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Follow-up to City Hall : the list and other comments.
First: We can't blame this merely on tradition. The books on this short list are all (relatively) new, not hoary old classics.
Here's the list:
Acceleration by Graham Mcnamee: This one seems the most promising of the group, and is the one Chris selected. Quick summary: Duncan (main character) failed to save a drowning girl when he was sixteen (one year ago). Working his summer job, he comes across the diary of a person who's showing all the signs of becoming a serial killer; the police pay no attention and so he and his friends try to track and trap the writer of the diary.
This isn't so bad in overview, and has potential to be a decent read; I am however suspicious of it on general principles, given experience with the prior years' reading list. There are So Many Ways a plot like this could go terribly bad in the end.
Crackback by John Coy: Easily described -- High-school football star finds out other people on the team, including friends, are using steroids. Has to decide what to do about it.
Really, do we need to fill their summer reading with "choose to do drugs or lose your friends?"
Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata: Cheerful happy younger sister makes everything seem kira-kira (sparkling). Then they move from an accepting Japanese community to the deep South, Georgia, and then younger sister gets terribly ill.
Maybe the younger sister lives? I suppose she MIGHT. But this is a Newbery book, and I would find it very surprising if they allow sister to survive.
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult: Oooh, this one looks great. Main character was conceived as a bone-marrow match for her sister, and has spent her life being used as a source of marrow for her older sister. Then she rebels as a teenager and naturally we know what she does to prove her rebellion. Again, MAYBE things end well, but I'm not seeing the likelihood here. If older sis hasn't gone into remission in (minimum) thirteen years, what's the likelihood she'll do so NOW? Either way things suck -- either older sister dies, freeing main character from the need to be a living marrow culture, but socking her with eternal guilt, or main character has to make terribly sucky choice.
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult: Little town suddenly shattered by an act of violence (I'm guessing something like a school shooting, given the timeframe of nineteen minutes and the age of the main witness). Main character could be the best witness but doesn't really remember what she saw. The trial then begins to fracture all the lines of unity in the community, separating friends, families, and the young and old.
Ms. Picoult gets a double-header in this list, and given there's only six books I think that's rather unfair. Surely there's some other author writing nice ambiguous or even depressing fiction who deserved a shot here.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom: Wounded war veteran has job fixing rides at an amusement park; gets himself killed as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart, and arrives in the afterlife, to find that heaven is where you have your life explained to you by five people.
I bet this one's supposed to be "uplifting" by showing that even an apparently meaningless life is meaningful and full of special things, but I'm not sure you need to demonstrate this by first killing your protagonist (and given the phrasing, possibly killing him trying to do something and failing).
I'll say that this is a somewhat less completely DOOOMy list than the one from last year, and at least one appears to be maybe possibly halfway decent, depending. Still, I'd rather be seeing lists of books that would make me LOOK FORWARD to my summer reading.
Here's the list:
Acceleration by Graham Mcnamee: This one seems the most promising of the group, and is the one Chris selected. Quick summary: Duncan (main character) failed to save a drowning girl when he was sixteen (one year ago). Working his summer job, he comes across the diary of a person who's showing all the signs of becoming a serial killer; the police pay no attention and so he and his friends try to track and trap the writer of the diary.
This isn't so bad in overview, and has potential to be a decent read; I am however suspicious of it on general principles, given experience with the prior years' reading list. There are So Many Ways a plot like this could go terribly bad in the end.
Crackback by John Coy: Easily described -- High-school football star finds out other people on the team, including friends, are using steroids. Has to decide what to do about it.
Really, do we need to fill their summer reading with "choose to do drugs or lose your friends?"
Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata: Cheerful happy younger sister makes everything seem kira-kira (sparkling). Then they move from an accepting Japanese community to the deep South, Georgia, and then younger sister gets terribly ill.
Maybe the younger sister lives? I suppose she MIGHT. But this is a Newbery book, and I would find it very surprising if they allow sister to survive.
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult: Oooh, this one looks great. Main character was conceived as a bone-marrow match for her sister, and has spent her life being used as a source of marrow for her older sister. Then she rebels as a teenager and naturally we know what she does to prove her rebellion. Again, MAYBE things end well, but I'm not seeing the likelihood here. If older sis hasn't gone into remission in (minimum) thirteen years, what's the likelihood she'll do so NOW? Either way things suck -- either older sister dies, freeing main character from the need to be a living marrow culture, but socking her with eternal guilt, or main character has to make terribly sucky choice.
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult: Little town suddenly shattered by an act of violence (I'm guessing something like a school shooting, given the timeframe of nineteen minutes and the age of the main witness). Main character could be the best witness but doesn't really remember what she saw. The trial then begins to fracture all the lines of unity in the community, separating friends, families, and the young and old.
Ms. Picoult gets a double-header in this list, and given there's only six books I think that's rather unfair. Surely there's some other author writing nice ambiguous or even depressing fiction who deserved a shot here.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom: Wounded war veteran has job fixing rides at an amusement park; gets himself killed as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart, and arrives in the afterlife, to find that heaven is where you have your life explained to you by five people.
I bet this one's supposed to be "uplifting" by showing that even an apparently meaningless life is meaningful and full of special things, but I'm not sure you need to demonstrate this by first killing your protagonist (and given the phrasing, possibly killing him trying to do something and failing).
I'll say that this is a somewhat less completely DOOOMy list than the one from last year, and at least one appears to be maybe possibly halfway decent, depending. Still, I'd rather be seeing lists of books that would make me LOOK FORWARD to my summer reading.
no subject
Kira-Kira and Five People are the only ones in my middle school library. Kira-Kira is definitely middle-grades stuff, and several of the elementary libraries have it. Heck, the Newbery is for stuff that's aimed at kids "under 14" so... yeah. Haven't read it, but from the reviews, it's definitely tragic.
Five People is in 3/4 of our middle schools and in the HS. One professional review said it was a sweet book that made you smile. A girl from another middle school gave it 5 stars and said that she reread it FIVE TIMES. *blinkblink* I guess she liked it. It was a 2008 Abe Nominee. [The Abe Lincoln award is a young readers' award-- books are nominated by HS students / teachers / librarians and a panel of librarians and HS students picks 22 titles to go on the nominee list for the year.]
Acceleration is in one of our other middle schools and in the HS library. I've debated getting it, but haven't had a chance to read it yet. It sounds GOOD to me. It won the 2004 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult Mystery. It was an Abe Nominee for 2007.
Never heard of Crackback. Two middle schools and the high school have it. Lexile is only 490; one of the middle schools has it in the Quick Reads [Hi-Lo] section. One review said that it took a good long look at adults (his father and his coach included) who demand respect but don't really deserve it. Probably there for the sports jocks who hate to read.
My Sister's Keeper is at one middle school and at the HS. I'm pretty sure it was an Abe Lincoln nominee... yeah, it won the Abe in 2006. Haven't read it, but I've heard it was excellent.
Nineteen Minutes is the only one I've read, and I really couldn't put it down. It's tragic, horrifying, and sad. But it really can make students think about the effects of bullying, teasing, and taunting. It was an Abe Nominee in 2010, which is why I read it last fall.
I do agree that these are pretty dark and/or depressing overall. The thing is... that's a huge part of YA lit, isn't it? You end up with SO many books about orphans and abandoned kids and such, because the whole thing is about getting away from the parents and doing things on their own. And I think it's a backlash against the Happy Perfect Ending that kids always get in books they read in elementary school. Many of these are described in reviews as gripping page-turners, which will hook some of the students who normally wouldn't read anything during the summer. And while they aren't challenging in language, many of these are books that (supposedly) Make You Think once you're done reading them.
I'm trying to think of what would be good to add to the list... Maybe something like The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, in which a HS girl secretly takes over the direction of pranks carried out by her boyfriend's all-male secret society. Maybe I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have To Kill You, in which a HS girl attends a spy-training school for girls. Both of those had some funny bits. Maybe Heir Apparent, wherein a HS girl is trapped in a virtual-reality video game in which she's the secret heir to the throne, and must figure out the solution to the game before her brain is fried due to the machine being broken. That one is one I recommend to guys and girls often, since it's got medieval, futuristic, adventure, and mystery all in one.
What titles would you like to see on the list? My administrators always are more willing to listen to me talk about a problem if I've got a couple of suggestions for solutions...
no subject
I would like to see books that don't look like anvils of education being dropped on my head, so to speak. Phrases like "It really can make students think about..." are instant aversion triggers. A book can't MAKE you think about anything, and if it's clearly assigned with an anvilicious moral in mind, it's more likely to teach cynicism.
I'd like books that make the kids happy to read them. Not depressed, or "oh, jeez, I have to read this THING." I see no reason every book has to have a *REASON* for being on the list, besides "DAMN, that would be fun book to read". I see reading as fun, I want my kids, and other people's kids, to learn nothing more or less than that: reading is fun. Anything that books have to teach will come NATURALLY once kids decide reading is something worth doing for its own sake.
I personally try to write books exactly in that vein. I want people to think "hey, reading this made my life a little brighter".
(Also, for Gog's sake STOP assigning Shakespeare's TRAGEDIES. The comedies, please, or The Tempest, but not four years of death, stupid choices, more death, humiliation, death, Pyrrhic victories, death... is there a pattern here?)