Glory or Garden...

I read both of these in previous rounds, so I've had a nice hiatus from the madness of Smackdown to venture into adult fiction.  I don't want to repeat myself on the aspects of each book that I liked or disliked, so I'll just summarize why I have chosen Night Gardener to continue smacking.  Personally, I was more enthralled by the characters and voices of the Night Gardener.  If you read my previous post about Glory...I was not a fan of the characters or the premise.  Drinking dead bat?  Definitely not my scene.  But people seem to love A.S. King, I'm just not a fan.  Night Gardener was spooky, the description was fantasical!  I loved the adventure wrapped up in this story.  As I said before...I the story was magic right down to the book cover and paper.  Night Gardener also more accessible to my students.  Realistically, Glory wouldn't be a viable option for me to put in my class library or at least it's a book I would only give to a select few to read.  I'm hoping for a real showdown next round.  This was went out with a whimper, I want a tough decision next time!

Are you all liars?

Having read both books and finding positive merits in both, I would have to say that We Were Liars is by far the much better book for young adults to read.  At this point I believe that I might have to apologize to some of my colleagues with whom I battled toe to toe in order to keep Nazi Hunters in the Smackdown race, but that was in the earlier stages of the contest when it was up against a much weaker selection.  In this case however, Nazi Hunters does not have the qualities to compete with We Were Liars.  The depth of detail and characterization in each story alone is  enough to push We Were Liars to the front of this contest.  Each person in the Liars was developed with connects (either like or dislike) are created for the reader. Questions such as "Is being rich really the wonderful life that we fantasize about?".  "If I were the Grandfather could I forgive that much?"  In Nazi Hunters, Eichmann is never really portrayed as "a bad man"... more like just someone going off to do his normal daily job.  I felt that because of this the characters are flatter and hard for the reader to make meaningful attachments.
If our goal is to find a book that will grab the attention of young adults then the choice should have been We Were Liars. Unfortunately, this is not the case.  So to rectify this choice - my zombie pick is We Were Liars. 

Liars and Nazis

Even though the majority has already spoken and Nazi Hunters has emerged victorious, we still want to add our votes to the We Were Liars column.  I went into Nazi Hunters thinking it would be akin to last year's winner (Bomb), an expectation to which Nazi Hunters fell short.   We Were Liars might lack the gravitas and educational value of Nazi Hunters, but it was an engaging story that students have been loving.  And while I kind of detested the whole family and had little sympathy for their self-manufactured tribulations, I think that was part of the appeal of Liars. Cadence and the other Liars are captives in a world where wealth is just a mask that can't quite conceal the dysfunction and racism that lurks beneath, and their ultimately fruitless efforts to escape that world does give readers something to mentally chew on, I think...

That being said, We Were Liars doesn't measure up to other Smackdown titles we've read this year, and this round most of our excitement has been reserved for voting for the zombie.  Mark two Xs next to I'll Give You the Sun, please!

-Chandra & Shelley K.

I Make My Own Rules

I feel like there is some sort of rule that if I didn't vote for a title in a previous round and it comes back at me again in another round I still shouldn't vote for it.  Arlene and I battled for Midwinter Blood  over Nazi Hunters a few rounds back with our staff, and sadly we were the minority.  This book still refuses to die, as it came back to our bracket again against We Were Liars.  I read Lockhart's book this summer and loved it.  The scene in the front yard had me utterly confused and had me hooked.  As I read, I knew something terrible had happened, but what? It reminded me of Halse Anderson's Speak where it takes the whole book for the horrific memory to come to the surface.  And that is precisely what I loved about this book- the whole thing just explodes at the end.  This old money family provides a (possibly) true look into how  power can corrupt a family and then decimate it.

We Were Liars has been floating around my room for the last few months and it hardly ever makes it back onto the shelf.  Readers immediately tell a friend that they MUST read it, and so the cycle continues.  Just yesterday two of my students were discussing a scene from the book.  Watching students talk about this book is interesting because the one who has read it always has to be careful about how they discuss or explain something as to not give away the ending.   I book talked Nazi Hunters to my homeroom the other day and two students immediately wanted it.  It is no surprise that the girls are the ones that gravitate to We Were Liars and the boys are fighting for a copy of Nazi Hunters.

My vote is for We Were Liars, my zombie pick is still up in the air.

Nazi Hunters vs. We Were Liars

We thought Nazi Hunters won as the book to move forward.  This is for no other reason than it is an important piece of history that people need to remember (and learn about how painstakingly it all 'went down').  The other reason is that We Were Liars was a book with little hope and very few, if any other,redeeming qualities (maybe I was grumpy when I read it), but other than the demonstration of how powerful the mind can be - we just didn't find much between these covers that would make us want to recommend it to kids (unlike Nazi Hunters that we feel kids should all read).

Posted by Arlene on behalf of Dianne, Deb and Donna

With 27 minutes to spare

I guess the one thing I always hope for, as we get to this stage of the Smackdown, is a good battle between some good, and even great, books. This round did not disappoint. I enjoyed both The Night Gardener and Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future and I would recommend them both to many a student and colleague. I literally just finished The Night Gardener while Glory’s glory has already faded a bit in my rapidly aging mind, which poses a bit of a challenge in making this a fair contest. Ultimately though, as much as I enjoyed the sheer storytelling of The Night Gardener and its, at times, subtle (and sometimes more direct) meditations on story-telling, I can’t say that it is a better book than Glory.

I don’t really have anything snarky to say about The Night Gardiner: it was pretty much exactly what I expected as I took in its super-cool cover. Auxier must have a great relationship with his publisher because the physical form of this book is completely in sync with the tone he has created. It reminded me a bit of one of our previous winners A Monster Calls. I think Auxier is a really fantastic writer and I could feel that this novel was a labor of love even before I read his very thoughtful Author’s Note at the end. As some previous reviewers have noted, this would be an excellent read-a-loud novel and it’s a book that I’d like to add to our school library sooner rather than later.

With all that being said, I’m going all in with Glory and here’s why. “A story helps folks face the world, even when it frightens ‘em. And a lie does the opposite. It helps you hide.” That, my friends, is the moral of the story of The Night Gardener. Again, I like the figurative and literal packaging around that moral, and I don’t necessarily need something more profound (What would Tim O’Brien - or countless other writers for that matter - have to say about this neatly packaged nugget, I wonder?) in this particular story, but I think you’d be hard pressed to boil Glory O’Brien (Character or novel) down to a three sentence thesis. If we tried though, it would surely have something to do with the lies we tell ourselves to create the stories of our lives. I think A.S. King is forcing us to confront these lies through the slightly cracked mirror that is Glory, but maybe more significantly, she’s not letting us get away with thinking that lies we tell ourselves don’t have ramifications that go well beyond our puny little lives. There is a vision of the future (Our future?) at the heart of this book and it is more Cormac McCarthy than John Green and, for me, that really upped the stakes. The Night Gardener is a story about the power of stories, but I’m going to suggest that Glory O’Brien, arguably no less fantastical in some ways, is the story that is more likely to change a young - or even not so young - life. A high bar to set of course, but I’d bet that it’s one that both of these fine authors set for themselves.

ZOMBIE pick still to be determined.

The Night Gardener blooms, while Glory was less-than glorious.

While Glory had a certain charm and sounded like a novel with promise, the premise fell flat, turned out to be a bit too hard to buy into.  The characters lacked sufficient depth to draw us in.  This futuristic Glory story also lacked the broader appeal and teachableness of The Night Gardener.

The Night Gardener is a gothic tale that was both light-handed and mystical enough to be enjoyable. The Mystery in the story was revealed in layers, at just the right speed to keep us reading.  The main characters evolve in a way that is both believable and endearing.  While this story is lovely and imaginative, it is also has greater potential to provide the jr. high classroom another novel to be taught and/or enjoyed.  

Therefore, in a unanimous 5-0 nothing victory, the Westminster pick for this round goes to The Night Gardener.