A literary Labor Day: A WRINKLE IN TIME, WHEN YOU REACH ME, and THE WILLOUGHBYS.

I’m teaching a new class this year – did I mention that I teach high school English Language Learners? – and I did about half the reading for this class over the course of Labor Day weekend. (The students return to school tomorrow.) I found myself in the fortunate position of being able to, more or less, design my own class and choose the books the class would read. After this weekend refresher on these books, I’m convinced a did a pretty good job choosing them.

I first read A Wrinkle in Time when I was 10 years old. Other than liking it now, the only thing I really remember about the story was the crazy lady (Mrs Whatsit, as it turns out) demonstrating how they move through time and space (tesser) with an ant and a wrinkle in her skirt. Turns out the book is much better at 26 than it was at 10.

Full of allusions to The Tempest, it’s the story of Meg, who accidentally embarks on an intergalactic mission with her baby brother and an acquaintance from school, aided by three… women? Along the way, Meg finds her long-lost scientist father, battles an evil universe-wide threat to civilization everywhere, and has to get philosophical in an attempt to save her brother from the clutches of IT. As soon as I finished the book, I dropped everything, hit Amazon, and ordered the box set of five.

Next and strategically placed on my list of required reading was When You Reach Me. Turns out this is the best book I’ve read in a long, long time. I don’t even remember how I happened upon it, I had never read it before, I only knew that it borrowed heavily from A Wrinkle in Time… which is not even actually true. It’s more like the book is one big allusion to A Wrinkle in Time, and SO effectively executed. I don’t believe you would have had to have read AWiT to appreciate this book, but I can’t imagine it having the same impact otherwise.

This story is an eerie mystery up to the end. Miranda (The Tempest? Hello?) – in the midst of personal relationship struggles that affect her mother, her stepfather-to-be-… maybe, her ex-best friend, her current sort-of friend, a snobby girl she hates, a cute guy she works with, a crazy homeless man, a racist boss, and a school thug – begins finding notes addressed to her, hidden in unlikely places. The notes beg her to tell a story she doesn’t know yet and give it to she doesn’t know who, because the sender is trying to save the life of Miranda’s friend. But who? And how? And what does telling a story have to do with this? The ending is profound and unshakeable. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to keep it together and not ruin the ending for my students!

Just this morning I finished reading The Willoughbys by the queen of YA literature herself, Lois Lowry. This book was deeply satisfying in a completely different way. A spoof of children’s literature, the story centers around the Willoughby family: Tim, who is the bossy eldest, Barnaby A and B who are twins and cannot be told apart even by family and must share a sweater, and Jane who doesn’t count for much because she’s a girl. Their parents don’t care much for them, but it’s okay because they don’t care much for their parents, either. They would be better off as orphans, like in “old-fashioned” children’s stories, so they come up with a plan to get rid of their parents just as their parents have come up with a plan to get rid of them. The story comes complete with a baby left on a doorstep, a long out-of-work chocolate manufacturer, a maid who knows just what to do, and the Swiss Alps.

The book is absolutely hysterical. I would imagine it’s a nice read for readers of this level, but I can’t help but believe that Lowry was addressing a more mature audience with this book. Frequent and explained allusions to Little Women, Heidi, Mary Poppins, James and the Giant Peach, and many, many other children’s/YA books provide lots of laughs. Children’s literature doesn’t get much more “postmodern” than this.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO: Stieg Larsson.

I don’t remember why I bought the book, but it must have been some kind of deal. Despite the sudden popularity of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy some time ago, I wasn’t really intending to read it. But people kept talking about it and I saw that there were film adaptations that actually looked kind of cool. In light of these circumstances, I certainly would have made this purchase with a few dollars knocked off.

That doesn’t mean I was intending to read it any time soon, though. I still, unfortunately, have this horrible bias against genre fiction, mysteries and romance in particular, and I have plenty of books that I’ve yet to read that do no fall into either of these categories, unlike The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. So what made me read this as my last pleasure-read before beginning work (by which I mean beginning ten months of reading for work)?

Well, it’s kind of embarrassing.

I’m obsessed with RIPT. Like, completely obsessed. I am quite close to being three-ramens-a-day poor, but I am a frequent purchaser of RIPT T-shirts ever since the design of the day that was a semi-obscure “Home Alone” reference (“Keep the change, ya filthy animal!”). In the meantime, I’ve developed quite the collection of book shirts, and my goal has become to have enough book shirts to be able to wear a different one to work each casual Friday – probably more for my own amusement rather than my students’.

This was my justification when RIPT sold the “Salander’s Dragon” design. I was in a pickle, and with RIPT you only have 24 hours to make up your mind. Do I buy the shirt because it looks badass and it’s a book that’s supposed to be equally badass? Or do I not because, y’know, I haven’t actually read the book and that would make me a complete and total tool.

Best compromise: I ordered it and immediately picked up the book to read and hoped for the best.

The book was badass.

Well-written, thankyougod, and expertly paced. Most characters are mostly likable despite obvious flaws. Most flaws are believable and don’t tend to wander into the realm of hyperbole.

Without getting into the details, what interested me about the first installment of the “Girl Who” trilogy is what seemed to be Larsson’s portrayal of commerce: both sex and money as currency. A case involving disturbing sexual assault is paralleled with embezzling funds. Salander is unable to reconcile a relationship when sex is not used as a bargaining chip. Blomkvist’s sexual practices differ only in (arguable) lack of violence from a serial murderer/rapist, and are as widespread as Wennerstrom’s funds. In fact, I would want to argue that Salander’s final dealings with Wennerstrom’s funds portrays the ultimate conflation of the two when Salander, who has become walking sex at this point, leaves a wake of financial ruin behind her.

That’s a brief summary of what fascinated me about the book, but I would need pages and pages to prove it.  I realize how scattered it sounds. The bottom line, though, is that, even if you’re a genre fiction snob, the book is fantastic. It’s the first true and well-written page-turner I’ve read in… maybe years?

100 best of nonfiction?

So. Because The Guardian is trying to ruin me financially, it compiled a list of “The 100 greatest non-fiction books.” Like, ever. This, of course, resulted in me adding two more pages of nonfiction that I will be very enthusiastic about buying but have difficulty actually sitting down and reading to my Amazon wish list.

Stealing Heaven: Elizabeth Scott.

A particularly smart YA book, Stealing Heaven is about Dani, 18, who has never been to school, taken a test, gotten a driver’s license or had a boyfriend. Well… not a real one, although she did lose her virginity to one of her mother’s flings at the age of 15. Dani has lived on the road, constantly on the go, with her mother all her life. They scout out houses, find an in, steal what they want, and move on to the next town.

Over the course of this novel, however, and without giving away too much, Dani begins to question this process. (Not sure how much of that I buy in reality; you don’t begin to question the only life you’ve ever known and the only family you’ve ever had that suddenly and with little interruption to your normal life.) Ultimately, however, Dani is forced to change her life rather than making a choice for herself. The saving grace here, though, is that there is a satisfying lack of mushiness for a YA book with a romantic subplot.

Fun read, fast-paced, sweet plot, smart protagonist. Recommended for anyone who likes YA fiction.

On banning young adult fiction.

Kevin Brooks’s book would be among the first to go on anyone’s young adult book-banning spree. Joe meets Candy and it’s love at first sight. And it never wanes, even after discovering that she is a seventeen(-ish)-year-old prostitute. He has close calls with her pimp, visits the house where she and the other girls receive their visitors, and watches her go through a brutal withdrawal. Needless to say, this is not exactly on the public school English curriculum.

That is where I take issue.

Apparently, if a work of literature contains brutal homicide, prostitution, rape, incest, profanity, racism, or any kind of general not-niceness, teens are not to be exposed to it UNLESS it was written about 400 years ago, preferably by a Mr. William Shakespeare, in which case all bets are off.

Linda Holmes did an awesome job of addressing the absurdity of actually preventing a young person from reading. It reminds me of the controversy surrounding Ozzy Osbourne when his chanting of “Shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot” was blamed for a teen massacre some time ago. As pointed out then and Linda Holmes points out now, if a kid is going to do something awful, it’s not going to take a book to get him to do it. Really, if a book “makes” someone commit murder, cut themselves, etc., do we really need to question whether or not there is a pre-existing problem that would surface regardless of one’s leisure activities?

But again, Holmes covered that herself, and that’s not even my biggest issue with the banning of YA lit.

The biggest problem with banning any kind of books geared toward teens, in my own opinion as an English teacher and obsessive reader, is not that teens are being stopped from reading books with questionable content; it is that the books offered to teens are books that they are completely unable to relate to on any level whatsoever. It’s only my third year teaching, but I am in the unique position of having a smaller number of students who I get to know over the course of years, and I know them well. Many of them better than I might like to. And there is not a damn thing about light, happy, sunshiney books that makes any kind of sense to them.

Not only should they not be stopped from reading these “dark” books, they should be encouraged to read them! From firsthand experience, I can say that the reading that happens in school is exactly why teens don’t read. Offer them Homecoming (dark in its own way, of course) and only nerds like me will be thrilled; offer them something juicy like Perfect Chemistry and they’ll read with the best of ‘em. (No kidding, I had to order 10 copies of Perfect Chemistry and still had a waiting list of two pages for this book, and then again for Rules of Attraction.) Kids who have never read a book in their lives have read multiple books in my classes this school year because they didn’t know there was anything out there that was at all relevant to them.

Our kids are surrounded by conflicting messages about drugs and sex and violence every single day of their lives. Keeping books with these themes away from them is the literary equivalent of abstinence-only education. If we pretend it doesn’t exist, that doesn’t make it go away. I am a supporter of passing out condoms to students just as I am a supporter of passing out controversial books to students. How could we expect them to deal with complex issues that affect their lives so profoundly if we who are responsible for guiding them pretend these issues don’t exist?

This is a sore subject for me – can you tell? My point is simply this: it is completely and horribly irresponsible for anyone – especially an educator – to 1) deny a book to a young person, and 2) not push controversial, thought-provoking literature into their hands. Did it every occur to anyone that the lazy thinkers produced in schools today are a product of these attitudes? The academic sloppiness is astounding and they are incapable of thinking for themselves… perhaps because everyone makes their decisions for them. Yet making these decisions for them, telling them how to think and feel because we said so, is supposed to cause them to make the right decisions when confronted with drug abuse, underage drinking, and premature sexual activity.

The logic here astounds me.

Anatomy of a Boyfriend: Daria Snadowsky.

I cannot tell a lie (despite what my elementary school teachers might have told you) – I enjoyed this book immensely. While there are obvious problems with the book, I find them to be far outweighed by the good stuff.

Keep in mind, of course, that I always read these YA novels with my students in mind, and I always read these YA novels with my girls in mind. Anatomy of a Boyfriend ranks right up there with Rainbow Party on my list of books I would require my students to read… if a teacher’s opinion mattered at all. Each for very different reasons, though.

This book does a spectacular job of capturing the sheer anxiety of young “love.” Dominique is studious and inexperienced, though not naive, when she meets Wes, a track star. They “court” the way people do now: instant messenger and e-mail. And that doesn’t only apply to teenagers anymore, as I think everyone must be aware by now. They decide to date, have a passionate beginning, shift into a long-distance relationship when they leave for college, and it eventually and very predictably crumbles within a year.

The most interesting thing about the book may be the fact that each and every turn of events can be seen coming from about 10 miles away, and yet Snadowsky still perfectly captures the gut-wrenching insecurity and anxiety of a new relationship. Or a long-distance one. Or… any one when you’re 17.

That said, the book is both flat and somewhat of a page-turner because it is so flat. (Huh?) There is no real subplot to the book. Dominique’s grandmother’s death, college acceptance, etc., are given no more attention than needed to explain how it affects her relationship with Wes. Although that makes for a flat story, I totally buy it in this context, and because it’s buy-able it keeps you reading rather than boring the reader.

While the book is definitely dated in terms of technology and pop-culture, the story is universal and the protagonist is believable. Other characters may be cliche (her police officer father and Algebra teacher mother), but the relationship that takes center stage is completely believable and certainly felt true to me.

The Spanish-language literature conundrum.

This article attempts to explain the conundrum of Spanish-language bookselling in the United States. Although the article points out that even Spanish-speaking book-lovers have a difficult time reading when they tend to spend so much time working (and working and working and working…) and that they only read .05 books a year on average, it doesn’t cite the fact that only four percent of books sold in the U.S. are Spanish and the fact that Spanish-language books therefore seem to be a poor investment as a part of an unfortunate catch-22. Just saying.

The Shining: Stephen King.

I finally read The Shining. That’s kind of a big deal for me as I’ve been meaning to read it since high school. When I graduated, my Creative Writing teacher gave me a copy of Stephen King’s On Writing, which remains the best book I’ve read about the craft of writing. I read it the summer before I went to college and to this day retain many of the lessons I learned from it… Granted, it was the first place I heard many bits of advice that are quite common, but I still remember it being the first place I heard this advice. Reading that book was a big deal for me, is what I’m getting at. Weird considering I’ve never been a fan of Stephen King otherwise.

Immediately after reading that book, I read Carrie. Now, as a former student and current teacher I have a totally bizarre-o fascination with school shootings, and Carrie White is the ultimate school shooting, except that guns aren’t involved. I should have loved it, yes? But I didn’t. I thought it was awful.

I always meant to read The Shining, especially after reading what Stephen King had to say about it in On Writing, but Carrie really left a bad taste in my mouth.

This school year, however, I am trying to be more diligent about reading what I want to read rather than sticking to what I’m teaching. (A new co-worker has helped me to get inspired in this regard – nevermind that that all centered around a reading of Water for Elephants.) I’m not going to pretend like I’m going to make it through War and Peace during the school year – if I can’t spend long stretches of time with a book, especially a rather thick one, I get bored by it – but I thought it would be no problem to work my way through The Shining.

I was put in the mood by Eric’s sudden interest in horror due to his own current project so I had a craving. Long story short, I was thoroughly impressed the first three-quarters of the book before I got bored, which is terribly frustrating with a book like The Shining. Right when things are supposed to be exciting, I am banging my head into the wall waiting for it to end. Not Stephen King’s fault.

It’s definitely worth reading. In fact, as soon as I finished it I went out and bought my own copy of Carrie. I intend to read it again before too long, and I’m hopeful. After my long-standing dissatisfaction with almost all things Stephen King-related, that says a lot.

And – I’m sure I don’t need to say this, but – don’t think you know the story if you’ve seen the movie. Not even close.

Brave New… Whoa.

Much like most people of my generation and location, I was forced to read Huxley’s Brave New World as a “gifted” student of English 10. I must say I haven’t read it since although the mangled paperback is still in the top of my brother’s closet, where it’s been the past seven years, since his own “gifted” English 10 days. (As a current teacher in the very same county where I attended school, I know now that the term “gifted” is used very loosely – don’t get me started.)

I must admit, I didn’t totally appreciate it – the sign of a successful “gifted” selection. If a high school student can even begin to grasp what they’re reading, we have a problem. This is the reasoning. I know. I teach English. This is why I was reading A Tale of Two Cities at 14, Frankenstein at 15, and somehow reverting to The Scarlet Letter at 16 and Native Son at 17.

I swear to you, it is required that you have no understanding or inkling of appreciation whatsoever of literature of any kind in order to create an English curriculum… Perhaps a passion for literature is thought to blind one to the rigorous demands of a secondary school curriculum?

But I digress.

Point being, I obviously wasn’t able to fully appreciate it and only settled ultimately on the decision that I did, in fact, like the book after the final scene in which the suicide is discovered. As a fishnet-clad teen, any story ending in suicide was ruled profound and tragic and therefore appealing to me.

Okay, fine. My taste has made little progress.

But the info I dug up today is exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to get elbow-deep into Brave New World again. If you’re a sci-fi buff – and I’m wishing I was one right about now – or if you just loved this book in particular, I would think that this site would be somewhat of a treat.

A Mother’s Prayer for Her Child.

Here’s today’s link.

I’ve been a fan of Tina Fey’s since she did “Mean Girls,” which I found to be completely brilliant. I have to admit that I am horribly impressed with this.

When I heard about Bossypants, I didn’t exactly jump for joy – my various interests and likes are a bit compartmentalized, I’m realizing – but this excerpt makes even me, an unconvinced but possible future mother, want to read this book at some point.

While you’re there, though, check out the blog Write in Color in its entirety. I could have just copied the excerpt, but the blog in which I read it is quite nice.

Anyway, the book looks quite nice, the author is nice to look at, and if you haven’t seen “Mean Girls” you don’t know what comedy is.

Go watch it now. In fact, if you already have, if you already did the last time TBS played it twice each night for three nights in a row, even so go watch it again.

“Oh my God, Danny DeVito, I love your work!”

Seriously.