The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler, Candlewick Press, Cambridge MA, 2003, ISBN 0-7636-1958-2
Plot Summary
Virginia is from a wealthy New York City family in which everyone is sleek and successful--except for her. She has to shop in the plus-size section of Saks Fifth Avenue and has learned to follow the "Fat Girl Code of Conduct" which assumes that no boy would ever want to date her. Virginia's best friend has moved to Walla Walla, Washington, her mother, a child psychologist, just wants her to stick to a diet, and her father ogles skinny women on the television. Froggy Welsh the Fourth wants to make out with her, but what if he sees underneath her shirt? Virginia figures that her plus size figure is the main source of any family problems--but realizes that there's more to it when her "perfect" brother moves back home.
Critical Evaluation
The characterization of Virginia is pitch perfect in places--she’s a classic model of a teenage girl who is smart and sassy yet crippled by self-doubt which invariably leads to self-destructive behaviors. Her parents are fairly unsuccessful in supporting their only child who is not lean like they are, and they are actively destructive of Virginia’s sense of self throughout the novel. With her left friend off in Seattle for the year and her supportive older sister in the Peace Corps, Virginia has limited support (a kind English teacher and Froggy whose sincerity she doubts) when she has a crisis of faith in her family. Virginia’s revelations about her family’s foibles and her resulting transformation into a self-confident, size-positive young woman happen so quickly that a reader could feel skeptical, but really, anything is possible during adolescence!
Reader’s Annotation
Virginia feels that she must have been switched at birth. How else is it possible that she could be the one blond, chubby daughter in a family of sleek brunettes?
Information about the Author
According to the author’s website, “Carolyn Mackler is the author of the popular teen novels, The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things (A Michael L. Printz Honor Book), Tangled, Guyaholic, Vegan Virgin Valentine, and Love and Other Four-Letter Words. Carolyn's novels have been published in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Korea, the Netherlands, Denmark, Israel, and Indonesia.
Carolyn has contributed to magazines including Seventeen, Glamour, CosmoGIRL!, Girls' Life, Storyworks, and American Girl. She has a short story in Thirteen, edited by James Howe, and in Sixteen, edited by Megan McCafferty. In 2008, Carolyn was a judge for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.
Carolyn lives in New York City with her husband and two young sons. She is currently at work on her sixth novel.”
Genre
Realistic Fiction/ Chick Lit
Curriculum Ties
N/A
Booktalking Ideas
Describe Virginia and from her own perspective and from her mother’s perspective. (Look at this from the beginning of the novel.)
Challenge Issues
The book references a rape and could be challenged on those grounds. If the book were challenged, I would turn to ALA's Strategies and Tips for Dealing with Challenges to Library Materials.
Why Included?
When I saw this novel, I noticed that it was a Printz award winner, and it sounded funny. I wanted to include a coming-of-age novel that is size-positive.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-439-02348-1
Plot Summary
Katniss Everdeen lives in District 12, one of twelve vanquished districts that lost in a war to the the Capitol. Here, in the ashes of the former United States, the Capitol keeps order over the conquered people through a yearly event called the Hunger Games. In the Games two young people from each of the districts are selected to represent their community in a televised game in which the contestants fight to the death. Katniss bravely steps in to take her younger sister Prim’s place when she is selected. Living close to the edge of death in her regular life leaves her well equipped for the Games. A talented hunter, she has been the primary provider of food for her family since her father died in the mines years ago. Once she enters the Hunger Games, she comes to know some of the other contestants and comes to rely on some for support--but “winning” will mean killing them. Triumphing in the Hunger Games will demand the sacrifice of love and friendship. Katniss has the physical prowess and cunning to excel, but will her heart survive these trials?
Critical Evaluation
This is a YA novel that can be read on many different levels--it can be plenty just to get through the the plot with its many twists and turns, but it can also be read for tough philosophical questions about the nature of relationships between a powerful and lavish society and its dependent, oppressed colonies. Collins manages to portray various elements of contemporary society in this young adult novel--she holds up a mirror to our thirst for violence and desire to showcase (and watch) the “real” horrors of life on reality television. Collins has innocents kill each other to satisfy a powerful society’s need for control and “entertainment” and in doing so forces her readers to ask hard questions. Is it possible for these innocents, pawns in a much larger game, to retain any shred of humanity in the Hunger Games? Why aren’t the districts in an active state of rebellion? Can Katniss retain her love for her family and best friend now that she is a trained killer? These and many other questions await readers of The Hunger Games series.
Reader’s Annotation
In a gladiator style arena, the Hunger Games are being televised throughout the Capitol and twelve vanquished districts. Teen contestants must fight each other to the death-- how will Katniss survive?
Information about the Author
On the author’s website, we learn that, “Since 1991, Suzanne Collins has been busy writing for children’s television. She has worked on the staffs of several Nickelodeon shows, including the Emmy-nominated hit Clarissa Explains it All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo. For preschool viewers, she penned multiple stories for the Emmy-nominated Little Bear and Oswald. She also co-wrote the critically acclaimed Rankin/Bass Christmas special, Santa, Baby! Most recently she was the Head Writer for Scholastic Entertainment’s Clifford’s Puppy Days.
While working on a Kids WB show called Generation O! she met children’s author James Proimos, who talked her into giving children’s books a try. Thinking one day about Alice in Wonderland, she was struck by how pastoral the setting must seem to kids who, like her own, lived in urban surroundings. In New York City, you’re much more likely to fall down a manhole than a rabbit hole and, if you do, you’re not going to find a tea party. What you might find...? Well, that’s the story of Gregor the Overlander, the first book in her five-part fantasy/war series, The Underland Chronicles.
At present, Suzanne is hard at work on the third book in her sci-fi series, The Hunger Games. She currently lives in Connecticut with her family and a pair of feral kittens they adopted from their backyard.”
Genre
Science Fiction
Curriculum Ties
Revolution/ Colonialism
Booktalking Ideas
Read the passage that describes the Hunger Games and the moment that Prim (Katniss’ sister’s name) is picked.
Reading Level/ Interest Age
Grades 7+
Challenge Issues
The novel could be challenged due to its graphic representations of violence. If the book were challenged, I would turn to ALA's Strategies and Tips for Dealing with Challenges to Library Materials.
Why Included?
The Hunger Games is the “it” YA series right now, and any serious conversation about Young Adult literature today starts with these books.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Little Brown and Company, New York, 2007, ISBN 978-0-316-01368-0
Plot Summary
Junior is a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane reservation. Life is tough enough with poverty (his self-portrait includes his K-mart t-shirt, Glad garbage book bag, and Safeway tennis shoes) and a family history of alcoholism, but Junior's got even more to contend with. He was born with water on the brain which left him with lopsided eyes and too many teeth. His only friend is the school bully, and he risks that friendship when he decides to leave the reservation school for a better education at the neighboring white school. Each day, Junior has to get himself to the all-white school twenty miles away (unreliable transportation, a sometimes drunk father, and no money for gas are all part of the struggle to get to school), and once he gets there, other than the school mascot, he’s the only Indian for miles. You might think Junior wouldn’t stand a chance--but he makes a friend or two, joins the basketball team and starts to make sense of his identity as someone who is of both places and neither. It is through the deaths of loved ones (Junior has attended forty-two funerals in his life) that Junior is able to feel the support of his community, both on the reservation and at his new school. Junior is an absolute original who will leave you cheering, crying, and laughing.
Critical Evaluation
The semi-autobiographical The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is Alexie's first young adult novel. The coming-of-age story addresses serious questions about friendship, isolation, love and loss, but it comes at them from the perspective of a funny and insightful fourteen year old boy whose life is surrounded by the bleakness of alcoholism, poverty, and the rest of the legacy of “the big stuff”, as Alexie puts it, of mass murder, loss of language and land. Junior aspires to be an artist, and the black and white comics interspersed throughout the novel (the work of cartoonist/ professional illustrator, Ellen Forney) are Junior’s reflections on his life. In his illustrations, Junior tackles the basics of all fourteen year old existences, including masturbation, girls, and zits, but he also has poetic insights into the nature of friendship between boys and how that changes over time, and the pain of being called a “white lover” when he leaves the reservation for a better education.
Reader’s Annotations
(Insert image of Junior’s self-portrait.) Watch Junior tackle it all with his cartoons and his basketball skills.
Information about the Author
According to the author’s website, “Sherman J. Alexie, Jr., was born in October 1966. A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, he grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, WA, about 50 miles northwest of Spokane, WA.
Born hydrocephalic, which means with water on the brain, Alexie underwent a brain operation at the age of 6 months and was not expected to survive. When he did beat the odds, doctors predicted he would live with severe mental retardation. Though he showed no signs of this, he suffered severe side effects, such as seizures, throughout his childhood. In spite of all he had to overcome, Alexie learned to read by age three, and devoured novels, such as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, by age five. All these things ostracized him from his peers, though, and he was often the brunt of other kids' jokes on the reservation.
As a teenager, after finding his mother's name written in a textbook assigned to him at the Wellpinit school, Alexie made a conscious decision to attend high school off the reservation in Reardan, WA, about 20 miles south of Wellpinit, where he knew he would get a better education. At Reardan High he was the only Indian, except for the school mascot. There he excelled academically and became a star player on the basketball team. This experienced inspired his first young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian.”
Genre
Realistic Fiction
Curriculum Ties
N/A
Booktalking Ideas
Show Junior’s self-portrait and explain the risk that he takes (leaving the reservation school for Rearden High School).
Reading Level/Interest Age
Ages 14+
Challenge Issues
This book could be (and has been) challenged because of its references to masturbation. If the book were challenged, I would turn to ALA's Strategies and Tips for Dealing with Challenges to Library Materials.
Why Included?
This novel is a National Book Award winner by one of my favorite authors. That it a. touches on profound matters but is b. fun to read and c. short made it an essential read for me. I think that there are readers who might be willing to tackle this novel who don't generally read much, and so I wanted to include it in my collection.
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, Tor Books, 2008, ISBN13: 9780765319852
Plot Summary
This dystopian novel imagines a not-too-distant moment in the U.S. after a major terrorist attack has occurred in San Francisco. Marcus aka "w1n5t0n" is a seventeen year old Bay Area tech genius who has already figured out his way around all of his high school's surveillance systems. In the wake of the terrorist attacks which blew up the Bay Bridge and killed hundreds, he and his tech-savvy friends have become a target of his government's anti-terrorist campaign. After he and his friends are taken in by Department of Homeland Security and mercilessly interrogated for days, Marcus realizes that what had been a surveillance-heavy society has now become a police state. Marcus, who used to cut school regularly to play online role playing games with his friends and hang out in the Mission, still knows the Declaration of Independence inside and out and can recite key passages from memory. Recognizing that his rights and those of others are being trampled, Marcus takes matters into his own hands and incites a techno-rebellion against a government that no longer cares for citizens’ constitutional rights.
Critical Evaluation
This novel is told from the perspective of tech genius Marcus and thus provides an inside line into the thought patterns of a teenager whose entire existence is saturated with technology and whose relationships with other teens is largely negotiated through wireless technology. In addition to being a treatise on the dangers of surveillance in the modern age, it is also a thought-provoking view on the social ecology of digital natives. For anyone who wants to get a better handle on the implications of the far reaches of surveillance or teen culture, Little Brother is a thought-provoking read. In a good way, this novel may make more readers feel paranoid (or at least aware) of their own technology use patterns and how this information is being used. Some readers may also despair of the foreign culture that they encounter in the novel--do we, just a generation away from today’s teenagers, even speak the same language?
Reader’s Annotation
To what extremes could our government go to control its citizens? Are your guaranteed freedoms protected when the government has such easy access to all of your information?
Information about the Author
According to the author’s bio on his website, “Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing (boingboing.net), and a contributor to The Guardian, the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Wired, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He is a Visiting Senior Lecturer at Open University (UK) and Scholar in Virtual Residence at the University of Waterloo (Canada); in 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.
His novels are published by Tor Books and HarperCollins UK and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. He has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards. His New York Times Bestseller LITTLE BROTHER was published in May 2008, a followup young adult novel called FOR THE WIN was published in 2010. His latest short story collection is WITH A LITTLE HELP, available in paperback, ebook, audiobook and limited edition hardcover. In 2008, Tachyon Books published a collection of his essays, called CONTENT: SELECTED ESSAYS ON TECHNOLOGY, CREATIVITY, COPYRIGHT AND THE FUTURE OF THE FUTURE (with an introduction by John Perry Barlow) and IDW published a collection of comic books inspired by his short fiction called CORY DOCTOROW'S FUTURISTIC TALES OF THE HERE AND NOW. His latest adult novel is MAKERS, published by Tor Books/HarperCollins UK in October, 2009.”
GenreScience Fiction/ Thriller/ Dystopian Literature
Curriculum Ties
Technology Studies/ Constitution/ Declaration of Independence
Booktalking Ideas
Take the perspective of Marcus and describe the moment when you decide that you’re going to take on the Department of Homeland Security.
Reading Level/ Interest Age
14+
Challenge Issues
Challenges to adult authority, references to underage drinking. If the book were challenged, I would turn to ALA's Strategies and Tips for Dealing with Challenges to Library Materials.
Why Included?
This book was required reading for my LIBR 265 course. I’m glad to have it in my materials collection because it raises such timely issues and is also a very enjoyable read.
