Novels about Teen Musicians, Romance, and Competition: The Lucy Variations and Allegra

As I've said before, I'm a voracious reader. I like reading most types of fiction, even if they are young adult or middle grade-- especially if they deal with subjects that interest me as a researcher, which include kids and competition in afterschoool activities like athletics and dance. Stories about young performers seem to particularly resonate, and two new books out about teenage musicians are worth a read. Allegra by Shelley Hrdlitschka and The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr both focus on teenage female musicians who have crushes on older male teachers and who read Alice Munro short stories. Strange overlaps, huh? But the stories themselves are quite different. The eponymous Allegra attends a performing arts high school; she is most interested in dance but she has a strong background in music thanks to her musician parents. When she must take a music composition course her life heads in a new direction, mostly because of said romantic feelings about a teacher.

My biggest issue with Allegra was that I found the story ended rather abruptly given the serious issues raised by depression and leaving school due to sexual allegations and a form of bullying. The school Allegra attends in Canada doesn't seem nearly as competitive as other performing arts high schools I have read about and seen, as many students seem to collaborate across their artistic fields (visual arts, dance, music, etc.), but that doesn't stop feelings of jealousy between friends causing serious fallout for both teens and adults.

Unlike in Allegra, competition is front and center in The Lucy Variations. For the eponymous Lucy though this competition is organized and not between peers. Lucy and her younger brother Gus are considered prodigies on the piano competition and festival circuit. Lucy abruptly left the circuit eight months before the story begins after her grandmother passes away. The story focuses on her return to playing as she learns to balance attending school full-time (and not being tutored or attending a music academy) and a social life. And, again, those feelings for an older male teacher. The Lucy Variations has a great deal of layered nuance, along with an air of mystery that surrounds all of the characters (both central, like grandpa, and more tertiary, like Aruna). I seriously devoured the book in a few hours and loved the insight provided by Zarr about the impacts of serious levels of obscure fame and competition on teens.

The three main observations about competition that I found apply to many kids across competitive activities include: 1) Grandpa's attitude described on page 14 that "everyone is the competition" even if the child doesn't agree. 2) Reyna, Lucy's best friend, when she observes that, "You miss having an audience." Reyna thinks that Lucy seeks out attention in all aspects of life because she has become so used to performing and having people watch her from a young age. 3) Teacher Will's confession about young prodigies who grow up and find, "We grow up, and we aren't so special anymore." This is one of the most difficult things that haunt those who excel earlier in various endeavors, even on a small scale, because their identities are so wrapped up in being the best and always doing well.

Both stories will interest young readers who are piano players or musicians themselves, though I think The Lucy Variations will also appeal to those who have no other interest in music and who are interested in being enveloped by a good story. I love that YA novels cover these sorts of topics and I look forward to reading more books like these soon.

Unleashing Momsters: It's a Small World of Pageant Reality (originally published on Huffington Post Celebrity)

CLICK HERE TO READ ON THE HUFFINGTON POST CELEBRITY! When Season 6 of TLC's controversial hit Toddlers & Tiaras premieres on June 5 many of its usual cast of crazy characters will be absent. Some of the tiny tots made famous by the reality show have since "retired," including Paisley Dickey, Isabella Barrett and Eden Wood.

Before Alana Thompson (aka "Honey Boo Boo") came along, Eden Wood was the breakout star of the reality show. Her former manager, Heather Ryan, claims that after becoming the "bump girl" (the girl used in series ads) for Season 2 in 2010, Eden was the "poster child for American Beauty Pageants."

Ryan says a whole lot more in her new tell-all book, Unleashing a Momster: A Peek Behind the Curtain at the Tragic Life of America's Most Successful Child Pageant Star. The book--filled with angry language, typos, and grammatical errors -- is accurately described by its author as a "Labor of Loath."

The focus of Unleashing a Momster is Ryan's relationship with the Woods, young Eden and the "momster" Mickie. Ryan draws on three years with the Woods, relying on over 2500 emails, two-and-a-half years of Facebook posts, Tweets and YouTube videos to make her case. The headline is that the book reveals Mickie's abuse of Eden (including too much caffeine, working while sick and illiteracy), a condition Ryan dubs "Mikie-Chousen by Proxy."

But none of these claims will terribly shock anyone who has seen an episode of Toddlers & Tiaras or the Logo show that starred Ryan and the Woods, Eden's World; they certainly didn't shock me as someone who has studied child beauty pageants for over a decade, long before they went the way of reality television.

Ryan discusses the link between child beauty pageants and reality TV, writing, "Reality Television and crazy ass pageants were destined to go hand in hand -- and I was there from the very beginning, when the two began to intermingle." According to Ryan the first intermingling was in 2005 for a show on Bravo called Party/Party, though the television audience's first taste of American beauty pageants in a standard recurring reality series format was Bravo's 2004 Showbiz Moms & Dads.

Ryan's tendency to insert herself into a grander entertainment narrative occurs throughout the self-published book, which while poorly written does make for strangely compelling reading. She claims to be the first to create a Facebook fan page for a child pageant star (imitators followed within weeks, of course), the first to make a pageant girl mainstream famous (though lots and lots of Hollywood starlets, including Britney Spears, got their start on the Southern child beauty pageant circuit), and the first to manage 34 beauty pageant clients (including Maddy Verst, of Dolly Parton fake boobs and custody battle fame). It's true that Ryan has just the right amount of moxie to take advantage of all the fame new media allows -- Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, talk show circuit, online tabloids, and the seemingly endless cycle of reality shows. She's so ahead of the game with all this that she rightly refers to the moms who are so desperate to get their daughters on the TLC series as "Toddlers Chasers."

But Ryan was particularly impressed by one Toddlers Chaser family, the Barretts, who figure prominently both in the book and in more recent child beauty pageant news. Susanna Barrett, mom to Isabella, contacted Ryan and tried to link up to the "Eden Train," pushing for joint appearances and the creation of a toy line. Ryan wrote of Barrett, "Any stage mom who has so much dedication to the cause to lie on such a grand scale about her daughter's experience in pageants, just to get a little name recognition, is a mom that I will entertain!" While Barrett and Ryan eventually split (and Barrett when on to become infamous for calling Paisley Dickey, a toddler competitor, a prostitute), about a year later in spring 2013 Barrett went on Good Morning America to reveal that her daughter is now a millionaire. Isabella is now is a star in Germany because of her own reality show, but she nonetheless no longer does the pageants that made her famous because they are too toxic.

If it worries you that a six-year-old can become a millionaire based on her participation in child pageants, you're not alone. In the end Ryan not only stopped managing Wood, but stopped being a pageant manger all together because, "Eden was a child and it felt like we were betraying her by brazenly treating her as a commodity." Ryan does write that she deposited some of Eden's earnings into a Coogan account, a hopeful sign for a future, but it likely won't be enough to make up for Eden's lack of a formal education during childhood.

In the end the rise to fame of young girls like Eden Wood and Isabella Barrett, along with adults like Heather Ryan, illustrate the new nature of celebrity, not just in America but also in Germany and Australia. "Be yourself" in a contrived way on social media and reality shows and fame and fortune may come. The new self-styled celeb mantra could be: If you build the Facebook page (and pay for ads), the fans will come.

However, the failure of Eden's World to garner a large number of viewers, especially when compared to Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, indicates that it may indeed be much better to be your real self -- fat, flatulence, filth and all -- than to pretend to be something you aren't. Reality princess wanna-bes in Toddlers & Tiaras Season 6, take note, especially now that Heather Ryan is no longer around to guide you.

Shrinking and Pinking: Sex, Sports, and Sociology

It's always fun when a sociological study makes it into the mainstream press (for a good reason)-- especially one about sports. A new paper out in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport titled, "Where are the female athletes in Sports Illustrated? A content analysis of covers (2000–2011)," has been making the rounds, especially in the blogosphere. I mean, you know you have hit in big when you make it to Jezebel! It likely will surprise no one that the results of the content analysis are that few women are featured on the cover. Turns out it wasn't so bad several decades ago, but has gotten worse over time. It's especially interesting to note that the journal where the article appeared this isn't considered one of the "top" journals in mainstream sociology, but it shows that this doesn't matter when the subject matter and results are ones that people outside of academic sociology care about. Take note, and good for the authors Jonetta Weber and Robert Carini for studying issues that matter in people's every day lives. (Note that I have long been fascinated with Sports Illustrated Kids and the Faces in the Crowd features that both SI for Kids and SI do each week/month and I wonder what the sex distribution looks like here, especially over time and for kids-- does it change and become more equitable at younger ages, which would bode well for the future of females in sport?) A useful counterpart to this story is some of the big sporting news coming out of the Middle East: Girls in private schools in Saudi Arabia are now allowed to play sports. This comes on the heels of last summer's decision to allow a woman to represent Saudi Arabia in the Olympics. So when we think about the inequality between male and female athletes in the US, it's amazing to think how different this gap really is in other parts of the world., not just historically but also in the present.

And in the US, progress is happening all the time. Now stories appear not just about a single girl playing on a boys' team, but multiple girls playing with boys. One example is this article about high school baseball players Samantha Yarnall and Taylor Jones. I saw this link by following Justine Siegal, written about in my first Shrinking and Pinking entry, and while she is waiting for the day when this isn't newsworthy, I'm waiting for the day when: 1) A team is considered co-ed whenever boys and girls play together, not only when a boy plays on a girls' team, and 2) when there is enough interest to have single-sex teams in almost all sports.

In the meantime, congrats to Yarnall and Jones and both making the starting line-up and here's hoping they might make the cover of Sports Illustrated sometime.

More Talking, and Writing, about Competition (while being a mom)!

It's been a busy week; and I suspect it will continue to get busier as I prepare for the release of Playing to Win-- or at least I hope so! Before detailing those though, some thoughts on making all this work as a mom: On the day I did the two TV appearances described below, which bookend-ed my work day, I thought I had *finally* figured out how to be a mom, work, be a friend, etc. I did NECN early, dropped off breakfast for a close friend with a new baby where we talked about the "usual" postpartum issues, ran to exercise, and raced home to put Carston down for his nap since I didn't get to do our usual morning routine earlier. During the day I managed to get our garage door repaired and give Carston some extra Mommy kisses while preparing for Greater Boston. After the WGBH appearance I again raced home, and Carston and I headed off to dinner with a friend at the local mall. As I drove there I remember thinking to myself, "What a day! After 15 months this is really clicking!" My  husband was out of town for work and I felt like this was proof I could make all this work. Famous last words, right?! Well, Carston and his friend (who is almost 3) had a great time at P.F.Chang's. They were so cute together mimicking one another-- one would laugh, and vice versa, one would babble something and so would the other. The "problem" with this is that Carston is very into screeching. Can't figure out why this is, or whether or not this means he will be an opera singer, but no matter what we have tried to do, he still screeches like a little screech owl. Of course then, his friend screeched back. While most of the people around us were very understanding, one man in particular, sitting behind me, kept telling me how wrong I was to bring my son out and that this wasn't Chuck E. Cheese. I chose not to engage with him, but I did feel his comments were way out of line given that P.F. Chang's has a children's menu and the Natick Mall is one of the most baby/family-friendly places I have ever seen. I could have let this man put a damper on my day, and he did a bit (so much so that I am writing this), but other people around us were so nice, and as my friend pointed out there are SO many more good people in the world than bad. I ended the day by eating my carryout P.F. Chang's Lo Mein (couldn't eat while dealing with this man and my little screech owl), watching my WGBH appearance, and waking up around 1 am when John got home. All in all though, I still hope we are *finally* figuring all this out, despite people telling me where I should or shouldn't take my Little Man...

Two pieces I wrote related to competition appeared this week. The first is "Competitions Within Competitions: America's insatiable hunger," which is part of my ongoing blog at Psychology Today about children, competition, and popular culture. The piece specifically talks about the rise of even more competition in reality TV shows, where celebrities have teams that compete for the glory of the win on behalf of the team leader as well.

The other piece is about a young man who took competition too far, punching youth soccer coach Ricardo Portillo in the head during a game in Utah. Portillo died from his injuries a week later-- a sad incident that should prompt legal changes to protect sports officials and reflection about what increasing competition is doing to youth. This article, "Youth Soccer Shouldn't Be A Blood Sport" is on WBUR's Cognoscenti blog, a site where I have long desired to see my words appear (and that I got the YES on my birthday was a nice treat).

I've also done both TV and radio recently, talking about competition. In a radio appearance on The Larry Fedoruk Show on NewsTalk 610 out of Canada, I spoke about links between bullying and competition. You can hear that by clicking HERE.

Speaking again and bullying, and links to violence and social media, I appeared on WGBH's Greater Boston with Emily Rooney for a very interesting discussion about boys, terrorism, and violence. It was triggered by the arrest of an 18-year-old high school student, Cameron D'Ambrosio, in the Boston area for making terrorist threats on Facebook, but the discussion went much deeper into youth culture today.

Finally, another discussion about youth culture and competition took place at NECN's The Morning Show about how college graduates can navigate the increasingly competitive labor market after graduation.

This time of year is filed with competitive experiences- both victories and fall-out from losses- and I look forward to thinking, writing, and discussing more about these topics. Thanks for reading and listening/watching!

Pint-Sized Phenoms: Creating and Destroying While Setting Records

For the most part, Guan Tianlang, had a pretty good month. At 14 not only is he the youngest player *ever* to participate in the Masters, but he also was the only amateur to make the cut, earning him additional coverage (which thankfully wasn't overshadowed by the latest Tiger Woods scandal). While Tianlang did have to deal with a rare slow play penalty, the way he comported himself after earned him many accolades.

Sports loves to focus on the "youngest-ever" and "first-ever" monikers, which makes sense given most athletic endeavors rely on statistics, records, and history to fill the space around the action. CNN put together this slideshow, based on Tianlang's success, which highlights our tendency to spotlight the youngest even if they aren't always the best (yet).

Chess, considered by many to be the most difficult mental sport, also loves its numbers, rankings, and history. Last month nine-year-old Awonder Liang broke yet another record, becoming the youngest ever chess master in American history. This was his third significant record, as at only 8 the Wisconsin boy was the youngest to defeat an International Master in a standard tournament game, and at 9 he defeated a Grand Master.

Funny to think about this young, sweet face destroying opponents over the chess board, right?

Another sweet face that doesn't betray the skill level of the child is that of seven-year-old Apoorva Mali. Apoorva's has been growing her fanbase worldwide after a recording of her performing a magic show in India last year (when she was only 6!) went viral.

Like many prodigies she was exposed to her activity early (in this case her parents are both magicians), but she clearly has a knack, even if she isn't Houdini quite yet.

Another girl with a special knack for her hobby is Sylvia Todd. Todd is the oldest Pint-Sized Phenom in this edition, but at 11 she's not even yet a teenager. Last week Todd participated in the White House's Science Fair where she had a robot paint an Obama doodle for him (it said, "Go STEM").

Todd is more well known for her YouTube science show, "Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show;" her 19 episodes have been seen by over 1.5 million already.  In her recent New York Times profile she is quoted as saying, "Ever since I was really young I liked destroying stuff. I’ve always been interested in making and doing things hands-on.”

I suspect on some level all of these pint-sized phenoms enjoy "destroying" an opponent, an object, expectations-- or those records. And, in the process, they are really creating.