In Darkness vs The Thing About Luck

While one can describe In Darkness as raw and vibrant in its description of people, violence, and bleak circumstances.  In Darkness is also a rich and complex story with shifting tales and settings.  Colored heavily by the worldview of the main character, it lends itself to a rich discussion of choices and how they are shaped by worldview or life circumstances.  However, it is its very complexity, the deepness of the subject matter, and the graphic description of both the violence and gore that makes it a poor choice as a YA novel.  I believe the novel is far too intricate to be readable for the majority of young readers.  

The Thing About Luck, however, is a story that is both readable and engaging.  While the plot is not strong and contains little action, the story is a charming, character-driven, authenticate account of a family living through poverty and illness. It is told from the perspective of a young woman who is undergoing a period of learning and change.  While the story is not epic, it is relatable, and far better suited for a Young Audience.  

While neither novel was a personal favorite, I choose The Thing About Luck as the better novel for this round.  

What Happened to Ivy VS 13 Hangmen

Well....what to do when you don't like either book? Flip a coin? Spin the title? Which book is heavier? Lighter? Prettier? This was the case with What Happened to Ivy and 13 Hangmen. Both really different stories from the emotional and controversial to thirteen year old boys with time travel magic and mystery. 

13 Hangmen first caught my attention with a baseball player on the cover. If any of you know Dia she was a crazed Boston Red Sox fan in the fall and we listened everyday to the ups and downs and wins or losses of her team. Of course being a sports fan I jumped on the wagon with her and watched until they won the World Series. I hoped the book would continue the Red Sox adventure but it fell well short of the excitement I'd hoped for. In the end it really had nothing to do with baseball and more to do with ghosts and time travel. I just didn't buy the 13 year old inheriting a house from an uncle he met once, or the time travel with ghosts...the other disconcerting thing was the main character always called his parents by their first name!! I don't like it.

What Happened to Ivy was a quick read with complicated controversial issues. A young girl with cerebral palsy and her 14 year old brother David and family are constantly dealing with her seizures. David struggles with loving his sister yet at the same time resenting her. Many things to talk about with students  but I don't see it as the nominated award winner it is touted as. Yes, the topic is emotional and controversial but the characters didn't have the development needed to to put it at the top. I'm not sure if young adults would get it at the level intended without guidance.

So, what did Tristin, Andrew and I decide on? After changing our minds several times and weighing our options....we choose 13 Hangmen to move on.

Tristin, Andrew, Donna O

After the Snow vs. Boxers and Saints

After the Snow starts as a distressing dystopian vision and ends as a distressing dystopian vision.  Willo is a young boy escaping the forces that took his family away for their resistance to some unexplained totalitarian state in the future.  He speaks though the voice of a dog – a voice that dominates the first part of the book and then disappears half way through.    The world is a bleak place—the winter has come and stayed.  People are starving, the country and minerals are reserved for the elite and the government.   The problem of this book for me is that it is a world seen through the limited eye of a young boy.  It is like he is too close to the ground or something—everything is dirty and miserable and redemption, when it comes, is so little that we are really left without hope. The great discovery at the end of the book is that this voice has been his own all along.  Redemption comes in the forgiveness of a girl child he deserts and finds again in some deus ex machine way at the end of the book.  He does apologize.

Boxers and Saints is a two volume graphic novel from the author of American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang.  It tells “parallel stories of two  young people” caught up on the opposite sides of the Boxer Rebellion—both of whom are searching for their identity and who find it in opposite faiths.  Bao is fighting to save China from the white faced foreigner in the role of a Chinese god and Vibiana has found herself by becoming a Christian and channeling Joan of Arc.  Both see themselves as warriors and are fanatical about their mission in life.  Sometimes this book felt like a Christian treatise but the redeeming value occurred when both sides realized that they had betrayed their beliefs though we do not see the change that that betrayal should cause. 

Generally, we were disappointed with both books for the most part.  Our vote though goes to Boxers and Saints and though the world is just as miserable in a way as After the Snow, there is plenty of action (blood and swords ) which the kids will enjoy.  Not certain that anyone who does not know about Joan of Arc will be able to follow the mystic reach of the second volume as we found the mysticism difficult in the first book because we knew nothing about the Chinese gods.

Summer I Learned to Fly vs Silence of Friends

How do you compare an apple to a doorstop? A cow to a bicycle?  These two books could not be more different.  One a graphic novel, dark, mature - looking back at a very serious time in history.  The other, a nice light snack, based on a 13 year old who works in a cheese shop with her mom.  She is not a particularly interesting character other than she has a pet rat, and in the end, she even lets the rat go.

Silence of Friends has a smaller audience.  It is Div 4 or adult all the way.  The content, a white man and black man who befriend each other in Texas during the time of Martin Luther King.  One a journalist, one an activist.  The language is strong, and the imagery is powerful but we could not recommend it to anyone at our school.  Summer I Learned to Fly has much broader appeal.  We could recommend it to Div 2, 3 and maybe even 4 but it really didn't grab me at all.  The main character was not well developed and we failed to empathize with her.  It had some potential but in the end, it never reached it.  And the last couple of chapters were disappointing.

So..even though we found it more of an adult than a young adult selection, the Silence of Friends was a better book.  Silent no more!

More Than This offers more than Wonder

Wonder – This is one of those cutesy school-problem novels where you know exactly what’s going to happen: charming-but-occasionally-self-doubting-outsider must come to terms with his differences, triumph over mean-spirited bully, and win the love and admiration of friends at school, leaving the audience feeling uplifted and optimistic. Admittedly, Auggie is an endearing character. Born with an unlucky combination of genetic mutations that has left his face severely deformed, he is nevertheless generally positive. Students might identify with some of his concerns about new classes and fitting in, but given the fact that Auggie is only beginning grade 5, the novel feels a bit juvenile for a Jr. High reader. Many of our students actually read the book as a novel study in grade 6, which would be a good fit. The book is told from the perspective of 6 or 7 different characters whose unique voices made for a more interesting read. Kevin also enjoyed the many Star Wars references (however, the author could do with some fact checking regarding Mon Mothma…) and the allusion to Natalie Merchant’s song “Wonder” (because no one is cooler to the Jr. High reader than Natalie Merchant!) Overall, Wonder is a fine, quick read but it lacks the substance to advance to the next round.

More Than This – We’re still not entirely sure what to think of this book. We both read and LOVED previous Smackdown winner, Patrick Ness’ A Monster Calls so we were hoping for more of the same. This was pretty different and hard to classify. Part dystopian in the style of The Matrix and part philosophical exploration of the meaning of life, More than This isn’t easily categorized by genre, nor is it really like many other books.  It’s lengthy (by teen fiction standards at almost 500 pages), dense, and complicated, and definitely suited more for a mature reader.  The story begins with the (disturbingly graphic) drowning death of Seth. He then wakes up in an “afterlife” (though this is not a tale of what lies beyond this world) where he meets two other people like him, including the humorous Thomasz. The post-apocalyptic world they explore together is ruled by The Driver, an ambiguous grim-reaper like figure whose true function remains a mystery for much of the novel. Indeed, the novel is largely driven by mystery, as the teens try to figure out how they got to where they are, how they can leave, and even if they want to. At the same time, we slowly learn through a series of flashbacks about Seth’s backstory – a terrible episode with his younger brother, a complicated relationship with his parents, and a fraught romance with his friend, Gudmund. We both found these dramatic bits more interesting reading than the action-packed main plot. Essentially, in our final discussion it seems we both enjoyed some elements of the book but still had many questions about it.  Also, we were hesitant about for whom we would recommend it. 

While Wonder was sweet, we are moving More Than This on to other readers because we need to hear more opinions on this book!

-Laura and Kevin

Round One ...Counting by 7's is victorious.

Hokey Pokey: A unique allegory about "coming of age" without any real crisis involved.  This book, however, is too silly for the age group it is aimed at.  Likely younger readers will not quite get the full meaning and older students will not have the patience to relax into the seemingly childishness of it all.  Although, we did like the "bikes are horses" concept ( mainly because both of us still call our bikes "our trusty steeds" and sometimes imagine slapping its flanks in order to power up a hill) , the concept is taken too far and likely will be dismissed by the critical adolescent reader.  Jerry Spinelli does try to wrap up the ideas in a nice parcel in the end but it is all a little too late....for us we will take our "right arm out" and instead of "shaking it all about" we will just leave it out.

 

Counting by 7s is our winner and will move to the next round. Although some events seemed contrived in their resolution, the short chapters and changing points of view add to its readability.  The "quirky" main character is delightful and the plot portrays an incident which lives out the greatest identified fear of early adolescents: fear of the death of one or more parent.  We can see junior high students loving the main character's resilience and tenacity as well as her ability to bring out the strengths in others. 

 

Submitted by:  Robin and Maureen (and Maureen's reading buddy - Brenda)

"Ding" there goes round one...

I guess if there is to be a first-round-KO in one of our pairings, it’s best that this happens early -- shame to see a good book go down swinging.  Fortunately, that wasn’t the case in the bout between Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Saenz and The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp, by Kathi Appelt.  In truth, what we had here was a welterweight taking on a heavy-hitter, with ‘True Blue’ fighting far above its weight-class.  The former is already a reigning champ (Printz, Stonewall and Pura Belpre awards), an edgy account of friendship, loyalty and emerging sexuality -- all haymakers when it comes to engaging teens facing the same issues.  The latter, on the other hand, might be better suited to shadow boxing, with an allegorical take on questions of legend, legacy and unchecked ambition, and a style that is probably better suited to a pre-teen reader.  If you’ll forgive my hamfisted ode to pugilism, there isn’t a real glass jaw amongst any of the Smackdown contenders, so I am hesitant to consign the ‘Scouts’ to the annals of coulda-been-somebodies.  Our resident Don King wants drama, but perhaps this was less a brawl and more light sparring.