#middleworld

Where does the 2nd gif comes from? *-*

thedriftersdarling reblogged your photoset and added:

Can someone tell me what the shrugging gif is from in the top right corner??? Pleeeease…

It’s from the High Rise Q&A on the 11th October, where he read an excerpt from a 1978 J.G. Ballard interview. :)

J&P Voelkel

The Jaguar Stones Book 1: Middleworld - available now

When fourteen-year-old Max Murphy from Boston, Massachusetts, gets lost in the Central American rainforest, a mysterious Maya girl called Lola teaches him to survive. But with the ancient Maya Death Lords on the warpath, deadly snakes and spiders are the least of Max and Lola's problems.

Indiebound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

The Jaguar Stones Book 2: The End of the World Club - available now

Desperate to block a comeback by the ancient Maya Death Lords, Max and Lola head to Spain on the trail of the conquistadors. But a ghostly princess, a skeleton army, a smelly cheese festival, and a crazy rock band are just some of the hazards they encounter as they make their way to the wild and windlashed coast of Finisterra, the end of the ancient world.

Indiebound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

The Jaguar Stones Book 3: The River of No Return - available now

On the run from the Death Lords and marooned by a hurricane, Max and Lola take shelter in a mysterious new hotel up the river from Lola's village. Too late they realize that most of the building is underground - and it has nine levels, just like the Maya underworld. Their worst fears are realized as Maya mythology comes to life all around them. And that's before they've noticed the zombie army that is gathering in the rainforest...

Indiebound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

The Jaguar Stones Book 4: The Lost City - available now

With his parents in jail and his best friend ignoring him, fourteen-year-old Max Murphy was pretty sure things couldn't get much worse. But that was before a parade of Maya monsters crashed through his house and the Queen of the Bats tried to sink her fangs into his neck... Meanwhile, down in the Maya underworld, the evil Death Lords have realized they'll never conquer the mortal world without conquering social media. So with the bad guys on a charm offensive, it's up to Max and his Maya friend Lola to reveal the terrible truth before it's too late. This epic conclusion to the Jaguar Stones series takes Max and Lola on their wildest adventure yet, north from the teeming rainforest to the lost city at the heart of America's past.

Last week, I learned of a series called Jaguar Stones. In the first book, Middleworld, there is a Maya King named "Lord 6-Dog" who has a "huge hooked nose" and speaks using "thou" and "thee" and "art" because, according to the story, that's the way his ancestors spoke. 

Would that book count as "diverse" in the current configuration of "diverse" literature? I hope not, but then again, Island of the Blue Dolphins is tagged as a diverse book (it is on the CBC Diversity shelf at Goodreads), and, as Anita Silvey points out,* O'Dell wanted to give his Native protagonist "great" dignity:

"There was no record of how she spoke, and because Scott wanted to give this character, Karana, great dignity, he wrote in iambic pentameter, the language of Shakespeare."

 Thinking about those two books, I'm reminded of the federal government policy at US boarding schools for Native youth, wherein the policy was to "kill the Indian and save the man." Kids who spoke their Native tongue were beaten for doing so.

I guess some people are still trying to do that, after all these years. By that, I mean, stripping Indigenous language/replacing it with English.