#YA literature

[rayghosts]

jk rowling: wrote a childrens book series in the 2000s about a society of outcasts, which attracted a lot of queer fans because of its themes on acceptance. comes out as transphobic, tweets out "merry terfmas 😘," and proceeds to write a crime novel about a man who disguises himself as a woman to kill people

eoin colfer: wrote a childrens book series in the 2000s that he describes as "die hard but with fairies," which attracted a lot of queer fans because he accidentally gave his male protagonist a feminine name. is confused but supportive of his largely queer fanbase, leaves nice comments on trans artemis fanart, and proceeds to have one of the protagonists in the sequel series marry a ghost princess inhabiting the clone body of her evil uncle, which when she asks if its weird, the protagonist responds with “Maybe people would think you strange back in the olden days, but kids these days don’t care about stuff like insides and outsides matching”

[sleepandblog]

"Please dance with me, I know that dancing is awkward and outdated, and I know that you don't like doing stuff like that and if I'm honest, neither do I, and I know that the night isn't going to last very long and soon everyone will just go home back to their laptops and their empty beds, and we'll probably be alone tomorrow, and we all have to go to school on Monday–but i just think if you tried it, you know, dancing, you might feel for a few minutes that all of this, all of these people... none of it is really too bad."

this line in solitaire ghdjgfjhdf michael cares about tori so much he really just wants her to see that the world isn't all horrible rahhhhhhhHHH

[ofstarsandmoonlightt]

Kit: you really don’t know how much something is worth to you

Kit: until you sell it

Jem:

Jem: Kit where’s Church?

[onceuponaneverafter]

Let's Talk About Jacks's Apples

...and especially their COLORS. I wanted to figure out what they could mean, so I made a spreadsheet!

part two

First, DISCLAIMERS:

MAJOR spoilers for OUABH and TBONA + the Caraval series!

This post was written BEFORE ACFTL and does not contain information or spoilers from it.

This post is based on my interpretations and observations, all of them may not be perfectly accurate. The conclusions I make are my theories, not necessarily canon information.

When I reference page numbers, they're from my OUABH UK paperback and TBONA UK hardcover - it's possible they're a bit off for you if you have different editions of the books.

This is a long post, so grab a snack and get comfortable!

I hope you enjoy reading! 🍎

Table Of Contents

Introduction

Why Apples?

A Detailed Look Into The Apples (= explaining everything I say I'll explain later)

The Colors

Where Do The Apples Come From

Conclusions/TL;DR

This is a long post, so here you can see what's coming and skip over to what interests you most :)

Introduction

Throughout the OUABH series, there are 14 scenes in total where Jacks is holding an apple in his hand (sometimes eating them, sometimes not) while Evangeline is there to witness it. All of those apples are unnaturally colored. To look for connections between them, I made a spreadsheet:

For sake of clarity, I will be discussing 13 total apples instead of 14 - I believe the "undescribed" apple (its color is not explicitly stated in the scene) is the same as White Apple #5, but it appears in two separate scenes, so both are included here. I will get into this later.

The spreadsheet contains various details about the apples, such as what Jacks does while holding them, when he picks them up (or if he's already holding them when they're described), what happens to them (dropped somewhere etc.), how he feels during the scene, etc. I will discuss these later in this post.

Then I realized he also has some apples in Legendary and Finale, so I made another list of the ones he has while Tella is present:

Here's a summary of all the apples:

That would make 20 apples in total, half of them being white.

Now let's go over some relevant context! Then I will get to analyzing what these colors mean and what kind of connections I found between the apples, I promise.

Why Apples?

Before we do a deep dive into the details, let's go over the basics on why Jacks keeps eating the apples. The most popular theory (if it can even be called a theory, it's basically canon) is based on what LaLa tells Evangeline in OUABH:

"When we [Fates] feel, it's intense and consuming. It devours us and drives us. And the strongest of our feelings is always the urge to be that which we were made to be." –OUABH page 270

She proceeds to explain that when she sews wedding dresses, it helps her with that urge, and to say that for Jacks it's similar – he has the desire to find his true love, and supposedly that's the one person his kiss doesn't kill. So, according to LaLa's logic, the apples help him with that. It makes a lot of sense, and everything he physically does with the apples makes more sense in light of it.

When Jacks is first introduced to the Caraval series, he is described eating an apple. While I believe the theory above is true, it was also interesting to notice that he seems to already be holding the apple when he meets Tella practically by chance. In fact, there are only four times he ever picks up an apple during a scene, and they are all during the OUABH series. I will get more into it later.

In OUABH, Jacks is described to have countless apples and apple cores in his rooms and offices, so we don't know how many he eats and why when Evangeline isn't around him. However, I found that he almost never touches Evangeline while holding an apple. (With sort of the exception of the silver apple, where he touches his dagger to her lips, and the blue apple, which he was holding before stopping Evangeline from taking the luck stone back from Chaos.)

Now, this could just be for practical reasons, but he touches Evangeline in about 21 of the 25 (I focused on the apples so this may not be the exact count) scenes where he doesn't have an apple and only in 6 of the 14 scenes where he has an apple, and in 2 of them the touch is barely there or brief and initiated by Evangeline.

An interesting comparison is how he does touch Tella while holding an apple (like Blue Apple #1 and White Caraval Apple #2), so it definitely isn't purely about logistics. Maybe it's related to him thinking she's his true love, that's the greatest difference I can think of. It is also noteworthy that he doesn't eat any apples while in the Hollow, which Evangeline also notices (TBONA 284).

With the theory above in mind, the way Jacks touches his apples is pretty straightforward:

He tosses them when he's in a good mood or needs to distract himself

Him biting them is practically his version of self-control

He drops them when things aren't so fun anymore or there's a clear mood shift (I will discuss this a bit more later).

He stabs two apples in total: the Silver Apple and White OUABH Apple #4. the first time he tells Evangeline how Apollo would be eternally heartbroken if she called off the engagement, the second time he tells Evangeline that the Archer ends up killing the Fox. And what unites these? Great heartbreak.

A Detailed Look Into The Apples

Or in other words, let's get into everything I said I would discuss later. After this, we'll look more into the apple colors.

The Undescribed Apple

I believe that White Apple #5, the apple Jacks holds in his hand before he and Evangeline leave to LaLa's engagement party, is the same as the apple that he picks up in the next scene, in the carriage as they travel - its color is not described, but the narration leads to the assumption that this apple is already familiar to the reader:

"Jacks leaned back in his seat and picked up his apple" –TBONA page 184

13 is also a more meaningful number than 14 (and the total count of all apples would be 20 instead of 21), so even though the total number might be purely coincidental, it also could be a fun intentional detail.

Caraval vs. OUABH

There are some very interesting parallels between apples in Legendary/Finale and apples in OUABH/TBONA.

First, we have the blue apple (in Legendary) that Jacks ends up dropping into a fireplace (see chart below). The only other apple that he specifically drops into fire is the very last white apple in TBONA. Before he drops the blue apple, Tella says that nothing could make her fall in love with him. Before he drops the white apple, Evangeline suggests that maybe Jacks could find another true love.

Second, every apple is either last seen still in his hand or dropped on the floor/ground (or fire), except for two: the sparkling white one in Finale (in Tella's dream again) and the pink one in OUABH, which he tosses to Tella and Evangeline. He directly encourages Tella to taste the white apple, and he tells Evangeline that she might need a snack. In terms of color, the sparkling white apple is especially interesting – I will look into the sparkling later along with the colors.

"Jacks picked up his apple"

The main difference between the Caraval and OUABH apples - and the one thing that keeps messing up my theories - is that during the Caraval series, Jacks never picks up an apple during a scene, he is always already holding one when the scene begins (see chart above). However, during OUABH and TBONA, he picks up four apples in total. And they are all white.

White Apple #1: Meeting Evangeline for the first time

White Apple #3: Evangeline says she'd stab Jacks if she got the chance to

White Apple #5: Evangeline forbids Jacks from killing people at LaLa's party

White Apple #7: Jacks lets go of Evangeline and shuts off from her, he's about to tell her the truth about planning to go back in time

All of them are different in terms of why exactly he picks up the apple, but there is more or less a shift in tone/topic of their conversation during all of these scenes.

The Colors

White Apples

I think that white apples are the "default" color, and/or they represent focusing on what's important.

They make up half of the apples Jacks has, and all of the apples he spontaneously picks up are white. So, if something like his emotions or circumstances affect the apple colors (which I think is at least somewhat the case), it makes sense for white to be the basic color – and what would be a better "default" apple than the one who reminds him not to get distracted.

Even though the apple he tosses to Tella is sparkling white, I don't think the color represents her because he was holding a white apple before he met Tella. He couldn't have been thinking of her, but he most likely had plans that he was thinking over as he was hoping to take the throne from Elantine.

Black Apples

I originally thought the black color could mean bad intentions or regret, but I'm now quite sure it represents doing whatever it takes to get what he wants. The context surrounding the black apples highlights this:

Black Apple #1: Jacks offers his help in exchange for controlling Tella's emotions. He wants to find true love more than anything, and this is his last attempt to make Tella fall for him.

Black Apple #2: He's controlling Apollo in order to make him propose to Evangeline. He needs it, again, in order to reach his goal – only this time he's planning to go back in time. Still to find true love, though.

Black Apple #3: This one stands out a bit from the other two. Jacks brings Evangeline to Chaos' castle so she can be healed after Apollo shot her. Here the black apple might symbolize doing anything to keep Evangeline alive (he also needs her alive, so that checks out, but at this point I don't think it's just that), and possibly his reluctance to either ask Chaos for help or put Evangeline through being infected with vampire venom.

Blue Apples

Blue apples seem to represent happiness and success, because we tend to see them after something went just like Jacks wanted. This could also be connected to his eye color.

Blue Apple #1: It's the first apple we see after Tella didn't die of his kiss, and he's obviously more than happy about that.

Blue Apple #2. He got into Tella's dream, for the second time, and he had successfully tricked her into the "marriage thing" before.

Blue Apple #3. He is holding this one right after Evangeline agreed to open the Valory Arch, while the apple he held in the previous scene (only five pages earlier) was white.

The Golden Apple

The apples that there are just one of are the trickiest because there's less context to go by, but I think the golden apple represents Tella. It's the first one we see in his hand after the events of Finale, and Tella's hair color is close enough to it. She is also a princess now, which the color gold could also represent.

It's worth mentioning that it could also be tied to failure, heartbreak, or Jacks's own hair color (as it is often described as golden). He also lives in the North now, known as Lord Jacks, and he's "friends" (?) with Apollo, a prince, so it could be related to that as well.

The Silver Apple

I think the silver apple is like a "milder" version of the blue apple, in which case the apple representing happiness would definitely be intentionally the same color as his eyes: The Caraval Wiki describes his eye color as "silver-blue".

When Jacks has the silver apple, Evangeline has got married to Apollo just like he wanted, but everything isn't perfect yet. He's quite content, but it isn't quite as big satisfaction as when he has a blue apple. However, because Evangeline asked him to meet, the apple's color could also represent for example curiosity.

The Pink Apple

Because of Evangeline's hair color, the pink apple seems to intuitively represent her. Not only that, he's just spent the night holding her before he appears with the pink apple in hand, so it just makes a lot of sense to me. This is also the apple he tossed to her.

The Purple Apple

I've had the most trouble with the purple apple. It being the apple he holds after talking with Scarlett and the scene leading to Tella's discovery that his heart beats, and the only purple apple during any book and scene, I don't even know where to start.

While basic color symbolism is connected to the apple colors loosely at most, purple as a symbol for royalty, nobility, and power could make sense if he wanted to emphasize those qualities while talking to Scarlett. Purple is also associated with mystery, and with us and Tella not finding out immediately why he met with Scarlett, it could also be a storytelling element.

Bonus: Sparkling/shimmering Apples

There are some apples that deserve a special mention, and that's the ones that are described as sparkling or shimmering.

White Caraval Apple #3, "sparkling white": This is the apple that Jacks gives to Tella (in her dream), urging her to taste it.

Black Apple #3, "shimmering black": And this apple is in TBONA, when Jacks brings Evangeline to Chaos' castle to be healed.

The only similarity between them that I've found so far is that they both stand out from the other white and blue apples: the sparkling white apple is the only white apple that Jacks gives to someone else, and the shimmering black apple is the third one that stands out to me (see "Black Apples" above).

Where Do The Apples Come From

A very good and for now unanswered question is where Jacks gets the apples from. Does he pick them from a tree? What tree? What color are they, do they start off as natural apples or maybe white? What makes an apple something other than their default color? For these questions, I don't have solid theories yet, only speculation.

We're all obsessed with how intensely Fates feel when they do feel something (*cough* the end of TBONA *cough*), but I also think that it could have something to do with the apples, at least some of them. When Jacks feels something or spends a lot of time thinking of something, maybe it could somehow affect the apples' colors? Some of the apples seem to be connected to his emotions, such as the blue ones. No apples are seen changing colors and some apples seem to not have a direct connection to his emotions, though, so there is little evidence to support this.

Conclusions

To summarize everything I went over above,

There are 20 apples in total that Jacks is seen holding throughout every scene he is in, seven of them during the Caraval series and 13 during OUABH and TBONA.

What Jacks does with his apples (tossing, biting, picking up, dropping) is connected to his emotions.

The apples have different colors that I believe represent different things: white (10 of 20, focusing on what's important), black (3 of 20, doing whatever it takes), blue (3 of 20, happiness), gold (1 of 20, possibly Tella? multiple possibilities), silver (1 of 20, possibly happiness mixed with something else), pink (1 of 20, Evangeline?), and purple (1 of 20, power? nobility? mystery?).

The origin of the apples is for now unknown, as is the reason for each color (both the colors' meanings and how they take on the different colors).

With all that said, there is quite much room for interpretation, especially in terms of the apple colors. My theories aren't the only correct ones, and I do not wish to present them that way. As I stated in the beginning, I might have overlooked details or noted some down inaccurately. The purpose of this post was to share my findings and to have fun theorizing!

Let's hope that we get some actual answers for these in ACFTL and that the books treat us kindly <3 Please do not give me any spoilers, not on the topic of apples or anything else, I'm actively trying to avoid them!

If you read this far, THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I poured my heart into this research and this analysis, and I'm so happy if at least one person besides myself enjoys looking at my little findings. <3 Here, have an apple as a reward: 🍎

[arson-09]

would love if we brought back romances in books that aren’t completely built on sex/the whole relationship doesnt hinge on sexual attraction and wanting to fuck.

Theres nothing wrong with a good smutty romance, love what you love. But good god i miss non sexual intimacy in books. Not every physical action between a couple has to be sexual. I get bored having to read this couple being extremely horny for eachother 24/7 like theres beauty to your partner outside their sexual appeal and power!! Let a character think positively about their partner without it being/becoming sexual

This is why i used to love ya romances. Since their SUPPOSED TO BE Ya (12-18) they SHOULDNT be too sexual (Maybe a fade to black if we r getting real spicy.) The characters relationship has to be built purely on respect and affection for eachother. You get to watch them become friends or falling for eachother, realizing that wow they love eachother

and its not just because of sex

anyway

[batireads]

What a great day to read a YA novel I’m too old for hehe

[katnissmellarkkk]

“I love you.”

“You are my life now.”

[leer-reading-lire]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge || November || 18 || Young Adult

[inspiredbyabook]

a study in drowning by ava reid

What is a mermaid but a woman half-drowned, What a selkie but an unwilling wife, What a tale but a sea-net, snatching up both From the gentle tumult of dark waves?

[stephaniemccrea]

Omg. So I'm doing a read along with my daughter, and I gotta say I was not expecting to absolutely love this series as much as I do. I'm in book 2 now, but I just gotta give a hell of a shout out to Tamora Pierce for such an enjoyable work.

Also, these new covers are absolutely fantastic. It is very appealing to the anime kids of this age, as I can attest to. My daughter immediately gravitated to this series over the many book options I presented to her. Yeah, try telling an 11-year-old not to judge a book by its cover. But then put this next to the 80-90s mass market paperback editions for Wild Magic, Diana Wynne Jones, Shannon Hale, and a few others, and she's gonna pick this.

Some of the topics are maybe slightly for an older age group than I was expecting, but my daughter is obsessively burning through them. I will have to explain some of the behind closed doors activities and explain to her that there is no such thing as a magical contraceptive charm pendant sadly; well, maybe an IUD is the closest thing we have. 😅

Anyways, I would definitely recommend this set for any young adult readers into fantasy. Hell, even old readers who love a fun fantasy.

I also read Sabriel and would recommend that, it's probably safer for younger ages/general audience as it was only ever glimpses and kisses if that.

And on a darker note reading The Women by Kristin Hannah, because I loved The Nightingale. It's so good. Late, but finally, a part of the 'Kristin Hannah rip my heart out with your historical fictions, and I will say please and thank you, and come back for more' train.

[the-fab-fox]

Love Chronicles of Narnia or don't but I think we can ALL agree that this line is one of the hardest and g.o.a.t.iest to ever come out of Children's/YA fiction:

"Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch. I was there when it was written." - Aslan

Like hot damn, Aslan. YASSS, QUEEN—I mean King. *bows respectfully*

Got any others to share? I'd love to see more! Perhaps get some good reading material to add to my list!

Please take a moment to read the note below the cut if the thing you are about to reply or reblog is anything religious in nature.

[Note: this post is a fun post about the books. DO NOT get into any religious debates or it will be deleted. I myself am a wiccan and have 15 gods who patron me ATM. You can find inspiration and happiness and meaning and enjoyment in things even if they weren't created specifically for you. Yes, it's a Christian allegory and quite frankly, the best IMHO. But if C.S. Lewis, a devout atheist-turned-Christian, and J.R.R. Tolkien, a passionate Catholic could be friends during the time of Lewis's atheism—a friendship based on truth of self and respect and understanding that two different beliefs can co-exist respectfully within the same space if allowed to do so—then people can enjoy books with certain religious themes and beliefs and not be compelled to change their beliefs because of it. Like if if happens and that's best for them, great. But we have our own agency. A book is not going to force me to change who I am. I decide what to take from the content. Not the other way around. Also Edmund is an amazing character and I'll hear no heresy about him. That is all.]

[silvermoon424]

I uploaded my PDF collection of Christopher Pike books for y'all to enjoy

I've been on a huge nostalgia kick for Christopher Pike lately, a horror YA author I adored in my teen years. If you never read his books, perhaps he's more familiar to you as the source material for Netflix's/Mike Flanigan's The Midnight Club (which not only was a book of his, but from what I've heard the series adapts several of his other books as stories the characters tell. Unfortunately the series got the axe despite being successful because it was on Netflix, of course it did)

Thanks to the Internet Archive and other independent archivists, I've managed to accumulate almost everything Pike ever wrote. There are some gaps, but thankfully most of my faves have been preserved!

If you're curious to get into some 90s horror goodness but don't know where to start, I can recommend some of my old faves:

The Season of Passage: VAMPIRES on MARS!!!

Monster: VAMPIRES from MARS ANOTHER PLANET!!!

The Immortal: Retelling Greek mythology before Percy Jackson made it cool again.

The Eternal Enemy: A Terminator-esque story that legit made me cry every time I read it as a 14-year-old (if you're wondering why, it's because the main character's nobility and love for humanity really struck a chord with me).

The Last Vampire series: A fun series (6 original books + 3 reboot books) about a hot, powerful 5,000-year-old vampire named Sita and her many escapades. I can't vouch for the reboot books but I loved the original series; it was my Twilight, lol.

Remember Me: The ghost of a teenage girl must solve her own murder. The first book is super strong; there are two sequels but tbh they're not nearly as good.

Honorable mentions go to Last Act, Witch, and Die Softly. Scavenger Hunt also gets a mention for being absolutely fucking insane in an entertaining way (it involves sexy immortal lizard teens and ritual sacrifice).

[bazberkker]

Oh, I get it. When a Bible Studies teacher spends a whole semester talking about one book, that’s “completely normal” but when I spend an entire year talking about MY favorite book nonstop—

[ofstarsandmoonlightt]

i want ty’s pov so bad like i want to know what was going in his head; when he put a knife to the throat of the kid in the basement, when he slept in front of the door of the same kid at the institute, like we know he kinda wanted someone to solve mysteries or whatever (like kit said, you want a watson for your holmes?) but he had livvy for that right? it’s said that he and livvy were so closed off together that they didn’t even include dru (but than that might’ve been some siblings thing because sometimes yeah at that age you kinda are annoyed by siblings in general lol) but yeah i want to know what was it about kit that just made ty drawn to him from the start

[thoughtofadumbteenprotagonist]

the strangest part of YA books stipulating the ages of their protagonists is like,,,,, eventually, you get to that age, and you reread the books, and you wonder at how any of these characters survived for so long when the average 15-18 year old can barely organise and complete a group project, let alone topple governments