the Tween/Teen/Adult crossover phenomena.

All this, of course, does more to tell you about how smart my sister is and nothing to tell you what I thought of the book.  Which I liked as much as I do any Tween book.

TweenLit, as I've commented before, tends to lack the grittiness and complexity of TeenLit.  It's not that there aren't important issues in Tween books--Un Lun Dun includes environmental issues, political corruption, and stereotyping, for instance--but it's generally glossed over quickly in order to focus more on characters.  And, these characters (particularly the supporting characters) often include animals and other unlikely objects.  In this book, Deeba crosses the Odd and becomes the UnChosen savior of UnLondon (a magical abcity that is Londonesque in character) and encounters a half-ghost, a diving suit filled with seawater and fish, a milk carton, spoken words given form, and umbrellas.  With this motley crew, as well as a few eccentric adults, Deeba takes on The Smog.

Miéville is an amazing storyteller, and this book is no exception.  The whimsy, creativity, and surprises make it a great read for fans of fantasy--of all ages--who also enjoy Tween books.