My Summer Reading List

In addition to several "candy bar" reads that I enjoyed this summer, I made a point to read as many Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award 2011 nominees as I could. Here is a visual tour of my reading list:

Sherman Alexie: Beloved RB Author

RUN, don't walk, to read this book. Seriously, you won't regret it. I personally can't believe that it's been out for so long and that I'm finally, just now, reading it. Sherman Alexie is a Native American author from Washington state who has written several novels that have been included in the curriculum at RB: Flight, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Flight is also this year's Summer Reading requirement for seniors not taking AP Lit.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is the heartbreakingly hilarious (hilariously heartbreaking?) story of Arnold Spirit, Jr., or "Junior" for short. Junior is a 14 year old Native American kid growing up on a reservation just outside of Spokane, WA (just like Alexie himself). The novel is told from Junior's perspective and is accompanied by cartoonist Ellen Forney's fantastic illustrations of characters or events that look like they could have come straight out of a diary:

Like many others on the reservation, several of Junior's family members are alcoholics, live in poverty, and struggle with depression and hopelessness. Junior, however, has managed to hold onto hope for a better life, and with that, he announces that he will no longer be attending the high school on the "rez" but will be transferring to Reardan, the rich, white high school in a nearby farm town. This leads to his ostracism from the tribe, as he is seen as rejecting his Indian family in favor of the white world. The white students, however, also don't fully accept him because he's not like them, either, so Junior ends up being caught between two worlds. He loses a best friend, gains a "translucent semi-girlfriend", and is hit with two family tragedies during his first year at Reardan.

What I loved about this novel is that the tragedies of Junior's life and the real problems faced by Native Americans today are not hidden; in fact, I feel like they are laid bare for all to witness and understand. Alexie's writing style is so witty, however, and and his observations are so poignant, that the story is NOT a downer. It is actually the perfect balance of humor and outrage, hope and despair. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian has absolutely been one of the best books I've read this year. 4 out of 4 Bananas!

Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award 2011 Nominee

Sometimes you need people to Just Listen.

Annabel Greene used to be one of those girls who has it all: she's pretty, popular, fashionable, and even works as a model in her spare time. Everything changed last summer, however, and she's now an outcast in her school and among her friends. Annabel sits alone at lunch, along with other kids on the sidelines of school society. One of these other loners happens to be her former best friend Clarke, who Annabel dumped as a friend the previous year when Sophie moved to town. Sophie is gorgeous, edgy, and just a tad dangerous. She can also make someone's life a living hell if you cross her. One of the first scenes of the novel is when Annabel is about to get out of her car on the first day of school, and Sophie walks by, looks at Annabel and says, "Bitch" in front of a parking lot full of students. The reader soon learns that Annabel has been accused of sleeping with Will Cash, Sophie's boyfriend.
As the novel progresses, bits and pieces of what actually happened during the summer are revealed. Annabel also becomes friends with Owen, a huge, threatening-looking kid known for punching people when provoked. Owen actually is a knowledgable music fanatic who helps Annabel get the courage to tell him and, finally, her family what happened that summer.
In addition to her own struggles with school and with the traumatic event of last summer is her older sister Whitney's eating disorder, which threatens to tear Annabel's family apart.
For anyone who enjoyed Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak and likes dramatic tales of friendship and relationships, Just Listen won't disappoint. 3 out of 4 Bananas!

Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award 2011 Nominee

This Summer's Junior Read: A Slice of Americana

American Rust by Philipp Meyer has been described as a mix of The Grapes of Wrath and The Catcher in the Rye. American Rust, I believe, captures what is best about each of these classic American novels. I was mesmerized by The Grapes of Wrath's description of American life and hardships in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression and appreciated how powerful it was to learn about that time within the context of fictional characters and their families. American Rust does the same, but in a modern day Pennsylvania steel town caught in the throes of a major economic downtown. The faltering economy has forced the factories to close and the town's unemployment to skyrocket.
Each chapter in American Rust is told from a different character's point of view, which allows the reader to feel the economy's impact on different areas of the population. What I loved about The Catcher in the Rye is Holden Caulfield's voice, and how he deals as a young man with conflicting feelings of anger, love, sexuality, rebellion, responsibility, alienation, etc.. The two protagonists of American Rust are young men who both held a lot of promise: one for his academic abilities and the other for his prowess on the football field. For various reasons, each gave up his dream of a different life in order to stay in the hometown, which holds nothing for them. Throughout the novel, each character undergoes an internal struggle involving some of the same issues that Holden Caulfield deals with in Catcher.
American Rust begins when one of the protagonists decides to leave home after having stolen several thousand dollars from his father and convinces the other boy to join him and start a new life in California. Shortly after their journey begins, however, a traumatic event changes everything for them, forever. These reads like an Important Book, without being inaccessible. A movie adaptation is currently in the works. 4 out of 4 Bananas!

Hold Tight Falls Short

Any reader of this blog knows that I love a good mystery, so I had high hopes for Harlan Coben's Hold Tight, even though I had been disappointed by another of his thrillers Tell No One. Hold Tight begins promisingly enough, with concerned parents installing spyware on their teenage son Adam's computer. They reluctantly decide to spy on Adam because one of his friends had recently committed suicide, and Adam had continued to withdraw from the family. The spyware reveals that he is planning to go to a party with drinking and drugs on Friday night so Mike, Adam's father, buys hockey tickets for that same night and won't let Adam refuse to come. When Adam does not show up at home the night of the game, however, his parents become terrified that something has happened. What follows is an adventure deep into the underground of blackmarket pharmaceuticals, with a healthy dose of revenge, insanity and betrayal to make things more interesting.
Each chapter is told from a different character's point of view, and several seemingly unrelated storylines are brought together for a surprising conclusion. What I liked about this is that Coben's characters use a lot of current cell phone and computer technology, which will probably render the novel outdated in a few years, but makes it seem cutting edge in 2010. What I didn't like is Coben's writing, which is not very interesting (to me, but maybe that's snobbish), or his storyline which seemed contrived. However, this novel received enough student, teacher and librarian votes to land on the 2011 Abraham Lincoln High School Book Award list, so what do I know? 2 out of 4 Bananas

Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award 2011 Nominee

House Rules: a Memoir of Emotional Abuse

Rachel Sontag's House Rules: A Memoir is a troubling glimpse into the absolute physical and emotional control a parent can exercise over a child's life, and the way that such emotional abuse can have effects that last a lifetime. Sontag, now in her thirties, describes how as a teenager she became the focus of her father's wrath and disturbing brand of mental illness, which prompted him to awaken her in the middle of the night for hours-long diatribes about how she's a disappointment, how he wished she was never born, and how she needs to make amends for all of the imagined wrongs she's committed. Rachel's mother refused to confront her father, however, and instead asked Rachel to go along with him in the interest of keeping the peace, ultimately failing in her role as protector. Once Rachel had left home for college, she began to disentangle herself from her father's control. She also began to sort through and identify many of the personal issues she had when forming and maintaining relationships, issues which she had developed as coping mechanisms. I'm not usually a fan of the "abusive childhood memoir" genre, but I found hope in Rachel's eventual freedom from her father's delusional demands and emotional sabotage. 3 out of 4 Bananas!

Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award 2011 Nominee

The Help: Race Relations in the 1960s

I was really surprised to like this book as much as I did. I wasn't a big fan of *Secret Life of Bees*, and in my mind I had lumped the two into the same genre due to their historical setting and general subject matter (race relations, 1960s). For me, *The Help* was far superior, even though I started off prepared to dislike it as soon as I started reading the first chapter, which is told in the voice of an African American maid named Aibileen. I struggle with white authors who write using colloquial African American voices, because I think it's almost impossible to get it right without getting it very, very wrong. I think Stockett did a great job with a precarious, yet important topic, and I appreciated her commentary in the Afterword describing her personal family experiences with "the help."

The novel is set in the early 1960s and explores the relationship between black household maids and their affluent white employers, told in alternating chapters from the perspectives of maids, employers, and the white woman who becomes compelled to tell the maids' stories. What I liked about the book was that the African American characters are so vividly and warmly developed, that not all of the white characters are bad, and that the story is fast-paced and compelling. What I didn't like so much was that Skeeter, the white character who writes the maids' stories, is portrayed a little too much like a white savior, assisting the poor and weak black characters. I'm sure a lot of people will reject this assessment and argue that the black characters are NOT weak- they're not, no, but they do rely on Skeeter to gain power over their white employers. Race is a complicated issue in this country, so there are no "safe", comfortable or easy ways to write about race relations. Kathryn Stockett comes fairly close, however, and since I enjoyed the story so much I am giving *The Help* 3 out of 4 Bananas!