Young Adult Lit/Crit

AVI

As you know, Richie Partington has one of the best sites for first class reviews of YA titles. I really liked what he did with the sequel to Avi's Newberry winner, "Crispin: The Cross of Lead" and since some of us chatted about historical fiction last night, I thought I'd share what Richie says:

Richie's Picks: CRISPIN: AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD by Avi, Hyperion, September 2006, ISBN: 0-7868-5152-X
 
"I wonder who they are
The men who really run this land
And I wonder why they run it
With such a thoughtless hand"
--David Crosby, "What are Their Names?"
 
"What kind of men -- I wondered -- were these that killed by day, drank by night, but prayed each morning?"
(from CRISPIN: AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD)
 
If you have yet to read CRISPIN: THE CROSS OF LEAD, then I urge you to stop reading this review of the second book (in what will hopefully become a CRISPIN trilogy), and proceed immediately to your library or bookstore for a copy of the first book.  You can see what I wrote in March 2002 about the first CRISPIN book, including my desire back then for a sequel, at: http://www.richiespicks.com/users/stories/picks/crispin_the_cross_of_lead.html. 
 
And if you have already read CRISPIN: THE CROSS OF LEAD, you are in for a wonderful surprise: the second CRISPIN book is even more powerful and moving than the first.
 
In fact, Avi could have chosen to write a safe and forgettable sequel to his 2003 Newbery Medal-winner, CRISPIN: THE CROSS OF LEAD.  Regardless of such a sequel's significance, or lack thereof, school and public librarians everywhere would add to their collections an author's follow-up to a Newbery Medal-winning tale.  
 
But rather than taking that path of least resistance, Avi has, instead, crafted a breathtaking and oft-brutal medieval adventure story that is underlain with some subtle-yet-biting satire.  The result is a sequel that could well stand on its own as the most exciting and thought-provoking book of Avi's long and celebrated career. 
 
"It was a June morning when Bear and I passed beyond Great Wexly's walls and left the crowded and treacherous city behind.  The June sun was warm, the sky above as blue as my Blessed Lady's spotless robe; our triumphant sense of liberty kept me giddy with joy.  Hardly able to contain myself, I more than once cried out, 'My name is Crispin!' for all the world to hear."

GREAT FIRST PARAGRAPH FOR ENGAGING MIDDLE LEVEL READERS. KES
 

A League of Their Own

Appleman argues that any cultural artifact is a text, no?  How about the opening ceremony for my kids' baseball league?

I didn't used to think of myself as a feminist.  Really.  I have started many sentences something like this, "I'm not really a feminst or anything, but..."  Well, the times they are a changin'.

This Saturday I had the pleasure of attending Endicott Youth Baseball's 55th annual opening day ceremony.  The sun was shining and a cool breeze made the air nothing short of delightful.  The boys and girls who participate in the league (over 400 of them) range in age from little, tiny kindergarteners to long-limbed middleschoolers.  They were all so excited to hear their names called out so that they could run across the field and hear the applause of their adoring fans!

At the end of it all (a speech from the mayor, boardmember recognitions, etc...) the culminating event was announced: the first (three) pitch(es) of the season.  Do you know they had three men pitch to three boys!?  Where were the girls?  I was truly disheartened. 

Do bad books make people do bad things?

Dawn's Girls Will be Girls post really got me thinking.  In it, she questions whether or not teachers should stock their shelves with books that might encourage sex, drugs, and rebellion.

Of course they should!  But they should also include titles that might appeal to a more conservative audience.

In an ideal world we wouldn't make it our place to judge, but to offer a diverse text set and then offer opportunities to discuss these texts.  In this way, we admit that life is complicated and demand that individuals be responsible for making good choices about their lives.

That's all for now,

Jacqueline

TOP TEN LISTS

I wanted to share this top ten list in the making from the adbooks listserve. Jonathan Hunt is the reigning guru of the adbooks list--we all bow down to his judgment about good books for adolescents. He reads them all, and I mean ALL. So I found this list interesting. There are lots of emails I haven't yet read responding to this list. I'm looking forward to seeing what other voracious YA readers on the listserv have to say about these choices.

"I'm preparing for a presentation on the best YA books of the decade,
and I've been thinking about my Top Ten list of my personal
favorites, but I'm having trouble rounding out my top ten--

In no particular order--

1.  CRISS CROSS

2.  SAMMY & JULIANA IN HOLLYWOOD

3.  POSTCARDS FROM NO MAN'S LAND

4.  THE LAND

5.  COUNTDOWN TO INDEPENDENCE

6.  SILENT TO THE BONE

7.  SPEAK

Of course, the problem isn't that I can't find good books to round
this out.  It's just that once I pick number eight, I feel like my
list has to be a Top Twenty or Top Forty or whatever.

I'm thinking of adding THE GOLDEN COMPASS or TANGERINE or possibly
THE RIVER BETWEEN US.  What would you do?"

Jonathan 

P.S. Interesting that our Chris and Dawn are reading CRISS CROSS. Dave, THE LAND, Nancy read THE RIVER BETWEEN US. Lots of you have read SPEAK I know. I have tried to "sell" SAMMY & JULIANA which many say is THE Latino book to recommend from that category. I've also tried to convince you to pick up POST CARDS FROM NO MAN'S LAND which Walter Mayes rhapsodized about on Monday...It is terrific.

Any serious fantasy reader know the Pullman books, THE GOLDEN COMPASS one of his that's taught in college classes. A wonderful, wonderful book.

Good reading...KES

P.S. What's everybody reading for book club tomorrow night?

Who is Jeff Stone?

And why should we care? KES

Seminar

I would like to do a seminar on the Vietnam War. According to Herz and Gallo, contemporary teens have a greater interest in learning about the Vietnam War than any other war. The book list that I compiled, fiction and non-fiction, is the same one listed by Herz and Gallo on pages 100 and 104. Any suggestions other than those books? Thanks. Nancy

Graphic Novels

(Don’t you dare call them comic books!)

I know several of you have read a graphic novel of some sort recently, so I hope we can talk a little about them here.  I’ve read Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and Allen Moore’s Watchmen.  I was thinking a bit about how this design differs from the traditional text format.  Obviously, the composition process is much more of collaboration.  It must be more like writing a script for a play or a movie than a book.  The author has to give up a lot of control and trust that the artist can convey the characters, ideas, and actions.   This creates, I think, an interesting interplay between the textual and the visual. 

Sometimes one of these elements fails.  I found that I sometimes had trouble following the action because of the art.  Sometimes still pictures don’t fully convey what they need to, or sometimes I just can’t tell what I’m supposed to be looking at.  The importance of the art became apparent to me when they switched artists between comics in Sandman.  Frankly, I thought this hurt the story a lot.  All the artists are completely competent, but I felt that some of them are much better at conveying the kind of horrific images and concepts that this story needs.

Other times the writer refuses to give up control and you end up with unnecessary “text bubbles.”  If the words can be removed without losing any of the panel’s significance, I don’t think they should be there.  Neither graphic novel I read was horrible at this, but I did notice it at certain points.  Some explanation is just too much.  Can you imagine if the Mona Lisa had a speech bubble coming out of her mouth that explained exactly what she was thinking?  Yeah.

There are a lot of neat things you can do with comics that you can’t do with just text.  I thought Watchmen did a great job embracing its existence as a comic book.  A certain points, there were several scenes happening at the same time connected by interspersed art frames and transposed text.   This allowed the writer to both contrast and comment on the action without any extra explanation. I can’t imagine doing that in a book without it being very confusing. 

What do you think about books with pictures?

My students rock!

Okay then.  This is seriously scary business, this inserting picture stuff!  I chose to include these two particular images because as I look around my classroom, they are all I see.  My magnificent students are participating in literature circles for our Memoir class, and Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life and Mary Karr's The Liar's Club were two of the options they had.

I was thrilled this afternoon when the kids came in after lunch, saw that my tables weren't in the right spots for this activity and immediately moved them around.  Before I could get out my attendance book to start class, the kids were sitting around the tables while a volunteer (a real one, not one I asked for!) passed out the books.  Talk about motivation!

I am one happy teacher,

Jacqueline

Looking for Alaska

Stearns requested a picture of me reading Looking for Alaska by John Green.  So here it is, hopefully you're not blinded by that big shiny spot on my forehead.  I am about half way through this book and so far I love it, hence the big smile on my face (or maybe thats because I can't help but smile for a posed photo).  I actually haven't even reached the climax of the book but I love the story so far of Miles, an outcast from Florida, who starts his new life looking for the "Great Perhaps" at a boarding school.  Miles, who before had no friends, meets up with some pretty interesting people at his school, including the Colonel, a scholarship student with an attitude, and more importantly Alaska, a beautiful and mysterious girl.  I love Miles character, he just seems like a loveable naive dork.  He reads biographies of famous people just so he can find out their dying words.  That in itself makes this book interesting because I now know people's last words.  This book is organized around a certain event, I am not to that event yet, but according to the text I am "2 days before".  Instead of chapters this book is organized in a countdown.  Tonight I'll get to the big climax. 

Anyways, good book so far.

Oh yea, sorry for any grammatical errors, I'm not an English major and never was, I'm just a librarian.

Graphic novels

After reading two great graphic novels in this class, I'm toying with the idea of applying my newly found interest to a seminar.  I'm thinking about discussing the literary of merit of Graphic novels and what this textual and visual medium offers to kids.  I look forward to your comments and/or recommendations.

Matt