How Miles Morales Changed the Spider-Verse

by Victor LaValle (originally published in Love letters from the New York Times Style Magazine, 14 February 2019)

The writer Victor LaValle reflects on the power of the Oscar-nominated “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” and its young hero.

Dear Miles,

My kids think you’re great, but I’m the one who loves you. I’m 47, my son is 7 and my daughter is 5, but at the end of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” I’m the only family member who sat there in tears. In the movie you look like a teenager, but in reality you’re barely 8 years old. Back in 2011 two folks at Marvel Comics — the artist Sara Pichelli and the writer Brian Michael Bendis — created you. In the sea of Caucasity that was (and still is) the comic book industry, you were long overdue. I know this is all a bit meta, but that history was rolling through my brain when the movie ended. Meanwhile my son and daughter were too busy pretending to turn invisible or web-sling across the Magic Johnson Theater lobby to notice. I watched them playing and thought about myself at their ages. I know, I know, nothing is duller than listening to an adult talk about how things were “back in the day.” I’m going to do it anyway so go ahead and pre-roll your eyes.

The Tenacity of Hope

by Natalie Standiford, originally published by the New York Times, 13 January 2012

“I am not a mathematician, but I know this,” says Hazel Grace Lancaster, the narrator of “The Fault in Our Stars,” the latest novel by John Green, a Michael L. Printz medalist and author of several best-­selling novels for young adults. “There are infinite numbers between zero and one. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others.” The trouble, she says, is, “I want more numbers than I’m likely to get.”

This is a problem faced by the heroines in both “The Fault in Our Stars” and “The Probability of Miracles,” two young adult novels about 16-year-old girls who have cancer: their days are numbered. At the outset, the two books are remarkably similar. Both begin by bluntly describing the harsh realities of life as a cancer patient through the wry sensibility of a smart, sarcastic teenage girl. They are both surprisingly funny and entertaining, given the subject matter, and both are at heart teenage love stories. About halfway through, though, “The Probability of Miracles” veers off in one direction — toward the miracles of the title — while “The Fault in Our Stars” stays the course of tragic realism. And that’s where the difference lies.

What Really Makes Katniss Stand Out? Peeta, Her Movie Girlfriend

by Linda Holmes, originally published by NPR, 25 November 2013

This weekend, Catching Fire, the second chapter of the Hunger Games film adaptations, raked in enormous piles of dough — with over $160 million in one weekend, it’s the biggest November opening ever. Ever. (Take that, Twilightsequels.) Much has been said, and rightly so, about Katniss Everdeen and the way she challenges a lot of traditional narratives about girls. She carries a bow, she fights, she kills, she survives, she’s emotionally unavailable, she’d rather act than talk, and … did we mention she kills?

But one of the most unusual things about Katniss isn’t the way she defies typical gender roles for heroines, but the way Peeta, her arena partner and one of her two love interests, defies typical Hollywood versions of gender roles for boyfriends.