Why "The Search for..."?

I got my title from the book The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt. where there is a wonderful quote--

" 'Of course it's silly,' said the Prime Minister impatiently. 'But a lot of serious things start silly.'"

This particular quote stuck out for me as I was reading The Search for Delicious to my kids this past fall, and I put it aside knowing that I would use it somewhere, sometime. It seems like the perfect subtitle to this blog as many of my musing probably are silly, but may turn serious at any moment!

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

A Lesson Plan from the Mind of Seven Year Old

Rhode Island's Office of Library and Information Service holds a mock Caldecott award every year, and I try to read through their list of nominees to find what is best of the year's books. I got two through ILL this week: Heat Wave by Eileen Spinelli and Mary and the Mouse, The Mouse and Mary by Beverly Donofrio & Barbara McClintock. I read them with my daughter last night. She liked them especially Mary and the Mouse... Mary is a young girl who discovers a mouse in her house who lives a parallel life. Heat Wave is self explanatory--it's about a town during a heat wave. We finished, and my daughter said, "Now I'm going to read them both together." I furrowed my brow a bit and wondered where this was going.

She started to put the two stories together, and with this particular pair, it worked! How would Mary and the mouse's story change if they lived in Lumberville, the town featured in Heat Wave? Where could you introduce this new element? I loved this idea...read two stories, give one story the other's setting, how do the two stories change? or exchange the main characters? Can children write a new story based on the changes? What ages would this work with? I think younger children would be able to make some simple exchanges, but YA's could take two picture books and make a fairly sophisticated story.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Two from 2007 RI Teen Book Award Nominees

These two books have very little in common besides the fact that they were both nominees for the RI Teen Book Award in 2007. While they were both fun, and I would recommend them both to middle school students, neither one was perfect.

Listening for Lions by Gloria Whelan was a beautifully written with almost poetic descriptions of Africa, but the end was a bit too predictable for me to consider it a great book. I loved the premise--a young orphaned girl in Africa is hijacked by a couple to pose as their daughter in an attempt to win back the good graces of the rich grandfather. It has all the trappings of an old-fashioned classic, but as I said, I guessed much of the ending about three quarters of the way through the story. That just left some of the details.

Confessions of a Closet Catholic by Sarah Darer Littman starts with quite a bang. The closet Catholic of the title is not Catholic at all, but Jewish! Again, what a great premise: what happens when a young Jewish girl decides to give up being Jewish for Lent? Justine is a excellent role model for middle school students who are asking themselves about their own identity. My biggest criticism is that the book gets slightly, and I mean slightly, preachy. But really, how can you avoid being preachy when you have a priest and a rabbi talking to a young girl exploring her faith?

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Material Kids

My children's literature instructor this spring recommended two books about materialism for young adults: Feed by M.T. Anderson and The Gospel According to Larry by Janet Tashjian. Both of these books would make wonderful book group type reading material for YA groups. There is just oodles to talk about.

The Gospel According to Larry is about a teenager who takes on an Internet alter-ego as Larry and in that guise, pontificates about how advertising manipulates people into believing that their wants are truly needs. Larry's message and the website suddenly become very popular with some unforeseen consequences for its creator. Even the the book is a little out-of-date (Larry wouldn't have just a website now, he would be on Facebook, writing a blog and podcasting), its message is still very relevant, what defines us as people? who we are or what we own?

Feed takes this idea and jettisons it into the future. The characters in this book can message one another by just thinking, they can access the same movies or music in their heads, they are bombarded by advertising. They are entities whose government is only interested in them for what they buy (does that sound at all familiar? Remember what George Bush wants you to do with that economic stimulus check...don't pay down your debt, don't save it. Be a good American, and SPEND it for the good of the economy!) Again, these people are so interested in what they have over who they are that they don't seem to notice that they are developing leprosy-like symptoms, and the main character Titus can't cope with a girlfriend who wanted to be something more than today's acquisition.

Feed will require a little more thinking from students whereas The Gospel According to Larry is a little more straightforward and while not overtly preachy, it does hover near the edge. They would be excellent companion reads for comparison and contrast.

While I am on the topic of materialism, I just need to mention a revolting article from the May 10, 2008 front page of the Wall Street Journal that describes a growing trend for parents to dress their children as they see celebrities are dressing their children. Apparently, a whole blog exists to promote this mimicry! Yikes. Can't the bloggers find something else to do? And what parent has the time to read a blog on how to dress their baby fashionably?

Using the two books described above, ask teens what Larry and Titus would think of this growing trend.

Friday, May 9, 2008

A book a day

From what I have written so far, it must seem that I read a book (or more) a day. Even between semesters I don't have time for that! I have been playing a bit of catch-up with some books that I heard book talked as the semester ended during a mock Newbery Award session in my children's literature class. Many of the books that I have written about so far were nominated by a classmate for our mock Newbery. (In case you are curious, A Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman won).

I decided that I wanted to blog the children and young adult books that I read because I think it may be helpful to me personally as I look for work. I will have a public record of my reading and be able to showcase my knowledge of the digital world. But, most of all, I want to share books with others both adults and children. Somewhere along the way, I hope someone other than me enjoys reading this!

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Precocious Young Girls

What is it about precocious female protagonists that I find so very appealing? Some of my favorite characters in children's literature have been Harriet the spy, Claudia Kincaid from The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Anastasia Krupnik and from today's book Margaret Rose Kane in E.L. Konigsburg's The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place. Margaret is typical of the rest of these girls--intelligent, misunderstood by less-than-sympathetic adults and willing to take risks. I often wonder if these aren't the characteristics of the authors themselves. Otherwise, where would they get the courage to write or worse, send off to a publisher, such wonderful books?

One of the arguments I heard a lot during classes is that children and young adults need to be able to identify with the characters in the books they read? So, do these books only appeal to precocious females? I would have to say no, because while I am female and, perhaps, intelligent, I would not describe myself as precocious, misunderstood or willing to take risks. Do these characters appeal, because they are who every girl wants to be (or for an adult, who she wanted to be as a child)? Or, and I sometimes suspect this, are they written for the adult women (as so many librarians and teachers are) who buy them?

But, these books are not all about the wonderfully clever characters who always seem to best the somewhat dense authorities that people them. I loved that Outcasts was about a girl who loves her eccentric, European uncles and who appreciates and is willing to fight for "outsider art." I loved the truffle hunting dog and the neighbors with the sourdough starter kit. Konigsburg's humor appeals to me as does her sense of beauty.

Another wonderful read from the the mind of E.L.Konigsburg

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Elijah of Buxton

My children's literature class discussed Newbery winner Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis, and after the discussion, I just had to read the book. However, as so often happens with me, when a book (or movie or restaurant or anything else for that matter) gets a lot of buildup, I found I was disappointed.

Don't get me wrong, there was so much to like about this book! But, I really wish I had read it before the big buildup.

So what's to like? Elijah is a "fragile", humor boy at the beginning this book who grows into a responsible young man through the course of the book. Elijah is the crux of this book, and few books have such a solid core.

I found learning a bit of Elgin Settlement's history fascinating. I had heard of towns made up of former slaves, particularly in Kansas, but these started only after the Civil War. Elgin was in Canada and was a safe haven for runaway slaves.

I won't give away the ending, but I thought it was fitting, believable and poignant.

So, I don't know why I was disappointed, but as I said, sometimes too much anticipation is a bad thing. Hopefully, I haven't ruined someone else's enjoyment of this book.

2007 National Book Award Winner

Just finished Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and I can see why it has topped almost every "must read" list for 2007 (except for an ALA award...interesting). Humor, poignancy, devastating sadness mixed with hope all make this book very real to me. The main character Junior recounts his freshman year in high school through his sharpening talent as a cartoonist and his writing. Junior was born with multiple medical issues. Still, he grows up to be a very intelligent teenager who realizes that if continues with school on the Spokane Reservation where he lives, he will be trapped there forever. He opts to go to a "white" school where he is treated as an outsider because he is an Indian. On the reservation, he is considered a traitor. As he makes friends and moves through a year full of tragedies that would devastate most adults, he wrestles with the problem of who he is, a theme with which all young adults will be able to identify.

This book is definitely for young adults. Although the reading level is not demanding, it contains mature subject matter particularly Junior's obsession with "boners" and masturbation.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Are you feeling Lucky?

Newbery Award winner and user of the word scrotum (gasp), The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron is a wonderful story of young Lucky whose mother has died, and her Guardian is her father's first wife Brigette. Lucky has problems with trust as would any child who lost a mother and whose father opts to not parent. The driving fear of the book is that her Guardian will desert her and return to France. She wonders how to access her Higher Power, a force that she overhears her twelve step neighbors discuss. The conflict with her Guardian is neatly resolved, but I was left a bit unsatisfied with Lucky's contact with her Higher Power. Still, it was a wonderful read.

Monday, May 5, 2008

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

I very much wanted to like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne, but I didn't. The premise was excellent: a naive nine year old boy moves from his beloved Berlin to a place he calls Out With, because his father has caught the eye of the Fury. The reader quickly realizes that the boy has moved to Auschwitz so his father can run the camp there for the Führer.

However, once that premise was established, the story wasn't very believable to me. The boy Bruno meets a Jewish boy through the wire, and for a year maintains a friendship with the boy. I just couldn't believe that over the course of a year that no guard noticed these two boys meeting and talking. I definitely did not believe the ending. Without giving it away, I wanted to know why if it was so easy for Bruno to get into the camp, why none of the Jews were able to get out of it.

There are much better books on the Holocaust out there, read those instead. Try Maus and Maus II by Art Spiegelman, some of the original graphic novels, or Friedrich or I Was There by Hans Peter Richter or The Diary of Anne Frank.

Lois Lowry

New and old: Lois Lowry doesn't fail to please. Anastasia Krupnik is a series that I have missed somehow along the way. I loved it. I loved that she kept a list of things that she loved and hated and that entries routinely were crossed out and shuffled from category to category. Anastasia is a bright girl, perhaps too bright for the adults around her, and her 10th year is full of the stuff of life--birth, death, love and loss. What's not to enjoy?

I enjoyed The Willoughbys with its spoof of old-fashioned, orphaned characters from old-fashioned children's books. I wasn't so certain that children who didn't grow up with Anne of Green Gables, Tom Sawyer or Heidi would get the joke. Still, they may enjoy the idea of getting rid of their parents by sending them on vacation or the happy ending when the children are adopted by a rich candy maker.