Bray, Libba. Beauty Queens. Scholastic Press (2011). ISBN 978-0439895972
Plot Summary
When a plane carrying the contestants of an upcoming beauty pageant crashes on a deserted island, the girls must find a way to survive. Right away, Taylor, Miss Texas, takes the lead organizing the girls to collect whatever they can from the plane that might help them survive. At first they all think they’ll be rescued right away, but the days go on and no one is coming. As tensions grow, more and more secrets start spilling out and it seems no beauty queen is what she seems.
The girls band together to make shelters, gather food, and start to thrive on island life. The girls feel free in a way they’ve never felt before. But then mysterious things start to happen making the girls wonder if they are really alone on the island, after all. A fake volcano, a group of shipwrecked (male) teen pirates and a foreign dictator all give this book so many twists and turns that readers won’t be able to put it down.
Critical Evaluation
Beauty Queens is nothing like teen readers have seen before. In between most of the chapters are advertisements of some kind written in about horrendously stereotypical beauty products or procedures meant for women and girls to make them into what men want them to be. The overlying message of this book is not hidden one bit – the government, the media, and parents want children and young adults to fit into the molds that have been made for them. If they don’t fit, well, then, they’ll do whatever snipping and tucking is necessary to make them fit. Each beauty queen gets her time to shine with flashbacks of their pasts and the inner demons plaguing them. Some of those demons include lesbianism, gender identity, sexual desire, extremely overbearing parents (in most cases), identity, self-worth and others.
While this book does cover many hot topics among not just teens but the world right now, it does not hold back much. This is a good or bad thing, depending on how much the reader wants to know. The overall structure of the book is good, the characters are well developed and sympathetic. The reader really routes for the girls. The final scene is of the girls leaving the island on the pirate ship (newly repaired). The story leaves them mid-jump into the water, or metaphorically, the rest of their lives. Bray leaves readers wanting to know more with this tale of self-discovery and acceptance.
Reader’s Annotation
These beauty queens are nothing like you’ve ever seen before.
Author’s Information
Libba Bray grew up in Texas for most her life before she re-located to NYC in her mid-twenties. She wrote her first story in the 6th grade, entitled Help, where a 12-year old saves her family from murderous bank robbers. More about Libba and her other books can be discovered here: http://www.libbabray.com/.
Genre
Sexuality and Gender
Book Talking Ideas
The premise of this book is probably enough to get kids to read it, they just need to know what that premise is. Beauty queens stranded on a desert island. Each one with their own secrets and no one is who they say they are. It is a little more girl oriented but boys might be able to appreciate it too.
Reading Level/Interest
12/15+
Challenge Issues
As mentioned above, there are a ton of issues parents might have with this book. Gender identity (there is a transvestite in this book), lesbianism, masturbation/sexual identity, swearing, etc. are all present and definitely not hidden. All one can do is take each challenge case by case and try to explain to parents that whether or not they read this book, all of these topics, and more, are currently being discussed all over the news, on talk shows, even referenced on some prime time TV shows.
Why Include This Title?
Beauty Queens, to me, seems like the new kind of YA fiction. It’s unlike anything before it with its formatting and the ads in between chapters. It covers so many youth topics that it seemed a shame not to include it. So here it is.
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