I've been wanting to read A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah for a long time, and I finally found a reason to move it to the top of my reading list now that it's been nominated for the 2010 Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award. Written as a memoir, Beah tells the story of how his childhood was destroyed by the civil war in Sierra Leone, which began in 1991 and lasted for eleven years. Beah was in a distant village participating in a hip hop dance showcase (!) when he and his friends heard that rebels had invaded their home village. The boys were forced to flee into the forest because the rebels were reportedly headed in their direction. They spent months hiding in forests and as temporary guests in villages along their way, although many villages thought that Beah and his friends were child soldiers fighting for the rebels and refused to allow them shelter. After a year or so of flight, and after seeing the village in which his family was supposedly hiding burned to the ground, Beah was conscripted by the army into military servitude. This wasn't entirely objectionable in Beah's mind, as it at least provided him with food, protection, and the chance to exact revenge for his parents' murders. While in the army, however, Beah became addicted to cocaine and numb to the killings he both witnessed and perpetrated. Beah was eventually rescued by UNICEF and rehabilitated while living in a refugee-style camp for orphans of the civil war. His story continued and ultimately had a somewhat-happy resolution when he makes his way to New York City as a United Nations representative (although his story can't have a truly "feel good ending" due to the tragic nature of his young life).

I really liked this book because it surprised me; I had anticipated a grueling, unpleasant reading experience, but instead found Beah's account to be engaging, honest, and humorous at times without compromising the serious issue of the civil war and his descriptions of child soldiers. I was also mesmerized by Beah and his friends' passion for early '90s American rap and hip hop music: at several time throughout the memoir, Beah includes references to Naughty By Nature, Heavy D and the Boyz, and Tupac Shakur. This inclusion of a world with which I am familiar (not that I claim to be an early '90s hip hop expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like the music) brought Beah's foreign experience with war and soldiering into sharp relief for me; it was a jarring juxtaposition of the familiar with the "unknowable-ness" of Beah's life in Sierra Leone.

Having said all that, however, after Googling "Ishmael Beah", I discovered that there has been controversy surrounding A Long Way Gone and Beah's version of the events and chronology he describes. The Slate article I read is linked here. I'm disappointed, but not entirely surprised that Beah may have taken some poetic license with his memoir, the practice of which has been cause for much argument and discussion regarding several recent memoirs (notably A Million Little Pieces by James Frey). So, read A Long Way Gone. Keep in mind that some of the events may not have happened exactly as described, but take from it Beah's voice, and his passion for his country, and the confident knowledge that children ARE having their childhoods snatched away from them, ARE being brutalized, and DO need our help. 4 out of 4 Bananas!

Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award 2010 Nominee

Do Fashion and Religion Mix?

Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah is a welcome addition to the realistic teen fiction genre. It is the story of Amal, a 17 year old Australian girl who decides to proclaim her faith publicly by wearing a hijab, or Muslim headcovering. The novel is written in Amal's fresh voice, which is a fun combination of sarcastic wisecracking and earnest religious dialoguing with friends and family. Here's what I liked so much about this novel:
- Amal is a religious teenage protagonist (it seems that religious characters are often used as foils for the main characters)
- Amal is a realistic religious character, who is concerned with the same frienship/guy/family issues as non-religious teens would be, but doesn't act high-and-mighty because of her religion
- It addresses many common misconceptions and fears people have about Islam
- I love the Australian slang! (I have worked with lots of Australians and have always enjoyed the slang terms they use-- lots of creative abbreviations, and adjectives, especially. I mean, who doesn't love the word "dag"?)

The only issue I had with the novel is that it could have used a little more editing for clarity and brevity; it seemed that the author had a lot to say, and used Amal as a vehicle for getting across her point of view. I think it's an extremely important and relevant read, however, so I'm giving it 3 1/2 out of 4 Bananas!

Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award 2010 Nominee

CSI for the High School Set

If you like CSI and other forensic mystery TV shows and movies, you should enjoy The Christopher Killer, by Alane Ferguson. Cassie is a high school student whose father is the town's coroner (the guy who picks up dead bodies and then, if necessary, performs an autopsy to find out cause of death). Cassie wants to be a forensic scientist, so she is always reading about how the police use clues from murder scenes to catch the killers. In the beginning of the novel, Cassie's father is beginning to get swamped at work, so he asks Cassie to be his assistant, much to her delight. She struggles a bit with her first dead body, but is interested in the work and enjoys using what she's learned from her extracurricular studying. She and the town are shocked to the core, however, when one of her high school friends is found dead in the woods. It's determined that the girl is the latest victim of the Christopher Killer, a serial killer who has been murdering girls across the country, always placing a small St. Christopher medallion somewhere on their bodies. Can Cassie get beyond her personal grief and help avenge the death of her friend by finding the killer, without becoming a victim herself? I liked this book a lot because of Cassie's strength as the protagonist, and for its combination of science, suspense, and teenage relationships and friendships. I was also pretty satisfied with the ending. 3 1/2 out of 4 Bananas!

What is Moral Responsibility?

I read The Reader by German author Bernhard Schlink while I was in Mexico during Spring Break. It's not exactly a vacation read, but I enjoyed it all the same. It's a very different sort of book from what I've been reading lately, which have mostly been mysteries and thrillers (love those!). Since Kate Winslet won an Oscar for her role as Hannah Schmitz in the movie version of The Reader, though, I thought that this novel translated from the German was worth a look. It's the story of Michael Berg, a teenage boy in the years following World War II, who begins an affair with an older woman (Hannah Schmitz, the Kate Winslet role). The affair is very erotic and exciting, but soon begins to have a dark side when Hannah avoids questions about her past and shows some troubling sides to her personality. And then, one day, she is gone. Michael does not see her again for years, after he has been married, had a child, and then divorced. The circumstances in which he sees Hannah again force Michael himself as well as the reader to ask certain moral questions about the nature of responsibility, guilt, redemption and forgiveness. These questions are not easy to answer, particularly when dealing with a subject like the Holocaust, which is the time period after which The Reader takes place. I liked this book and felt that it was an important read because it filled a gap in my own consciousness and provided food for my own thought and personal moral development. It's not a technically difficult book to read, as it is fairly slim and straightforward, but the themes are certainly sophisticated and require a patient, thoughtful mind. 3 1/2 out of 4 Bananas.

Inexcusable's Main Character is, well, Inexcusable

Have you read Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson? If you did, and loved it, then you should give Chris Lynch's Inexcusable a try. This is a gripping, fast-paced novel from the viewpoint of an unreliable, potentially unstable, narrator. Keir Sarafian is a good guy, everybody says so. So, if he's such a stand-up, admirable person, it's impossible that he would rape a girl that he's totally in love with...right? That's what Keir is trying to convince the reader of during the course of this novel, which opens with a scene where the girl, Gigi, is screaming, crying, and accusing him of raping her. Now I would say that usually in a novel, the reader likes or identifies with the main character or narrator. In Inexcusable, however, I never felt comfortable with Keir. I was always on edge with him, and was suspicious of what he was telling me. Were my suspicions justified? Is Keir really who he thinks he is, or is there a dark side to him? I loved this book, partly because I was uncomfortable while I was reading it, and also because it was fun to question the truthfulness of the narrator. 4 out of 4 Bananas!

Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award 2010 Nominee

Murdery Mystery: What a Genre!

I love murder mysteries. What I loved about In the Woods by Tana French is that it is a shining example of what mass market murder mysteries could be if only the writing were good, or at least if it resembled something bordering on the literary. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Patricia Cornwell and Mary Higgins Clark as much as the next person, but they verge more on brain candy than on literary B vitamins. In the Woods, however, is more literary fiction than airport bookstore. It is told from the point of view of Detective Ryan, a detective on Ireland's Murder Squad, who with his partner is investigating the murder of a twelve year old girl. The girl is found dead on an archaeological site outside of Ryan's hometown, which is also the site of the disappearance twenty years earlier of two other children. The twist is that Detective Ryan is the one child who was found when the other children had vanished. He was found with his arms wrapped around a tree, blood filling his shoes. In the Woods is thrilling, suspenseful, and a true page-turner (I had to force myself to put it down and turn off my light every night). However. Mass market murder mysteries always have a satisfying ending, right? If you read In the Woods, just remember that this is no mass market murder mystery. And that's all I'm going to say about that. 3 1/2 out of 4 Bananas!

Great Read About a Terrible Topic

Such a Pretty Girl by Laura Wiess recently won second place in the 2009 Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award contest. It is the story of Meredith, a fourteen year old girl who was repeatedly raped by her father until he injured her so badly that she had to go to the hospital. Her father was arrested, imprisoned, but was released after having served only three years. The book begins with Meredith's father returning to her life, much to the delight of her mother, who is desperate to hold onto her marriage, even though she knows what he did to Meredith. Incest is a very difficult topic to stomach, even in fiction, but Wiess handles it with an appropriate amount of honesty, outrage, and just enough details to make it wrenching without being too graphic. On her official website, Wiess comments on writing Such a Pretty Girl, and how she extensively researched incest's effects on victims, the way incest crimes are prosecuted, and case studies of various perpetrators of incest. She felt so outraged by what she found that she felt compelled to write this novel so that people could have some sense of what the victims go through. The ending was a little strange for me, but because it is a short, well-written book with a lot of impact, I'm giving it 3 1/2 out of 4 Bananas.