Brooding YA Hero: Becoming a Main Character (Almost) as Awesome as Me

Gr 8 Up—As "the best of all fictional characters ever created," Broody McHottiepants is an archetype who has starred in many novels. But lately, authors haven't been writing much about him, so Broody decides to write his own book: a how-to guide on achieving main character status. He covers topics, such as the importance of describing your eye color, different genres and settings, various plot devices, and "The Brooding YA Hero Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe." The first-person chapters of Broody's book are interspersed with third-person narrative interludes consisting mainly of dialogue between Broody and his evil ex-girlfriend, the character archetype Blondie DeMeani. Occasional notes from Blondie herself hint that she yearns for her own point of view and the opportunity for character development. Secretly, she is counting on Broody's book to guide her toward becoming a main character. Broody's arrogance and exaggerated descriptions are hilarious, although the recurring jokes about expressive eyebrows and excessive adjectives lose their effect relatively early in the book. DiRisio makes a few positive points about the value of YA literature, noting that it "keeps growing and changing and breaking new ground," but she mostly pokes fun of it through her enumeration of clichés and tropes, thinly veiled allusions to specific books, and deliberately awkward language, such as the moment when Broody "froze like a frozen thing, trapped on an ice-cold frozen lake."