Extra Credit Assignment - Liren Xue

Apologies in advance if the emojis don't show up on Windows. Here is a key showing all of the ones I used.

In order, they represent 👩🏽‍🔬, 🤷🏽, 🙆🏻, and 👵

Title

The novel is titled 🙆🏻 🤷🏽‍Love and here is the picture I put together. It features emojis since the story is told largely through emojis, but the title includes the word "Love" in normal text since, by the end of the novel, the main characters transition from exclusively communicating in emoji to also using words.

Back Cover

🙆🏻 🤷🏽Love‍‍ is a bold, modern love story presented using emojis. 🤷🏽‍ is a senior in at Lakeview High School on her way to an Ivy League school. She has grown up obeying her single mother’s every command and is going to be the valedictorian of her graduating class. According to her mom’s wishes, 🤷🏽‍ will become a doctor, end of discussion. She is shy and studious, but secretly brimming with unfulfilled passion. 🙆🏻‍ is boy unsure about what he will do after he graduates. He’s not even sure if he’ll graduate at all. His parents are both dead and he has no one else in his life other than his loving but increasingly senile grandmother. All he knows and loves is dancing. And, yet, after running headfirst into each other after one fateful fourth period, these two, wildly different as they are, fall madly in love.

What will happen in this modern day Romeo and Juliet? Can 🙆🏻‍ find a place for himself in 🤷🏽‍’s preplanned life? Can 🤷🏽‍ help get 🙆🏻‍ back on track and into college? Does he even need to go? What will happen when these two totally different worlds collide? Find out in this uniquely stylized novel.

“A masterful glance into a Generation Z relationship” – The Woo-hoo Yorker

“As an expert on teenage romances, I think this novel will change the face of the genre” – Juan Spleen

“Xue’s second novel is streets ahead of his first. The characters are deep and relatable, the style is unique, and the plot is perfectly twisted. A true masterpiece” – Tamora Pierce Hawthorne

Pitch

🙆🏻 🤷🏽Love‍‍ offers a unique glimpse into Generation Z relationships. The story is presented as a series of screenshots of text messages. In a way, it is like a graphic novel. At the beginning, the main characters only communicate to each other using emojis. This will be relatable to adolescents today since it follows the trend of a decreasingly literary world. Teens will be able to understand the nuances implied by each emoji in a way that their parents won’t and the novel will give them something to call their own.

The high school love drama also provides a relatable, appealing context so readers will want to follow along with the story even if they don’t fully understand the emojis. 🙆🏻 🤷🏽Love‍‍ is a much-needed book in today’s adolescent market because it provides its target audience a source of validation for the way they communicate. By providing a story told mostly in emojis, 🙆🏻 🤷🏽Love‍‍ helps to normalize Generation Z’s style of communication and pushes back against the commonly-held adult belief that it is inherently inferior. The novel will empower adolescent readers by pushing back against the belief that adults are always right. However, the novel will also be didactic, since, as the relationship between 🤷🏽‍ and 🙆🏻‍ becomes more and more intimate, they begin to realize that they also need to use words to express emotions that emojis can’t truly capture. This will help guide teenagers through the transition into adulthood because the transition from emojis to actual text will mirror the aging process—as one gets older, he or she gets a clearer, more detailed version of the world, and generalizations stop being as useful.

The novel builds a tradition laid out by one of the earliest novels, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. Richardson’s novel is presented as a series of letters, and he uses the contents of each letter to tell a story that educates his audience on the rewards conferred upon a fifteen-year old girl for being pious and chaste. 🙆🏻 🤷🏽Love‍‍ offers a more modern interpretation of this idea since texting is a modern-day analogue to letter-writing, and the story will also include didactic messages. Essentially, it will emulate Richardson’s style of teaching through example. 

Main Character Blurbs

🤷🏽‍ – 🤷🏽‍ is a studious, reserved teen headed to college. She is ambitious, but has a hard time standing up for herself. She loves puppies and her favorite food is pineapples.

🙆🏻‍ – 🙆🏻‍ is a wild, restless soul. His life doesn’t have any direction at the moment, but in his heart he feels a burning passion for dancing.

👵 – 👵 is 🙆🏻‍’s guardian. She took him in after his parents’ deaths and loves him more than anything in the world. She is sweet and caring though occasionally overbearing.

👩🏽‍🔬‍ – 👩🏽‍🔬‍ is 🤷🏽‍’s mother. She is strict and busy all the time with her job as a chemist. She thinks she knows what’s best for 🤷🏽‍ and won’t take “no” for an answer. 

Stray dog Sonata Blurb and images

Luke Brix

4/17/17

Extra credit: Stray Dog Sonata Pitch

Back: Skin Walkers roam what is left of the United States after Yellowstone erupted and devastated the country many years ago. Artemis and Marcus Reyes are two brothers lost in the ash-cloud covered wastelands. They’ve been surviving nomadically for a while, but little does Marcus know that Artemis has been a Skin Walker for nearly the whole time.

Now on their journey they will come across a new challenge. A Lone Skin Walker who only refers to himself as Omega offers them the chance to head to a place called the citadel, a city built around one of the last working water treatment plants in the land. Along the way, the meet Meliza and Shyreen, two sisters planning to make the same journey to the citadel. As a group of 5 they manage the wastelands well, but as such a large group, they become targeted by a madman and his cult of sycophants.

“Dystopia in the post-apocalyptic sense. Here the land is not led and any scrap of order and power has to be made by the characters, a cult compound, and the failing remains of the US government. it’s a dark read, especially when thinking about the world, but made appealing by the characters who inhabit it.” –Suzanne Collins author of the Hunger Games.

“A story both externally and internally motivated. The character’s psychologies matter just as much as the destroyed landscape they inhabit. This is the YA adventure that will gear kids up to read writers like Cormac McCarthy.” –Steven King

Publisher Pitch: Stray Dog Sonata is a Young adult book aimed at fans of the dystopian audience with a bit of science fantasy woven in. 3 of the characters have the ability to change into wolves, a trait that always seems to be marketable. It will appeal to romantic interests as well; the main relationship is between Artemis and Omega. Such representation is needed in today’s YA market, and the idea of Artemis Hiding his wolf-form from his brother Marcus is meant to stand in relation to people staying in the closet.the main cast is also multi-ethnic, Artemis and Marcus are Hispanic and Meliza and Shyreen are African American. Hopefully this novel can take part ing positive representation of ethic as well as sexual minorities. This book appeals to the Adolescent desire to understand how power works, The main characters when not in compound of tents are often able to do as they please. Roving bands of Gangs and law enforcement are put at the same power level, and the cast will need to overcome both of them to complete their journey.

This Book is an inheritor of the Dystopian and Post-apocalyptic tradition. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road Heavily inspired the creation of this book. In the Realm of YA, it is in a similar Vein to the Hunger Games and The Knife of Never Letting Go. Hopefully this book will be new and interesting enough to appeal and create a new audience of readers that will view novels just as appealing and interesting as TV or Film.

(Artemis Reyes: Planned to enter the military before the eruption. Now watches over his younger brother marcus: one of the few times he wilfully shows emotion
Marcus Reyes: 7 year old who barely remembers life before the eruption. carries his mother's ashes in the bottom of a lantern.
Omega: the Jack Sparrow of the group and likes to pretend he's good at leadership.
Meliza: Lost her leg from a landmine. Adoptive sister of Shyreen. the one most capable of leadership.
Shyreen: 7 year old who clings to Marcus as a "romantic" interest. often lets her wolf side get the better of her.)

Extra Credit Assignment 

Blurb:

“Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Workingmen of all countries unite!” 

― Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

Asaria Harker has only ever known hardship. Whatever family she had, long ago forfeited their rights to her, unable to afford another mouth to feed and entering her into the government program that sees her living in a designated project doing menial labor at whichever factory she is assigned that week. A citizen of a world that has tipped over the brink of economic and environmental disaster, most of humanity is left in circumstances not unlike her own. Working day to day, from the moment they are able, in order to survive, under the leadership of a newly formed global government whose intent is merely to ensure that its citizens might have the opportunity to eat. But not everyone lives this way. Hundreds of millions of miles from Earth’s scorched surface, 99% of its wealth lives on a lush utopic planet more beautiful and abundant than Earth at its finest. Its existence is all but a myth to Asaria until one day she receives a working order unlike any she has ever seen. She is to report off world to the planet Theia where she will be a ladies maid to none other than Femi Keita, the girl in whose mother's factories Harker has worked in all her life. The pay for the job is more money than Asaria has ever seen and she is promised an entire house to herself on the planet at the end of a ten year contract for her services. But her positioning is not coincidental and she discovers that her entire existence is a consequence of lies, betrayal, and unchecked greed. With her eyes newly opened she becomes a spy for the organization that saw her placed on the planet, an organization that desires nothing short of revolution, to reclaim a stolen world and punish those who have lived in opulence while the rest of humanity starved around them. But what will she do when she discovers that the truth of Earth’s current existence is far more complex than she was lead to believe?  With a war looming on the horizon Asaria finds herself involved in the fate of two worlds, with every decision she makes more consequential than the last.

“Puts you on the edge of your seat and leaves you there for 374 pages.”

-The Guardian

"Never has a YA book taken such a hard look at the workings of the world. Controversial, heartbreaking, and inspiring, “The 1%” captivates as much as it terrifies, putting the world on notice of a future that seems more possible the longer you read.”

-NY Times

"I have never seen a love story as complex and powerful as Asaria and Femi.  It is, even in the context of such a fantastic story, utterly realistic... sometimes devastatingly so."

-J.K Rowling

Pitch:

The 1% is first and foremost a novel about injustice, empowerment, and realism. The book strives to circumvent the tropes of dystopian and futuristic novels even as it is exists within those settings. Asaria is always real. She is a young girl involved in a conflict much bigger than herself, but the longer the novel goes on and the more she grows as a character the more power and autonomy she is granted as a player in the conflict. She will make mistakes, be selfish, be weak, because in the end those experiences will make her into the woman she becomes by the novels end. Her romance with Femi will not be the love lorn torture of two girls separated by circumstances. They will both hold strong opinions and have strong personalities that will challenge their relationship. They may or may not end up together in the end, and the audience will be aware of the precariousness of their relationship. The love between them will be hard won and important, even if it may not be enough to keep them together. Their relationship is important in the novel because it is tied to the larger plot and is a big part of their development as characters, but it is still only a part of the novel. No character in the 1% will be fodder, but rather unique. This allows the readers multiple opportunities to connect and relate, because Asaria is not designed to be anything but herself and not everyone relates to any single individual. The novel builds slightly on Susan Collins and her kin but also draws on the works of sociologist and intellectuals (like Marx) in order to present a more fleshed out and realistic world. The characters will reference Locke, Fanon, Durkheim, among others because I think that a real revolutionary would and because it provides an opportunity to teach people something that might not come across otherwise. A little knowledge slipped between the pages of a thrilling adventure. Todays adolescents want something different, and real, and challenging and I intend to give it to them.  

Character Sketches 

Asaria-  Since Earth has fallen into poverty, looks have become unimportant, but on Theia aesthetic is everything. Part of the reason Asaria is chosen to go to Theia is because of her appearance, which although unfair and shallow, is realistic to the way of the world. She has never thought of her own looks and upon realizing the privilege of them, she feels guilty and rejects the idea of beauty and appearance, refusing to wear make-up and dressing very simply in a  personal rebellion that she is often mocked for. 

Dani - Dani becomes Asaria's closest friend and ally. The continual weakening of the ozone layer for centuries left the Caucasian race in a precarious position, as they were unable to withstand the ferocity of the sun. Skin cancer became rampant and many died. This effectively reversed the race norms of the world, placing power in darker skinned hands. Dani is one of the last of her race and on Theia she is almost an exhibit, something that Femi's family uses as dinner conversation. She is also apart of the movement.

Femi- the daughter of the Primarch. Femi is a social celebrity on her planet and  is works hard to maintain her appearance. She comes off very shallow but has hidden depths and a strong will that builds throughout the novel.

The Primarch (Cassian Keita)- A very serious and complex man. Although possessing a penchant for brooding and secrecy, towards all around him he is a very kind man who loves his people and his family. It is important for him to keep up appearances but he is a simple man in truth and is maybe the only fan of Asaria's style as he emulates it himself.