Ironman

Bibliographic Info

Title: Ironman

Author: Chris Crutcher

Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers

Publication Date: 1995

ISBN: 978-0060598402

Plot Summary

Bo Brewster is starting out his senior year with a record three suspensions in the first two months of school.  This time is serious.  If he doesn’t make amends with the football coach/English teacher, he’s looking at home tutoring with the most boring teacher alive.  A journalism teacher with a kindred spirit takes it upon himself to negotiate Bo’s return to school.  The sentence, as it turns out, is for Bo to attend an anger management class.  The class is notorious for being full of thugs, but Bo doesn’t have much choice.

The honesty of the anger management kids, along with the anger management teacher, Mr. Nakatani show Bo a way through the self-destructive mess he’s making of his life.  He learns just how bad things can be, and are, for the kids in his class.  He sees how his struggle with his father is actually giving undeserved power to the bullies in his life.  His new found perspective makes it possible for him to put his energy into training for a triathlon.

Critical Evaluation

Picking up a book about sports and emotional frustration may not sound like it would have wide appeal.  This book is different.  Through the main character’s love of pushing himself to the ends of his physical limits, it’s possible to understand the passion that drives some athletes to greatness, and what makes a sport worth playing.

The author does a remarkable job of capturing a masculine voice in the story.  While it might seem obvious that a male author would be an authority on the male viewpoint, in this case, the writing seems to open up another world of perception, like a person might see if they suddenly woke up a bee, seeing in ultraviolet.

Reader’s Annotation

Bo Brewster called his English teacher an asshole.  Under his school’s three strikes and you’re out rule of suspension, Bo may be out of school for good.  When a good-hearted teacher takes it upon himself to advocate for Bo, Bo finds his way back in is going to be through an anger management class full of felons.

Author Info

Chris Crutcher was born on July 17, 1946 in Dayton, Ohio.  He grew up in Cascade, Idaho, a small logging town.  He studied psychology and sociology at Eastern Washington State College, which is now Eastern Washington University.  He later earned a teaching certificate and taught in Washington and California.

Crutcher served as the director of an alternative K-12 school in Oakland, California.  The school was racially diverse a place of last resort for many students.  Crutcher claims that the students he worked with there provided a lot of inspiration for the characters in his stories.

Crutcher moved to the Northwest after around ten years at the Oakland school.  He worked as a child advocate and began writing.  He continues to act as a therapy consultant.    He has written more than a dozen books and several more short stories.

Crutcher, C. (n.d.). Crutcher bio. Retrieved April 26, 2010, from http://www.chriscrutcher.com/content/blogcategory/20/9/

Genre

Sports Fiction

Curriculum Ties

Health

Book Talking Ideas

Discuss:  Have you ever had a teacher who you just couldn’t get along with?  How did you handle it?

Reading Level

15+

Challenge Issues

Deals with difficult issues, such as child abuse, abandonment.

Challenge Responses

Active Listening

Refer to library’s collection policy

Provide complaint form

Refer to book reviews

Selection

Teacher mentioned the author.  Searched for his books.

Cool Salsa

Bibliographic Info

Title: Cool Salsa

Author: Editor Lori M. Carlson

Publisher: Fawcett Juniper

Publication Date: 1994

ISBN: 978-0805031355

Plot Summary

This collection of poetry, shown in English and Spanish encapsulates the experience of growing up in the U.S. as a Latino. Poets from Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Argentina, the U.S. and more remember things like the smell of orange blossoms, singing, dancing, hurting, missing.  The poems speak often about loss – the loss of the land and relatives and identity as even the words used to express feelings and thoughts have to change when in America.

Critical Evaluation

These poems speak to everyone, thinking back to a childhood ritual or a beloved family member.  They remind one of things that have been lost and will never return.  They provide a bridge for non-Latinos, linking to a rich culture.  For Latinos, they likely provide something altogether different.

Reader’s Annotation

Cool Salsa is a tribute to the Latino experience of living in the U.S.  Latinos and non-Latinos will appreciate the remembrance of the beauty of childhood, and the sorrow of leaving it behind.

Author Info

Lori M. Carlson was born in Jamestown, New York.  She earned an M.A. in Hispanic Literature from Indiana University.  She has taught at several universities and compiled several books.  Carlson lives in New York City.

Carlson, L. M. (2010). Lori Collins biography. Retrieved April 22, 2010, from http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/15263/Lori_Marie_Carlson/index.aspx

Genre

Poetry

Curriculum Ties

U.S. History, especially immigration

Book Talking Ideas

Discuss: What’s it like to visit a place that’s different from where you’re from?  Are people friendly towards you?  What do you think about most of all?  Excitement?  Home?

Reading Level

13+

Challenge Issues

None

Selection

Internet search for multicultural teen poetry.

The Quotable Slayer

Bibliographic Info

Title: The Quotable Slayer

Author: Compiled by Micol Ostow and Steven Brezenoff

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Publication Date: 2003

ISBN: 978-0743495486

Plot Summary

This book takes quotes from the scripts of Buffy the Vampire Slayer television shows and sorts them by character and later by topics such as “Slaying,” “Religion,” and “Love.”  The book highlights some of the best moments in the quirky banter of the Scooby Gang, compiled for fans on a reminisce.

Critical Evaluation

Clearly this book isn’t for everyone.  If Buffy the Vampire Slayer was and is a monument in your life, then it’s a great read.  The quotes are occasionally taken from the more somber parts of the shows, but generally the bright, silly conversation will keep a fan chuckling, and thinking, “oh, I remember that.”

Reader’s Annotation

For die-hard Buffy fans, The Quotable Slayer is a must-read.  It will stock your coffers with an appropriate Buffy-speak response for every situation (particularly on those crazy nights where you’re taking out a Chaos demon in 4-inch heals).

Author Info

Micol Ostow has written more than 40 books for people of all ages.  In 2009, she graduated from Vermont College with an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults.  She lives in New York City with her husband, Noah Harlan.

Steven Brezenoff, age 35, lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota with his wife and son.  His debut novel, The Absolute Value of -1, is set to be released in September 2010.  Brezenoff claims to have recently disabled his World of Warcraft account, which may lead to a second published novel.

Brezenoff, S. (n.d.). Profile of Steven Brezenoff. Retrieved April 22, 2010, from http://www.blogger.com/profile/17974929351763422930

Ostow, M. (2010). The official website of author Micol Ostow. Retrieved April 22, 2010, from http://www.micolostow.com/bio.php

Genre

Non-fiction, Film, Television

Curriculum Ties

I've heard there are Buffy studies classes out there.  I want to go to that school.

Book Talking Ideas

In a world where creatures of the dark walk the streets of her hometown, Buffy’s super strength and speed have nothing on her powerful puns.

Reading Level

13+

Challenge Issues

Vampires, demons, magic, sex… so much to despise, or relish.

Challenge Responses

Active Listening

Refer to library’s collection policy

Provide complaint form

Refer to book reviews

Selection

Stumbled across during a search of local library website.

Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland

Bibliographic Info

Title: Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown Colonial Maryland

Author: Sally M. Walker

Publisher: Carolrhoda Books

Publication Date: 2009

ISBN: 987-0-8225-7135

Plot Summary

This non-fiction book illustrates how much information can be found in the skeletal remains of Jamestown colonists from the early 1600s.  The body of a 16-year-old boy tells a story of ill health, and ultimately of a violent death at the hands of Powhatan Indians.  An arrowhead lodged just a hair’s width from the boy’s femur and a broken collarbone indicated how the boy met his end.

The body of an indentured servant told a different story.  The boy, approximately 14 years old, showed signs of abuse, such as a fractured wrist.  The body was found under the home of a plantation owner, who used the space as a garbage dump.  Since, at the time, a proper burial was mandated of slaves and indentured servants, anthropologists believed that the body was concealed amongst garbage to hide the boy’s poor treatment during life.

Several other lives, such as the remains of a family of Catholics who had likely fled religious persecution in England, were highlighted.

Critical Evaluation

This book is an excellent example of how non-fiction can be made fascinating.  The author introduces what seems like a puzzle and slowly reveals a picture of a human life through the details of scientific discovery.  The excellent photographs add to the experience of unearthing the stories.

Reader’s Annotation

The hardships, lifestyles, and personal details of the residents of the first U.S. colony are unearthed by forensic anthropologists in this non-fiction work.  The book contains photographs of skeletal remains, excavations, tools, and more to document the findings.

Author Info

Sally M. Walker was often in trouble for daydreaming in elementary school.  She would let her mind wander to the book she was reading.  She wrote stories for her parents and gave them as presents.  Walker’s father would tell her and the children from her neighborhood non-fiction stories about colonists and Indians.

When asked what parents can give their budding writer children, Walker recommends a library card.  She also suggests pens and paper.  She describes the most importan gift, though, to be time to wander and dream.

Walker, S. M. (2009). Author Sally M. Walker. Retrieved April 16, 2010, from http://sallymwalker.com/biography.html

Genre

Non-fiction

Curriculum Ties

U.S. History

Book Talking Ideas

Did you know that a skeleton’s number of teeth or the shape of a thigh bone can tell a forensics specialist how old a person was at the time of their death?

When you imagine what life was like in the colonies, what do you picture?

Reading Level

10-14

Challenge Issues

Photographs of human remains.

Challenge Responses

Active Listening

Refer to library’s collection policy

Provide complaint form

Refer to book reviews

Selection

2010 Finalist for YALSA’s Excellence in Fiction for Young Adults award.

Parrotfish

Bibliographic Info

Title: Parrotfish

Author: Ellen Wittlinger

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Publication Date: 2007

ISBN: 978-1-4169-1622-2

Plot Summary

Angela Katz-McNair is on the verge of a big move – she’s planning to return to high school after the Thanksgiving holidays as a boy named Grady.  She doesn’t have all the details worked out exactly, but she starts by cutting her hair, binding her breasts, and buying boy’s clothes.

The first hurdle she, now referring to herself as he, must pass is his family.  The family takes the news in with various levels of comfort and understanding.  At school though, the going’s a little harder.  A carton of milk is dumped down Grady’s back in the cafeteria.  A popular girl decides to humiliate Grady by taking his clothes while he’s in the shower and replacing them with revealing women’s clothes.

Things improve for Grady as he finds new friends, and old friends adjust to the change.  He is supported by some teachers and soon by his family.  He even wins the attention of a beautiful girl.

Critical Evaluation

While this book is valuable in its effort to represent transgendered teens, its delivery leaves something to be desired.  The dialogue feels so contrived, that it’s as if the reader has been thrust into a scripted role-playing exercise.  Also Grady’s announcement is met with immediate acceptance by one classmate, who instantly becomes Grady’s best friend and protector.  This sounds nice, but is completely unrealistic.  The sudden positive attention of a popular couple is also unrealistic.  When the couple separates briefly, the gorgeous popular girl expresses interest in Grady.  It simply doesn’t ring true.

On top of the plot and character issues, there is a constant drone about the specifics of transgendered individuals.  The reader is being educated, which may be positive in some respects, but the lessons don’t belong in the realm of fiction.

Reader’s Annotation

Grady is an average boy, concerned with making and keeping friends, interested in girls, trying not to seem like a complete dork.  There’s just one catch, Grady was born a girl, with all the physical specifics that that entails.  He must struggle to assert himself in a world which doesn’t provide a neat category for people like himself.

Author Info

Ellen Wittlinger was born on October 21, 1948 in Belleville, Illinois.  She attended Milliken University in Decatur, Illinois.  She earned her MFA in writing at the University of Iowa.

Wittlinger mainly wrote poetry and plays until she became a mother, and worked as a children’s librarian.  She began reading and writing young adult fiction and published her first novel, Lombardo’s Law, in 1993.

Wittlinger, E. (n.d.). About Ellen Wittlinger. Retrieved April 16, 2010, from http://www.ellenwittlinger.com/about.html

Genre

GLBT Lit

Curriculum Ties

Health, especially human sexuality

Book Talking Ideas

Imagine that since birth you had been dressed in sweat pants.  You hate sweat pants, but now you’re a teenager and everyone things that your clothes say something significant about you.  Well they don’t.

Reading Level

14+

Challenge Issues

Story is about a transgendered individual

Challenge Responses

Active Listening

Refer to library’s collection policy

Provide complaint form

Refer to book reviews

Selection

Assigned.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Bibliographic Info

Title: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Author: Sherman Alexie

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Publication Date: 2007

ISBN: 978-0316013680

Plot Summary

Arnold Spirit was lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Eastern Washington.  He’s skinny and has seizures and gets beat up a lot.  All around him he sees the chronic health problems and poverty of the people of his tribe.  One day, when he’s handed a geometry book that has his mother’s name inside the cover (as in, it’s that old), Arnold loses it.  He throws the book, which hits his math teacher and leaves the teacher with a broken nose.  Arnold has to get out of the reservation if he’s to hang on to any hope of a decent future.

When he decides to attend the white high school in the nearest town, things start to pick up.  He gets a sort of girlfriend.  He befriends some cool kids and turns out to be a star basketball player.  Though life is seemingly improving, he struggles with never fitting in on more than a surface level, with hiding a lot of personal information, including that he’s completely broke, and worst of all, he lost his best friend Rowdy when he switched schools.

In this coming of age story, Arnold Spirit boldly inserts himself in a strange environment, dealing with all that comes with being the one Indian kid in a white school – the ignorance, the racism.  He also contends with the ongoing issues of being a rez kid, like the early death of his grandmother.  Though she’d never had a drink in her life, she was hit and killed by a drunk driver.

Critical Evaluation

This story is sorrowful, hopeful, and full of self-deprecating humor.  It offers a window into the life of a kid who is fighting for survival.  In order to achieve self-truth, he has to betray his family, friends, and his tribe.  He can’t get what he needs from them, and even though it’s painful, separation is necessary.  Readers can feel for Arnold’s internal conflicts, but laugh along with him through the pain.

Reader’s Annotation

Arnold Spirit was born with water on his brain.  He lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation where he witnesses poverty, violence, and chronic health problems.  To grasp onto hope, he transfers to a white school outside the rez, but through the trials of being the one Indian kid and leaving his friends and family behind, the victories that he achieves in his new school are confused by his feelings of betrayal and shallow, empty relationships with his new friends.

Author Info

Sherman Alexie was born in October 1966.  He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation.  Like his character, Arnold Spirit, he was born with hydrocephaly, or water on the brain.  He had surgery at six months of age to correct the problem.  He was left with side effects, such as seizures, which he experienced throughout childhood.

Just as in the story, Alexie found his mother’s name in a textbook in Wellpinit High School and decided to transfer to a high school off the reservation.  He became a star basketball player and excelled academically.

After high school, Alexie attended Gonzaga University, then transferred to Washington State University, where he fell in love with writing poetry.  Alexie developed a drinking problem in college, but gave up drinking at age 23, after finding out that one of his poems would be published.

Alexie has written screenplays, acted as a public speaker, stand-up comic, and advocate for the preservation of American folk history.  He lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife and two sons.

Alexie, S. (2010, January). Sherman Alexie. Retrieved April 15, 2010, from http://www.fallsapart.com/biography.html

Genre

Realistic Fiction

Curriculum Ties

Native American Studies

Book Talking Ideas

For Arnold Spirit, transferring schools is like moving to a foreign country.

Reading Level

12-17

Challenge Issues

Mild Violence

Words, such as “boner” may be offensive to some

Challenge Responses

Active Listening

Refer to library’s collection policy

Provide complaint form

Refer to book reviews

Selection

The book was a gift from a Tribal libraries and archives conference.  I had been meaning to read it.

Monster

Bibliographic Info

Title: Monster

Author: Walter Dean Myers

Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers

Publication Date: 1999

ISBN: 978-0064407311

Plot Summary

16-year-old Steve Harmon is on trial for murder.  If he’s found guilty he faces life in prison or the death penalty.  The trial seems like a parade of one criminal after another and Steve feels like he’s losing his sense of himself, wondering if he’s just like them.  As if the fear of the trial’s outcome wasn’t enough.  As each day comes to a close, Steve has to face the terror of the jail cells, where inmates are always fighting.  One man was even raped in Steve’s cell.  And then there’s Steve’s parents.  His father doesn’t seem to know what to make of the situation, as if he thought he knew his son, and suddenly, his boy is a stranger.  His mother’s pain is almost unbearable.

In order to keep from losing it, Steve writes the story of his trial down, as if it were a movie, happening to someone else.  Through the lens of a screenplay, Steve makes sense of his situation and finds a bit of safety in its pages.

Critical Evaluation

Monster is an excellent depiction of the quirks and flaws of the justice system, viewed from the inside from the eyes of a black teenager.  In the story, the jury has decided Steve is guilty even before the trial begins.  The book places a face behind a stereotypical story of a couple of black kids in a convenience store stick-up gone wrong.  This book demonstrates beautifully the power of fiction to transform prejudice into understanding and compassion.  By the end of the story, readers know Steve intimately.  They know that he’s not just another sad statistic.  He’s human.  And so the other real-life sad statistics may be as well.

Reader’s Annotation

In the beginning of his trial for murder, the prosecuting attorney calls Steve Harmon a monster.  Is he?  He struggles with questions about who he is while surrounded by violence, and on trial for his life.

Author Info

Walter Dean Myers was born August 12, 1937 in Martinsburg, West Virginia.  He was sent to Harlem to be raised by a man named Herbert Dean, and his wife Florence.  Myers dropped out of high school at age 17 and joined the army.

One of Myers’ high school teachers recognized Myers skill in writing and encouraged him to keep at it, no matter what.  As an adult Myers recalled this advice and began writing about his teen years, which he claims were the most difficult of his life.

Myers, W. D. (n.d.). Walter Dean Myers Author. Retrieved April 15, 2010, from http://www.walterdeanmyers.net/bio.html.

Genre

Realistic Fiction

Curriculum Ties

Social Studies, especially Civics

Sociology

Book Talking Ideas

Have you ever done anything morally questionable, then looked around you to find out if it really was that bad?

Imagine that you woke up in jail.  Your days were spent listening to people accuse you of something terrible.  Your nights were spent listening to fighting and worse.

Reading Level

13+

Challenge Issues

Main characters aren’t upstanding citizens

Challenge Responses

Active Listening

Refer to library’s collection policy

Provide complaint form

Refer to book reviews

Selection

Won ALA’s Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Literature for Young Adults.