Category: YA Lit

Fall Foliage trip to New Hampshire 2011

Sunday Salon: Book Club

Posted on by Dana

Fall Foliage trip to New Hampshire 2011

I get to live in a place that looks like this in the fall. How lucky am I? I didn’t take this picture, and it’s actually New Hampshire rather than Massachusetts. The leaves have just begun to turn here. Right now there is a very soft rain falling outside. It’s perfect weather for curling up with a cup of tea and a book.

I recently became the new advisor of the Book Club at my school, and as you might expect, it’s full of smart girls. I wish we could have talked more boys into joining. If they were smart, they’d have joined if for no other reason than that they can meet girls. For their first book, the girls picked Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The plan is to read half the book by our next meeting on Thursday, and then finish the other half for the following week. Then we are going to go see the movie. I am more excited than I can say about the Book Club. For one thing, it’s a proper book club. The girls are serious. They love books. It makes me so happy. If you have ever been an English teacher and tried to get students to love books, then you understand how I feel. If you feel like the world would be a better place if only more people were readers, then you also understand how I feel.

I have also become something of a go-to person for YA in the library, and in the next few weeks, I plan to request a big stack of books for the library. I believe that the school library should be driven by student interest as much as by curriculum. Certainly teachers should request books, but it is my hope that students will also see the library as a place to check out the books they want to read. I will be helping one of our librarians out with a display for Teen Read Week. I am so excited about this role because I’m excited to influence and support our students’ reading. I have been fortunate to hear from parents and former students about my role in their development as a reader, and nothing gives me more pleasure than fostering a love of lifelong reading in a student.

I am about 60 pages into Perks, and so far, what a great book! Charlie, the protagonist, makes a mixtape for his friend Patrick, whom he has drawn as a Secret Santa partner for Christmas. I recreated the playlist minus the Beatles songs, which aren’t in Spotify (I substituted with some cover versions). I shared it with the Book Club girls, so I thought I’d share it with Perks fans here. Take a listen.

Enjoy this glorious fall Sunday!

The Sunday Salon

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The Fault in Our Stars, John Green

Posted on by Dana

The Fault in Our StarsJohn Green’s YA novel [amazon asin=0525478817&text=The Fault in Our Stars] was recently named one of the 100 Best Ever Teen Novels. The novel’s protagonist, Hazel Grace Lancaster, is a sixteen-year-old girl with an incurable cancer. She meets seventeen-year-old cancer survivor Augustus Waters at a support group for teens with cancer. Hesitant to become too close to Augustus and worried over how her death would affect him (Hazel memorably describes herself at one point in the novel as a grenade), she eventually succumbs to Augustus’s charms as they connect over Hazel’s favorite novel, An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten. Augustus uses his Genie Foundation wish on a trip to Amsterdam with Hazel so that she can find out from Peter Van Houten what happens to the other characters in his novel after his protagonist, Anna, dies. The rest of the story doesn’t turn out as Hazel expected—in every single way.

Wow. John Green has to be one of the best writers of YA fiction. I can give no higher praise than that he reminds me Judy Blume in his ability to capture teenagers as they really are. Hazel and Augustus are charming and precocious, but not in an annoying way. I had the sense as I read that they had so much time to contemplate the big questions and in facing death had simply grown up more than your average teenagers. They have a rare joy for life that I would imagine only young people who have faced their own mortality might have. They are delightful, and I felt if I had been their age and known them for real, I hoped they’d have let me in their circle to be their friend. The Fault in Our Stars is a gorgeous novel, beautifully written, tightly plotted, and poignant and funny. I think its place in NPR’s list is well deserved.

You have to check out this excellent review of the book at Forever Young Adult. Posh cast it better than I could imagine, so I’ll beg off that responsibility (which I have been horrible about remembering to do, anyway).

Rating: ★★★★★

Full disclosure: I borrowed this book from my public library.

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Musing Mondays: Changing My Opinion

Posted on by Dana

This week’s Musing Monday: “Have you ever reread a book and found that your opinion changed?”

This has probably happened to me more than once, but the most memorable instance was in re-reading J. D. Salinger’s [amazon asin=0316769177&text=The Catcher in the Rye].

I first read the book in high school. Not as required reading. My high school in California actually did precious little of that. It wasn’t until I moved to Georgia that I was actually required to read much substantial literature in English class. I think had some kind of list of great books students should have read by the time they entered college, and this book must have been on it. I hated Holden Caulfield. He was whiny. He complained too much. You know what, Holden? I thought. Life just isn’t fair. Suck it up. I really disliked him when he procured Sunny the prostitute. He was arrogant. He was annoying and full of himself.

Years later, Catcher was in my ninth grade curriculum. I picked it up again, not expecting to feel differently, but I was surprised. This time, I saw Holden as a victim. He was a loving brother who had lost a beloved younger brother and felt guilty about the small unkindnesses brothers commit against each other. He didn’t want to lose Phoebe the way he had lost Allie. He had already written his older brother off as a phony. His parents were largely absent and paid no attention to him, so naturally he was self-destructive and subconsciously did things that would ensure he was kicked out of school so they would have to pay attention to him, however fleetingly. He didn’t feel like he had a place in the world. One of the most poignant scenes to me in all of American literature, and I’ve taught the course a few times, is this scene when Holden is walking down the street in New York:

Anyway, I kept walking and walking up Fifth Avenue, without any tie on or anything. Then all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening. Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I’d never get to the other side of the street. I thought I’d just go down, down, down, and nobody’d ever see me again. Boy did it scare me. You can’t imagine. I started sweating like a bastard—my whole shirt and underwear and everything. Then I started doing something else. Every time I’d get to the end of a block I’d make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I’d say to him, “Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear. Please, Allie.” And then when I’d reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I’d thank him. Then it would start over again as soon as I got to the next corner. But I kept going and all. I was sort of afraid to stop, I think.” (197-198)

That is the portrait of a scared, lost child, and I think in reading it for the first time as a high school teacher and as a parent, I realized how incredibly sad Holden’s situation was. I felt sorry for him. I wanted to protect him.

My opinion of the book, and its main character, changed completely.

I think we probably never read the same book twice. We always pick up on different things when we re-read. We are different people than we were the last time we read the book. However, I can’t remember ever experiencing such a different reaction to re-reading a book as I did these two times I read Catcher.

I’ll be teaching it again next month.

I can’t wait.

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Insurgent, Veronica Roth

Posted on by Dana

Tris Prior lives in a dystopian future Chicago divided by factions: Dauntless, who value bravery; Abnegation, who value selflessness; Erudite, who value education and intellect; Amity, who value love and friendship; and Candor, who value truth. Like other citizens in Chicago, Tris takes an aptitude test at the age of sixteen that will determine which faction she has an aptitude for. Tris’s test reveals that she is a rare individual with an equal aptitude for three factions: she is Divergent. The Divergent are considered dangerous and untrustworthy, and Tris is told to hide her test results at all costs.

Veronica Roth’s novel [amazon_link id=”0062024043″ target=”_blank” ]Insurgent[/amazon_link] is the second in a planned trilogy, the first of which, Divergent, tells the story of Tris’s decision to choose Dauntless and her initiation into her faction. I would not recommend trying to read Insurgent without reading Divergent first. Roth wastes no time catching up readers who didn’t pick up the first book and dives into the story, instead. In fact, even though I read Divergent just a few months ago, I frequently found myself trying to remember who various minor characters were and how they fit into the story. You may want to stop reading now if you haven’t read the first novel. Continue reading “Insurgent, Veronica Roth” →

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A Northern Light, Jennifer Donnelly

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”B0006BD9BK” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]A Northern Light[/amazon_image]Jennifer Donnelly’s YA novel [amazon_link id=”B0006BD9BK” target=”_blank” ]A Northern Light[/amazon_link] is based, in part, on the same crime that inspired Theodore Dreiser to write [amazon_link id=”0451531558″ target=”_blank” ]An American Tragedy[/amazon_link]: Chester Gillette’s murder of Grace Brown in the Adirondacks in 1906. The novel’s protagonist, Mattie Gokey, is the teenage daughter of a poor farmer in the North Woods. Mattie’s mother died not too long before the events in the book start. Before she dies, Mattie’s mother extracts a promise from Mattie that she will stay to help take care of her siblings. Mattie’s older brother Lawton left home after a fight with their father, and Mattie is responsible for her three younger sisters. Mattie, however, dreams of going to college. Her teacher, Miss Wilcox, encourages Mattie, who she believes has a gift for writing. Mattie’s friend Weaver Smith has dreams of attending Columbia University, and Miss Wilcox encourages both of them. They both take jobs at the Glenmore Inn, where Grace Brown and Chester Gillette come to stay. Before Grace is murdered, she entrusts Mattie with her letters and asks Mattie to burn them. After Grace’s body is found and Mattie finds herself unable to dispose of the letters as Grace asked, she reads them instead, and she uncovers a motive for Gillette’s murder of Grace as well as motivation to follow her own dreams.

Jennifer Donnelly’s books are all good. This particular novel’s narrative flashes backward and forward in time, but the plot is not difficult to follow, and in the end, Donnelly’s reasons for telling the story in this less linear fashion are clear. Mattie is an engaging heroine, representative of so many girls of her age who were expected to marry, often without love, and raise a family. Weaver is an interesting character too. His father was killed in a racial hate crime, but rather than making Weaver fearful of whites, it instead empowered him to stand up for himself when he encounters racism. Like Mattie, the reader can have no doubt that Weaver will go to Columbia and become a fine lawyer despite the odds. Donnelly’s setting is vividly painted for the reader, both in time and place—which is a particular gift of Donnelly’s and something I have enjoyed about all of her books.

I would recommend this book even to readers who aren’t necessarily fans of YA, mainly because I think readers will enjoy learning about this time and place and will like Mattie and her friends and family (except, of course, for those we aren’t supposed to like). Grace Brown’s murder is more or less incidental to the plot, as the main story is Mattie’s coming of age.

Rating: ★★★★½

I thought about counting this book as a crime/mystery book as part of the Mixing it Up Challenge, but I ultimately decided not to because the crime is not the center of the novel.

Full disclosure: I obtained this book via PaperBackSwap.

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Musing Mondays: Young Adult

Posted on by Dana

Musing MondaysWhy do you think that the Young Adult genre is so popular with even the adult readers? Do you read YA books, yourself?

I think YA is popular for several reasons. First of all, it’s in the midst of some kind of renaissance, perhaps ushered in by writers like Lois Lowry and Laurie Halse Anderson. There is simply a lot of really good YA fiction out there right now. I think one of the reasons it is popular with adult readers is that we were all young adults once, and I think good fiction, whether the protagonist is a little girl like Scout Finch or an elderly man like Jacob Jankowski, is always appealing. Therefore, I don’t see why a teen protagonist shouldn’t appeal to an adult. I also think the [amazon_link id=”0545162076″ target=”_blank” ]Harry Potter[/amazon_link] series, the [amazon_link id=”031613290X” target=”_blank” ]Twilight[/amazon_link] series, and the [amazon_link id=”0545265355″ target=”_blank” ]Hunger Games[/amazon_link] series had massive appeal for fans of all ages. Perhaps one reason for the popularity of YA is that these books prompted readers to pick up other YA fiction.

I do read YA. As a matter of fact, I am on my third YA book this month. I don’t read it exclusively or even a lot when compared with my normal reading habits, but I have never felt any shame in reading it, and I have enjoyed reading it since I was a young adult myself.

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Delirium, Lauren Oliver

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0061726834″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]Delirium[/amazon_image]Lauren Oliver’s dystopian YA novel [amazon_link id=”0061726834″ target=”_blank” ]Delirium[/amazon_link] takes place in an alternate present in which love has been found to be the root of all humanity’s problems and has subsequently been treated as a disease. When citizens turn eighteen, they undergo a procedure that removes their capacity for love, and, in the view of most members of the society, renders everyone happier. Lena is weeks away from her procedure when she meets Alex. She falls in love with Alex, or as her society would call it, contracts amor deliria nervosa. Alex leads her to question everything she has ever believed about her society.

One of Oliver’s nice touches is an epigraph at the beginning of each chapter. The epigraph comes from literature or handbooks published by the government, and it is a quick way for Oliver to give her reader a glimpse of the world in which the novel is set. The reader doesn’t learn too much about what is going on outside of the U.S., and that is by design, because Lena doesn’t know, and the oppressive government is not forthcoming. Perhaps because Lena either does not know or is not interested (or because Oliver is saving it for later in the trilogy), the reader doesn’t learn how society arrived at the conclusion that love is a disease that should be eradicated. I did get the sense that the U.S. had decided love was dangerous quite a long time ago. I had a little bit of trouble believing the U.S. had come to the conclusion that love was so dangerous when it was mentioned that not every country in the world agreed, and I had to wonder what happened in the U.S. We are a group of people who enjoys their freedom, and for us to agree to such a totalitarian regime, something big must have happened. I didn’t get my answer, but perhaps it will be revealed in the future books of the trilogy.

While I can appreciate the way in which Oliver designed this alternate present, and parts of the book were gripping, the book as a whole didn’t grab me by the jugular the way it seems to have done for many other readers. I think I couldn’t get past the idea that a society would ever decide love was a problem that needed to be eradicated. I think I might try to read the sequels because I am interested enough to know what happened. I struggled with how to rate this book, and I ultimately decided on four stars because I did think it was probably better than just OK, but I also had no trouble putting it down, and sometimes I wasn’t over eager to pick it back up again.

The sequel to Delirium, [amazon_link id=”006197806X” target=”_blank” ]Pandemonium[/amazon_link], will be released on February 28.

Rating: ★★★★☆

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Divergent, Veronica Roth

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0062024027″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]Divergent[/amazon_image]Veronica Roth’s novel [amazon_link id=”0062024027″ target=”_blank” ]Divergent[/amazon_link] is the story of Beatrice Prior, who lives in a future dystopic Chicago. After a cataclysmic war that Beatrice, the first-person narrator of the story, doesn’t know much about, Chicago divided into five factions: Abnegation, who believe that the cause of war is selfishness and seek to be as selfless as possible; Dauntless, who believe the cause of war is cowardice and seek to be as brave as possible; Erudite, who believe the cause of war is ignorance and seek knowledge; Candor, who believe the cause of war is deception and seek to be as honest as possible; and Amity, who believe the cause of war is unkindness and seek to be as kind as possible. At the age of sixteen, each member of this society takes an aptitude test that partly determines which faction they will join. Some people are best suited for the faction into which they are born, but those who are not leave their families behind because in this society, faction comes before family. Beatrice has always felt out of place in Abnegation. She doesn’t feel selfless enough. When she takes her aptitude test, the results are inconclusive, and her test administrator explains that she is something called “Divergent,” which is a very dangerous thing to be, though Beatrice doesn’t know why. All she knows is that she must keep her test results quiet. The day after the aptitude test, Beatrice must choose which faction she will join, and she shocks everyone by choosing Dauntless.

After joining Dauntless, Tris, as she is known, undergoes a tough initiation that hardens her mentally and physically and prepares her for her role in the faction that protects the society. Even in this competitive environment, she manages to make friends and develops an attraction to Four, her instructor. As she becomes more deeply involved in her initiation, she discovers something is not right about her society, which is perhaps not as invested in peace as she has grown up believing.

Fans of Suzanne Collins’s [amazon_link id=”0545265355″ target=”_blank” ]Hunger Games[/amazon_link] series will find much to like in Divergent, the first book of a planned trilogy. Tris is a tough-as-nails heroine not too different from Katniss, though with perhaps a little less confidence. Four is an interesting counterpart and love interest, too (more interesting than Peeta or Gale, in my opinion). The craziness of the Dauntless initiation will remind some of the Hunger Games, and certainly the dystopic future set in a world where people divided based on some arbitrary factor will look familiar, but the factions are more interesting than the districts of Panem. Your station in life in Panem depends so much on which district you are born into, and it seems fairly difficult to change your stars in Collins’s series, but choices determine everything about who you are in Roth’s dystopic Chicago, which I liked because it puts more responsibility into the hands of everyone. Rather than a ruthless Capitol victimizing everyone, Roth writes about a society in which everyone is responsible, to some degree, for the way things are, and are also ignorant of some facets of the society. I haven’t seen a lot of people compare this novel to [amazon_link id=”0547424779″ target=”_blank” ]The Giver[/amazon_link], but I thought of that book often as I read. In Lois Lowry’s novel, the society seems perfect, but Jonas discovers that they systematically execute those who are weak or ill or old. Feelings are suppressed. No one can see color. The weight of discovering what his society is drives him to escape, an event which might destroy his society, given that he has been chosen to the the society’s Receiver. I suspect something similar will happen with Tris. I can’t help but feel she’ll upend the whole society. Unlike Katniss, who knows her society is corrupt and unfair, both Jonas and Tris discover the darkness in their society when they both come of age and choose their role or have it chosen for them.

Divergent is a gripping, edge-of-your-seat read. I read it on the bus, which was a mistake because it nearly caused me to miss my stop several times and actually did cause me to miss my stop once. I can’t wait to read the next book in the series, [amazon_link id=”0062024043″ target=”_blank” ]Insurgent[/amazon_link], which is due out in May. The book leaves open several questions that I hope I learn the answers to before the end of the trilogy:

  • How did the society get like this? Lake Michigan is nothing more than a marsh. I want to know how that happened.
  • What is going on outside of Chicago? Are they the only people in the world, or just cut off from everywhere else?
  • If there are other people, do they have factions too, or is that just Chicago? If it’s just Chicago, what the heck is going on there?

I have other questions, but they’re a little spoilery.

I love dystopian novels. So much fun to read, and with the success of The Hunger Games, it looks like we’ve been seeing a lot of them lately.

I was glad I recently visited Chicago as it helped me visualize the scene much better than if I hadn’t, but I suspect Google Images and a good map would be nearly as helpful.

Oh, and I’m totally jealous of Veronica Roth, who wrote this debut novel when she was only 22 and studying creative writing at Northwestern.

Rating: ★★★★★

Other reviews of Divergent:

This one’s been on my TBR pile for a little while and qualifies as the children’s/YA choice for the Mixing it Up Challenge. Actually, it qualifies for sci-fi/fantasy, but I can’t double-dip.

 

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Catalyst, Laurie Halse Anderson

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0142400017″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]Catalyst[/amazon_image]Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel [amazon_link id=”0142400017″ target=”_blank” ]Catalyst[/amazon_link] is the story of Kate Malone, perfect student, driven athlete, minister’s daughter, and so dead-set on going to MIT that she hasn’t applied anywhere else. Since her mother’s death, Kate has held everything together through tightly-controlled organization. She makes she her brother has his asthma medication and that her family’s clothes are cleaned and pressed. With all this pressure, something has to give. Kate’s life starts spinning out of control when her neighbors, the Litches, lose their home to a fire and move in with her family while they rebuild their home, which means Teri Litch—the angry bully who used to pick on Kate—is now sharing her room.

Kate was not as likeable a heroine as some other characters Laurie Halse Anderson has written. Sometimes people need to be shown that their priorities are out of whack in a really harsh way, and to Kate’s credit, she gets it by the end of the book. She’s fairly typical of a lot of overachievers—driven, way too focused, wound so tight it’s a question of when not if they’re going to pop. I didn’t enjoy this book as much as Anderson’s other books, but Melinda Sordino of [amazon_link id=”0312674392″ target=”_blank” ]Speak[/amazon_link] has a cameo appearance; this novel takes place in the same school and community as Speak. The characters were interesting: they were layered and more complex than you usually see in YA (but typical of Laurie Halse Anderson, who is a brilliant writer). I just didn’t like them very much, and it was hard to root for them. Still, I would probably read anything that Laurie Halse Anderson wrote.

Rating: ★★★½☆

Full disclosure: I checked this book out of my school library.

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WWW Wednesdays: December 14, 2011

Posted on by Dana

WWW WednesdaysTo play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

I am currently reading Laurie Halse Anderson’s YA novel [amazon_link id=”0142400017″ target=”_blank” ]Catalyst[/amazon_link]. It was, incidentally, mentioned in the most recent book I read by Sherman Alexie: [amazon_link id=”0316013684″ target=”_blank” ]The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian[/amazon_link]. It’s one of Junior Spirit’s favorite books. I also recently read [amazon_link id=”0142402516″ target=”_blank” ]Looking for Alaska[/amazon_link] by John Green. You can read my reviews of these books here and here. John Green will be in Atlanta next month, and I think my daughter wants to go see him. I have also finished Stephen King’s novel [amazon_link id=”0451169522″ target=”_blank” ]Misery[/amazon_link] since I last checked in with WWW Wednesdays. My review of that book can be found here.

I am not totally sure what I’ll read next. It’ll be something from this list. I have a lot of those books already, many on my Kindle, and it seems about time for a Kindle book.

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