InLand/YA Booktalks

Book Talk: Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

By Mileka Grager

In the back of every child’s mind, and deeper still in yours and mine, lies a place of intrigue and adventure. It’s a place of imagination and it is here in Neverland that the story of Peter Pan and Wendy Darling takes place. The book begins by taking a look into the Darling’s household and the telling of their lives up to date. Mr. and Mrs. Darling are the parents of three small children, Wendy, John, and Michael, who are cared for by their nurse Nana who happens to be a dog. The Darling family is a happy one, until of course Mrs. Darling discovers that a boy named Peter has been coming to her home.

Peter has been coming to the Darling residence to hear the bedtime stories but one night He is discovered and in his escape attempt Nana catches his shadow and Mrs. Darling keeps it in a drawer. On the “dreaded Friday," Mr. and Mrs. Darling leave their children to go out and Peter and Tinker Bell come to the house to find his missing shadow. Unable to affix it back to himself Peter accidently wakes Wendy and she sews it to his foot. The two then exchange “kisses," Wendy’s being a thimble and Peter’s an acorn top, which later saves her life.

After discovering that Wendy knows just as many stories as her mother, Peter sets his mind to convincing her to accompany him to Neverland. Wendy agrees only if her brothers can come. With lovely thoughts in their heads and a bit of fairy dust they head off to a place they’ve only ever dreamed of. Once there the five of them end up separating and Tinkerbelle attempts to have Wendy killed, luckily Tootles’ (a lost boy) arrow strikes Peter’s kiss and not her heart, and Wendy lives. Tinkerbelle is then banished for a week upon Peter’s discovery that it was her who told Tootles to shoot Wendy. Life goes on for the Lost Boys who come to adore Wendy and she becomes their mother.

The pirates, led by the terrifying Jas. Hook have it in for the Lost Boys and especially Peter, who cut off Hook’s hand and fed it to a crocodile. They accidently discover the Lost Boys’ home and set them a trap of a poisoned cake by the water. The boys would normally have fell for such trickery, because without a mother they wouldn’t have seen the danger, but they are lucky because they have mother Wendy who tells them not to eat it.

On a trip to play in the water and see the mermaids the Lost Boys and the Darling children discover that the Pirates have captured the leader of the redskins, Tiger Lily, and that they intend to leave her to drown at high tide. Peter convinces the Pirates to free her by calling out to them in Hook’s voice and tricking them. Unfortunately the actual Hook shows up and Wendy sees him for the first time. After rescuing Tiger Lily, she and Peter form an alliance and they part ways.

As time goes on in Neverland the Darling children begin to remember home and get very homesick and they ask the Lost Boys and Peter to come back with them. The six lost boys decide to join them but Peter, determined never to grow up decides to stay behind. Unfortunately the group headed back home is captured by the Pirates.

About to walk the plank the children are rescued by none other than Peter and Tinkerbelle. Peter and Hook face off yet again and Pan defeats Hook and sends him into the jaws of the very same crocodile that ate his hand before. Wendy and the boys head back home and the Darling family embraces their new additions while Peter stays in Neverland. He comes to visit her on occasion but eventually she grows up and forgets all about Peter and his magical home. Her daughter however finds herself imagining a world of magic and pirates.

 

Book Talk: A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich by Alice Childress

By Stephanie (Roger) Long

A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich (Take Two!)

    Funny enough, I had just started reading this book about the time Mandy did her 1-2 minute book talk in class about the same book. I was thankful hers wasn’t a 6-8 minute talk, or else I wouldn’t have had any new information to bring to the class!

    I selected this book by scanning the list and cross checking the library database. First one that was available. Score! Upon looking at the book, I knew it had the potential to be interesting. I started guessing what could be meant by the title. What impact(s) on the plot, characters, and setting could it possibly have? Then I looked at the first page. It was like a foreign language. I was definitely submerged right into the mind of the main character, Benjie. It took me a while to get used to reading the specific dialect Benjie spoke (and thought) in. I had to scan and rescan sentences, using the context to establish and understand what was being said. It was definitely quite the amount of exercise on my brain! He used words such as “letrit” for electric, and eventually I caved in and started reading with a sassy attitude. It actually helped significantly. I really dove into each character, each dialect being slightly different from the others.

    These characters not only had their own way of speaking, but also their own story to tell. At first, I didn’t really think there was a plot line to the book, just a bunch of characters telling their story. But it started to line up after a while—each character adding onto Benjie’s life and story. His mother, step-father, teachers, principal, and friends each progressed the story by telling it from their own vantage point. It was interesting switching between the characters. I managed to learn personal things about all of them that a “one character view point” wouldn’t be able to give. Each of them spoke in the first person, giving a sense of authority when it was their turn to tell a chunk of the story.

    The story seemed to be centered on Benjie and his drug addiction, which he claimed was not an addiction at all. But throughout the book I was introduced to many other important themes: the struggles of those around the addicted, how to be a good parent, dealing with segregation and a newly developed sense that it has been “abolished,” and the importance of viewing things from a different perspective. The last theme listed really hit home for me upon reading the chapter narrated by the principal. It reminded me that no matter how much you think you know about someone, you will never truly know what they have to go through on a daily basis—even if they appear to have a decent life.

    Toward the end, the book took a turn and I realized that the book wasn’t necessarily only about Benjie. In fact, it seemed to switch its main focus to an entirely different character, reflecting on his actions throughout the book and ending by centering on the relationship between Benjie and this character. I’m not going to give away which character, because I hate spoilers, but I believe that the switch from Benjie to the other character is something that added to the impact of the novel.

    This book is definitely one that could fit in with multiple unit themes including discrimination, segregation/African American rights, drug addiction, and family/relationship issues. I would love to incorporate it within a unit once I become a teacher, or at least have it available on my shelf for any student that would like to read it. If there were any pages I would suggest you read to a classroom, they would be pages 54-57. They are very powerful, and a good way to hook students into wanting to read the book—something that all teachers hope their students will want to do.

Book Talk: Jacob Have I Loved by Katharine Paterson

By Samantha Herriot

    Based on the title of the book, Jacob Have I Loved would assumingly be about some young girl who is hopelessly in love with a dashing young lad named Jacob.  The case, however, is the title is taken from a bible verse saying, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”  This bible verse is repeatedly brought up in the story, as the young girl, Sara Louise Bradshaw, struggles to escape the shadow of her younger twin sister’s spotlight, growing up amidst the beginning of the second World War.  From the first moments of her life, she has always been cast aside as her sister takes the attention of everyone on the small island where they live: Rass, near Chesapeake Bay on the east coast. 

    The story of her and her sister is that Sara, also called “Wheeze” by her friends and family, was born before her sister, Caroline.  Her sister was delivered soon after, not breathing.  The color returned after Caroline began breathing and crying, but was delicate and sickly, and cared for much more carefully than Sara.

    Ever since then, Caroline is seen as the gifted and beautiful child, while Sara Louise is the average and unseen shadow of her sister.  Sara’s closest and only friend in the beginning of the novel, Call, is almost as inextraordinary as her; they spend nearly all of their time outside of school in the marshes along the island, catching crabs for extra money as children.  They encounter a new inhabitant to the small Methodist community of the island: an old sailor who takes residence in an abandoned house along the shore.  Later on, Call and Sara befriend the old man, and work to help restore his damaged home.

    Throughout the story, circumstances occur that allow Caroline to attend a school, far away in Baltimore, thanks to the generous financial support of the old man that Sara and Call helped.  Sara stays on the island, in the home she grew up in, with her father, mother, and god-fearing grandmother.  Sara helps support the family by working on her father’s crab boat.  She keeps talking about wanting to leave the island, knowing that nothing will come to her life if she doesn’t set out to make something happen.  After what begins as an argument with her mother, she is convinced and motivated to set out to go to school.  She finds her true calling and realizes the hardships and difficulties her environment provided in Rass ultimately prepared her for her wonderful life that she finds on her adventures after leaving the island of her childhood.

Video Book Talk: Beneath a Meth Moon by Jacqueline Woodson

By Kelsey Phillips

 

Worried Common Core Standards could set YA in high school back a generation

Strategically the movement to us young adult literature as a bridge to the classics was a brilliant maneuver (see Herz and Gallo 1996, Kaywell 1993). Continue to value the high school canon while bringing young adult literature through the side door to provide the very necessary scaffolding for student understanding. Introduce thematic, character, or plot points through young adult literature before reading the classic text. Perhaps the hidden agenda was that once young adult literature was in the door/room, it would be there to stay and eventually, on its own terms, take its place in the literature curriculum. That hasn’t transpired, alas, and, if the Common Core Standards have their way, that may not occur in the next generation. The suggested "exemplar" texts will become the canon. With the exception of The Book Thief at grades 9-10, YA disappears on this "suggested" list after grade 8.

Book Talk: I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan

Alaina Grade

Julie James was an actively involved member of her high school’s social activities and one of the most perky and upbeat members of the cheerleading squad. She didn’t have the best of grades but she had a loving mother and boyfriend who only saw the good in her. Her boyfriend, Ray Bronson, couldn’t be the star football player that his father wanted him to be but Ray excelled in tennis, golf, and obviously in his ability to snag cheerleader girlfriends. Barry Cox lived under the watchful eye of his mother during high school but rebelled by driving fast and dating the bratty but beautiful, Helen Rivers. Helen was one of the most beautiful girls in high school whose biggest issue in life was dealing with her less than personable sister, Elsa. This group of “friends” never had a problem or care in the world until last summer when an accident changed everything.

When Julie and friends start receiving mementos reminding them of “what they did last summer,” they think that someone is pranking them by making them feel more terrible about what they did – how could anyone have seen them run over a 10-year old kid on a bicycle in the middle of the night? They had also made a pact not to tell anyone about that summer’s incident but things begin to unravel and the truth of that evening is begging to slip out.

The plot of this story largely revolves around the idea of good versus bad conscience. That summer when the pact was made, Barry and Helen vowed to never speak of the situation again while Julie begged her friends to do the right thing. Regrettably, Ray made the decision to side with Barry and Helen – an event that triggers the end of his relationship with Julie, which causes him to leave their unnamed town for California.

The situation has largely been swept under the rug during the period of time that Ray has been away. When we begin reading the novel, we learn that it has been almost exactly one year since the incident. Barry is just finishing up his final exams while attending University, Helen is working as the “Golden Girl” for a news station, and Julie has just been accepted to Smith University and is dating a new guy named Bud. Ray has just come back into town. As Julie is just getting off the high of receiving her acceptance letter to Smith, she opens another letter that reads, “I Know What You Did Last Summer”. The letter opens up new wounds and old worries which, in turn, cause Julie to unknowingly begin a connected series of events that lead her and her group of friends, to the only person outside of the pact, that knows about last summer’s incident.

We see this previously mentioned conscience issue play out in the action of the novel. Julie and Ray believe that the mementos are more than a prank and look toward learning more about the background of the child that they had a part in accidentally murdering. At the same time, Helen and Barry continue to ignore the past and focus instead, on each other. Much of the plot is devoted to the inner thoughts that Barry has of Helen and Helen has of Barry – they do not share the same hopes and dreams, to say the least. It is only after Barry and Helen really begin to understand the severity of the situation that they decide to dissolve the pact and do the right thing that Ray and Julie have been trying to do all long – will it be dissolved too late? 

 

 

Book Talk: Noen Roper Navnet Mitt (Someone is Calling my Name) by Eva Jensen

By Paul Lund

Noen Roper Navnet Mitt (Someone is Calling my Name) by Eva Jensen

 Monika is a seventeen year old girl who goes to visit the village where her mother grew up. Monika’s parents have been divorced for some time, and her mother recently took off with the man she’s fallen in love with.

Monika finds the property she’s inherited from her mother and sets up a tent on a field. The first person she meets is her mother’s cousin, Sigrun. She offers Monika to sleep at her place, but Monika tells her that she’ll be sleeping in the tent.

The purpose of the trip is to have time and space to think about the future. To help her in doing so, Monika starts a dairy on the first night in the tent. Her first entry is about her best friend, Charlie, whom she’d like to spend more time with in the future.

After a few days of gathering fire wood, Monika heads over to a nearby house where she meets an older man by the name Odd. He invites her inn for a cup of coffee, but she only wants water. A couple of days later Monika, Sigrun and Odd watch a movie starring Carmeron Diaz, and Odd is very pleased with the scenes by the pool.

One day Monika’s dad calls the landline at Sigrun’s place. He asks if she’s coming home soon as school is about to begin. She’s not too thrilled about it because she doesn’t know if she wants to go back to studying what she was. Sigrun is a great conversational partner, and offers insight about Monika’s mother. She reminds Monika that her mother is a nice woman and that just because she left town with a man, doesn’t mean she’ll be gone forever.

When Monika returns home she turns on her cell phone and reads text messages from her mom and Charlie. Her mom’s somewhere warm, and Charlie wants to hang out. When Monika breaks the news to her dad that she’s thinking about dropping out of school, he flips out. He asks for some time to think about it all, and they agree to talk again later. Monika meets up with Charlie and they exchange stories about their summer vacation. While he tells her about his adventures, she thinks about how good it’s to be around him again.

As expected, Monika’s dad refuses her to drop out of school. He wants her to finish what she’s started and he wants her to live with him, his wife and Monika’s step siblings. Monika is upset, and decides to pack a suitcase and escape. She leaves the house at midnight and walks to the first intersection where she hears someone calling her name…

Book Talk: The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket

By Julianne Baggett

The Austere Academy

by Lemony Snicket

This book starts with us picking back up with the depressing story of the Baudelaire siblings. Violet the inventor, Klaus the bookworm, and Sunny the biting infant have had a horrific time since their parents were killed in a house fire. Their distant relative, Count Olaf, has been trying to get his filthy hands on their fortune.  He follows them to all of their new homes, bringing death and destruction with him.

In this novel, the Baudelaire orphans are left at Prufrock Prepatory School, a school made of tombstone-shaped buildings, ridiculous rules, and a motto translating to “Remember You Will Die.” Prufrock Prep is run by an egomaniac named Vice Principal Nero who insists on requiring all of the students to listen to his horrendous violin playing for six hours a night. If the students do not attend, they must buy Nero a bag of candy and are forced to watch as he consumes it.

The three siblings are forced to live in a tiny tin shack filled with angry crabs, dripping tan fungus, and hideous green and pink walls (the nasty children at Prufrock Prep like to call this the Orphan Shack). The Baudelaire children learn to make the best of their situation when they make friends with the Quagmire siblings whose family, including their triplet, also died in a house fire and left them with a fortune. Each of the Quagmire children has a small notebook in which they write notes and poems in, which later tend to come in handy.

I wish I could tell you that the Baudelaire children lived happily ever after with their new friends, but sadly I cannot. Wherever the Baudelaire children go, Count Olaf follows, and this book is no exception.

 

Open-Minded Response to Alexie's Absolutely True Diary

Brooke Troutman

October 9, 2012

Entry #6/ Critical Response Paper

 

True Diary = True Life

When I told my mom that I was reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, she turned to me and said, “Oh gosh. That guy again?” I responded with an innocent, “What? What’s wrong with him?” She replied, “Wasn’t he that guy you read in high school, with all the cuss words?” And I said, “Oh yeah! Yep. That’s him!” She proceeded to sigh in a disgruntled manner. Sherman Alexie has reputation for being inappropriate, in almost every sense of the word. His reputation has even reached so far as my mom. Even so far as school teachers, principals, and superintendents. In fact, Alexie’s books are banned in some schools (just run a Google search—155,000 results). But is the removal of Alexie’s books from school curriculum valid? I would argue no. I think the content—and even the style—of Sherman Alexie’s writing is a valuable resource for teen students.

The back pages of True Diary consist of an interview with Alexie, where the interviewer asks if there were “any subjects that [he] was hesitant to broach,” noting topics in the book such as “alcoholism, poverty, masturbation, fighting, death, etc.” Alexie responds with a resounding, “No.” He continues on to explain first that he respects parents’ right to decide on the books that their kids read, but that they don’t get to decide on what a school or community reads. He explains that the people who often try to get his books banned are “extremely conservative Republican Christians,” but he asserts that his book shouldn’t be banned because “those conservative Christian kids and I were exactly alike. I was publicly inappropriate, they were privately inappropriate. All this stuff that is controversial is stuff that kids are dealing with on a daily basis.” And he says nothing more.

Go Sherman Alexie!

I completely agree with his statement that the kinds of things discussed in True Diary are things that every teen experiences. And I am a conservative Christian kid! So I’m allowed to say this. While I respect and love my mom and dad for protecting me (or, ‘sheltering’ me, as most kids at my public schools called it) from specific worldly influences, there is a certain sort of ignorance and naivety that accompanies such an upbringing. A number of fellow conservative Christian kids have dealt with such issues as homosexuality, suicide, depression, and yes, even masturbation—some of these topics aren’t directly addressed in True Diary, but I imagine Alexie wouldn’t be shy to tackle them in other books. A lot of people have misconceptions about Christians, thinking that we are immune to the problems of life. I can’t tell you how untrue that is! The difference between Christians and non-Christians lies in how Christians choose to cope with those issues. But because ‘controversial’ issues-- like sex and identity-- aren’t necessarily openly discussed, Christian kids are left confused and floundering for clarity and explanation. Alexie realizes that. Conservative Christian kids are still kids, and kids need help.

So, I guess this idea of banning Alexie’s books didn’t really change my viewpoint on True Diary: I still think the book is glaringly inappropriate. But I say bring it on. Because life is inappropriate. It reminds me of something my high school Spanish teacher would say, when we asked him if our practice Spanish sentences had to make sense: “Nope. ‘Cuz life doesn’t make sense.” However, the book has changed my viewpoint on Young Adult Literature as a genre. I used to think it wasn’t necessary to address certain topics, like maybe abortion or religion or death. I thought that because these books were aimed at a children-and-teen audience, we needed to protect them from harsher aspects of life. But now I don’ think so. Any and all subjects should be written about, because any and all subjects are a part of being human. I think the key, perhaps, is in the way that those subjects are written about. They must be discussed with gentleness, honesty, and tact, unlike Wintergirls (which is a book I would not tolerate in a classroom setting). There is a way to handle the difficult parts of life without being utterly explicit and suggestive. And that is a task that is left up to the writers, though parents and schools should be aware of the exact materials their children are reading. With the integrated efforts of YA Lit authors, parents and schools, children and teens can grow up and learn about all of life, but in a narrative setting that is monitored.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is a book that pushes boundaries. It raises issues of poverty, death, sex, and alcohol, and a number of schools object to including the book in curriculum. Alexie claims that his book is valuable because of those issues. And I agree. Young Adult Literature books are supposed to delve into the vast array of human experience, and sometimes those experiences are messy. They might even include cuss words.

 

 

 

 

Book Talk: Broken by Daniel Clay

By Shandra Clark

I was interested in Broken by Daniel Clay mainly because To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books. (Sound weird?) Broken was touted by the website on which I first heard of it (I do not remember the name of it now) as being a “modernization” of the story of Scout Finch, and, in my naïveté, I assumed this meant that it would be just as age appropriate and palatable as its inspiration, which led me to believe that it may also be worth teaching as part of a unit on To Kill a Mockingbird.

However, I was sorely mistaken. Broken is definitely a novel for an older audience, and a significantly darker story, but a great novel nonetheless – whether that designation comes in spite of or because of its unbelievable darkness is up to the reader. Immediately upon beginning the story, we find out that our sometimes-narrator eleven year-old Skunk (yes, really) Cunningham is in a coma, and that it somehow has something to do with Bob Oswald – but then, basically every bad thing that happens to the residents of Drummond Square has something to do with the Oswald family; whether directly or indirectly, the Oswalds are the root of all evil in Broken. Patriarch Bob Oswald is a single father of five daughters whom he regularly beats; a drug dealer; a drug addict; an alcoholic; on welfare; and is covered in Maori tattoos (this detail, though seemingly insignificant, is made note of several times through the course of the novel, leading me to believe that the author believes tattoos indicate a lower class standing). He communicates only through yelling and punching, and the action of the novel begins with Bob beating nineteen year-old Rick Buckley to a bloody pulp after he is falsely accused of rape by one of the Oswald girls in a measure of self-preservation.

Over the course of the beginning of the novel, we are introduced to Archie (father) and Jed (brother): what remains of Skunk's family after her mother left them many years ago. Archie is a solicitor who is unsatisfied with the way his life has turned out, a stark difference from his analogue, Atticus Finch. He does not have many friends, and he, unlike Atticus, has not managed to retain any sense of idealism in spite of the difficulties he has faced in life. However, like Atticus, he loves his children very dearly and attempts to do right by them even if he is not always as present as he could be in their lives. Jed is a typical surly teenager who vacillates frequently between enjoying Skunk's company and finding himself irritated by her. As the story progresses, however, Jed seems more and more irritated by Skunk, especially as he begins to consort with one of the Oswald girls. He frequently beats Skunk (a common theme throughout the novel).

Dillon is a self-proclaimed Gypsy who, at the beginning of the novel, has supposedly lived in eleven countries and is now an orphan who steals everything he can get his hands on. Consistently noted throughout the novel is that he is always dressed in a pale pink hoodie. Dillon befriends Jed and Skunk, and Dillon and Skunk begin a “romance” of sorts (mostly involving playing on swings and holding hands), which is cut short when one of the many schoolyard bullies that seem to inhabit Drummond Primary declares Dillon is a pedophile and threatens to beat him up if he sees him near Skunk again. The cast of characters is rounded out by Cerys (pronounced kare-iss), the Cunninghams' live-in au pair with whom Archie has a short-lived sexual relationship, and Mr. Jeffries, Skunk's idealistic young teacher who has an on-again off-again yet somewhat serious relationship with Cerys throughout the novel, and on whom Skunk has a massive schoolgirl crush – the tenderness of which is juxtaposed very nicely against the brutality, violence, and general bleakness of the rest of the novel.

As far as the plot goes (outside of character development), Bob Oswald's beating of Rick Buckley at the beginning of the novel, paired with another highly humiliating and dehumanizing event that happens soon afterward, causes Rick to suffer a psychotic break (a “mental breakdown” in layman's terms) and never come out of his bedroom again. This places great strain on his family, and indirectly on the rest of the residents of Drummond Square, aside from the Oswalds, who, predictably, could not care less. After this auspicious introduction, things go downhill for these families as the Oswalds become more and more belligerent; the school-age daughters constantly bully Skunk at school and steal her lunch money, and Bob's drug parties get more and more out of control as time goes on. Mr. and Mrs. Buckley are driven nearly to the point of separation in their attempts to cope with Rick's mental illness, Cerys and Mr. Jeffries are constantly fighting, and Archie becomes more and more detached from his children as his interest in/sorrow over the fact that he cannot attain Cerys grows. The emotional turmoil of the characters is consistently punctuated with episodes of horrendous violence and brutality, mostly at the hands of various Oswalds – almost every character is beaten up at least once in the story, and the majority of those beatings are handed out by an Oswald or two.

At this point, I do not think that I would teach this book. However, if I were to do so, I would try to teach it to older kids (which may prove difficult since To Kill a Mockingbird is frequently taught to freshmen and sophomores), and, due to the extremely dark content and rather harsh language, I would require parent permission to be allowed to read the book, and have an alternative assignment set up for kids who did not receive permission. I do think this would be a worthwhile book to have on the shelf in my classroom, though (while still requiring parent permission), as it is a fascinating study of how low humans can actually sink, and how bestial we can actually become. I also think that it is very useful to read and compare to To Kill a Mockingbird as a rather extreme portrayal of both the fallibility and nastiness of humans, which was arguably somewhat more subtle in this Broken's progenitor.