Firstlife (Everlife #1)

Description:

Tenley "Ten" Lockwood is an average seventeen-year-old girl...who has spent the past thirteen months locked inside the Prynne Asylum. The reason? Not her obsession with numbers, but her refusal to let her parents choose where she'll live—after she dies. 
There is an eternal truth most of the world has come to accept: Firstlife is merely a dress rehearsal, and real life begins after death. 
In the Everlife, two realms are in power: Troika and Myriad, longtime enemies and deadly rivals. Both will do anything to recruit Ten, including sending their top Laborers to lure her to their side. Soon, Ten finds herself on the run, caught in a wild tug-of-war between the two realms who will do anything to win the right to her soul. Who can she trust? And what if the realm she's drawn to isn't where the boy she's falling for lives? She just has to stay alive long enough to make a decision...

My thoughts:

I didn't make the connection until just now, but this story reminds me of being visited by Mormon missionaries every day. Like the "elders," young, handsome in their white shirts and ties, determined to share news of the second life or eternal life, that is what the characters Archer and Killian remind me of. The difference is that Archer is a missionary or laborer from Troika and Killian is a laborer from Myriad, two different and warring second life worlds who both are trying to actively recruit Ten. 

The premise is very different even if the arc of the story is typical. Girl meets boys. Boys fight over girl and sacrifice themselves for girl. Girl, although wishy washy has other-wordly potential and strength. In other words, for a girl, she is hard to kill. Lots of side characters are killed for said girl. In the end, the reader is left on the edge of the cliff without a bridge.

Speak: the Graphic Novel

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson originally came out in the late 90s and quickly  became a book talk book and a mentor text in my classroom. It is about Melinda, a freshman in high school who was raped at a party in her 8th grade summer, calls the police and becomes a pariah in her high school from day one. It is about Melinda's inability to speak about her experience. It is about fear and depression, warning signs for parents and finding a voice.

The original text is used as a mentor text when I want to demonstrate the writing strategies "show don't tell," "thoughtshots" and "snapshots." Anderson is an author that uses craft to her advantage.

The difference in this graphic novel is that while the story is there, many of the very poignant writing cannot follow into this genre. What the reader is left with, though, is a pared down powerful story told in stark black and gray. The art by Emily Carroll is bleak in all the right places.

The one jarring thing in this collaboration is that although the original text was written before the internet and the prevalence of even elementary students having smart phones,  technology is included, even if in a limited way to make this version less dated. The problem with putting some technology in is that it opens doors for questions in the story. I think the savvy teens of social media today wield their power  in very anonymous ways that give even the voiceless power. That would make this a very different story.

Still, I think this graphic novel can stand on its own. It is not a graphic story I would use to introduce reluctant readers to the original text. I think it is just a story that needs to be told and it will appeal to the reluctant reader who would otherwise just not read. 

Atar Gull, a slavery story

Description:

Africa, 1830. Atar Gull, a strapping young slave, finds himself on a certain Captain Benoît's ship, on his way to the West Indies to be sold. This is no ordinary slave. He is the son of one of the great tribal kings, an athlete, a warrior. He will come at a high price, and not just in terms of money. After a long, unimaginably tough trip, Atar Gull winds up in Jamaica in the service of a plantation owner. It is with this plantation owner that his tragic destiny is entwined. This is a staggering adventure narrated through a superb 88-page volume that will be sure to haunt you long after you've turned the last page.

My thoughts:

This story is haunting because I am not sure if there is a hero. Perhaps slavery narratives have no heroes. Perhaps moral centers cannot come from amoral situations. 

I don't want to spoil the story but this kind of haunting is similar to the real actions turned into fiction in Toni Morrison's book Beloved. Margaret Garner, the real slave who becomes Sethe in the fictionalized novel, fled from Kentucky to the free state of Ohio in 1856. When she was set upon by slave catchers, she chose to kill her own child instead of allowing the slave holders to enslave and possibly sell her child. It is this same kind of psychological horror that is part of the slave narrative in Atar Gull as well as in Beloved. Perhaps not before 8th grade. 

Goldfisch - or why manga needs to be in the classroom

Description: from the publisher

Say hi to Morrey Gibbs! A fisher-boy in a flooded world overrun with dangerous mutated animals known as "anomals," he's got his own problems to worry about. Namely, how everything he touches turns to gold! Sure it sounds great, but gold underpants aren't exactly stylish -- or comfortable!

Together with his otter buddy and new inventor friend Shelly, Morrey's on a quest to rid himself of his blessing-turned-curse and undo the tragedy it caused. That is of course, if they can dodge the treasure-hungry bounty hunters... 

My thoughts:

Back when our island used to have chain bookstores, teens would always be around the manga section just standing there reading. This is what real reading looks like to me. How does that translate to the English classroom? Unfortunately, it does not. Too few middle and secondary English teachers see manga as real reading for real readers. Even teachers who do regular SSR in their classrooms (sustained silent reading) do not include manga series in their classroom libraries. That's a shame.

Here is a non secret that we do not seem to believe fully: readers get better at reading by. . .reading. So is it more important to dictate what they cannot read or is it more important to let students read what they enjoy reading, regardless of our thoughts on the "literary value" of that reading? 

This first volume of Goldfisch is typical of most Tokyo Pop manga. At a little over 200 pages, this is not a lightweight book. It follows the typical plot pyramid and because it is made to be a series, it ends at a point where there is a hanging conflict that will bring readers into the next volume. Increasing the volume of reading also helps readers learn new words (Allen), so the more students read, the more they will learn. 

Finally, when working with middle and secondary students who struggle, I found that they do not visualize while reading. The manga, which holds tone, mood, even irony in the context of the words combined with the graphics and the shape/size of the block helps with visualization of text. 

As teachers, it is up to us to up our manga game and bring more graphic novels and manga into our classroom libraries. Just read them first as publishers like Tokyo Pop may look like they are created for YA and tween readers because of the cuteness factor but some series are for older students. 

Lydie

Script by Zidrou, Illustrations by Jordi Lafebre (translated from Spanish)
English publication date Mar 21, 2018

Description:

On a forgotten cul-de-sac in a nameless city, a child is born. It doesn’t take long for the charming little girl to work her way into the hearts of all the residents on this cozy little street. Does it really matter that she’s invisible? The child’s mother delivered a stillborn, fatherless baby. Two months later, she becomes convinced that her child has returned from heaven. The neighbors don’t have the heart to tell her otherwise, and so they play along. After all, “why bring somebody pain when it's so easy to bring joy instead?” ...But is Lydie really a figment?

My Thoughts:

My first question -  Is this graphic novel with the old fashioned sepia toned cover and the disturbing scene with the man killing the litter of kittens for middle level readers? 

Perhaps that is not the right question. Perhaps the question is which middle level reader is this graphic novel for? This is for the reader who embraces magic realism and who can embrace some of the ugliness in the world in order to understand where beauty comes from in communities and in people. This is for the reader that will eventually make their way to other magic realism stories and movies like Big Fish, Amélie, Scott Pilgrim versus the World, Beasts of the Southern World, my favorite, but definitely not for middle school Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate and my sister Becky's favorite Pan's Labyrinth.

So this is for Becky, who by middle school was the only child left at home with older parents. This is for Becky who found that the world in books did not need to be a reflection of the world outside of books, but more of a door and a window to possibilities and alternate universes. 

I am drawn to this story of a ghost baby that is not a ghost baby, not for my own loss, but for the window and door it opens to a way in which a community can let go of logic and create a more magical truth. 

This advanced digital copy was made possible by Europe Comics and Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. 

Going Places

Description:

Everyone had high expectations for Hudson Wheeler. His fourth grade teacher even wrote to his parents that Hudson was "going places." But everything went downhill after his father died on the battlefield of Iraq one year later. Now facing his senior year of high school without his two best friends by his side and with his teacher's letter still haunting him, Hudson seizes homeschooling as an opportunity to retreat from the world.

What happens during this year will prove to be anything but a retreat, as Hudson experiences love and rejection for the first time and solves the painful mystery of the “girl in the window”—an apparition seen only by the WWII vet whose poignant plight forces Hudson out of the comfort zone of boyhood.

Going Places is a peek into what male adolescence looks like today for those who don't follow traditional paths as they strive to find themselves.

My take:

There are a lot of stories like this in one way, but not enough in another. Hudson Wheeler chooses to forego his senior year and home school himself, not because he is angry or bullied or painfully awkward. That makes him different because he is not angsty or depressed. He actually is set on not  falling into the trap of post high school expectations but he does this with a  proposal to his mother to both take two classes at the high school (yoga and AP art), work at his two businesses that he creates (dog walking and Distress Dial for seniors with emergencies just below 911), and work on his graphic novel. He does that, but that is just one small part of a very convoluted and bustling story line. I think we need more stories like this about what home schooling might look like. Hudson's life is more about choosing an alternative path than dropping out, hiding out, religious zeal or disappointment and fear about the public school system

What also makes this different from other YA is that he is not the strong female protagonist, and as an 18 year old, he is pretty wimpy, but his commitment to his work and the maturity he shows to do what needs to be done is unusual. Sigh, unfortunately, he is still a doofus in the love department, just that he is not clueless as to how much of a doofus he is, he just cannot help it. 

Hudson, by the end of the book, becomes the heroic lead but not because of what he does. More because of the cast of side characters that he holds on to: Fritzy, Mr. Pirckle, his mom, his dead father, even Jennifer the pink male poodle. This book is not a fast read because the characters are eccentric and shooting off in different directions, but they are going places and the journey, not the destination is the adventure. 

A digital advanced copy provided by Net Galley and the publisher for an honest review. 

The Valiant Comics

This is old school comic book warriors. Captain America except that the Eternal Warrior, Gilad, never seems to succeed in protecting the Geomancer from the Immortal Enemy. 

Geomancers are a long line of mystics and they are guided by the Earth. As each Geomancer is killed, another Geomancer takes his/her place. As always, Gilad is there to protect them.  

Spend a day in the middle of the week reading this. Everyone loves monsters, and mystics and mangled ancient warriors. Oh my. 

The Sun Does Shine

The Sun Does Shine: How I found life and freedom on death row

From the publishers:

In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only twenty-nine years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free.

But with no money and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in agonizing silence—full of despair and anger toward all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but find a way to live on Death Row. For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon—transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates, fifty-four of whom were executed mere feet from his cell. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015.

With a foreword by Stevenson, The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times. Destined to be a classic memoir of wrongful imprisonment and freedom won, Hinton’s memoir tells his dramatic thirty-year journey and shows how you can take away a man’s freedom, but you can’t take away his imagination, humor, or joy.

My thoughts:

In education, we call things like grit, values, persistence, work ethic, faith, and collaboration as "soft" skills. They are off content skills that are not graded or tested, but students who have these soft skills seem better equipped not just for school but for life. 

The wrenching memoir of an innocent black man who spent 30 years on death row in Alabama not for any crimes he committed but for being poor, black and convenient is really a model of how these soft skills helped Mr. Hinton to survive on death row. He not only survived, but he helped others, even if it was just to help others to escape their minds for a little while. 

This is a story of compassion and unconditional love. In this world of #blacklivesmatter, this is a story of hope, faith and love. 

Digital galley provided by Net Galley and Macmillan Publishers for an honest review

Published March 27, 2018

The Sun is Also a Star

Description:

Natasha: I’m a girl who believes in science and facts. Not fate. Not destiny. Or dreams that will never come true. I’m definitely not the kind of girl who meets a cute boy on a crowded New York City street and falls in love with him. Not when my family is twelve hours away from being deported to Jamaica. Falling in love with him won’t be my story.

Daniel: I’ve always been the good son, the good student, living up to my parents’ high expectations. Never the poet. Or the dreamer. But when I see her, I forget about all that. Something about Natasha makes me think that fate has something much more extraordinary in store—for both of us.

The Universe: Every moment in our lives has brought us to this single moment. A million futures lie before us. Which one will come true? 

My thoughts:

This book grabbed me from the prologue and stirred up the science nerdy girl that has been dormant in me for so long.  Yoon starts with Carl Sagan talking about making apple pie from scratch, not just with raw ingredients. No. It's Carl Sagan. He is talking about an apple pie from nothing at all. Big Bang, black holes, suns, oceans, life coming up from the muck. 

To make a thing as simple as an apple pie, you have to create the whole wide world.

That last line in the prologue is the essence of this book right there. If this were an essay, it would be the thesis. Worlds must collide. Dark matter, tides, extinction-level events. This is about two teenagers and romance and alternative worlds. It is about science and physics and the problem with immigration and race and ethnicity in America. This is about one day in New York. It is about broken dreams and loneliness. It is about time. 

And finally, as a former chemistry major who borrowed a chemistry book from my future husband and switched to English literature once we were together, this book is all about chemistry. 

Creating Bookworms

This is not the first Buzz Books edition I have read, but this is the first one I have talked about. In short Buzz Books is a gathering of soon-to-be-published excerpts of novels chosen by Publishers Lunch. 

I initially thought that I would use this space to talk about my very long history with Young Adult books and how the books that I gravitate towards influences how I choose my own books to read, but this edition has made me think about how book choosing and book reading has changed and how I have to change.

I started writing about my belief in bringing tradebooks into my classroom for pleasure reading and how in 1992 when I started as a high school English teacher, there was a sad lack of used YA books that would appeal to my juniors and seniors in high school. However, that evolution as a teacher with nothing but a class set of Cormier's The Chocolate War and leaving my middle school classroom 20 plus years later with thousands of tradebooks all chosen by me for specific kinds of readers is another long story.

The short story is that I give my students a specific strategy for choosing books. 

1. Look at the cover. If it appeals, keep going, if not, put it back. 
2. Read the little description on the back or the inside cover. Again, yes keep going, no put it back.
3. Read the lead until you lose appeal. If you have gotten through the first one or two chapters by the time you look away, grab it, borrow it, steal it. 

The change in strategy is that the assumption with this strategy is that my classroom is fully stocked, the school library is fully stocked and not being used for testing, or my local bookstore is fully stocked. This is not always the case.

My new strategy relies on me searching out ebooks with readers in mind, and when I come across books through a plethora of means (Buzz Books, other blogs, Net Galley), pass it on. It is no longer possible to stock my shelves. E-books have limited the experience that students have in choosing their own books by touch, by sight, by smell. Students will no longer remember what a brand new book smells like. They won't know what a book with its pages still a little crisp and tacky feels like. This is a new world. Relying on publishers to open up their pages in things like Buzz Books is the new way to choose the next read on the students' readers. 

The Rose and the Dagger

Book 2 of The Wrath and the Dawn

Book 1: Like 1001 Nights. . . Girl hates monster, wants to murder monster, but the mystery and pain of this boy/man/monster puts her on edge. 

Girl loves a boy/man/monster who loves her and will defy curses for her, opens his heart to her. But fathers in these books. Ugh. They screw everything up with their misguided hunger for power. Girl is taken from boy who she loves and whisked away by the boy who has always loved her. 

Book 2: Like Aladdin (sort of). . .Girl must harness the power within her. Save herself, save her man, save her sister, save herself, save her man, save her sister, save herself. . .Get the gist? Always towards the boy/man/monster who loves a girl that is so much more than he deserves. 

The Beauty That Remains

Description:

Music brought Autumn, Shay, and Logan together. Death might pull them apart. 

Autumn always knew exactly who she was: a talented artist and a loyal friend. Shay was defined by two things: her bond with her twin sister, Sasha, and her love of music. And Logan has always turned to writing love songs when his real love life was a little less than perfect.

But when tragedy strikes each of them, somehow music is no longer enough. Now Logan is a guy who can't stop watching vlogs of his dead ex-boyfriend. Shay is a music blogger who's struggling to keep it together. And Autumn sends messages that she knows can never be answered.

Despite the odds, one band's music will reunite them and prove that after grief, beauty thrives in the people left behind.

My Thoughts:

It seems like there is too much teenage death in this society, as in this book. Granted, none of the dead teens was killed by a school shooter, but there are three characters who tell the story of three dead teens. One died in a single car crash, one committed suicide and one died of cancer. However,
I actually tried to finish the book, fell asleep and dreamt about one of the characters. That is always a sign of good writing.

Woodfolk switches characters for each of the chapters, so it is like listening to three different albums at once until I finally realize that no, I am listening to the same album, through different entry points and it is not until I am almost finished with the album that I realize what the music is trying to say.

So what is it saying? Grief is heart breaking in many different ways. Time is different, interventions are different, healing is different. Perhaps the music brings the different characters together in the end, but the beauty that remains is not the music, but the acceptance by those left behind that it's ok to live.

The Disturbed Girl's Dictionary

Description
Macy's school officially classifies her as "disturbed," but Macy isn't interested in how others define her. She's got more pressing problems: her mom can't move off the couch, her dad's in prison, her brother's been kidnapped by Child Protective Services, and now her best friend isn't speaking to her. Writing in a dictionary format, Macy explains the world in her own terms—complete with gritty characters and outrageous endeavors. With an honesty that's both hilarious and fearsome, slowly Macy reveals why she acts out, why she can't tell her incarcerated father that her mom's cheating on him, and why her best friend needs protection . . . the kind of protection that involves Macy's machete. 

Reflection
Disturbed is the right word. Macy. . .George. . .Alma. . .Yasmin. . .Zach. . .  Even the fact that this is a personal "dictionary" that is sometimes sort of in alphabetical order and sometimes not is disturbing. The overwhelming need that these characters have for stability, compassion, love, clothing, shelter, food, sleep. . .disturbing ("see I for I don't want to talk about it).

Like Melinda in Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, and Samoana in Sia Figiel's Girl in the Moon Circle, Macy as the narrator is both too young for her age "cooties," and much too old. At some points, her street smarts and survival instincts show up as clarified rage, and at other times she is very naive, broken down, and pieced back together.

In some ways I had a difficult time justifying her age to her actions, but I think that is what makes Macy believable as a character who hearts George and loves Alma and is unable to save anyone at the end, including herself.

What is not disturbing is the very powerful cover. Since I read books on my reader, I do not often even see the cover until I am writing about the book, but this cover, with the tub that is both the safe space for Zach and Macy as well as their pirate ship with the broken part of the wall that looks like a sail actually makes a powerful last word to this book. I somehow feel lighter by looking at it, although I could not really say why.