Anderson Gets It

“If things like . . . PTSD upset adults like me, what do they feel like to the teens who are trapped by them?” -- Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak, and other books you should be reading. 

Seriously, if you need another reason to pick up a book by this outstanding YA author (whose titles are most certainly good enough for adults to read!) please click immediately to her interview recently published in BookPage. 

Thank you. 

New Core Standards: What Will Get Left Behind?

I like the reading list I see coming out of the new core standards, but wonder what will get left behind? Will students get hooked on reading and take it upon themselves to seek out great new voices in fiction, and non-fiction?

I'm excited to see many of the additions and changes to the list, including Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake on tap for 11th graders. (Now I'd better hurry up and read it myself!)

But not everyone is pleased.

While I've never quite "gotten" poetry, it's strewn liberally throughout the curriculum. Perhaps we'll see a new generation of more thoughtful communicators. I can dream, right?

What do you think of the new standards, dear readers?

~Diane Stresing

I heard that

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, first published in 1999, could have been written yesterday, or tomorrow. Note to parents: the date-rape thing? get over it. Your girl child really ought to read this.

Even quite-uptight Common Sense Media rated it "age appropriate" for 13 and up. Of course there was that one "iffy" scene because a teacher makes an anti-immigration speech.

(Ohmygoodness!)
(#GetOverIt)

Read on...

Pile-up on my Reading Table

What extra time? The kids are in school now and my book table is overflowing. Sigh. I'll get to them, I'll get to them. "Them" being:

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
To Kill a Mockingbird* (PLEASE don't tell anyone I haven't read it yet!)
Crucial Conversations (I'm ambivalent about this one; stay tuned)
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley**
...and a couple more.

I'm already committed - three of the four above (and several others) have me enthralled. I should consider this a bit of training, I suppose. I love reading a pair of books simultaneously - as long as the pair consists of one fiction, one nonfiction. (I can't read nonfiction after dark; is there a support group for that?) To have twice as many books open at once, well, I'm in over my head here, folks. Any suggestions? Words of encouragement?

*Why are the best books the most likely to be banned?

*Has anyone read Jane Smiley's blog (at the Huffington Post) long enough to figure it out? If so, please let us all know.

Evolution of a Great YA

Yeah, I said I was done with YA for a while...but Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature is the kind of book that changes minds.

It's absolutely one of the best YAs I've read in years; right up there with Rules, but longer, with a much more involved plot.

The premise of the story is interesting enough: After the youth group of a very conservative (read: over-the-top) church torments a boy to the point he attempts suicide, one remorseful teen (Mena Reece) writes letter of apology to the boy, which naturally becomes the basis of his parents' lawsuit against the church. The book follows Mena through a year of hell as a high school freshmen ostracized by her church, tormented by said youth group (and former friends) while she deals with more mundane high school stuff - including a wildly interesting biology teacher, having a crush on her lab partner, and questioning everything her parents ever taught her.

But what's really cool about Evolution... is that Brande doesn't explain how things unfold - she just lets them unfold. The author is so stingy with backstory, in fact, basic info about the lawsuit isn't revealed until halfway through the book. For the first 100 pages, all we get to go on is this, from the book's second paragraph:

When you're single-handedly responsible for getting your church, your pastor, and every one of your former friends and their parents sued for millions of dollars, you expect to make some enemies. Fine.

For an author to withhold further details/explanation not only shows serious restraint, it's also brilliant. Brilliant because Brande packs those first 100 pages with enough action/progress/subplots to keep us reading, even if Mena wasn't in the middle of a civil lawsuit.

Evolution has so many positive features, I'm struggling to list them all, let alone in an organized fashion.

It reminded me how exciting high school was. Seriously. Remember how a really great teacher could present a really big concept (like democracy, or evolution) and really blow your mind?

Brande's book was realistic, but realistic with a dash of humor and imagination. For example, the motto at New Advantage High School is, "Let brilliance find you." I laughed out loud. Then I sighed even louder when she described second period: yoga. Ahhhh. I might be willing to go back to high school if I could get credit for yoga class! That's brilliant.

Of course, I haven't yet stated the obvious: Evolution takes on a great philosophical/scientific/religious debate with a realistic, energetic tone that never, ever sounds contrived.

Bravo, Robin Brande. Please, keep writing.
-- -- -- --
(Unlike Brande, I can't resist a little backstory. Evolution... is Brande's first novel, and according to her website, "she is or has been ...[a] lawyer, yoga instructor, entrepreneur, community college instructor, Wilderness First Responder, insurance agent, outdoor adventurer, Girl Scout leader, and Sunday school teacher." Obviously, I'm a total slacker, so I'll stop here.)

Almost missed another boat

I just hoisted myself on this one; the steamship of a runaway series Artemis Fowl nearly cruised by without me on board. And what a ride!

I took the plunge (dangerous mix of metaphors, I know) just last week and am a full convert already. Not that I'm taking sides against the incredible Mr. Potter, mind. But Potter is so...incredible. And Artemis, dear 12-year-old Arty (who apparently really doesn't age, at least in his latest adventure) is more believable. He sort of lives in the "real" world. You know, with real gnomes and fairies and centaurs and trolls and...and, well, you do have to employ that old suspension of disbelief long enough to swallow that he's a 12-year-old who happens to be smarter than all the grownups combined. Um. Well. Ah.

I'll just write myself out of this corner now. 'Bye!

Why I love MG and YA books

I've just finished reviewing Lowis Lowry' latest book, a parody of classic children's literature. To prepare for the review, I checked out Number the Stars, Find a Stranger Say Goodbye, and *ahem* the Cliff Notes for The Giver. The Giver is just too intense, folks. Not that her other books are lightweights.

Actually, a few are. I also read Stay! Keeper's Story, a bit of light fiction narrated by a dog, and perused the Anastasia series, which is very popular with younger readers.

But in really considering The Giver and a few of Lowry's other heavy-hitting titles, I got to thinking...the vast majority of "acclaimed" titles for the Young Adult market are really, really heavy. Friends, mothers, sisters die. The Holocaust disrupts lives. The Book Thief is narrated by Death, for heaven's sake.

And I think I know why.

Do you remember being a teenager? It probably wasn't a take-it-or-leave-it time in your life. Everything about being an adolescent seems intense. The right (or wrong) girlfriend/boyfriend could talk you into sneaking a cigarette, cheating on a test, running away, stealing a car, having sex, killing yourself, or a combination of those things.

YA literature has to speak to those intense readers. And - I'm not making this up, research has proven the point - teens' attention spans get shorter, thanks to all the chemical changes in their bodies and especially their brains. So YA authors can't waste words. Every sentence must be worth reading. Nothing is mundane.

Well written books for the age group (YA/MG is a bit of blurred demographic these days) include all the important stuff, but no more...character descriptions move the story forward, the setting matters to the plot, there are no throw-away scenes.

I guess that's one of my top two reasons for reading YA and MG lit.

The other reason is I hope - hope, hope, hope - that reading YA and MG books will help me understand and appreciate those tumultuous teenage years...especially as my own kids approach those years, at an alarming pace.

Sigh.

Historical Fiction Worth Reading?

In my formative years, I could count on one hand the number of "historical fiction" titles I deemed worth reading. Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series (totaling eleven? or twelve? books) and The Witch of Blackbird Pond made the list because they didn't seem like history lessons; they simply told great stories.

As I've typed before, I have enjoyed every page of Team of Rivals but *sigh* I'm still turning its pages.

Browsing the stacks in the library's teen section recently, I picked up The Girls They Left Behind and was hooked on the first page. The historical fiction in a diary format introduced me to the main character, code name Natalie (because "My real name is not fit to print"), who gave me a glimpse of what it was like to be a 17-year-old girl in Toronto in 1943.

What was it like? Well, teenagers are teenagers: Beryl/Natalie has crushes (and kisses!), fusses with her hair, is quite delighted to leave school for a high-paying job, and loves/hates her eight-year-old brother. But as a teenager on the home front in WWII, she also hates watching (just watching) most of her male friends go off to war; at the same time, she's embarrassed to be seen with Carl, who is of age but unable to enlist because he's deaf in one ear. She also hides to trade ration coupons (it's illegal!), hates the blackouts, and struggles with the emotions letters from the front - and worse, telegrams - bring.

Author Bernice Thurman Hunter died (in 2002) before she completed the book; her daughter, Heather Anne Hunter, finished the job. And well. From now on, any kid who tells me they don't like historical fiction will get one more recommendation...

Graphic Novels - Good & Bad

I just read The Plain Janes and loved it! But I finished it in 40 minutes! I hate it when that happens.

Which is the good and bad in this revelation, folks. I learned that a good writer (Cecil Castelluci) and a good illustrator (Jim Rugg) can turn out a very good story, even if it looks like a comic book. (Admission: this bookworm never liked comic books. A character flaw, I've been told.) It's just over too quickly!

I've just begun Castelluci's other 2005 release, Boy Proof, and so far, I'm less enamored. I'm only on page 25 and already I've tallied at least a dozen bad words, including several F-words. Realistic dialog, maybe. But still... not a plus in my book. More later. I also already know I'll forgive Castellucci - the story is off to a pretty good start.

Rules of the Road Driven by Characters

Rules of the Road by Joan Bauer features well-developed characters driving a fairly predictable story about growing up. The story isn't developed enough for me to consider it a coming-of-age story, exactly, but I think it's worth recommending to the 12-15 or 16 y.o. set.

Bauer's language keeps the story moving, and the pace of things ramps up very nicely when it should - during action-sequences and other tense moments.

Not wanting to offer a major spoiler, here's the story in a nutshell: Sixteen-year-old Jenna Boller, in a self-diagnosed "slump," feels like her job (selling shoes at Gladstone's) is the only area of her life where she succeeds. When her alcoholic father returns to annoy her, and the about-to-retire Mrs. Gladstone asks Jenna to drive her to Texas for the annual shareholders' meeting, fate hands Jenna the keys to her future. From Chicago to Texas, Jenna learns she can handle the road, a few demons from her own past, and the challenge of the future. A new hairstyle in the process helps.

I don't mean to trivialize the book (or the power or the right hairstyle) but folks, this is a book for girls.

As an aspiring fiction writer, I'm keeping the book on my shelf because I think Bauer provides a good example of getting the pacing right. I'm also hoping my daughter will pick it up off the shelf. While the plot line seemed rather obvious to me and there are too many cliches for my liking, the fact is, that's OK in YA fiction. We grownups who read kid lit have to remember that when it seems obvious or cliched to us it may not be to our kids, who haven't read quite as much or for as long as we have.

Related links:
This Fun Trivia quiz about Rules of the Road was created for kids, but I enjoyed it (and you might too) as a way to test my tired old brain. (I did OK. How 'bout you?) And homeschoolers or teachers may appreciate this http://www.joanbauer.com/rulesguide/index.htm teaching guide, designed for 8th-9th graders.