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Gnomic Utterances. These are traditional, and are set at the head of each section of the Guidebook. The reason for them is lost in the mists of History. They are culled by the Management from a mighty collection of wise sayings probably compiled by a SAGE—probably called Ka’a Orto’o—some centuries before the Tour begins. The Rule is that no Utterance has anything whatsoever to do with the section it precedes. Nor, of course, has it anything to do with Gnomes.
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Date: 2013-04-02 10:55 pm (UTC)I saw Cris Beam on a panel last year, and (paraphrasing from memory) she said that yes, there's a lot of chunks of information in I am J, and it's because transgender teenagers (and, heck, teenagers who are totally ignorant about being transgender) need that information, and to know what kind of resources and information are out there. And I think that's a valid point. It's that informational aspect that makes me categorize something as a "problem novel" -- I don't think The First Part Last has much in it that I would characterize as useful information for teenage single fathers.
And it often makes me roll my eyes, just like the recent Law and Order SVU episode made me roll my eyes when everyone was very earnestly outraged about how rapists could sue their victims for custody of their children, not because it's not outrageous but because I'm no longer surprised by it -- but I think that eye-rolling is not necessarily a good way to judge young adult books; because I remember being that age and being TOTALLY unwilling to actually search for information on the problems that I had, even when I was technologically equipped enough to search on the internet and then delete my search history.