Closing Thoughts

Now that class has unofficially ended and only my final course proposal is due, I have some closing thoughts to wrap up on this class, and this blog. I have a much different perspective on young adult literature than when I entered the class, for which I am glad. It's not the class I signed up for at all, but I think I have a new venue for getting my students to open up and explore themselves in ways I really think they need in high school. Many young adult books may not be schools for style in the way that the classics are, but they can open students emotionally and create meaningful discussion among young people. Much of my educational philosophy is about helping students find their own voices, and much of that comes from exploring different perspectives, which I want to fuel through literature and reading. I will always be a strong defender of the classics--you could never take the Shakespeare nerd out of my soul--but I see where young adult literature can fit into the modern high school classroom, and plan on using it where I can in my own future career.

Final Final Project

I've worked through all of my previous ideas for a final project for my Adolescent in American Literature course for which this entire blog was created, and wanted to share with you my imagined course proposal.

I am writing a syllabus and narrative proposal for a high school course exploring Gender and Sexuality in Young Adult literature. We'll be reading a group of texts that explore the entire range of gender and sexual identities and the issues these variations raise. As an entire class, we'll be reading:
The Heart Has Its Reasons-Michael Cart
This book would serve as our text, tracing LGBT issues in YA novels from the beginning of the genre in 1964 with The Outsiders all the way through modern texts. There are many, many novels mentioned and analyzed here, and the students can use these references for future reading guides.

My Most Excellent Year-Steve Kluger
I want to start with a positive portrayal of what it means to be gay today. There are a saddening and staggering number of heartbreaking stories about the LGBT communities out there, both fact and fiction, so I want to give my students a hopeful note with their first class novel. I have already written a review of this book on this blog, but in particular want to give students a quote from the main gay character's father: "As I tucked him in, I realized we'd never had the 'I'm gay' conversation. Has this generation made it superfluous? If only."

The Perks of Being A Wallflower-Stephen Chbosky
This is an extremely popular novel with young people, but it is one of those aforementioned heartbreaking stories. There are two secondary characters dealing with different stages of coming out in their high school, while the primary character and narrator is dealing with questioning his budding sexuality. This is a great chance to encourage students to delve into more complex definitions of sexuality, and the levels of acceptance that they meet.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic-Alison Bechdel
To get students experimenting with genre a bit, this is a graphic novel dealing with a young girl realizing she is a lesbian, while also finding out that her father was having homosexual affairs for most of her childhood only weeks before he is killed. There are classic literary references left and right in this book which students might need help understanding, plus the unusual genre will make this a tough enough read to really pull apart.

Kissing the Witch-Emma Donoghue
This is a book I discovered just while researching for this project and ended up really enjoying. All of the short stories in this book are retellings of classic fairy tales from a lesbian or feminist perspective, creating some radically different imaginings of familiar stories. I would love to pair this with a multimedia project involving the early music video for the Sara Bareilles song "Fairy Tale," a song which includes the lyrics, "Tall blonde lets out a cry of despair/Says 'Would have cut it myself if I knew men could climb hair/I'll have to find another tower somewhere and keep away from the windows.'"

Girl Goddess #9-Francesca Lia Block
There is one short story in particular I want students to read from this book, dealing with a teenager realizing one of her lesbian moms was once her father. Much of the short story deals with a teenager coping with having two moms, but at the closing, deals very positively with transsexual identity issues. This would be a happy and easy note to end full-class reads with.

Then the class will be participating in literature circles reading the work of Julie Ann Peters, a leading author for LGBT YA novels, including:
Luna
Grl2Grl
Between Mom and Jo
Far from Xanadu
Keeping You A Secret

The class would then end with a multimedia project, very open-ended, about what they think gender and/or sexuality mean. They would have to illustrate the continuum of one or both of those societal constructs as they see it in the modern world using some sort of creative format. I'm imagining a range of photos, videos, paintings, poems, short stories, and nonfiction papers for each student to explain these complicated concepts to the best of their ability.

This would be a tough push to get into a high school, but one I know I can explain and justify as really necessary to students' complete development into adulthood. These are issues they should be able to explore in the safety of a classroom where they can be challenged and questioned and feel free to change their minds.

Musical Theatre and Reading--How could I NOT love it?!?

Another must-read book I have gleaned from this class: My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger! Focusing on multigenre novels, this particular story is told through journal entries, English assignment, text conversations, instant message conversations, memos, and transcripts of meetings. This massive collection of forms creates a really intense sense of community as these characters deal with coming of age in many different ways. The three main perspectives of T.C., Alé, and Augie each have to come to terms with their pasts and becoming stronger adults. T.C. has been dealing with the death of his mother since he was only six and is now acting as a hero figure to a boy living in a foster home for deaf children, Alé is expected to join the family "business" of foreign diplomacy while also being the new girl in school, and Augie seems to be the only one who doesn't realize he's gay. Even with all of these huge issues, this story at its essence is about how much love can save us. The voices are strong, real, and bring so much youthful hope (even from the adults' eyes). The ending includes a great surprise that I won’t give away here, but definitely made me smile from ear to ear!

I loved this book for its humor, adept weaving of so many genres into one seamless story, and hopeful message, but above all, this novel handled minority perspectives in the most effective way I could imagine. The minority perspectives in this novel aren’t treated with gloves on, nor are they defined by that one aspect that makes them a minority. T.C. has two aunts married to each other, but it is never questioned or forced; it simply is. At one point, Augie’s father ruminates, “And while I was tucking him in, I realized that we’d never had the ‘I’m gay’ conversation. Has this generation finally made it superfluous? If only.” The big surprise ending has nothing to do with race, sexuality, gender, or ability; it is simply about these characters’ interests and personalities. If we expect prejudice to fade, we should be able to recognize differences without making them someone’s defining characteristic. This really was a magnificent book that I can imagine in my future classroom.

Suggested Grade Level: 9th grade

Appropriateness: emotional issues, length (400+ pages)

Classroom use: discussion of sexuality and minority perspectives, and/or multigenre writing

Race and Relatability

We Were Here by Matt de la Peña brought up some really harsh feelings in my Adolescent Literature class, it was pretty shocking. The story itself deals with Miguel, a young boy of mixed Mexican heritage, living in juvenile hall after committing a mysterious crime. This mystery drove the story for me, so I won't give any spoilers here, but it definitely contained the emotional heart of the story in my opinion (not so for my classmates, apparently...). The judge demanded that Miguel keep a journal during his time in the boys' home, so the entire story is taught in a very personal strong voice in the form of journal entries. Miguel, stuck in juvi, tries to better himself by working through the library, making for some really great text pairing options with its mention of several really great classics. Making friends with Rondell and Mong, each with some obvious severe problems of their own, Miguel decides to run away to Mexico, hoping with his new friends to escape to a better life. The journey, however, is one more about self-discovery than it is about a physical destination, so it should come as no surprise that the boys never make it to Mexico; life very rarely turns out as we plan as teenagers.

I am frustrated by how much race played into the development of these characters--there were some really strong voices and interesting story elements, but almost every discussion about Miguel, Mong, and Rondell starts with their racial status. Our classroom discussion this week got very heated because of this, I feel, when I wish we had focused on the mystery of Miguel's crime even though the perspective is so directly first-person in this journal format. I didn't think about it until I read one other blogger's point, but the issue of race with Rondell is really handled poorly--he is obviously mentally challenged, a sort of modern day George from Of Mice and Men, with a slow wit but loving affability. His particular strengths include basketball and strong loyalty. Combine all of these traits, and you have an African American character nearing caricature status and tiptoeing into very offensive territory. From what I've seen of Matt de la Peña's other two novels, he tends to focus on race in young adults in a way I think has been done more effectively by other YA authors. There are some really compelling elements to this story, but it definitely pushes some buttons that I'm not sure it means to push. I'd recommend it outside of class to boys looking for a more rough-around-the-edges narrator, but otherwise I'd stay away.

Suggested grade level: 10th grade
Appropriateness: racial issues to be handled sensitively, violence
Classroom use: outside of class only

Graceling--Delving in the Science Fiction World

Kristen Cashore's Graceling is the first true-blooded fantasy novel I've really worked through. I just can't get into them, but I toughed it out for our class discussion. This story deals with the world of Seven Kingdoms and the special power, or "grace," of Katsa--the power to fight and kill with her bare hands. Katsa's uncle, King Randa, keeps her employed doing his dirty work, a graceling himself able to manipulate others' thoughts. One of her missions, however, introduces her to Prince Po, with whom she falls deeply in love, a particularly difficult situation when she has trained herself not to feel too much when she must work as a killer. Po, graced himself, is able to meet Katsa fairly in battle, using her talent for fighting to grow close to her and make her more human. Po and Katsa bond over their suspicion of the current power structure, and go on a sort of adventure to turn the established order upside down. This book expresses well the awkwardness of being a teenager, of feeling like being different, even if it is a gift, is mostly a burden.

I've never been a sci-fi/fantasy type of reader. A fervent supporter of the classics in most genres, I have yet to get through a single J.R.R. Tolkein novel. I've always felt that sci-fi writers get to break the rules in whatever way they want, they get to "cheat" so to speak, in the way they explore the problems of our current world. In addition to my resentment of the sci-fi genre in general, I also had some problems with repetition of other novels' major themes. If you've read some of my previous posts, you'll see how much I enjoyed Looking for Alaska, and my analysis of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. This novel also presents a strong female character searching for self and truth, but whereas those two titles deal with a figurative "fighting the man," Graceling gets to present that same struggle literally. That sort of translation into a literal battle just feels like a cop-out to me. Katsa does take a uniquely strong anti-marriage stance, saying that giving herself to Po in marriage would be taking away her freedom. I can't quite figure out how it would be much different than the current relationship she has with him, but the assertion was a pleasantly bold one. Overall, I would recommend this book to a student needing that strong female experience but looking for something more in the fantasty realm; it just isn't my personal cup of tea.

Suggested Grade Level: 10th grade
Appropriateness: some violence, some sexuality
Classroom use: literature circles dealing with strong female narrators

Final Project

I'm beginning to consider my final project options for my Young Adult Literature course, and want to put them out there for future editing and revision. Choosing between a unit plan, a course proposal, and a course video is going to be pretty difficult. So far, here are my ideas:
Lit circles-Banned books
Catcher in the Rye
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Looking for Alaska
The Lovely Bones
Go Ask Alice

Lit circles-Gender identity and sexuality (LGBT issues)
Stone Butch Blues
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead
My Brother Has AIDS
The Laramie Project

Course proposal-LGBT Young Adult Literature
Above texts

Text Pairing unit plan and/or video-
The Book Thief
The Diary of Anne Frank

Dating, Love, and Sex

In discussing YA novels that focus on dating, love, and sexuality, we read and discussed The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. This novel is the story of a teen girl at an upper class boarding school, who grows from awkward gawky girl into a stunning young woman over one summer. Coming back to school the next year, Frankie gets used to the new attention, and begins dating cool senior Matt. However, Frankie's new boyfriend is a member of the school's all-male secret society, The Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds. Feeling a victim of her circumstances, being female and judged on her looks by the "cool crowd," Frankie covertly tries to take over this secret society by coordinating pranks through manipulative emails. When Frankie must face the consequences of her actions, she brings the reader to strong criticism of gender double-standards in a way students haven't considered before. It is a fun story for teens in its sense of secrecy and danger while exploring gender issues in a world fairly close to their own.

This novel is a tough one for me to place in a classroom. There are definitely some interesting aspects of the novel I would want to explore with students, including some fun with wordplay, a couple really great metaphors, and an interesting narrator perspective. However, this is a novel that deals, on the plot level, mostly with dating. There is some room for teaching Marxist and feminist criticism out of this book, and while I do like the idea of using easier material to teach difficult concepts like literary criticism, there is no getting around the pretty simple plot line of this book. I'm so torn, because it would be nice to see kids working on literary criticism without spending class time summarizing plot because of difficult language. Still, I think there are better books to do so with, including earlier review book Looking for Alaska. In many ways, I see The Disreputable History as the poor man's Looking for Alaska--a strong female narrator that boys swoon for, finding a way to subvert the power stuck in upper-class patriarchal society, but without the stunning style and greater life lessons of John Green's novel.

Suggested Grade Level: 9th-10th grade
Appropriateness: Some language and sexuality, subversion of authority

Read "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak!

Read this book.

No, seriously, I mean it. Read. This. Book.

I picked this book up when it was on the “Our staff recommends…” shelf with 5 staffers’ names on the description card. Only when I got it home, having devoured the first chapter on the way, did I realize that it was a Printz Award Honor book.

The Book Thief is the story of Liesel Meminger, a young girl living through the Holocaust, as narrated by Death. Yes, you read that right. Death here is not your hooded skeleton with a scythe lurking in the shadows, however; he wants a vacation from carrying souls, and it breaks his heart to see the living survivors he has to leave behind. It’s hard not to give away spoilers here, as Death only runs into Liesel when he is taking someone from her, and he does describe her as “an expert at being left behind.” I can tell you that Liesel is given to foster parents in a suburb of Munich at a very young age, not fully understanding until Hitler’s rise to power why her mother had to give her up. She tries to grow up as normally as possible, with a ravenous desire to learn despite her humble background, her current poverty, and the tumultuous political situation. Her home becomes a sanctuary for a young Jewish man, and she has to understand moral complexities very early in her life.

I don’t mind skimming over the plot points here in the attempt to avoid spoilers, because it is really the style and figurative language of the book that makes it so wonderful. In an interview, Markus Zusak talks about the multiple drafts it took to get this narrator right; Death is weary of his eternal job, worn down by the horrible things he sees in Nazi Germany. He sees the world with an unending framework, so metaphor weighs heavy on everything he sees. Color plays importantly into his view of the world, and it creates some beautiful images for the reader. This book’s central theme about the power of words and ideas, to manipulate in Hitler’s case and to overcome for Liesel, is an important one for teenagers, and one that has never been told so perfectly in a Holocaust novel. The prose of this book was stunning and touching, with a style entirely its own. Please do yourself and your students a favor by reading and assigning The Book Thief, wherever you can fit it and whatever means it takes.

Suggested grade level: 9^th-12^th grade

Appropriateness: violence/death, dark themes, length (500+ pages)

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party

For this week, our Young Adult Literature class theme is Printz Award winners and Honor books, a category specifically reserved for young adult novels of high value and literary quality. How to define value and literary quality is a whole argument in itself, but hopefully one day I’ll get to that in this blog. I personally chose to read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (review coming next), while our entire class read The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson. Both books are historical fiction with very different takes on the genre.

Octavian Nothing is the story of the son of an African princess being raised by a secret society in pre-revolutionary Boston. The Novanglian College of Lucidity is working on an experiment, giving Octavian the same premier education as European princes, to determine if race has any effect on intelligence. Among their intellectual experiments, the society also works with medicine, trying a primitive inoculation against smallpox that goes awry. As the revolution begins, the society trips up, and Octavian goes on the run. Here Octavian’s voice ends for a long while, and the rest of the novel is a multigenre experience recounting his recapture and slavery, experiencing a sort of physical imprisonment where his intellectual imprisonment ended.

This book would be a hard sell to high school students. The idea of historical fiction can make history lessons more interesting, and can work really well for interdisciplinary teaching. This book, however, I don’t think is the one to do it. The entire first half of the story details Octavian’s education and experience with the College of Lucidity through his point of view, and this is a slow section. The language, for one thing, attempts to recreate early American highly educated ways of speaking, but it makes the first half of the book very difficult to get through. There isn’t much action to be seen in this section either, compounding how slowly it moves. I appreciate the themes of freedom that the book raises, making intellectual imprisonment the true suppression of freedom. Young adults could use this sort of illustration of the power of rebellion to funnel their incredible energy. Still, acknowledging that high school students can be difficult to motivate, a novel that was tough for a college student to plow through is a tough expectation for younger students.

Suggested grade level: 10th-11th grade
Appropriateness: racial issues, difficulty level

If utopia literally means "no place," where is DYStopia?

The Hunger Games by Susanne Collins is a young adult dystopian novel, a story that takes place in a dark future marked by harsh government control. Each year, the 12 districts of the new North America must send one male and one female between twelve and eighteen years old to participate in a televised battle to the death. The story's protagonist, Katniss, is from the poorest of the 12 districts, and volunteers for the Hunger Games to take the place of her younger sister, despite having to battle against young people from much wealthier districts who have been training for most of their lives. Upon arriving in the capital to prepare for the Games, Katniss experiences something akin to today's reality shows, creating looks and entire personalities suited for better mass consumption. Katniss develops a relationship with Peeta, the other competitor chosen from her district, but has to play the game to stay alive. The game itself is built up very well, very high-stakes and tense. The characters are well-developed, and as far as dystopian novels go, this story raises a lot of societal and critical criticisms that students would benefit from critically reflecting on.
Still, I've never personally been a fan of sci-fi/fantasty, because I feel like they get to bend the rules in a way I don't appreciate as much. Many of these stories get to create a reality where they critique current society in a way that avoids offending their readers. They get sort of a free pass by creating their own rules for criticizing society, and I've never been able to really find myself sold by any author's set of rules.
Still, in trying to think about this story critically, I started thinking about the types of dystopian stories that are told, and some of the source material from which The Hunger Games was drawn. These stories warning us against the dangers of government control and our own overindulgence in entertainment have been told in a lot of different ways, and with a lot of different predicted outcomes. So, as something of a thesis to this blog post:
When the Ancient Greeks told the story of Theseus of Athens being selected by Crete to battle the Minotaur;
when Battle Royale ups the stakes of a state-sponsored reality game to the death;
when the movie Gamer tells of a world where prisoners are used as live characters in a video game;
when TV’s “Jimmy Neutron” features aliens who will destroy planets based on the outcome of a game:
Does dystopian literature still serve a purpose, when none of these situations have come true for centuries?
Do dystopian novels really try to predict the future? Or are we fooling ourselves into thinking that “dystopia” is somewhere beyond the here-and-now?
If "utopia" literally translates to "no place," and "dystopia" is its opposite, where is dystopia?
This is the type of question I think students should be grappling with when reading dystopian novels, rather than just summarizing plot assuming that this means they're analyzing the author's intent.

Suggested grade level: 10-11 grade
Appropriateness: some violence, dark themes

School shootings

Shooter by Walter Dean Myers is one of the first extremely successful multigenre novels that I’ve ever read. The novel tells the story of a high school shooting through police interviews, psychologist interviews, newspaper articles, diary entries, and medical reports. You get a sense that you’re a reporter or detective simply looking through the files, trying to figure out objectively what happened on that particular day. The three main first-person perspectives, from the 3 interviews and collection diary entries, are all those of self-proclaimed “outsiders,” students who feel alienated and isolated from their peers. This is the perspective of a lot of teen novels, as teens tend to worry so much about being included and part of a group, but Shooter gives this scenario a weight that made it powerful for me.

This book would be useful in a classroom talking about genre, while still dealing with very relevant teen issues. I love writers that experiment with genre, but not to make it easier for the reader. I really enjoyed Shooter because the multiple perspectives required a lot of work on the reader’s part. The violent nature of the book makes me wary of giving it to students much younger than 16, and the diary section takes on a lot of metaphor that would be appropriate to older students.Walter Dean Myers is definitely a force in the YA lit world, and from what I've seen, this book would be near the top of my list of his work to be read by teens.

Suggested grade level: 11^th grade

Appropriateness: strong violence, mention of sex

Experiencing death as a teenager....

Looking for Alaska by John Green tells the story of teenage Miles at a new boarding school he has chosen for himself in his search for "the Great Perhaps," as Rabelais put it. In his search for this mysterious grand future, he connects with roommate Chip, aka "the Colonel," and Alaska, a dangerous beauty that never wants to quite reveal her whole hand. This trio, along with their friends Takumi and Lara, form a sort of misfit band, smoking, drinking, and causing trouble where they can. At the climax of the story, Alaska leaves in the middle of the night after drinking heavily, crying and yelling about how sorry she is.
**Spoiler alert!**
Each chapter of the book is labeled "___ days before" or "___ days after," clearly marking the event that changed the development of every character in the story: Alaska's tragic and mysterious death that night. The rest of the novel honestly portrays the teenage attempts at grappling with death.

This book was beautifully written, and deals with a massive subject is a very creative way. When teens lose a peer, it is an entirely different experience and creates a new sense of community; they need to communicate with each other to realize that everyone else is just as confused and hopeless as they are, and that's okay. There were a lot of beautiful themes to this book, but I think my favorite was ambiguity and the acceptance thereof. From the very beginning, Miles leaves home looking for "the Great Perhaps." Considering the large amount of Buddhist philosophy later in the book, there was an obvious choice being made by choosing such an open-ended term to describe the future. This word choice sets up the entire central theme of ambiguity in a way that makes this novel undeniably YA--Miles must leave the safety of his childhood home to search out for himself the possibility of possibility, and find comfort in the ambiguity of adulthood. In one of their first conversations, Alaska poses to Miles a question about Simon Bolivar's last words--"How will I get out of this labyrinth?" Miles ponders the meaning of the labyrinth for the remainder of the novel, finally learning to accept that the labyrinth is living and dying and suffering and surviving, and we escape it with faith in the Great Perhaps. As John Green himself put it, "I was born into Bolivar’s labyrinth, and so I must believe in the hope of Rabelais’ Great Perhaps."
I would undoubtedly recommend this book to anyone with the time to read it thoroughly, and willing to spend the money on a copy to keep. There are passages in this book that I'm sure I will keep for years.

Recommended grade level: 10-12
Appropriateness: sexual content, drug use, language; has been challenged in schools, most likely making it more appropriate for an extracurricular read

Another play in the midst of madness

I'm going nuts trying to get a whole bunch of work done at once, along with two meetings tonight, so here goes nothing...

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is a play by Paul Lindel with only three main characters, all of them female and at very different life stages. The play focuses on the growth of Tillie despite the dangerous influences of her old sister, Ruth, and unbalanced mother Beatrice. Only occasionally do Nanny-an elderly boarder in their home-, Janice-Tillie's rival at the science fair-, and Mr. Goodman-Tillie's science teacher- enter the scene. Beatrice ruminates almost constantly on her own failure in life, and makes it clear that she will force the same on bright, promising Tillie. The plot itself centers around Tillie's science fair project, exposing marigold seeds to radioactivity to see how the dangerous energy will effect their growth--and therein lies the central metaphor! Tillie has prerecorded voice-overs about the significance of every atom from the Big Bang as the source of all life.

As a piece of literature, this may not be a great fit for students that aren't otherwise theatrically oriented. The stage directions alone are dripping in symbolic language, and the theatrical element of the voice-overs combined with the very every day plot action of the play makes for a pretty heavy show. The extremely specific set layout makes me think that this is a show that would make more sense being performed and seen by an audience than read on the page. Overall, it was a play I really enjoyed as a theatre minor, and think is a great read for anyone involved in theatre, but it doesn't really fit the bill of a Young Adult novel--too focused on metaphor than perspective. It's a great story of development of a young adult, but as I have learned, that does not make a YA novel!

Recommended grade level: 10-11, theatre classes
Appropriateness: doesn't fit the YA bill, but effective for a theatre study in high schools

Perks quotes

Since I feel like I'm on a roll with this blogging business, I wanted to give a little teaser of some of my favorite The Perks of Being A Wallflower quotes, from Stephen Chbosky:

"I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn't try to sleep with people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist.
I think you of all people would understand that because I think you of all people are alive and appreciated what that means. At least I hope you do because other people look to you for strength and friendship and it's that simple."

"So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."

"I have finished To Kill A Mockingbird. It is now my favorite book of all time, but then again, I always think that until I read another book."

"'Do you always think this much, Charlie?'
'Is that bad?' I just wanted someone to tell me the truth.
'Not necessarily. It's just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.'
'Is that bad?'
'Yes.'"

"'Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve.'"

"I wasn't raised very religiously because my parents wen to Catholic school, but I do believe in God very much. I just never gave God a name, if you know what I mean. I hope I haven't let Him down regardless."

"There is a feeling that I had Friday night after the homecoming game that I don't know if I will ever be able to describe except to say that it is warm. Sam and Patrick drove me to the party that night, and I sat in the middle of Sam's pickup truck. Sam loves her pickup truck because I think it reminds her of her dad. The feeling I had happened when Sam told Patrick to find a station on the radio. And he kept getting commercials. And commercials. And a really bad song about love that had the word 'baby' in it. And then more commercials. And finally he found this really amazing song about this boy, and we all got quiet.
Sam tapped her hand on the steering wheel. Patrick held his hand outside the car and made air waves. And I just sat between them. After the song finished, I said something.
'I feel infinite.'
And Sam and Patrick looked at me like I said the greatest thing they ever heard. Because the song was that great and because we all really paid attention to it. Five minutes of a lifetime were truly spent, and we felt young in a good way. I have since bought the record, and I would tell you what it was, but truthfully, it's not the same unless you're driving to your first real party, and you're sitting in the middle seat of a pickup with two nice people when it starts to rain."

More to be added when I'm not so exhausted!

Here it goes!

Alright, to cool down from post-VMA Kanye-bashing, I'm here with my very first book review! I want to start with Dog Sees God by Bert V. Royal. I'm not a huge fan of the "typical" Young Adult novels, as I just tend to get bored around 20 pages in. So to attempt to remedy this, I'm experimenting with different genres, focusing right now on dramatic literature.

Dog Sees God is a play dealing with an ensemble of adolescent characters in the throes of teenage turmoil: drug/alcohol use, sex, homosexuality, bullying, and just growing up. What goes unstated, however, is the fact that this cast is the teen versions of Charles Schultz's Charlie Brown characters. In past productions, this show has had an all-star cast, including John Gallagher Jr, Michelle Trachtenberg, Anna Paquin, and America Ferrara, Eliza Dushku. There are subtle references along the way to the characters' identity, including CB writing to his old pen pal, an old dog dying of rabies having eaten his best friend-a little yellow bird-, and lighting fire to the red hair of a certain little girl. The references are hard to catch sometimes, but I imagine the visuals of a production would help clue in the audience.
This is a tear-jerker of a play, featuring characters that generations have grown up with in extreme emotional pain. They face very massive choices in a very believable way, and it will definitely hit home to any reader who remembers these characters. There is a shocker of an ending that brought tears to my eyes quicker than several scenes along the way, as well as being very theatrically interesting in its creative staging. This play is a great read, too, because it spells out many of the choices that other plays leave to actors, directors, producers, etc., that would necessitate actually seeing the play performed.

Recommended grade level: 10-12
Appropriateness: mature themes not appropriate for inside the classroom, but recommend for outside reading

Thank you for checking out my first installment of YA book reviews! Coming up on my "to-review" list will be Looking for Alaska as an assigned class read, as well as another play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, and a special review of one of my all-time favorite books, The Perks of Being A Wallflower.

Upcoming Reviews!

Dog Sees God
Looking for Alaska
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

Beginning a blog!

I'm here to start a little blog for my Adolescent in American Literature class, reviewing a book or two each week as I get through them! We're already two weeks into the class, so I have some catching up to do, but I'll try to address some basic plot points and the possible place each book could have in a high school classroom (I'm a secondary education/English major).

There are a lot of blogs out there for YA lit, as long as you're looking. There are an awful lot to sift through when looking for a particular genre or theme in a critical blog. I'm here to provide more of a random assortment of books as I work through them, working through many different genres and levels of YA lit. I want to experiment with different points of view and levels of experience for teenagers, not knowing what grade level I'll one day be teaching.