The Start of an Exciting New Series

Ally Condie’s Matched hooked me right away.  Set in a futuristic dystopia (a cross between the world of The Giver and the world of The Hunger Games), the novel opens as 17-year-old Cassia prepares for her Matching Banquet.  At the banquet, she will see the face of the young man the Society has chosen as her husband.  When she sees the face of her close friend Xander, she could not be happier.

The next day, though, when she loads the datacard that will give her more information about her Match (something that is hardly necessary in Cassia’s case, since she has known Xander all her life), she sees the face of another boy.  Another boy she knows.  What does this mean?  Has the Society made a mistake?  How should she feel about this other boy?

Matched develops a scary and engrossing vision of the future:  careers (like marriages) are arranged by the Society, literature has been reduced to the Hundred Poems, people no longer learn how to write (as technology has made handwriting obsolete), citizens carry three mysterious pills with them at all times, and everyone dies peacefully at the age of 80.  When her grandfather dies, passing some final words and a forbidden poem to Cassia, the novel’s young protagonist starts to question the perfection of the Society.

Looking for a Way Out

Reese’s father is dead, his mother is a drug addict, and his older brother is running the streets.  And he is serving his second year in Progress, a juvenile detention center.  For ten days each month, Reese is allowed to leave the center to participate in a work-release program.  He sweeps floors and empties trash cans at a nursing home, where he meets Mr. Hooft, an elderly man who is able to offer some insight and advice.

The latest novel by Walter Dean Myers offers hope for its protagonist, but it recognizes that there are no easy answers.  If you liked Myers’s award-winning Monster, this is a good follow-up.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers retelling of Abdulrahman Zeitoun’s plight in the aftermath of Hurrican Katrina was enthralling. I began to really understand what the people of New Orleans went through during and after the hurrican hit.

 However, what was in Zeitoun’s personality that made him stay when the evacuation notice was sent out?  Was it for altruistic reasons or trying to control / master nature? Eggers portrays him as a man with optimism and a strong personality.

A New Year and a Time to Reflect over 50 Decades of Reading

I decided I better pull together my Top Ten Favorite Book List for the BW Teacher Reading Blog. This is so incredibly hard. I did not realize how much I have read over five decades and how much my taste in reading has varied!  I did not even get into the many nonfiction books  I’ve read and loved. I would be better off giving the ten in various genres or listing 10 titles per decade. Here goes an attempt and none of these are in any type of order.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman and everything he has written.
Additional tops picks of his Neverwhere, Stardust, Sandman series, Anasi Boys.
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and everything, everything he ever wrote. 
Additional top  picks of his Breakfast of Champions, Welcome to the Monkey House, Timequake  and so it goes.
Collected Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as well as, One Hudred Years of Solitude & Love in the Time of Cholera.
Dune series by Frank Herbert
Foundation series by Issac Asimov & everything else he wrote.
Going to Extremes by Joe McGinnis
Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury & everything else he wrote. (He loved librarians. I met him and received a huge hug from him!)
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Light on Yoga by B. K. S Iyengar’s
Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein
Mystery & Detective stories any and all. LOVE THEM! I started with author Agatha Christy & Sherlock Holmes stories during my 8th Grade year and am currently into James Patterson. Fun reads and I love to solve “who done it.”
No Ordinary Genius: the Illustrated Richard Feynmann by Richard Feynmann
Once and Future King by T.H. White
Rama series by Arthur C. Clark
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Shadow series by Orson Scott Card
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

Abe Challenge Continues

Alright. I have now read most of the Abe nominees. I have 6 more to  go. This week I read Leaving Paradise by Simone Elkeles. I also read, a moving true story A Long Way to Go by Ishmael Beah. After losing his family to rebels, Ishmael was forced to serve in the Sierre Leone corrupt army and kill at the ripe old age of 13, a children’s army.

A Teen’s Twisted Tale

Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak is a very popular book with high school readers.  But Speak definitely appeals more strongly to young women than it does to young men. With Twisted, Anderson has written a story that speaks to male readers.

Tyler Miller is a high school senior. As the novel opens, he is finishing the community service that he was ordered to complete after committing an act of vandalism during his junior year. He isn’t exactly looking forward to his final year in high school (he would much rather stay in his bedroom playing his favorite video game), but then Bethany Millbury—a beautiful, popular girl—takes an interest in him. But Bethany’s twin brother Chip hates Tyler, Tyler’s father works for Bethany’s father, and Tyler has never fit in with the popular crowd (his best friend is a guy who likes to quote a small green character from Star Wars, earning him the nickname Yoda). Oh—and then something really bad happens.

Twisted should appeal to any reader who has experienced family problems, who has felt like he doesn’t fit in, or who has dreamed about getting the girl who seems to be out of his league. In other words, this book should appeal to a lot of readers.

Join Me in the Abe Challenge

I set a goal. I want to read all the Abe Award 2010 nominees by the end of winter break. That is twenty-three books. I have read quite a few already, eight to be exact–Abundance of Katherine, Aftershock, Book Thief, Christopher Killer, City of Bones, Does My Head Look Big in This? and The Good Guy.

Geektastic

What a great and fun read. Geektastic is a collection of short stories by today’s current authors like Garth Nix, Scott Westerfeld, Cassandra Clare, Holly Black, David Leviathan, and so many more. It makes you want to be a nerd! Well, maybe I am already there.

It’s Really Inventive

Pick this book up and read it.  Really, I mean it.  Male or female, young or old, you’ll like it.  The last time my freshmen went to the BW Library to pick out an independent reading novel, I tried to get one hesitant reader to give it a try.  It looked too long to him.  This happened before I read it, so the next time I WILL get someone to read it.  (If you get to the library before my class goes again, go to the S section of fiction.  You can’t miss it.)

The Invention of Hugo Cabret,  by Brian Selznick, is a mix of graphics and writing.  It reads really fast in different ways.  The pictures tell a story, like a film, and the actual prose grabs your attention and won’t let you go.  On top of all this, you will learn about a pioneer in the very beginning of movies.  Wow!  

You’ll be entertained as well as educated when you choose this book. Stop by B325 once you’ve read this one and let me know what you think!

A Teen’s Dark Tale

I think I’m one of the last people on the planet to read Crank, a young adult novel by Ellen Hopkins.  Some of my students were talking about it the other day, it was one of the top ten books checked out of the BW Library last year, and another teacher in my department said that it keeps “disappearing” from her bookshelf.  So…I decided that I should check it out.

The book (which is based on events that happened with the author’s daughter) tells the story of a 17-year-old girl who becomes involved with meth.  At the beginning of the story, Kristina is a good daughter and a high-achieving student.  When she spends a few weeks over the summer with her father (and meets an attractive but troubled boy), she tries crank—”the monster”—for the first time.  Kristina—who starts referring to herself as “Bree,” her more adventurous, more flirtatious, less responsible alter-ego—quickly descends into a drug-fueled world that she cannot control.  She rebels against her parents, drops her best friends, sleepwalks through school, and does whatever she needs to do in order to score drugs.

In many ways, this book is a Go Ask Alice for a new generation.  Crank is written as a series of poems, making this book (at 544 pages) a very quick read.  (And for lovers of this book, Hopkins has recently published Glass, a sequel to Crank.)