InLand/YA Booktalks

Book Talk: Two Way Street by Lauren Barnholdt

By Rachel Raine 

            Courtney and Jordan were the perfect high school sweethearts. “Were” being the key word. An unlikely couple, they ended up defeating the odds, for a short time. Going to college together seemed like the perfect plan. Before they broke up. After falling out of love, these once inseparable teens now have to travel from Florida to Massachusetts for college orientation. Together. In one car.

Jordan broke up with Courtney. This blind romance ended with Jordan having a new Internet girl. Or did he? As the story unfolds, the secrets unearth themselves. Jordan’s secrets hold the keys to why they broke up, and the real reasons they can never be together again.

This novel started out like a confusing rollercoaster. There are three types of chapters. There are: the before, the trip, and after. They are told from the perspectives of either Jordan or Courtney. At the beginning of the chapter it says the time frame, as well as, whose perspective it is told from. The time traveling aspect of this novel and the switching of perspective had me lost for a while, until I caught on… about halfway through. Problem number one. Also, I found myself feeling too old to be reading this novel. Although it is centered around a group of kids going to college, it has very juvenile language and references. I had never seen the words myspace and chat room so many times in a novel I was reading. Problem number two.

But not to say this novel was all-bad. I found myself laughing, feeling sorry for some of the characters, and rooting for them in the end. Courtney and Jordan are both very likable characters. And although they are on different sides, you want both of them to succeed.

They only problem with the characters is that you didn’t get to know them on a very deep level. It was purely a façade that you got to see. I like characters to be multi-faceted, highly complex beings. In this story, Courtney and Jordan are the two characters you get to know the most about, and you don’t even get to know them that well. It was a little depressing to me how shallow they came off as. The other secondary characters were even less important to the story. Brian Joseph Cartwright, known as B.J., Jordan’s best friend was just there for the laughs. He was an extremely shallow character that only wanted attention, and came off as funny a few times. 

            The bulk of this story is argumentation between Jordan and Courtney and the plot follows a very set-in-stone path. It was easy for me to figure out what was going to happen next. I am not a believer in the fact that all young adult literature has shallow plots and characters, but this story seemed to live up to the false expectations that many critics would have. This came as a sad news to me, because since this class has started, I have fallen in love with young adult l    iterature and I want to read some books that can be life changing novels in my eyes. This stuck out as a poor representation of what young adult literature should be.

            Overall, this story was a disappointment to me. I was hoping this was going to be a fun read that I read relatively quickly. I was hoping to find some significant themes or maybe some symbolism throughout this book. I found the opposite to be true. I was finding excuses to not read my book and always ended up thinking about other things while reading this. It wasn’t a bad story that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. It was a story perfect for pre-teens that are looking for something fun. There are many references in this book that I would probably have laughed at if I was younger. I would recommend this as an outside reading assignment or a summer book if I was a teacher. I wouldn’t teach this book in the classroom. There are no significant themes or morals that could be incorporated into a school setting. There aren’t any important conversations that you could facilitate with this book. This book is purely for fun.
 

Book Talk: Ghost Boy by Lain Lawrence

By Tara Hogan                                 

            Ghost Boy is a story about a fourteen year old albino boy, Harold Cline. Not only does he have pale skin and white hair, but his eye sight is terrible too. From the beginning of the story he is treated differently, made fun of, and ignored by other children. The verbal abuse he receives from the other kids is extremely cruel; they call him maggot, snow, and ghost, instead of by his given name.

When we first meet Harold he is walking through town. He totes along with him his fishing pole and his dog follows at his heals.  Harold is constantly by himself  and often causes a stir when he walks through town. Kids mock him by writing phrases on the walls of buildings calling him names and making fun of his lack of pigment. When Harold finally reaches the river he crosses it to his favorite pool where he would be fishing as he typically did. There is a point when he is setting up his fishing pole and poking a worm with his hook to thread it on when he suddenly shows his personality towards the small creature. He examines the worm and its transparent color, and recalls that his brother had told him that they couldn’t feel it when piercing them to attach the hook. Harold found himself examining his own life and the worm and drew similarities between the too, becoming more saddened by his life. Harold wished that he could fit in somewhere, and that there would eventually be a place he fit in.

While he is still at the river he meets an Indian on horseback later that day at the river while the man was allowing his horse to drink from the river. He called himself Thunder Wakes Him, but told Harold he could call him Bob, if that was easier, as he laughed in thought. The man told him that he is part of a traveling circus, but before Harold could say anything he looked up and the man had already passed down the old rugged trail. When he embarks on his journey to find where he belongs the story continues to build about his sense of belonging and family. He discovers Hunter and Green’s Traveling Circus and he finally can see where he belongs. The people in the circus were a lot like him, and understood him, and treated him as one of them, not an outcast.

Through his journey he meets Tina, who is a mother like figure to Harold. She is known as the Princess Minikin and cares for him more than the others because he is a young boy. He also meets the Cannibal King who is also an albino. Knowing that there are more people like him, Harold finds comfort and emotional stability. Samuel is the Fossil Man, who Harold becomes great friends with too. But, when Harold first meets Samuel he thinks he is the ugliest thing he has ever seen until Harold looks at Samuel’s eyes and realizes that Samuel is beautiful on the inside. The two characters, Samuel and Tina are significant in the story as a lesson to learn for a reader. Samuel and Tina teach that there is more than what meets the eye. Further, they teach that beauty is on the inside and to look past what is placed directly before you. 

But Thunder Wakes Him is the captive of Harold’s attention through out the story. Thunder Wakes Him tells many stories of legends and Indian tales. Through these legends and the great friends and people Harold meets he finds a sense of belonging and comfort that he has never had in his entire life with a group of strangers.

In Harold’s quest for happiness leads him to teaching elephants at the circus how to play the game of baseball, which Harold always had a passion for. While he is teaching the elephants he learns of a girl named Flip. She was a trick rider so he encountered her a lot in the riding ring.

While Harold thinks he has completely found happiness the Gypsy fortune teller named Magda encounters a scary vision for Harold.  The issue Harold encounters is an issue of later deciding where he belonged. With the “normal” people, or with the “outsiders.” When Tina is passing away she tells Harold to go see his mom. At this point its interesting because she is implying that he needs to be with his real family, and not necessarily the family he feels most comfortable around.

As I worked my way through this book I found that Harold had a lot of similar issues that a teen may encounter as well. The idea of Harold starting to agree with the children that make fun of him, closing his eyes every time something threatens him, makes him somewhat agree with his sense of being invisible as the other kids have implied as well. Throughout this book there are many different scenarios that could lead to being taught in a classroom environment. Acceptance is a major key of the story, whether it is accepting who you are or who other people are. The story shows a great way to make people realize important things in the world.  

Book Talk: Flight by Sherman Alexie

By Kyle Erdman

            Flight is an inspirational and emotional story that follows the main character Zits. The year is 2007 and Zits is a Native American boy who was abandoned by his father at birth and who lost his mother to death when he was 6 years old. He is half Irish and half Indian and got the nickname Zits from the multiple pimples that cover his brown skinned face. His mother was Irish and is the most beautiful woman in the world to Zits. He is obsessed with her green eyes because that is the only trait he took away from her. He got his looks from his father who had just as many pimples and the Indian appearance. Physically, Zits is very self-conscious, but the reader really gets to see the inner beauty of this character and it makes the story easy to love. As an orphan, Zits questions his heritage and what his role in society might be. From house to house, Zits becomes more confused to find himself in what seems to be a complicated world. That is until he meets a white boy named Justice.

            After a negative encounter with his active foster parents and a physical encounter with some policeman, Zits finds himself pissed off at the world and sitting in a jail cell. Justice and Zits make a connection and that is when Zits shows the reader a sense of direction in his life, which is to follow Justice. Zits trusts Justice and finds himself doing an Indian dance that can supposively bring back his removed family, but we eventually see Zits with two guns in his hands in the middle of a bank and the mind thought of shooting innocent people. Before he acts, a bullet strikes the back of his head and he wakes up in a different room, in a different year in time, and most importantly, in a different person’s body.

            Through the time traveling, Zits experiences multiple scenarios in different persons’ bodies. The different characters that he becomes affects his sensitive mind set, but as the story progresses, so does Zits. While inside the body of an FBI agent in 1975, Zits realizes that these so called “Heroes” Horse and Elk, are nothing but Indian killers and it causes Zits to think and question everything that has happened in his life. While inside of these characters, Zits feels what they feel and understands what they are thinking. In one scenario, Zits becomes an aging white man in the military during the 18^th to 19^th century era. Through this experience, Zits feels the pains that the old man feels and the difficulty that goes along with just basic movements. The scene showed the anger that the whites had towards the Indians and the difficulty it is for an old to keep up with younger men. This showed the heart of Zits because he had to overcome this situation in order to do the right thing. Zits experiences what Indians have done to white people. He notices a mother and a child who are inches away from touching each other as they lay dead on the ground. Their dis-connection physically is referenced to their afterlife dis-connection in which they are separated forever.  Zits looks at the afterlife like it is based on how you act during your life. So if you are a good person, you will go to heaven. I thought this was very interesting because Zits did not have a religious background with his parents. Through his experiences with his time travel, he became wiser and showed hope towards a bright future. He sacrificed his life, well the old man’s life to save an Indian boy and white man’s lives.

            The most important encounter that Zits has is when he becomes part of an old Indian man who is a bum during modern time (2007). He feels sorry for this man because he feels his pain and anger that floats through his mind. As his experience goes on, Zits finds himself shuffling through a wad of papers wrapped by a rubber band, and finds a picture of him. Well, a picture of Zits when he was 5 years old. Connecting the dots, Zits realizes that the very body he is in just happens to be his father. In this scene, Zits finally gets to encounter the appearance of the man who abandoned him and ruined his life. Zits then becomes connected to his father and begins to see through the mind of his father and gets a flashback to when his father was a little boy. He learns that his grandfather was ruthless to his father. The fear and emotional ridicule that his father took from grandpa permanently scarred him. Zits realized that his father left him as a baby in the hospital because he did not want to be a horrible father like his father was to him. Obviously, this shows the how much of a coward his father was, but it also shows the importance of a family. Love and support is something that a child must have in their life or they might be in the middle of a bank with two guns in their hands. Thankfully, Zits got a chance to re-live the bank shooting incident in which he did not murder anyone and Zits also got to see what it is like to have a family.

            The good heart of a cop placed Zits in a loving home with a firefighter and his wife. Zits began to ignore being a rebel and felt at home for the first time in his life. The love of this family opened up Zits and it is revealed that Zits had trust issues with people he gets close to. The woman in the house says that she will pick up Zits after school and he asks her to promise. She tells Zits that when she says she will do something, she will do it, and he believes her, he trusts her. The story concludes with Zits planning on going to a Mariners baseball game with his new family and finally getting zit cream for his facial issue. He finds himself with this family and he actually lets them call him his real name, Michael.

            This book has multiple sexual references and jokes that revolve around swear words, but this is a story that students can easily connect to. This made me appreciate my family and the life that I have be given. You also get see issues of racism which is something that stills goes on today. This plot and the characters make the reader become so emotionally connected to the text and that is what will benefit them because they could easily find a passion for reading. The character in this story was fearless because he did things that were so hard to do in life. This is a fabulous principle to teach aspiring students at the high school. Flight is a book that I will definitely read again and again.  

          

Booktalk: The Cat Ate My Gymsuit by Paula Danzinger

By Julia Graves

​I hate my father. I hate my school. I hate the principal because he wasted to fire Ms. Finney. These words are said by the main protagonist Marcy Lewis which is used to open The Cat Ate My Gymsuit and set the stage for what is to come. Gymsuit was written in 1974 by Paula Danzinger and it was published through Puffin Modern Classics.

​The Cat Ate My Gymsuit centers around a young, thirteen year old girl named Marcy Lewis who struggles with the onset of puberty, weight issues, family issues and her first year of high school, a nightmare for a shy, fat, self conscious girl. In the beginning of the novel, she is unimpressed with her teachers until a new English teacher, Ms. Finney, arrives and with her arrival begins character changes in Marcy. Ms. Finney is a college educated woman who is in the process of attaining her master’s degree (a rare occurrence during the time that this book was written) and teaches English in an unorthodox way as she emphasizes on compassion, conversation and interaction between students to help them learn the subject matter more effectively. Ultimately, her unorthodox teaching, her personal interaction with the students and her resistance to performing the pledge of allegiance gets her suspended from teaching (not fired…yet) and with Ms. Finney about to lose her job, Marcy, her “crush” Joel, her friend Nancy, and the smart kid Robert all try to devise a plan to get Ms. Finney reinstated for teaching in their high school.

​This is a very simple outline for the plot of the story but the plot is not very important as Danzinger wants the reader to identify with Marcy and understand that this is her story and how this young woman (Ms. Finney) changed her life.

​ Marcy’s weight issues are central to the story as it adds a realism to the character as Marcy is an accurate representation of the fears and physical expectations of young, teenage girls. Throughout the novel she is extremely self deprecating and often refers to herself as a blimp especially in comparison to her classmates in gym class. Her self- loathing becomes more and more tempered after Ms. Finney orchestrates “Smedley” (after an English book character used to help explain grammar through written means), a social club with an emphasis on reading and discussion. This club was focused to make the kids reach out to one another which thusly made Marcy reach out.

​Before Ms. Finney’s arrival, Marcy’s family life seemed pretty bleak. Her father is verbally abusive towards Marcy and who berates, insults and yells angrily at her on a day to day basis while her mom weakly tries to diffuse the situation.  Marcy’s family dynamic is pivotal to the novel as when Marcy changes so does her Mom. Danzinger seemingly wrote Marcy’s family in a way to illustrate the beginnings of the feminist movement as toward the end of the novel, Marcy has much more self confidence due to her standing up for Ms. Finney and Marcy’s mother was so inspired by Marcy’s actions that she decided to return to college and to get a job as well.

​​Through Ms. Finney’s direct and indirect actions, she served as not only a teacher but rather a catalyst for a change, a symbol to self identity and inspiration to the youth.When she was in danger her students fought for her, rebelled against their principal and petitioned the district, a feat the students probably would never have done without her.

​At the time this book was written there was political unrest with issues such as the Vietnam War, the budding Feminist movement and the recent Civil Rights movement;  Danzinger found a way to incorporate these issues into a 147 page, young adult novel. Marcy’s actions challenged and inspired her mother to become a different woman, a working and educated woman. Marcy and her fellow students peacefully petitioned their school and fought for what they thought was “right” and “fair” and Marcy found a cause bigger than herself which helped her grow.

​I feel that this book should be taught in school as it raises the issues of self- esteem, individuality and the journey to self identity. Young girls may benefit more from this book due to the main character being a pre-pubescent girl on her way to puberty and the issues that arise from that journey however I think it may induce at a base level compassion from boys for those young girls. The book ends with Marcy referring to herself as a helium balloon rather than at blimp which is a sign of acceptance and change which should be taught and applied to all the readers.

http://indigotheory.blogspot.com/2010/09/booktalk-cat-ate-my-gymsuit.html

Booktalk: Th1rteen R3asons Why by Jay Asher

By Carly Ross

                  This book is about a girl named Hannah Baker. At the beginning of the story you find out that Hannah has actually already committed suicide. It has been about two weeks since her death when a boy who had a crush on her, Clay receives a package with seven cassette tapes in it. There is no return address and when he starts the first tape he hears Hannah’s voice. She had recorded these tapes previous to her suicide and distributed them to the people she holds partly responsible for her death. There are thirteen different stories involving the thirteen people who attributed to her death. She has also given a map to all of the people included with places marked off where they are supposed to visit.

                  On the first tape while Hannah is explaining the rules of the operation she tells a joke about a dead girl only being able to lie. It is a silly pun but it seems odd that someone who is contemplating suicide would still be in the joking mood. The first story that she tells has to do with her first kiss. She is in ninth grade and she just moved to town during the summer. Over the summer she meets Justin who is friends with her neighbor who ends up moving away before school starts. During this time Justin is intrigued by Hannah and they discuss meeting each other at the park under the rocket slide. This setting is important for Hannah because this is where she has dreamt about her first kiss. She and Justin share a wonderful kiss and she is delighted to have a boy who she likes and who likes her. It turns out that rumors were spread by Justin that he had done more with Hannah than just kiss. She gained the reputation of a promiscuous teenager. This story helps intertwine the next side of the tape which contains story number two.

                  The whole time that Clay is listening to this tape he is frightened to let anyone know that he has them. The pure fact that he received the tapes means that he contributed to Hannah’s demise. He steals a cassette player from his friend so he can listen in private and proceeds to wander around town going to the places on the map that Hannah has marked. While he’s listening to the stories he thinks back to the interactions he had with Hannah and her interactions with the people in the stories she was telling. Clay has nothing but admiration for Hannah and he keeps thinking back to the time when they made out at a party in the summer. He wishes he had had the chance to get closer to her before her death.

                  Story number two consists of a list made by a boy named Alex in their freshman class. It contains a who’s hot and who’s not list. On the list Hannah is named best butt while Jessica is named worst butt. Jessica is aggravated by this fact and Hannah states that this is simply a gesture of revenge. The reason is not made clear until the next story is told. However, the rest of the tape talks about an act in which a nameless boy grabs Hannah’s butt in the Blue Spot Liquor store. She is upset about the fact that the list is the excuse that let this young man feel he had the right to slap her butt. Hannah points out that this happens as a snowball effect from Justin’s rumors. All of the events that she lists in the course of the novel snowball from the previous event. While listening to the tape Clay visits the Blue Liquor store and is haunted by the scenery. He looks around the store to where Hannah previously stood. He even buys candy from the rack that held her favorite candy. He ends up throwing it away because he can’t imagine holding anything solid in his stomach.

                  The next tape reveals the driving force behind Alex’s decision for best butt. It reveals a little known friendship that developed between Hannah, Jessica and Alex. All three students were new in town and they were supportive of each other during their first few weeks of school. Hannah admits to their never being a real friendship bond but that she was glad to have them there for her. As time passed they stopped meeting in the Monet café. Hannah was the last one to let go of their tradition but did not say she was particularly upset they were no longer meeting. This changed after the list came out. Hannah and Jessica met in the café. Jessica believed that the reasoning behind Alex’s choice was because Hannah had been intimate with him. Hannah denied the claims and said she knew about their relationship. Jessica believed this was the reason they broke up and she let herself believe the rumors over Hannah’s truth. In reaction, Jessica slapped/punched Hannah in the face and left a small scar above her eyebrow. She was less concerned about the scar and more about the emotional pain it caused her. At the end of this tape she asks if Jessica had gone to the funeral and seen the scar. Clay’s response is that there was no funeral held. He reflects on his part in this story. How he looked at the list Alex had distributed and not given it a second thought. He wished that he would’ve gathered all the lists and destroyed them.

                  The stories continue on and each one is intertwined. The fourth story is a little bit different than the previous three. She finds out that there is a peeping tom taking pictures of her in her room while her parents are on vacation. Hannah tells a friend about it at school and they devise a plan on how to catch the intruder. Her friend comes over that night and they stage some pictures to be taken and hear the clicking of the camera. Part of the prank is that the friend claims that Hannah has some private things in her dresser drawer. This helps distract the peeping tom and Hannah is able to figure out that it is a boy from their school named Tyler. While recording the tapes Hannah stages her own peeping situation in which she is perched outside of Tyler’s window but she isn’t even watching him. Her reason for this is that she doesn’t want revenge. It doesn’t satisfy her.

                  Tyler comes into play later on in the fifth story Hannah has. However, the most interesting point in this novel is when Clay goes and visits Tyler’s house on the map. He has a hard time distinguishing which one is his and he is only able to identify it by the bamboo blinds Hannah has informed him about and the duct tape which is holding his broken window together. While pondering why the window is broken Clay is confronted by an acquaintance from school. This boy hands him a rock and tells him that he has been intercepting people who come to Tyler’s house to give them instruction on where to throw the rocks. Clay finds out that this boy is featured in the later tapes and so he is also to blame for Hannah’s death. He asks why Tyler should have a rock thrown through his window if everyone who is aware of his peeping tom status is as much to blame for Hannah’s demise. He replies that his involvement is less harmful than Tyler’s. This infuriates Clay and he is almost resolved to smash the rock into the boys’ face instead. Clay composes himself and walks away but it is interesting that Clay doesn’t feel the need to lash out at Tyler. Clay feels the responsibility for Hannah’s death and he hasn’t even found out how he ties into the story yet.

                  There are thirteen stories in this book and I won’t reveal them all. The writing in this novel is interesting because the voices of Clay and Hannah are so intertwined it is hard to distinguish one from the other sometimes. Clay is forming thoughts while Hannah is story telling. While Hannah is forming thought’s Clay is patiently waiting for her to finish them. Throughout the book Clay is searching for the reason he has contributed to Hannah’s death and rethinking all about his involvement.

                  It is worth giving the book a chance because the character’s have so much depth. It is hard to imagine a teenage girl plotting out her death and planning to tell her tale accordingly. I think that teens could really take away an important theme from this book. It would help them reassess their behavior towards their peers and maybe see how deep the consequences of their actions go.

 

Go to this website to listen to the tapes: 

http://www.thirteenreasonswhy.com/tapes.php?video=6ushyNJhnrs

Booktalk: For One More Day by Mitch Albom

By Erin Reep

 

            “Every family is a ghost story” is an intriguing ling within the first paragraph of For One More Day by Mitch Albom. I would not call the book a ghost story, but it incorporates stories of someone who has passed and their interactions with the living that still continue after someone passes away.

            The novel begins with the main character, Charles “Chick” Benetto, attempting suicide. The story wastes no time introducing the reader to Chick’s depressing life and the current issues he is involved in. The upsetting family issue that put Chick over the edge was the fact that his only daughter, Maria, was married two weeks prior, and that he was not invited. He was informed through a letter from her containing two photographs of her with her new husband, a man Chick had never met. Upon receiving this news, Chick makes a phone call to his ex-wife, mother of Maria, and desperately searches for some answers. While Chick is hoping for some explanation, he truly already knows why he was not included in the family affair; he is no longer a part of the family unit. He left his wife and child years before because he was too consumed in his alcoholism and self pity reflecting on his past regrets and mistakes. His phone call to his ex-wife only creates a more realistic realization: Chick had no one who truly loved him and nothing he cared about existed anymore. 

            Chick’s suicide plan consists of him drinking himself silly one last time, driving to Pepperville Beach, his childhood home, and packing a gun along with him. While Chick’s plan was not definite, his intentions of death certainly were. He drunkenly missed his exit to Pepperville Beach, and without much thought, he U turns and drives the wrong direction on the highway. Chick is inevitably hit head on by a large truck. To his disappointment, he is not killed, only thrown from his vehicle and injured. Without assessing the scene of the state of the other driver, Chick walks into the night, with Pepperville Beach still as his chosen destination.

            When Chick arrives, he quickly forms a new plan of hurling himself off of a building. Much to his dismay, he lives through his second attempt as well.  Much to his surprise, he is looking upon the face of his dead mother. This confuses him and scares him, but he is magnetically drawn to his old Pepperville Beach home, and finds his mother there who happily greets him.

            The sequences of events after this point provides flashbacks from his childhood mainly. Chick reminisces about his relationship with his mother, the pleasant times and the hard times. The books uniquely labels these flashbacks as, “Times My Mother Stood Up for Me,” and, “Times I Did Not Stand Up for my Mother.” Chick reflects on this list he has formed and how unbalanced it became over the years; him treating his mother poorly. This informs the reader of his mother’s unconditional love and support for Chick and his sister, Roberta. Chick’s mother, Posey, was nothing but a wonderful mother, making Halloween costumes, driving them to school, and being the best single mother that she could be after their father left them. While Chick assumed that the divorce was his mother’s fault, he would learn from this visit not letting Chick’s father back into their lives was Posey’s greatest accomplishment of “standing up” for her children.

Considering the time period, 1960’s, divorce itself was an unheard of and sometimes embarrassing obstacle for their family. But Posey was always strong for her children. Chick, however, being young and naïve, resented his mother from the time that their father left them. He internally blamed her for his absence, and punished her in his own ways when he wanted a father figure. A key moment of flashbacks takes place when Chick is with his father as a child, and he proposes to his son, “You’re either a mama’s boy or a daddy’s boy. Not both.” Chick’s decision to be a “daddy’s boy” was his greatest betrayal to his mother.

The majority of Chick’s short comings towards his mother were based upon his emptiness of a male figure and his constant attempts to fill his void. Chick also did all he could to please his father, most likely hoping that it would make him return. What Chick never realized though was how unfair he was to his mother up until her death. Throughout his time with his mother after his suicide attempts, Chick also learns the truth about his parents’ divorce, and finally understands that he had been wrong to remain a “daddy’s boy.”

The opportunity he is given to talk and learn from his dead mother is what gives Chick the understanding to make a decision: should he choose life or death now that he is given a second chance?

While this book explores some challenging life issues, I think that it would be appropriate to teach in a classroom. It explores the dynamic of a family unit throughout the story, and many high school children would be able to relate to at least some aspect of Chick’s childhood struggles. The book also gives a different perspective on divorce and how it affects children and an entire family, and many students could relate to these issues as well. It is not a challenging read, but I am sure it would generate good classroom discussion about Chick and his high and low points.

 

Crag Hill's "Reading across the Curriculum: A Report from the 2009 NCTE Region & Conference" Now Posted in English Practice

http://www.bctela.ca/sites/www.bctela.ca/files/1000000/hill.pdf