Beauty Queens

Beauty Queens
Bray, Libba. 2011.
Beauty Queens.

Read by Bray, Libba.
New York: Scholastic Audio Books.
12 CDs, unabridged, audio-compact disc. $44.99
ISBN 9780545315234.

Format: audiobook
Rating: 4.5/5.0 stars
Plot Summary
50 teen girls, all wanting to win the crown and become the next Miss Teen Dream, along with camera crew, crash land on a deserted island. Only 13 of the girls survive, and so begins the story of survival. While Taylor (Miss Texas) expects them to keep focusing on and practicing as if this were another portion of the pageant, Adina (Miss New Hampshire) understands the reality of their situation and wants to be named leader in order to guide all of the girls to saving themselves.

Polar opposites, Taylor is very much the beauty queen contestant and Adina is secretly a reporter who is opposed to all that a beauty pageant represents. Though Taylor wins the vote and is named leader, it really is Adina who leads. Each beauty queen, as it turns out, has skills other than primping and preening, and each are assigned roles to help them all as a collective.

Unbeknownst to the girls, inside the volcano on the other side of the island, are some scary villains led by an evil, greedy dictator. Saving themselves gets a lot more complicated for our beauty queens.

As the story progresses, we find the girls becoming stronger with confidence and are able to make split-second decisions that help save each other, and sometimes themselves. Friendships form, and the girls become more real. It is no longer a competition; it becomes as fierce and protective as a family – and that may be the key to being saved.

Critical Evaluation
Bray's ability to develop realistic, sometimes stereotypical, and totally hilarious teen beauty queen characters is unprecedented. Of course, Texas is one of the survivors and plays a very key role in the entire storyline. A reader can appreciate the changes she experiences over the course of the book, and how, in the end, none of the girls are exactly what they seemed in the beginning. In sharp contrast, we have Miss New Hampshire – a take action kind of young lady who really is set on helping them save themselves. The conflict between the two, and the alliance at the same time shows growth for both. I especially loved the Fun Facts page on eight out of our thirteen survivors, as it really showed much more depth for each of them than our first impressions.

From the opening A Word from your Sponsor, Bray sets a hilarious tone that her surviving beauty queens carry forward throughout the story and her use of a Lost-like island for the setting was skillful, as it would be recognizable to teen readers and create expectations of intense danger and the consumption of disgusting foods for survival.

At first, the introduction of the pirates and girly-fying that happened felt like it set back the women’s rights movement by about a hundred years, but it was critical to the climax and conclusion of Beauty Queens.

Side-note: While Miss New Hampshire shares a striking resemblance to the personality of Libba Bray, it was probably no accident that the character of Ladybird Hope has been likened to a certain presidential wanna-be from Alaska. Political statement here, hidden between the lines?

Reader’s Annotation
50 teen girls want to win the crown to become Miss Teen Dream, but when their plane crashes on a deserted island the surviving 13 girls must find a way to save themselves and make it off the island - all, of course, without breaking a nail or becoming unladylike or forgetting where they came from. (Be prepared to lol on this one!)

Information About the Author
Libba Bray is a Printz Award-winning author of the acclaimed A Great and Terrible Beauty, The Sweet Far Thing, Rebel Angels, and Going Bovine. She is the #19 most followed author on Goodreads, and was born in Alabama, then lived in the great state of Texas (which, of course, is one of the survivors in Beauty Queens) and now she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.

She is fearless, unique and not afraid to be herself - and yes, that means sharing more with her readers than maybe some of us want to to know. She and her husband eloped in Italy and pulled a perfect stranger off the street to be their witness. She is always so funny that one can't always tell when she is truthful and when she is teasing. For example: she has 22 days to wrap up a manuscript which she has just torn to shreds so she admits, "I am fully psychotic and so terrified that... sometimes I go up to perfect strangers, pet their faces and say, 'You have a beautiful light inside you. Shhh, don't speak'...and I have not been arrested yet" (Goodreads, Killing Your Darlings, 2011).

Genre:
Fiction: Adventure – survival

Read-Alikes

Model Spy by Shannon Greenland

Down to the Wire by Shannon Greenland

Curriculum Ties
Compliments perfectly with our English 10 study on forms of propaganda, with heavy advertising, and body image and how sex sells in both subtle and not-so-subtle text within the book. It also spotlights teen communication skills or lack of at times.

Booktalking Ideas
1) read A Word from your Sponsor, which is key to understanding some elements in the book
2) scene/argument between Miss Texas (the 'wait to be rescued' approach) and Miss New Hampshire (let's save ourselves approach) and the vote for leader

Book Trailer Links
Book trailer a Reader

Reading Level/Interest Age
Ages 12 and up / YA

Challenge Issues
rescue, mass casualty, death, drug-use, post-traumatic stress, and gay- lesbian-transgender sex

First, I would share some of the recommendations used as part of the selection process, including reviews from resources as noted below. Next, I would point out the value in allowing these types of materials to be optional reading as teens grow ever closer to adulthood and making their own decisions. Finally, following our school district’s policy #KEC, after explaining that our school district’s philosophy is that no parent or group of parents has the right to determine the reading matter for children other than their own, I would refer the parent or community member to the building principal, so that he/she can file a written complaint to begin the process of review.

Awards
Goodreads Nominee - Favorite Book of 2011 - Best YA Fiction

Why Title Included & Selection Tools
Beauty Queens is a new favorite at our school and was included because it is as much a comedy as it is an adventure or survival book for YA, and our teens love how it seems to be like the television series Lost only with beauty queens. The first thing they wanted to know when reading it was, which 13 states had survivors, and was Maine one of them? The audio version, narrated by the author Libba Bray, makes Beauty Queens even funnier to listen to read.