rebelthroughreading-blog

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Wade prefers his life as Parzival, an avatar in a virtual reality called the OASIS, where he can escape reality and compete for money in the millions and the entire internet world.

Quick Information

price: $8.79

number of pages: 400

ISBN: 978-0307887443

publisher and date: Broadway Books; 32089th edition 2012

author’s website: http://www.ernestcline.com/

genre: juvenile fiction

main subjects: regression (civilization), virtual reality, utopia, puzzles, fantasy

Plot

Wade, or Parzival as he would prefer, would rather live in the OASIS instead of reality. The OASIS, a virtual reality that completely transports people into the world of the game, is the one place where everyone can be who they are not with an avatar that they can customize, clothe, and level-up to be the best battler. Obsessed with the creator of the game, James Halliday, Wade knows plenty of 1980s references including pop culture, movies, and games. After Halliday died, the creator left a final quest for the OASIS players. Whoever can find three hidden keys inherit all of the OASIS and Halliday’s money, which is far more money than anyone else in the world, or the worlds, have. One afternoon, Wade as Parzival finds the first key, where he also meets Art3mis, with whom he immediately falls in love. Suddenly with a purpose in his life, he and Art3mis team up, with the occasional help of Wade’s best friend Aech, and they work to reach the three keys before the Sixers, employees of IOI, an internet service provider that wants to get the keys so that they could sell away the OASIS for profitable gain.

Who’s reading it?

Written on a 9th grade level, those interested are likely to be in 9-12th grade; however, because of the many ‘80s references, the appeal is much wider, expanding to college students and those who were children of the ‘80s.

Why did I read it?

My mother happened to be listening to the book when she, my brother, and I were in the car. We were all so fascinated that she saved the continuation of listening until we took a road trip to see family which was going to end up being about eight hours in a car. For the left over time, she continued to save it until we were in the car together. Though I did not choose to read it on my own, I am glad that my mother thought that it had sounded pretty neat. With all of the ‘80s references, I did not understand everything as I was a child of the 2000s, but I learned much about my mother’s past and childhood. This is a great book for people who want to learn more about their parents or loved ones or if they want to take a trip down memory lane.

Evaluation

One of the most fun books that I have read in a while, Ready Player One took me back to a time before I even existed. As someone who was not born until the late 1990s, many of the references probably went over my head, impact anti-climactic; however, I was blessed with parents who were children of the time and also present as I listened to the book. Instead of pages of references I did not necessarily understand, though I am relatively cultured due to my parents and knew more than I thought that I would, I had the advantage of listening to the book with my ‘80s mother who graciously explained many things or relayed her own experiences with movies, games, and other pop culture. I fear that the impact may not have been as heavy on someone else who were not familiar with the topic at hand and did not have someone to fill them in on the gaps. However, the beauty of books is that they are not meant for everyone. Someone in middle school may enjoy the overall story of beating the bad guys and winning for good, but they may not understand those other but very prominent parts. This book is geared to a specific audience.

The actual story is also an involving adventure. Wade begins because he loves Halliday and not because he wants all of the money. He continues the quest, yes, to win, but also because this is what he loves. These tests are what he is good at. Very few others compare when it comes to tests of his extensive knowledge of everything that Halliday loved. We want Wade to win, find justice, and most especially beat the evil corporation that threatens to ruin the OASIS, which has proven to be one of the best things to have ever happened in this alternate world. Perhaps not the most literary of novels, sometimes readers needs something fun instead of highly intellectual.

The Issues

sexual content

explicit language

drug abuse

violence / murder of minors

LGBTQ

As with all teen books nowadays, the language is rather explicit and a lot. Much of it would be considered boy humor with inappropriate language combined with potty humor. God’s name is used in vain on multiple occasions. The f-word is used rather frequently by many characters. On one occasion, we have an obscene gesture including middle fingers.

The real world is a disturbing and awful place to live. Everyone wants to escape into the OASIS because people are murdered, shot, looted, raped, and every other horrible act. The real world has fallen, because everyone lives inside the virtual reality. For Wade, this is no exception. Wade lives with his aunt and her boyfriend due to the loss of both of his parents, his father shot while attempting to rob a store and his mother died of a drug overdose. His aunt is addicted to drugs, and her boyfriend abuses her. Her boyfriend also tries to abuse wade. Before his mother died, she worked with an online brothel. Wade and online best friend Aech joke about jerking off. Wade buys a virtual doll to use while attending an online brothel, but because it was not good enough, masturbates on his own in reality. 

Inside the OASIS, violence does not cease. Players level up their avatars by killing and fighting other avatars and looting their stuff. The Sixers attempt to kill off Parzival, Art3mis, their friends, and the real people who own the characters as well. These adults who run a company attempt to murder teenagers for money. 

Wade’s online best friend, a male avatar named Aech, ends up being a female homosexual in real life. She was kicked out of her home at 18 when she came out to her parents.

So why should we read it?

For some, we read the book for the fun adventure and the great references to old classics, both the good and the bad. We remember what once was and relive our old memories while creating new ones in the books. For others, we talk about serious cyber issues in the world. Is the internet taking over the world? In forty years, will we all live in virtual realities and never have to leave our houses again? We discuss these things, because they are close to home, literally. Perhaps we are not so close to the creation of the OASIS, but we do have a technology driven world, and it is worth looking at when considering how our world is going now.

How can we use it?

Many people want to escape their real lives for whatever reason. Some feel as though they are not good enough, too weak, too big, whatever. They want to be someone else who can be good enough. Perfect looks, perfect stats, lots of money. Everything. They want it all, and that may not be an option in their real lives. Reading something like this can give them that relief, even if only momentarily. It also can show them how important the real world is. Remembering back on my own childhood, I often escaped into books, because I did not love the way that my real life was going. I know that I was not the only one. Then, with those discussions from before, this is a great place to think about them. Big corporations who care only for money and not about lives do exist and will act out if allowed. What will everyone do to stop them?

Booktalk Ideas

Wade realizes that he is overweight, so one day he just decides to start working out and lose weight, and he does it. It takes him longer than a day, but he works and works until he is a better size at least for himself. What does that say about his character if he can decide to do that kind of work for his real body instead of paying the most attention to his avatar body, which is already supposedly the better one. Would more people let themselves become unhealthy, not just in weight, because they are focused on their avatars as opposed to their real selves?

Wade allows himself to get caught and thrown into servitude of the IOI with the intention of infiltrating the system. This plan takes a long time, and no one else really knows what he was doing, and he may not have been able to pull off his plan. Why did he decide to go through this long, drawn out, and highly risky plan when he could have found another way? What was the purpose of this plan over others?

What else can I read?

The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Armada by Ernest Clint

The Martian by Andy Weir

Awards and Lists

2011 Booklist -- Starred Review (*)

2012 Alex Award -- Adult/For Young Adults (Winner)

2012 Georgia Peach Book Award for Teen Readers -- Young Adult (Nominee)

2012 Locus Award -- First Novel (Nominee)

2013 Eliot Rosewater Indiana High School Book Award -- Grades 9-12 (Nominee)

2014 Evergreen Young Adult Book Award -- Young Adult (Nominee)

2014 Young Reader's Choice Award -- Senior/Grades 10-12 (Nominee)

2015 Green Mountain Book Award -- Grades 9-12 (Nominee)

2015 Nevada Young Readers' Award -- Young Adult (Nominee)

2016 Nutmeg Book Award -- High School (Nominee)

Professional Reviews

Donna Seaman (2011), Booklist - http://go.galegroup.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ps/i.do?&id=GALE|A257511761&v=2.1&u=csusj&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w

Publishers Weekly (2011) - http://go.galegroup.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ps/i.do?&id=GALE|A255087540&v=2.1&u=csusj&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin

Riley Cavanaugh is the secretly gender-fluid kid of a congressman, suffers from bullying and anxiety, but is also quickly becoming a blogging sensation.

Quick Information

price: $12.59

number of pages: 352

ISBN: 9780062382863

publisher and date: Balzer + Bray 2016

author’s website: https://jeffgarvinbooks.com/

genre: juvenile fiction

main subjects: identity, gender identity, sex role, bullying, blogs, high schools, social issues, adolescence

Plot

Riley Cavanaugh is figuring out how to survive in this world by figuring out who the person inside really is. Having recently discovering that they are gender-fluid, Riley has to determine how best to fit in when everyone critically judges based on appearances. Suffering from anxiety, starting at a new school, and having a congressman for a father, the pressure is starting to get to Riley, so their therapist suggests starting a blog to anonymously talk about being gender-fluid. Suddenly, on the internet, Riley, or Alex, is a sensation, gaining followers and moving people more than anyone could ever dream. But someone knows who Alex really is, and the threats are possibly becoming real.

Who’s reading it?

Written on a 9-12 grade level, the same ages are more likely to be interested. 

Why did I read it?

Though the LGBTQ+ community has been in books for quite some time, recently, more books have started to include those who fall under the + in that title. Being one of the fewer books that I have seen with a gender-fluid main character, or one at all, the book posed an interesting perspective for someone relatively new to the community, still learning who they are, and learning to become ready at the same rate as those not in the community. With promises to see the real-life struggles of people like Riley, the book shows the good, bad, and the ugly of what it is like to be seemingly vastly different than everyone else around.

Evaluation

A new perspective, Symptoms of Being Human shows the flaws in a binary society that, though on paper saying it is accepting of all, in reality still judges and sentences for anything outside of the accepted norm. The title reads like human is a disease or illness because of the use of ‘symptom’. Yet, the novel is hopeful in the end, because Riley is able to find a hope, a reason, a cause. With the pressure of being a teenager, being in high school, being gender-fluid, having anxiety, having a crush, having to live up to parents’ standards, living in the shadow of a parent, and so much more, Riley, like many teens, has a hard time fighting the cruelty of life and other people, and finds that all great things come with sacrifices and inconveniences too.

Riley only about a year prior to the opening of the book figured out what they are. Since then, they have slowly been working out a way to tell their parents, who though open to possibilities, namely homosexual, are not as aware of the gender spectrum as Riley who has done plenty of research and read through many blogs where people discuss themselves, their issues, their lives, and everything going on that has shaped them into their own, unique individuals. With a congressman as a father and a mother with her own anxiety, Riley does not know what to say or when would be the right time, especially with Congressman Cavanaugh’s reelection campaign currently happening. Between being worried about whether or not their father would approve and whether or not he would even understand, Riley keeps pushing it away in hopes that the perfect moment will pop out later, and somehow everything else will just fall in line. 

Bullying is nothing new for Riley either. At a previous school, Riley was bullied, because they wore their gym clothes under their normal clothes since changing in front of other people bothered them. It did not feel right to some days feel like one gender and have to show being a different sex, so Riley avoided it entirely by not changing. Kids bullied them for that, and then the last day of the school year, a group of kids cornered Riley in the locker room and pulled down all clothes to show genitals to everyone in the room. Ever since then, Riley has had a hard time letting anyone get close enough to them to do that. However, at the new school, Riley is still bullied for wearing androgynous clothing that makes it difficult for people to figure out which of the two acceptable genders they are. Yet, despite the bullies, Riley finds two new friends, one that becomes a kind of guard and the other that becomes an anchor, finds a huge community through their blog, and finds that the hole inside of them is slowly being filled with a cause they never knew was meant for them.

The Issues

language

bullying / stalking / threats

LGBTQ

politics

violence

Every issue that comes with being drastically different at a school is present in this novel. The main character has no definite gender. Instead, they are a gender-fluid sometimes girl sometimes boy who cannot always determine where they lie on the spectrum. The spectrum is how Riley describes gender. They say that instead of genders being one or the other, its a spectrum, and all people fall on different parts of it, occasionally fluctuating on it, and some people have more drastic fluctuations. Not everyone agrees with definition, nor do they agree with how Riley decides to act or dress, so they act out on that.

The bullying, stalking, and threats are pretty severe. Riley speaks of a time when they were previously attacked where other students pulled down Riley’s pants to show their genitals to everyone. Readers read through Riley’s assault through their first person perspective, being attacked themselves. Readers read every hate message that creates fear and anxiety that hurts someone worse than a physical pain that can and will heal. Mental pain does not always heal. Someone breaks into Riley’s locker and covers the whole thing in ketchup, ruining anything that took the damage. Riley does not always make the best decisions and sometimes lets their overwhelmed emotions decide their actions (re-breaking another student’s arm). Their ill-thought out opinions often lead to drastic and violent reactions of others who lash out on Riley, who they see as an easy target. These other students constantly berate Riley by calling them things such as “fag” or “dyke” in the most derogatory of manners. 

Riley’s father is a congressman currently going through a reelection process. Being gender-fluid and essentially being part of a scandal as someone outs Riley through the media as part of bullying and then Riley’s attack potentially affect the campaign in a negative manner, both showing the negatives to politics and the LGBTQ community. On a lower end, the similarity to Congressman Cavanaugh of the novel and Associate Justice Kavanaugh potentially cause uproar with those reading today (2018).

So why should we read it?

With the growing LGBTQ community and the constant fight in every teenager’s life to survive to the next day, books are continuing to surface to describe what is happening to and around young adults. Someone is being bullied, someone is learning who he or she or possibly they are, someone has a big shadow from a parent, and someone is figuring out how everything goes together to fit into a life that can and will be better after the crisis of being a young adult. Until that point, though, there will still be bullying, violence, abuse, threats, and moments of serious hurt. There will be terrible things that happen to people, maybe not to everyone, but to many, and everyone deserves to understand them, even if only through literature. The best part of literature is reading a story that can give you something meaningful, whatever that may be to you as a reader.

How can we use it?

A novel like this that is packed with so many controversial things can do a lot in terms of giving meaningful insight depending on the reader. Because it includes the LGBTQ community, readers who are also part of that community can find something to which they relate. Readers who are not part of that community may learn more about it, and maybe even start to understand it. Readers who are not part of the community may start to see how they might be after all. Readers may learn something about someone else that they know, about themselves, or just in general. Someone may not be gender-fluid, but he or she may be bullied and can see his or herself in Riley as she fights back against their attackers. Maybe he or she will be cautioned from irrational actions like Riley knowing the consequences that they had to pay, because of the lack of thought.

There are endless possibilities for what readers can get from the book, but they have to read it in order to get anything at all. 

Booktalk Ideas

Riley is afraid to tell people that they are gender-fluid despite knowing that this is who they are. Why would they be afraid to accept who they are in front of other people? When their therapist suggests talking to their parents, Riley says that they are not ready. What does that mean? Are they not ready to be outed, for their parents to know, to admit who they are, or something else?

Riley has a crush on Beck, a girl. Riley describes a previous crush on a boy. As a gender-fluid person who has now had crushes on both boys and girls, how can you describe their sexuality? Is it important to understand their sexuality to understand Riley or does it not matter? Would looking at gender as a spectrum rather than one or the other prevent someone from having a specific gender preference?

What else can I read?

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz 

Her Name In the Sky by Kelly Quindlen 

Luna by Julie Anne Peters

Awards and Lists

Lambda Literary Award Finalist

2018 Missouri Gateway Readers Award Nominee

American Library Association Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection

Rainbow List Selection

American Library Association Top 10 QuickPicks for Reluctant Young Readers

Goodreads Choice Awards Semi-Finalist

Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choices Pick

A Bank Street College Best Book of the Year

Chicago Public Library Best Teen Fiction

Professional Reviews

Sarah Sawyers-Lovett (2016), Lambda Literary Review - https://search-proquest-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/docview/1770531509?accountid=10361&rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo

Ingrid Abrams (2015), Library Journals - http://bi.galegroup.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/essentials/article/GALE%7CA436437490/269b113a1e2a6dd1e104f4b620cbad8e?u=csusj

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Miles, “Pudge”, is looking for the great perhaps, and on the way, he found The Colonel, Alaska, and a private school full of vices and pranks that lead to something far more extraordinary than he could ever have known.

Quick Information

price: $7.49

number of pages: 221

ISBN: 978-0142402511

publisher and date: Speak; Reprint edition 2006

author’s website: http://www.johngreenbooks.com

genre: juvenile fiction

main subjects: interpersonal relations, boarding school, death

Plot

Miles is looking for the great unknown, something that makes his life important and worthwhile. In his search, he convinces his parents to send him to a boarding school for the rest of high school with the help that his father too went to the same place. When he gets there, he meets The Colonel and Alaska, pranksters who love to drink and smoke just as much as they appreciate their main hobbies. The now nicknamed Pudge, the opposite of Mile’s skinny body, revels in the last words of dead people, new friends, and a new school where he finally feels at home. And then something terrible happens that completely destroys the new happiness and confidence that he has attained.

Who’s reading it?

Written on a 9th grade level, the content is aimed towards 9th-12th grade as well as college students.

Why did I read it?

Though I had not heard too much about it previously, it was recommended by two different people around the same time: my mother the librarian and a student of library science. Both suggestions came within weeks of each other, and therefore I decided that I needed to see what this book was. Doing quick research, which included asking around to see who had read it and if they could tell me briefly what it was about, I decided that this was absolutely the kind of book I needed to read.

Evaluation

With everything that could make a book controversial inside the chapters at some point or the other, the book describes how a lost young adult can find a home, if unconventional, and figure out a real place to be. Miles, or Pudge, did not have friends back in his hometown. He got along with her parents, but they were not especially close. For his going away party, only two students came, and both were more of acquaintances than friends. When he switched to the new private school, though he did not have an abundance of friends, he had several incredibly good ones. He started to see the value in living despite spending much of his time smoking and drinking, which he only begins once he goes to the school.

The way of living that readers see in the book is not the ideal living situation. People do not usually aspire to be high school drunks who smoke and get in trouble and skirt by because of the large amounts of effort that they use in order to get away with all of the trouble that they cause. Though this is a relatively common lifestyle, it is not what parents would want for their children nor is it what anyone would want for anyone that they know and want to succeed in life. However, despite that, the novel presents the lifestyle as good and desirable. Miles is not happy until he joins The Colonel and Alaska in their derelict ways. They get “shitfaced” for the fun of it, smoke not because they need to but because they want to, and deliver pranks that are only worthy of their names. Green does not say that this life is the ultimate life to which people should aim, but he instead he says that you can still find that happiness and importance - the great perhaps - anywhere, including that kind of life. Miles could not have learned what he did had he not met The Colonel and Alaska. He could not have begun to see the world a different way than that which existed at his parent’s house with the public school and the lack of friends. He could not have begun to see how different people were and their many intricacies without all but studying the strange and multi-layered Alaska. Green shows readers that you can find the positive part of anything if you look close enough.

The Issues

Drinking

Smoking

Sexual content

Explicit language

Death / possible suicide

Oral and anal sex, excessive amounts of alcohol consumption, explicit language, and potential suicide are the biggest red flags. The constant issues never seem to end. From the second that Miles arrives at the school, he meets The Colonel who introduces him to Alaska, smoking, and drinking, all of which are arguably bad for Miles. They never stop smoking and drinking throughout the entire book. There are scenes where they have to hide how drunk they are or the smoke from their cigarettes. None of these things are allowed, but they continue to do them. Their language is vulgar and explicit constantly.

When they speak of hobbies, Alaska’s is supposedly having sex. She loves it, and they talk about it all of the time. Two students were recently kicked out of the school, because they were caught naked and together in bed, presumably because of the act of sex. Though the book does not ever have an explicit sex scene, there are several other sexual scenes with making out and oral sex. The narrator skips over the specifics of the oral sex, but it is unmistakably there.

Alaska, as a main character, dies. She crashes late at night when she is drunk and upset. We are never told whether or not she committed suicide or it was an accident, but she does in fact die. Miles, The Colonel, Lara, and Takumi all discuss her motives and attempt to the solve the mystery. Yet, in the end, they never know what really happened, and it is likely that they never will.

So why should we read it?

That happiness that we discussed before is the reason to read a book like this. The lifestyle and choices may not be ones with which readers may agree, but hopefully the merit behind it all is apparent enough to bypass those. Understanding the way of living, seeing what makes them happy and keeps them going, provides a more well-rounded view of the world that previously readers may not have had. Not to mention that these things- the drinking, smoking, sex - are all more common than we want to believe. They are everywhere whether or not we accept it. 

How can we use it?

Other than broadening perceptions or understanding how others may be, this is a great medium for coping. The book is set up as time before and after Alaska’s death which makes her the center of his world. He recalls everything as leading up to her death or anything that came after it. It is similar to the way that choirs speak of their notes that they sing. Each note has one of three titles and jobs: leading to the it note, the it note, and falling away from the it note. This is how songs are created; in every phrase there is one it note. However, unlike this, instead of many phrases, Miles only has one. He has notes leading up to the it note of her death and then only notes leading away. That is why he includes the end which states that this was how he was going to cope. He was going to recall everything and learn how to keep living. He has to learn that Alaska was not his only it note, and readers also need this as well. They need to feel the suffering, the sadness, and the ability to survive despite everything that attempts to stop them. Young adults especially need the help to sort through their complicated emotions and conflicts within them. 

Booktalk Ideas

Miles is obsessed with last words. He is more interested in biographies and the last words of people instead of their contributions to the world. He is upset for never getting to know Alaska’s last words. What do last words signify to him? What about them is so important that he feels compelled to know them? He claims that they help him know and understand a person. He also says that in never knowing Alaska’s last words, he will never truly know Alaska. Is this true? Are last words a metaphor for a person’s entire life?

Alaska has spent her life trying to answer the question of how to get out of the labyrinth. Knowing that she means that the labyrinth is that of suffering, what exactly was the significance to her? Considering her lifestyle and her past with her mother, are those enough to make her feel as though she is stuck in the labyrinth of suffering? Was there more that added to her labyrinth? Is it enough to commit suicide if she did do that?

What else can I read?

The Art of Feeling by Laura Tims

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Awards and Lists

Winner, 2006 Michael L. Printz Award

Finalist, 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize

2006 Top 10 Best Book for Young Adults

2006 Teens’ Top 10 Award

2006 Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers

A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age

A Booklist Editor’s Choice Pick

Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection

Borders Original Voices Selection

Professional Reviews

Ken Donelson, James Blasingame Jr, and Alleen Pace Nilsen (2006), The English Journal - https://www-jstor-org.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/stable/30046671?sid=primo&origin=crossref&seq=4#metadata_info_tab_contents

Johanna Lewis (2005), School Library Journal - https://search-proquest-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/docview/2001769008?accountid=10361&rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

Vigilante V will not stand for the injustice of London’s fascist government and will stop at nothing to make his point.

Quick Information

price: $9.22

number of pages: 296

ISBN: 978-1401208417

publisher and date: Vertigo; New edition 2008

author’s website: None

genre: graphic novel, fiction 

main subjects: Totalitarianism,  Resistance to Government, comics, graphic novels, Great Britain, vigilantes, politics, dystopias 

Plot

In London, a fascist government reigns where exact weather reports and events are spoken to the people every day, and they are no longer allowed to think for themselves. However, someone is unhappy with the way the world is run. V, a vigilante who uses terrorist-like tactics, commits crimes against the government to make a point with a young accomplice, Evey, who is only sixteen. 

Who’s reading it?

Due to the nature of graphic novels, the writing is on a level close to 9th grade; however, the book is considered adult fiction, and thus would most likely appeal to older teenagers through adult ages.

Why did I read it?

I neglected to read the book until my graphic novels class while working on my undergrad. For the longest time, I thought that it was one of those anti-government movies made from an anti-government book that was just going to make me doubt everything that I thought I already knew. In a way, I was right, but the book was more than that. When we discussed the book in class, my professor chose it because of its many great qualities, both for being a graphic novel and also having great literary merit. With an eloquent protagonist who was also a villain, the book warned London against a possible future and in turn, also warned the rest of the world of what could come and who could fight back. 

Evaluation

One of the most thought provoking graphic novels, and really stories, that I read as a young adult, V for Vendetta created a protagonist who was not necessarily a good guy. With a fascist government, a terrorist against the government, and citizens with the likability of cockroaches, readers have little choices as to who to choose when picking sides. Whereas no one wants the government to continue as it is, no one can necessarily get behind a person who kills innocents as well as guilty individuals and tortures children. How are readers supposed to feel when their options are one evil and another? That is the beauty of the graphic novel. In reality, only on rare occasion are sides black and white. So often, there are problems with both sides, negative aspects, evils. In the real world, no script makes the world exactly perfect. In the real world, people have to consider every part of a situation before making an informed decision. There is no easy choosing between a terrible government and a terrorist.

V, who now works for his own twisted justice, feels no qualms in destroying entire buildings, large amounts of the city, and killing many. If someone is in some way impeding, he kills without hesitation. He keeps to himself except for Evey. Evey is a sixteen-year-old girl who has no money or purpose until she meets V. She sees him as not just a murderer or a terrorist but someone who cares about his city and justice. Justice is a reoccurring theme. Everything is about some sense of justice that may be a bit skewed depending on the person speaking. For Evey, she wants to see that justice, but she does not agree with murder. In fact, she insists on helping but does not wish for him to murder. However, he does, because this is what he does.

Evey goes through a particularly traumatic time when V abandons her in the street to survive on her own, which she does not know how to do, and once she finds someone to take her in and love her, which is all that she really ever wanted from V, he is taken away. Then, when she is at her wits end, considering murdering those who took away her only love left, she is taken away to a terrible place where someone shaves off all of her hair, puts her in ratty and nasty clothes, and keeps her locked away in a cell where the only comfort she has is a rat and a note from someone who too was locked there once before.

But then it is not real. It was all a sham. It was all V doing this by himself. He put her through Hell to rebuild her into someone better; someone more capable. He subjects her to this and then expects her to be a new person, okay with his own actions. She is right, and she and the readers cannot help but somewhat be on the side of this terrorist who tortures children as well.

The Issues

Anti-government

terrorism

protagonist vs. antagonist

sexual content

torture

murder / death / violent

inappropriate for young adults

The title of the book is V for Vendetta. He goes by V, which is one short for his actual name - Victor- but two, standing for Vendetta. He has a vendetta against the government which he so passionately despises. They wronged him, tortured him, and made his life the worst kind of life it could possibly be. He was kept in an internment camp, locked away as a freak they could test, and now he is taking out his vengeance in the most violent of ways. His acts against the peace are dramatic, and in his mind, poetic as they are as drastic and brutal as the government itself. The government can do nothing but make life worse - willing its people to become mindless pawns and controlling their every action. Especially for London, the government is portrayed as definitely going to become this terrible thing that creates its own doom. The book acts as a warning of governments in reality and how they could get eventually.

V is the ultimate protagonist. Though the story follows several different characters, he is the closest to a main character. Yet, despite being the protagonist of the book, he antagonizes the city. He is not necessarily a good guy despite being the “good” role. The government is the antagonist, but is not necessarily “bad” either. They do not fill the roles as neatly at all. There is a question as to which is the protagonist and which the antagonist. Perhaps the readers see it differently, and everything is switched. Whatever the case, they are not cookie cutter characters or organizations.

V takes in Evey who starts off trying to seduce some men into sleeping with her for money. She is not usually a prostitute. In fact, this is the first time starting, but it was not her intention to stop if she was paid well. As the story continues, V and Evey plot to take down a priest who has been raping young girls. V murders him. V murders many, especially those who are “bad” and oppressing others. This goes back to his roots when he was held in a camp and tested on. 

The book is classified as an adult graphic novel. It has plenty within it that is inappropriate for younger readers and may be disturbing. 

So why should we read it?

There are a plethora of reasons people, especially parents and caregivers, would want this book away from their young adults. The pages contain scenes that children should not read; however, when are you a child in the sense of a book? Though this book would be inappropriate for children in middle school and younger, high school ages are learning more about the world and discussing important things like government, past events, and more. While reading about the Holocaust and World Wars, this book becomes relevant to these younger ages.

How can we use it?

Hand this book to young adults who are beginning to form their own opinions about the presidency, politics, and those sensitive government and life-issues that are occurring around him or her. This book will make them start reconsidering their parent’s opinions and looking at the facts to form their own. They can see the situation and determine what is the most important part and what they can overlook. Considering the protagonist vs. antagonist may give them a better sense of what the world really looks like. It may even help them to understand people that they know and themselves. 

Booktalk Ideas

V wears a mask at all times. The mask is of Guy Fawkes. Who is he and why would V want to don his face while enacting his justice? Is there a true significance or is it just a mask?

Evey goes through a journey that leads to her ultimate transformation. It appears to have worked due to her ending involvement to keep V alive. What is the transformation exactly and was the means to it necessary? Did V have to do what he did in order to transform her so completely? Does this make him reprehensible or should he be forgiven as Evey says. 

What else can I read?

Watchmen by Alan Moore

Remember, Remember by J. Sharpe

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Awards and Lists

Prometheus Hall of Fame Award

Nominated Best Novel for Prometheus Awards

Nominated Best Script in 2007 for Nebula Awards

Professional Reviews

Jennifer Feigelman (2006), School Library Journal - https://search-proquest-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/docview/211820250?accountid=10361&rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

Chinese Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher

After the suicide of his brother, Dillon finds it hard to cope with the truth of his brother’s pain and what cause he may have had in it.

Quick Information

price: $7.48

number of pages: 304

ISBN: 978-0060598396

publisher and date: Books; Reprint edition 2004

author’s website: http://www.chriscrutcher.com/

genre: juvenile fiction

main subjects: child abuse, suicide

Plot

Dillon is a fantastic athlete but refuses to join in his high school’s sports teams. He is still coping from the loss of his brother who committed suicide in front of him. Dillon cannot help but feel as though he had contributed somewhat to his brother’s pain. At the same time, Jennifer too is an amazing athlete who is competing. Sports bury the pain inside her as she tries to hide what her stepfather does to her at night. Together, Dillon and Jennifer try to face their demons and protect one another.

Who’s reading it?

Written on a ninth grade level, young adults high school aged and older are more likely to appreciate the content. 

Why did I read it?

Chris Crutcher is known for his deeply personal and critical works. After reading Whale Talk I was excited to find more of his books in which to indulge. For myself, I have never been interested in sports, but Crutcher’s use of sports as an aide to the rest of the story, which also has real meaning to it. The discussions within the books always cross into controversial territory as they pertain issues that are sensitive and could trigger readers. Yet, I do not see it that way. The book was a discussion of the real issues its readers are dealing with and how they might be able to find the help that they need.

Evaluation

Filled with several different stories, Chinese Handcuffs describes the struggles and difficulties of Dillon, Jennifer, Stacy, and Preston. Dillon and Jennifer are both athletes who push themselves to be attain their own physical goals.

Dillon wants to win the Ironman triathlon, something for which he has been training intensely. He knows that he is one of the best, and therefore he will settle with nothing less.

Jennifer is getting ready to compete against the best athlete, and she wants to win to show that she is still number one. When speaking to her sister about it, she describes how the other player is better than her but she is tougher, therefore, Jennifer will still win. She has to win, because otherwise she always loses. After escaping one man who abused and raped her, she has fallen into another trap that she cannot escape. With no one to save her now, she is slowly losing her own sense of purpose and importance, so she has to win. 

Preston is dead. He committed suicide after having a motorcycle accident where he lost both of his legs, and he no longer can have the life that he wanted. The drug use, motorcycle gang, and the crippled body were enough to make him reconsider his purpose. He tells Dillon right before he kills himself that in a way it is also Dillon’s fault for showing Preston everything that Preston could never be. Preston could see no reason to live if all he could ever be was the crippled, smaller, weaker brother who no one really liked anyway.

Stacy gave birth to Preston’s child and struggles with understanding not only how to continue living when her boyfriend is dead but also when the father of her child is gone. When she sees Ryan, she sees Preston, and that makes her angry, sad, and happy all at the same time. She also is struggling with the emotional roller coaster that is juggling feelings for someone who is dead and his younger brother.

When the stories converge, the dynamic is heart wrenching and complicated. Dillon wants desperately to learn how to love, but he has no real knowledge of what that is, especially having only seen his parents, who are no longer together, and his brother, who is dead. He searches for this in both Jennifer and Stacy, but neither can give him the love for which he is looking, because of their own demons. Only in confiding in each other can any of them eventually come to terms with the horrors of the world and begin to plan how they will continue to be survivors.

The Issues

cruelty to animals

explicit language

child abuse

sexual abuse

sexual content

teen pregnancy

drug abuse

gangs

suicide

violence

death

At the very beginning, Dillon and Preston, as much younger children, torture and kill the neighbor cat, because the cat was mean to their dog. 

The language is frequent and explicit. With every curse word imaginable, the whole lot of characters, especially the boys, seem to include the explicit words in their every day vocabulary.

Many people are abused within the novel. Jennifer’s mother marries a man who abuses her and their daughter. He hits both of them and eventually rapes her daughter on many occasions. The only person she feels safe with his her grandfather who not only dies but dies when she is with him, and she tries to sit him up to safe him, but is unsuccessful. She lives with the self knowledge that if she had only tried harder, she could have saved him. When Jennifer tells her mom, her mother gets both of them help, and then kicks out her husband. She then continues to bring home guy after guy who abuse her until finally she brings home who would soon be Jennifer’s stepfather. He gained Jennifer’s trust and then raped her as well, threatening to hurt everyone she loved if she told. She has been raped over and over since then. She told her mother once and she and the stepfather essentially convinced CPS that she was lying.

Dillon is kind of in love with two different girls, though he does not understand love and begins to lust after both of them. He imagines being physically close to them, and has intimate conversations with them. He is not explicitly dating either of the girls, but he does not keep his romantic gestures to one or the other.

Stacy became pregnant as a teen and decided to keep the baby. She and her parents pretend that her parents are adopting a baby from members of their family who could not keep it, but Stacy admits to the baby being her own. 

Preston committed suicide the day after he learned that he was going to have a child. He says part of the reason for his misery is Dillon who is the opposite of him: athletic, big, tall, smart, etc. Before Preston died, he was injured in a motorcycle accident where he lost both of his legs. He was constantly under the influence of drugs and hung out with a motorcycle gang. The night before his suicide, the gang initiated a gang rape of a young girl and he participated even if he never actually raped the girl. He tells this to Dillon before he kills himself, so Dillon confronts the gang and messes up their motorcycles which causes them to go after him. 

So why should we read it?

All of these characters are suffering from different pains. All are young and dealing with a lot of issues that are too much for them to handle by themselves. The beauty of a novel is that it can show the negative parts without making an audience uncomfortable with truth. Preston commits suicide because of his pain, but Dillon and Jennifer are able to make it with each other’s help. Crutcher writes to explore the issues of inner and outer pain and the reality of coping or not. Not everyone is going to be able to survive by themselves, like Preston, but people have a chance with the help of others, Dillon and Jennifer. 

How can we use it?

This book contains many issues that young adults have to face: death of loved ones, abuse, suicide, conflicting feelings, emerging emotions, and more. Reading about how some did not make it but also can see that it is possible to get out of the dark and find safety with the right help can be great. Sometimes people need that push to see that they are not alone. People are stronger than they think, even if that means that the strength comes from healthy friends and family.  

Booktalk Ideas

Jennifer is sexually abused by her father when she is young. Once she has found her escape, she is sexually abused again. She has fallen into the same hole only this time, it is deeper and more dangerous if she tries to get out. Is it plausible that this happens in real life? Is the story good even though it just repeats itself especially when it comes to her? Does it seem to easy to have her abused and abused again? Does this have anything to with her mother who keeps finding mean men who abuse her?

What is the significance of having part of the story told through Dillon’s letters to his dead brother? His parts are not only told through these letters. Other sections of the normal prose follow Dillon. What insight do readers get from the letters instead of from the prose? Why do we only get the initiate thoughts of Dillon this way? Do Jennifer’s memories as J. Maddy serve the same purpose?

What else can I read?

Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher

Alt Ed by Catherine Atkins

We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier

Somewhere in the Darkness by Walter Dean Myers

Awards and Lists

ALA Best Book for Young Adults ALA Best of the Best Books for Young Adults 1991 South Dakota YARP Best Books List

Professional Review

Robert Unsworth (1989), School Library Journal - http://web.a.ebscohost.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=e537c58f-3344-4ac1-a58d-73113c0ed122%40sessionmgr4006

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

And Then There Were Four by Nancy Werlin

Five teenagers are invited to a run down building for “Leadership Club” when the building collapses on them, and a terrifying conspiracy starts to unfold.

Quick Information

price: $8.00

number of pages: 432

ISBN: 978-0147510266

publisher and date: Speak; Reprint edition 2018

author’s website: http://nancywerlin.com/

genre: juvenile fiction

main subjects: friendship, high school, people with disabilities, parent and child, murder

Plot

Five teenage students going to a private high school and who are mostly strangers or unacquainted are invited to attend the first meeting for Leadership Club which happens to be in an old building that no one uses anymore. After a large explosion, the building collapses, but the five manage to save one another and get help in time for everyone to be okay. However, the circumstances are odd. There was no meeting, and the teacher who supposedly sent out the invitation had her account hacked, which meant that someone wanted the five of them there, probably to kill them. Then they start to think the unthinkable when one of the five poses his theory that his mother is in on the plot to their demise.

Who’s reading it?

With the two distinct voices, the novel is written on an 8th grade level, but the complicated perspectives and content may make it appeal to high school ages and older. 

Why did I read it?

What many young adult books have that other reading levels do not always is a distinct voice. Often, books for teens have teen main characters who tell their stories as a teen would. They tell their opinions as they would if speaking out loud. Few other books have quite the strong voices like And Then There Were Four. With two different perspectives, readers get into the minds of both Saralinda and Caleb in ways readers may have never seen before. Exactly what they think as they think it is written on the pages disregarding proper English when that is disregarded in thoughts. Readers really understand their narrators, making the stories far more personal and easier to fall into. 

Evaluation

Before reading this book, I had not read anything so intensely personal in the style of narration. Nancy Werlin puts her readers into the minds of her narrators to the point of interrupting thoughts, not completing sentences, jumping topics, and everything else someone might do inside their own minds. Whereas this type of narration can be done at any time, no other book had been able to capture the same detail of someone’s inner thoughts, because of the limitations of written language. By ignoring many of the conventional rules of writing, Werlin is able to express more. Saralinda often rambles for what should be sentences but is only a single sentence. Some of her thoughts are shoved together to make long, one-sentence paragraphs. Caleb’s narration is not in first person but in second, a rare occurrence that happens little other than in Choose-Your-Own-Adventure styled writing. Every chapter told through Caleb’s eyes are directed specifically at the reader putting them in the story instead of allowing them to stay the audience. One of the most personally engaging books, And Then There Were Four gives an entirely new look at how to integrate readers into the novel. 

Due to the personal narration, the readers get not one but two extremely unreliable narrators. Both fully believe something as the truth that is entirely different from reality. Saralinda see her mother as overprotective and sometimes a bit unbearable but never sees how that same woman can want to murder her. Even when she accepts it as the truth, she never can see the connection and thinking that could have led this woman into wanting something so drastically different than what Saralinda had previously assumed about her. Caleb knew something was wrong with his father, but never knew of his truly evil intentions which included making a young boy believe that he was a monster. His father began when Caleb was only eight weaving the story of a boy with split personalities and tendencies to do violent things that happened when the other personality, Mr. Hyde as Caleb nicknames him, does. Even knowing that his father is a liar and master manipulator, he only eventually can believe that his father made those things up, but like Saralinda, has a hard time erasing his previous views and accepting the new ones. It is only through the eyes of others that he and the readers can see that.

The Issues

Murder / suicide / violence 

manipulation / abuse

conspiracy

mental illness

Five teenagers are in danger of being murdered by their parents or guardians. They are successful in killing one of the five of them. They create an elaborate plot to murder these teenagers ultimately so that one of them will die and one man can have her inheritance money. The long list of manipulation and abuse stems further out than parents to children but also from adults to other adults as well. 

Essentially, one man, a psychiatrist, manipulates angry parents into planning to kill their children so that he can get these adults to murder one specific child. He met the girl’s stepmother, wooed her until they were planned to be married, and decided to kill the girl so that the stepmother would get her money, thus giving him the money when they quickly married. With the parents murdering the other children, he had an easy out in saying that they were all suffering from mental illness that he was unable to detect due to the human failing of falling in love. This same man made his own son believe that he had a disorder of his own where he blacked out and committed violent acts such as killing squirrels and setting fires. The man did those things and blamed his child for years.

The main characters are that boy, Caleb, and Saralinda, a girl born with a club foot and a diabetic. Caleb believes what his father has told him, and cannot allow himself to become close to anyone for fear of hurting them. Saralinda, though her foot has undergone surgery and much better than it once was, still needs a cane and insulin for the diabetes. Both are young adults with serious issues, though not necessarily the same ones the readers may have believed at the beginning of the book. Those around them including Caleb’s mother who has been abused by his father and subdued with medication for years, and the mother of Antoine, the child to die, who suffers from the loss of a husband to a cruel disease and knowledge that not only that Antoine too has the disease but he could also commit suicide due to it.

Throughout the novel, four people die and another is near death before she is saved by the hospital technicians. Antoine, the teenager, is murdered when a parent tampers with the breaks on his car. Antoine’s mother is killed when drinking a poisoned smoothie that she shares with Evangeline, which also poisons her, but is slower acting enough for her to get to the hospital before it is too late. Saralinda’s mother commits suicide by jumping out of their apartment building window and hitting a car after her daughter outs her murder attempts and motives on the internet and eradicates the chance for her mother to ever be able to adopt another child who could depend on her. The last to die is Caleb’s father who has orchestrated the entire plot. He dies as Caleb lunges to strangle him, and in an attempt to save Caleb from murdering his own father, Saralinda gets there first, trips, and uses a mechanism in her cane that is some sort of blade that cuts into the man’s throat and blocks his airway. Not one other witness, which is all three of the remaining teenagers and the dean of the school, stop or blame her. Four teenagers are driven to murder because of the actions of their parents. 

So why should we read it?

Not often do parents get together and plot the deaths of their children nor do they do so because someone else is plotting a specific murder and manipulate other parents into doing his dirty work. However, the individual parts of the story that come because of the plot may be something to which young adult readers can relate. With five young adults who had something “wrong” with them and parents who have something also “wrong” with them, there is plenty to get out of reading a book full of conspiracy, complicated relationships, and learning how to survive in the worst of situations.

How can we use it?

Looking at the five teenagers that begin the novel, one has no friends on top of being diabetic and having a deformity that makes her need a cane to walk, one potentially has a psychological disorder and severe anxiety and no self confidence or esteem about himself, one has been harassed and witnessed the murder of a loved one on top of being a lesbian, one has an incurable disease that will destroy his brain cells and drastically impact his way of life until it eventually kills him, and another has lost her best friend and father and has acquired a stepparent who appears to hate her as much as she hates the parent. All start the book with what some may say something “wrong” with them. They are not happy and are in constant search of something that will make their lives better and more normal. Every young adult can find something in these main characters that relates back to his or herself and has the potential to speak something real to them. Reading is a catharsis that allows people to discuss what is happening to or around them in a safe way. They can see these people who have that “wrongness” about them and are still able to survive. Young adults need to see that the perfect, normal, and average people are not the only ones who can survive. Those at a disadvantage can survive in the worst as well. 

Booktalk Ideas

Saralinda starts the book with a crush on Antoine who she had never met before. By the end of their first encounter, she no longer has a crush on him at all. She does not dislike him, but she has no romantic thoughts about him whatsoever. What can make a person have romantic thoughts and then change their minds relatively rapidly? Considering that they go through the traumatic event of a building collapsing on them, does this have anything to do with her shift in feelings? At the same time that she lets go of her crush on Antoine, she develops feelings for Caleb, who she also barely knows. Does this say something about Saralinda’s personality at the beginning of the book?

When Caleb describes Mr. Hyde and the things that he has done in the past and is potentially capable of doing still, Antoine immediately says that he does not believe it. He does not believe that Antoine has a monster inside of him nor that he did these things. When Caleb questions this, Antoine explains that he saved the girls from the collapsed building. Antoine saw how much emotion Caleb had and how much he cared for these people he did not know, which was against Caleb’s monster thoughts. How can Antoine who had only known Caleb a relatively small amount of time know more than everyone else? How can he already see passed the skewed view of Caleb to the truth?

What else can I read?

Endgame by Nancy Garden

Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins

Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

Professional Reviews

Kate Quesly-Gainer (2017), Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books - https://muse-jhu-edu.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/article/656259

Maggie Mason Smith (2018), School Library Journal - http://bi.galegroup.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/essentials/article/GALE%7CA488688303/5349f484dc9a21fba47968218875aaef?u=csusj

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

After the death of her best friend since childhood, Lia begins to fall into the depths of a self-inflicted Hell with little hope of making it out alive.

Quick Information

price: $5.87

number of pages: 304

ISBN: 978-0142415573

publisher and date: Speak; Reprint edition 2010

author’s website: http://madwomanintheforest.com/

genre: juvenile fiction

main subjects: anorexia, death, illness

Plot

Lia Overbrook is a cutter and an anorexic, eighteen-year-old girl who is unhappy with herself and her family situation. Living with her father, stepmother, and stepsister after refusing to return to her mother’s home, she lives with a serious disgust with her body and herself, trying to be the good daughter who keeps her parents and sister happy, but the more she eats, the more she hates herself. Now, with her best friend Cassie dead, having died in a motel alone, she cannot bare the thought of how she is alive and Cassie is dead, especially because Cassie called Lia 33 times that fateful night.

Who’s reading it?

Written on a 9th grade reading level, the content is likely to interest older young adults from 10th grade and older.

Why did I read it?

I had read Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson years ago and then again recently, but I had never read any other of her books. After listening to several classmates talk about the book and also listening to the author speak, I was interested in this book that supposedly was going to do for girls with eating disorders what Speak did for girls with traumatic pasts. The last person to endorse the book was my mother, a longtime librarian who said that Wintergirls spoke to her more than Speak did which said a lot since Speak was one of her favorite young adult books. 

Evaluation

Wintergirls is by far my favorite young adult novel, or really any novel, that I have read in several years. Though I have not read like I did while I was in high school, I still remember many books that I have consumed, and none were quite like this. Though I do not have an eating disorder, I have serious food-related issues as well, which struck home. As Lia speaks to her audience, I can feel every word as though I too were thinking them, and I believe this to be the at the doing of the author’s beautiful craftsmanship as opposed to the spurious relatability on my own part. 

Lia and Cassie from an early age at serious issues with which their parents did not deal. Cassie was the first to begin, and she was bulimic. Lia kept it secret for her friend, because she too was beginning to develop her own disorder. With the two opposites, they both vowed to be the skinniest person. Lia stopped eating and Cassie continued to throw up all of her food before it could settle into her body.

After Cassie’s death, even though they were not talking and were no longer friends, Lia mourned. She saw her own ghost of Cassie who tortured, tormented, and refused to let up on any of her suffering. Lia’s imagination created a new Cassie who represented the hate that Lia felt for herself. Always thinking about Cassie, calories, and collateral damage, Lia felt like she was a danger to herself and everyone around her, and in deciding so, that became reality.

The Issues

mental disorders

graphic content

death / suicide

alcoholism

inappropriate for young readers

possible trigger

Lia is anorexic and Cassie is bulimic. Lia cuts herself because of how much she hates her body. She sewed quarters into a bathrobe so that when her stepmother weighs her, she would weigh more than she does since she continues to starve herself. She always has a goal to a smaller size. In that state, she will never be satisfied with her body no matter how small she gets.

Some of the scenes are pretty graphic. The readers watch as Lia cuts into herself where no one can see except for her. They watch as Cassie tortures Lia through the night. They envision Cassie’s death as she pukes out her life.

Cassie dies not by suicide but by being so drunk that she throws up, and since she has done this so many times, she had burned away so much of her esophagus that it finally ruptured while she was drunk and alone in a motel room where even if someone was with her, they probably could not have saved her. Yet, the readers still see this happen as Lia insists on learning the truth.

For people with eating disorders or are on the cusp of something potentially traumatic, this book describes horrors that could potentially trigger them. By reading about Lia’s difficulties and seeing that hopelessness, the readers may have a sense of hopelessness within themselves.

So why should we read it?

Despite how often parents or guardians may say that the book should be banned, because it may trigger someone with the same disorders, it is more likely to save those people. The author can attest to getting letters and personal stories about how this book or books like these saved a person from feeling that sense of hopelessness, kept a person from committing suicide, or allowed someone to share that story and no longer be holding it in as a burden that could not be shared. Wintergirls is far more likely to allow someone to see that there can be a happier ending, that you can get help, and you can change for the better instead of staying in a constant state of suffering.

How can we use it?

The book may not be appropriate for ages below fourteen or so, but for those who are older, the book is the most appropriate content that they could read. Even if the reader does not relate to the disorder, they may find something about themselves that they did not previously understand. For me, I see that my food issues are serious but are workable. I can find ways around the issues I have with my body. However, I also see problems that are in people that I know and love, and now that I see the perspective of someone with these problems, I know how they are thinking, which is drastically different than the way that I do. Everyone can benefit from seeing the other side, especially with things as serious as eating disorders and depression.

Booktalk Ideas

Lia loves her stepsister. Towards the end, she is supposed to help her sister make food but, she is too sick to do so. This is devastating. Why is it that she can no longer find love for her own father and mother but she can spare all of the love she has to give to a girl who is not her blood family? What does that say about Lia, and what does it say about her sister?

Lia sees Cassie first at night and then later during the day and everywhere that she goes. The longer Lia continues to live after Cassie’s death, the more frequently Cassie’s ghost appears. Lia speaks of Cassie’s ghost as first almost comforting but then gradually tormenting. Cassie is a constant reminder of how Lia failed her friend. Why does Lia see Cassie as does things such as attempt to sleep or buy medicine to help get rid of the food in her body? Is Cassie the embodiment of the disorder in her?

What else can I read?

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Once was Lost by Sara Zarr

By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead by Julie Ann Peters

Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

Awards and Lists

ALA Best Books for Young Adults 2010

ALA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers 2010

Amelia Bloomer List 2010

Indies Choice Honor Award 2010

Young Adult; Bulletin Blue Ribbons 2009, Fiction

Booklist The Best of Editors’ Choice 2009

Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book of 2009

Professional Reviews

Laura Walsh (2009), Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy - https://search-proquest-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/docview/216922012?accountid=10361&rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo

Deborah Stevenson (2009), Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books - https://muse-jhu-edu.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/article/260102

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan

High school teachers can be too demanding, especially Mr. Griffin. Fed up with him, a group of kids plan a kidnapping prank, but everything goes wrong when Mr. Griffin winds up dead.

Quick Information

price: $9.00

number of pages: 272

ISBN: 978-0316099004

publisher and date: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Revised edition 2010

author’s website: https://loisduncan.arquettes.com

genre: juvenile fiction, mystery

main subjects: mystery and detective stories

Plot

After another hard day with Mr. Griffin, the strictest teacher at their high school, a couple of students plan to scare their teacher into being more forgiving to their students. With Mark Kenney in the lead, they plan to kidnap and frighten Mr. Griffin, then return him to the safety of his normal life with something to make him second guess being so mean to students. However, in order to make this work, they need a few more people, so they enlist Susan, a smart but lonely girl with a huge crush on the senior class president who also agreed to be in on the prank. With all of them set with their roles, some perhaps a bit more reluctant than others, they kidnap Mr. Griffin, but their plan goes south when something happens, and when they go back to check on their teacher who should be just fine, he is dead. The kids have to figure out what to do with their prank gone awry.

Who’s reading it?

Written on a 9th grade level, ages from 12 and up may be interested in the content of the book.

Why did I read it?

In all reality, I was a middle school student scanning the shelves of my school library for my next book to read when I came across Killing Mr. Griffin, written by the same author who wrote I Know What You Did Last Summer and Gallows Hill. Though I admit that I do not remember much of the latter, the former had intrigued me enough to keep reading more of Duncan’s works. The cover of Killing Mr. Griffin at the time that I read it was not the modern one with the noose behind the large and eerie words but two feet tied up in a way only a man laying on the ground could be. The picture was in black and white, almost a sepia color, and the title had a green stripe behind it. The cover was striking, especially when considering that I found it in my middle school library. At the time, I did not read the backs of books, plots, summaries, or even first pages or chapters to determine whether or not I wanted to read a book. I just read them. If only we could be as unprejudiced as we were when we were children. However, since then, I have reread the book, not only because it made such a good impression on me when I first read it, but also because it had a story that was appealing even after so many years. A couple of kids get mad at their teacher for being so mean and grading so harshly so they decide to do what they think is a harmless prank: blind fold and tie him up, smack him around a little, and leave him in the dark and cold for a couple of hours until he breaks and then let him go. But that does not happen, and these children have to deal with the consequences of their actions.

Evaluation

This novel shows how good, honest people can be roped into doing terrible things. Susan is a straight-A student, sweet, always the good girl, and she agrees to participate in an outrageous plan because the boy on which she has a crush asks her to and her part is only doing something that she would already do. All she has to do is keep Mr. Griffin after school long enough for the rest of the students and staff to leave so that the other kids can do the kidnapping. She feels as though she is finally part of a group, has friends, and will maybe start to turn her life around to a happier and more positive way other than just doing well on tests and assignments. She does not want to go through with this plan, regrets it before, while, and after she has done it, and tries her hardest to set what they did right. 

The novel also switches between several perspectives, showing the different reactions to the same situation and getting a more complete story. Though the novel mainly focuses on Susan and David, the readers have the chance to see some of the workings to the other characters so that they better understand their actions.

The story is also a cautionary tale that describes what can happen when things get out of control. This is a worst case scenario from a plan that can only have bad endings. The characters have their own motives and views on what this prank is supposed to be, and none of them quite understand the gravity of their situation until it drops on them with full force.

The Issues

Violence / Murder by Minors

Mental illness

Manipulation

Teenagers kidnap, torture, and inadvertently kill their teacher. They leave him in the cold and away from his medicine that he needs for his heart condition. Though they may not have meant to cause his death, they did mean to kidnap and scare him. Their actions were purposeful and in some cases malicious.

The leader of their group is Mark Kenney who has a personality disorder, psychopathy, where he is charismatic and fully capable of manipulating others into doing exactly what he wanted. He makes the other teenagers want to commit this crime by calling it a prank with a motive that has their best interests in mind. He tells them what they want to hear, because he knows what will make them do what he needs.

So why should we read it?

The novel shows different perspectives of the same situation. Not many novels get into the heads of characters who are not the immediate main characters of a story, and yet this one does with the purpose of allowing the readers a fuller view of not only what happened and why but how it is affecting everyone, not just those main people. The readers see the teacher and his wife for a brief moment before the attack so that they can better understand the teacher’s personality and motives as well as the wife’s when she comes back into the story later. David’s grandmother gets a section to describe her feelings about the situation, and how she misinterpreted her grandson’s actions. We see Susan, David, Mark, Betsy, and Jeff - and occasionally their parents - which shows a whole different side to the story that the audience may never have considered had the story been left to only be in one point of view. 

How can we use it?

All of these extra points of view help readers relate to what is happening. They need to see how actions affect everyone, not just them or those immediately around them. They need to see that doing something that they may not see as a big deal can become a big deal. This book does a great job at showing how skewed perceptions can be, especially by those of young adults who are still at an impressionable age. They are learning to understand when they are being manipulated, when they are wrong, when they are right, and when they should trust themselves and people who are trustworthy. They also need to learn that sometimes they cannot do anything to stop what has already happened. These children were manipulated by someone who fed them lies of comfort and reassurances to keep them going, but they could not have known the extent of what they were doing. Do we excuse their behavior? No. They still participated in the kidnapping of their teacher which led to his eventual death, but they were coerced and heavily guided by a strong force. Sometimes people are led astray, and they have to figure out how to fix the wrongs before they become worse. 

Booktalk Ideas

Mark successfully manipulates several other teenagers into doing exactly what he wants. He talks them into believing that this is what Mr. Griffin needs and deserves. He justifies the actions, tells them plans for if something goes wrong, and makes them believe that he will take care of any issues. How is he able to do all of this so well, even with people he barely knows? Is it his psychopathy that allows him to understand and read other people so well?

Susan does not fit in with the crowd. She is a smart girl who keeps to herself and does not do anything that could be considered wrong or rebellious. The only reason she agrees to the plan is because David asks her and she has a crush on him. However, she is hesitant to say yes even then. Can extreme feelings such as having a crush makes someone’s judgement that blurred? Why is she so easily swayed? 

What else can I read?

We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier

I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan

Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher

Awards and Lists

ALA Best Book for Young Adults--l976

Massachusetts Children's Book Award--l982

Alabama Young Readers Choice Award--l982-83 86-87

Nominated for California Young Readers Award--l982

Selected for Librarians Best Book List, England--l986

New York Times "Best Book for Children"--l988

NBC Movie of the Week -- 1997

Nominated for Edgar Allan Poe Award

Professional Review

Teri S. Lesesne, G. Kylene Beers, and Lois Buckman (1996), Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy - https://www-jstor-org.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/stable/40013439?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

I Know Why the Caged Bird  Sings by Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou recalls her own coming-of-age story filled with her own trauma and unadvised choices.

Quick Information

price: $6.39

number of pages: 304

ISBN: 978-0345514400

publisher and date: Ballantine Books; Reissue edition 2009 

author’s website: https://www.mayaangelou.com/

genre: fiction, autobiography

main subjects: childhood and youth, intellectual life, entertainers, African American families, African American authors, Social life and customs, autobiography

Plot

Describing her childhood, Maya Angelou embarks on a journey with her readers on an autobiographical view of the events that shaped her into the woman she would become. Quickly sent away from her mother, she and her brother moved in with their grandmother where she suffered, loved, and learned as she began to see the ways of the world, understand herself and others, and grow into a person worthy of who she could be.

Who’s reading it?

Written on a 9-12th grade level, the same ages are likely to be interested in her coming-of-age tale.

Why did I read it?

Whereas young adults prefer fiction, whether to escape from real life or to read about something different from their own world, they often forget that reality is the base for all of the stories. Maya Angelou brings her own story, the one of her childhood and life, and offers it to everyone in the world. These are the most personal and meaningful pieces of literature, because they are real and not just symbols of what could be real.

Evaluation

An alarmingly beautiful tale, Angelou weaves through her life with elegant words and complicated feelings that can only be understood through the poetry of the truth. She describes the struggles of being a child and not truly comprehending the meanings of actions and words until much later. She shows her readers how a child can be deceived, mislead, and abused without realizing the full extent until it is too late. She does not skip over parts that could make herself sound bad or disregard choices she may regret now. She shows how she was and is a human, and that is the only way she has become the person that she is.

When she was young, her mother sent her away with her brother, and by the time that she was a teenager, she felt as though she were a caged bird, sheltered enough not to understand the ways of the world. One of her childish mistakes was becoming pregnant, because she initiates sex with another teenager while she is in her senior year of high school for fear of being a lesbian, though she has no true understanding of the meaning to the world. Though she does regret the baby, the pregnancy was still a mistake someone young and unaware would make. Though she suffered more than any other child should, she still made those real mistakes in overcompensation for what she has done and what has been done to her.

The Issues

rape of minor

sexual content

teen pregnancy

racism

irresponsible adults

violence

Maya Angelou is a black woman who writes a book about being an African American young girl and dealing with the consequences of her skin color. The book has plenty of racism. Some have considered it a book against whites, especially because of the poor portrayal.

When she was very young, her grandmother’s boyfriend not only groomed her into being okay with sexual activity but also raped her. She was not okay with the rape, but did not want to say anything against the boyfriend, because he threatened to kill her brother. Later in life, she is afraid of being a lesbian due to her sexual past and immediately insists on having sex with a boy. She comes on aggressively to a boy she does not know necessarily well, and falls pregnant. She keeps it secret from her family until the end of the pregnancy so that she can finish high school since it was her senior year.

When she was a teenager but younger, her father showed up out of no where and takes her and her brother back to his home to visit. While there, he becomes so drunk that he cannot drive and she must drive them home, though she could not do so and crashed the car. Later, her stepmother is upset because she feels as though her husband’s children are coming between him and her, and after Angelou attempts to reconcile by saying that was not the case, she is forced to defend herself from an irrationally angry woman. Angelou slaps the woman, after warning her, and the woman attacks her. She is cut before she is able to get away. 

So why should we read it?

The world is a hard place. Terrible things happen every minute, and there is nothing that victims can do to stop them except come to terms as best as they can and continue to live. For Angelou, she learned that loving someone was not the same as forcing themselves on someone. She learned that sexuality means more than just sex. She learned that family is more than just the people who gave birth to you. She learned many things before she was able to have the experience to grow up. She had to make mistakes before she correct them and learn to be a better person.

How can we use it?

All young adults make mistakes. They seem to think that if they make one mistake or one bad things happens to them that they are cursed to forever lead a certain kind of life and overcompensate when trying to prevent that. Angelou ends up having sex with a boy about whom she cares nothing and conceives their child. She looks back on the tragedies in her life, the things that have made her less than whole as she can see it, and she acts out in the only way her naive and inexperienced mind can fathom. Young adults should use this book to explore these ideas before they do something that they will regret later. They can allow Angelou to fight with a step parent instead of themselves. They can see how her life fell apart and came together without having to make those mistakes or make the decisions until they are ready. Learning from the mistakes and achievements of others can always help.

Booktalk Ideas

Angelou compares herself to the caged bird. The symbol could have several meanings, but what does it mean to you? What from the book makes you see the caged bird in this way? Does the caged bird have more than one meaning depending on the reader?

Angelou’s father reacts relatively calmly by the fact that his wife attacked and cut Maya when they had their argument. What kind of a father is he if he can take his teenage daughter to a party where he hooks up with other women, get so drunk he passes out, and leaves his unlicensed daughter to drive them home as well as allows this kind of action to happen without any serious reaction other than to take his daughter to a friend and neighbor instead of an actual hospital? Does he seem like he would make a good father? How would her life had changed if she lived with him instead of her other family?

What else can I read?

Maya Angelou’s Autobiography series

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose by Alice Walker

Awards and Lists

National Book Award Nominee

Literarian Award

Time Magazine’s All-TIME 100 Nonfiction Books

Coretta Scott King Book Awards

Marilyn Meltzer Prize Award

Professional Reviews

Sue-Ellen Beauregard (1994), Booklist - http://go.galegroup.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ps/i.do?&id=GALE|A15742634&v=2.1&u=csusj&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w

Patrik Henry Bass (2013), Essence - https://search-proquest-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/docview/1322389308?accountid=10361&rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo

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Splintered by A. G. Howard

Alyssa has a curse, because the original Alice who traipsed through Wonderland brought one when she came back out of the rabbit hole.

Quick Information

price: $8.78

number of pages: 400

ISBN: 978-1419709708

publisher and date: Scholastic Inc.; Reprint edition 2014

author’s website: http://www.aghoward.com/

genreL supernatural, fiction

main subjects: paranormal, Alice in Wonderland, supernal, mental illness, mothers and daughters, blessing and cursing, fairy tales and folklore, adaptations, fantasy and magic, Alice Pleasance Liddell

Plot

The women in Alyssa’s family are all cursed. She has delusions of talking insects and plants that have only gotten more vivid as she has aged. Her mother, who too suffers from the same curse, is in a mental institution, a fate Alyssa fears will befall her if she admits of her delusions out loud. However, something more intriguing has rattled her brain: perhaps the curse is in fact a curse and not just an illness that she made up. Alice Liddell, the girl of which the book Alice in Wonderland was originally based, was one of Alyssa’s ancestors, and it seems that she not only did go down the rabbit hole but brought a curse upon her family. Feeling as though she owes it to her mother and herself to break the curse, she valiantly decides that it is time for her to make that same journey, but she is not prepared for the twist that soon comes.

Who’s reading it?

Written on a 9th grade level, 9-12 grade students are most likely to be interested in the content.

Why did I read it?

Fairy tales are harder to come by in modern literature, because they do not appeal to the older generation. A fairy tale is for babies, some might say. Modern day twists on fairy tales, however, have found a way around that by taking the stories and placing them into new genres with modern story elements. For Splintered, Howard has created an adventure novel with multiple discussions all stemming from the original tale. Appealing to the younger generation, this tale takes an old classic and favorite and gives it something darker and creates a whole new world of fantastic creatures. 

Evaluation

An interesting rendition of an old classic, the book, and the series, takes a world created by Lewis Carroll and pulls it apart to make a newly rendered, darker, expanded version with sickeningly eerie but intriguing twists that keep the readers guessing as to what could befall Alyssa next. From just some curse to royalty, the journey she takes within one book is astronomical. Alyssa rushes out of her old life and finds exactly for what she is looking: Wonderland.

The beginning of the book discusses mental illness, even if the main character does not turn out to have one. Until she understands the truth behind her supposed curse, she assumes that when she hears nature speaking to her, they are part of delusions. Though she feels that they are real, due to how she presumes the world is supposed to work, she has decided that delusions is the best explanation. Her mother being in a mental hospital for the same reasons, the obvious conclusion is mental illness. When she visits her mother, she talks of times in the past when her mother is playful like a child, cutesy like a love-sick teenager, and as violent as a mad woman with seemingly no trigger. Anything and everything can set her off, and then she falls back into the curse. Her illness is so bad that they keep her medicated the majority of her waking days. When her father decides to begin more drastic treatment because there as been no progress in her mental state, Alyssa finds the final push to get her to act against the medication, procedures, and torturous treatments that they put her mother through.

Alyssa’s bloodline goes back to royalty making her the perfect candidate for the next queen. Morpheus, knowing this, has and continues to groom her to prepare her for fulfilling that role. He uses her, abuses her, and yet still shows a compassion one can only have when truly loving someone. Alyssa battles her feelings for Morpheus while also understanding the love she has for her life-long best friend Jeb who too has confessed his love for her. The love triangle carves the way for tension conflict throughout not only this book but for the rest of the series as well. 

The Issues

grooming / manipulation / pedophilia

captivity

mental illness

supernatural / magic

Howard takes a beloved classic and rips apart the world of Wonderland to make a dark and frightening place that is dying due to the fall of the kingdom after Alice ruined everything. The world, no longer a dream a little girl had, exists beyond the world of the commonly known, including the supernatural creatures that cannot be described with the ease of names like fairies. Though those exist, much are of fey nature, just meaning that they are all inherently fairy-like and magical. Alice turns out to have been held captive for years until she became an old lady, starving and having lost her mind, when she is returned to her family. The generations she supposedly helped create were from the fairy queen who lived her life as Alice, marrying, having children, and growing old. She switches back with the Alice who had been locked away for decades and goes back to her own life leaving Alice’s supposed children to grow, half fey, the true reason for the curse and not mental illness.

Instead of being natural, the delusions are real because of the magic inside of the women in Alyssa’ family. They are all not only royalty from another world but also part otherworldly. They have wings and powers that no person would ever assume, even if they knew that they could talk to plants and insects.

Morpheus makes himself to appear as a younger child, when in fact he is very old, so that he can speak to Alyssa in her dreams, befriend her, and groom her into becoming fit to be the next queen when she is older. She manipulates her every action, and despite her knowing exactly what he is doing, he gets away with everything in the end. What he wants to come true does. He seduces her, uses her, and even becomes free of his own curse because of how he makes her feel.

So why should we read it?

Something different does not make it bad. Just because the classic is loved and known as it is does not mean that anything that is not exactly that cannot be good. Branching out and reading something new can always be interesting and broaden the way one views a genre. Crossing genres can create stories that can take a new journey than one in any original genre.  

How can we use it?

Splintered discussed mental illness before getting into actual magic and fairies. Howard gives the readers an interesting perspective on how one might perceive the world with a disorder of some sort. Though none of the readers will have magical fairy powers that are the underlying cause of their different perspectives, they may find that what they are going through is similar to what they have read. Perhaps they do not share her delusions, but they may just see that everyone sees the world differently, and no one way is necessarily the correct way. 

Booktalk Ideas

Alyssa has to come to terms with the fact that her curse has been part of her genetics the entire time. Whereas she has assumed that there was something wrong with her because she was different, she learns that she is different because of her own ancestry. Should that cause her to be conflicted in trying to relieve herself and her mother of the curse? Should she try to keep that part of her alive? She choose not to, though. Why? What justifies effectively killing and ignoring part of oneself?

Jeb also confesses his undying love for Alyssa almost immediately after they have delved into the depths of the rabbit hole. Is his love a real love that he had been suppressing before? Why should he tell her now? Is it because of the danger that they are in and he feels as though he will have no other chance? Does that make his love any less? If they had never gone into the hole, would he have ever understood how he felt?

What else can I read?

Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare

Newsoul series by Jodi Meadows

A Wicked Thing by Rhiannon Thomas

Awards and Lists

Epic Reads Sexiest book of the year 2013

Epic Reads New Kid on the Block Award 2013

Professional Reviews

Alaine Martaus (2013), Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books - https://muse-jhu-edu.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/article/500644

Kirkus Reviews (2012) - http://go.galegroup.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ps/i.do?&id=GALE|A310222113&v=2.1&u=csusj&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Grace was attacked eight years ago by wolves, and since then, one of the wolves, her wolf, has watched her every winter day.

Quick Information

price: $9.91

number of pages: 416

ISBN: 978-0545682787

publisher and date: Scholastic Inc.; Reprint edition 2014

author’s website: https://maggiestiefvater.com/

genre: fiction

main subjects: wolves, human-animal relationships, metamorphosis, supernatural

Plot

Eight years after a wolf attack, Grace has become accustomed to associating the cold with the wolves. During the winter, she seems them more, looking at her sometimes, and she feels a strange closeness to them. She shares a bond with one wolf in particular who watches her every day when it is cold outside. Then one day, a man, bleeding after being shot lays on her doorstop, and she just knows that he is somehow her wolf. Her life is uprooted as she learns about shapeshifting humans who are wolves in the winter.

Who’s reading it?

Written on a 7-9 grade level, 9-12 are more likely to be interested in the content.

Why did I read it?

Though not the most popular book, Shiver strikes an interest with young adults due to its supernatural nature. One of the two main characters is a human who turns into a wolf in the cold and the other is a human with wolf-like qualities after her attack. The idea that these people only become other wolves in the cold is fascinating, and that they do not control their own bodies as wolves is even more interesting. It creates a question as to whether or not there is a science behind it, making it more natural and thus more possible, or if it is something more magical or unnatural.

Evaluation

Ultimately a love story, the book also includes the supernatural and conflict, but everything else comes after the romance. However, despite the story being completely a romance with side stories that also pertain to the main line, the book is striking and entertaining. It holds the attention of romance lovers as well as those who prefer action. The novel is beautifully written, often poetic and like a song, as the main characters begin a journey that brings them life and even threatens it at times.

The story is also somewhat tragic as it ends in the loss of friends, broken families, and more conflict than it began, thus enticing its readers to read the rest of the series, which continues to enthrall at every chance. However, despite the agony of the constant turmoil, happiness is always possible for those who are determined to be happy, and now that Grace and Sam have found each other, nothing can stop them from finding their happily ever after, even if it is a bit unconventional.

The Issues

sexual content

supernatural

As the story is a love story, two teenagers fall in love, seemingly instantly as they have only known each other’s human sides for very little time before they become romantically involved. They take no time to learn about one another before becoming closer than any parents may see appropriate. Immediately after his change to a human, Sam, who is eighteen, begins sleeping in Grace’s room, who is seventeen. They share a bed nightly and trust themselves to decide how intimate they would like to be. The book includes a sex scene, which was only explicit in nature and not in graphic detail of the actual act. However, their relationship continues to grow more intimate as the book progresses to the point that both are not able to function well without the other. They form an absolute dependence on one another, possibly one that is unhealthy.

Sam is a shapeshifter. He is human during the summer and warm months and wolf in the winter and cold months. This kind of supernatural being does not exist in this world. It gives humans an added edge and advantage to others with their enhance abilities. The werewolves, for lack of a better term to that already has a universally known meaning, can hear, smell, and run better than the average person. They have a better tolerance to illness, temperature, and more. Their condition is almost like cheating through life when everyone else is forced to follow the directions.

So why should we read it?

Supernatural is always appealing. For the same reason that people are drawn to Twilight, they are also drawn to this book. Werewolves are cool and mysterious, two things that young adults long to see. They will read and watch anything with something different. They are drawn to the weird, because it is not like their own world. Even if the stories could be told without the supernatural and would be similar to their own lives or situations in which they could find themselves, the supernatural makes it distant and interesting.

Young adults also love to love. The more romance the better when it comes to what they read and watch. Because of their hormones and growing bodies, romance is becoming more and more appealing. They are thinking about it more often, perhaps even considering it for themselves, so of course they want to read about it. This is how they learn what to and not to do other than what they learn from friends and parents. Books and other story mediums teach them important life lessons about romance, how it works, and more importantly, how it does not work.

How can we use it?

One of the best ways to learn is to read about something. That is why there are textbooks for classes. In a similar vein, fiction stories take advantage of that medium to teach readers about a subject. Whether readers learn about romance, supernatural, or issues in their world masked by a safety blanket of fiction, books allow readers to use their imaginations and begin to consider more. Supernatural, like science fiction, fantasy, and other unrealistic genres, talks about what is currently happening in the world in a way that tells readers that it is safe to think and discuss those happenings without any serious repercussions. Whereas people may not feel comfortable talking about uncomfortable subjects with friends and family for whatever reason, they can read about them with plenty between their reality and the fictitious world.

Booktalk Ideas

Grace was attacked by the wolves when she was younger and never changed. Throughout the book, they think this is due to her abnormally high fever closely following the attack when she was still in a transition stage between human and shifter. They decide to give meningitis to both Sam and Jack in the hopes that the same will happen to them. However, it only works on Sam. Why do you think that the “cure” only worked on one of them? If Grace had a deadly fever that should have killed her but did not, why did this not work for Jack? Is the reasoning more story driven or scientific?

Sam is a truly conflicted character. He loves Beck but hates the life that Beck gave him. He spends his wolf days watching Grace and his human days longing to be with her. He waits for her to change despite the fact that he hates being the wolf, because he loses himself. Does he want her to change so that they can be together all of the time or does he just assume that she will and therefore should also be with him when she does? Is it a selfish or selfless line of thinking?

What else can I read?

Twilight by Maggie Stiefvater

Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr

Iron Fey series by Julie Kagawa

Awards and Lists

Indies Choice Book Award Finalist

ALA Best Books for Young Adults

ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers

2011 ALA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults

Amazon Top Ten Books for Teens

Border’s Original Voices Pick & Finalist

Barnes & Noble 2009 Top Twenty Books for Teens

CBC Children’s Choice Awards Finalist

SIBA 2010 Book Award Finalist

Glamour’s Best Book to Curl Up With

Winner, 2010 Midwest Booksellers’ Choice Award for Children’s Literature

Winner of the 2011 Georgia Peach Award

VOYA: The Perfect Tens

YALSA Teens’ Top Ten

Silver Inky Award Winner (Australia)

CO Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award Nominees 2011

FL Teens Read Award Nominees 2010-2011

MD Black-Eyed Susan (High School) Book Award Nominees 2010-2011

NC YA Book Award Booklist (High School) 2010-2011

NH Flume Teen Reader’s Choice Award Nominees (9-12) 2011

OR Young Adult Network Book Rave Reading List 2010

PA Young Reader’s Choice Award Nominees (Young Adult) 2010-2011

TN Volunteer State Award Nominees Young Adult (7-12) 2011-2012

2011 NCSLMA Young Adult Book Award Nominee (North Carolina)

2010-2011 Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Award Nominee

2010 TAYSHAS Reading List (Texas)

Professional Reviews

Cynthia Kiefer (2010), Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy - https://www-jstor-org.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/stable/25653930?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents

Karen Coats (2009), Scholastic - https://muse-jhu-edu.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/article/317486

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Starr Carter is two people- Starr from her black neighborhood and Starr from her prep high school- but when her friend Khalil is shot and killed by a cop, she no longer knows who she is. 

Quick Information

price: $9.49

number of pages: 464

ISBN: 978-0062498533

publisher and date: Balzer + Bray; First Edition Later Printing edition 2017

author’s website: http://angiethomas.com/

genre: fiction

main subjects: witnesses, African Americans, race relations, police shootings, police-community relations

Plot

Starr Carter, sixteen and leading a dual life, finds herself caught in a horrific situation. She witnesses the shooting of her friend Khalil who was driving her and himself back home after a party when a police officer pulled them over for a broken tail light. Through Starr’s eyes, we watch as Khalil does as the offiver asks and then is shot several times in the back. Through the next few weeks, riots and protests go from loud and civil to neighborhood-burning violence. Starr has to learn figure out how to defend her friend but also stay safe at the same time as trying to figure out who she really is as she has lived a life at her home in a black neighborhood and another at a preparatory school full of white rich kids who expect an entirely different attitude and behavior. With the scandal about Khalil, both worlds are beginning to collide rapidly.

Who’s reading it?

Written on a 9th grade reading level, later grades in high school are more likely to be interested in the content.

Why did I read it?

With the rave of the new book that spoke about the real issues currently going on and the recent movie, the hype of the story was abuzz all over for quite a while. My local library’s book club chose The Hate U Give as one month’s choice, and I did not read it with them. Instead, half a year later, after hearing them rave about the high quality of writing and storytelling, I had to give it a go, and right I was to do so.

Evaluation

Told in the voice of the African American society dealing with these issues every day, The Hate U Give shows those who may have previously been unaware of what life is like in the present for certain peoples in America. Though the information is not entirely new, seeing it told in such a way through a medium likely to get to more individuals, as it has proven to have done so, has gotten a different point of view out there.

Starr lives two different lives. She is Starr from her neighborhood, a black girl who speaks with the same diction and vernacular of those around her, specific mannerisms and immediate reactions, and just about blends in with everyone else around her. She is also Starr from her school where she is one of two black people, has to change the way she acts and use a different vernacular and speech pattern to fit in better with the crowd of rich white teenagers who are more likely to judge her because of her race and status. She tries to avoid crossover between each of her lives. The only person who remotely sees both sides of her is Chris, her boyfriend, and she hides much of her neighborhood life even from him without knowing it.

The fact that she has to create two selves in order to survive shows the failings in the world. She is not allowed to be one person because of the way she sees the world. Her two worlds cannot collide, because they do not collide. Her friend Hailey ignores the side of her that shares posts about the wrongful murders of black children by police officers and other “black stuff” as Hailey calls it. Other people would judge and her ignore her more if they saw what else she might do and say in her other life.

Khalil’s death is the cause of controversy in the book as there are two sides: Khalil was murdered for no reason and the police officer was defending himself. In the end, for Starr and her neighborhood, Khalil does not get the justice that they want, but some could say that nothing would ever give them justice. Even if the police officer was convicted of murder and put away for life, Khalil would still be dead. 

The Issues

violence/murder of minors

police brutality

racism

inappropriate language

When the novel begins, Starr is at a party with her half-sister Kenya but finds her friend from childhood, Khalil. They are interrupted by gun shots. Not wanting to be near a fight, they both leave. The party was full of teenagers. When they are pulled over, a police officer kills Khalil. Protesters threaten lives, burn buildings, and destroy parts of their neighborhood. There is so much violence in the book that it becomes almost disturbing. Though the violence is not always graphic, it is abundant.

Racism also is heavily present in the novel. With Starr’s dual life (living as a black girl in her neighborhood and essentially a white girl at school), Khalil being a black boy who questioned a white cop, Hailey’s racist comments to both Starr and Maya as well as her avoidance due to Starr’s Tumblr shares of “black things”, and more racism continues in both ways and not just whites against blacks.

The inappropriate language is explicit and often as it is part of their common vocabulary. Everyone of every age in the neighborhood uses the explicit words.

So why should we read it?

This book is more real than all the real things young adults talk about. When they want to be real with everyone else, this is what they should mean. This novel describes the real-life conflicts for minorities in this modern society. We see how challenging it can be to have to be someone for one group of people and someone else for another. We see what it is like to live in neighborhoods where people worry about whether or not they or their loved ones will survive the night. For readers who do not live the same way, this is a great example of how others in the world do have to live.

How can we use it?

Is there a better way to learn the ways of the world than reading about people living in a different way than yourself? Or at least, we should ask, if there is an easier way that tells this information in the most appealing way possible. Arguably, this is one of the best ways to broaden a reader’s world view. We can hand this book to a young adult who has only ever known their own life and has not quite figured out that the rest of the world may not be the same as once they thought. We can also hand a young adult this book who goes through the same things and see that it is not just them. These are real things to which they can relate, which by itself is therapeutic at times.

Booktalk Ideas

Starr has to have two different lives, because she thinks this is the easiest and only way to survive. If she has to act one way with one set of people and a completely different way with another, are either sides truly her friends? One side includes her family, but she is hiding herself from them as well. Would they accept her if she were to merge her two selves and become whoever she really is? What would change if she did not have to be certain people in different places?

THUGLIFE stands for “the hate u give little infants fucks everyone”. The term was coined in back in the 1990s but is used frequently in the book. Actually, it is a driving point for the story and Starr’s father. What about this phrase really makes the story go? 

What else can I read?

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

How it Went Down by Kekla Magoon

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

Tyler Johnson was Here by Jay Coles

Awards and Lists

#1 New York Times Best Seller

Goodreads Choice Awards Best Young Adult Fiction

Audie Award for Young Adult

Goodreads Choice Awards Best Debut Goodreads Author

Longlist’s National Book Awards 2017 for Young People’s Literature

2018 Coretta Scott King Book Awards

William C. Morris Debut YA Award 2018

2018 Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production

2018 Michael L. Printz Award

Boston Globe-Horn Book Award

Edgar Allan Poe Award Nominee (Mystery Writers of America)

Professional Reviews

Publishers Weekly (2017) - http://go.galegroup.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ps/i.do?&id=GALE|A518029870&v=2.1&u=csusj&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w

Eboni Njoku (2017), The Horn Book Magazine - http://go.galegroup.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ps/i.do?&id=GALE|A485970973&v=2.1&u=csusj&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

The Great American Whatever by Tim Federle

Quinn has been in hibernation since the death of his sister, and now he is ready to wake up and accept his real life, but he is not sure if the world is ready for him.

Quick Information

price: $9.31

number of pages: 304

ISBN: 978-1481404105

publisher and date: Simon and Schuster 12017

author’s website: https://timfederle.com/

genre: juvenile fiction

main subjects: screen writers, grief, lgbtq, performing arts, social issues, friendship

Plot

Quinn has always loved movies. He writes screen plays and his sister directs their movies. They cast friends and neighbors for their epic tales. Then one day, his sister gets into a car crash and his whole world gets turned upside down. She dies and Q&A Productions (their company in the making) dies along with her. Holed up in his room for months, he does not come out until his best friend comes to get him out and make him live again. While out, Quinn meets Amir, and he knows that Amir is definitely his type. The two begin to see each other, and along the journey, Quinn learns about himself and his sister. Going through the emotions of only drama students and writers, he has to figure out how to keep living even though his sister did not.

Who’s reading it?

Written on a 9th grade level, young adults 9th grade and up will more likely be interested in the content.

Why did I read it?

Stories about regular people who are having to grieve and deal with their lives are always appealing. Young adults can really relate to books with characters who have problems and are not always handling them well until later. With the intrigue of a character who is feeling downtrodden and uninspired, I, though older than high school ages who may find it more interesting, could really understand something so traumatic happening that you drop what you love in order to grieve. I hope others can see that as well. 

Evaluation

A cute novel full of coming-of age moments with mistakes and anger and real emotion, readers cry, scream, and laugh with Quinn as he comes out of his cave and is reborn into the world again. He suffers from previously untold truths, secrets that shatter his view of himself and others around him, and a terrible case of low self esteem. Throughout the book, his screenplays are nothing without his sister’s directing. Though his screenplay is accepted into a junior film-making program, he feels as though it would be a ridiculous venture without having his sister who should direct it. In his mind, every movie they made was their project and not his. Even as he learns that she cared less about the movies as he did, he cannot help but think that it was still their project. But, in the end, he knows that this was still his calling even if not hers, and that is something he should remember when he feels so sad.

Quinn is sad. He never admits it out loud until the very end, and once his does, he says that he really feels the wave of sadness that he has been trying to suppress for nearly six months. The emotions are deep and complicated in The Great American Whatever just like the title. It being the Whatever, Quinn has not yet decided where he wants his life to go, but at least now he has a start to life again.

The Issues

death

LGBTQ

sexual content

explicit language

underage drinking

Quinn is in mourning because of the death of his sister. His sister crashed and died immediately or almost immediately. Thought she supposedly felt no pain, that does not make the truth any less painful or overbearing. Quinn dropped out of school, has a therapist, and has given up existing for the most part. He is skinnier than his clothes, often forgets to eat, and makes terrible decisions, because he is not paying any attention to the world around him. He is stuck in his head, and a terribly unreliable narrator.

Quinn is also gay. He mentions to his best friend that his might be bi, but he and the friend both know that he is absolutely gay. He has not come out to anyone, especially his mother, but everyone around him already knew, especially his best friend and his sister.

While out at a college party, he meets Amir and the two start to date despite the fact that Quinn is sixteen and Amir is nineteen. Only, their dating is more like hanging out and then a fling where they sleep together in Amir’s car. The fact that it is Quinn’s birthday and he is seventeen does not make the age difference any better.

As they are all young adults, the explicit language can get relatively heavy at times. When Quinn and Geoff his best friend have a large fight, Geoff uses the f-word in front of his own mother and so does Quinn.

So why should we read it?

Though not the most literary of books, The Great American Whatever is a wonderful book for hanging to a young adult, specifically in high school, and giving them something light enough to not take too much effort but meaningful enough for them to get something real out of it. We read this book because it is true to life. Not everything is exactly how we perceive it. Sometimes there are uglier truths we are not prepared to know, but that is just how it is. We learn to accept the world and ourselves and then we learn to move on.

How can we use it?

Handing this book to a teenager in high school who is feeling lost, excluded, depressed, or whatever other negative feeling due to something that has happened in their life - a death, a bad grade, or whatever has gotten to them in a bad way - can be the difference in seeing someone die inside and live again. If nothing else, it forces them to start thinking about it and making connections.

Booktalk Ideas

The title of the book is The Great American Whatever. The phrase comes about when Quinn is listening to Amir read the first page of his novel which is quite terrible. He realizes that it makes no sense for Amir to work at the Great Iranian Novel if Quinn does not work at the Great American Whatever. Why does he not say screenplay, movie, or something else? What does he really mean by ‘whatever’? What is the significance of not knowing what should go there?

Quinn, thinking that it might be weird for him to be gay while talking to Geoff, suggests that he might be bi. Why would he say that if he knew that was not true? Is he trying to make the conversation less awkward? Is he trying to appease his friend? Why lie like that?

What else can I read?

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin

True Letters from a Fictional Life by Kenneth Logan

Drag Teen by Jeffery Self

Awards and Lists

Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Award Nominee

YALSA Teens Top Ten (TTT) Nominee

Great Lakes Great Books Master List (MI)

Texas Tayshas Reading List

Buckeye Teen Book Award Nominee (OH)

ALA Rainbow List Selection

ALA/YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults - Top Ten

Professional Reviews

Karen Coats (2016), Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books - https://muse-jhu-edu.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/article/608503

Michael Cart (2015), Booklist - http://go.galegroup.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ps/i.do?&id=GALE|A437058971&v=2.1&u=csusj&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Young Scout watches as her father defends an innocent black man in court after a white woman accuses him of raping her. 

Quick Information

price: $7.30

number of pages: 384

ISBN: 978-0446310789

publisher and date: Grand Central Publishing 1988

author’s website: https://www.harpercollins.com/author/cr-103537/harper-lee/

genre: fiction

main subjects: fathers and daughters, southern states, race relations, racisim, trials, rape, legal stories, bildungsromans

Plot

During the depression, Jean Louise, or Scout as she likes to be called, is the daughter of Atticus Finch, a well-known lawyer in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama. She lives at home with her father and brother Jem. Through the story, she follows her father’s current job representing Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of raping a white woman. As a young girl of not even ten, she begins to learn just how prejudiced the world truly is.

Who’s reading it?

Written on an eighth grade level, ninth graders are more likely to be reading the book, especially because it is often required reading in 9th grade classes in high schools. However, later middle school students could also find the story a worthwhile read. 

Why did I read it?

Many people have read the book, because it was required reading in one of their public school classes. Though most people I have met read it in their lower high school grades (9 and 10), some read it in eighth grade instead or, on occasion, as well. With the book being required reading in so many different places, it obviously has some real value. We want our young adults to read this book to understand history and how people used to perceive other people during a different time. Atticus is a racist because of the time but still believes in other people including blacks because they are still people. The law is that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and in a world where African Americans are automatically guilty, he fought what was right. This is a lesson all young adults should understand for the future when they may find themselves in unfortunate situations either for themselves or others. 

Evaluation

Possibly one of the most beloved books, To Kill a Mockingbird has changed lives. People have named their children after characters in the book, namely Atticus, because of how good and honorable he is. Atticus Finch, a white lawyer with everything to lose, fights to prove the innocence of a wrongly accused black man. A white woman claims that the man raped her when he did not. She invited him to kiss her, but her husband insisted that they press charges. They treated this man as though he were lesser than human because of his skin color. That kind of injustice is unacceptable anywhere, and Atticus fought to have that wrong righted.

The story follows the perspective of a young girl. Younger audiences have an easier time reading and understanding the book because of the young perspective. Scout is closer to the age of those who would be reading the book for the first time than Atticus making her the better narrator point. She is the reader’s anchor into a new world for the young readers.

The Issues

racism

inappropriate for the age

sexual content, especially rape

explicit language, specifically “nigger”

The entire book is riddled with racism. The reason Atticus has to defend a man in court is because racist white people are against all blacks because of the color of their skin. With the book set during the Depression, racism is abundant. Though Atticus defends a black man in the court, he too is racist. Everyone is racist except for Scout who too may grow to accept the racist views of the times.

Tom Robinson is accused of raping a white woman. Regardless of whether or not he did as he was accused, discussion of the alleged assault are prominent, described, and overwhelmingly present. The woman claims to have been attacked in a personal and traumatizing way, and in a way, shows the signs of trauma, even if it is only emotional trauma that comes from believing the lies she has told so often that they have become her truth. 

The book frequently uses the derogatory word “nigger” which is one of the worst words to say in reference to those of darker skin color. People of all ages and genders use the word, and the readers cannot escape it. 

So why should we read it?

Just because the book is old, set in a time that feels long ago, and discusses an issue that America supposedly no longer has, that is not an excuse to not read the novel. In many ways, the story is more relevant now than only a few years ago. Racism has never gone away, only gotten better, but even with that, it is only marginally better. We still judge and prosecute because of color and race. People still see color before before they see people. That is the nature of the society that we have created. That does not make someone a bad person, though. It only makes them human. 

How can we use it?

In the world today, young adults need to see how wrong this kind of injustice was so that they do not make the same mistakes in the future. They will be able to recognize this kind of thing and avoid it if at all possible. Because of the nature of this man-made world, people still judge, form opinions, and act because of the racism that is so prominent. If one grows up in a world where one race is seen as a certain way, when that one is older, he or she may still think that way even if he or she is a good person. Seeing color does not make someone bad, it just means that they have to overcome those thoughts and see the person underneath it all, and reading about it can help. 

Booktalk Ideas

Within the book, there is a story about the Gray Ghost. There is also a mysterious character named Boo Radley. Somehow Boo Radley turns into something of a ghost story. How does a person become a ghost story? Why are stories of ghosts so important? How do they add to the story of racism and injustice?

How specifically does the case of Tom Robinson pertain to today’s society and the justice system? We still have cases where people are prosecuted because of their skin color. What about the case in To Kill a Mockingbird can we take to better understand our own cases and how to make them fair? Can they be fair like Atticus does for Tom?

What else can I read?

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Go Set a Watchmen by Harper Lee

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Awards and Lists

Pulitzer Prize 1961

Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews

Paperback of the Year

Alabama Library Association Award

Quill Award for Audio Books

Professional Reviews

Richard Sullivan (1960), Chicago Tribune - https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-harper-lee-to-kill-a-mockingbird-1960-review-20160219-story.html

TIME (1960) - http://time.com/3693680/to-kill-a-mockingbird-review/

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

When her young sister is chosen to be part of a dangerous game where she is almost guaranteed to die, Katniss volunteers to take her place.

Quick Information

price: $11.07

number of pages: 384

ISBN: 978-0439023481

publisher and date: Scholastic 2008

author’s website: http://www.suzannecollinsbooks.com/

genre: fiction, dystopia, science fiction

main subjects: survival skills, television programs, interpersonal relationships, contests, science fiction

Plot

In a dystopian world, Panem is separated into districts. The Capitol, the rich government that rules over each district, requires that two people from each district, a boy and a girl, participate in the “Hunger Games”, a broadcasted television program where the participants fight to the death. When the 74th Hunger Games participants are being chosen, Katniss’s young sister is chosen, and out of panic and necessity, volunteers to take her place. She is swept away to the Capitol where she is briefly prepared before being thrown into a whole new place where she had to learn how to survive.

Who’s reading it?

Written on a 9th grade level, those in 9-12 grades are most likely to be interested in the story. 

Why did I read it?

Before the movies and even before the book got popular, I wanted another book to read, and did not have any of interest in my immediate vicinity. I texted a friend who then recommended the book thinking that I might like it. From those who had read it, I had heard only good things. There was something different going on that no one could explain. “You just have to read it.” In middle school, the scholastic book fair came along, described the book, and I thought it sounded boring. My mother, the librarian, heard about it and thought that it sounded ridiculous and unrealistic. When we read it, our minds were completely changed.

Evaluation

Katniss Everdeen has proven to be one of the most beloved characters, especially for young girls who are looking to find confidence and self-esteem. In her, they see someone strong and capable, often unlike how they view themselves. Katniss risks her life for her sister, a courageous act out of love for another that has disregard for her own safety and wellbeing. Everyone wants to not only be selfless but also be able to handle one’s self in difficult situations. Katniss continuously shows her many strengths as she overcomes her fears and anxieties in order to save herself as well as Peeta who desperately needs her help. Directly after the books and movies were popular, Halloween was full of girls with hair pulled to the side in a tight but messy ponytail and clothes that looked like they were ready to take on an adventure.

Collins writes beautifully, her words chosen carefully as she describes the world around Katniss. The readers see inside Katniss’s mind and understand her actions on a personal level. Every thought and conflict in her mind are shared with the reader as though they were part of the narrator’s perspective. With the overwhelmingly present perspective, the story is crafted with multiple levels, one including an unreliable narrator who has structured views. The specifics of the world around her are often blurred into something new instead of the exact truth. Only through reading the full story do readers see the truth, and even then, the truth is askew.

The Hunger Games makes readers question values in life that perhaps they did not consider before reading the book. The safety of a different world allows readers to think of their own personal situations, of the country, friends, and themselves, in a way they would not have seen had he not been able to read about it otherwise. The beauty of well-crafted books is their ability to discuss real-life issues without discussing real life.

The Issues

anti-government

anti-family

underage violence and murder

graphic content

Children are forced out of their homes to parade around a new place, be flaunted in front of cameras for rich people, and then forced to fight to the death in an arena for everyone to see. The rich people see it as sport and entertainment. They do not see how horrific it is. They do not consider the fact that children are being forced to murder other children for their amusement.

The world is split into different districts, different places with certain styles of living (i.e. farming, mining, etc.). Some of the districts treat the Games as the most important and honorable thing to do. They train to be the strongest, fastest, and most talented and skilled candidates in the arena. They volunteer to be part of the bloodbath because they have been taught to think highly of the Games. They believe that they have to become worthy for it as opposed to being disgusted.

The government is perceived as corrupted and terrible. It has created a world where some people live in absolute poverty that could be fixed by the government. The government runs the Games and requires that the children participate. It tear apart families and pit them against each other. It destroys lives without any regard to those that it hurts.

So why should we read it?

The world is a dark and ugly place sometimes. Even if school, work, and home are good, other places in the world are not so great. Some places have people who are forced to fight to the death in arenas so that they may live. Some people are used and abused by others. Some places have no running or clean water to use. Young adults who are fortunate enough to live in a home where people are kind, have amenities such as running water, and overall good lives should still hear and learn about how others might live if only to be more aware of their own world. They should have the opportunity to broaden their knowledge and understanding through books, which are some of the best mediums for doing so.

How can we use it?

I touched briefly on this before, but books are the best medium to learn and work through issues. Something in the book may speak to a reader and explain how they are feeling or what they are seeing in their worlds. If a young adult finds herself in a situation where she does not feel as though she as good as the people around her, because they have practice or studied more, she might find strength within Katniss who is in the same situation when she is with members of the other districts who have trained to battle and outwit their opponents. Katniss helps people, specifically girls, find confidence in themselves unlike what they may have seen before.

The book, as well as the rest of the series, allow readers to think about difficult topics such as the possibility of a corrupt or evil government that not only allows but sanctions events where children must murder other children in order to survive. They discuss what is right and wrong as well as what is moral and who is good or evil?

Booktalk Ideas

Katniss volunteers as tribute and be part of the Games when her sister is chosen. She does not think or hesitate, instead she reacts instinctively. What can we infer and learn about her personality with this action? Does she continue to exhibit similar behaviors throughout the book?

Peeta says that he has always been in love with Katniss even though she knows very little about him. She remembers him, but he did not make a lasting impression like she did on him. Is his love real or is it for camera? Or is it real in the moment, because she is in the same situation as he?

What else can I read?

Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

The Fifth Wave series by Rick Yancey

Awards and Lists

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

#1 USA TODAY BESTSELLER

WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY'S BEST BOOKS OF 2008: CHILDREN'S FICTION

NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE CHILDREN'S BOOK OF 2008

AN AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION 

TOP TEN BEST BOOKS FOR YOUNG ADULTS SELECTION

AN ALA NOTABLE CHILDREN'S BOOK

2009 ALA AMELIA BLOOMER PROJECT LIST

#1 ON WINTER '08/​'09 CHILDREN'S INDIE NEXT LIST

INDIES CHOICE--BEST INDIE YOUNG ADULT BUZZ BOOK HONOR

2008 CYBIL AWARD--FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION

2009 CHILDREN'S CHOICE BOOK AWARD

TEEN CHOICE BOOK OF THE YEAR FINALIST

YALSA'S TEENS' TOP TEN, 2009

NYPL “STUFF FOR THE TEEN AGE” LIST, 2009 

CCBC CHOICES 2009

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE 

A KIRKUS BEST BOOK OF 2008

A HORN BOOK FANFARE

SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOKS Of 2008

A BOOKLIST EDITORS' CHOICE, 2008

LA TIMES FAVORITE CHILDREN'S BOOKS, 2008

BARNES & NOBLE BEST BOOKS OF 2008; FOR TEENS AND KIDS

BORDERS BEST BOOKS OF 2008: TEENS

AMAZON BEST BOOKS OF 2008: TOP 100 EDITORS' PICK AND TOP 10 BOOKS: TEENS

Professional Reviews

Anton Bitel (2012), Sight & Sound - http://web.a.ebscohost.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ehost/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=90d2317e-4b09-4df4-96a2-4c710834fad5%40sessionmgr4008&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=74454415&db=ibh

Maris Hubbard (2011), Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry - https://www-sciencedirect-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/science/article/pii/S0890856711008859

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

Bella is a nobody, temporarily living with her father when she meets Edward, mysterious, strangely powerful and fast, and maybe a vampire.

Quick Information

price: $9.49

number of pages: 544

ISBN: 978-0316015844

publisher and date: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers 2006

author’s website: https://stepheniemeyer.com/

genre: fiction, supernatural

main subjects: vampires, werewolves, supernatural, high school, love

Plot

Bella Swan, seventeen and starting at a new high school half way through the year, does not want to live in rainy and miserable Forks with Charlie, her father, while her mother and stepfather travel due to his job in minor league baseball. A bit of a bookworm, Bella makes a few friends her first day at school but overall is not interested in anyone. In class, her lab partner acts as though he is entirely disgusted by her, and then disappears for days just to come back trying to be her friend. Edward Cullen is mysterious and continues to make her question her humanity. After getting somewhere far too fast, making a large dent in someone’s car, and changing eye color, Bella start to wonder if he is something supernatural. Despite that thought, she is not afraid but intrigued, because she is almost certain Edward is a vampire, and she is pretty sure she is in love with him.

Who’s reading it?

Written on a high school grade level, the same readers would be interested in the content.

Why did I read it?

I first read the series when I was in middle school, which is when many of my friends also read the books. I was, of course, late to read them, and was reading the first book as the movie was being made. I wanted a new book to read, and this was one that I just had to read. In fact, we were out of town and I made my mother buy it for me so that I could read it while in the taxi/bus and in the hotel room. However, the real question should be why I have reread the book. When I first read it, I was not entirely impressed as I thought Bella was being silly and ridiculous. Actually, the second time I read it, I disliked it more than I did the first time. That was at the end of my eighth grade year, and I was still not interested in the theme.

The most important part about reading a teen book is being ready to read a teen book. When I was in middle school, I was not ready. It was not that I did not understand the book, though I admit that I did not understand parts of it, but I also was entirely uninterested in romantic relationships. To further my point on how much I was not ready, I could not say the name Carlisle. However, by the time I reread Twilight for a third time, I was in high school, and suddenly everything made much more sense, and though I did not personally identify with Bella, I appreciated the entire book. When I read the book for a fourth time, the last time as an adult who had been out of high school for four years, I appreciated it even more, because it occurred to me that I knew people who were just like Bella. I knew people who needed to see that they were not the only people in the world with the same feelings and desires, not just romantically but about themselves and about the world. Twilight appeals to so many, because it hits those people with a real truth when they are ready to understand the angst of every teen phase.

Evaluation

We discussed this briefly in the last section, but I think this is one of the best books for young adults when they are ready to read it. Not everyone who is on the reading level is ready to read the book. Plenty of middle school and even elementary school students can read and understand the words and sentences in the book, but few have the hormonal readiness to appreciate the book. However, for those who are ready, it depicts a teenage girl so well. Many girls, and people in general have no self confidence unless they are attached to someone else, often a significant other. This type of thing is seen so often with girls who feel as though they cannot be good enough until they have a boyfriend.

The use of vampirism is a great way to safely allow teenagers to explore new ideas such as sex and relationships. When Bella declares that she wants to be a vampire and that she wants Edward to turn her, it is a metaphor for wanting to have sex. The book discussion centers on the importance of adolescence and abstinence.

The Issues

supernatural

anti-religion

sexually explicit

racisim

Vampires and supernatural are prominent in Twilight as well as the rest of the series. They hunt and kill both animals and humans for food. Some hunt for sport. They murder and torture as James attempts with Bella. They pretend to be human and hide their true identities. They are unnaturally pale even if they had darker complexion when they were human. Vampires often have magical powers. Edward can read the mind’s of others. Jasper can manipulate how others feel. Alice can see the future. They are not only nonhuman but they can manipulate others. Overall, they represent everything that goes against the natural order.

The vampires have an almost magical appeal to them. Everyone who sees them finds them beautiful and desirable due to their vampiric natures. People desire them, which is inherently sexual. Their even existing is inherently sexual as the entire turning process is a metaphor for sex. They feast on others which in turn means that they rape others. When Bella is attacked by James, she is bitten, which, if going by the ultimate metaphor of changing is sex, is almost like she is being raped, one of the worst crimes someone could commit. 

Vampires are evil creatures, and yet, despite all of these unlikable and bad qualities, the book does not show all of the vampires as these terrible creatures. Instead, the book glorifies those who are “vegetarian” and only hunt animals that would already be hunted and attempt to lead normal, human lives. Bella is not only in love with Edward, she adores his entire vampire family. As reader’s get the story through the perspective of Bella, the readers too can only see the vampires in a good light.

So why should we read it?

Vampires are still appealing even if every bad quality. Readers like them like Bella does. During the early 2000s, vampires were “all the rage.” Everyone wanted to read the next vampire novel, because they were dangerous, bad, and still amazing. That idea that someone so superior (magical powers, supernatural strength and speed, beautiful appearance, infinite age) could love someone so inferior (only mortal, no self confidence, assumed to be boring) is what so many people cling to. Everyone wants to be special even if they can be in just one person’s eyes, especially if that person is in their eyes the most special or unique. So many young adults feel that way, particularly girls. So many people need to see that someone can find them special even if they cannot.

The author of Twilight is Mormon. Her religious views are all throughout the books. The discussion about adolesence and abstinence is strongly one that falls within her religious beliefs. As a Mormon, Meyer firmly believes in sex after marriage and not before or underage, and therefore, throughout the book and the series, Edward puts off turning Bella into a vampire.

If one believes that James’s bite and attack was in fact a rape, that is different. Rapes are violent and awful, but they happen. These kinds of violent acts happen, and young adults learn about them through reading. 

How can we use it?

One of the safest ways to learn about and work through issues in the real world is to read about them in fictional settings. Reading about how someone else works through the same or similar problems can help someone know what to do or that they can do something to help their own lives. Not to mention that vampires are cool and appealing, so they automatically draw the attention of the young adult. The supernatural are strange, different, unique, unusual, and every other adjective that draws others to them. It gives the readers a safe barrier to think about discussions about abstinence, rape, violence, loss, and whatever else without feeling too close to it to disallow the conversation. 

Booktalk Ideas

When Bella moves in with her father, she moves to Forks, Washington, a dark, rainy, dreary place that supposedly is everything that Bella does not want. She comes from Arizona, a place with plenty of sun and light that at least helped her attempt to have a tan. In Forks, however, she has nothing positive except for Edward and the Cullens. What is the significance of having Bella move somewhere so dank and dark? Of course, the Cullens need the area so that they can hide from the direct sunlight, but what is the significance for Bella who craves the sunlight?

Edward risks everything to be Bella’s friend. He saves her from a skidding vehicle knowing that someone might see him move at his abnormal speed or use his supernatural strength. He continues to be close to her despite his thirst for her blood. He knows that every moment he is with her, he puts himself, his family, and her in danger, but he continues to act irrationally. Does he do this out of love or curiosity? Is he more like a seventeen-year-old boy than we thought, and he likes to take risks, or does he have a different ulterior motive?

What else can I read?

Blue Bloods series by Melissa de la Cruz

House of Night series by P. C. Cast

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Fallen by Lauren Kate

Evermore by Alyson Noel

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Awards and Lists

School Library Journal's Best Books of 2005

A New York Times Editor's Choice

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

An Amazon.com "Best Book of the Decade...So Far"

A Teen People "Hot List" pick

An American Library Association "Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults"

"Top Ten Books for Reluctant Readers"

A New York Times Best Seller

Professional Reviews

Sepideh Aram, Kristin Russel, and Mona Potter (2009), Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry - 

Ken Donelson, James Blasingame Jr. and Alleen Pace Nilsen (2005), The English Journal - https://www-jstor-org.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/stable/30046671?sid=primo&origin=crossref&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

[rebelthroughreading-blog]

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time; sometimes he is still fighting in World War II and sometimes he is with the Tralfamadorians who abducted him and put him in a zoo full of otherworldly curiosities.

Quick Information

price: $13.60

number of pages: 288

ISBN: 978-0812988529

publisher and date: Dial Press Trade Paperback; Reissue edition 1999 

author’s website: https://www.vonnegut.com/

genre: fiction

main subjects: World War, Soldiers

Plot

Billy Pilgrim began to get unstuck in time during World War II. In 1944, he blinks out of one time and into another for the first time. He describes how this has happened to him many times, but no one seems to believe him. Others start to view him as a crazy man when he describes the time that he was abducted by an alien race, the Tralfamadorians, who took him on the night of his daughter’s wedding and kept him in a zoo for years until he was returned to Earth with only a slit second of time between when he was abducted and returned. While away, and the many times he blinks to his away as well, he learns more about the beliefs of the Tralfamadorians, one of which is that everything is happening at the same time, and there is nothing you can do to change it. Their catch phrase is “so it goes” meaning that there is no reason to worry or be upset by the inevitability of their fates. We follow Billy through his journey as he tries to come to terms with being “unstuck” due to the effects of war.

Who’s reading it?

Written on a 9th grade level, high school aged young adults are most likely to be interested in the content.

Why did I read it?

In some places, Slaughterhouse-Five is required reading for high school classes, especially around junior and senior year. Though I did not have to read it for school, my brother did, so I read it with him for an eleventh grade English class. Why do teachers assign the book for their students? Because it talks about World War II, and wars in general, and the many effects that it had on soldiers as well as anyone else involved. Before we knew about PTSD, there was Billy who was unstuck. Everyone should have the opportunity to see how that kind of thing was viewed before it had a name and a treatment.

Evaluation

Admittedly not the most thrilling novel that I have ever written, I understand why many students forced to read it may not enjoy the tale. The work may seem to plod without the constant action of current novels. This book does not assume that readers must be entertained at every second and instead allows readers to take the time to process and learn on their own. They find their own entertainment instead of being bombarded with constant thrilling adventure.

With one of the biggest debates on genre, Slaughterhouse-Five has been normal fiction as well as science fiction. Those who read it have definite opinions one way or the other. Dramatic debates referencing the entirety of the book have attempted to quell the fight of genres, but still it continues. For me, the book has never been science fiction. The Tralfamadorians were not real aliens but a way for Billy to cope with his world. He describes first becoming unstuck in 1944 during the war. After that, he travels through times, blinks rather, and finds something new to explain what is happening to him. He creates aliens that abduct him from his life, symbolizing being a prisoner of war, where he is put into a zoo with others, like a war camp. The aliens also teach him that all time exists at once for them, so they do not see things chronologically, nor do they have to mourn. Instead, they dismiss unfortunate events with the phrase, “so it goes.” Billy adopts this phrase in order to cope with the tragedies and negativity in his life. When people die, it is not a problem, because it was fate. That is the only way he has found to understand his life.

Billy suffers from what is mostly likely modern day Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This explains his delusions and thoughts better than just that he lost him mind after the war and slowly deteriorated over time. However, this kind of PTSD is not common now. We hear about people who swerve in the road, because trash bags looked like mines, or they snap and become aggressive when stressed. We do not hear about drastic delusions of aliens who view time as something different, abductions, and becoming “unstuck”. The appeal of this story is the seemingly uniqueness of his disorder in comparison to what readers see now.

The Issues

adult fiction

anti-Christian

anti-American

explicit language

sexual content

nudity

One of the most challenged and banned books, Slaughterhouse-Five has it all. The worst of the explicit language that is pretty rampant, nudity pretty often, and multiple accounts of sexual content which include sex and the act of watching others like a display. Much of it has the look of being anti-Christian with its lack of faith anywhere and Billy’s ultimate belief that everything is fate as opposed to having anything to do with a higher deity. It is also considered anti-American as Billy adopts the Tralfamadorian ways and thinking, and the aliens are representations of the Germans. Not to mention that on top of everything else, this book is adult fiction.

So why should we read it?

Despite being classified as adult fiction, the book’s intention was to teach readers, specifically young adults who may not understand wars. In a sense, the book was created as an aide in schools just as it has become in so many places. However, many protests the many controversial topics that float within the pages despite its initial purpose. They doubt their readers and the teacher’s abilities to explain the importance of each of these elements.

How can we use it?

Teachers and students can discuss the effects of war on soldiers who survive. They can discuss the different forms of PTSD and the parallels between the Tralfamadorians and the Germans and Billy’s life. They can discuss his last name, which is pretty significant. Though still not the novel that will take teenagers into dramatic worlds with magic and action-packed sequences and glamorous characters, it keeps the attention for those who are prepared to read something thought-provoking.

Booktalk Ideas

The title of the book is the place in which Billy Pilgrim was imprisoned. Does this indicate the true reason for Billy’s delusions and “unstuck” nature? Considering that the place got the most important place of honor, is it signifying that this was Billy’s turning point or is it something else? Why is the place of imprisonment so important that it gets to take the title over something like Billy’s name, the Tralfamadorians, or even being “unstuck”?

The novel is arranged in a style that is jarring and dramatic as it shifts from one place and time to another, just as Billy does. What is the significance of the structure of the novel? Would arranging it in chronological order have ruined the effect of the novel or not have made a difference?

What else can I read?

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonogut

White Noise by Don DeLillo

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Awards and Lists

Nebula Best Novel Nominee

Hugo Best Novel Nominee

100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century

TIME Magazine’s 100 Best English-Language Novels Written Since 1923

Professional Reviews

R. Kent Rasmussen (2003), Library Journal - https://search-proquest-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/docview/196782968?accountid=10361&rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo

Keith McKean (1969), The North American Review - https://www-jstor-org.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/stable/25117008?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents