Saints vs. Colors

(Subtitle: better late than never!) 

Thank you, Smackdown Deities, for a great start this year! Overall, we enjoyed both of these books, and appreciated their many strengths. Both have compelling female protagonists, both feature authentically-represented diversity (#ownvoices) and explorations of identity, and both deal sensitively with lots of relevant contemporary issues - namely, mental illness in The Astonishing Color of After, and sexual assault in Saints and Misfits.

We were unanimous in voting Saints and Misfits to go forward, though. We found the ideas around internet shaming and how teens interact with their internet identities especially intriguing. How the main character moves through choices involving "sexting" and communications felt very applicable to the experiences that some our own students go through.  Another strength was the way that the novel handled romance, and that it wasn’t a dominant feature or driving force. It also does a wonderful job of depicting various elements and tensions of Muslim life in Canada, and adding nuance to the representations we’re typically presented with.

The Astonishing Color of After, on the other hand, was a bit too heavy-handed with the romance, and tried to juggle too many storylines. The story of the protagonist's mother's suicide, and the journey to Taiwan to uncover the secrets of the past, would have been better, we thought, if not bogged down by the inclusion of the romantic confusion with the best friend. We really liked the magic realism, though, and the ample, mouth-watering depictions of Taiwanese street food, so this one is definitely still worth a read!

Saints and Misfits for the win!

Darius the Mighty: An Collection of Emails

I rather miss the lunch hour yelling and screaming over books, but when your book decisions are due the same week as report cards you instead resort to emails that you furiously type at breaks.

Me to team:

What are your votes?

I am throwing mine to Darius. It got me in the feels at the end and I may have cried when his mother said goodbye to her dad for the last time.

Lil:

Darius gets my vote too. I enjoyed reading all the complexities of the relationships that developed through the story- the ties that bind and understanding one another.

Tammy:

I must be a hard @## because both books bored me. I am choosing Darius only because the writing was better. I liked that the author depicted mental health as a generational disease and that Darius was learning to cope with his depression in healthy ways. I also appreciated that the author only suggested at a possible sexual encounter between the two friends; leaving the reader to determine the level of intimacy shared. Darius was well written, but too slow to be a Smackdown contender.

Andrew:

Mighty did not live up to its' name as I struggled through the book to get to the end. For a mystery, there was very little suspense or drama. As well, the coincidences in Mighty were far too many. For that reason alone, Darius gets to move on.

Dia:

I didn't hate Finding Mighty, but it wasn't the best mystery for kids. I found some things went unexplained like why Myla is afraid of high buildings. I thought the author was trying too hard to put in too many "cool" things like Parkour or tagging or gangs (#westsideforlife).

On the other hand I found Darius very engaging. It was heart breaking to see what Darius thought were facts around his Dad's feelings for him. I loved learning more about Zorastrianism which I knew nothing about was fascinating. Most importantly I loved the friendship that Darius found. I know it can be read perhaps more but I like that if it is great, but that the friendship is the foundation piece. This is an easy choice for me.

So there it is,
Darius moves on.

#northsidestillalive

The Goat vs Moxie

After some discussion group 12 has picked The Goat for the win in round 1.

We felt The Goat has a wider audience and deals with such a wide range of topics. It would make for a great read-aloud for div 2 and a great lit circle for jr high. Not only does it talk about parental loss but it touches on moving to a whole new country, perseverance, friendship, social media, and working towards self-regulation. Even the goat has a voice in the book. It's a good amount of funny with serious.

Moxie is great and would totally suggest it for high school. Just felt it was limited in its audience.

Hard pick. 2 great books!

Long Way Down vs. Love-ish

DDM teachers read Long Way Down, which was a novel written in verse about a boy named Will attempting to get retribution for the shooting of his older brother. As he goes along his journey to carry out this revenge plan, he encounters many individuals from his past that give him perspective on the situation.

Our other pick was Love, ish, which was sort of like The Fault in Our Stars in the sense that a terminally ill girl has cause to reassess her dreams and relationships.

Our pick to move forward is Long Way Down. It was the more compelling of the two books, and when I lent it to two of my very reluctant readers, they read the entire thing and enjoyed it. That alone tells me that this is a winner (at least in round 1)!

Far from the Tree-  By FAR the better book!
Krystal:
Luckily I was able to download this as an audiobook right away and loved listening to the story develop. Perhaps I should say the ‘stories’ as three siblings, given up at birth, find their way to each other and discover how their ‘stories’ intertwine while learning about each other.
There are so many facets to these young people and their struggles, which I feel the plot addresses adequately, and they were not the typical struggles I find in YA fiction.
Karen:
I found the characters to be relatable and realistic. I loved how the events unfolded through the eyes of the three characters. Just enough foreshadowing to keep the reader’s interest. I love how the author, in the acknowledgments, ends with “I am endlessly grateful that they chose me to tell their story, and I hope they’re doing well, wherever they may be”!

#Murdertrending -
Krystal:
I was so excited to get to choose this as our first read and as I sat waiting to choose our first books,  I was ready to wrestle it away from others!
How deceiving a book can be… but this deception will encourage kids read it at the very least.
The idea of Social Media and a Murder will certainly attract many young readers (look at the hashtag...instant appeal), yet I could not push forth past the first few chapters. I could not connect with the character(s) and felt that the plot was just too ‘out there’ to have any true connections or compassion with.
However, I did enjoy the unexpected- edge if your seat suspense of never knowing when the characters might be murdered, the book just didn’t have enough to sustain my interest. Perhaps it was the vivid description of the decapitation that really ruined it for me?!?
Karen:
I hate to say this, but I just could not get through this book. The concept, characters and events did little to hold my interest. I really tried to read it, but it just did nothing for me.
Rachel:
I read the back of the book and thought it was an interesting concept. I was hoping for Hunger Games meets Big Brother but sadly it was not. I read the first chapter and was not impressed. We all know “don't judge a book by its cover,” or in this case, the first chapter so I read on. It was work to get through. The characters were not of interest to me. Dee, the main character, was not even a driving force to continue reading. Although I liked the idea of the book the plot fell flat. Considering that the plot involves countless gruesome murders that’s quite a feat. I finished the book simply because I thought it had to get better. It did not! At one point I actually thought that this is more like a Scooby Doo episode than a young adult novel. Not a fan of this book at all!!

I Should be Able to Craft A Witty Title Out of These Titles, But I Can't

So, as some of you will recall, our little contingent secured the first pick in the Smackdown draft,and I’ll have to be honest that I was getting all judging-a-book-by-its-cover and not really feeling either of our selections from the outset. Now, some (Brad) might suggest that I was just being sulky over us not choosing the Spider-man graphic novel, which my comic loving self was feeling very protective of, but I have it on good authority that Spider-man is moving through, so I’m writing in the spirit of generosity about both of our books. The covers of both Starfish and Piecing Me Together have actually grown on me, now that I can see the connections with texts, but I can’t even make a premise of close fight in this one: We all just flat out liked Piecing Me Together better.

Now, normally in such a lopsided affair, I’d lick my chops and start ripping into the unfortunate book that is about to depart this smacky vale, before waxing poetic about the victor’s many merits, but a conversation I had on Friday gives me pause. The one kid I know who has read both books, actually likes Starfish better. Yeah. I know. It kind of calls whatever I’m about to write into question. As I reflect on this, though, it doesn’t really surprise me. Starfish is one of those books - and there are some in every edition of the Smackdown - that reads like a Frankenstein monster of YA tropes: angsty teen, lots of references to angsty teen’s object of affection’s hotness, family drama, unfulfilled goal, mysterious strangers who provide just in the nick of time insight etc. You get the picture. I know that sounds dismissive, but really, I’m dismissing myself because all of this stuff works in YA - and even, if we’re honest, more highbrow stuff - because it speaks to things we can all connect to and for this young man, this book really spoke to him. And I mean that almost literally: one of the strengths and the weaknesses of the book is a narrator (and an author) who paints in pretty broad strokes and I can see this being very effective for some kids, even if it left all of us middle-agers clamoring for more nuance.

So this is not a terribly subtle book. Our young narrator, Kiko, lives in a broken home whose dysfunction is exacerbated by a mother whose narcissism might have even Donald Trump raising a blow-dried eyebrow. Her art is her solace and her albatross as her failure to get into her chosen art school leaves her adrift. And  . . . the hottest boy ever, her childhood crush, is back in town. There’s lots more, including a couple of biggies: ongoing sexual trauma and struggles with cultural and racial identity.  If that seems like a lot, it is, and there are times where we felt that there was more going on here than the author could be expected to do justice to in a relatively slim 330 pages. In our discussion, what we kept coming back to, however, was a lack of nuance in the prose that really boils down to the author not trusting her audience, and perhaps her own writing. Throughout the novel in pivotal moments we find our experience of the novel is actually hijacked by a narrator who tells us not only her every thought and feeling, but also her takes on the thoughts and feelings of those around her. This probably doesn’t sound like a bad thing, and sometimes it’s not, but there are other times where it feels like we’re getting a few more “Get it?” nudges than we need. This extends to the basic structure of the book where the connecting thread of Jade’s art rang somewhat hollow for us, particularly through the use of the sometimes cloying end of chapter encapsulations of what Jade is drawing in the moment. Again, I don’t want to get into too many examples of what wasn’t working because there are strong moments that would resonate with kids, but this was not a book that any of us found ourselves compulsively reading.

While I’ve sometimes found the opening round of The Mighty Smackdown quite jarring, where very disparate selections are matched up together leading to forced choices between books that are great (or, occasionally, not great) in fundamentally different ways. These books do not fall into that category as they have some similar features, perhaps most notably that their female narrators are young female artists who are struggling to find their own identity in a complex cultural landscape. If Kiko was at times a, a hard character to connect and maybe even like, Jade in Piecing Me Together was someone we all felt quite connected with. Part of this is a testament to the formal structures of the novel and Watson’s ability to craft an authentic voice for Jade. That concept of voice is the controlling conceit of the novel even more so than Jade’s work with collage, and ultimately there is a very empowering message here about the importance of speaking truth to power and I don’t mean this just in the more familiar context of looking at larger social injustice, although this does play a role in the novel and one that is all the more effective for it’s understated nature. More importantly though, this is a book about speaking truth to that power in your own head; that dominating voice that at some point tries to stop so many of us from doing what we want -and more importantly, need - to do. I know this probably sounds hypocritical after criticizing Kiko for TMIing, but while we certainly get her interior thoughts it is how that interior monologue links up to her spoken words that makes a tremendous difference. It is, in many ways, a primer for young people to contemplate how to have tough conversations. Jade has a lot going on too - friend and family issues, exploring her identity as a young woman of color and her body image, her relationships with authority figures in her life etc. - and yet this is all woven together in an artful and eloquent manner. There are some profound moments throughout the novel and some sparkling bits of prose -and poetry- that really made this a compelling read. We all really enjoyed the book and could envision kids who we’d really like to give it to. Piecing Me Together is our number one with a bullet.

Drum Roll.... and its Nevermoor!

At Harry Ainlay, we vote for Nevermoor for this round. We found this novel was a text that will engage younger readers who are familiar with other dystopian worlds created in other series like Harry Potter, Divergent, Hunger Games, etc. It is accessible to younger readers who are intimidated by more complex fantasy/dystopian texts but a bit simplistic for more advanced YA readers. We found some scenes were intriguing and cinematic.

Drum Roll Please had strong characterization and was diverse, but fell flat at the end of the novel which made it lose credibility.