Audibook Review: Beauty Queens, or why Libba Bray is sheer genius!
Written AND NARRATED BY: Libba Bray
Publisher: Scholastic Audio
Release Date: 2011
How acquired: Library copy
The Top Ten Reasons the Beauty Queens audiobook is your next required reading:
10. Have you seen the cover?! Plus it totally comes into play at the end of the book. You had me at lipstick bandolier!
9. The book includes both transgender and lesbian characters written with humor and spirit-yay for some fun and thoughtful GLBT representation!
8. Girls do the complete opposite of Lord of the Flies-they start off snarky and end up bonding together. I always wanted to write a book in response to Goldings’ Hobbsonian treatise, and Libba has crafted it exactly right-women will work together rather than go all Lost/Survivor on each other!
7. Feminism is portrayed as the positive, normal concept that it is, and all the girls learn its value through the book; yay for feminism explanations that make sense and aren’t dumbed down or radicalized!
6. Footnotes. are. awesome. I love the absurdly dry witted commentary about what each reality show/beauty product/dictator’s stuffed pet is all about. Plus the chirpy “TM” made me laugh every time.
5. The book is awesome as audio-there is background music for every corporation commercial and hilarious commentary by typical-beauty queen contestant Tiara about what CD number we are on (“Disc 3-Britney has 3 nipples…”).
4. Where else can you read a book with an Elvis-Presley impersonating dictator, a pageant contestant with a tray table embedded in her forehead, a beauty product that turns into a deadly weapon, a Texas pageant winner with a secret penchant for crazy and much, much more?!
3. This book-is truly HI-LAR-I-OUS! It mocks all that is absurd about American society-from reality television to inane television commercials (Maxi Pad Pets anyone?)- but is so fresh and original that I never really knew what was going to happen.
2. LIBBA BRAY FREAKIN’ READS THE BOOK! How else would you know that Ladybird Hope is a brilliant parody of Sarah Palin or be able to understand the nuances of each distinct character? How on earth Libba are you this freakin’ talented that you write the best book I’ve read in a LOOONNNGGG time AND read it better than any professional reader I’ve heard? WOW-you have skills!
1. It has given me heart in that I can raise a teenage girl (current age, 6 months) because we can read this book together and discuss the end message -girls rock, don’t apologize or demean yourself because corporations attempt to sell a problematic image of what girls/women should be. Thank you for giving me a book that says everything I want to tell my daughter (and the high school girls I teach) and also be hysterically awesome!
Check out the fun Libba-Bray-interviews-Libba-Bray interview about Beauty Queens (with cool info like the fact that David Levithan-yes Stacy-your favorite-David!-gave Libba the idea to write this book!) here.
Final Note to Libba:
As the “Forever YA” blog puts it, “In Libba We Trust!” And while lucky ducks Stacy, Shannan and “Fangirl Nancy” got to meet you at the Austin Teen Book Festival (you gave the keynote-AWESOME!), Amanda and I just wallowed in our own self-pity in Ohio. We all gave a collective *squeal* when you started following us on Twitter, and we can’t wait to have many more fangirl moments when we talk with you, read your books/tweets/blog posts, or just revel in your awesomeness. I, Sarah, will also be totally fangirling you (not stalking as we at Girls in the Stacks are not creepy-just huge YA fans) at NCTE in Nov! Until then, please know we here at GitS LOVE YOU!
I read the print copy, but I might need to give the audiobook a listen. This might be my favorite YA book ever. I am so glad it exists for young women, not only because it’s so funny but because of how many cultural points it touches on. This is a fierce satire that I’m so proud landed in the YA market.
Haha! I loved this review/top ten list! I am actually planning on reading Beauty Queens via audiobook, but I think I might bump it up my list after reading this. I am hoping to see Libba Bray in December at a bookstore event, so I want to read more of her books. So far I have only read A Great and Terrible Beauty.
I LOVE this audio book! LOVEEEE!
Jen
Jen-So glad you LOVE the audio like I do-yay!
Quinn-this definitely should get bumped up! I also listened to Going Bovine-I love that it is a modern retelling of Don Quixote, but found a few parts pretty crazy; I like the realism of Beauty Queens better, but think Going Bovine is a trip (literally and figuratively).
Stephanie-SO EXCITED that you love this book already-it definitely is a whole new read in audio I would imagine (like Harry Potter on audio vs. Harry Potter the books).
Overall, I was pretty disheartened by many of the reviewers on Goodreads-they said this was dumbed down feminism; my thought-how could they not love book as much as I did?! So THANKS everyone for loving the book and Libba as much as I do!
[...] is added when producers can play with sound! See my original review of Beauty Queen on audio here (it lists the 10 reasons why Beauty Queens is awesome). See Nancy’s interview with Libba [...]
[...] think that my audiobook review kind of sums it up -see link here but the biggest reason out of all of them: It has given me heart in that I can raise a teenage [...]