Module 12: The Wall by Peter Sis

Book Summary: The Wall is the illustrated memoir of a boy who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, in Communist Czechoslovakia. It is told in different drawings that bring the story to life, reading as a comic book would.

APA Citatioin: Sis, P. (2007). The wall: Growing up behind the Iron Curtain. New York, NY: Farrar, Strous and Giroux Books for Young Readers.

Impressions: I had seen this book around at different libraries before and am kicking myself for not picking it up sooner. I loved Peter Sis' use of drawings to tell his life story. The drawings, like well done children's illustrated books, brought the story more to life and added to the feeling of what he was writing about. As a fan of comics, I really enjoyed how it was formatted as if it were a comic book with panels and unique layouts. He used words in the artwork to make the artwork more of a statement.

I haven't read a lot about the Cold War and the Iron Curtain but this book did a spark an interest in me to read more about it. It's incredible to think how this is recent history and lives have had to change so drastically in such a short span of time.

It's one of those books that I'm already wanting to reread so I can discover new parts of the story in how he chose to put the story together with the artwork and text. It's definitely a must read.

Professional Review: In the spring of 1957, a Hungarian girl appeared one day in my second-grade class in Mount Vernon, N.Y. Our teacher urged us to welcome the new arrival, who spoke no English and would be staying in our class temporarily. Her family, we were told, had just come to America to escape the Russians.
On the playground days later, during a game of cowboys and Indians, one of the second-grade boys picked up a stick, aimed it like a gun and “fired” at a classmate, who fell to the ground with a theatrical flourish. I was enjoying the spectacle from my perch on a nearby rock when a blood-curdling scream rang out across the schoolyard. It was the new girl. She too had been watching the game. When she saw the boy fall to the ground — I somehow knew this instantly — she thought it was because he really had been shot. The girl, I later learned, had had reason to think this, having lived through the brutal suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising.
Children make what sense they can of the life they are given. Far from our sun-splashed suburban playground during those same years, the artist Peter Sis was a schoolboy growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia. In “The Wall,” he tells the story of his early years as a citizen of that Eastern bloc nation, where he learned at school to think and draw what he was told, and of his gradual rejection of Communism. (In Los Angeles in 1982 to make a film for the Czech government, Sis chose not to return to his homeland.)
The story unfolds in a word-and-picture montage consisting of a spare, fable-like narrative, introductory and closing notes, a historical timeline, diary excerpts, childhood drawings, family photos and, at the center of it all, a sequence of playful but intense pen-line drawings, many of them arrayed in storyboard panels.
“The People’s Militia enforces the new order. ... The display of red flags on state holidays — COMPULSORY. ... Western radio is banned (and jammed).” For young readers unfamiliar with cold war-era history, timeline entries like these are a lot to absorb. As Sis writes in his afterword: “Now when my American family goes to visit my Czech family in the colorful city of Prague, it is hard to convince them it was ever a dark place full of fear, suspicion and lies.”
To bridge the gap, Sis presents his readers with graphic equivalents for the feel as well as the substance of the life he knew. People in the drawings are scaled down, toylike. They look as if they could be easily crushed. The predominance of black and white suggests the diminished possibilities under Communism for freedom of expression. Where touches of color do appear — on a demonstration banner, as a star shape on the side of a military tank — the color is usually red. When a full rainbow of colors makes its voluptuous appearance in the later illustrations, we too feel the rush of joy that unrestrained color came to symbolize in the lives of Sis and his friends.
Because children know all about tattling and betrayal, young readers of “The Wall” will be able to imagine the atmosphere of fear implied in a passing reference to the Czech government’s policy of encouraging schoolchildren to inform on their parents, and one another, for speaking out against the regime. Children in fact know a great deal about tyranny. They learn about it on the playground, as the English folklorists Iona and Peter Opie showed in “The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren” (1959), a study of traditional schoolyard chants and rhymes that laid bare the cruelty implicit in much childhood group behavior. How sympathetically did my classmates and I react to our visitor’s alarmed misreading of our “innocent” war game? That I have no memory of this prompts me to fear the worst.
“The Wall” is a brave book for acknowledging, as Sis writes, “how easy it is to brainwash a child,” and for taking on a serious subject at a time when feel-good children’s books are widely assumed to be what sells. It is also a challenging book, and with its blizzard of fleeting references to everything from the Hungarian uprising to the Beach Boys, 8- and 9-year-olds will most likely need a parent or other handy font of knowledge to help them make their way to the end.
Compressing history into fable can confuse matters. “On November 9, 1989,” Sis writes, “the wall fell.” On that date, the Berlin Wall — a hugely symbolic stretch of the Iron Curtain — did come down. But when did the setting of “The Wall” shift to Germany from Czechoslovakia, where the Velvet Revolution that ended Communist rule followed days and weeks later?
For Sis as for so many others, the collapse of the Eastern bloc’s oppressive governments was a dream come true. In “The Wall,” the ecstatic energy and big-spirited inventiveness of the artist’s drawings make the once all but unimaginable realization of that dream visible for all to see.
Yet history should perhaps have the last word. In “The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989,” Frederick Taylor writes that notwithstanding their public protestations of outrage, Western leaders, including President John F. Kennedy, were more relieved than angered by the Soviets’ sealing off of East Berlin, a move that effectively put a lid for a generation on a highly volatile situation. To ordinary people around the world, it may have seemed that freedom, justice and integrity all lay on one side of the wall, and terror, injustice and lies on the other. What if in fact the wall served the governments’ purposes on both sides equally well? How dark a fable would it take to tell that tale?

Marcus, L.S. (2007). The Cold War kid [Review of the book The wall: growing up behind the Iron Curtain by P. Sis]. The New York Times. Retrieved April 19, 2015 from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/books/review/Marcus-t.html?_r=0.


Library Uses: I would use this book in either a class on comic drawing or memoir writing to show a different way to tell a story. If a speaker could come in to discuss the history of what living behind the Iron Curtain was like, it could also be put out on display as a reading recommendation for those who would like to learn more about that time period and history.

Module 11: An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Aston

Book Summary: An Egg is Quiet is a beautiful children's nonfiction book about the many different types of eggs that can be found around the world. The illustrations are colorful, beautiful and big.

APA Citation: Aston, D. & Long, S. (Illustrator). (2006). An egg is quiet. New York, NY: Chronicle Books.

Impressions: This book reminded me of something that I would have loved reading when I was little. It is informative and interesting and beautiful. The illustrations are detailed and bring the information to life. I found myself rereading it a few times, just to view the different pictures. There was information that I even learned while reading it, which I loved.

I enjoyed this book so much that it played a part in me determining what my theme would be for the story time I was putting on. I found the illustrations and sparse text to be perfect for a 3-5 aged story time. It allows the children to stop and view the pictures and ask questions or add commentary along the way.

It's a beautiful work of art and one that I'd consider adding to my own personal library.

Professional Review: An Egg is Quiet is a glorious feast for the eyes. The book is an illustrated introduction to eggs of amazing diversity. The simple and poetic text just adds a quiet drama to the whole book: “An egg is quiet It sits there, under its mother's feathers… On top of its father's feet …Warm. Cozy." 

The book displays eggs in all their glory, with different textures, colors and themes. There are lacewing eggs, salmon roe, ostrich eggs, etc. Each is gorgeously painted in rich, layered watercolors of such depth and color that they seem to be real. You can almost feel the depth of texture. 

The endpapers of the book are pale blue and speckled, giving the feel of an eggshell. The attention to detail is simply amazing. What a labor of love this must have been! 

The book talks about the shapes of eggs – the tubular eggs of the Dogfish Shark or round like a sea turtle’s. It talks about size – the mammoth eggs of the ostrich. It goes on to discuss egg embryos, egg habitats, etc. 

The colors! Oh, the colors used are wonderful! Pale blues, mottled greens, light browns, oranges that ache with their beauty, butter yellows, stunningly simple brown ink text that adds to the lushness of the colors used in the gallery of jewels called eggs. What a lovely way to teach children (and adults) about nature and its diversity. 

An Egg is Quiet is instructional, arty and simply beautiful. An absolute must for any library and a book that is sure to be pored over lovingly for years to come. A masterpiece!
Recommended for ages 3 and up.

Ruiz, G. (2007). Book review: An egg is quiet by Dianna Hutts Aston [Review of the book An egg is quiet by D. Aston]. Blogcritics.com. Retrieved April 12, 2015 from http://blogcritics.org/book-review-an-egg-is-quiet/.


Library Uses: I used this book in my spring-themed story time this semester. It is a great book to get kids interested in different animals and how animals that have eggs grow. There isn't too much text and the pictures are big and colorful, allowing children to find different and unique details in them.

Module 10: Barefoot: Escape on the Underground Railroad by Pamela Duncan Edwards

Book Summary: Written in little text and with dark images, Barefoot tells the story of an unnamed, barefoot slave running away from slavery thanks to the help of the animals, nature, the Underground Railroad, and his bravery and intelligence.

APA Citation: Edwards, P. D. & Cole, H. (Illustrator). (1997). Barefoot: escape on the underground railroad. New York, NY: Katherine Tegen Books.

Impressions: I was absolutely spellbound by this book. The artwork and story were beautiful and powerful. I handed it over to my mom to read as soon as I finished it because I wanted someone else to talk to about it.

The story about a slave who is on the run from men who want to take him back to a life of slavery is told mostly from the point of view of his feet and the animals that seem to come to his aid. Told mostly by the dark illustrations that depict nighttime in nature, there is both a feeling of foreboding and hope.

I also found the use of the animals to be interesting. The story is told in a way that the animals are purposely helping the man run away, which makes sense in a children's books, but I liked how the author and illustrator used the animals along the way. In reality, slaves and the people who helped them run away did use nature, trail markings, and signs to get from one location to another. It was very interesting to see how this book incorporated those in the character's escape.

Professional Review: With a taut, involving narrative and dramatic, shadow-filled full-spread art, the creators of Some Smug Slug and Livingstone Mouse transport youngsters onto the overgrown path that an escaping slave stealthily follows one evening. The sound of the young man's racing heart is almost audible as Edwards describes his desperate predicament: ""He was fearful of what lay before him. He was terrified of what lay behind."" But the man has allies in the underbrush, creatures that perceive him as ""the Barefoot"" (in contrast to ""the Heavy Boots"" who come in angry pursuit). A frog signals the presence of water, which quenches the Barefoot's thirst; a scurrying squirrel turns his eye to a blanket of leaves under which he naps; a deer diverts a crew of Heavy Boots away from this hiding place; and fireflies light the way to the safe house ahead. The vigilant eyes of these deftly rendered creatures peer out from Cole's haunting paintings, cleverly skewed to invoke the animals' ground-hugging perspective on the Barefoot's flight. An author's note at the end briefly explains the workings of the Underground Railroad in helping real-life ""Barefeet"" find freedom. Ages 5-9. 

Publisher's Weekly. (n.d.). [Review of the book Barefoot: escape on the underground railroad by P.D. Edwards]. Publisher's Weekly. Retrieved April 5, 2015 from http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-027137-4. 

Library Uses: This would be a great story to have at a story time during African American History Month. It would be interesting to see how the kids answered open questions while reading it to them. It could also be on a display.

Module 9: Where's the Big Bad Wolf? by Eileen Christelow

Book Summary: Detective Doggedly always seems to be on the search for the Big Bad Wolf. When the three Pigs' house keeps getting blown down, he has a good idea about who is behind it but he never seems to catch the perp. Thanks to the help of some old cows, though, the detective finds who he is looking for.

APA Citation: Christelow, E. (2002). Where's the big bad wolf? New York, NY: Clarion Books.

Impressions: This was a cute mystery children's book that was also a retelling of the Three Little Pigs. In it, Detective Doggedly is on the search to capture the Big Bad Wolf from knocking the Three Pigs' homes down. But the Big Bad Wolf always seems to get away in the knick of time.

The story isn't new but the element of making it a mystery is a fun take on a well-known story. Children will love the cartoons and spotting the Wolf before Detective Doggedly does.

The drawings were what made the book for me. They were funny and do a great job of telling and adding to the story. I loved the Cow neighbors who always have the Pigs' best interests at heart. Detective Doggedly being a somewhat bumbling detective is a cute introduction for young readers to the mystery genre as well.

Professional Review: 

KIRKUS REVIEW
Three little pigs get some real bad advice from a wolf in a real goofy sheep disguise in this comical whodunit. The three little pigs are having their homes blown down—and escaping by the hair of their chinny-chin-chins—and Detective Doggedly believes it might be the work of the shiftless, no-account neighborhood wolf, the infamous BBW. But the only character found at the crime scenes is a newcomer to town: Esmeralda the sheep. Sure, kids will note, Esmeralda their foot, for her disguise is pretty transparent. She has also been giving the pigs construction ideas: straw is good, twigs are good, and cardboard’s not bad. Two cows suggest a brick house, which foils the wolf and ends in his unveiling and incarceration. Short-term incarceration, that is, as he’s soon back, this time tricked out as a horse, with more self-serving recommendations: “Pick peas after midnight, when everybody is asleep. They’ll taste sweeter.” So what if there are a few inexplicables here—How did the wolf con his way into that hospital bed?—this is good clownish fun, and the rough-and-tumble art keeps the farce bubbling. (Picture book. 4-7)

Kirkus Review. (2002). [Review of the book Where's the big bad wolf by E. Christelow]. Kirkus Review. Retrieved March 29, 2015 from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/eileen-christelow/wheres-the-big-bad-wolf/.

Library Uses: I would use this in a story time or on a display about fairy tales and fables.

Module 8: Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Book Summary: In the Graceling Realm, there are people that "Graced" with certain skills or powers. Katsa was Graced with killing. She can kill anyone with just her own hands. As she is niece to the king, he uses her and her power to kill and keep people in line. When the father of a king goes missing, she begins to investigate who and why someone would kidnap him. Along the way, she meets Po, who is Graced with combat skills. It's on this journey that she learns the truth behind her own Grace.

APA Citations: Cashore, K. (2008). Graceling. New York, NY: Harcourt.

Impressions: This book has made it to the top of my favorites list. It's different in the premise, has amazing world building, well-developed characters, and a villain that is terrifying (spoiler alert: he only gets more terrifying in the other books, IMO).

I usually enjoy fantasy and science fiction books but I can be a little picky about them. I expect the world-building to be well done. I want to be able to close my eyes and picture the scenery, the clothing, the customs, and the culture. I want to feel like I have entered a new world and am exploring it along with the characters. Graceling does not disappoint. I loved discovering the different parts of the land and what Katsa's life was like. I don't think it's too high fantasy that beginning fantasy readers would feel as if there is too much going on but it hooks both new and fantasy aficionados in.

Katsa is an incredibly strong character. Both literally--with the grace of killing--and figuratively. I love reading about strong female characters that are trying to make their place in the world. Katsa is flawed in some ways--like her fears of trusting others and tendency to take everything seriously--but I was swooning in several scenes between Katsa and Po.

This is a great read that is quick to capture the reader and will have them wanting more once they've finished it.

Professional Review: In a world of gossip girls, it is perhaps refreshing to have a teenage heroine who cuts off all her hair because it gets in her way; and Kristin Cashore’s eccentric and absorbing first novel, “Graceling,” has such a heroine. Katsa is tough, awkward, beautiful and consumed by pressing moral issues. She is extremely serious; it could be said she lacks a sense of humor.
The story is set in a rich fantasy world where children born with extreme talents, called Graces, are “Gracelings.” These Grace­lings occupy a vexed and complicated place in their kingdoms, as they are both shunned and respected by ordinary people and exploited by kings. Katsa’s Grace happens to be murder.

She can kill a man with her bare hands. This peculiar talent is discovered when, as an 8-year-old, she accidentally kills a distant cousin who is leering at women servants and touching them. Her uncle, the king, recognizes the potential of Katsa’s power and begins to train her. He turns his niece into his creature, his own private girl assassin, forcing her to do the dirty work of the court: wreaking vengeance on his enemies, subduing those who dare to defy him. As one might expect, the adult world in “Graceling” is irrational, whimsical, cruel — the young people band together into a secret Council, which Katsa dreams up to protect the innocent and correct the sins of narcissistic kings. 

Katsa comes from the tradition of heroines like Pippi Longstocking, who scandalize the adult world with impossible feats of physical strength like lifting a horse or fighting a pirate. Katsa gets into a brawl with a mountain lion and wins. She subdues an entire army of guards. In other words, she overturns every biological reality and cultural stereotype of feminine weakness, which is a large part of her charm. She is the girl’s dream of female power unloosed. 

On one of her secret missions, Katsa encounters another Grace­ling, Prince Po, who can read minds. He also happens to be extremely handsome. After a great deal of wrang­ling, Katsa finally frees herself from her tyrannical uncle, and together she and Po try to save his young cousin Princess Bitterblue from her pathologically insane father, King Leck, who is in possession of a dangerous and bewildering Grace. Many harrowing adventures ensue. 

There is a touching ordinariness to these characters as they go about their work breaking arms and legs. Unable to fall asleep one night, Katsa “listened to make sure no one woke. Normal. She wasn’t normal.” As in every self-respecting fantasy story, all the good characters, the ones we’re supposed to like, are freaks and outcasts. Po admits: “I do a decent job of folding myself into normal society, when I must. But it’s an act, Katsa; it’s always an act. . . . When I’m in my father’s city there’s a part of me that’s simply waiting until I can travel again. Or return to my own castle, where I’m left alone.” 

In the course of her dark and eventful tale, Cashore plays with the idea of awkwardness, how at a certain age gifts and talents are burdens, how they make it impossible to feel comfortable in the world. And in this she writes a fairly realistic portrait of teenage life into the baroque courts of her outlandish kingdoms.
There is also embedded in this adventure a tempestuous love story; it begins with the two Gracelings fighting, and the anger that flows between them is as interesting as the attraction. They train together, as both are gifted in physical combat. And somehow in all of this struggle and resistance Cashore offers an acute portrayal of sexual awakening: ambivalent, rageful, exhilarating, wistful in turns. 

At one point Katsa thinks of herself as a “vicious beast that struck out at friends in uncontrollable anger.” In many respects “Grace­ling” is a study of mysterious angers: it offers a perfect parable of adolescence, as its characters struggle with turbulent emotions they must learn to control. The consequences are more tangible than they usually are in more mundane settings — if Katsa loses control, she breaks someone’s jaw by accident — but the principle is the same. The teenage characters in this novel, like some we may know in life, grow into their graces. They realize that their monstrous individuality is not so monstrous after all.

Roiphe, K. (2008). Lady killer [Review of the book Graceling by K. Cashore]. The New York Times. Retrieved March 15, 2015 from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/books/review/Roiphe-t.html.


Library Uses: This could be a fun book to have as a yearly read along with a school district and town for teens. There could be monthly meeting where they discuss different chapters of the book and have meetings that discuss different fantasy tropes and readalikes. Once the read along has ended, there could be a cosplay party where they are invited to come dressed up as a character from the book. I know Dallas and other cities have yearly book reads and think that a fantasy or science fiction book would do well with one of those.

Module 7: Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Book Summary: Clay Jensen is a normal teenage boy that goes to a normal high school. One day he comes home to find a box with his name on it that has thirteen cassette tapes inside. They are from his crush who committed suicide a few weeks earlier. On each of the tapes, Hannah explains who had an affect on her decision to end her life. While she's telling her story through the tapes, Clay is wandering around their town to the different locations that she mentions. It's in Hannah's tapes that Clay, and the reader, learns how people's actions can have such a large impact on others.

APA Citation: Asher, J. (2007). Thirteen reasons why. New York, NY: Razorbill.

Impressions: I went into this book not knowing much. I usually enjoy contemporary YA and I do have a soft spot for "dark" contemporary so I did assume that I would enjoy at least parts of the book. I was surprised, though, with how quickly I became sucked into the story and invested in the characters' lives. I found he dual perspectives to work really well for the story. It allows the reader to follow both Clay and Hannah's journeys and to see that both of them are human and flawed.

I did like Clay as a character but I loved Hannah. It broke my heart meeting her after she had committed suicide. Like Clay, I kept wanting and thinking that I could find a way to help her. I think that is a normal reaction when someone you know and care about does end their life. You want to let them know that you care about them, miss them, and are hurting. At the same time, it's normal to be angry about the situation and hurting in different ways. Jay Asher does a good job of giving both perspectives--both the person who has committed suicide and one left after--in Thirteen Reasons Why.

I also loved the formatting of the book. Each chapter was titled by the side of a cassette tape. In it, the reader would discover a new part of Hannah's story and see Clay's reactions to listening to the tapes and mapping his town out by the places that were important to Hannah.

It's a powerful story that I think both teens and adults would enjoy. It can be a hard read and has been on challenged and banned books lists, but I think it's important for libraries to provide books that cover tough topics like suicide to readers who want and need it.

Professional Review: Among the vampires, dragons and dystopian futuristic societies that dominate young adult reading lists, a debut novel about teenage suicide has become a stealthy hit with surprising staying power.

“Thirteen Reasons Why,” by Jay Asher, is made up of the transcripts of audiotapes that 16-year-old Hannah Baker recorded before committing suicide, interspersed with the reactions of a high school classmate who listens to them. Each tape reveals an anecdote about another classmate whose actions the girl blames for her death.
Since it was first published in October 2007 by Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Group U.S.A., the novel has sold 158,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of retail sales. Unlike most books, which are customarily released in paperback about a year after hardcover publication, “Thirteen Reasons Why” has remained in hardcover, with word of mouth and the author’s appearances fueling sales. 

“Death and dying has always been a popular theme for kids,” said Josalyn Moran, vice president for children’s books at Barnes & Noble. “Kids like to read about situations that are worse than theirs and figure out that ‘O.K., my life isn’t so bad.’ ” 

The book enjoyed a short run on The New York Times’s children’s chapter books best-seller list last spring. Last fall the publisher released a revised hardcover edition that included a new Q. and A. with Mr. Asher.

Razorbill also commissioned the flagship New York office of Grey, an advertising agency, to develop a YouTube campaign featuring videos of a cassette recorder playing Hannah’s tapes, as read by the actress Olivia Thirlby, who played the title character’s best friend in “Juno.” 

“Thirteen Reasons Why” re-entered the chapter-book best-seller list in November at No. 10. When next Sunday’s list is published, it will rise to No. 3. 

“It was not a book where a whole house runs out and pushes like crazy, and you have to have success right away, because you spent all this money,” said Benjamin Shrank, publisher of Razorbill. The company paid Mr. Asher a low six-figure advance for two books. 

With its thrillerlike pacing and scenes of sexual coercion and teenage backbiting, the novel appeals to young readers, who say the book also gives them insight into peers who might consider suicide. “I think the whole message of the book is to be careful what you do to people, because you never know what they’re going through,” said Christian Harvey, a 15-year-old sophomore at Port Charlotte High School in Port Charlotte, Fla. “You can really hurt somebody, even with the littlest thing.” 

Ms. Harvey, who bought the book with a gift card last year, said she stayed up until 2 a.m. to finish it and immediately recommended it to friends. The school’s book group read the novel in October, and when Mr. Asher visited Port Charlotte in February, about 35 students bought a copy. 

“Thirteen Reasons Why” was partly inspired by a relative of Mr. Asher’s who had tried to commit suicide. The idea of using tape recordings, he said, came from a visit to a casino in Las Vegas, where Mr. Asher used a recorded audio guide on a tour of an exhibition about King Tutankhamen of Egypt. 

Something about listening to a disembodied voice made Mr. Asher, now 33, think, “This would be a really cool format for a book that I had never seen.” 

At the time Mr. Asher, who had dropped out of college to pursue a writing career, was trying to sell comedic picture and chapter books for younger children. Before he sold “Thirteen Reasons” to Razorbill, he said, he submitted a total of 11 manuscripts to publishers. All were rejected. 

He was working as an assistant children’s librarian and as a bookseller at a local store in Sheridan, Wyo., six years ago when he started reading a lot of young adult fiction. One day, he said, the idea for “Thirteen Reasons” just hit him, and he wrote what eventually became the first 10 pages that night. 

The eerie, sardonic voice of Hannah, the suicide victim, came easily. The character of Clay Jensen, the boy whose reactions to the tapes provide another thread through the novel, was based on Mr. Asher’s own high school memories. 

Booksellers have embraced the novel from the beginning. “I’ve read a lot of titles that are pretty dark,” said Kris Vreeland, the children’s book buyer at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, Calif. “But not something that was specifically that kind of a format and never anything that really dealt with suicide from the perspective of the person who has committed suicide.” Ms. Vreeland said the store had sold more than 250 copies. 

Mr. Asher was planning to write a lighthearted high school romance as his follow-up to “Thirteen Reasons,” but the intense feedback from readers, he said, caused him to abandon that manuscript halfway through. “I didn’t want them to be let down by my next book,” he said. Now he is working on a novel that “will go into the complications of high school relationships.” 

That’s enough for fans like Gabrielle Dupuy, a 17-year-old junior at Charlotte High School in Punta Gorda, Fla., who heard Mr. Asher speak at her school. “As soon as he told us he was working on another book,” Ms. Dupuy said, “I was like, ‘Can I preorder it now?’ ”

Rich, M. (2009). A story of a teenager's suicide quietly becomes a best seller [Review of the book Thirteen reasons why by J. Asher]. The New York Times. Retrieved March 9, 2015 from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/books/10why.html?_r=0.


Library Uses: This would be a great book to add to a display about mental health awareness or suicide prevention. On the display could be other books--both fiction and nonfiction--about people mental health, awareness, prevention, and other information. There could also be literature as in pamphlets with local assistance and numbers.

Module 7: Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

Book Summary: Stargirl is new to Mica High School. She's colorful, eccentric, and has a presence. Leo Borlock falls in love with her, as does most of the school, until they no longer find her so enchanting. It's once the school have changed their minds about her that Leo starts to want Stargirl to change herself.

APA Citation: Spinelli, J. (2002). Stargirl. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Impressions: I remember this being extremely popular when I was in high school. I don't know why I never picked it up before this class, but I do think I would have enjoyed it more if I had read it in the middle of the high school dramas, cliques, and social expectations. I might have related more to the story than I do now.

Most of my thoughts during this book were my surprise at the school's quick acceptance of Stargirl at the beginning. She doesn't fit into a box and she is the type of person that remains genuine and true to herself because that's the only way she knows how to be. I found her an admirable character at times but not completely realistic.

Reality set in when the tides changed and the school and her boyfriend, Leo, wanted her to begin to fit into the box that she should already had been in. I wanted her to dump him and leave as soon as he started trying to make her more "normal".

What I did find interesting was how supernatural Stargirl appeared and felt. She was other and at the same time relatable. It's a book that I think should be encouraged, especially for younger readers, but one that I did not fully connect with.

Professional Review: For the nondescript town of Mica, Arizona, being different is not a way of life. When Stargirl arrives, walking around with a ukulele and a pet rat named Cinnamon, she is the definition of different. 

Her mold did not fit that of the boring Mica Area High School (MAHS), which had never seen somebody boldly walk through the lunchroom and sing "Happy Birthday" to that day's recipient. Everybody thought she was a hoax, a scam, a way for the administration to raise school spirit. Everybody but Leo Borlock, who found her charming, intriguing, and beautiful; so when his best friend, Kevin, insists they bring Stargirl on their in-school interview show, Hot Seat, Leo is faced with the growing feelings he's kept hidden. 

This bittersweetness sets the tone for the engaging novel Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, Newbery Honor Medalist for Maniac Magee. Magee is the story of a boy who's caught in society's racial boundaries and of his engagement with crossing those boundaries. Stargirl, also a socially responsive story, solidifies Spinelli's ability to view the world through the lens of a child and weave his observations into a profoundly enriching and thought-provoking novel. 

It's no easy feat that Spinelli can create a larger-than-life, yet relatable character. Stargirl is written so realistically that it's not easy to describe her personality completely; it's through the narrative of Leo Borlock that the reader begins to understand Stargirl's uniqueness. Leo describes the school's reaction to the girl who asks questions about trolls in U.S. History class, says hello to strangers (whose names she knows) in the hallway, and dances outside in the rain instead of being in class. Through his lens, we connect to Stargirl, even feel proud of her seemingly ignorant antiestablishment motivations. But, like the students of MAHS, we also wonder if she's true and balk at her embarrassing antics and individuality. 

Simultaneously, we follow Leo's fears that Stargirl will change, as it is "unthinkable she could survive (at least unchanged) among us." As the students attempt to define Stargirl, Leo recognizes their transformation in defining themselves, even if subconciously. "The pronoun 'we' itself seemed to crack and drift apart in pieces." 

The supporting characters are portrayed with such realism we feel drawn to their feelings, their hopes, and their rejection of the unfamiliar. We try to define Stargirl just as they do, wondering if she could possibly be real. Jerry Spinelli answers this with, "Stargirl is as real as hope, as real as possibility, as real as the best in human nature." This idealistic approach to our desire to tidily place Stargirl in definitive terms, forces us to recognize our own stereotypes while following the novel's story. 

Stargirl creates this conversation, placing it as a "Reader's Circle" choice. Although labeled as a young adult novel,Stargirl is engaging for many age groups, including the not so young adults. Spinelli's themes of conformity, change, and inspiration and his imperfect characters are things we can connect with throughout our own lives, making Stargirla must read for all.

She laughed when there was no joke. She danced when there was no music. She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow.

Miller, S. (2009). Stargirl: a modern day tall tale [Review of the book Stargirl by J. Spinelli]. Powells.com. Retrieved March 5, 2015 from http://www.powells.com/review/2009_02_28.html.

Library Uses: I would add this to a display for strong female characters. I'd highlight it during Women's History Month along with other books about fictional and real female characters.