Posts filed under 'Young Adult Literature'
“Shakespeare Bats Cleanup”
Shakespeare Bats Cleanup by Ron Koertge
Mrs. Martin recommended this to me and asked me about the last entry—some students who read the book saw some hidden meanings there. Well—hidden meaning? That was intriguing enough to get me to read. And now I want to recommend this book to you—it is so short, it’ll take you about an hour to read. And yet it deals with so much.
Kevin is fourteen. He’s a great first baseman and baseball is his joy, but when he gets mono, he has to stay home in bed. His father gives him a journal to pass the time, and he decides to write a few poems to deal with the break-up with a girlfriend and more importantly, with his mother’s death. What’s fun is that he writes poems about these things—a sonnet, a ballad, a pastoral, a haiku (OK, that one is funny), blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), couplets, a sestina—but you just smoothly read through these poems without knowing what he’s doing. What you do know is that through these forms, Kevin does a better job of expressing his emotions. Instead of saying, “I’m bummed that my mom died,” his images and language show you what his mother was like and why he misses her so much.
So, yeah—read it. As for the hidden meaning? I didn’t get it, but if you do, let me know!
Add comment May 24, 2010
“Telling”
Telling by Marilyn Reynolds
The novel begins with twelve-year-old Cassie meeting her new neighbors, the Sloans, and agreeing to baby-sit their children. Each time Cassie baby-sits, Fred Sloan makes a sexual advance toward her, progressively becoming more obvious and direct. In the beginning, Cassie doesn’t tell anyone, but instead tries to beg off the baby-sitting jobs. Unfortunately, Cassie’s mother often says ‘yes’ for her, thinking that Cassie should enjoy making the money.
When Cassie finally tells her older cousin, the two go to baby-sit together. Cassie only baby-sits alone when Fred is out for his bowling night and will be home later than Angie. One night this plan backfires and Fred catches Cassie alone. He forces kisses upon her and promises he won’t hurt her. She freezes in fear. Afterward, she won’t go out. Once the truth comes to light, not all adults believe Cassie –and Fred and his wife won’t admit what happens. The novel continues with the effects of the truth upon both families and the danger that Cassie is in while she is ‘telling.’
We just got two copies of this book for our ‘SSR’ library in the textbook room at COHS. I thought it was realistic and recommend it. Ask in the textbook room if you’d like to read it.
Add comment May 18, 2010
“Graceling”
As a fantasy book for teens, especially for girls, Graceling by Kristin Cashore, is nearly perfect. The heroine, Katsa, has just the kind of power in life that girls often dream about. (The first time a man tries to grope her, she kills him effortlessly.) Though she is spirited, strong, good and able to make her own decisions, men still find her very attractive and one very beautiful man is more than willing to sacrifice himself for her—a reversal of the roles we commonly experience in real life.
In Katsa’s world there are people called Gracelings who have special powers. They can be identified by the fact that they have two different colored eyes (Kasta’s are blue and green). Sometimes it takes awhile before they find out what their special grace is. Often they are employed by the kings in their seven kingdoms. Katsa has the misfortune of being the niece of the ruthless King Randa. When he finds out that her grace gives her the ability to kill or hurt anyone without being harmed herself, he uses her as a sort of henchman. She does his bidding, but as she comes of age, she also comes into her own power. She creates a secret council which works against Randa’s evil influence and later she turns away him altogether.
Enter Po, a graceling prince with one eye silver and one eye gold. He, too, is an excellent fighter. The two work together to save a young princess. They have constant battles of wills, yet Po (sigh deeply here) understands all of Katsa’s moods and is willing to do just about anything to be her true love. Unlike many such fantasy stories, in Graceling, Katsa doesn’t want to be under the command of a man, and that means she refuses to marry, taking Po as a lover.
My real criticism of the book is that it could have been much shorter, as the writing is redundant. Characters will have conversations—You don’t love me—yes I do—followed by a summary of the conversation—she felt that he didn’t love her, but he said that he did. Not only does this happen again and again, but it happens again and again on the same topic—you don’t love me ‘round five’ and the fifth round summary. However, the up side of this is that it adds to the total number of pages in the book, so you can impress your teacher by reading 475 pages—and you can do it quickly without having to pay too much attention because if you miss one train, it’ll be coming around again very soon.
This is a super-popular book, one of YALSA’s top ten of 2009. COHS students who’ve read it love it, and I’m guessing you will, too.
Add comment April 1, 2010
“Beautiful Boy” and “Tweak”
“It hurts so bad that I cannot save him, protect him, keep him out of harm’s way, shield him from
pain. What good are fathers if not for these things?” Thomas Lynch, “The Way We Are”
David Sheff begins Beautiful Boy with this quote. The fact that he can’t save his son Nic, from his addiction to meth doesn’t stop him from trying again and again, doesn’t stop him from blaming himself for any and every mistake, small or large, that he made in raising Nic, doesn’t keep him from the intense research about meth addiction that informs this memoir.
To say I was riveted from page one is not hyperbole. I wanted so badly for everything to get better, for Nic to wake up and see what his addiction was doing to his family, to him. But as a meth addict this wasn’t even possible for Nic. The research tells you why and Sheff explains it. It seems the best possible hope to stop meth addiction is never to start, not once. If this is hard for you to believe, if this just seems like the sort of fairy tale that teachers tell, YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK. And—if you are suffering because someone in your family is an addict—if a parent, brother or sister is lying, stealing your money, breaking into your house or your room, promising to do better but never acting on that promise—YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK. It will reinforce the “three C’s of Al-Anon” for you: you didn’t cause it, you can’t control it and you can’t cure it. One focus of this book is to help addicts’ family members to stop being ‘addicted to addiction’—to work on living their own lives.
Beautiful Boy is as much a story about relapse as it is about anything. As it opens, Nic returns from college very excited to see his family, his little brother and sister. But he’s relapsed into crystal meth addiction and life explodes. From here, we track back to look at the course of Nic’s addiction. David Sheff, as Nic’s father, will blame himself about so many things: his divorce from his first wife, his unconventional raising of Nic, the fact that he did drugs himself when he was young. Yet to the reader—who will acknowledge that Nic’s joint-custody life must be lousy because it requires him to jockey between the Bay Area (San Francisco) and Los Angeles—parts of Nic’s childhood seem ideal. He is allowed so much creativity; he lives with his father, step-mother, sister and brother in one of the most beautiful, desirable neighborhoods in the country (in Marin County); his step-mother is an artist and encourages Nic’s own artistic skills. He is not only smart and well-loved by his teachers at his exclusive private school—he’s an agile athlete too, and has the time and money to surf. His father joins him and takes the kind of interest in Nic’s activities that most kids only dream about.
How does all this turn out so terribly wrong? Nic experiments with alcohol and marijuana in middle school. From there, he moves on to harder drugs. After going away to Paris as an exchange student, he not only comes home with an ulcer, but has become an addict. His many efforts at rehab fail over and over in a heartbreaking cycle of addiction and sobriety. He is depressed. He uses up his health insurance allowance for rehab and then his parents dive into their bank accounts. Meanwhile, David Sheff, the father, has a brain hemorrhage and nearly dies. It seems he’s going to have to let go or he won’t be around to raise his younger children. Yet even his father’s near death doesn’t stop Nic’s addiction. He takes up with a girlfriend who shoots meth and speedballs with him.
Since Sheff has done so much research, he will tell the reader how meth burns away nerve endings and wipes out the brain’s dopamine (a neurotransmitter responsible for feeling good, for feeling pleasure); how addicts cough up the lining of their lungs. He points out the fact that if the body and mind are to heal, the addict must be sober for two years. Nic is sober once for eighteen months and relapses; then again for almost two years and relapses.
Tweak is Nic Sheff’s telling of his own tale, but he covers a shorter time period than his father does in Beautiful Boy. Tweak is a young adult book (it’s meant to be read by teens), and it covers some pretty scary territory. As a crystal meth addict, Nic has ‘turned tricks’ for drug money; he gets an infection from shooting up and nearly has his arm amputated. It’s tough to read about someone destroying himself—especially if you’ve read Beautiful Boy first and are thinking of Nic as his father portrays him. However, Nic’s story might be the incentive you need to bolter yourself against peer pressure, to reject a life in ruins.
Add comment February 25, 2010
“Skulduggery Pleasant”
Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy
Stephanie Edgley is brokenhearted over the death of her Uncle Gordon, who, in a surprise move, has left Stephanie his estate. He was a bestselling author of fantasy and magic, and hung out with what his family considered a weird, low-life crowd. One of this crowd comes to the reading of Gordon’s will. He is hidden by his dark glasses, muffler and overcoat. When Stephanie is later staying the night in the house she inherited from Gordon, this strange man saves her life. It quickly becomes apparent that Gordon was murdered and Stephanie, bored with life on the east coast of Ireland, wants to help find the killer.
But the strange Skulduggery Pleasant isn’t a man—at least not a live one—he’s a skeleton, and a powerful one at that, a detective who takes on cases in the world of magic, vampires, sorcerers, ‘cleavers,’ Elders and Hollow Men. Apparently, Gordon’s best selling novels were based on reality. And thus begins Stephanie’s adventures in the world of the supernatural.
Skulduggery and Stephanie (aka Valkyrie Cain) are a smart-mouthed, wise cracking pair as they fight the evil Nefarian Serpine, who hopes to resurrected the Faceless Ones and destroy mankind. They dodge bullets (or are shot), outrun vampires, escape cleavers and more. They survive broken bones, burning and torture. The action never stops—violence, danger nor magic—but through all they are cool. (Skulduggery even drives a 1954 Bentley.)
Skulduggery Pleasant has many great twists and turns that keep you involved in detective books. Though Stephanie is twelve, she acts much older. The violence in the book, while not gratuitous, is also more suited to teens than to kids. So don’t pass this one up if you find a copy shelved with the kids’ books. Oh—and it has that always sought after ‘more than 375 page’ benefit—even though the pages are short and the action so fast that you’ll finish in no time at all. And if you really like it, sequels are here.
Add comment February 23, 2010
“The Graveyard Book”
“There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.”
The first sentence of The Graveyard Book
Though The Graveyard Book has been marketed to younger teens in the U.S., it is sold as an adult book in some places. As soon as you start reading, you’ll see why. The tale opens with a man and a knife and a family being murdered. Though three are killed, the youngest, a baby about a year and a half old, climbs out of his crib and wanders away, ending up in a nearby graveyard—an old graveyard, no longer in use except as a nature sanctuary.
The inhabitants of the graveyard—all ghosts except for Silas, who is neither alive nor dead—argue mightily about the boy’s fate, but in the end, he is kept by the Owens’, who in life never had children. Silas agrees to be the boy’s guardian. Thus Bod—short for Nobody Owens (“so named because he “looks like nobody but himself”)—is raised where he is given ‘the freedom of the graveyard’ and therefore can practice skills like fading and haunting. He grows up exploring chapel mausoleums, ancient burial chambers and the home of the monstrous creatures as well as accidentally entering the ghoul gate and endangering his life. Outside the graveyard danger also awaits as the man Jack, who assassinated Bod’s family, is still looking for him.
The community of the dead includes several teachers and other useful sorts. Bod learns what he needs to know, but longs for the friendship of the living as well as the dead. But when he goes outside the graveyard, he learns of the ancient order responsible for his family’s death.
This is a quick read and a very original book. It’s not all dark—there are lots of puns and much fun to be made of the inhabitants of the graveyard, like the failed poet who recites some (pretty awful) lines for Bod. A plus is the inclusion of illustrations.
Add comment February 16, 2010
“Twice Told: Original Stories Inspired by Original Art”
Twice Told: Original Stories Inspired by Original Art has stories by many wonderful YA writers and drawings by Scott Hunt.
When a teacher asks you to read short stories, check this book out. Each section has art work–a pencil drawing. Following the drawing are two stories that interpret that piece of art. It’s great to see what a creative mind comes up with–how different the two stories can be and how far they can venture from that beginning in the drawing (which is the point–the art is something of a prompt, but once the creativity gets going, the story takes on a whole new dimension). Some of the story writers happen also to be some of my favorite YA authors–Sarah Dessen, Bruce Coville, Neal Shusterman, Margaret Peterson Haddix, M. T. Anderson, and Alex Flinn. Judging from books that checkout here, I think these are some of your favorites as well. Other story authors are new to me–which is great because it gives me the opportunity to meet them and then find out about other works they’ve written.
I also want to recommend this book to you if you’re a budding writer. What sort of story will you write after contemplating the drawing? The art is just right to start those creative juices flowing.
Add comment January 29, 2010
Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson
I loved Speak and when someone told me that Twisted was Speak for guys, I had to read it.
The New York Times Book Review (Oct. 27, 2009) tells us that Anderson’s “novel Speak (1999) was one of the first seriously good books published for teenagers to be read widely by them. It tells the story of Melinda Sordino, a clanless outcast who barely endures her freshman year at a suburban high school, and it features one of the best young narrative voices this side of Holden Caulfield.”
So, did Twisted meet the high mark of Speak? Well, it might be too much to ask for another book that good by the same author, but I think Twisted comes close.
Tyler is a former geek with a geek best friend. At the end of his junior year, when he’s had it with being a bullied nobody, he spray paints graffiti all over his school. (He regrets misspelling ‘testicle.’) He’s caught. His punishment is to do community service hours with a landscape community. In doing so, he builds big muscles and gets a great tan. He begins his senior year looking beautiful and attracting the goddess girl of his dreams—Bethany Milbury, sister of the jock who antagonizes him, daughter of Tyler’s father’s boss. So, yeah, Tyler’s life is still complicated.
Tyler seems to be trending lightly, but somewhat successfully, between two worlds. That is until Bethany invites him to a wild party where she proceeds to get very drunk and asks Tyler to have sex with her. Of course, he wants to. But if he doesn’t, he thinks he can be a sort of hero to her, the good guy—and that she’ll really love him. But that’s not what happens. Especially not after sexually explicit pictures of an unconscious Bethany hit the Internet and Tyler is accused of this assault.
There are many good themes in this book—much about class privilege and the rich always coming out on top; teens making ethical choices; how teens are viewed as ‘bad’ people after one mistake; how rotten parents (Tyler’s dad is cruel and emotionally abuse) affect the course of a kid’s life—and whether the kid can alter that course. Twisted will speak to all readers, but especially to guys who are just trying to do the right thing.
Add comment January 22, 2010
“City of Ashes”
City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare (Book Two of The Mortal Instruments)
Here’s another Top Ten Teen Read of 2009—but with smart cover art and an intriguing title.
I read City of Ashes because it got on the top ten teen book list. I probably should have read the first book in the trilogy, City of Bones, but Clare does a good job of grounding the reader. Clary Fray is a Shadowhunter, which is a mortal who polices the ‘Downworld’ of monsters—werewolves, vampires, fairies (Seelies), witches and warlocks. Ordinary mortals are given the pejorative ‘mundanes’ and include Clary’s sometimes boyfriend, Simon.
Though Clary and Simon share an unbreakable bond, it’s really Jace that Clary has the hots for, mostly because Jace has that ‘bad boy who takes crazy chances and is angry at everyone’ thing going. Unfortunately, though the two were raised apart without knowledge of one another, they turn out to be brother and sister. Their father is the evil Valentine whose goal is to overthrow the Clave (Shadowhunter society). His reasons have to do with his hatred for all ‘Downworlder’ beings except Shadowhunters. He sees them as inferior monsters.
The arrogant Valentine engages a lot of powerful demons that mundanes can’t see. It is soon clear that he cares nothing for his own children if they disobey him, and could easily destroy them along with others in the Clave. So the battle is on. And it is fierce. Action is swift, bloody and described in detail. Demons are imaginatively described. As the plot twists, you’ll be hanging on for the ride. And here’s an added bonus: there’s lots of good writing—you can talk to your English teacher about the great metaphors and imagines. There’s a bit of lousy writing as well—when your English teacher lectures about how annoying a plethora of adverbs can be, bring this book in and get extra credit. (Clare can reconstruct any sentence to throw in pointless adverbs, making meaning stupefyingly [get it?] redundant.)
But so what—you’re going to be engaged—from cover to cover. And then want to go back and read Book One—City of Bones–and get on the waiting list here for Book Three—City of Glass.
Add comment January 20, 2010
“The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks”
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
A so-so cover that only has appeal after you’ve started reading the book and ‘get it.’
A so-so title.
And one of the top ten teen books of 2009.
How did that happen?
It’s a great read.
Frankie is a sophomore at a very exclusive private high school, Alabaster Preparatory Academy. She has the makings of the ‘ugly ducking turned swan’ cliché. But she’s also very brainy and wants to be taken seriously. (Her family calls her Bunny Rabbit.) When she meets the hottest senior guy on campus and he starts dating her, she is the envy of other girls on campus. This could be all they’d want. Not Frankie.
The guys in her boyfriend’s group belong to an all-male secret society called the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds. Frankie isn’t supposed to know anything about it, but she’s too smart and inquisitive—devious–not to figure out what’s going on. The Bassets are goofy and they mostly pull really dumb pranks—and most of these go unnoticed. Frankie is excluded because she’s a girl. She wants to belong—these guys she hangs out could also be clichés about the snobby, privileged guys who will go to Harvard and Princeton and run the rest of our lives some day. But they, too, are smart and likeable. We want Frankie to break the barrier and be part of their group. When she secretly infiltrates the Bassets and masterminds some great pranks, we think these guys will have to love her. But they don’t actually have to do anything.
“It is better to be alone . . . than to be with someone who can’t see who you are. It is better to lead than to follow. It is better to speak up than stay silent. It is better to open doors than to shut them on people.” The Disreputable History takes on not only boy/girl relationships, but class and privilege (the ‘old boys club’)—and, as a bonus, has a lot of fun with words and language. Frankie is an oddball girl with a quirky imagination. If you are tenured of stories (real or fiction) with girls erasing themselves for boys, you’ll identify with her.
Add comment January 20, 2010
