2004 Blue Ribbon Dissents

Unanimity and consent are all very well and good, but sometimes pure passion needs its own outlet. I'm speaking, of course, of the passion for a particular title, a title that didn't manage to make the Blue Ribbons list but nonetheless aroused in its admirer the desire to praise, to advocate, or maybe even to whine a little. Here, then, are our consolation prizes, our chance to appeal a book's case to the world: our 2004 Blue Ribbon Dissents.

--Deborah Stevenson, Editor

• Westerfeld, Scott. So Yesterday. Razorbill/Penguin. Gr. 7-12 (October)
  
  So wonderful. So unfair. So Yesterday.
  
  This was one of my personal favorites of the year (as well as being the winner of my unofficial "Book for young people most likely to be a good gift for adults" designation), and young adults are going to take to it like a duck to brand-name water.  No book for young readers has so brilliantly captured the possibilities of marketing in the contemporary world, the consumer culture that's created by kids and processed by the corporate to sell back to them.  Yet it's also funny, suffused with a wise and cunning playfulness in its postmodern embrace of the process of selling as its own kind of art.  
  
  And within the book, none of this is as complicated as it sounds: it's a glorious chase across New York for the coolest sneakers ever designed, with some possible romance along the way; oh, and there's also some sly satire, some highly amusing pranks on the young, idle, and overmoneyed, and more than a touch of mystery.  Wherever readers stand on the cool or cool-wannabe spectrum, they'll recognize the dynamics and relish the savvy, highly contemporary adventure.  So don't miss it.

  --Deborah Stevenson, Editor

http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/puboff/bccb/dissents04.html