Speak

15 Jul 2009 Leave a Comment

by smizerak in Uncategorized Tags: , ,

It is official:  I am now a Laurie Halse Anderson junkie.  I have really enjoyed any book I have ever read by her and Speak is a great example of why.

Melinda goes to a huge summer bash with one of her best friends right before starting their freshmen year in high school.  Melinda feels so cool being at the big party with all the high school kids.  She has a few beers and starts to feel tipsy.  Andy, a handsome football player even starts flirting with her.  One thing leads to another and ultra-cool Andy turns into a monster.  Melinda tries to fight back but in her drunken state is unable to find the words and her voice.  She tries to scream, “No!” but nothing comes out.  She returns to the party and immediately calls 911 but is still in shock and rendered speechless.  She says nothing, so the police show up and many of the students get busted.  Melinda escapes the police and walks home only to find her house empty and her parents mysteriously missing.  Her parents don’t come home until very late in separate vehicles raising suspicions that there may be trouble in her parents’ already strained marriage.  Melinda immediately becomes an outcast and is blamed for the bust.  She loses all of her friends and no one knows what has happened to her.

Melinda, still grieving over the rape and unable to find the words to talk about it with anyone, starts school as an outcast.  High school is hard enough and Melinda is going

through what many high school freshmen go through.  On top of things, her relationship with her parents is strained as her parents seem to fight frequently.  She is also unsure as to the mystery of where her parents had been on that night of the party so she doesn’t want to talk about it.

Her story is easy for teens to relate to because at the base of this, Melinda is dealing with regular high school stuff that many teens have to deal with.  Sometimes you wake up one day and it feels like your best friend has morphed into someone else overnight.  Only for Melinda, there is this added layer to her angst because of this terrible secret that is weighing on her soul.  She has no friends except for social butterfly wannabe Heather whom Melinda finds fake and in genuine.  Melinda keeps quiet and just takes in all that goes on around her trying not to be noticed.  She sees no point in going out on a limb to be social or make friends.  She is still very much affected by the rape and needs help but will not ask for it.  She gets more and more silent as the school year goes on.  Her grades slip and she cuts class to hide in the janitor’s closet.  Even her parents notice she is barely speaking.

What Melinda does find is an outlet in her art class with Mr. Freedman.  Mr. Freedman challenges Melinda artistically and she slowly starts to use this outlet as way of working through her issues.  Her “tree” assignment leads to some introspective examinations of her home life and although she receives praise for some of her work, she is always left challenged to push herself further.

The story is written in a very engaging way.  At first you aren’t really sure as the reader why Melinda is such a social outcast.  Slowly little pieces of the puzzle come together until you learn for certain all the details of her rape.  Melinda’s ex-best friend starts dating Andy the “IT” but when she tries to warn Rachel/Rochelle she is only called a jealous liar.  You keep reading to find out exactly what will happen as Andy starts to pop up around school harassing Melinda while dating Rochelle.  Everything finally comes out during a heated confrontation in Melinda’s janitor closet while Andy attacks her for a second time.  It is during this time, and after lasting the entire school year with barely speaking, that Melinda screams for her life and fights back.  She yells “No!” and screams for help and even manages to fend off Andy with a shard of broken mirror.  Her fighting attracts the attention of the nearby lacrosse team who come to her aid.  By the end of the book Melinda has decided she is ready to talk about what she has gone through and start to process her feelings.  She has even started to branch off and make a few friends by the end of the book.  After receiving her final art class grade the story ends with her about to open up to Mr. Freedman about all that has happened to her this year.

Even though this covers very gritty and serious subject matter, the book itself can be very funny at times.  Melinda is incredibly dark and cynical.  She is quite intelligent and witty.  She makes incredibly detailed and astute observations about the world around her in which she chooses not to speak.  She names teachers “Hairwoman” and “Mr. Neck” and “Principal Principal”.  She is almost an anti-hero hero that I feel many teens would relate to.  Some might even consider her borderline “emo”. She has a no-nonsense attitude about the ridiculousness of high school clichés and social standings after her ordeal at the party.  She misses her old friends and wants to fit in but at the same time views the clichés at school with disdain.  Her comments are very sarcastic but also spot-on as far as sounding like an accurate teenaged loner.  It would be a good read for noncommitted readers because the story keeps moving at a nice pace with short chapters and the author chooses to use interesting chapter headings rather than numbers.

I am not sure why the cover has a photo of a girl with two different colored eyes. I am not sure if this is something I missed in the story about Melinda or if it is supposed to represent something about her.  I am also astounded at how well this author can get into teen heads and accurately portray very real teens, with very real problems.  She can accurately portray teenagers whether they are boys like Tyler in “Twisted”, girls like Melinda in “Speak” or a bulimics like Lia in “Wintergirls”.  I think teens would appreciate the characters that Anderson creates as well and be able to relate to their problems while also learning something through her stories as they always seem to have a moral.

An Abundance of Katherines

15 Jul 2009 Leave a Comment

by smizerak in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

Published by Dutton Books, New York: 2006

215 pgs.

Recommended reading age: 15 and up

VOYA rating: 3P, 3Q

I really loved Looking for Alaska so I jumped at the chance to read some new characters from the head of John Green.  I was interested to see how completely different this book was compared to the very serious and somber world of Looking for Alaska.  It is a very humorous read with lots of great dialog between two newly graduated friends, Colin and Hassan but I was still slightly disappointed.

Colin is a “prodigy”, not a genius.  Clearly being told that he was prodigy and being incredibly good at useless things has messed with Colin’s psyche.  Although Colin is incredibly good at things like learning languages and anagramming things, he isn’t very good at coming up with original ideas and thoughts.  He still hasn’t had his “Eureka” moment and fears he never will.  To be praised as a prodigy at a young age and then growing up to produce nothing of merit has left Colin feeling inadequate and depressed.  Colin instead tries to find happiness in other ways like dating.  For poor Colin though, the dating scene is difficult.  Since his anagramming fetish has caused him to be attracted to “Katherines” Colin keeps coming across them and every time, he gets dumped.  The day after graduating from high school and on the cusp of his future, Colin is dumped again for the 19th time and this time it stings worse than normal.  Colin is truly in love and infatuated with this Katherine.  Colin is left utterly heartbroken by Katherine the 19th.

In an attempt to take his mind off things and get Colin out of a funk, best friend Hassan (who by the way, is not a terrorist) shows up to wish Colin away on a random road trip.  What happens next is a strange series of events that are at some time boring but other times hilarious.  Hassan and Colin wind up meeting Lindsey, a young store clerk in Gutshot, and before they know it, they are staying with her and her mother being paid to help do research about Gutshot.  Colin also finally has his own Eureka moment and he decides to formulate a theory that will mathematically determine whether or not a person is a dumper or a dumpee.  The trio gets into a few madcap adventures, one that involves a crazed “feral pig”.  They also have some more tame adventures that involve learning about the history of Gutshot through the townspeople as slowly Lindsey and Colin start to get closer and closer.  Colin finds himself attracted to Lindsey even though he still keeps thinking about Katherine the 19th and obsessed with his formula.

The story deals a lot with teen friendships and teen relationships during that weird time just after graduation but right before moving off into the world on your own.  It is a time that older teens deal with and can struggle with because you are leaving one part of your life behind to go of and do something new and sometimes scary.  For Colin, it takes the persistence of his best friend to get him out into the world and out of his depression.  Parts of this novel drag and got boring for me to read but then there would always be this hilarious dialog going on to keep me with the story.

Something that rally bothered me to no end was the use of the word “fug” which is consistently used in place of the real “f-bomb”.  I was confused and bewildered as Colin and Hassan would use every other swear word in the book but “fuck”.  It was utterly ridiculous.  It made me want to stop reading the book.  I was only able to get over the use of the word “fug” because about halfway through the book the word “fug” is explained.

According to the book, Norman Mailer had gotten in trouble with a publisher once for using the word “fuck” too many times.  So to mess with his publisher, he went back and changed all the “fucks” to “fugs”.  In An Abundance of Katherines, it is explained that Hassan and Colin found this so hilarious that they in turn decided to only use the word “fug”.  Once I got to this part it didn’t bother as much but it was still annoying.  They didn’t slip up once! Not even during a fist-fight that leaves both Hassan and Colin badly bruised.  I kept thinking of all the negativity and controversy that surrounded Looking for Alaska after it won the Printz award and how some people wanted it banned from bookshelves for its realistic language and content.  I couldn’t help but wonder if the use of “fug” was a direct hit at those critics and publishers who didn’t appreciate the authentic language and swearing that he included in that book.  If this is true then John Green succeeded in making those critics look just as “mother-fugging” ridiculous as the word “fug” itself.

I wouldn’t suggest this book to a reluctant or noncommitted reader because of all the graphs and footnotes.  I can appreciate a good footnote but they got a little too boring after awhile.  I still read them but I found myself skimming over them rather quickly.  I also got bored with the graphs.  Some readers really enjoy this type of nonlinear story telling so for that clientele this would be a great book.  Since there wasn’t a lot of action in the book I felt that the copious graphs and footnotes only made the story drag.

I agree with what was said in class about the cover of this book.  It looked too girly when this is a story that would really be more relatable to guy readers.  The girly rainbow cover was not a good idea.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian

15 Jul 2009 Leave a Comment

by smizerak in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,

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

Published by Litter Brown and Company, New York: 2007

240 pages

Recommended reading age: 16 and up

VOYA rating: 4P, 4W, JS

This is a realistic fiction books that feels very much like an actual memoir.  It is technically fiction but based on Sherman Alexie’s very real experiences growing up.  It is fun, witty, humorous and authentic in the language and teen issues presented. It uses sexual references, talks about masturbation and deals with bullying and friendship issues from the perspective of an intelligent adolescent boy growing up on a reservation.

Junior lives on the reservation with his sister and parents.  Growing up on the “rez” means growing up in near poverty with a poor educational system.  Alcoholism and other drug addictions are part of Junior’s every day life.  Aside from the normal struggles that Native Americans typically deal with growing up on a reservation, Junior has the extra added bonus of being gifted with “water on the brain”.  In other words, Junior was born with too much cerebral spinal fluid which now results in occasional seizures.  He has to be extra careful not to injure himself and any head injury might prove fatal.  This is all bad news for a boy growing up in an environment where fighting and bullying is a part of every day life.  At least Junior has his strong, loyal and scary best friend Rowdy to help him get through each day.

One day, after “accidentally” acting out and throwing a text book at one of his teachers, Junior is convinced of his potential and is motivated to leave the rez for a better school system.  He takes the advice of his teacher and convinces his parents to allow him to attend Reardan, much to the chagrin of Rowdy and his other fellow classmates.  Rowdy and Junior have a huge falling out which results in Junior getting decked.  Junior becomes the “white lover” of his peers.

Junior goes off the Reardan and sees what life is like off the reservation in a fancy private school.  Although he does well in school he finds that it is hard to fit in.  Without Rowdy to help him bully his way into the social scene he starts to try and bully himself in on his own.  Junior quickly learns that although adolescence has its challenges no matter where you are from, the same social rules from the rez aren’t the same at Reardan.  After trying to pick a fight with a kid for cracking a racist joke Junior learns that fighting isn’t as important or as necessary around here as it is back home.  He even manages to get himself a spot on the basketball team, something that he and Rowdy used to spend much of their time playing while they were still friends.  Junior meets a girl named Penny and eventually they even start dating.  He makes a few friends and manages to make a decent name for himself on the basketball team.  Things start to look up for Junior.

This frail peace doesn’t last for Junior.  Not only does he deal with normal high school issues like girl trouble and school work.  He has plenty other things to deal with like the fact that his alcoholic father can’t remember to pick him up from school half the time.  He is from a different socioeconomic class than the other students and fights to keep the fact that he is poor a secret.  On the other hand, he now is not accepted by his own people on the reservation.  Above all, he misses his old best friend Rowdy a great deal.  Junior is stuck in-between two worlds and feels like he can’t quite fit into either one.  Also, Junior’s sister dies after leaving home in search of her own hope.  She dies one night in her trailer where she lives with her husband after a drunken party.  Junior blames himself citing that she only ever left home to begin with because he left first.

For Junior there is always death on the reservation due to the lifestyle that many of his people live which is fueled by crime and alcohol.  For someone who grows up in such a dark place he seems to be able to remain incredibly well-adjusted by using his humor and his doodling to make it through each day.

Junior eventually finds a type of balance between his two worlds after going head to head with Rowdy and his other old classmates as the their two schools play each other in basketball.  Junior learns hat even if it isn’t easy, sometimes you have to take your life into your own hands go out in search of a new and better one.  This book shows teens that using humor, your friends, and finding some type of positive outlet, even the direst of circumstances can become manageable.  It is a very hopeful book that doesn’t come across as preachy and it would be very entertaining for the older teenaged reader.  It also has lots of great illustrations which are meant to symbolize the comics and drawings that Junior does as a means of coping and dealing with his stress.  I would suggest it for ages 15 and up because of the language but younger teens would be able to understand these themes and issues discussed in the book.

The cover is funny too because it depicts a stereotypical little Indian and Cowboy toy flying through space.  It reminds the reader how Junior is stuck in space between these two worlds trying to find a way to exist in both.

The Arrival

15 Jul 2009 Leave a Comment

by smizerak in Uncategorized Tags: , ,

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

Published by Arthur A. Levin Books, New York, 2006

There are no page numbers

Recommended reading age: 12 and up

VOYA rating: 2P, 2Q MJS

I find it funny that a graphic novel with no words at all would nearly leave me with no words to write.  I am almost speechless.  I don’t know what to say about this strange graphic novel.  I have no idea what just happened.  I keep going over pages again and re-viewing the panels but I don’t really get it.

I am guessing this is an interpretation of the immigrant experience, hence the title, “The Arrival”.  The story depicts a man, leaving his family whom he seems to adore, as he boards a Titanic-like ship to go to a foreign land.  The man arrives in the new land but everything is strange.  He can’t communicate.  He can’t speak.  Things are different here than back home.  All the signs and letters that would normally be words in English are drawn with strange symbols that the reader can’t make sense of.  I assume this is the illustrator’s way of showing us how hard it is for an immigrant from a different country to have to come here and not be able to communicate.  The illustrator then takes this a step further.  Some things have strange and arbitrarily drawn shapes.  For example, there is this strange cup that the man brings home which he keeps on the windowsill and eventually hatches birds in it.  The man works in a non-descript factory sorting something unidentifiable.  The “food” all looks rather strange and resembles oddly shaped vegetables with tentacles.  At one point giant vacuum cleaning guys show up and suck the world clean and the man just narrowly escapes with someone whom I believe to be a shopkeeper.  It was all just plain weird and reminded me of a Pink Floyd music video.

I could accept the fact that I am confused if that was the point.  If the illustrator wanted me to be confused so I could understand how frustrating and confusing it is to come to America for the first time when you are from another country.  If this was the point then the goal was reached.  I would be alright with that.  However, there are these strange paper animals flying an swimming around and this odd vegetation everywhere.  There are these animals that resemble a Jim Hensen creation and other flying or floating animals that look like aliens or cats.  I seriously don’t get it.

Somehow the man’s family is able to join him.  They arrive in the same toll booth looking contraption that he originally did and are attached to what looks like a hot air balloon.  He somehow knows they are coming and runs to meet them.  They arrive and quickly you can tell that the girl is easily able to acclimate herself to the new way of life.  She is already giving direction to another person and seems to be communicating just fine rather than the dad who took awhile to understand his surroundings.  This is what would happen in real life too, as a younger mind would most likely absorb a new culture and language easier and quicker than their parents.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the illustrations.  I enjoyed looking at the photos.  I just couldn’t make sense of it.  This a beautifully illustrated graphic novel completely devoid of any text. It is done in all sepia tones. There are no thought or speech bubbles.  There are no labels or internal dialog.  All the reader has to go on are the beautiful illustrations and their own imaginations.  It might open up interesting discussions in the classroom or in a book discussion.  It might be fun to sit as a group and try to figure out what exactly is going on in the story.  The illustrations remind me of M.C. Escher and also a bit like “The Snowman” by Raymond Briggs.  They are admittedly gorgeous and very imaginative.  It just wasn’t really my taste of graphic.

I think kids and teens would be intrigued and interested at first to start this book, but I think they might get bored quickly without a little more indication and direction about the plot or story line.  Some panels are huge, two-page layouts while other pages have very tiny detailed squares all lined up on the same page.  I still don’t know that there would be variance to keep a teen interested enough to finish the book.

The cover makes the book look like it is going to be a science fiction graphic about aliens from outer space.  I don’t think that is what the book was about.  But I could be wrong.

SKIM

15 Jul 2009 Leave a Comment

by smizerak in Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

Skim by Mariko Tamaki

Illustrated bu Jillian Tamaki

Published by Groundwood Books, Toronto: 2008.

143 pgs.

Recommended reading age: 15 and up

VOYA rating: 3P, 3Q, JS, G

This is a strange little graphic novel with some nice meat behind it.  The story takes place in 1993 in a Catholic school where you meet Kim, a training Wiccan.  Kim, or “Skim”, as she is called, is trying to become a witch with her best friend Lisa.  Only things at school have been happening and Kim isn’t so sure that she likes her friend Lisa as much as she used to.

First, Kim breaks her arm on accident falling offer her bike (or so we are told) which Lisa promptly makes fun of.  Then, a boy in school commits sluiced leaving his girlfriend Katie to mourn his loss in school.  Next Katie jumps of a roof (or so the rumors say) injuring herself and breaking her arm too.  All this talk of suicide and depression gets the school counselors and parents going on overdrive, looking out for any other teens that might be suffering from any signs of depression.  The guidance counselor even specially asks Kim if her “Goth tendencies” aren’t making her more sensitive than others.  (Kim is not Goth.)  Everyone starts to worry that perhaps one suicide will start a trend and prompt fragile teens like Kim to go over the edge.  Some of the popular girls even start a ridiculous “Celebrate Life” club and force themselves on poor, unwilling Katie who rather be left alone.

Kim is not suicidal, but she is depressed.  Even though she is slowly getting more and more fed up with her best friend Lisa, she has found a special connection to her English teacher Ms. Archer who happens to be a woman.  Basically you learn that Kim is gay, or at the very least, questioning her sexuality, and has strong romantic feelings for Ms. Archer.  The two begin having secret meetings in the woods to smoke during the school day.  They strike up a relationship of sorts although the book never tells you specifically how intimate or serious the relationship is.  For a brief moment in time, Kim actually feels alive and nearly happy.

On top of everything going on at school with the teachers on suicide watch, and the new crush on her English teacher, Kim’s home life is no picnic either.  She comes from a broken home with a mother who is never around and a father who has suffered two heart attacks.  Suddenly, one day Ms. Archer is gone and you never truly learn why although one would assume it has something to do with kissing Kim one day.  Kim starts an obsessive infatuation for Ms. Archer which involves finding her house, visiting her at home, leaving her letters and tarot cards and longing for her.  Before long Kim gets the news that Ms. Archer will be leaving school and Kim feels alone again.

Even though Kim still has Lisa, she is really getting fed up with Lisa’s know-it-all attitude and mean streak.  Still, who else does she have?  Slowly a friendship starts to build between Katie, the “widowed” ex-girlfriend and Kim as the two “Cast-offs” starts to talk more in school.  One of the turning points n the story comes after Kim agrees to get fixed up with Lisa for a date to the school dance.  Kim dies her hair and goes to the dance but runs into a distraught Katie who is frustrated over all the “celebration of life” paraphernalia that has been going around.  Kim and Katie get to talking and start to form a friendship that slowly builds after the dance.  By the end of the novel Lisa has found a new boyfriend but is still as pretentious and snobby as she ever was but manages to make amends with Kim.  It is hinted at that Kim and Katie will start a relationship as one of the last panes of the story shows Katie’s beret walking off into the woods to meet Kim, much like how Kim used to meet with her teacher Ms. Archer.

I think this is a good book for teens even though I personally didn’t care for it entirely.  The illustrations were all in black and white and done very well but some of the lapses in time bothered me when I didn’t know what actions were happening in between the panes.  I also got confused with which panes to read when and didn’t always read the talking bubbles in the correct order.  I liked the details and the style that the characters drawn in.  The fact that this deals with changing friendships is good because teens go through a lot of changes during that time in their life.  One day your best friend and you seem to drift apart and you either make new friends or find yourself alone.  This is what Kim goes through.  On top o that, this is a book that really examines sexuality and bisexuality in teens when they are just starting to experiment and figure out who they really are inside.  Katie’s ex-boyfriend was also rumored to have been gay which might have been part of the reason he committed suicide.  The story shows teens finding their way, exploring who they are, and moving on after loss and tragedy one day at a time.  Kim is shown in a positive light as she makes new friends with Katie and the two start a new relationship together.

The cover art is a close-up color illustration of Kim with her hand on her head, staring off into space.  It makes her look like she is in dire despair, when really, she is just introverted and thinking.  This is a theme of the novel.  Everyone just assumes that Kim is obviously suicidal when all she is doing is just processing the world in a different way than other more socially accepted teens.  Also, I wondered why exactly the writers chose to place this story in the year 1993.

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