Young Adult Lit/Crit

It's Dave!

Picture: g/f and I picking up trash at Mercereau Park in Endicott over the weekend.  What have you done for our environment lately?!?  Huh?!?

Book Club: I'll be bringing a couple books I've been working on over the past couple weeks, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Age 13 3/4 and Watership Down.

Lit Circle: Lennon people... I've got a nice bio talking about Yoko Ono's artistic career, as well as a pretty cool piece about a performance of "Cut Piece" (which is discussed in the book) in 2003 in Paris.  It goes on about the symbolism of the artisitic performance... world peace and stuff like that.  Pretty interesting stuff, I think, and definitely ties in with her relationship with John.

Tech stuff: Check out these cool links I've stumbled upon in the past week.

Pennsylvania Governor Rendell Applauds Easton's Laptop Program; Highlights Need to Implement 'Classrooms for the Future' - laptops for every high school student in PA!

Technology in the classroom (Talladega, AL) - interesting quotations include:

"State law requires that schools provided a certain amount of technological instruction, but local educators find it's what the students want anyway."

"We're trying to reach out to our audience. (Technology) allows the teachers to be more engaging, and it's more interesting to the students."

"Anything you can do to bring an interactive capability helps capture students' imagination, so they'll engage in the material."

Blogs reshape communications (Indianapolis, IN) - why kids like to blog, and how it can be used in the classroom

Party: PARRRRRTY!!!

See you all tonight!

LENNON!

I have two copies of LENNON...who wants them? Had to make a trip to another library in Syr today to get one of them so I hope there's a reader waiting to join that lit circle. Let me know. KES

Lennon

I read John Lennon: All I Want is the Truth for this lit circle round and I enjoyed it very much.  For someone who doesn't know very much about the Beatles, this book was very informative and helped me to realize just exactly why the Beatles were so revolutionary.  I've always looked back on the music of the Beatles with a New Historicist lens (I hope I used that term right!), thinking of it as very tame and (in my opinion as a non-musicphile) somewhat overrated.  But this book does a great job of setting up the time frame of when the Beatles rose into popularity and just why and how their music affected so many young people worldwide.

The book also d0es a fine job of showing just how creative, and not to mention volatile and rebellious, Lennon himself was throughout his life.  It was a view of John Lennon I'd never really grasped, and I think kids who are interested in music would be well-off to read this book and learn these things as well.

Lit Circle Chat

Hi there, I'm wondering how your lit circle reading is going? How are you finding the books you're reading? IS anyone still looking for a copy of a particular title? If so, please let me know on the blog by tomorrow morning before I leave Syracuse and I'll try to help. KES

Books for Lit Circles

Dear Readers, please let me know if I can help you obtain the titles you may still need for lit circles next week. If you've checked your local library and not been able to turn up what you need, I am happy to do some legwork in the Onondaga Cty library system.

I was able to pick up another copy of SAMMY AND JULIANA today at the library near my house...Jacqueline has first dibs on this copy.

So do Let me know if I can help. I am worrying about getting enough copies of LENNON. KES

Lit Circle -- Geeks

Hey, is there any chance anyone would want to read Geeks for this final lit circle?  Professor Stearns read an excerpt of it in class last week, remember?  It sounded like she'd discovered my personal diary from high school and was reading it out loud.  Geeks just don't fit in with anyone.  But, if we're lucky, we'll get our laughs later in life.  I haven't had any yet, but there's still time I guess.

Anyway, I digress.  Anyone interested in this book, besides me?  Let me know.

Oh, and my seminar...  Matt is the only one who has signed up so far.  Click here and sign up if you're interested.  It should be enlightening.  Matt has told me he'll talk about Star Wars if the necessity arrises.

Advertising for Another Lit Circle

Alright.  This is another post where I'm going to try (successfully) to sway some of you reluctant readers over to join yet another lit circle. 

No preface needed.  Read a review I found at Amazon.com, written by a Richie Partington:

In 1968, during the summer preceding his senior year at Las Cruces High School in southern New Mexico, seventeen-year-old Sammy Santos hooks up with Juliana Rios. The powerful and achingly tragic story Sammy recounts of Juliana and that summer is but a mere preface in this stunning ode to growing up in the barrio--a neighborhood that some joker has named Hollywood. I alternately laughed, cheered, and cried as Sammy and his Hollywood friends encounter the prejudices, the Church, the hormones, the War, the drugs, the violence, the music, the aspirations, and the dress code, while making their way through that year both inside and outside of the barrio. If I had to choose a single "top" book from the 200+ new books for teens that I've read in 2004, SAMMY & JULIANA IN HOLLYWOOD would be the one.

So, the tagline is: join our lit circle.  It will be fun.  Like Romeo and Juliet?  JOIN US!  Hate Romeo and Juliet?  Join our group anyway to debate the differences between Shakespeare's version, and this Latino version by Saenz.

Either way, don't miss out on this great YA novel!

Dawn

The count: Chrissy, Dawn, and maybe James, if I was convincing enough for him! ;)

Looking for Alaska

Ok, a post on this book is overdue from me.

I was amazed by the ending of this book. I don't want to give anything away, but I started reading After on my lunch break, and was considering blowing off another half hour to finish it.

It raises such deep questions, and needs to be read by any kid who has lost a friend. Or anyone, really, dealing with loss. I liked especially how it discussed grieving greed, or the thought that other people don't have the right to be as sad as you are about someone's death. It definitely strikes chords.

Think about it. I recently had a friend die, but she wasn't a terribly close friend. I know her family from BoyScouts and the like, but I was never particularly close to her. It put me in a strange place, where I felt bad, but not like I'd suffered a personal loss. It was awkward to talk with her mom and brother after, because I just didn't know what to say. I didn't want to sound like I was devastated, because they would know it wasn't terribly valid, but I also didn't want to be flip or nonchalant. It was a hard rope to walk.

So, back to the book, it deals with death in a very real, human way.  And, what pleased me a lot, it showed how studying the world and religion in school can be a way to learn how to deal with a real problem. Fascinating.

I'm sorry, I really don't want to reveal anything about the circumstances, but I welcome anyone who's read the book to either comment on things or to email me at npietrop@hotmail.com to have a more in-depth discussion. I'd love to talk about it, but don't want to spoil it.

So, as a final note: EVERYONE SHOULD READ LOOKING FOR ALASKA BY JOHN GREEN. :)

Sharing Lit Circle Books

Walter Mayes' workshop in Syr. this morning--on the best of YA over the last decade--was excellent. It was such a thrill to be in the presence of such an amazing storyteller, reader, teacher, media specialist, librarian, etc. etc. He's a powerhouse--at 6'7" he does have some physical advantages!! I will tell you more about the workshop on TH. And I am having his excellent resource guide copied for you. It's worth its weight in gold!

One really neat thing is that he referenced our blog and our discussions of INEXCUSABLE, one of the books he talked about this morning. That was amazing!

I'm so interested to hear, dear teachers, what you are thinking about your lit circle books...and what those of you who are investigating the next round titles are finding as you research them.

Keep blogging! KES

Criss Cross

Looks like it's just me and Chris for Criss Cross so far... there's still time for more people to join!  Give the sites a look on the other post and join us!

Dawn ;)

--You can still join even if your name isn't Chris. (or Dawn)