Fiction of the Week for July 13: Pieces of Me (Part 2)
Continuing from our conversation on Monday with Susan Ouriou, translator of Charlotte Gingras' Pieces of Me...
Elsa (E): What other books have you translated?
Susan (S): I love translating literature for young adults, in large part due to my many fond memories of reading as a child and teen myself. What's more, Quebec has some fabulous authors right now who are not afraid to broach "taboo" topics and who do so using the language of today's youth, which makes translating their work pure pleasure. Some of the other teen books I have translated are Marie-Francine Hébert's This side of the Sky (IBBY Honour List), Carole Fréchette's In the Key of Do and Carmen, and Michèle Marineau's The Road to Chlifa. I also translate books for children and adults and write fiction for adults (although a short story of mine for adults that just won a fiction award was originally intended for children.)
E: Do you have an all-time favourite book as a teen?
S: My all-time favourite teen book is Love Ya Like a Sister written by my 16-year-old daughter Katie Ouriou. It also happens to be a book I'm not sure I'll ever be able to read again because it is so much Katie and reading it is like losing her all over again. The book is actually a collection of emails, edited by Julie Johnson of Tundra books, that Katie wrote to her best friends in Calgary as we started out on what was to be a year's sabbatical in France. Katie's voice is funny and wise and caring, and her love for her friends seems to extend to us all. What she has to say is made all the more precious by the fact that her life was cut short by a rare and sudden form of leukemia only three months after we moved to France. Judging by the emails we have received over the years since publication, countless other people have been touched by her words, and so the book is one of the many gifts she has left us.
Elsa is a librarian at Toronto Public Library. She reads a lot of Canadian Young Adult fiction.
Omg! Suside Notes looks soo interesting. I can't to read it!
Posted by: Sravya | July 15, 2009 at 02:10 PM
And Pieces of me was such a fantasic book. I loved it.
Posted by: Sravya | July 15, 2009 at 02:10 PM
I want to read Suside Notes too, it sounds interesting.
Posted by: Lilly | July 15, 2009 at 02:11 PM
i wanna read suside note...
Posted by: Devi | July 15, 2009 at 02:59 PM
OMG! I finally got my hands on "Idental". My friend told me it was great book.
Posted by: Rosey | July 15, 2009 at 03:32 PM
Btw, Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell, is such a great book. The title is misleading that's about history, but it was written long after 1984, about what people thought the present would be like. It's soo cool. (and a little confusing at fisrt)
Posted by: Pinkee | July 15, 2009 at 03:34 PM
A Wrinkle in Time, is such a great book. I just finished reading it like two days ago. And it's awesome! Try it!
Posted by: Polly | July 15, 2009 at 03:36 PM
I remember reading "The Giver" a few years ago for school, and I want to read it again. It's such a great book.
Posted by: Kim | July 15, 2009 at 03:36 PM
Life of Pi is another great book you guys can try.
Posted by: Kim | July 15, 2009 at 03:37 PM
Brave new world is such a great book. I almost done reading it, and it's awesome.
Posted by: Sally | July 15, 2009 at 03:38 PM
I was just looking through the chapters website, and I found out that " Into The Wild" is a great book. Try it.
Posted by: Sarah | July 15, 2009 at 03:40 PM
woot woot! I can't wait to read it! i put a hold on it and it JUST came!
Posted by: gigy | July 15, 2009 at 03:52 PM
OMG... I CAN'T WAIT.... I AM DYING TO READ ABOUT IT... it sounds great
Posted by: Theevijah | July 15, 2009 at 04:45 PM
Also take a look at other translated books by Susan Ouriou. You may want to give them a try as well.
Posted by: Elsa | July 15, 2009 at 05:35 PM
wow....Love ya like a sister definitely sounds like a touching book!
it might be a bit sad but i think i'll read it because there's always so much to learn from books like these and by the time i finish reading sad books, i end up being grateful for all the things that i have and being content and not unhappy and complaining about life!
Posted by: Lola | July 15, 2009 at 09:58 PM
ohhh and if anyone's interested, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold is a really good book! It's so touching and it gets a bit sad in some parts but then the author has used humor in other parts too, so its really good :D
and The Pearl by John Steinbeck is another short and awesome story that you can really learn alot from while enjoying the story!
Posted by: Lola | July 15, 2009 at 10:00 PM
Lola, I have read Love Ya Like a Sister and I must say that it's a very touching book. And you're absolutely right about being grateful for all the things we have. The book is also about the value of friendship.
Posted by: Elsa | July 16, 2009 at 08:52 AM
try 'I cross my heart and hope to spy' by Ally Carter. Awesome x2 :)
Posted by: Linda | July 16, 2009 at 10:14 AM
"I Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy"?!? That sounds hilarious!
Posted by: Edmee | July 16, 2009 at 11:47 AM
hey I read this awesome book and it is amazing to and you should read it every day and i would get really interesting
Posted by: lina | July 16, 2009 at 02:59 PM
I so want to read it!!
Posted by: Chloe | July 16, 2009 at 03:22 PM
Thanks for another awesome book suggestion, Word Out!
To return the favour, I'd like to recommand "The Adoration of Jenna Fox". It's such a cool book! It's about a girl named Jenna who loses 90% of her body and organs after a car accident. She undergoes a coma for a year, and one day she wakes up and finds that she has no memories of her past. Jenna later finds out that she's actually a synthetic creation constructed with over five billion neurochips and only has 10% of her original brain left during a time where biotechnological advances are illegal. She struggles with accepting her new self and trying to remember the past.
Posted by: Shel | July 16, 2009 at 05:10 PM
Wow! The Adoration of Jenna Fox sounds amazing! I read the Lovely bones by Aice Sebold and i can't wait for the movie to come out(hope they don't mess it up!). I also read Cross my Heart and Hope to spy and i really liked it! Did u know that there is a sequel called Don't Judge a girl by her cover! I can't wait to read it! I read the book that comes before it "I'd tell you I love you but then i'd have to kill you." It was hilarious! This book is funny and at the same time serious! If you like spies, you really should read this book.
Posted by: Cindu | July 16, 2009 at 06:29 PM
I read the book Pieces of me by Charlotte Gingras,and I loved it. It ususally takes me more than a week or so to read a book, because I always have a hard time finding a book that I really like, and I could not stop reading this book it's really goood because it shows how damaged mira was, and most of the problems that she had to go through were realistic,specially the porblem with her dad and mom. She reminded me a lot of one of my friends, it was actually pretty scary...
Posted by: Paola | July 16, 2009 at 07:05 PM
Pieces of me is an awesome book. I love it!
Posted by: Ruby | July 16, 2009 at 07:37 PM