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YA Book Reviews

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I teach students who are reluctant readers, at best, especially the boys.  Four of them this term are in a class called Guided Literature Projects.  They read a book a week, then do a project on it – poster, essay, diorama, etc.  Most students fail this class, or barely pass, because they pick books that are boring.  To help them, I’ve been reading a lot of YA recently so I can recommend books they’ll actually enjoy.

  • The Burn Journals by Mark Runyon.  A kid asked me for something to read one day during study hall, and this was the only book I had in my classroom.  He devoured it.  It’s about a high school kid who hates himself and life so much that he sets himself on fire.  He survives and writes about his recovery.  It’s very open, very honest, and something I think students can relate to.
  • Snitch by Allison van Diepen. A student in inner city New York has made a promise to herself to stay away from gangs.  But then she falls for a guy and gets sucked in.  She alerts him to a planned attack, thus earning herself the label of “snitch.”  The book gives great insight into how circumstances can alter the best laid plans, as well as the consequences of being true to yourself and your friends.  Even though the gangs in our community aren’t nearly as gung-ho as the Crips and Bloods of NYC, it’s still something that my kids can relate to with their “Snitches get stitches” mentality.
  • Mexican White Boy by Matt de la Peña.  The main character is half white, half Mexican.  He doesn’t fit in at his all-white prep school, and he doesn’t fit in when he spends the summer with his Mexican father’s family.  There he meets another mixed kid (half Hispanic, half black).  The boys build a friendship based on baseball, a desire to fit in somewhere, and the attempt to earn the love and approval of their absent fathers.  Definitely another one my students can relate to, as most of them don’t live with their dads.
  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.  The main character is a kid growing up on an Indian reservation in Washington.  He makes the choice to go to school off the rez, making him a traitor to his people.  But the town (like a lot of small, isolated towns in the western US) is deeply racist, and he doesn’t fit in there either.  Meaningless death, alcoholism, staying true to your heritage while trying to succeed – this story has it all.
  • Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Meyers.  I read Meyers’ Monster, so when I saw him tackling the Iraq War I picked this one up.  Nope.  It’s too sanitized for a war novel. I realize you need to tone things down for YA, but war is not one of them.  This is not one I’ll be recommending to my students.
  • The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll.  Holy crap.  Ever seen the movie Kids?  It and this book are realistic in a way that makes you want to send your own children to a convent or monastery on an island somewhere without internet access.  I know based on conversations with my students that things like this actually happen, but I’m going to be a prude and bury my head in the sand, fingers shoved in my ears as I hum loudly with my eyes squeezed shut.  While this book has redeeming literary value, I will not be recommending this one.

Up next on my list:

  • The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy
  • The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (shut up, I’ve never read it)
  • Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
  • Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
  • The Enemy by Charlie Higson
  • Face by Benjamin Zephaniah
  • Come Clean by Terri Paddock
  • Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
  • Paper Towns by John Green

What are your favorite YA books?  Other books you’d recommend for kids who hate to read?

    Six Sentence Sunday – 11/13/11 #sixsentencesunday

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    Another NaNo bit from A Handful of Wishes.  Zeke’s wife has just left him, and the genie can’t make her come back.

    “What’s the point of having a genie if you won’t do what I say? You’re worthless.  Worse than worthless.” Zeke laughed, drank from the bottle in his hand. “You get my hopes up, then destroy them with your list of rules. Maybe it would be better to just wish you away.”

    Post a link to your six sentences blog entry, or join the fun at the Six Sentence Sunday website. 

    Six Sentence Sunday – 11/6/11 #sixsentencesunday

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    NaNoWriMo has started and I’m working my way through the novel I started last year, A Handful of Wishes, so let’s grab a chunk from it.

    The premise is that for every wish there’s a consequence, and sometimes those consequences are bad.  Kill-other-people bad.

    “I wish they’d stop throwing paper at me,” Zeke muttered under his breath, then froze. It had been roughly four years since he’d uttered those words, four long years that he’d tried to forget about the genie, about what his wishes had done. He didn’t have the bottle with him though. Didn’t even know where it was; probably in a box in the attic with the rest of the things from his parents’ apartment. He was safe this time, right?

    “I didn’t mean it,” he whispered. 

    Post a link to your six sentences blog entry, or join the fun at the Six Sentence Sunday website.

    Multilingual

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    **Note – this isn’t really related to anything.

    Exchange as I was handing back papers in class today:

    A:  Danke.  That means “thank you” in German.
    Me:  спасибо.  That means “thank you” in Russian.
    A:  Um, gracias.  That means “thank you” in Spanish.
    Me:  Merci.  That means “thank you” in French.
    D:  Yeah? Grazie. That means “thank you” in Italian.
    Me:   Ank-thay ou-yay. That means “thank you” in Pig Latin.
    A:  Thank you. That means “thank you” in English. [pause] I got nothing.

    NaNoWriMo 2011!

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    Tomorrow starts the frantic insanity that is NaNoWriMo – writing a 50k word novel in 30 days.  This’ll be my third year participating (I’m emartin317 if you’d like to add me as a buddy).  In 2009 I wrote a horrible novel that’ll stay buried forever (but at least I won!).  Last year I made it about 13k into A Handful of Wishes, but wasn’t able to make it further because I was too focused on editing the novel I’d just finished (The Lone Wolf).  This year I’m in the same boat, as I really want to finish editing that novel, but I’ve been told to stop picking at it for awhile and I’m going to try to follow that advice.

    This year I’m bending the rules and plan to complete my novel from last year. 

    Here’s a brief overview:

    Ezekiel Archer hates his life. His parents are mean, and everyone seems to hate him. His luck seems to change when he receives an old bottle that contains Paribanu – a genie, a fairy godmother, a guardian angel. Zeke now has the power to change his life with a few simple wishes. But getting one’s way has unintended consequences, a lesson he learns and forgets over the course of his life.

    I’ve had a year now to work out plot details, and I’ve had some great character insights along the way.  So here’s hoping I finish this year!

    Are you doing NaNo this year?  How are you feeling about it going in?

    Six Sentence Sunday – 10/30/11 #sixsentencesunday

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    Another bit from The Lone Wolf.  This is Andrew, age six, talking to a police officer about the Greater Good.

    “Most people are just trying to serve that greater good, aren’t they, sir?” I asked, thinking about what he’d said.

    “I think you’re right.  God made people mostly good but sometimes they do the wrong thing. They might be scared, or not thinking, and you just gotta remember, no matter how bad things get, we all got our reasons.”

    “Even the bad guys?”

    “Even the bad guys.”

    Post a link to your six sentences blog entry, or join the fun at the Six Sentence Sunday website.

    Writing encouragement

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    As I get closer to querying my novel, I’m of course getting cold feet, which I voiced to a writing group.  This was a response:

    In her most recent message, ED wrote about being hesitant to send out a novel because “it’s not as good as it could be.” She quotes a character in a story of L M [Montgomery]’s as saying to a would-be writer, “‘You’ll never write anything that really satisfies you though it may satisfy other people.'”

    This reminds me of comments made to me by David Foster, then head of the Fine Arts Department at the University of Oregon. He said that when an artist works, the work is for the artist first, and for anyone else second. He said that Art is a process of discovery conducted by the artist, and that any discoveries made in the course of producing one piece only lead to the need for further exploration in the next. No artist is ever satisfied with his or her work, because that work is only one step on a road that will never end — the road to understanding. So artists churn out works, and as each one is produced it teaches the artist something; as the lesson is absorbed, the work that provided it loses value — it has been exhausted. If these works can help others — readers, viewers, listeners — to improve their understanding, then the works have continued value for them, but the artist is on to new explorations.

    Foster went on to say that trying to make any work of art “perfect” is a mistake, because it simply distracts the artist from the true course of his or her explorations. It’s like Crick and Watson refusing to divulge their findings on DNA until they’d figured out how to do gene splicing and cloning. An art work is not a final product. It is an experiment, and it may be more or less successful in the artist’s estimation. Whether the artist regards it as a success or as a failure, it may or may not be of value to others. Everybody’s exploratory path is different. For the artist to try to make something perfect is simply to expend further effort on an experiment that has already served its primary purpose….

    So, ED, don’t worry about getting it absolutely right. Don’t go after those diminishing returns. Don’t be overly concerned with which piece of parsley to use as the garnish. You’ve cooked the meal, it smells wonderful, the flavors complement each other deliciously, and your guests will agree with you that it is wonderfully nourishing. Your guests that aren’t lactose intolerant, that is. Or gluten-aversive. Or vegan. But there are other cooks cooking for them.

    I know it’s time to throw the baby from the nest.  I know changing a couple words here and there won’t change anything overall.  But damn is it still daunting.

    Rereading my childhood

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    I’ve always been a voracious reader. 

    I got in trouble exactly once in first grade.  We’d just finished our free reading time, and our teacher, Mrs. Sisul, told us to put away our books.  But I was enjoying the adventures of Ms. Frizzle and her students on the Magic School Bus too much to stop reading, so I hid the open book in my desk and kept reading, earning me a negative paper punch on that month’s artwork.

    My love of the written word continued throughout elementary school.  Second grade’s Ms. Johnson introduced me to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and the other Chronicles of Narnia, which I’ve since reread to the point of memorization.  In third grade Mrs. Rudolph instilled a love of Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose books were also reread until known by heart.  (Interesting random fact:  in my Russian class the term we learned for memorize, выучить наизусть, literally translates as “to know by heart”.)

    In fourth grade we were introduced to the Accelerated Reader program.  Basically you’d read a book, take a test on it, and be awarded points based on the reading level of the book and how many questions you got right.  My friends and I held annual competitions to see who could get the most points, which opened up the world of literary classics.  In addition to Mark Twain and Scott O’Dell and Louisa May Alcott, we tackled Doestoevsky and Tolstoy, Victor Hugo and Gabriella Garcia Marquez.

    I didn’t have any friends who lived close by, so my free time was spent with books.  I was fortunate in that I lived a mile’s bike ride from a library (well, three miles if I took the approved non-side-of-the-highway route but that didn’t happen very often; sorry, Mom), and I read probably its entire young adult and sci-fi/fantasy sections. 

    By sixth grade I was still reading age-appropriate books (Babysitters’ Club, Christopher Pike, Anne McCaffrey), but I’d also added in age-nonappropriate books (Stephen King, Jean Auel) and nonfiction.  I was horribly disappointed that for my twelfth birthday party no one wanted to go with me to see Schindler’s List and compare it to its book. 

    My grandmothers were both readers as well, and around this time my maternal grandmother gave me novels in The Cat Who series, as well as a dozen Michener books, and a romance series based on Bible characters.  All promptly devoured.

    In high school I continued with the classics, preferring books with themes and issues and well-developed characters to fluff books.  Although I still read the fluff.  An art teacher saw me with a Wheel of Time book in class and gave me a list of other fantasy authors, including Dennis L. McKiernan, and I promptly read all those as well.  College, filled with lit classes analyzing Chekhov and Baudelaire and Swift and Conrad, pushed me back towards literary stories, as did my role as a high school English teacher, and that’s where I remain today.

    I have hundreds of books I want to read at any given moment, but that doesn’t keep me from rereading what I read as a child.  A lot of the classics have deep themes that I didn’t pick up on when I was ten (Dracula, for instance, or even some of Brian Jacques’ Redwall novels), or layers that are revealed with each subsequent read.

    But I’m careful with what I choose to revisit.  A few years ago I picked up a new novel by Dennis L. McKiernan and had to put it down after just a chapter; his elaborate purple prose, written as far as I can tell just to impress his readers, was something I couldn’t take.  I’m afraid to reread The Belgariad; I know it’ll be unpalatable based on what I’ve read since I initially read it in ninth grade.

    Just this past week I’ve reread LM Montgomery’s Emily books.  A friend and I read all the Anne of Green Gables books, probably in about fourth or fifth grade, and so for my eleventh birthday (I think) she gave me Emily of New Moon.  I think I appreciated it more this time, was able to relate to it more at least now that I’m going through the process of getting published.  The books are still as lovely as they were before, not dated in the least.  I still prefer Emily to Anne. And I would’ve married Dean Priest over Teddy Kent any day.

    What about you?  What books from your childhood have you reread decades later?  Did you love them or hate them?  Anne or Emily?  Dean or Teddy?

    Almost done?

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    Last night I finished the third round of edits to my novel.  I’ve been working on editing The Lone Wolf for just about a year now, and with all the wonderful feedback I’ve gotten from my beta readers and critiquers, I’m feeling cautiously optimistic that it just needs one more polish and then I’ll send out a query to agents.  And I’ve found one writing buddy in particular who’s awesome at digging deeper into various parts, at giving me honest feedback when I bounce ideas off her.  Even though it means more rewriting.  Which makes me think of the Metallica song, “No Leaf Clover:”

    Then it comes to be that the soothing light
    At the end of your tunnel
    It’s just a freight train comin’ your way

    So, am I really that close to being done, or will I need a lot more polishing?  At the end of the month I’m putting the whole thing aside to focus on NaNoWriMo and the novel I tried to write last year, A Handful of Wishes.  At least, that’s the plan right now.  But who really knows?

    Six Sentence Sunday – 10/16/11

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    Another bit with Kasey and Andrew, from towards the end of The Lone Wolf.

    I stared at him, growing annoyed. There were a million things I wanted to tell him, but he was the one who needed to go first tonight, not me. He was the fickle one, not me.

    I hated him right now, hated him for everything he’d put me through, for rejecting me, for leading me on and using me, for taking advantage of what I’d offered him without a thought towards how I felt. But at the same time I loved him more than I could possibly express, knew I was his no matter what he did or said, knew that he only had to say the word and I’d do anything he asked of me.

    “Damn you, Andrew.”

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