Crank

Crank by Ellen Hopkins has got to be one of the best and most powerful books I've read this year. It's the story of Kristina Snow, a 17 year old junior in high school who gets good grades and has a pretty low-key life. That is, until she goes to stay with her dad for a few weeks during the summer. Although she meets a cute guy and falls in love for the first time, she also tries crank (crystal meth) and, after the first time, she's hooked. It doesn't help that her dad does the drug with her. By the time she returns to her mom's house and to her "normal" life, the damage is done and she is officially a meth addict. As her more innocent self, "Kristina" slowly begins to disappear, her more assertive self, "Bree" starts to take charge. Bree likes living life on the edge, taking risks, lying to her family, ditching her old friends, and hooking up with guys who can help her score more meth. Her life starts to go downhill fast, and what happens to her at the end will shock anyone who thinks that meth can be a harmless pasttime, something you can do without repercussions when you're young. Crank is written in free verse poetry, which makes it all the more powerful. 4 out of 4 Bananas!

Give a Boy a Gun: Disturbing Yet Awesome

Mrs. Cabaj's freshman English class is reading Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser, and since I was working with them on a research project about school violence, I thought that I would read it, too. Like Stuck in Neutral (see previous post), Give a Boy a Gun is about high school students struggling with some pretty intense issues. Gary and Brendan are considered outsiders by the popular kids at school. They deal with constant bullying, especially from one of the most obnoxious football players, and often talk about how awesome it would be to slowly and painfully kill the worst offenders. Although it is highly disturbing, I really liked this book because it is told completely in flashbacks and from memories of students, teachers, administrators, friends, and family members of the two boys AFTER they took the school hostage and the town had dealt with the aftermath of their violent attack. Also, facts and statistics about gun violence and quotes from newspaper articles about real life school shootings are at the bottom of most pages. All in all, this was a fast read that spoke to an extremely serious and highly important issue facing our country today, so I'm giving it 4 out of 4 Bananas. For another author's perspective on school shootings, try Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult.

Stuck in Neutral: I'm Voting This One "Most Original"

Ms. Hayes' 9th grade English class read *Stuck in Neutral* by Terry Trueman and, since I helped them with a related research project, I thought that I would read the book too. I loved it! It is really short, really fast, and is about a subject that would make even the bravest person weak in the knees. Imagine if you were able to think, feel, and understand things just as you do now, but you were trapped inside your own body? Imagine that you were in a coma, or that you had severe cerebral palsy (like the character in *Stuck in Neutral*) and were unable to communicate with anyone or do anything by yourself, so everyone, doctors included, assumed that you could not understand, think or feel? And what if you found out that your dad was thinking of putting an end to your "suffering" by killing you? Terrifying, right? Shawn considers himself to be a pretty normal teenager: he likes music, girls, and TV, and he loves his family even though sometimes they drive him crazy. The big difference between Shawn and other teenagers his age is that he suffered a stroke at birth and has gone through his entire life unable to communicate or control his own body. No one knows who he really is, and no one ever will. His dad left the family when Shawn was little because he couldn't deal with the pressures of Shawn's disability, and has since become a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. Based on some comments his dad makes, and also on the research his dad is currently working on, Shawn realizes that his dad is thinking about killing him in order to end his "suffering". Does he do it? Does Shawn's dad kill him? Or can Shawn make a connection with his dad to let him know that he's really inside, a thinking and feeling person? Hands down, 4 out of 4 Bananas!

Sold (disturbing, haunting... unforgettable)

Sold by Patricia McCormick is a novel told in free verse about the horrors of the international sex trade. It's also on the Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award list and the Read for a Lifetime list for this year. It is told from the point of view of Lakshmi, a thirteen year old Nepali girl from the mountains of the Himalayas, who is sold by her stepfather to pay off his gambling debts. She thinks she is going to the "big city"to work as a maid for a wealthy family in order to send money home to support her baby brother and to buy a tin roof for her family's mud hut. In reality, she has been sold to one of several middlemen, who sells her to another middleman, who smuggles her across the border into India and sells her to a brothel in the city of Calcutta. Once she arrives in the brothel, she is locked into a small, dirty room, is drugged into compliance, and is forced to have sex with customer after customer, until she loses the will to struggle. Once she stops resisting, she is allowed to live in the brothel among the other prostitutes, with whom she forges hesitant friendships. She sees much horror (girls contracting AIDS and being thrown out into the streets, girls being brutally punished for resisting, and the futility of trying to pay off their "debts" to the brothel's madame). She also experiences small acts of kindness and, ultimately, is one of the lucky ones (relatively speaking). This book is NOT easy to read (it's a fast read, but its subject matter makes it not an easy one). I read it before bed each night, which may not have been the smartest thing to do, but I feel that it is so important that I bought a copy for myself so that I can loan it to friends and family members. Because of its importance, its free verse style, and its haunting beauty, I'm giving Sold 4 out of 4 Bananas.

What Happened to Cass McBride?

I liked this book. I read it in just a few nights, so if you're in the mood for a fast-paced, suspenseful, fairly easy read, this could be the book for you! It's also on the Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award list for this year, which is why I chose it in the first place. It's the story of three high school students: Daniel, his brother Kyle, and Cass McBride, for whom the novel is named. Alternating chapters tell the stories of Kyle, Cass, and Ben, the officer interviewing Kyle at the police station. The novel opens with Kyle being interviewed by the police for his role in the kidnapping of Cass McBride. It turns out that Kyle's brother Daniel has committed suicide, and Kyle blames Cass because of a cruel note she had written that mocked Daniel and the fact that he dared to ask her out. So Kyle kidnaps her and buries her alive. This is how the novel begins, and it takes off from there, delving into the family histories and psyches of Daniel, Kyle, and Cass. How large of a role do our parents play in our lives? How much do they affect our perceptions of ourselves and the way in which we treat other people? Why did Daniel commit suicide, and. as the title of the novel asks, what did happen to Cass McBride? 3 1/2 out of 4 Bananas.

A Northern Light: A Gentle, Inspirational Murder Mystery (Really!)

I just finished Jennifer Donnelly's A Northern Light, which is a Printz medal winner and is also on this year's Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award list. After the Taken debacle (see previous post), I needed to read another Abe Lincoln nominee and have my faith in the list restored. I would describe A Northern Light as Anne of Green Gables meets Little House on the Prairie, set in the Adirondacks, with a murder thrown in to add an air of mystery and to help the main character develop her sense of destiny. It is actually based on a real murder case from the early twentieth century, in which a young woman becomes pregnant and is drowned in a lake by her lover so that she does not get in the way of the life he had hoped to have. Their letters to each other survived, however, and ultimately helped convict him of her murder. A Northern Light is set in the Adirondacks and is the story of Mattie, a teenage girl who hopes to go to college in the city and become an author, until she draws the romantic attention of the handsome son of a wealthy local farmer. She also takes a job at a local resort, where she meets Grace Brown (the woman who is eventually murdered). After the murder, and after Mattie reads the sad letters Grace had written to the man who ultimately kills her, Mattie must decide what direction her own life should take. Should she forego her dreams of independence and education to marry a man who may not love her truly? 3 out of 4 Bananas

Taken (I hate to do it, but I've got to.)

Here it is, my first negative review. As the title of my post indicates, I do hate to do it, but in the interest of honesty, I've got to. After all, it's impossible to love every book you read, right? And I have had quite a string of awesome reads, so it was probaby time for something not-so-great. Another reason that I'm hemming and hawing so much is that Taken, by Chris Jordan, is on this year's Abraham Lincoln High School Book Award nominee list, which is why I chose it in the first place. I fully expected to enjoy the book because I like suspense-thriller fiction, plus it is on this award list, but...no. I actually kind of loathed it.
The plot centers around Kate Bickford, a suburban widowed mother of an adopted child named Tommy. Tommy is abducted in the novel's first few pages by the "man in the mask", who later appears in Kate's home and warns her to follow his "method" if she ever wants to see her son again. A local sheriff winds up dead, and Kate is arrested for his murder, which complicates her efforts to find her son. She is eventually released on bail and takes it upon herself to find the "man in the mask" and, ultimately, rescue her son.
The main problem I had with the novel is that it is sloppily written. I enjoy novels written for children and young adults, so it's not that I don't appreciate writing at a different level: I do, as long as it's good writing. There is a difference, and this difference is evident in Taken. The plot is also inconsistent, and several loose ends are never tied up. Also, the main character, Kate, never seems quite as worried or as devastated as you would probably be if it was likely that your child had been killed by an abductor. That really bugged me. Also, his portrayal of the lone African American character in the book is rife with stereotypes. Jordan even writes this character's dialogue using his conception of African American speech patterns and vocabulary choices, which, to me, is obnoxious and inappropriate. Finally, the climax and conclusion of the novel fell flat and left me with a bad taste in my mouth, plus it made me mad because it ultimately wasted time I could have spent reading something amazing! I keep a reading journal where I write down every book that I read, and, for the first time ever, next to the book's title I drew a little arrow pointing down to remind myself of how much I disliked this book! So, for all of these reasons I grudgingly give Chris Jordan's Taken 1/2 out of 4 Bananas.