Embedded Files
The Poet X
The Poet X
Elizabeth Acevedo
Elizabeth Acevedo
Bibliographic Information
Author Acevedo, Elizabeth
ISBN 9780062662804
Publication Date 2018
Subject Term Poets -- Young adult fiction; Novels in verse.
Source: Search Results for Poets -- Young adult fiction. (lacountylibrary.org)
Plot Summary
High school student Xiomara Batista is a poet and a young woman striving to find her place in the world, her way through her relationships, comfort in her own skin. She writes her experiences down in her notebook and shares her poetry with her new boyfriend, Aman. But the problem is, she has to hide it all--her poetry, her growing awareness of herself and her desires, her feelings for Aman--from her very devout, very strict mother, who compels Xiomara to attend confirmation classes and mass, making it very difficult for Xiomara to find a way to attend the Slam Poetry Club at school or to be with Aman. Xiomara has to lie, to keep secrets. Yearning for the freedom to find her way and be herself, to be the poet she is, Xiomara must confront the forces in her life that have other ideas about who she is and who she should be.
Critical Evaluation
What is it like to be inside someone else’s skin? What is it like to be Xiomara Batista, a young woman coming into her power, learning to know and accept herself, lit by the fire of self-expression in verse, but facing a formidable obstacle in her own mother, who would stamp out all that Xiomara is becoming? In The Poet X, readers discover the ability of poetry to convey life as it is experienced in the moment. Reading Acevedo’s rich verse, we become convinced that we, too, actually do go through life in stanzas, line breaks, enjambments, in the pulse of each word. In the poems of this novel, we are in each of Xiomara’s experiences as it blooms. We are in the immediacy of the body, the urgency of her questions, the force of her feelings. We learn from the inside what the search for self is, and the tragedy that comes when the ones who are supposed to love us don’t honor and protect that search--like Xiomara’s Mami--but instead try to control it, to stamp it out: “And I think about all the things we could be/if we were never told our bodies were not built for them.” For its ability to bring Xiomara to life in its pages, to so openly welcome us into the world she builds in her poems, into the story she tells in their sequencing, I found The Poet X to be one of the most important American novels in the history of the country’s literature. It’s important for teens. First, for teens like Xiomara, who will be empowered by her own empowerment. Next, for teens who are different from Xiomara in culture, gender, class, however, who can truly enter into Xiomara’s richly perceived and keenly observed inner world and understand it. Finally, for anyone, especially anyone who lives in the United States and needs to understand what its young people are capable of, what they are going through, what their world is, what it is made of, and who they are. Xiomara is voice, and for that she is vital.
Reader’s Annotation
Xiomara has a gift. She is a poet. She is learning about herself and her body and the world. And she wants to join the Slam Poetry Club at school. But she has to hide her true calling and all of her experiences from her Mami, who would have Xiomara focus only on devotion to God.
About the Author
Elizabeth Acevedo is a Dominican-American poet and author. She is the author of The Poet X and With the Fire on High. The Poet X is a New York Times Bestseller, National Book Award Winner,and Carnegie Medal winner. She is also the winner of the 2018 Michael L. Printz Award, the 2018 Pura Belpre Award, and the Boston-Globe Hornbook Award Prize for Best Children’s Fiction of 2018. She lives in Washington, DC. At the age of 14, she competed on her first poetry slam at the Nuyorican Poets Café, and then participated in open mics around the city, in such as venues Bowery Poetry Club and Urban Word NYC. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Performing Arts at George Washington University by designing her own degree using courses in perf orming arts, English, and Sociology.She then earned a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland and served as an adjunct professor for bachelor level creative writing courses. Elizabeth Acevedo was teaching eighth grade in Prince George's County when she was coaxing a specific student to read more, and when she asked her students as to why they weren't reading, the response she got was, "These books aren't about us.’’ Acevedo realized her students were affected by the lack of diversity in their books and not her capabilities. Acevedo was influenced to buy books that her students could relate to, when she realized that she had the power to write such books too. (Adapted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Acevedo)
Genres
Novels in verse, urban novels, romance
Booktalking Ideas
Read some of the poems in the novel and invite students to imagine the young woman who wrote them.
Reading level
14+
Challenge issues
Sexuality; homosexuality; conflicts with parents; conflicts with religion
Why I Chose This Book
Acevedo's novel should be required reading for everyone in the United States.
Weetzie Bat
Weetzie Bat
Francesca Lia Block
Francesca Lia Block
Bibliographic Information
Author: Block, Francesca Lia.
ISBN: 9780064408189
Edition: 10th anniversary ed.
Publication Date: 1999, 1989,1999
Publication Information: New York, NY : HarperCollins, 1999, c1989.
Physical Description: 113 p. ; 22 cm.
Subject Term: Friendship -- Juvenile fiction.
Plot Summary
Set in an urban amusement park-like fantasyland version of Los Angeles, a land where hipster accoutrements, restaurants, and hang-outs tantalize and satisfy a perpetual itch for material culture at consumer prices, Weetzie Bat tells the story of young hippie-hipster-punks Weetzie and her gay friend Dirk, who find each other in a high school classroom and embark on a series of adventures which may promise that they live happily ever after in their “Shangri-La” version of L.A. Their story centers on their shared desire to find the perfect mates. When Weetzie inherits a genie in a lamp left to her by Dirk’s super-cool grandma Fifi, their love lives unfold and introduce a set of charming characters: Duck, who becomes Dirk’s beau, Secret Agent Lover Man, who becomes Weetzie’s mate, Cherokee, Weetzie’s child by Dirk and/or Duck, Witch-Baby, Secret Agent Lover Man’s child by the vamp Vixanne, and all of their most remarkable and cool friends and relations. Together, this charming, charmed, and peace-and-love loving band of friends and lovers set up house in the fairy tale SoCal cottage left to Dirk and Weetzie by Fifi, start a film company, and attempt to realize happily-ever-after.
Critical Evaluation
What Francesca Lia Block gets right in the first two novels of her Dangerous Angels series, Weetzie Bat and Witch Baby, is world-creation. Drawing in elements of fairy tale and magical realism, she crafts an essentially upbeat narrative in which a loving, blended family consisting of one hetero-normative couple, one gay couple, two love children, and a mixed race family as friends, provide a support network for the various characters as they undergo the struggles and conflicts that make up the novels’ plots. The setting, a kind of dreamscape Los Angeles where all the hipster fixtures--Oki Dogs, vintage clothes, classic movie star ambience, and even the Jacaronda trees--acts simultaneously as a safe paradise in which the characters can live out their dreams and as a locus where coolness can be enacted even when the suffering of the characters is acute. The safety and coolness and errant beauty of the setting Block creates extends to the comedic aspects of her characters and narrative. While the characters do face problems and run into danger, Block seems bent on enacting the Happy End. The lyricism of her language and vividness of her imagery enhance the fairy-tale qualities of these novels, making the happy endings not just easy to accept, but important statements about making dreams into realities and vice versa. Other things to like about Weetzie Bat and Witch Baby are their gay-positivity and their embrace of non-traditional, chosen family structures. While the characters are still mostly interested in long-term monogamous relationships, Block leaves room for exploration.
There are two major problems with these novels, which are related to their settings and props and, ultimately, theme. The first is cultural appropriation. To shape her white characters’ peace-and-love personas, Block employs Native American stereotypes and cursory, pop culture props. The main character, Weetzie, in part defines her outsider identity by wearing feathered headdresses, moccasins, and fringe. Worse, she names her daughter Cherokee. These tropes place Block within the long history of white Americans’ reductivism of Native American tribes and peoples as they have tried to fashion their own identity as aboriginal (Deloria 1998). The other characters in the book who reflect stereotypes and appropriation are Ping Chong and Valentine Jah Love, the mixed-race couple who befriend Weetzie and her family. Drawn largely by the material facts of their existence and their choice of home decorations, with some New Age platitudes thrown in for good measure, Ping Chong and Valentine can be viewed as tropes to signal the multicultural virtues of Weetzie and co., as ethnic sidekick/token characters, not as respectfully rendered secondary characters in their own right.
Reader’s Annotation
With a genie in a lamp offering three wishes, Weetzie Bat seeks lovers and a fairy-tale ending for herself and her best friend Dirk and in the process of this search for true and enduring love materializes a cast of characters and build a fairy-tale reality.
About the Author
Francesca Lia Block, M.F.A., is the author of more than twenty-five books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association and from the New York Times Book Review, School Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly. Her work has been translated into Italian, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Portuguese. Francesca has also published stories, poems, essays and interviews in The Los Angeles Times, The L.A. Review of Books, Spin, Nylon, Black Clock, The Fairy Tale Review and Rattle among others. She has also adapted her work into screenplay form. In addition to writing, Francesca is a beloved and devoted teacher. She was named Writer-in-Residence at Pasadena City College in 2014 and in 2018-19 became a Visiting Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Redlands where she was a finalist for Professor of the Year award. Currently she teaches fiction at UCLA Extension, Antioch University, and privately in Los Angeles where she was born, raised and currently still lives. (Source: http://www.francescaliablock.com/about)
Genre
Magical realism, domestic fiction
Booktalking Ideas
Explore the genres of fairy tales and magical realism and discuss how these play out in these novels.
Reading Level
15+
Challenge Issues
Sexuality, homosexuality, non-traditional family structure, cultural appropriation
Why I Chose This Book
Block is a well-known and respected YA author and the Weetzie Bat books are widely read, so experiencing at least a few of them seems important for developing literacy in YA literature.
Chinese Handcuffs
Chinese Handcuffs
Chris Crutcher
Chris Crutcher
Bibliographic Information
Author Crutcher, Chris
Title Chinese handcuffs / Chris Crutcher.
Publisher New York : Greenwillow Books, ©1989
Description 202 pages ; 23 cm
Subject Child Abuse Fiction, Suicide Fiction, Brothers Fiction
Source: Los Angeles Public Library (lapl.org)
Plot Summary
The novel centers on the intertwining stories of two protagonists, Dillon and Jennifer. Dillon excels as an athlete and a student, but refuses on principle to go out for any of his school’s teams. The emotional context of his life is defined by his older brother Preston’s recent suicide (after having gotten involved in running drugs for a motorcycle gang and losing the use of legs in a motorcycle accident) and his persistent attraction to Preston’s girlfriend, Rachel. Jennifer Lawless is the high school girls’ basketball team star player and Dillon’s best friend. Like Dillon, she is an incredible athlete and a good student, but her life is beset by trauma. She has been sexually abused by her father and her step-father. Dillon and Jennifer must navigate reality as it has been defined by their traumas, figure out where they stand with each other, and ultimately face the man who has abused Jennifer since she was a girl. Dillon must also determine his relationship with Rachel, who is the mother of Preston’s child.
Critical Evaluation
Chinese Handcuffs is a character-driven story about loss, sexual abuse, and building trust in young heterosexual relationships. The author, Chris Crutcher, deftly navigates the omniscient point of view and intertwining stories of the novel’s two protagonists, Dillon and Jennifer, using chapter breaks to shift perspectives, but he is also able to incorporate first-person narration as well through letters that Dillon writes to his older brother, Preston, who has committed suicide. Being able to take in the story from these various angles, readers have the opportunity to enter into multiple interior worlds and encounter character’s conflicts and struggles with a wider view of the failures of the families in the story to protect and nurture their children and, indeed, of the failures and evils of adults in general (with the exception of the girls’ basketball team coach). The overall sense is that, while the world is cruel, and that each person must face demons from within and without, a few good people of conscience can create enough of a support network to build trusting relationships and ensure that justice is served and healing can commence.
One criticism of the novel which I encountered on Goodreads flayed the author for a simplistic mode of character development through melodramatic depictions of abuse and pain and scenes involving cruelty to animals; however, I think this critic misses Crutcher’s knowledge of the meanness of the world (he is family therapist and child-protection specialist), a reality that numberless teens must face essentially on their own, and the ways that adults fail to protect the children in their care. Cruelty to animals was not rare when I was coming of age, and in the memories of many of my friends has often been a seminal experience in their development. And while the step-father in the novel may seem cartoonish in his ugliness and villainy, and the mother extreme in her neglect, I have read enough actual and utterly harrowing accounts of adult abuse of children and teens to find these portrayals, unfortunately, very believable.
Crutcher does something admirable in Chinese Handcuffs in giving his protagonists the space, time, and wherewithal to be able to help each other, discover their own strengths, and bring adults who have abused them to justice. In the process, they forge relationships built on trust and support and offer promise of healing, models which teens and adults alike can benefit from.
Reader's Annotation
Dillon and Jennifer, two amazing athletes, must figure out how to face their respective traumas and where they stand with each other in this story of difficult relationships, trust, and courage in the face of formidable enemies.
About the Author
Chris Crutcher grew up in Cascade, Idaho, and now lives in Spokane, Washington. He is the critically acclaimed author of six novels and a collection of short stories for teenagers, all chosen as ALA Best Books. In 2000, he was awarded the American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards Award, honoring his lifetime contribution in writing for teens. Drawing on his experience as an athlete, teacher, family therapist, and child protection specialist, he unflinchingly writes about real and often-ignored issues that face teenagers today. (Source: https://www.amazon.com/Chris-Crutcher/e/B000APB97I%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share)
Genres
Realistic fiction, child abuse fiction, suicide fiction, brothers fiction
Booktalking Ideas
Offer a plot summary and explore how telling and reading stories can help us process trauma.
Reading Level
14+
Challenge Issues
Child abuse, sexual abuse, parental neglect, suicide, cruelty to animals
Why I Chose This Book
Realistic fiction is one of my favorite genres, and Crutcher has been lauded for his sensitive portrayal of the problems that young people face--and his stories involving sports, something else I enjoy.
Someday We Will Fly
Someday We Will Fly
Rachel DeWoskim
Rachel DeWoskim
Bibliographic Information
Author DeWoskin, Rachel
ISBN 9780670014965; 9781984836243
Publication Date 2019
Physical Description 353 pages : illustrations, map ; 22 cm
Subject Term Jews -- China -- Shanghai -- Young adult fiction.
Emigration and immigration -- Juvenile fiction.
Circus performers -- Young adult fiction.
Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945 -- Young adult fiction. Young adult fiction.
Source: https://catalog.lacountylibrary.org/client/en_US/default/search/results.displaypanel.displaycell_0.detail.mainpanel.fielddisplay.linktonewsearch?qu=Young+adult+fiction.
Plot Summary
It is 1940, and the Germans have invaded Poland. Fourteen year old Lillia and her family--her Papa, Mama, and her baby sister Naomi--have tickets affording them passage to Shanghai, where it is still safe for Jewish people. Naomi’s mother is captured during a circus performance the night before their departure, however, and so Lillia, Papa, and Naomi must brave the journey to Shanghai without her. Someday We Will Fly recounts Lillia’s experiences as she, Papa, and Naomi begin their new life as members of the Jewish refugee community in Shanghai. Enduring grinding poverty and hunger, yearning for her mother’s safe passage to China, and navigating the moral dilemmas posed by the difficult emotions of growing up, Lillia finds love, friendship, and a dream: to build a new circus for the refugee community in Shanghai. In beautiful, lyrical prose, Lillia opens her heart on every page of this engrossing tale of poetic insight into suffering, love, and family.
Critical Evaluation
From the first page of Someday We Will Fly, I recognized a familiar territory, one I have not visited often during my forays into the realm of teen fiction: the literary novel. Lillia’s imagistic and observant narration anchor this work, offering readers the kinds of insights into human nature that can be conveyed through stories of survival, of profound poverty and hunger, of deep yearning and irresolvable moral complexity. It is the moral complexity posed by the exigencies of survival, so honestly narrated by Lillia, which also marks this work as one of exceptional literary merit. As Lilliana’s hunger and dreams lead her to steal and to take up work which puts her at great risk for sexual abuse, she must navigate the emotions that attend her experiences: feelings of guilt, of anger, of disgust, of shame. Her narration provides space for these inner conflicts to play out in intense and lyrically rendered imagery, language which calls to mind the sensitive insight into female characters I have found in George Elliot. There were times during my reading when Lillia’s seemingly typical adolescent self-absorption led me to renounce this stereotype and see something more complex in its place: how the soul holds onto its desires and to beauty, how it manages to keep these impulses alive in spite of the ugliness of the world and the sometimes harsh decisions one must make in order to survive.
Reader's Annotation
Dreamers and lovers of WWII historical fiction will be drawn into fourteen year-old Lillia’s account of escape, hunger, love, and creative vision as she and her family learn to survive as Jewish refugees in Shanghai, 1941, while Germany threatens the world. Will she be able to make her dream of starting a circus a reality? Will she be reunited with her mother? DeWoskin creates a cast of endearing and memorable characters and an important story of survival in Someday We Will Fly.
About the Author
Rachel DeWoskin is the author of Foreign Babes in Beijing, a memoir about her inadvertent notoriety as the star of a Chinese soap opera, and a novel, Repeat After Me. She lives in New York City and Beijing and is at work on her fourth book, Statutory. She is an Associate Professor of Practice in Creative Writing and an affiliated member of Jewish Studies and East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. (Sources: Rachel DeWoskin (Author of Big Girl Small) | Goodreads Rachel DeWoskin – About)
Genres
Historical fiction
Booktalking Ideas
Discuss getting a new and surprising view of a tragic period in world history from a fourteen-year-old girl’s point of view, focusing on the story of survival, love, moral ambiguity, and the passion for performance.
Reading level
13+
Challenge Issues
Extreme poverty; colonialism; prostitution
Why I Chose This Book
DeWoskin’s ability to convey the moral ambiguity of her characters was especially rewarding and will give teen readers lots of contentious issues to think about.
Looking for Alaska
Looking for Alaska
John Green
John Green
Bibliographic Information
Author Green, John, 1977-
ISBN 9780525428022
Publication Date 2015, 2005
Physical Description 350 pages ; 22 cm
Subject Term Interpersonal relations -- Young adult fiction; Boarding schools -- Young adult fiction; Schools -- Young adult fiction; Death -- Young adult fiction.
Source: https://catalog.lacountylibrary.org/client/en_US/default/search/results.displaypanel.displaycell_0.detail.mainpanel.fielddisplay.linktonewsearch?qu=School+stories.
Plot Summary
When his father asks Miles why he has decided to attend Culver Creek Boarding School for high school, Miles replies, “So this guy...Francois Rebelais. He was this poet. And his last words were ‘I go to seek a Great Perhaps.’ That’s why I’m going. So I don’t have to wait until I die to start seeking the Great Perhaps.” Driven by this desire for the excitement of a mysterious unfolding, ideally to be pursued with close friends, Miles lands at Culver Creek. Bonding with his roommate the Colonel, he is soon nicknamed Pudge, and gets in with a small group of friends including Takumi, Lara, and the titular character, Alaska Young. As soon as Miles meets Alaska, he is smitten with her. She is brash and bold and wild, and he and she and their group of friends find plenty of ways to make mischief together, playing pranks on the hated “Weekday Warriors” (rich students who don’t live on campus), smoking, drinking, and drumming up in-group drama--albeit of a rather understated variety. Throughout these adventures, Miles observes everything he can about Alaska, and the two grow closer. But something very serious arises which turns Miles’s pursuit of the Great Perhaps into a genuine moral dilemma and introduction to grief--”a labyrinth of suffering” which Miles and his friends must find a way through.
Critical Evaluation
In Looking for Alaska, Green’s first novel, we encounter an insular world of precocious teens at an Alabama boarding school, Culver Creek. Narrated by Miles, who is soon nicknamed “Pudge” by his roommate the Colonel, the story, with its adult-light setting and hence opportunities for smoking, drinking, sex, and lots of clever mischief, evokes the sort of romantic nostalgia for a Neverneverland of young adult autonomy such as we find in Stephen King’s “The Body,” save the young ones in Green’s novel are older than the kids in King’s tale. The fulcrum of this idealized world is Alaska Young, who comes to represent the novel’s problem, the novel’s figure of the messed-up feminine, the one who is inevitably discarded in order to allow the narrator to learn a lesson of life and to grow. The whole novel is structured around her mysterious and tragic demise in a drunk-driving accident, counting down to the day of her death and from there, counting up through the days after. Part of the reason for this diptych structure is that Pudge and the Colonel bear some responsibility for Alaska’s death: seemingly taking her feminine power for granted without recognizing the person inside, they help her leave campus in her car in spite of their realizing that she is very drunk and very upset. The posthumous novel is spent, at times incoherently, with Pudge learning to rationalize his guilt and to grieve and trying, with the help of the Colonel and Takumi, to solve the mystery of why Alaska left in such a rush that morning. When they discover finally that Alaska has left in such a hurry because she has missed visiting her dead mother’s grave--that she was engaging in her ritualized confrontation of her own guilt over her mother’s death (although she was just a little girl at the time)--Alaska’s innocence is finally foregrounded. She can be absolved. Drunk and wild as she was, her action is justified. With this debut, Green clearly positions himself as a purveyor of the growth-through-trauma story. Miles does learn, at least, that “If you take Alaska’s genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people. And then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her that is greater than the sum of her knowable parts.” However, in Looking for Alaska we find yet another wild young woman positioned as the object of desire and sacrificed on the altar of a heterosexual, male-centered plot and character arc.
Reader's Annotation
Boarding school highs and lows ring true in Green's debut novel.
About the Author
Born on August 24, 1977, in Indianapolis, Indiana, John Green is the author of several popular books for young adults, including Looking for Alaska (2005), An Abundance of Katherines (2006), Paper Towns (2009), Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with David Levithan, 2010), The Fault in Our Stars (2012), and Turtles All the Way Down (2017). His novels have been recipients of numerous awards and have attained many “bests” lists, including the Michael Printz Award for Looking for Alaska (2006) and the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Paper Towns (2009). In addition to being a YA author, Green is something of a public figure, gaining renown for his YouTube projects, VlogBrothers, Crash Course, Project for Awesome, and Mental Floss, and for his podcasts, Dear Hank and John and The Anthropocene Reviewed. Perhaps because of his widespread popularity, a few literary phenomena have been named after him: “GreenLit,” which describes novels that feature wit, drinking, flouting of authority, and unrequited love, and “The Green Effect,” which references how, when John Green mentions a novel on social media, it helps increase awareness--and sales--of the book (reference). His essay collection The Anthropocene Reviewed will be out soon. He lives in Indianapolis. (Note: This bio was written by me.)
Genres
Boarding school fiction, suicide fiction
Booktalking Ideas
I would show clips from the Hulu series and say how it’s even more fun to read the book.
Reading level
15+
Challenge issues
Smoking, drinking, driving under the influence, school pranks, sexuality, suicide
Why I Chose This Book
I wanted to include a work from this popular author, and Looking for Alaska unabashedly portrays many of the things actual teens are engaged in, for better or for worse. It also offers a testament to grieving process.
Rabbit Cake
Rabbit Cake
Annie Hartnett
Annie Hartnett
Bibliographic Information
Author Hartnett, Annie,
ISBN 9781432838416
Publication Date 2017
Physical Description 403 pages (large print) ; 23 cm
Subject Term Sisters -- Fiction. Mothers -- Death -- Fiction. Fathers and daughters -- Fiction. Family secrets -- Fiction. Large type books.
Genre Domestic fiction. Psychological fiction.
Source: https://catalog.lacountylibrary.org/client/en_US/default/search/results.displaypanel.displaycell_0.detail.mainpanel.fielddisplay.linktonewsearch?qu=Psychological+fiction.
Plot Summary
In the aftermath of her mother’s death by drowning while sleep-swimming, twelve-year-old Elvis Babbit is trying to figure out the correct way to grieve, wondering how she can help prevent her sleepwalking and sleep-eating sister from their mother’s fate. To add to the confusing, Elvis is bemused by her father, who has been wearing their mother’s bathrobe and lipstick. To cope, Elvis turns to science and to her volunteer job at the local zoo, to memorizing facts and to taking measures to prevent her sister from coming to harm. With humor, insight, and wisdom, Elvis treats us to a world that is off-kilter but all the more charming for it, and she manages to find balance by accepting the messiness of life.
Critical Evaluation
If you’ve ever had the opportunity to hang out with middle-schoolers for any length of time, you’ll recognize the precocious coping acrobatics that Elvis Babbitt undertakes to handle life after the death of her mother in Annie Hartnett’s light-hearted but deeply therapeutic read, Rabbit Cake. As far as the elements of fiction go, Rabbit Cake is built on that most important one, character. It is young Elvis who tells us the story of this small world teetering on the edge of chaos, gently and wryly and gamingly making a heroic attempt to use whatever information she can to manage her grief. She is a girl driven by questions, eager to solve the mystery of her mother’s death, resourceful enough to find the answers and processes that will help her most, and smart enough to separate the wheat from chaff. As she discovers toward the end of the novel, when the beloved family border collie, Boomer, dies: “I’d figured out by now that death never makes sense, no matter how someone dies: murder, accident, old age, cancer, suicide, you’re never ready to lose someone you love. I decided death will always feel unexplained; we will never be ready for it, and you just have to do the best you can with what you have left. That’s what I’d pieced together, and I felt like I had solved a major mystery.” As we travel with Elvis toward this epiphany of acceptance of death and of the messiness of human life in general, we adopt her admirable wherewithal and scientific spirit. As I read, I had the opportunity to explore for myself what it is about the preternaturally wise pre-teen character-trope that is so perennially attractive. I know not everyone takes a shine to it, but I do. I think it’s because as a child I never felt myself to be anything other than a grown-up in a kid’s body. I was ready, before life sucked the life out of me, to assert kids’ rights as the defining cause of our age. And I know I’m not alone, that a lot of kids feel that. So I found the character-building that we see in Elvis Babbitt is an important expression of that feeling, and hence a healing read for any kid, young or old, who wonders how to cope with death and the human life that goes on after it.
Reader's Annotation
Trying to figure out how her sleepwalking mom died, twelve-year-old Elvis tries with humor and tenacity to go through the grieving process as best she can. Meanwhile, her dad is acting weird, and her sleepwalking older sister has her worried all the time. In this cozy domestic novel, we meet one of the most endearing young characters of fiction--and experience some competitive cake-baking along the way.
About the Author
Annie has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the Associates of the Boston Public Library. She holds degrees from the MFA program at the University of Alabama, Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English, and Hamilton College. She is currently at work on her second novel, and is represented by Katie Grimm of Don Congdon Associates, Inc. Annie lives in Providence RI with her husband, baby, & border collie. (https://www.anniehartnett.com/about)
Genres
Domestic fiction, humor
Booktalking Ideas
Bake a rabbit cake to serve, then talk about how young Elvis has to figure out how her sleepwalking mother died and how she can save her sister from the same fate.
Reading Level
9+
Challenge Issues
Possible suicide, death, bereavement, cross-dressing
Why I Chose This Book
Although the narrator is just twelve, I was attracted to her voice. I’m a fan of using a lighthearted approach to deal with heavy themes as well. Plus, the title and the book’s cover spoke to my wholesome gene.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson
Bibliographic Information
Author Jackson, Shirley, 1916-1965.
ISBN 9780143039976
Publication Date 2006, 2006, 1962
Publication Information New York : Penguin Books, 2006.
Physical Description xii, 146 p. ; 22 cm.
Series Penguin classics deluxe edition
Series Title Penguin classics deluxe edition
Genre Gothic fiction. Psychological fiction.
Source: Search Results for We Have Always Lived in the Castle (lacountylibrary.org)
Plot Summary
Mary Catherine "Merricat" and Constance Blackwood live an insular but sensually rich existence with their wheelchair-bound, eccentric Uncle Julian in the large family home on the outskirts of a village modeled after a New England small town. Merricat narrates the story of their lives, the details of the townsfolk's meanness toward her when she ventures out for groceries and library books (for, as she says, "The people of the village have always hated us"), of her excursions into the surrounding woods with her highly intelligent cat, Jonas, and her efforts to protect her little family and their dwelling with acts of sympathetic magic. Merricat adores Constance and will do anything to protect her. Constance has not left the house in six years, but keeps it impeccably tidy and her charges very well fed. Life would seem to be more than acceptable. That is, until Cousin Charles comes to stay at the Blackwood house under the pretense of helping the Blackwood sisters and Uncle Julian. His presence, however, proves only to rock the boat, and in the ensuing upheaval, we discover why the Blackwood family has become so small and why they have been ostracized by the rest of the people in the village.
Critical Evaluation
For readers whose tastes lean toward domestic, psychological fiction, who enjoy touches of the gothic, hints of the sociopathic, grim themes of everyday human cruelty, charming but mysterious and unreliable narrators and their preternaturally intelligent cats, with threads of witchy ritualism woven through, there is no better work than Shirley Jackson's masterful novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle. First, the domestic setting. The remaining Blackwoods, Merricat, Constance, Uncle Julian, and the feline Jonas, live in the old but meticulously cared for Blackwood house. Descriptions of how they tend the house are aesthetically pleasing artifacts in themselves, adding a patina of domestic tranquility, over which Constance reigns, gentle goddess of the hearth, and which make the inevitable disturbances of the novel all the more jarring: "Mondays we neatened the house, Constance and I, going into every room with mops and dustcloths, carefully setting the little things back after we had dusted, never altering the perfect line of our mother's tortoise-shell comb" (pp. 41-42). But such a hermetic, tidy existence, trained on pretty, minute details, must also bristle with psychological tension. In this case, it ripples toward us in waves as Merricat counts down to the time of trouble: "This Saturday morning I had apricot jam on my toast, and I thought of Constance making it and putting it away carefully for me to eat on some bright morning, never dreaming that a change would be coming before the jar was finished" (p. 42) To measure time in jam jars, to note portents in the woods, as she proceeds toward the climax of the story is just one of the many ways Merricat lures us into her world, which is trimmed by lacy magic that cannot quite forestall what is coming, though she tries. Take this ornament of teeter-tottering thaumaturgy: "On Sunday the change was one day nearer. I was resolute about not thinking my three magic words and would not let them into my mind, but the air of change was so strong that there was no avoiding it; change lay over the stairs and the kitchen like fog. I would not forget my magic words; they were MELODY GLOUCESTER PEGASUS, but I refused to let them into my mind" (p. 51). When the interloper, Cousin Charles, finally arrives, we are treated to a general diagnosis of the interloper, the malady of the small town: "He knocked, quietly at first and then firmly, and I leaned against the door, feeling the knocks hit at me, knowing how close he was. I knew already that he was one of the bad ones; I had seen his face briefly and he was one of the bad ones, who go around and around the house, trying to get in, looking in the windows, pulling and poking and stealing souvenirs." As she builds of this world of days of the week and Francis Ponge-like observance of minutiae, Jackson also slowly, slowly exposes the themes of "small-town New England persecution" in what Jonathan Lethem calls "this little fable of merry disintegration."
Reader's Annotation
For readers whose tastes lean toward domestic, psychological fiction, who enjoy touches of the gothic, hints of the sociopathic, grim themes of everyday human cruelty, charming but mysterious and unreliable narrators and their preternaturally intelligent cats, with threads of witchy ritualism woven through, there is no better novel than Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
About the Author
Shirley Hardie Jackson (December 14, 1916 – August 8, 1965) was an American writer, known primarily for her works of horror and mystery. Over the duration of her writing career, which spanned over two decades, she composed six novels, two memoirs, and more than 200 short stories. After publishing her debut novel The Road Through the Wall (1948), a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood in California, Jackson gained significant public attention for her short story "The Lottery", which presents the sinister underside of a bucolic American village. She continued to publish numerous short stories in literary journals and magazines throughout the 1950s some of which were assembled and reissued in her 1953 memoir, Life Among the Savages. In 1959, she published The Haunting of Hill House, a supernatural horror novel widely considered to be one of the best ghost stories ever written. By the 1960s, Jackson's health began to deteriorate significantly as a result of her increasing weight and cigarette smoking, ultimately leading to her death due to a heart condition in 1965 at the age of 48. Despite her ailing health, Jackson continued to write and publish several works in the 1960s, including her final novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), a Gothic mystery novel. It was named by Time magazine as one of the "Ten Best Novels" of 1962. (Shirley Jackson - Wikipedia )
Genres
Horror, crossover
Booktalking Ideas
Read selections from the work and summarize with a tantalizing teaser.
Reading Level
13+
Challenge Issues
Sociopathy, sympathetic magic, murder, ostracism
Why I Chose This Book
I wanted to add both a horror title and a crossover work, and Shirley Jackson is one of the greats. I feel that young adult readers, especially the introverts, would appreciate and even idolize Merricat, giving them a chance to dance with the shadow side of their psychology.
A Very Large Expanse of Sea
A Very Large Expanse of Sea
Tahereh Mafi
Tahereh Mafi
Bibliographic Information
A very large expanse of sea
Author Mafi, Tahereh,
ISBN 9780062866561
Edition First edition.
Publication Date 2018
Physical Description 310 pages ; 22 cm
Subject Term Muslim teenagers -- United States -- Young adult fiction.
Prejudices -- Young adult fiction
First loves -- Young adult fiction.
Muslim teenagers -- Young adult fiction.
Genre Romance fiction. Historical fiction.
Source: https://catalog.lacountylibrary.org/client/en_US/default/search/results.displaypanel.displaycell_0.detail.mainpanel.fielddisplay.linktonewsearch?qu=Historical+fiction.
Plot Summary
Shirin is a young Muslim-American woman trying to survive yet another new high school. Added to the fact that her parents have moved so often that she hasn’t been able to put roots down anywhere, it is a very hard time to be Muslim in America: the attackes of 9/11 have created an environment in which Shirin must face daily expressions of hatred against her for wearing a hijab. To cope, she has learned to shut everyone out. With her headphones hidden under her head covering, she listens to music; walking through the halls of school, she keeps her head down and averts her gaze so as not to make eye contact with anyone; to keep herself busy, she works after school with her brother and his friends on creating a break-dance routine. It’s not the happiest life, but it works, until Shirin meets Ocean James in her biology class. A white kid and star of the high school basketball team, Ocean is not the sort of boy Shirin would ever dream of engaging with. But he is persistent in his attempts to connect with her, and eventually, Shirin can’t avoid her feelings. Together, they must navigate the cruel world of high school and figure out how to have a relationship.
Critical Evaluation
What I most appreciated about A Very Wide Expanse of Sea was the opportunity to experience the suffering that attends being a Muslim young woman in the United States and understanding the coping mechanisms that young Muslim women must put in place in order to survive. Shirin is a lucid and strong character, unashamed but understandably wary of everyone she meets. As narrator, she offers the reader glimpses into her reason for wearing the hijab and what it is like growing up in an Iranian-American household as a girl whose parents don’t really understand her struggles, given how intense their own have been. However, I found myself frustrated while reading this novel, which is, to a large extent, a romance, mostly by its flat narrative style and lack of imagery and poetry, so unexpected, given the book's title. Those are important parts of the reading experience for me, for I feel they add depth of meaning and intensify themes, characters, and symbolism in a way that straightforward, all-tell, no-show narratives cannot. At the same time, I can understand the author’s choice to present the narrative without embellishment. It’s important to make stories which we don’t often hear as accessible as possible, to render them in a voice that is recognizable, and Shirin presents her tale in very typical teenage vernacular, and the lack of descriptive language lends a sense of immediacy and raw honesty to the work. And for all of its lack of poetry, the novel’s romance story is still an engaging read. I’ve never read a genuine romance novel before, and as I read I imagined myself as a teen reading this and knew I would have been thrilled. And I think I would have learned a lot from Shirin about self-protection, something I was never compelled to engage in culturally, but which probably would have helped me. Overall, I would feel comfortable recommending this novel to any young person who is looking for something to help them cope with or understand racism and prejudice against Muslims from the victim’s perspective, to anyone looking for an against-the-odds romance more readable than Romeo and Juliet.
Reader's Annotation
Being a young Muslim woman in the United States in the aftermath of 9/11 brings with it suffering, Shirin must find ways to cope while still preserving her dignity. But when love enters the picture, the wall she's put up to protect herself could come crumbling down.
About the Author
Tahereh Mafi is the New York Times bestselling and National Book Award nominated author of books for children and young adults. She currently resides in Southern California with her husband, fellow author Ransom Riggs, and their daughter. The final book in the Shatter Me series, IMAGINE ME, will hit shelves on March 31, 2020. (About | Tahereh Mafi (taherehbooks.com))
Genres
Historical fiction, romance
Booktalking Ideas
To introduce the novel, I would create a PowerPoint or other presentation to show some news headlines from September 11, 2001, then some about people of the Muslim faith being harassed in its aftermath. A romantic image of a young hijabi girl and a boy would fade in. Then, I would summarize the novel as both exposing the prejudice faced by Muslim people in the U.S. and getting readers wrapped up in an intercultural romance.
Reading Level
13+
Challenge Issues
Swearing, violence against Muslim Americans
Why I Chose This Book
I selected this novel based on its reviews on Goodreads and because I wanted to read something from the perspective of a Muslim young woman--a voice that is not often heard.
Dodger
Dodger
Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett
Bibliographic Information
Author Terry Pratchett
Publisher Dreamscape Media, LLC
Edition Unabridged
ISBN 9781611209723
File size 303038 KB
Release date September 25, 2012
Duration 10:31:19
Plot Summary
Dodger is a seventeen-year-old orphan living in Dickensian London, surviving as a “tosher” (one who scours the sewers for salable items) and living with his caretaker, Solomon, and a very smelly dog, Onan. One night, he witnesses a young woman being attacked, and manages to save her, chasing off her attackers. Two men, resurrected for this historical fantasy, Charles Dickens (yes, that Charles Dickens) and Henry Mayhew (author of London Labour and the London Poor, 1851) witness the boy’s heroic act, and help out by transporting the girl, who calls herself Simplicity, to a home where she can be treated by a doctor. It is found that she was pregnant, but that the child is dead. Dickens charges Dodger with finding her assailants, and we soon learn that the girl is at the center of an international intrigue. Dodger, increasingly falling for Simplicity (and she for him), must save her from this awful fate. In the process, he gains fame and gets to meet some of the most renowned personages of his era, including Benjamin Disraeli and Queen Victoria.
Critical Evaluation
If being immersed in Dickensian London in a charming reprise of Oliver Twist (complete with cockney dialect and plenty of time spent “toshing” in London’s miraculous sewer system) sounds enticing, then I heartily recommend Terry Pratchett’s historical fantasy, Dodger. If, at the same time, you were horrified by Dickens’ antisemitism in his portrayal of Fagin and wanted to like the Artful Dodger (his name alone), but just couldn’t abide his treachery, you will possibly appreciate Pratchett’s revision of those two unfortunates of literary history. For the Dodger of this novel is a boy of great integrity, and the Jewish man he lives with, named, much more respectably and suitably, Solomon, is an admirable, gentle, and wise guide and protector to this street urchin as he navigates his way into the highest echelons of 1840s London in the process of saving a young woman being sorely victimized by the patriarchal power structure. I’ve tried several of Pratchett’s books, knowing how widely beloved an author he is, but have never been hooked. And it took me some time in listening to the audiobook version of this tale to warm up to it. But soon enough, I was eager to return to listening each day, having grown fond of Dodger and the sewers most especially, and enjoying all of the allusions to London’s history and British literature, including a hilarious run-in with the murderous barber Sweeney Todd, which Pratchett crams into the tale.
Reader's Annotation
A young man who hunts the London sewers for things he can sell. A young lady of international importance, in dire trouble. What happens when these two meet and get a little help from Charles Dickens and other members of London society?
About the Author
Born Terence David John Pratchett, Sir Terry Pratchett sold his first story when he was thirteen, which earned him enough money to buy a second-hand typewriter. His first novel, a humorous fantasy entitled The Carpet People, appeared in 1971 from the publisher Colin Smythe. Terry worked for many years as a journalist and press officer, writing in his spare time and publishing a number of novels, including his first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, in 1983. In 1987, he turned to writing full time. There are over 40 books in the Discworld series, of which four are written for children. The first of these, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, won the Carnegie Medal. A non-Discworld book, Good Omens, his 1990 collaboration with Neil Gaiman, has been a longtime bestseller and was reissued in hardcover by William Morrow in early 2006 (it is also available as a mass market paperback - Harper Torch, 2006 - and trade paperback - Harper Paperbacks, 2006). In 2008, Harper Children's published Terry's standalone non-Discworld YA novel, Nation. Terry published Snuff in October 2011. Regarded as one of the most significant contemporary English-language satirists, Pratchett has won numerous literary awards, was named an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) “for services to literature” in 1998, and has received honorary doctorates from the University of Warwick in 1999, the University of Portsmouth in 2001, the University of Bath in 2003, the University of Bristol in 2004, Buckinghamshire New University in 2008, the University of Dublin in 2008, Bradford University in 2009, the University of Winchester in 2009, and The Open University in 2013 for his contribution to Public Service. In Dec. of 2007, Pratchett disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. On 18 Feb, 2009, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He was awarded the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award in 2010. Sir Terry Pratchett passed away on 12th March 2015. (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1654.Terry_Pratchett)
Genre:
Historical fantasy
Booktalking Ideas
Read an excerpt from the novel (trying my Cockney accent) and then lure listeners in with more descriptions of the life of a “tosher” as hero.
Reading level
13+
Challenge issues
Suggestions of rape, extreme poverty
Why I Chose This Book
Dodger is unique. A work of historical fantasy, it allowed Pratchett to recreate Dickens London and revise some of the characters in Oliver Twist in a way that both pays homage to and gently satirizes Dickens and the other characters of that era. It acts as a good entry into Pratchett's style, the world of Dickens, and the class consciousness of British society.
Punkzilla
Punkzilla
Adam Rapp
Adam Rapp
Bibliographic Information
Author Rapp, Adam
Edition First edition
Publisher Somerville, Mass. : Candlewick Press, ©2009
Description 244 pages ; 20 cm
Subject(s) Runaway teenagers Fiction; Methamphetamine abuse Fiction; Drug abuse Fiction; Brothers Fiction
Genre/Format Young adult fiction
Source: Los Angeles Public Library - Punkzilla / Rapp, Adam (lapl.org)
Plot Summary
Adam Rapp has created an authentic and gritty, poignant and bold epistolary work in Punkzilla. The novel's main character, fourteen-year-old Jaime, aka Punkzilla, is a run-away, having gone AWOL from the hated military academy his parents had forced him to attend. He is heading from Portland, by Greyhound and by hitchhiking and by however else he can get there, to his dying older brother, Peter, in Memphis. Along the way, Jaime recounts his adventures and his inimitable observations of the people he's hung with, of those who harm him and who help him in a series of letters to Peter, or "P." Rapp holds nothing back in this Michael J. Printz Honor winner. It's an important work of realism, but many would probably agree it's pretty graphic in its depictions of crime, drugs, assault, and sex, and thus geared toward older teens, although Publisher's Weekly says it for 14 and up.
Critical Evaluation
Punkzilla is a character-driven novel, or maybe I should say a voice-driven novel, one that eschews any but the most bare bones plot (Jaime, a runaway, is trying to get to his dying brother in Memphis). Instead, as fourteen-year-old Jaime writes of his misadventures in a series of letters to “P,” his older brother Peter, the work foregrounds the episodic, and in the process achieves a very high level of naturalism. Add to that a heavy dose of gritty street-kid realism rendered from a slippery world of runaways, drug addiction, petty crime, and a cast of misfits--all told in a run-on style which still retains great coherence--and you have what feels like a portrait of the America that folks housed in the neat suburbs and wrapped in expensive yoga pants are completely oblivious to. Jaime reminds me of the Fool, the 0 card in the major arcana of the tarot: alone, on the precipice of something, his few belongings stuffed in a knapsack, his loyalty to his brother (symbolized by the dog in the card) egging him onward. He is totally uncertain of how he will get to his destination, but by some serendipitous alignment of circumstances manages to. He is homeless, but he has a destination, a promise of something like home. And so Rapp pulls Jaime and the reader through on this thin strand of hope, and he and we find it holds. Even if, in the end, it’s a little bit frayed, it’s enough, we feel, to begin a new weaving. And we get to think about how people are, how crazed we all are in one way or another. We get to think about brothers, and what a brother can mean in a young person’s life. The only sore spot might be Jaime’s habit of referring to females as “skeezers” and the harsh spotlight he shines on many of the people he encounters on his journey. There was just one point in the novel where I grew tired of this unforgiving glare. Jaime writes, “The old skeezer behind the desk at the Best Western had a face like a mustard stain….” Reading it now, it seems a slight offense, but it came after 173 pages of many similar observations. Still, I was able to soldier on, and fell again to liking and appreciating this, after all, delicate but tough fourteen-year-old looking for a family that would take him as is. And he does find that, so I think Rapp has written an important book.
Reader’s Annotation
Not for the faint of heart, Punkzilla is a journey told in letters written by fourteen-year-old runaway, Jaime, who is traveling across the United States by bus and the kindness of strangers, trying to get to his dying brother in Memphis.
About the Author
Award-winning novelist, playwright, poet, and screenwriter Adam Rapp was born on June 15, 1968, in Chicago, Illinois, but he grew up in Joliet. He attended college at Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa, and completed a playwriting fellowship at Julliard in New York, where he worked in publishing, writing fiction and plays by night. Rapp is the author of nine novels for young adults: Missing the Piano (1994), The Buffalo Tree (1997), The Copper Elephant (1999), Little Chicago (2002), 33 Snowfish (2003), Under the Wolf, Under the Dog (2004), Punkzilla (2009), The Children and the Wolves (2012), and Fum (2018). The ALA named Missing the Piano one of its 1995 Best Books for Young Adults and Best Books for Reluctant Readers, while Under the Wolf, Under the Dog received both the 2006 Schneider Family Teen Award and a Los Angeles Times Book Award nomination. Punkzilla was a 2010 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book. Rapp currently lives in New York City.
Genres
Epistolary novels, runaway fiction
Booktalking Ideas
Introduce the author and his credentials, then read and excerpt from the novel to entice the audience with Jaime’s voice.
Reading level
16+
Challenge issues
Drug abuse, sexuality, homosexuality, petty crime, swearing, violence, runaways, cancer
Why I Chose This Book
Rapp's novel offers readers a powerful portrayal of the runaway experience, life on the streets, and brotherly love.
Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Bibliographic Information
Author Sáenz, Benjamin Alire.
ISBN 9781442408920; 9781442408937
Edition 1st ed.
Publication Date 2012
Publication Information New York : Simon & Schuster BFYR, c2012.
Physical Description 359 p. ; 22 cm.
Subject Term Families -- Young adult fiction.
Mexican Americans -- Young adult fiction.
Friendship -- Young adult fiction.
Homosexuality -- Young adult fiction.
Coming of age -- Young adult fiction.
Genre Bildungsromans.
Source: https://catalog.lacountylibrary.org/client/en_US/default/search/results.displaypanel.displaycell_0.detail.mainpanel.fielddisplay.linktonewsearch?qu=Coming+of+age+--+Young+adult+fiction.
Plot Summary
Aristotle (Ari) is an introverted, angry New Mexico teen. Without many friends, and the youngest of his siblings, the only one still living at home, he feels pretty lonely. His father, a Vietnam veteran, is taciturn and hard to connect with, and their family never talks about Ari’s older brother, who is in jail, but whom Ari wants to know more about. Ari’s one outlet, his only way to deal with his feelings of alienation, is his love of fitness. For one thing, he wants to learn how to swim better. At the public pool where he practices, he meets Dante. Dante is an intellectual, poetic sort of young man, unlike anyone Aristotle has ever met. Dante offers to teach him how to swim. They become best friends, eventually forging an unbreakable bond and learning who they are. In building a relationship with Dante and connecting more closely with his mother and father, Aristotle learns the most important secret of all.
Critical Evaluation
“Eventually, I realized that these lists of predictable and unpredictable patterns in adolescent literature share one thing. They can all be linked to issues of power. Although the primary purpose of the adolescent novel may appear to be a depiction of growth, growth in this genre is inevitably represented as being linked to what the adolescent has learned about power.” - Roberta Trites, Disturbing the universe: power and repression in adolescent literature
In working on a research project on realistic YA fiction, I came across Trites’ work. Her premise, that the majority of YA fiction is invested in dominant capitalist power structures and that realistic YA fiction often reinforces those structures as teen characters grapple with and eventually capitulate to them, works as a cipher for so many of the YA novels I’ve read. And yet, although I’m not sure I possess the intellectual chops to make this reading, I think I can point to Sáenz’s novel as managing, ultimately, to elude this paradigm. Told in the first person by Aristotle, a young man living in New Mexico with his parents, the story unfolds through Ari’s lyrical observations of his experiences. Yes, power structures and dynamics are all around for Ari to grapple with: his older brother is in jail, and his family never talks about him; his father is a Vietnam veteran undergoing his own trauma; Ari often ends up fighting some of the assholes that lurk in the neighborhood, compelling them to stand down. And yet, when Dante enters his life, we see these power dynamics gradually dissolve, piece by piece, like leaves falling off the trees in autumn. From Dante’s love for Ari, from Ari’s and Dante’s parents’ embracing the boys’ relationship, from the eventual breaking down of barriers between the boys, between the families, between Ari and his father, a pristine bubble arises. Inside this bubble are Ari and Dante and their love for one another and their families' support of their love. While it takes the entire course of the novel for this bubble to float gently up, to find its space in the clear air of the reader’s engagement with these characters (so enticing in Saenz’s deft, compact cadences), once it does, love seems to become a bulwark against power: Dante and Ari’s love for one another, and their parents love for them as they encourage the boys to embrace their passion. For that blissful moment at the end of the novel, we see the power of love overcoming the love of power, as the saying goes: “As Dante and I lay on our backs in the bed of my pickup and gazed out at the summer stars, I was free. Imagine that, Aristotle Mendoza, a free man. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I thought of that look on my mother’s face when I told her I was ashamed. I thought of that look of love and compassion that she wore as she looked at me. ‘Ashamed? Of loving Dante?’ I took Dante’s hand and held it. How could I ever be ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?”
Reader's Annotation
Are Ari and Dante going to get together, or what? Like all relationships, it's complicated. But Sáenz handles all of this with gentle, poetic, and sagacious care.
About the Author
Benjamin Alire Saenz was born on August 6, 1954, in Old Picacho, New Mexico. Saenz is a poet, novelist, and scholar, and has authored works for children, young adults, and adults. His first book of poems, Calendar of Dust, won an American Book Award in 1992. His first YA title was Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood (2004). He followed that work with four others: He Forgot to Say Goodbye (2008), Last Night I Sang to the Monster (2009), Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (2012), and The Inexplicable Logic of My Life (2017). All of these novels have received some of the highest honors conferred on YA authors. The novel featured on this blog, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, was a Printz Honor Book, the Stonewall Award winner, the Pura Belpre Award winner, the Lambda Literary Award winner, and a finalist for the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award. Mr. Saenz teaches Creative Writing at the University of Texas in El Paso. (Note: This bio was written by me.)
Genres
Realistic fiction, bildungsroman, LGBTQ fiction
Booktalking Ideas
In my mind’s eye, I see images of boys who look like Ari and Dante, laughing together; a picture of a red pickup truck; a video of a rainstorm in the New Mexican desert. In my talk, I say, “Ok, who likes those kinds of romances where you just don’t know how or even if they are going to turn out? The ones that pull you along, without your even realizing what’s happening?”
Reading level
14+
Challenge Issues
Homosexuality, sexuality, swearing, some violence
Why I Chose This Book
I consider it a classic of YA fiction and an important addition to the LGBTQ+ canon.
Dragon Boy
Dragon Boy
Donald Samson
Donald Samson
Bibliographic Information
Author Donald Samson
Description Paperback, 248 pages
Publishing May 8th 2008 by the Association of Waldorf Schools
Original Title The Dragon Boy
ISBN 1888365846 (ISBN13: 9781888365849)
Plot Summary
An orphan with a secret gift is brought by a wizard to an old woman on the outskirts of town. The woman agrees to undertake the wizard's request to raise the boy, but when she dies, he is left to fend for himself on the streets. He is inexplicably drawn to one of the most guarded places in the town, the Dragon Compound, where generations of young people, mostly of royal or aristocratic extraction, are trained to take care of the compound’s precious inhabitant, a Luck Dragon named Star. The boy stands vigil outside the compound until, at last, he is admitted. Once inside, he works hard, finds friends and enemies, and discovers the most important thing of all: the secret that makes him different from all others, and which binds him to Star forever.
Critical Evaluation
A possibly embarrassing confession: after finally watching all eight seasons of Game of Thrones earlier this year, I fell in love with dragons. Yes, it was rousing to watch Daenerys Targaryen claim again and again before all of her foes that she was Mother of Dragons, born of fire, but it was the beautiful, ferocious, loyal, and intelligent dragons themselves that most entranced me. Inspired by these mythological beings, I researched how dragons have been perceived and portrayed throughout the history of literature and film. With the knowledge I've gleaned so far, I can say that Donald Samson’s Dragon Boy makes a worthy addition to the long history of world dragon lore. Star, the dragon at the center of the novel, is depicted not as a ferocious beast to be slain, but as a magical and sage companion for a special boy, who, under Star’s tutelage, grows into a man and becomes a formidable knight. In Star we find a dragon with sweet-smelling breath, who speaks in chimes that only the boy can comprehend as speech, a dragon who, when night falls, is covered in sparkling constellations (hence his name). Samson doesn’t completely eschew the ancient trope of the knight’s fight with a dragon; instead, he re-envisions it as a way for the knight to form an everlasting bond with a dragon, through occult means, not to be divulged here. For Star, and for Samson’s neatly constructed fantasy, in which there are many unexpected twists and surprising devices, Dragon Boy makes good on Tolkien's dictum: "It simply isn't an adventure worth telling if there aren't any dragons."
Reader's Annotation
You love dragons. Therefore, it is your duty to consume all literature involving dragons, so that you can attain the fullest picture of all a dragon can be. So you have to read Dragon Boy. We promise you won’t be disappointed.
About the Author
“For nineteen years I was a Waldorf classroom teacher in grades 1 - 8. I had the pleasure of telling my students a story every day. I was able to share all of my favorite fairy tales, saint stories, fables, myths, and historical biographies depending on the grade. One autumn, I wanted to tell my children a new story, one that had never been told before. The story went on for weeks. The children loved the story so much, they badgered me until I wrote it down for them. Once it was written, I realized it was a well-told tale and a gift for any young reader to enjoy. It was the first book in the Star Trilogy, The Dragon Boy. Since the release of the second book, The Dragon of Two Hearts, I chose to take a leave of absence from the classroom and devote my time to writing, visiting classrooms to talk about the author's process, and marketing my books.” (Donald Samson (Author of The Dragon Boy) | Goodreads)
Genres
Fantasy, bildungsroman
Booktalking Ideas
A brief history of depictions of dragons throughout history, then an account of Star and Straw, his keeper, in Dragon Boy.
Reading level
9+
Challenge issues
Bullying
Why I Chose This Book
For all those who are attracted to the trappings of fantasy and love dragons.
Unwind
Unwind
Neil Shusterman
Neil Shusterman
Bibliographic Information
Author Shusterman, Neal.
ISBN 9781416912040; 9781416912057
Publication Date 2007
Publication Information New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, c2007.
Physical Description 335 p. ; 22 cm.
Subject Term Survival skills -- Young adult fiction.
Revolutionaries -- Young adult fiction.
Fugitives from justice -- Young adult fiction.
Source: https://catalog.lacountylibrary.org/client/en_US/default/search/results.displaypanel.displaycell_0.detail.mainpanel.fielddisplay.linktonewsearch?qu=Fugitives+from+justice+--+Young+adult+fiction.
Plot Summary
Shusterman’s dystopian novel Unwind is set in a future United States in the aftermath of a second Civil War over, this time over abortion rights. The resulting solution was a compromise: unborn babies cannot be aborted, but parents may choose to have their unwanted children “unwound” when the children turned 13. Being unwound means that all of the child’s parts are harvested and donated to others who might need them. The process is sold as different from death in that the parts of the person go on living in their recipients. The teens who are the protagonists of this novel--Connor, Risa, and Lev--all scheduled to be unwound themselves, mostly disagree, and embark on intertwining journeys of escape, salvation, and empowerment. Along the way, they meet other unwinds and unwanted souls, the victim of a brain transplant from an unwind, and a network of adults who want to save them, undertaking expeditions of survival and suspense which keep readers turning the pages.
Critical Evaluation
While my readership of dystopian novels has not been wide-ranging, it still seems possible to argue based on the little I’ve seen that dystopias can serve as narrative escape maps of teen trauma and suffering at the hands of adults. After all, it wasn’t and isn’t the young people who broke the world. This is one possible way to view Unwind, in which the very worth of a young person’s life has been sacrificed to appease the adults who would save unborn lives and can use their theology to rationalize the unwinding process as not really death and actually as a kind of transcendence. Shusterman seems clear about the morbid hypocrisy of his fictionalized dystopian society and the real society it’s based on. What his novel also evokes is the problem with seeing teens (or children, for that matter) as sub-persons, without any rights, totally at the whim of adult decisions about their lives and bodies. Two characters in the novel, CyFi and Roland, reflect what happens when this ideology is taken to its logical, sci-fi conclusion. CyFi is like a reverse version of the Black characters whose bodies are stolen in Jordan Peele’s Get Out, as he is forced into serving the source of his brain transplant’s ghostly need for redemption. Roland is subjected to unwinding in nauseating detail, revealing to readers bit by bit the humiliating dis-assembly of human identity and the elephant in the room of this novel. As a bully, Roland becomes Shusterman’s sacrificial lamb--which I view as somewhat problematic. The only time we get to see the boy’s full humanity is when it is being exterminated. But maybe that’s the point.
Shusterman’s choice to structure the novel as a series of third-person subjective chapters, moving from one character’s experiences to another’s, allows readers to see this world more holistically and to discover different ways to be empowered. Connor finds himself as a kind of superhero and uncovers the integrity his parents never recognized. Risa finds herself as an artist. Lev is able to deprogram his own conditioning. And CyFy is freed from the demon that compels him. Shusterman also sensitively, if in a somewhat maudlin way, manages the issue of life-saving transplants by writing in some redemption for the Admiral, who shows though Emby and the other recipients of his unwound son’s body parts that there is some truth to the idea that a person can live on through those transplants. Throughout the novel, survival is an empowering theme that helps its characters deal with the cruelty of the world they didn’t choose. Through survival they find the strength to remake that world.
Reader's Annotation
After the Heartland War, Connor and Risa must find a way to escape their fate: to be “unwound” and have their bodies disassembled, their parts donated to others. In their journey of survival, they forge their identities, finding heroism, creativity, passion, and friendship along the way.
About the Author
Award-winning author Neal Shusterman grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where he began writing at an early age. After spending his junior and senior years of high school at the American School of Mexico City, Neal went on to UC Irvine, where he made his mark on the UCI swim team, and wrote a successful humor column. Within a year of graduating, he had his first book deal, and was hired to write a movie script.
In the years since, Neal has made his mark as a successful novelist, screenwriter, and television writer. As a full-time writer, he claims to be his own hardest task-master, always at work creating new stories to tell. His books have received many awards from organizations such as the International Reading Association, and the American Library Association, as well as garnering a myriad of state and local awards across the country. Neal’s talents range from film directing (two short films he directed won him the coveted CINE Golden Eagle Awards) to writing music and stage plays – including book and lyrical contributions to “American Twistory,” which is currently played in several major cities. He has even tried his hand at creating Games, having developed three successful “How to Host a Mystery” game for teens, as well as seven “How to Host a Murder” games. (source: http://www.storyman.com/about/)
Genres
Dystopian fiction, science fiction
Booktalking Ideas
How can dystopian fiction help us better understand the issues facing our society?
Reading Level
13+
Challenge Issues
Violence, bullying, sexual assault, parental neglect, dismemberment
Why I Chose This Book
I appreciated Shusterman’s novel for its masterful plot-craft and world construction and for the issues it raises regarding the value of a life, issues which young people will be drawn to.
Inferno
Inferno
Robin Stevenson
Robin Stevenson
Bibliographic Information
Author Stevenson, Robin, 1968-
ISBN 9781554690770
Publication Date 2009
Publication Information Victoria, B.C. ; Custer, WA. : Orca Book Publishers, 2009.
Physical Description 229 p. ; 21 cm.
Subject Term Teenage girls -- Young adult fiction.
Homosexuality -- Young adult fiction.
Friendship -- Young adult fiction.
Parent and child -- Young adult fiction.
High schools -- Young adult fiction.
Source: https://catalog.lacountylibrary.org/client/en_US/default/search/detailnonmodal.detail.mainpanel.fielddisplay.linktonewsearch?qu=High+schools+--+Young+adult+fiction.
Plot Summary
Dante’s family has moved to a cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood, meaning she has had to change schools, and the students and faculty at her new high school seem just as stiflingly conformist as the houses in her neighborhood. To make matters worse, her best friend and love interest, Beth, has moved away and decided not to continue their relationship. Dante has changed her name from Emily, and her mother is having a hard time accepting that, and other aspects of her daughter’s temperament and life. A way out of this monotonous and confining situation seems to appear when the alluring and mysterious Parker appears at Dante's school, inviting her to rebel against the stultifying system with the message, “Woof woof. You are not a dog. Why are you going to obedience school?” Intrigued and attracted by Parker, Dante gets involved with her, her boyfriend, and their friend, trying to find effective ways to rebel against what they view as an oppressive school system--only to find that freedom is harder to realize than she imagined, that love is more complex, and that finding oneself might be the most important thing of all.
Critical Evaluation
What most struck me about Inferno was the way seemingly typical, nondescript issues that teens face are gradually revealed to be about freedom and how hard it is to actualize. In the early pages of the novel, Dante’s struggles with the stifling monotony of school, the obliviousness of adults, especially her mother, the ease with which her friend and beloved, Beth, cuts ties with her, seem relatively normal, even boring. But as Parker, her boyfriend, and their friend Leo move into the picture, and Dante works with them to find a way to prompt systemic change, the novel’s themes rise to the surface and its potential to help teen readers becomes apparent. Things begin to feel more deeply familiar. When Dante sneaks out with Leo, climbs the school building, and hangs the sign, hoping to stir the students at her school to action, only to find the next day that the risk she has undertaken was not worth the decidedly listless results (the students are momentarily interested, but quickly move on), we can see the difficulty that attends any attempt to forge solidarity behind a cause only a few see as worth supporting. It proved an interesting juxtaposition to the groundswell of this summer's .lsupport for the Black Lives Matter movement and protests, which are fueled by the urgency of the need to survive. Beside these, we can see that the rebellion of Parker, her boyfriend, Leo, and the ambivalent Dante, are more about facing the consequences of their individual choices, the illusion of freedom posed by the painful choices society offers people who don’t feel like they fit in, who want another way to live. The failure of their attempt rises to the level of tragedy, in my view, at least for Parker. In seeking freedom from the unquestioning conformity of school, she finds only the drudgery of low-wage labor, an abusive relationship that neither she nor Dante, nor Leo, can’t liberate her from. For Dante, the lesson is a compromise, a bargain. Realizing there is opportunity for the educated, she decides to stay in school. Coming to see her parents more clearly, she finds a way to connect with her formerly remote father. And understanding that Parker is a troubled soul, that for all her talk of freedom, she is unable to wrest herself from the chains she has chosen in staying with Jaime, Dante decides that friendship is enough. The tragedy that Dante observes in Parker is ameliorated by these compromises, making Inferno a decidedly realist novel. For that, I think it is a helpful read for young people who need to find a way to make peace with the world--at least until they find a more effective way to change it.
Reader’s Annotation
You are a young adult, beginning to question gender norms and forge your own identity. You have even changed your name, in spite of your mother’s inability to accept it. What would you do if an alluring young woman, someone who has decided to free herself from the monotony and conformity of the high school scene, approached you on campus, asking if you wanted to persuade other students to rebel against the power structures that keep them down? Lured in by the captivating Parker, Dante must ultimately find herself as she is pulled between the forces of destruction and conformity.
About the Author
“I was born in England but moved to Canada as a when I was a kid. I read pretty much every book in our small town library. Fortunately I grew up in a house full of books and soon moved on to the books on my parents’ shelves. I still read everything: short stories, memoirs, kids books, YA novels, and adult fiction and non-fiction. I studied philosophy and social work at university and for ten years, I worked as a counsellor and taught social work. These days I mostly just write, both fiction and non-fiction, for all ages (babies to adults!). I have also taught creative writing courses and edited books, and I often visit schools and libraries to talk about books and writing. When I am not busy with writing or spending time with my family, I work with other people to sponsor refugees to come to Canada.” (About - Robin Stevenson)
Genres
Realistic fiction, LGBTQ+
Booktalking Ideas
A book talk montage of highlights from the novel--a Dante-like character looking in the mirror, images to convey the conformity of her high school, a Parker-like character, imagery to suggest rebellion, and fire--could be overlaid with text from scenes in the novel. PIano music could be playing in the background.
Reading level
13+
Challenge Issues
Homosexuality, domestic abuse, vandalism
Why I Chose This Book
In an understated way, Stevenson’s novel reaches out to readers with an authentic portrayal of teen struggles, struggles to find themselves, to find how they fit into the power structure. Teen will relate to Dante, her aversions and attractions, her integrity and strength.
Jackpot
Jackpot
Nic Stone
Nic Stone
Bibliographic Information
Author Stone, Nic
ISBN 9781984829627, 9781984829634, 9781984829658
Publication Date 2019
Physical Description 343 pages ; 22 cm
Subject Term Lotteries -- Young adult fiction.
Social classes -- Young adult fiction.
Popularity -- Young adult fiction.
Family life -- Georgia -- Norcross -- Young adult fiction.
Source: Search Results for Nic Stone Jackpot (lacountylibrary.org)
Plot Summary
Rico is a high school senior who works at the local Gas 'n' Go, a teen who's put her dreams on permanent delay to earn money to help her mom keep up with non-stop bills and take care of her little brother. It's Christmas Eve, and Rico sells what may be the winning ticket for a $212 million jackpot. When no one comes to claim the prize, Rico sees a chance to free herself, her little brother, and her mom from the desperate financial straits they're in, and she sets her sights on the richest white boy at her school to help track the winner down. Together, Rico and Zan embark on a wild sleuthing adventure in search of the ticket. They end up finding each other, and so much more. But will the money come between them?
Critical Evaluation
Nic Stone's talents for plotting the classic Hollywood romantic comedy shine bright in this story of collaboration--and possible calamity--between the rich and the poor (with cameos by a receipt, a wallet, a wish list, some $100 bills, a taxi cab, some high thread count sheets, and a winning lottery ticket). For me, this was a rare treat in a novel. It’s not often that one feels a work has the elements of a classic, a fairy tale with a happy--but not perfect--ending. Element one has to be the characters themselves. Stone carves them out like the interlocking pieces of a three-dimensional puzzle. Rico lives with her mom and her beloved little brother in an apartment on the edge of the more affluent part of town. She works at the Gas N’ Go because they can barely afford this place. Rico has to take on a lot of adult responsibility, and the relationship between her and her mother is strained by their dueling views of how to find happiness in that very stressful situation. Zan is the rich, white kid, heir to the family toilet paper fortune, the neon glow of his privilege mitigated slightly by his utter lack of motivation to take over the, eh hem, throne, and the conflict this causes between him and his father. Splash these two together, and you get element three: lots of witty repartee. The fast-paced dialogue assists in element four: a speedy, but not incautious, dash through the plot, which ends with element five: a bittersweet ending, more sweet than bitter. Needless to say, I was impressed by Stone’s craftsmanship, and hope that some producer somewhere will see the classic movie being projected in this book and do it justice.
Reader's Annotation
With an unclaimed lottery prize offering hope of relief from the economic burdens straining her family, Rico takes a chance and enlists the most popular and richest kid in school to help her find the winner. But their ensuing detective work takes them to places neither would have dreamed, including into one another's arms.
About the Author
Nic Stone was born on July 10, 1985, in Atlanta, Georgia. She attended Spelman College, where she earned a degree in psychology, and traveled to Israel in 2008. It was there where she was first inspired to become a writer. Her first novel, Dear Martin, completed in 2012, was published in 2017 and became a finalist for the William C. Morris Award. It reached #4 on the New York Times bestseller list, fulfilling one of Stone's lifelong dreams. Her other YA titles include Odd One Out (2018), Jackpot (2019), Dear Justyce (2020) and Shuri: A Black Panther Novel (2020). Ms. Stone says that she didn’t originally think she could write the kind of fiction she wanted to write because “I didn't see anyone who looked like me writing the type of stuff I wanted to write (super popular YA fiction). But I decided to give it a shot anyway. (Life lesson: If you don't see you, go BE you.)” (Bio written by me).
Genres
Comedy, romance
Booktalking Ideas
Hand out fake $200 million lottery tickets and ask everyone to write down what their ticket would say if it was the winning ticket but no one had come to claim the prize. Discuss how Rico is a poor girl and she has to work with the richest kid in school to find the ticket and its winner because she hopes maybe there will be something in it for her. Do you think Rico and Zan fall in love?
Reading level
13+
Challenge issues
Dissension between daughter and mother
Why I Chose This Book
Nic Stone is a popular YA author. Jackpot is masterfully plotted and showcases the author's talents for comedy. It takes a sensitive approach to the differences between the wealthy and the poor. And it's highly entertaining.
On the Come Up
On the Come Up
Angie Thomas
Angie Thomas
Bibliographic Information
Author Thomas, Angie
ISBN 9780062498564
Publication Date 2019
Physical Description 447 pages ; 22 cm
Subject Term Rap musicians -- Young adult fiction.
African Americans -- Young adult fiction.
Freedom of speech -- Young adult fiction.
Source: Search Results for On the Come Up (lacountylibrary.org)
Plot Summary
Bri has a native talent for laying down hip-hop rhymes and creating the catchy rap riffs that go viral in her community. It’s her dream to be like her late dad--to transcend the local ring and get a recording deal. With her mom falling on hard times, bills coming due, and not enough to eat in the house, she feels pressured more than ever to make it big. Facing racial injustice at her school, the dangers coming from her late father’s enemies, the need to make money being pitted against the need to rap authentically, and the troubles that attend just being a teen, she must overcome some very serious obstacles to make her dream a reality. On the Come Up, Angie Thomas’s follow-up to her breakout debut The Hate U Give, treats readers to more than just a story. In it, readers will come to understand the world that Bri inhabits and root for her and her family and friends to make that world a better place for themselves.
Critical Evaluation
Voice is always an important part of compelling fiction, but it’s not something we often focus on or contemplate in the novels we read. In Angie Thomas’s On the Come Up, Ms. Thomas’s voice arises with strength, gentleness, and poise, and I think it is this warm, knowing narrator that makes this work a world unto itself. There’s nothing embellished or overtly stylistic about her prose. It’s straightforward, but it has a certain lilt to it, reflecting the author’s acumen for cadence and line break, making her pronouncements reverberate with the knowledge that comes of lived experience:
“We can’t have any power, either. I mean, think about it. All these people I’ve never met have way more control over my life than I’ve ever had. If some Crown hadn’t killed my dad, he’d be a big rap star and money wouldn’t be an issue. If some drug dealer hadn’t sold my mom her first hit, she could’ve gotten her degree already and would have a good job. If that cop hadn’t murdered that boy, people wouldn’t have rioted, the daycare wouldn’t have burned down, and the church wouldn’t have let Jay [Bri’s mom] go.
“All these folks I’ve never met became gods over my life. Now I gotta take the power back.”
As I worked my way through the novel, I appreciated this ability to enter into Bri’s world and felt strongly that this novel would be so important for a young person facing similar struggles and looking for a path through. For the world that Thomas creates here is (almost too) full of obstacles, so rich with characters, backstory, and unexpected turns, that Bri becomes like the heroine trying to navigate a moral and emotional maze that she didn’t make but which she must master. Her coming out the other side more certain of her voice and her message is a feat, an empowerment, and an inspiration for young readers who are, as they grow into life, also on the come up.
Reader's Annotation
Can Bri overcome the forces arrayed against her as she tries to stake out her place and express her true voice in rap?
About the Author
Angie Thomas was born, raised, and still resides in Jackson, Mississippi as indicated by her accent. She is a former teen rapper whose greatest accomplishment was an article about her in Right-On Magazine with a picture included. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from Belhaven University and an unofficial degree in Hip Hop. She can also still rap if needed. She is an inaugural winner of the Walter Dean Meyers Grant 2015, awarded by We Need Diverse Books. Her debut novel, The Hate U Give, was acquired by Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins in a 13-house auction and will be published in spring 2017. Film rights have been optioned by Fox 2000 with George Tillman attached to direct and Hunger Games actress Amandla Stenberg set to star. (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15049422.Angie_Thomas)
Genres
Realistic fiction, hip-hop fiction
Booktalking Ideas
Show the Angie Thomas video in which the author performs one of Bri’s raps, then share how the novel unfolds the story of Bri and how we get to find out how she finds her true voice.
Reading Level
13+
Challenge Issues
Swearing, police violence, drug dealing, bullying
Why I Chose This Book
Bri's story is about finding your true voice and overcoming the obstacles in your way, things that are very important for teens.
If You Come Softly
If You Come Softly
Jacqueline Woodson
Jacqueline Woodson
Bibliographic Information
Author Woodson, Jacqueline.
ISBN 9780142415221
Publication Date 2010, 1998
Publication Information: New York : Puffin Books, 2010, c1998.
Physical Description 181, 10 p. ; 21 cm.
Subject Term Interracial dating -- Young adult fiction.
African Americans -- Young adult fiction.
Family life -- New York (State) -- New York -- Young adult fiction.
Schools -- Young adult fiction.
General Note Originally published: New York : Putnam's, 1998.
Source: https://catalog.lacountylibrary.org/client/en_US/default/search/results.displaypanel.displaycell_0.detail.mainpanel.fielddisplay.linktonewsearch?qu=Schools+--+Young+adult+fiction.
Plot Summary
Ellie (Elisha) is white, a Jewish girl dealing with some difficult family history, and it's her first year at Percy Academy. Miah (Jeremiah) is Black, the son of a famous film director and one of the few Black students at Percy. Crashing into one another in the hallway that first day at their new school, Ellie and Miah feel something they have never felt before. In spite of the obstacles, they end up taking a chance with one another, fighting against the odds for their newly blossoming relationship.
Critical Evaluation
Woodson paints the story of Ellie and Miah in deft water-color style, tenderly presaging the tragic forces that threaten the delicate and sweet love between a Black boy and a white girl. This light touch seems to have led to one Goodreads critic’s unfavorable review: “For starters, everything is underdeveloped. The characters, the romance, the twist, everything is just rushed and has no time to develop.” (If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson | Goodreads) At least we can say this: whether a case of delicacy or of undercooking, there is the author’s choice to leave a lot of space in this book, which we may question. Why did Woodson decide to finish the novel at 181 pages? Does it leave us feeling as if (not considering the sequel, Behind You, which Woodson wrote about 4 years later) the story could have been developed more? I’d like to defend the novel as it is. Without spoiling the ending for you, I want to argue that the love that blooms between Miah and Ellie has to be told in feathery brushstrokes, quickly and full of room and space, because the very theme of the novel is a heavy thing, the heaviest thing: what racism can snatch from people, what is lost because of it. The novel also gives voice to Miah, through whom readers can understand the experiences of a Black boy in their fullness, what is like for him to be in his skin, to be with his friends, to attend a mostly white high school, to play basketball, to deal with the rifts in his own family, and to fall in love with a white girl, Ellie.
Reader's Annotation
Read to experience the blossoming love between a white young woman and Black young man and the obstacles they must face in order to be together.
About the Author
Jacqueline Woodson was born in Columbus, Ohio on February 12, 1963. She began writing at an early age and was recognized even as a child for her ability. She studied writing at The New School in New York, which is where she was discovered, during a reading of Last Summer with Maizon, by editor Bebe Willoughby at Delacorte, which published Woodson’s first six books. Woodson has been the recipient of over 15 awards and accolades throughout her writing career, including ALA Best Book for Young Adults in 1998, 2000, 2003, 2004, and 2005, and the 2006 Newberry Honor for After Tupac and D Foster. In that same year she also won the ALA’s Margaret A. Edwards Award, which “recognizes an author and ‘a specific body of his or her work, for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature." (reference) She is a 2020 MacArthur Fellows Program Grant Award winner. Her YA novel Miracle’s Boys (2000) won the Coretta Scott King Award. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her partner and their two children. (Bio written by me).
Genres
Romance
Booktalking Ideas
Start with the questions such as, what would it be like to be in an interracial relaltionship in high school? What kinds of obstacles do you think you would encounter? Then, talk about Ellie and Miah and how they find each other, and how they try to make it work.
Reading Level
13+
Challenge issues
Police violence against African Americans
Why I Chose This Book
Jacqueline Woodson is an important author of books for children and young adults, having received a 2020 Macarthur Grant. The story of an interracial relationship will intrigue readers and speak to young people who are living in a diverse world.
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