Brown Girl Dreaming

It took me considerably longer to find this last 2015 honor for the slightly odd reason that I was under the impression until three weeks ago it was entitled Brown Girl Crossing. I'm not sure why I didn't look up the title again after a handful of library databases claimed they had no Brown Girl Crossing books on record, but I did eventually (three weeks ago) do just that and discovered I had the name wrong. The next day I had Brown Girl Dreaming in my possession. The following day, I finished it.

And what a lovely book! I'm becoming more and more a fan of this free verse form of narrative. Some thoughts while reading this beautiful autobiographical story of Jacqueline Woodson's childhood:

1. How on earth does she remember so many minute and colorful details from her toddler years?! I think I remember, like, two things that happened to me before I was 6. How did she fill 200 pages of pre-6-year-old memories?!

2. I am so glad she included a family tree at the beginning of the book (I referenced it often).

3. This is beautifully written.

4. All the "how to listen" pages are haiku (I may not have figured this out until how to listen #8 (and then went back and checked the syllables on all the others)) (and who knew haiku was the plural form of haiku?!)!!

5. Seriously, how does she remember all of this?

As a related aside, I participated in a book group for the first time ever this week. Friends from church invited me and despite the fact that I had not read the two novels they would be discussing, I decided to just check it out (I mean, I love books and yet have never attended a book group?! It's time!). I brought Brown Girl Dreaming and True Grit because they were the last books I'd read. Upon entering the hostess's home, the first person to speak to me was the hostess's ten-year-old daughter, Katie. Pointing at Brown Girl Dreaming, she exclaimed, "I just read that! Isn't it so good?" We then chatted for several minutes about the story and what we loved and what surprised us. I discovered it was on her list for reading bowl this year and she was surprised to find out it had won a Newbery honor. The book group then began and all the women started discussing adult fiction books they had been reading and I didn't recognize a single title. Politely attentive but disengaged, I noticed Katie lying under her chair with a book. Quietly, I whispered, "Hey, Katie, what else have you been reading?"

The Crossover

My pervading thought while reading the short basketball novel The Crossover was that even my sixth graders who were sworn non-readers would enjoy this book.

It reminded me of a "reading night" my middle school organized last year at a community center in one of the neighborhoods where our students lived. The only students that came were the six to eight kids we were able to drag in from the basketball court (wrong place, wrong time). The teachers who volunteered to come had brought our favorite books and we read those books to our small groups of kids for about 20 minutes. 

My well-meaning but slightly out-of-touch principal then gave a stirring speech about the usefulness of reading. During this middle-aged middle-class woman's haphazard attempt to connect to these poor, basketball-loving 13-year-old boys, she said, "Take basketball, for instance. Y'all love playing basketball, but let's say you want to get better at your free throw. You can go look it up in a book or online and READ about how to improve your free throw. Reading is just so useful!" 

I'm sure the kids left that gym and ran straight to the library for some "how to improve your free throw" books. I can't help but think that reading a passage from Kwame Alexander's Newbery-winning verse novel would have caught their attention. Written from the perspective of its middle school basketball star protagonist, The Crossover's appeal to a middle school athlete seems almost certain. The fact that it's written in verse might throw some kids off, but I think it just made it an easier and more interesting read.

Apart from inspiring me to grow dreads, this book did not personally move me. I felt only a slight connection to Josh Bell and even less so to his twin brother, JB and basketball has always been my least favorite sport to play and watch. It was well-done, however, and I'm sure it will inspire some kids who don't usually pick up books for pleasure to enjoy some fast-paced fiction.

El Deafo

Adorable! And officially the first graphic novel I've ever read. It's certainly the first (Correct me if I'm wrong; I still have 20ish to go) graphic novel Newbery, which is cool. It created a bit of confusion when the call number read J GRAPHIC BELL (A new section in the library? A warning about content?!) and I didn't know where to find it. And even when I found the correct section (Oh, right! Graphic novels! That's a thing.), El Deafo was a tricky one to locate. I sent the children's librarian on a wild good chase all over the library before she finally returned in dismay and discovered it on display exactly where it should be in the graphic novels section (I'm sorry, is this your first time in a library?).

So my understanding of a graphic novel prior to last week was a long comic book that included words like "Bam" and "Pow" in large speech bubbles, black and white drawings of full-figured women in tight clothing, and a very specific font.



El Deafo properly challenged my graphic novel ignorance. Cece Bell tells and illustrates the autobiographical tale of her meningitic hearing loss at age four and the ensuing social discomforts of being nearly deaf and wearing a large hearing aid around her neck through elementary school. Cece is an adorable heroine (not full figured and, while she does love wearing her bathing suit, she generally avoids tight clothing to hide her giant hearing aid) with funny insights, genuine feelings and relationships, and a creative imagination. And there wasn't a single "Bam" or "Pow" in the whole book.

"Our differences are our superpowers."  -Cece Bell

Cedric the Forester

Is it just me or did it feel like Cedric ended several different times? Every couple of chapters brought a completely new dramatic arc: new intro, new rising action, new conflict, new resolution. The main characters remained the same, but little else did. Another really serious bloody conflict just a year or two after the last one was all figured out?! But maybe that's the Middle Ages for ya.  Perhaps I would not have been so confused had the title read: Cedric the Crossbowman: A Collection of Tales.

And I realize that Cedric is set in England during the Middle Ages, but it's still rather unsettling that every conflict in the book is resolved by killing someone (or several someones). I mean, Cedric is a pretty cool character. His underdog-championing is admirable and his pro-civil liberties cause is worth supporting. I just wish that he and Dickon (the narrator) didn't solve all of their problems with a crossbow.

The Great Quest

I actually finished The Great Quest a few months ago, but a variety of life events (deciding to marry my ex-bf, flying across the country to propose, planning a wedding, a wedding) have kept me occupied in the meantime. I had to re-read the last few chapters to remember exactly how it ends (*spoiler alert* everybody dies!), but I recall most of the book, and most importantly, how I felt when I read it (anxious, almost constantly).

Synopsis: There are some bad guys and some good guys and one rich kinda good guy that the bad guys are manipulating and they're all on a ship owned by the rich manipulated guy headed to Africa and it's unclear until the very end who will triumph.

Recipe: 
1 cup Lord Jim

½ cup Heart of Darkness
2 Tbsp True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

½ tsp Johnny Tremain

Recommendation: Use this book to teach your child (or neighbor or coworker) the literary device of "foreshadowing." The narrator foreshadowed ad nauseum (Didn't think foreshadowing could have that kind of effect? Read this book!). And, it must be said, The Great Quest is way better than The Story of Mankind (the medal winner that year). But that's not too hard to do.

Paperboy

A tornado warning in my county has given me a much-needed free morning and an opportunity to write about Paperboy, my final 2014 Newbery. The book was actually due at the library yesterday, so my blog-writing procrastination may actually cost me 10¢, a fee I refused to pay even for The Story of Mankind (see previous post), but I would say Paperboy is worth it.

This semi-autobiographical novel is told in the first-person perspective of an 11-year-old boy who stutters. His name is Victor, but that fact is not revealed until late in the book because he himself struggles to pronounce it. His best friend, Rat (actually Art, but that's harder to pronounce with his stutter), leaves for a month over the summer and Victor takes care of Rat's paper route while he's gone. I thought Victor was an endearing and eloquent protagonist. His struggle to speak makes him the kind of underdog that I live and love to champion, but is also reminiscent of others (Moses, Demosthenes, Enoch) who changed that specific weakness into a strength. His mother's inability to connect and lack of involvement frustrated me, but Mam's and Mr. Spiro's care for and interest in Victor inspired me.

Mr. Spiro is a former merchant marine and book-lover who lives on Victor's paper route. Victor looks forward to collecting from him each week because he treats him as an equal. Apart from Victor's housekeeper Mam, Mr. Spiro is the only adult with whom Victor is able to carry on conversations (including his parents). During one of his Friday afternoon collections for the paper, he goes inside Mr. Spiro's home and gets to see his collection of thousands of books for the first time. Inspired, Victor reveals that he wrote a poem, but immediately realizes he won't be able to recite it to Mr. Spiro because of his stutter. Mr. Spiro suggests they say it together (a strategy that is apparently very helpful for those who stutter), so Victor types it up and they recite it. 

 I wish I had a book

That did not have an end. 

I go to pick it up 

And it is new again. 

The words feel real 

And mine to share. 

They have no sound.

 They have no air. 

My voice is clear 

And lets me speak. 

My fear is gone. 

I'm never weak. 

My words all come 

And right on time. 

The words are true.

The words are mine.

The poem didn't sound like my words even though I had just typed them. Each word floated out of my mouth and joined up with Mr. Spiro's to make one. I didn't stutter once or have to worry about Gentle Air or sneaking up on sounds or fainting. My legs were itching. I looked down to see sweat trickling over my kneecaps and down my legs. For the first time I had said words out loud that I had written on paper.

Mr. Spiro was smiling with his big arms folded across his chest. He looked at me for a while without saying anything and then stood. "My bias against poetry has been properly challenged. A wonderful poem. I'm grateful to you for sharing, my Stuttering Poet."

If someone had called me a Stuttering Boy or a Stuttering Sixth Grader or a Stuttering Pitcher I would have probably tried to pick up something and bust them. But Stuttering in front of Poet seemed to make stuttering a good thing for the first time in my life.

The Story Of MANKIND

The Story of Mankind has always had an impressive power over me. My history with the book extends over two decades, but it has exerted its particular influence in such a way so as to prevent me from reading it in its entirety until now. I first checked it out at around age ten and have repeated that process literally dozens of times since. Every library has it because it received the medal in 1922, the first year the Newbery medal was ever awarded. And so, unlike all the other Newberys I have yet to read, accessibility has never been the problem. No, the actual issue that I have always faced with The Story of Mankind is more complex. I will reveal its power, but you must know that I am being completely and unadulteratedly honest with you on the subject. Once I discovered it, I tested it repeatedly and discovered the same result without fail (like, not even one time). Are you ready? I cannot read more than ten pages of The Story of Mankind without falling asleep.

Now, if you will allow me to do some math, I will illustrate why this book's particular power has been so debilitating for so long. The book contains 562 pages and since the average number of pages I reach before falling asleep is actually much lower than 10 (but never more than 10), reading the entire book would amount to roughly 80 naps. Now factor in that each of those naps could be anywhere between 30 minutes and 3 hours (let's say the average is 2 hours) and I would sleep roughly 160 hours before reaching the final page. If it takes me 1.5 minutes to read a page of text, the reading portion of this calculation would amount to around 14 hours. This means that if I checked out the book from an average public library and renewed it the maximum number of times (twice), I would have six weeks to complete my 174 hour task (I take overdue fines very seriously). With 168 hours in a week minus 56 hours for sleep (the book naps were never part of my night sleeping), 14 hours for meals, 50 hours for work (or 70 if I'm teaching public school), 12 hours for church and church activities, and 7 hours for "getting ready" time, I would have approximately 29 hours left in the week to dedicate to other pursuits. If I had spent all of my free time for six straight weeks, I could have reached the last page on the day my last renewal expired. As a pre-teen and teen, my attention span was never long enough for this type of endeavor (I usually pooped out before reaching page 50), and as an adult I preferred using those 29 free hours for social interaction (though I did still check it out and attempt it on numerous occasions). Is it any wonder I've tried and failed to read this book for the last 20 years?

I had to try something new. This past summer, I decided it was time. I hadn't spent an entire summer reading a book since I took a used copy of Les Miserables to the Philippines 11 years ago. I worked out a system where I brought the book back to the library every 6 weeks and asked the librarians to check it in and check it back out to me ("As long as there isn't a hold on the book." "Nobody has ever placed a hold on this book, I assure you."). I did this twice (18 weeks). I took dozens and dozens of naps. I fought indifference and boredom. I learned a few things about Napoleon. I laughed twice. I cried never. I solidified my belief that European monarchy history is painfully uninteresting. The word "revolution" transformed me. And, finally, I read the last page.