Why does everyone love Francesca Lia Block so much? She stinks.

...in January, the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association announced that Ms. Block was being given the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement, sponsored by School Library Journal.

Her books have turned a lot of non-readers into readers.  I will give her that.  I still think that she's awful, though.

Comments

[Chrissy]

I'm going to have to break down and actually read something by her aren't I? grumble

[leila]

I will admit that I've made the judgement based on reading very, very little FLB. A couple of short stories, a lot of exerpts. What can I say? I haven't been able to read more than that because every time I try, I come way too close to barfing all over the pages.

[C.C.]

I've read enough to know that I find her so tremendously irritating that I don't even know whether she writes well or not. Yech.

[Chrissy]

I knew her as an adult erotica writer BEFORE I knew her as a YA writer. Needless to say I was rather surprised and extremely bothered that she didn't write one of these genres under a pen name. I'm wating for the day that some parent goes "Well my daughter really likes these Weetzie Bat books. Here's another book by the same author. Hmmmm, yeah, Nymph sounds good. And it has such a pretty purple cover."

[leila]

Gah. That's like the patrons that want to take out My Uncle Oswald for their little Dahl fanatics.