Blood Roses - Hardcover

Block, Francesca Lia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060763841 ISBN 13: 9780060763848

Publisher: HarperTeen, 2008

Synopsis

What shall we do, all of us?

All of us passionate girls who fear crushing the boys we love with our mouths like caverns of teeth, our mushrooming brains, our watermelon hearts?

What's real is what's imagined in nine tales of transformation by Francesca Lia Block.

About this title

About the Author:

Francesca Lia Block, winner of the prestigious Margaret A. Edwards Award, is the author of many acclaimed and bestselling books, including Weetzie Bat, Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books, the collection of stories Blood Roses, the poetry collection How to (Un)cage a Girl, and the novels The Waters & the Wild and Pretty Dead. Her work is published around the world.

From Booklist:

“What shall we do, all of us? All of us passionate girls who fear crushing the boys we love with our mouths like caverns of teeth, our mushrooming brains, our watermelon hearts?” Block’s latest book, featuring eight new stories and one reprint, explores female sexuality with wild poetry and a sense of vulnerability that extends to the book’s cover, a discreetly posed nude photo of the author. The stories, which read with brief, flashing intensity, are more like dark, fantastical dreams than developed narratives. Block combines elements used in her previous books—predatory adults, threatened girls, a natural world that both harms and heals, and the terrifying, infinite power of the imagination—to create strange, evocative scenes filled with archetypal fantasy characters, L.A. teens, and sly social commentary. In “My Mother Is a Vampire,” a girl’s mother, struggling in a youth-obsessed culture, drinks her daughter’s blood to stay young. In two of the strongest stories, girls’ bodies are dramatically transformed by the strength of their sexual desires. As disjointed as nightmares, the stories will startle, provoke, and fascinate many older teens, who may find reassurance in one character’s raw, closing message: “You are not fucked up. . . . Your world is fucked up . . . and you are just responding normally to its psychotic vibe.” Grades 10-12. --Gillian Engberg

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperTeen
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0060763841
• ISBN 13: 9780060763848
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 129