Review: My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger

THE FACTS: 

            Title:  My Most Excellent Year

            Author:  Steve Kluger

            Publication Date:  2008

            Pages:  402

Round of applause: 

SUMMARY:

E’S 2 CENTS:

            Eh.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s refreshing to have an easy feel good read, but My Most Excellent Year is far from the most excellent book I’ve read for this class.  There just wasn’t anything particularly extraordinary about it.  It’s sweet and inoffensive, but with enough setbacks (predictable as they may be) and salt to keep you reading.  Reading this book was about equivalent to watching a season of a sitcom:  there was a moral and feel good thread throughout, all the major problems were resolved, the characters were predictable but entertaining, and, by the end, while a little sad to say goodbye to the story, no one was jumping up and down to call it great art.  So, take it with you on your next road trip (provided you’re not driving of course) or weekend at the beach, but if you want a book with some grit and imagination, I’d try another title.  

Review: If You Come Softly

THE FACTS: 

            Title:  If You Come Softly

            Author:  Jacqueline Woodson

            Publication Date:  1998

            Pages:  192

Round of applause: 

SUMMARY:

            The main characters in this novel, Ellie and Jeremiah are both 15 year olds who have recently transferred into an expensive private New York City high school.  Jeremiah (Miah) is an only child who splits his time between his mother and his father who has moved in with the woman across the street.  Ellie is the youngest of several children, but, 10 years younger than her closest siblings, she spends a lot of time alone in an empty house.  Her dad is a doctor who works almost all the time and her mom has walked out on the family twice.  Both Miah and Ellie crave connection and someone to count on for once.  When they meet in the hallway on their first day of school, something in each of them clicks.  Once they finally get a chance to meet outside of school, they quickly become a couple.  The catch? Ellie is Jewish and white, Miah is black.  As perfect a couple as they may be, Ellie and Miah quickly discover the challenges of being an interracial couple.  Miah has always been aware of the color of his skin and the assumptions that came with it depending on the neighborhood, but for Ellie, noticing the biases in the people she has always been around comes as an unpleasant surprise.  But both of them notice the stares and comments when they’re together.  Both of them hesitate to tell their parents, but eventually they do.  Like true star crossed lovers, just when everything looks like it’s going right, their superficial differences find a way to separate the two.  But I’ll let you read that part.

E’S 2 CENTS:

            I booktalked this book in class.  While wish I would have had more time and energy to come up with something more original, I hope my talk encouraged my classmates to check out this book.  At first, my feelings about If You Come Softly were a bit lackluster.  I thought the story was too simple and direct—it seemed to want to be a short story that was just stretched out for almost 200 pages.  In wrestling with some of these points of critique, I began to see a purpose for what I had originally viewed as weaknesses.  The simplicity of Miah and Ellie’s love for each other—how easily they recognize and accept it—allows the challenge of being a biracial couple to pop as the sole complicating feature.  It forced me to recognize the persistence of racial prejudice in our society and how that impacts relationships.  Simply, worth a read.

--E 

Review: We Were Here by Matt De La Peña

THE FACTS: 

            Title: We Were Here

            Author:  Matt De La Peña

            Publication Date:  2009

            Pages:  368
            Round of applause:

SUMMARY:

            We Were Here is written as the court ordered therapy journal of 15 year-old Miguel who has just been sent to a group home. He immediately decides to keep to himself and makes sure the other boys at the home understand that he has no intention of getting chummy.  His attitude lands him in a fight shortly after he arrives with Mong, a thin, crazed looking kid with huge scars on his cheeks.  That night, Miguel wakes to see Mong staring down at him, but when both acknowledge that they have nothing to lose a tacit truce is established between the two.  Not long into Miguel’s stay at the group home, his huge, slow, former juvi cellmate, Rondell, gets transferred to the home.  Miguel allows himself to hang out with Rondell, but keeps his distance from the other boys.  One night, Mong returns to Miguel’s room and offers to include Miguel in his plans to escape the group home.  Although hesitant at first, Miguel and Rondell break out with Mong when the time comes.  What follows for the three is an adventure that involves a lot of running, backtracking, hiding, and growing.  You’ll have to read it to find out how it all ends.

E’S 2 CENTS:

            As a future urban teacher, many elements of this novel were attractive to me.  First and foremost, Miguel starts reading compulsively at the group home in an attempt to remain isolated. His journal provides a lot of wonderful links to more traditional classics and may compel some students to read the referenced books as well.  Duh, Matt De La Peña didn’t invent literary allusions, but opportunity in this book is especially powerful because Miguel—aside from his one big mistake—sounds a lot like a teenage guy.  His voice, which employs colloquial usage and a few heaps of profanity, is defined and consistent.  Miguel’s concerns are that of many teenage boys:  he worries about how to seem smooth in front of the ladies, idolizes his big brother, and likes sparring with his friends.  An area that interests me concerns conceptions of power and masculinity specifically in low-income urban populations.  When people don’t have power through financial means (CEOs, trust fund kids, etc), power and social prowess are achieved through much more corporeal means.  I think the limitations on modes of achieving power or status in these cases are greatly responsible for the level of violence we see in such settings.  From the way Miguel his brother talk about girls to their play fighting to actual fighting, this novel opens a great opportunity to discuss and critically analyze what it means to be a man in our society and in different sub-cultures.  The novel also invites critical analysis of race relations and the US justice system.  Worth a read!

--E

Review: Graceling by Kristin Cashore

THE FACTS: 

            Title: Graceling

            Author:  Kristin Cashore

            Publication Date:  2008

            Pages:  471

Round of applause: 2009 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature, SIBA Book Award for YA Literature, a Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults

SUMMARY:

            Katsa, the niece of King Randa, lives in her uncle’s castle in the central kingdom of Middlun.  Her presence at courts has little to do with her nobility and almost everything to do with her grace—a special skill/power the possession of which is indicated by having two different eyes.  When Katsa’s grace for fighting/killing emerged at a young age, her uncle quickly saw to her training and began utilizing her as a weapon.  Burdened by the weight of her royal missions, Katsa started a Council—an underground vigilante-esque organization that operated in all seven kingdoms.  The novel opens with Katsa carrying out a Council mission to retrieve the elderly father of the Leniad king.  In the process, she encounters a Leniad prince also apparently graced with fighting.  When she returns to court, this prince, is there being entertained as a guest.  Eventually the two become friends and embark on a journey peppered with suspense, conflict, love and sacrifice. 

E’S 2 CENTS:

            My summary doesn’t really do this book justice.  I generally hate books with maps in the front, but this novel managed to establish another world without requiring me to reference a map or glossary of invented terms every other sentence.  Graceling definitely fits into the category of “approachable” fantasy.  My distaste for the fantasy genre on a whole is mild and generally a result of my frustration as a reader having to learn a new language and history.  In our culture at large however, I sense a stigma around the genre of fantasy.  As if the only people who read fantasy spend their afternoons dueling in parks, not having girlfriends, and generally avoiding all traces of reality and coolness.  While, recently, geek has been moving toward chic, I still wish fantasy books could be published without bearing the impenetrable seal of social ineptitude.  With its glossy cover embossed with a reflective sword, I was a little embarrassed to carry Graceling around with me… but I loved reading it.  The story is well written, the characters compelling, and the elements of fantasy detailed enough to be fulfilling yet not enough to be confusing.  Although set distinctly in the realm of fantasy, this novel explores ideas and feelings that are innately human.  In many ways, fantasy allows all readers to relate personally/emotionally to the characters because no reader can relate superficially.  We’ve discussed in class how the characters’ circumstance seems to take the forefront in YA novels, and the “relatability issue” that stems from this emphasis.  Fantasy doesn’t have to deal with this problem of relatability because it develops new worlds outside any reader’s context.  While the details of these worlds do draw a lot of focus, novels like Graceling explore other issues.  Discovering our talents and deciding how to use them, gender roles, the possessive nature of relationships, even the danger of persuasive speakers… this book is fully stocked with interesting ideas to rummage around in.  Even if you don’t do it in public, Graceling is definitely worth a read.

--E

Review: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

THE FACTS: 

            Title: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

            Author:  E. Lockhart

            Publication Date:  2008

            Pages:  352

Round of applause: Printz Honor Book, Finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, Cybils Award for best young adult novel.

SUMMARY:

            During the summer after her freshman year of high school, fifteen-year-old Frankie Ladau-Banks goes from a lanky debate dork to a curvaceous bombshell.  When she returns to her prestigious private boarding school as a sophomore, she catches the eye of the most popular senior boy, Mathew Livingston.  The two start dating and Frankie finds herself engrossed by the easy goofiness of Mathew and his friends.  However, Frankie’s latent abilities as a pranking mastermind slowly begin to surface as she grows discontent with the idea of being just Mathew’s girlfriend.  She wants to be a part of Mathews friend group—a bond made even more impenetrable by their membership in an all male secret society.  In a one-woman effort to subvert the patriarchal foundations of her school, the secret society and her relationship, to find acceptance and acknowledgement from her peers (particularly her male peers), and to shake up the sense of surveillance implicit in her school’s construction, Frankie manages to take covert control over the secret society.  Inevitably, these escapades get her into a great deal of trouble… but you’ll have to read it to see exactly why.

E’S 2 CENTS:

            Before we begin, a side note:  buy this book in hard cover.  The paperback cover is heinous.  For the record, I am absolutely against photographs of people on book covers.  Old photos, artistic photos and photos that show only part of the body (hands for example) are the exceptions—and then only if the picture represents the novel.  The girl on the paperback cover of Disreputable History is completely unnecessary. The highly commercial shot of a blond teenager on the paperback cover makes the novel seem trivial and disposable… which it is not.  The hardcover is much more representative of the novel’s quality and content. 

            Ok.  Good book.  It stands alone as an interesting and intelligent read, but also provides some great opportunities for further reading and research.  The panopticon, patriarchal structures, etc are all good things to keep investigating if you’re so inclined.  I think my favorite thing about this novel, though, is the exploration of power and gender and how they play out both in personal relationships and in society at large.  Lockhart doesn’t necessarily take a final, definitive stance on anything, but she provides an excellent literary environment to explore such issues.   When we started discussing this book in class, it became obvious to me that most people were making sweeping generalizations and assumptions about feminism and its definition.  The discussion failed to acknowledge that there are many types and forms of feminism—and I think that more than one are at play in this novel.  This is a good thing to dig into and discuss.  Do it.

            A final note:  be on the look out for the funky narration.  The narrator seems to have a singular identity (he/she uses the pronoun “I”) and engages the reader directly (uses “you”), but is somehow outside the story (he/she is not one of the characters).  The narrator’s perspective is limited to knowledge of Frankie’s feelings and experiences and does not extend beyond the time shortly following the main action of the novel.  I won’t lie to you, at first this really bothered me.  I was highly irritated with being addressed by a mysterious narrator that could identify with me, but whose identity I could not locate.  Then… it clicked.  You wont get this till you read the book, but I think Lockhart’s writing makes the reader feel the same way Alpha must have felt when receiving disembodied e-mails.  In many ways, I think this is Frankie writing her own Disreputable History for future generations. 

I’m really tired… let me know if that makes sense after you’ve read the book.  Worth a read.

--E

Review: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T.Anderson

THE FACTS: 

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

            Author:  M.T. Anderson

            Publication Date:  2006

            Pages:  353

Round of applause:  National Book Award Winner, Printz Honor Book, ALA Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults

SUMMARY:

            This novel opens in the home of a group of philosophers during the late 18^th century in Boston.  Octavian lives in this house with his mother who is an African princess.  Octavian is given the best of classical educations, but he eventually discovers that his education, upbringing and his very presence in the house have been part of an experiment.  Not only have he and his mother been studied like lab animals, but they also share a similar level of freedom with such domestic creatures:  they are slaves.  Over time the nature of the philosophers’ interests become clearer to Octavian, but when the philosophers irreverently intrude upon his mother’s death, Octavian flees.  He joins the revolutionary forces, and, as the novel progresses, contemplates the nature of freedom through a series of trials.

           

E’S 2 CENTS:

            I just couldn’t get into this book and I can’t figure out why.  The premise is interesting, the themes complex and engaging, the writing—though indirect and somewhat tedious at the beginning—is beautiful… even the cover is enticing… so what’s the problem?  I need to give it another good skim before I can figure it out.  I’ll be sure to repost when I get a handle on this one.  … But in the meantime, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and say it’s worth a read.

Review: Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

THE FACTS: 

            Title: Hunger Games

            Author:  Suzanne Collins

            Publication Date:  2008

            Pages:  374

Round of applause:  ALA Top Ten Books for Young Adults, Best Indie Young Adult Buzz Book Honor, School Library Journal Best Book of 2008

SUMMARY:

            For 16-year-old Katniss, fighting to survive has been a way of life since her father died and her mother mentally checked out.  She lives in District 12—one of the poorest districts in a futuristic nation centered around the Capitol.  To remind the districts just how much power they have, the Capitol puts on the annual televised Hunger Games, where a boy and girl from each district are sent to fight to the death.  When Katniss’ little sister is chosen in the lottery, Katniss volunteers to go to the Games in her place.  She is transported to the capitol with the boy selected from District 12, peeta, the bubbly Games representative, Effie, and Katniss’s new coach/notorious drunkard, Haymitch.  Katniss spends the rest of the novel vying for sponsorship, playing the crowd, and legitimately trying to stay alive.  Giving you any more details would take the fun out of reading it.

E’S 2 CENTS:

            I was utterly and unabashedly sucked into this book.  While Hunger Games lacks the specificity to directly criticize a government or type of government, its comments on power, rebellion, media and economic inequity are noteworthy.  OK.  So I guess that’s a lot of things.  The last two of those items were what resonated with me most.  In the world of the novel, everything within the Hunger Games is televised.  Their chances of survival are greatly increased by having a good image and presenting compelling entertainment.  It seems so sick that the life of 24 teenagers could become a commodity—let alone a source of entertainment.  But then, don’t we thrive on intimate depictions of the world’s horrors in our media-driven society?  In the way of dystopian literature, Hunger Games picks a few of these social ills and drives them to extremes.  The effect is disturbing yet familiar. 

To make the novel better (and, honestly, to keep it from being entirely too preachy or didactic) these dystopian issues are all nestled within a dynamic plot where the stakes are literally life or death.  It’s fairly obvious that Katniss manages to survive somehow (really guys… her death would cause a serious problem with the established first person narration… not to mention… there’s a sequel), but that didn’t bother me so much.  I was still totally engaged and bewildered about how she would pull through.  I thought the ending was disappointing (not that it was poorly written, but because was inconclusive) but, I suppose, that’s why there’s another book.  …another book that I will probably read as well…

Worth a read.

--E