The God Box by Alex Sanchez

Sanchex, Alex. The God Box.
ISBN 13:978-1416909002. Soft cover $8.99.


Annotation:
Paul is a high school student struggling with his sexual identity. When Manuel, an openly gay student moves into town, Paul finds himself challenged to accept who he is.

Book Talk:
The God Box is a small wooden box. Write your concerns on a piece of paper, slip your concerns into the box, and turn your troubles over to God. Given enough time, you will find that your prayers have been answered. Paul has used his God Box for many years now. Into the box go concerns about tests, prayers for family members, and for friends. When the God Box gets full, Paul will go through the box and realize how his prayers have been answered.

And then, Manuel transfers into school.

Manuel is an openly Gay student. He challenges perceptions. He challenges the Bible. He helps to begin a Gay Straight Alliance in school. And he challenges Paul. Paul finds himself drawn to Manuel in a way that he has never been drawn to anyone before. As Paul struggles with his identity, Gay Hate incidents in the High School escalate until one horrific incident causes everyone to rethink the status quo.

Will Paul be able to find peace within himself? Find out in The God Box, by Lambda Award Winning author Alex Sanchez.



Author Website: www.alexsanchez.com

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

The Chocolate War. Robert Cromier. 1974. Laurel Leaf Books. New York.
ISBN-13: 9780440944591. Paperback $7.50.

Book Awards:
ALA Best Books for Young Adults
School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
Kirkus Reviews Choice
A New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year

Annotation:
At Trinity High School, the Vigils are the unspoken force behind all that happens at school; both the good and the bad. Jerry Renault decides to take a stand against the Vigils when he refuses to participate in the fall chocolate sale.

Book Talk:“Do I dare disturb the universe?” This question is on the poster in the back of Jerry Renault’s locker. Jerry is a freshman, a quarterback on the freshman football team, and struggling to fit in at Trinity High School. The Vigils are an unspoken, unacknowledged force which dictates what will happen in the school. From pranks to outright acts of disobedience, the Vigils control it all. No one has ever dared to go against the will of the Vigils.
This year, the school has taken on a challenge with the chocolate sale. Brother Leon is asking every student to sell 50 boxes of candy, and he enlists the help of the Vigils to enforce the 50- box quota.
What happens when Jerry defies the school and the Vigils and refuses to sell any candy at all will answer the question “What happens when the universe is disturbed?”

Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli

Spinelli, Jerry. 2003. Milkweed. Random House, Inc. ISBN 9780375813740. $15.99. Hardcover.

Awards:
*ALA Best Books for Young Adults-2004
*Carolyn W. Field Award-2004
*Texas TAYSHAS High School Reading List-2004
*Golden Kite Award for Fiction-2004

Annotation:
Misha is a homeless child roaming the streets of Warsaw, stealing food in order to survive. When the Nazis arrive in Poland, Misha struggles to survive under the new rulers who attempt to destroy everyone that is not just like them.

Book Talk:
Orphaned for as long as he can remember, and living on the streets of Warsaw, Poland life is a constant battle for survival for eight year old Misha. When the Nazis invade Poland, life for the street children of Warsaw becomes even more difficult. As life lurches on under the Nazis, a strange new order begins to take shape. The Jewish people are herded up and sent to live in the ghetto – a small, walled off neighborhood where food, clothing, jobs and housing are short. Misha and the other street boys soon find themselves herded into the ghetto where they have even less food than they did before.

One day, after Misha finds himself so hungry he is eating rats, he decides to find a solution to the problem:

“The next day I began walking along the wall. Until then, I had not thought much about the other side. Now I thought: There’s food over there. More than rats. The gates in the wall were guarded by Jackboots and Flops.

The wall was much too high to climb over, and even if I could get to the top, there was a thicket of barbed wire and broken glass. All that day I walked and looked, walked and looked. At last I saw something. It was not far from the uniform factory. There was a break in the bricks. It was low enough for me to reach. It was two bricks wide. I didn’t know it then, but it was a drain hole of some sort. It would never occur to them that anyone could squeeze through a space two bricks wide.

I left and came back after dark. I was through the hold in a second. I stood on the other side.”
(pg. 87)

Can Misha outwit, outlast, and outplay the Nazis? Find out in Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli.

Author Website: www.jerryspinelli.com

I Am Scout, The Biography of Harper Lee, by Charles J. Shields

Shields, Charles J. I am Scout, the Biography of Harper Lee. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 2008.(ISBN 0-8050-8334-0; $18.95 US, Hardcover)


*Winner of the 2007 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance for Best Nonfiction Book
*Quill Award Nominee for Biography
*Junior Literary Guild selection
*2009 Best book for Young Adults—ALA


I am familiar with To Kill a Mockingbird. We read it in high school, and I loved the book then. I was not familiar at all with the world of Harper Lee, as she has been a notorious recluse for many years now. The little I knew about her is that she modeled her character, Atticus Finch, after her father.
The Biography was fascinating. I never knew that Truman Capote and Nelle (Harper) Lee were next door neighbors growing up. It does make you wonder what kind of influence the two had upon each other. I did find myself fascinated by Nelle Lee. She was a maverick in her own time. Unconcerned with what conventional wisdom said a woman should be and do, she made her own unconventional way through the world. She was a smart woman, unconcerned with make-up or fashion. She lasted for a year at her Huntingdon College, and then transferred to the University of Alabama. She wrote for both the Crimson White and the Rammer Jammer, the two newspaper publications published at Alabama. In her Junior year, she not only became the Editor in Chief of Rammer Jammer (the campus humor magazine), she began studying Law. Eventually, Nelle dropped out of school one semester before graduating to go to New York. The book then goes on to chronicle the work Nelle put into creating To Kill a Mockingbird, and the movie version of the book. Projects that Nelle has worked on since finishing Mockingbird are explored.

I think I was inspired the most by the story of Nelle’s sister, Alice. Alice was the first person in the family to go to college. She left college after a year, and came home to help her father run his various businesses and raise her younger brothers and sisters. After seven years raising her younger siblings, she went to work for the Social Security Administration, and began to rise in the ranks of that fledgling bureaucracy. Her father eventually convinced her to come back home and work in his law firm. She took graduate courses at night, became a lawyer, and began practicing law in her family business. Alice broke many of the barriers that women faced who wanted to pursue a career – a profession. Alice, who was significantly older than Nelle, became Nelle’s role model in life.
This would be an awesome book for teens because it does explore decisions that she made in her young adult years- where to go to college, studying law as a Junior in college, and leaving college early to go make her way in New York City – and how these decisions directly impacted her career, and her writing. It shows that it is okay to be different, and stand apart from the crowd. Both Nelle, and her sister, Alice were mavericks who went against the crowd. They experienced great success in their careers.

Would I have this title in my YA collection at my library? Yes. Harper Lee has written one of the most influential works of fiction of the latter half of the 20th century. Students are required to read To Kill A Mockingbird in school. Harper Lee has been a recluse for most of her adult life. To have any additional information at all about her life is a gem beyond measure.

Author Website:
http://www.charlesjshields.com/content/index.asp

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

Hinton, S.E. The Outsiders. Puffin Press. 1997. (ISBN: 9780140385724; $9.99 U.S.; Paperback)


*New York Herald Tribune Best Teenage Books List, 1967
*Chicago Tribune Book World Spring Book Festival Honor Book, 1967
*Media and Methods Maxi Award, 1975
*American Library Association Best Young Adults Books, 1975
*Massachusetts Children's Book Award, 1979

a) What does the title mean?

"The Outsiders" refers to the place in society that Pony, Soda, Darry, and their friends occupy in society. They are the outsiders- the group that doesn't fit in with the other groups. They are at the bottom of the social pecking order, and they do not fit in with any of the other groups.

There are core groups in most high schools- the Jocks, the Nerds, the Freaks, etc. My daughter (age 12) calls that "TOP" social group "The Girlie Girls", or if she's had a really bad day "The A-------". In this book, that "TOP" social group is called "Soc". They are the group that perceives themselves to be the best of the best. They have the money, the brains, and the attitude that they are the best.

The Outsiders in this group are called the Greasers. They are the group of kids that have very little, and struggle for everything that they do have. Hard breaks and hard times seem to follow these kids, making a life that is already difficult even harder for them. They live on the bad side of town, have very little money, and don't wear designer clothes. They take pride in their attitude, their gangs, and the grease they put into their long hair in order to define themselves. This group perceives themselves to be less than everyone else, and this leads to their attitude - the attitude that invites trouble and the wrong kind of attention.


b) What does it mean to "stay golden?"

The original "golden" line took place between Pony and Johnny when they were hiding out in the church, and Pony quotes the poem by Robert Frost (on pages 85-86). The boys had been watching the sunrise behind the church. For the first time in the story, you see the true depth of Pony's character. He quotes a poem he read by Frost. Pony sees life beyond the limitations of the "Greaser" label. He has a certain innocence about him. He will stand up for himself against the Soc's, but he does not go looking for a fight. He doesn't carry a weapon to defend himself. He is an anomoly in the world in which he lives.

The "golden" tag comes back again at the end of the book, when Pony finds the letter from Johnny in the book Gone With the Wind.. "I've been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you're gold when you're a kid, like green. When you're a kid, everything's new, dawn. It's just when you get used to everything that it's day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That's gold. Keep that way, it's a good way to be." (The Outsiders, pp 186-187).

What struck me at this point were some of the behaviors we had been seeing out of Pony since Johnny's death. He broke a bottle to fight with some Socs at lunch. He stopped caring about his grades, and he was failing all of his classes. He had started to get a hard look in his eyes. The letter from Johnny seemed to remind Pony of who he was, and what he wanted to be.

I believe that to "stay golden" means to hold on to Childhood innocence and enthusiasm, and HOPE. Pony sees possibilities in the world. He reads, and wants to expand his horizons. As a result of his experiences after the death of Bob, Pony realizes that everyone has problems, life is tough all over, and there really isn't that much that separates Soc from Greaser.

Author Web Site:
http://www.sehinton.com/

Beowulf

Hinds, Gareth. Beowulf. Cambridge, Mass: Candlewick Press, 1999. (ISBN:978-0-7636-3022-5; $21.99 US; Hardover)


I had been familiar with Beowulf as a teenager. I was forced to read it as part of our instruction in the classics in tenth grade. I hated the story, with a passion. It was a difficult to read translation, written in old English. We were forced to parse it, dice it, and slice it in every way imagineable, as well as to compare it to another great epic we had read- The Odyssey, by Homer. I ranked Beowulf right down at the bottom of my list of things to read EVER again in my life, along with The Brothers Karamazov.

Imagine the revulsion in my mind when I saw this book on the list of titles we were to read for class. "OMG, it's going to be 10th grade english all over again...." BUT- we had been assigned the Graphic Novel version of Beowulf. Hmmm...I was excited. I love Graphic Novels, and the thought of reading Beowulf in this format intrigued me enough to get me past the mental shudder that usually accompanies that name.

What did I love about the book? The vivid pictures bring the story to life. Where I found the language confusing when I was a teenager, I found the pictures provided the "context clues" that I needed to fill in the blanks. "The author and editors had prepared a new translation, based upon the translation by A.J. Church." (from the foreword.) This change, to me, made the poem much easier to follow and appreciate. I have read the book several times through now. The pictures drew me in to the story, and I found myself drawing my own parallels- if anything, I was reminded of the stories that Tolkien wrote in the Lord of the Rings as the history of the land, the elves, and the first wars against Mordor. (I have been interested enough to pull out my Tolkien and compare the styles.) I truly wish that Beowulf had existed in graphic novel format 20 odd years ago when I was a teenager. It wouldn't have been on my hate list for so long!

I think this story is a classic because it embodies timeless elements. The struggle against an ancient, evil foe. The cause of right vs. wrong. A brave, strong hero who saves his people and fearlessly leads them.

An interesting note here- reading it as an adult who has experience in Storytelling to large groups of people, I noticed the rhythm of the story itself. That is the rythm, the circular telling pattern that would make the story easier to memorize and tell orally. The fact that the poem itself would be easy to memorize would make it an easy one to be told over and over again- and enable the story to survive the oral tradition until it could be written down.

The elements that speak to teenagers today- (in my opinion)- the battle between right and wrong. The super hero figure who comes and helps to solve the problems. (oh- and according to the 12 year old girls who were at my house doing homework last night- Beowulf looks "HOT" in the drawings) I believe that the most endearing element to teenagers today is that this book is drawn from History. The characters were able to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds and thrive. Sometimes, in today's world, I think the teens need to see that others have survived terrible odds.

Authors Website:
http://www.garethhinds.com/