Nazi Hunters is Ultra Cool

Well, I feel like this round was a real milestone for me. Not because of anything relating to the books, but because this is my first successful blog post using my own login! That being said, I really feel like going for gold here, so I am also going to attempt a picture or two in order to keep up with you techno-savvy kids who are posting videos and the like.

Ultra was...alright. It turned out to be better than I expected, but that doesn't say all that much, as I was expecting it to be terrible. I think that Brad echoed - I'm pretty sure it was Brad but don't want to mess things up by going back to check - my sentiments exactly when he said that it was like a Scholastic book that a distant relative would've purchased for me circa 1990. I was really excited when I read page one and thought that it was non-fiction, but was then disappointed when Travis crushed my dreams and told me otherwise. Don't get me wrong, there are some positives for this book: it would be easy to teach (although it would never be my choice) and it is a straightforward read and therefore easily accessible to many grades. For me, I just found it too predictable and the characters, underdeveloped.

Now Nazi Hunters. Tracy and I had this book in the first round, and I loved it. I couldn't put it down; not just because I was stuck in the Canmore hospital with a sick student and had nothing else to do, but because I found the investigative/spy/capture aspect of it engrossing. I have read and watched my fair share of Holocaust texts but this novel is the first one that brought something new to the table. I knew nothing of Adolf Eichman prior to reading this book, and unlike those Social Studies/Phys Ed teachers who make up the upper echelon of the education system, I am not overly well versed in geography and the events that lead up to formation of Israel; so this book actually taught me many things, and not all of them directly about the Holocaust. After I read it, I spoke to my grade sevens, eights, and nines about it, and many of them have bought their own copies and absolutely love it - most of them commenting on the 'spy' aspect of it and the geography-type-stuff that they learned.

Needless to say, the Vimy vote goes to Nazi Hunters.

 **interesting tidbit about this picture: apparently Nazi hunters around the world called for a ban against Hitler wine (didn't know that was a thing).

Glory wins... insert pun here.

I have read, and enjoyed, three titles by A. S. King, though I see a clearly discernible pattern in the themes of these works; it would seem that moody, introspective stories sell.  To be fair, one could level similar criticisms against others in young-adult genre -- chief amongst them, John Green -- but perhaps this represents the genesis of author-loyalty for our students; after all, I'd read a take-out menu if Vonnegut wrote it.  Nonetheless, my colleagues at DDM and I agree that young 'Glory' is well-conceived and deftly hits on bona fide themes that will appeal to young readers.

Which is not to say that Famous Last Words, by Katie Alender, was without virtue; I can enjoy a pulp as much as the next guy.  If one can contrive a healthy dose of obliviousness in the face of Reed's constant presence, which has no apparent function beyond sledgehammer foreshadowing, this is a fun story, stylistically in-keeping with the story's mien; an homage to film noir of the era?

Hat's-off to A. S. King for a good read, but me thinks the game is afoot, and the next round will not be won so easily.

ER

Swing Votes, Bibles, Heart Shaped Paper Clips, and a Guest Appearance by Jeff Probst.

Dia and I felt like the loner contestant on Survivor, the odd man out, the one no one wants to work with. We are the swing vote. The vote with POWER.  With Westmin voting in favor of I'll Give You the Sun and all of the ABM staff voting for The Night Gardener our two votes would decide the fate.   The swing vote can change the game in a moment, breaking all of your little literary hearts (Dia and I may have cackle laughed more than once at the prospect of this). Surprisingly no one tried bribery, and in our lunch time meeting no one really managed to sway our vote one way or another.  The good news is, that this time there was no yelling in our meeting and we all all left with our self-esteem intact.  It should be noted that Annabel and Andrew were not there. Make inferences as you wish.

We have actually spent the last twenty four hours mulling over our decision, and it has not been an easy one.  We feel torn. We spent the whole break this morning saying in unison, "ahhhhhhhhhh what should we do." I looked in my dead grandma's bible and I found the perfect rule to help us make our decision and live with it as the swing vote:

If you upset a round in Smackdown, take a paperclip and fold it into the shape of a heart.  Place the paperclip underneath the keyboard of your fellow Smackers for one night.  Remove it in the morning.  They will forget this ever happened. 

Our thoughts/thoughts of the poster:

The Night Gardener is a book that most definitely could be on any shelf in any classroom.  Many of my grade 7s have read the book this year already, some admitting that they found it hard to read late at night because they thought it was too creepy.  It is accessible to a wide audience of readers. The black pages were one of the reasons I was so excited to read this book this past summer.  The whole book was packaged with the horror/gothic reader in mind.  It has this slow rise that brews and bubbles throughout the story.  The imagery in this book is fantastic as is the suspense. What is in that room?  Where is that mud coming from?  How did the leaves get there?  Why is that kid so mean to the kid with the crutch?  Can they escape the terror? Many of us on the ABM team felt that students would enjoy this as a read aloud, but that students may struggle with is the unique language spoken by Molly and Kip.  We have seen similar situations in books like The Knife of Never Letting Go and Blood Red Road. 

When I was watching the Oscars on Sunday night  Graham Moore's acceptance speech rang true to me when I thought about I'll Give You the Sun.  He said, "I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels like she's weird or she's different or she doesn't fit in anywhere.  Yes you do.  I promise you do.  Stay weird.  Stay different, and then when it's your turn, and you are standing on this stage, please pass the same message along."

This is one of these "weird" books, but damn it (can I use that word?) it is so beautifully written. There are young adults out there who need this book, so they can feel a sense of belonging.  There has been a lot of talk in the Twitterverse this year about needing more diverse books, and baby this is one.  Besides Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe I cannot remember such an eloquently written book on this topic in a while.  Usually teen romance has me rolling my eyes and thinking get on with it already, but I never felt that way while reading this.  The other night when I was reading the part about Brian and Noah I actually got so lost in their moment I forgot their gender.  This book didn't feel forced, it was full of tension and uncertainty, shame, and pride- something many LGBT teens feel.  Nelson really had her work set out for her with the plot she created, and I think she handled tying it up well.  During our lunch time discussion I brought up the fact that this is the only book besides Under the Egg that I have read in the last two years that really addresses the fine arts, specifically art so well.  That part of the book drew me in when both Noah and Jude were creating art, or all of the references to artists.  That is a niche market that is not often addressed.  That was another audience for this book.  Our problem with the book was the voice of Noah.  Is that REALLY how a thirteen year old talks?  Is that how a thirteen year old thinks? We felt like it was a stretch at times.  Just because you add the immature jest of "toilet licker" doesn't make the voice realistic.  We also struggled as a junior high staff having this book sitting in our library, or in our classroom without ensuring it had the right reader.

Again, both books could easily go through.  Both very different, both outstanding.  It became the argument of which lens we should view these books; student as audience or literature that is art?

There have been so many diverse/weird/unique/make you think books this year.  Dia and I raise our fists in solidarity for books like Glory O'Brien, The Knife of Impossible Memory and Grasshopper Jungle.  We love to celebrate the weird, because well, we are slightly weird.

So with that, our swing vote goes to:

What does Probst always say Smackers? "Expect the Unexpected."  Wait.  That's Big Brother.  Wait. Do we watch way too much reality tv? Wait? Whose idea was it to let me write this? Wait. Who gave me login access?

We made our swing vote using the lens of student audience to make our decision, but all you Sunners will have your chance in the next round to help it rise from the dead.  Dia and I may join you. I am also quite sure we broke the universe.

Zombie with caution my friends.

Liars vs Sister Mine

We are Liars was an overall good read.  Definitely in the vein of Drowning Ruth and other books about mysterious families, which I enjoy.  I love a good mystery about a family with money and a legacy and this one unfolds nicely.  Not a masterful read but a good one.  I particularly like the short stories about the king and his three daughters that held hidden meanings and themes.  Like someone else said, it was m'eh but I believe their was potential for fantastic.  I am happy we moved this one forward.

Sister mine was horrific and in all honestly I only needed about 3 chapters to know that.  This book was not worth my time to finish so I bailed.  I will admit I am a book bailer.  I will not finish a book just because.  The author needs to hook me in order to have my valuable time and this book failed miserably.

P.S-Super disappointed the I'll Give You the Sun didn't move on.  I was looking forward to reading that!

Are you Kidding Me?

When I got the email this morning that Night Gardener was moving on past I'll Give You the Sun - I was absolutely stunned.  Night Gardener was a good book but for me, not even comparable.  So...I got online to "lay some smack" and there is only a single post about this battle and the post is pro - I'll Give You the Sun...and overwhelmingly.

SO...if you are moving Night Gardener on - you have some 'espaining to do.  Get posting so I can figure out what the heck is going on in the world.

Ultra vs Nazi Hunters

Morning everyone.

For round 3 team Spruce Avenue had to review Nazi Hunters and Ultra. 

Ultimately we chose, at a vote of 2-0, to advance Nazi Hunters on to the next round.

Ultra was an interesting read. We liked how it blended together the two different narrative styles - the interview/podcast and 1st person storytelling. We connected more closely with the text and generally agreed that the text would be a great resource for a grade 7 classroom. It would not be a challenge to teach literary concepts through Ultra but I don't know if I could use it beyond grade 7 or 8. The whole storyline of his dad and that he was running to honour/overcome the loss of his him was obvious and the hallucinations could have been less frequent but there was a certain charm to the novel.

Nazi Hunters, we thought was a unique narrative. Both Christine and I expected that it would be just another WWII story of genocide and the search for humanity. We were wrong. Nazi Hunters was an enjoyable read. It was an engaging spy story about Israel's secret attempt to reveal and capture Adolf Eichmann, one of the key members of the Nazi party. One angle to the story that I was captivated by was the close connection that each member of the Palestinian group had to the holocaust. Whether they had lost their wives, children, parents, friends, etc. each member was deeply moved to be a member of the team and understood the extreme significance of what they were doing. Everyone from the pilot of the flight to the reconnaissance team was honoured to be assisting and in many cases brought to tears at the thought of success.

Nazi Hunters is the novel that we are advancing because of it wide appeal at many different grade levels. I think that it indirectly discusses the effects of the Holocaust, the fear of Nazi Germany, and the ruthlessness of Nazi leaders while reading as an spy/capture novel. We believe that Nazi Hunters, is better, even without its teachability, than Ultra and are advancing it to the next round.

See you all in Round 4!

Travis and Christine.

The Nazi Hunters vs. Ultra: Battle of the M’ehs

Well, if you can’t say something nice…be brief.

Needless to say, neither of these books were terrific reads.  Ultra has its charms, to be sure, but reads like a YA book that your Mom ordered from Scholastic circa 1981 because a distant relative (that you just met) noted at a family function that he was going to run a marathon, and you feigned 11-year old interest.  And then your Mom thought that this would be a great book for you to read having read the one sentence plot encapsulation.

It is periodically innocuously charming.  There’s the wacky sidekick best friend (named Kneecap, of course, because why wouldn't she be?).  A few mysteries/secrets that you figure out a few pages in, and then wait 150 pages for the shoe to drop.  I thought the structure (the talk-show interspersed with the actual narrative events, with an occasional hallucination thrown in) was an interesting choice, but I wish it was used with a little more intentionality and purpose.  All and all, methodically purposeful, predictable, and…okay.  I guess.

The Nazi Hunters?  Well, I was expecting to love it.  But I found it…sort of tedious, actually.  Neal Bascomb has an (undesirable) gift for glossing over what would appear to be the most interesting or morally ambiguous situations in his account, while ponderously belaboring others.  And I’m beginning to tire of all these ostensibly non-fiction YA books that read like fiction.  You know, where the author blends imagined events (and they could ONLY be imagined) into historical, third person objective writing or quotations that are a matter of public record.  So, side by side with Eichmann detailing plans to a town’s leaders, a matter of public record, we get fictionalized moments such as this:

At last, in early December, Himmler himself summoned Eichmann to his headquarters in the Black Forest of Germany. “If until now you have killed Jews,” he told Eichmann, in a tone laced with anger, “from now on, I order you, you must be a fosterer of Jews.”

What happens is, of course, that the vestigial verisimilitude from the historical part bleeds into the fictionalized portion, so we are meant to consider the fiction actual reality, and we get this worrisome hybrid where I lose faith in the author’s veracity.  And in elements of the narrative. 

I blame Common Core.

Is it just me who finds this a little bit questionable?

Begrudgingly, Ultra moves on.  Although I’m shocked that it will be in the quarter finals…