Just Finished Reading...

Enclave by Ann Aguirre

There is no new territory covered in this teen dystopian/apocalyptic first book in Aguirre's Razorland series.  It starts out with the cliched right-of-passage ceremony in which fifteen-year-old, Girl15, is named Deuce and given the marks of her new position as a Huntress.  Deuce's people live underground in an enclave called College, where no one lives longer than their twenties.  The subterranean dwellers are sorted into one of three responsibilities:  Hunters, Breeders, and Builders.  Builders are in charge of creating everything needed for survival.  Breeders, ahem, breed with other Breeders to keep the population going and care for the brats until they are old enough to attend their own naming ceremonies.  Hunters have the most regarded jobs of patrolling the dangerous tunnels, snaring meat and killing any Freaks (some distant relation to humans with sharp teeth and claws who live on flesh of humans as well as their own fallen) they may encounter along the way.

Deuce's small world is very much that of a dystopian society: elders she had grown to trust with blind deference may not be capable of keeping their enclave safe, including the strict rules set to ensure their survival.  Her partner, Fade, comes from Topside, though no one believes this because nobody survives above ground.  As Deuce comes to trust Fade, she begins to reconsider all she was taught as a brat. 

While nothing new in this story, Aguirre's decision to not disclose Deuce's world and its history of coming into being outright made me curious to learn more of College and the other underground enclaves, as well as the world above and how it came to be.  Not all is illuminated, but hopefully more will be revealed in the books to come. 

Recommended for teens. Pause for violence, gore, and references to rape.

48HBC
time spent reading 3.5 hours
time spent blogging 45 min.
pages read 262

All You Need Is Love... and Individuality

My favorite genre of Young Adult fiction is dystopian fiction.  Dys meaning "not" and topian taken from "Utopian" or an ideal society.  Dystopian societies are usually formed out of tyranical rule.  Its citizens have few freedoms and many laws, many which seem outlandish to the reader, all in an effort to form a society that is seemingly perfect and without conflict.  The problem is that it is these laws and limited rights that breed conflict.  Authors tend to create these fictional societies as a way of commenting on our own forms of governing conventions.  Authors pose questions through their stories, asking students/teens/readers to examine and/or reexamine their views on many principles, easily tying in to conversations regarding political science, history, and the humanities.  Dystopian societies are often set in the future, and that is why these books are generally considered a sub-genre of science fiction. 

As Banned Books Week was a little over a week ago, and I like to do things in my own time, I've decided I would go through my favorite YA books in this typically challenged genre.

1.  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

What can I say, Ray Bradbury's the boss.  This book is for everyone who believes in the power of books.  And if that's not enough, there's a killer spider-robot chase scene.  I believe in the importance of rereading and reading again good books, but I don't do it enough.  Except with this book and a few others. 

Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave.

Umm... for the millenials, at what temperature does an eReader burn?

Controversial:  Montag's pill-popping wife.

2.  The Giver by Lois Lowry

For my degree, I had to take an Adolescent Literature course at UMKC.  I had been used to reading out of anthologies, studying Shakespeare, falling asleep to Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, and learning gaelic and other Old English/anglo-saxon dialogues.  Great for starting conversations with other English majors, but generally not beneficial or entertaining in any other fashion.  I was interested even less in reading kids' books.  I had to do a lot of reading in college, and it was the one time in my life that I started to despise reading.  One of the course requirements for my class was that we had to read twelve books from a provided list of notable YA/chapter books.  Many of my selections were random, while a few based on recommendations.  The Giver happened to be one that I chose.    I tucked myself into bed one night with this book at the top of my stack, and I ended up reading it cover to cover that night.

Controversial:  Pills that stop "stirrings."  Unwanted babies and elderly alike are euthanized.

3.  A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

This book's a classic, but I only first read it a couple of years ago.  I've read it once a year ever since, though.  Such a good story, with one of the most well-known and copied first sentence.  I actually made a book trailer a couple of years ago as a model for my students to make their own.







Controversial:  Heck, I don't know.  The idea that sameness is bad?

4.  The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

I loved this book, but why talk about it again when you can go here and read my inital review?

Controversial:  Language and brutality. 
5. Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Sometimes the best way to get a kid to read a book is to tell them why they shouldn't read it.  That happened to be the case for this book.  After I finished my book talk  for this book with each class, I had at least half of my students add their names to the waiting list to read this one.  I read this book when none of my books on hold were available and I had nothing else to read.  It was my first Shusterman novel, and I just thought it was going to be another average, ho-hum YA book.  Obviously it wasn't, or it wouldn't be on this list.  This story had a great premise:  You can "unwind" a child between the ages of 13 and 18 if you decide they'd make a better contribution to society as parts than as a whole.  In one chapter, the reader actually experiences a character getting unwound.  I feel ill just remembering it.

Controversial:  Uh, see last sentence.

**This blog post was probably spurred by two of the latest books I've read.  I highly recommend both, but I'm too tired to discuss either at this point in time.

*The Maze Runner by James Dashner

*Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Just Finished Reading...

Wake by Lisa McMann

time spent reading: 3.45 hours

pages read: 210

This book was not so great. It was on the level of the DaVinci Code or a Lifetime channel original movie - stupidly stupid but with mass appeal.

Janie discovers at a young age that whenever she gets near a sleeping person, she gets sucked into his dream, much to her chagrin. Most people dream they're naked in a room full of people, or that they're falling, or dream about their greatest desires and worst fears. Janie comes to know more about people, and perfect strangers, than she cares to.

Her senior year, Janie runs into a boy she used to know. He's had an extreme makeover, going from greasy goth guy to pulled-together, glasses-wearing cutie. The girls at school think he's a new kid, that's how well they recognize him. He and Janie grow close and eventually he learns her secret. Afterward, he seems to distance himself from Janie, and she learns through a friend that he is hooking up with her enemy and possibly selling dope. What's a girl to do?

I could deal with the short, choppy sentences and even the choppy storyline punctuated by dates and times, but I couldn't get used to the cheesy, inauthentic dialogue. Listen, nobody says 'rents. Nobody ever has. And meeting the Captain? That pushed this story far into the Lifetime television, paperback novel sold at your local grocery store or pharmacy. Finally, I find it unbelievable that there would be so many kids and adults who fall asleep napping at school and the office. Silly, silly, silly.

#48HBC Book One

#48HBC Book One

I finally finished The Dark and Hollow Places. I feel like such a slow reader for taking around 7 hours to read it. (I spent part of my late morning listening to Beastly on audiobook while I cleaned up.) This book is the apparent end to The Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy, although neither the second or third book lives up to the first. There was so much potential for this story, and it all got lost somewhere in between the silly love stories, chases, near deaths, and evil Recruiters. There was no big revelation or glint of real hope for the survivors. I'm exhausted not from the length of time it took reading this, but from Annah's constant fight and struggle to stay alive. It never ended.

pages: 377

time spent reading: roughly 7 hours

Just Finished Reading...

For Christmas, I got the Barnes & Noble Nook. It is awesome. The first book I completed on it was The Forest and Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. I heard about this book a couple of years ago, but based on the age group of my students, I never picked it up, because I knew I wouldn't be able to recommend it to 5th and 6th graders. Now that I have 7th and 8th graders, I am able to select more and more YA novels, and I'm so glad!

The Forest of Hands and Teeth is my first foray into the zombie genre, and I enjoyed it. Mary lives in a village in the middle of a forest of Unconsecrated, undead humans infected and hungering for blood. The press against the fences that surround Mary's village unrelentingly. Mary has already lost her father to the Forest of Hands and Teeth, but he will not be the only loved one Mary loses.

What's interesting about this story is that the reader knows just about as much as Mary does about the Return and the world outside of Mary's village, not a whole lot. So when Mary enters the Sisterhood, I was thinking she would be uncovering some deep, dirty secrets of the sisters. Instead, there is a breach, the village is wiped out, and Mary, along with her closest loved ones (how much did she luck out?) flee the village and enter the "forbidden" path. The reader begins to hope that this path is going to lead to the group's salvation, but, well, you'll just have to read it to figure out whether Mary ever makes it to her precious ocean or not.

Themes: hope, faith, and zombies

Just Finished Reading...

48 HBC #5


The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

time spent reading... 4 1/2 hours

time spent blogging...  12 min

I am ending on a high note.  This is my favorite book  of all the ones I read this weekend.  I loved it.  Romance, crazy Puritans, witch trials, history, romance.  Kit from Barbados has recently lost her grandfather, and having no other immediate family members boards a ship headed for Connecticut, to an aunt's she has never met and who is unaware of her visit.  Kit is like a colorful peacock that sticks out amongst gray pigeons in Puritan New England.  She shocks the natives over and over again.  She can swim and read and oh, that "witch" at the outskirts of town? a wonderful new friend!  A couple of chapters devoted to the witch trial reminded me of the insanity also seen in The Crucible.  This story, however, does everything a good book should.  It was fun, worrisome, irksome, sweet, funny, and had a very happy ending.  What more could a girl want?

Just Finished Reading...

48 HBC #4

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

time spent reading: 6 1/2 hours (embarrassing)

time spent blogging: 35 minutes

I'm disappointed in this book. It started out so well that I thought this was going to be the most fun of all the books I've read and then it began to feel more like The Diary Anne Frank: Armageddon. The premise is that a large enough astroid hits the moon hard enough to send the moon out of its natural orbit and pushes it closer to the earth. This sets off a chain of disasters almost immediately. Tsunamis decimate almost all coastline cities, electricity comes and goes, phones lines are down, volcanoes erupt blanketing the atmosphere is ash and smoke, blocking out the sun, and quickly turning an August summer into an August winter. It all sounds terrifying and enthralling but that's the extent of explanation we get from Pfeffer. The rest of the story is rather monotonous, told from the point of view of 16 year old Miranda as she writes in her diary. At first she complains about not having the chance to experience what it would be like to date, then school is no longer an option, and eventually every is one in the same. The temperatures are freezing. They are starving. Surely, the will all die soon.

I was hoping for scientific explanations for this chain reaction of horrific events and to get an idea of what is happening in the world, but even at opportune moments, Pfeffer chooses not to reveal any details. Even as Miranda's mother listens to the radio, the information is thin.

Most of the news was bad, the way it had been last summer. Earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, the litany of natural disasters. There were a few things added the list, though: Flu epidemics and cholera. Famine. Droughts. Ice storms.

The news reporters and top officials don't seem to have any answers, but everyone has a list of the deceased. The president (no doubt Bush Jr. - or as mom calls him "idiot") only says that things are looking up. If that were true, then shouldn't the earthquakes, floods, and volcanoes be over by now? I'm not sure the earth could sustain itself after a year of nonstop natural disasters. No one could survive that.

Even if the news did report something of significance, Miranda and her family don't seem to concerned to hear what they have to say.

It scares me a little that Mom is willing to burn up batteries just to listen to the radio.

Besides not having a clear explanation as to what is going on or why, I was troubled with the actions of some of the characters. Firstly, the family goes on a huge shopping spree stocking up for the end of the world. They come out with at least 6 or so heaping carts of food in just the one trip alone and a week later they already seemed to be starving. What happened to it all so quickly? The mother begins to act irrational, too, getting upset with Miranda for going back to her boy friend to tell him that bags of food are being given away to each household. They all come out with a bag of food, but the mother scolds her saying, "What if they ran out while you went to get him? We need to think only of ourselves right now." Real nice.

The father is no better. The world is ending and he leaves town with his young new wife and their unborn child to head cross country to her parents' place, never to be seen again. He has three kids and he leaves them to fend for themselves alone with their single mother. What real father who loves his kids would do that?

The story ends with no explanation of whether they all die, the planet implodes, or civilization begins to flourish once again. It just ends. I'm going to assume that dinosaurs crawled out from under the earth and ate Miranda and her family.

Just Finished Reading...

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Parick Ness

THE FIRST THING you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got much to say. About anything.

"Need a poo, Todd."

"Shut up, Manchee."

"Poo. Poo, Todd."

"I said shut it."

The Knife of Never Letting Go is a brutal, traumatizing, sci-fi YA novel about a boy named Todd Hewitt (cannot be forgotten, his name is screamed throughout the story) who is the last boy in the settlement of Prentisstown, New Planet. Over 20 years ago, a group of believers left their old planet and sailed off in their spaceships in search for a simpler, more peaceful, less communicative way of life. What they found was a planet where everyone can hear each other's Noise, including the animals.

The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.

In Prentisstown, all of the women are now dead because of this germ. Todd is a month away from becoming a man on his 13th birthday when everything he knows to be truth starts to unravel and he must suddenly flee Prentisstown and the men who are pursuing him.

The book is set up from the perspective of Todd's Noise (or at least one strand of it) and so much of it is one long rolling run on sentence. Reading was also banned in Prentisstown, books were burned, and so of course Todd has had a very limited education. He is illiterate and several words are misspelled in Todd's Noise to emphasize this. At first, this all bothered me, but as I fell deeper and deeper into Todd's world, I saw the absolute beauty in his Noise, and in Ness's writing.

It's like the song of a family where everything's always all right, it's a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, it's a song that'll always take care of you and never leave you. If you have a heart, it breaks, if you have a heart that's broken, it fixes.

Todd's journey to becoming a man is more difficult than the average human ever endures.

Doing what's right should be easy.

It shouldn't be just another big mess like everything else.

___

Life equals running and when we stop running maybe that's how we'll know life is finally finished.

___

Maybe there really is hope at the end of the road.

I love this book and am disappointed in it all at the same time. It has a lot of the aspects of dystopian fiction that I love and hints of Ray Bradbury, but there are moments when I lost all respect for the main character Todd and moments when I couldn't keep reading, my eyes were too blurry with tears. And, worst of all, the story doesn't end. It stops on a cliffhanger and is picked up in the second book of the series The Ask and the Answer.

This book is not, not, not for children to read. The worst of the worst language is in it as well as violence and brutal savagery. Despite that, this book is so so good and highly recommended.

Just Finished Reading...

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

Yes, that's her name. And before that it was Hullygully. Before Hullygully it was Mudpie. Before that she was Pocket Mouse. Originally she was Susan.

"So...you change your name whenever you get tired of it?"

"Whenever it doesn't fit anymore. I'm not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn, I outgrow it, I change it."

This just scratches the surface of the title character in the story. We never understand Stargirl on an intimate level; instead we see her through eyes of Leo Borlock. He is enamored with her. She strums her ukulele and sings "Happy Birthday" to students in the cafeteria. She has a pet rat named Cinnamon. She sends cards to strangers anonymously. She cheers for the other team. She cares about other people. She never seems to care what other people think of her.

Leo cares, though. He and Stargirl have been "shunned" by the school populace. He feels invisible and it bothers him.

This is a great story about conformity and staying true to yourself. After reading it, I wish I had a little bit of Stargirl in me. I wish I didn't care what others thought. But I have to identify with Leo. As humans, we need to feel we belong. We need interaction with others to feel our own existence. And so Leo has to make a choice: happiness he feels with Stargirl, or the approval of his peers.

Spinelli does not preach to the reader; instead he draws us in with Stargirl's odd behavior. What weird thing is she going to do next? While Stargirl's behavior and reactions do seem to be unfathomable, it's Leo who we are supposed to learn from. Stargirl is a mythical Santa Claus who visits a run-of-the-mill town. Leo is all of us. If we ever were lucky enough to meet a "Stargirl," would we react the same? Make the same choices? This goes along with Kelly Gallagher's argument that reading is like a dress rehearsal for real life. Students can use Leo's lesson as an example for making decisions when they come to similar crossroads in their own lives.

There is a follow up to Stargirl called Love, Stargirl. It's set a year later and from Stargirl's perspective. I'm not sure if I'm interested in reading it, though. I feel like she was meant to be this impossible thing to touch, to understand. To get inside her head would be like killing the mystery that is half of her charm. I'll wait until I hear something more about it.