Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Stitches: A Memoir by David Small

Genre 6 - Fiction, Fantasy, and Young Adult Literature

"Read one of the following graphic works:"
Stitches: A Memoir

Plot Summary

Stitches chronicles the author's life from birth to adulthood, revealing along the way myriad secrets that shaped his family environment. Everyone within the family has their own way of coping with the taciturn family ways. As a sickly child, David received various experimental treatments on a regular basis from his father the doctor. He also encountered various frightening medical specimens and photos as a result of spending time around hospitals and medical books. David tries to escape from these horrors by indulging himself in the fantasy of Alice in Wonderland. When he develops a lump on his throat, his mother, scared of the costs of the operation, puts off treatment of it and instead indulges in a shopping spree. When it is finally operated on, David finds he has lost his voice after the operation. His family has told him nothing about his surgery, but he discovers a letter from his mother to his grandmother that says it was cancer. He begins a downward spiral of skipping school, running away, and eventually ends up living alone at 16 as he finishes high school and indulges himself entirely in art. David finally finds support in a friendly therapist, portrayed as a white rabbit, who helps him to make sense of the many secrets his family has hidden over the years. Reconciliation is

Critical Analysis

The lack of colors in the black and white drawings shaded only with gray washes works to convey visually the harsh emotional environment of family experiences in a void of communication. Various flashback, dream, and nightmare sequences are integrated visually into the narrative of the book, skillfully lending greater insight into the character's unspoken motivations throughout. Metaphors are also conveyed both visually and within the text to more fully depict the emotions behind them.

As a solo work of art and writing, the book works exceptionally well as a whole. The graphic-memoir format is also particularly well suited to an author who has won the Caldecott medal for his artwork in children's picture books. While it is certainly not a cheerful childhood tale, it is so skillfully executed as to provide great insight into the workings of non-communicative families in general, and David Small's in particular.

Connections


Awards/Reviews

National Book Award Finalist 2009
ALA Notable Book 2010

From Publishers Weekly:
In this profound and moving memoir, Small, an award-winning children's book illustrator, uses his drawings to depict the consciousness of a young boy. . . Small's black and white pen and ink drawings are endlessly perceptive as they portray the layering of dream and imagination onto the real-life experiences of the young boy. Small's intuitive morphing of images, as with the terrible postsurgery scar on the main character's throat that becomes a dark staircase climbed by his mother, provide deep emotional echoes. Some understanding is gained as family secrets are unearthed, but for the most part David fends for himself in a family that is uncommunicative to a truly ghastly degree. Small tells his story with haunting subtlety and power.
From Library Journal:
"Stitches" refers to the clumsy sutures on 14-year-old David's neck after a cancer operation he wasn't supposed to know was cancer-an operation that renders him mute for a long time. More subtly, "stitches" could allude to how David's family members clumsily hold together their outwardly normal but unhappy lives: dad a stiff radiologist taking refuge in the liberal application of "healing" X-rays, mother a furious, cruel force, the cranky and feisty grandmother. Amidst enforced family silence about the parents' marriage and this unexpected handicap, a psychiatrist tells David a simple truth, freeing him to find his voice in art and, later, win awards for children's picture books. In fact, it's Small's art that lifts his memoir into the extraordinary. His seemingly simple black-and-white wash captures people, emotions, relationships, and plot subtleties with grace, precision, and a flawless sense of graphic narration. Verdict In no way the latest ho-hum episode of Dysfunctional Family Funnies, Stitches is compelling, disturbing, yet surprisingly easy to read and more than meets the high standard set by the widely praised Fun Home. With some sexual issues; highly recommended for older teens up.
From School Library Journal:
Small is best known for his picture-book illustration. Here he tells the decidedly grim but far from unique story of his own childhood. Many teens will identify with the rigors of growing up in a household of angry silences, selfish parents, feelings of personal weakness, and secret lives. Small shows himself to be an excellent storyteller here, developing the cast of characters as they appeared to him during this period of his life, while ending with the reminder that his parents and brother probably had very different takes on these same events. The title derives from throat surgery Small underwent at 14, which left him, for several years, literally voiceless. Both the visual and rhetorical metaphors throughout will have high appeal to teen sensibilities. The shaded artwork, composed mostly of ink washes, is both evocative and beautifully detailed. A fine example of the growing genre of graphic-novel memoirs.-Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia
From Booklist:
Prolific, Caldecott Medal-winning Small makes the leap to the graphic novel with a spare and unflinching memoir. . . The suffocating silences of the household swell in grays and blacks with more nuance than lesser artists achieve with full rainbows of color, and Small's stark lines and intricacies of facial expression obliterate the divide between simplicity and sophistication. Like other important graphic works it seems destined to sit beside think no less than Maus this is a frequently disturbing, pitch-black funny, ultimately cathartic story whose full impact can only be delivered in the comics medium, which keeps it palatable as it reinforces its appalling aspects. If there's any fight left in the argument that comics aren't legitimate literature, this is just the thing to enlighten the naysayers.--Chipman, Ian

Bibliography

Small, David. Stitches: a memoir. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009. ISBN 9780393068573.

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Posted by Nan, C. at 9:09 PM 0 comments

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Genre 6 - Fiction, Fantasy, and Young Adult Literature

"Read one of the following Newbery Award winners/honor books"
When You Reach Me

Plot Summary

Miranda is a rather average twelve year old girl dealing with shifting friendships and loyalties in middle school. At home, her mother is preparing for a game show appearance with Miranda's help. Miranda has also received several mysterious notes telling her to do certain things, among which is to write down everything that happened. This is her description of everything that happened. Miranda documents such things as the mysterious appearance of a crazy laughing man on the route to school, the loss of her best friend, her mother's invitation to the game show, and details about her lunch-hour job at a nearby sandwich shop. As Miranda discovers the origins of the notes, she also regains her best friend and gains insight into the world of the laughing man and then puts it all down in her written account and delivers it to the right time-traveling person so it can all happen just as it's written.

Critical Analysis

The conversational format of this book is intriguing at first. Addressed to a mysterious "you", the language is accessible. It feels as though the narrative is the letter mentioned in the first pages, but the actual letter is not included within the book itself. Nevertheless, it reads as if it is an epistolary novel due to the early and consistent mention of writing a letter to "you".

While at first the book just seems as if there is an odd mystery behind it, we soon find the mystery is far greater than average. Time travel has been brought into play in the book in such a subtle way that it might just sneak past the radar of those who dislike science fiction long enough to hook them into the story. The climactic rescue scene finally reveals who the mysterious "you" is that our narrator has been addressing.

The shifting loyalties of middle school are portrayed accurately here, with just the right mix of sappy and sinister motivations behind the characters' actions. Our narrator bounces around between replacement best friends just as quickly as things actually happen in middle school.

Connections

Awards/Reviews

2010 Newbery Award

From Publishers Weekly:
Twelve-year-old Miranda, a latchkey kid whose single mother is a law school dropout, narrates this complex novel, a work of science fiction grounded in the nitty-gritty of Manhattan life in the late 1970s. . . Eventually and improbably, these strands converge to form a thought-provoking whole. Stead (First Light) accomplishes this by making every detail count, including Miranda's name, her hobby of knot tying and her favorite book, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. It's easy to imagine readers studying Miranda's story as many times as she's read L'Engle's, and spending hours pondering the provocative questions it raises.
From School Library Journal:
Rebecca Stead's novel (Wendy Lamb Books, 2009) pivots around the day Sal gets punched by an unknown classmate and shifts the order of the universe. She skillfully weaves written notes into each scene and repeats clues when necessary. The climax is full of drama and suspense. This story about the intricacies of friendship will be a hit with students.-Ann Crewdson, Issaquah Library-KCLS, WA
From Booklist:
If this book makes your head hurt, you're not alone. Sixth-grader Miranda admits that the events she relates make her head hurt, too. Time travel will do that to you. . . Miranda's first-person narrative is the letter she is sending to the future. Or is it the past? It's hard to know if the key events ultimately make sense (head hurting!), and it seems the whys, if not the hows, of a pivotal character's actions are not truly explained. Yet everything else is quite wonderful. The '70s New York setting is an honest reverberation of the era; the mental gymnastics required of readers are invigorating; and the characters, children and adults, are honest bits of humanity no matter in what place or time their souls rest. Just as Miranda rereads L'Engle, children will return to this.--Cooper, Ilene

Bibliography

Stead, Rebecca. When you reach me. New York: Wendy Lamb Books, 2009. ISBN 9780385737425.

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Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Genre 6 - Fiction, Fantasy, and YA

"Read one of the following Michael Printz YA Award winners"
Going Bovine

Plot Summary

Any description of this book is going to sound scattered. It's a quixotic journey that is well worth taking. Cameron, diagnosed with the deadly mad cow disease, escapes from his hospital bed in Texas and embarks on a journey to find a doctor with a cure at the behest of his guardian punk-rock angel love interest, Dulcie. He takes his hospital roommate Gonzo the hypochondriac dwarf with him, and the trip to Florida takes several dozen odd turns all driven by random coincidences. Flashbacks of hospital scenes throughout the journey bring the reader to question which version is reality.

Critical Analysis

I've had this one set aside to read for a while now, and thought it would be a bit too random for me. But after diving into it, it was a compelling story that I couldn't put down and I really liked the random.

There is so much packed into this book that it is hard to analyze it beyond "wow. Wow. The same word backward and forward. (Bray 480)" Bray does an amazing job of making everything count. Everything mentioned in Cameron's day to day life of making it through high school comes back in the picture as he travels across the country.

The language is accessible, the conversations believable. The coincidences Cameron follows are the biggest stretch of the imagination, but since he's given the mission of following them to find a cure, it's hardly questioned.

Don Quixote is a definite influence in the hallucinatory journey which Cameron undertakes. Not only is he reading it in class, but elements of it come back in the hallucinations. Dulcie is his guardian punk-rock angel love interest and the car he acquires is named Rocinante; both are based on Cervantes' Dulcinea and Rocinante respectively. It really is a modern day version of Don Quixote that just might inspire a few to try the original.

Connections

Awards/Reviews

2010 Michael L. Printz Award

From Publishers Weekly:
What takes place after he is hospitalized is either that a gorgeous angel persuades him to search for a cure that will also save the world, or that he has a vivid hallucination brought on by the disease. Either way, what readers have is an absurdist comedy in which Cameron, Gonzo (a neurotic dwarf) and Balder (a Norse god cursed to appear as a yard gnome) go on a quixotic road trip during which they learn about string theory, wormholes and true love en route to Disney World. Bray's surreal humor may surprise fans of her historical fantasies about Gemma Doyle, as she trains her satirical eye on modern education, American materialism and religious cults (the smoothie-drinking members of the Church of Everlasting Satisfaction and Snack 'N' Bowl). Offer this to fans of Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy seeking more inspired lunacy.
From Library Journal:
When fate deals you a one-in-five-billion blow, do you go out living or dying? You are advised to keep a Cliff's Notes edition of Don Quixote handy as you read-though instead of windmills, Cameron tilts at Disney's Tomorrowland. Bray has not written a teen problem novel about mad cow disease. She swims in deeper water, defending the importance of friendship, family, and life purpose in the face of mediocrity.-Angelina Benedetti, King Cty. Lib. Syst., WA
From School Library Journal:
Filled with slang, four letter words, humor, pathos, satire, absurdities, sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, and the fight between good and evil, this is not a journey for the faint of heart.-Roxanne Spencer, Educational Resources Center, Western Kentucky University Libraries, Bowling Green
From The Horn Book:
Bray gleefully tosses a hallucinogenic mix of elements into the adventure -- snow globes, fire demons, a talking yard gnome, a demon-fighting New Orleans jazz musician, and more -- but their origins can all be found in Cameron's mundane pre-diagnosis life. So is his trip "just a ride," as his Mom once told him about "It's a Small World"? Readers will have a great time trying to sort everything out and answer the question at the heart of it all: even if Cameron's experiences are all a dream, are they any less real?
From Booklist:
Talking yard gnomes, quantum physics, cults of happiness, mythology, religion, time travel, the blues, Disney World, the vacuous machine behind reality TV shows, and spring break's beer-and-bikini culture all figure prominently in the plot, and readers may not feel equally engaged in each of the novel's lengthy episodes. But Bray's wildly imagined novel, narrated in Cameron's sardonic, believable voice, is wholly unique, ambitious, tender, thought-provoking, and often fall-off-the-chair funny, even as she writes with powerful lyricism about the nature of existence, love, and death. Familiarity with Don Quixote certainly isn't necessary, but those who know the basic plot will want to start over from the beginning and pick up on each sly allusion to the classic story.

Bibliography

Bray, Libba. Going bovine. New York: Delacorte Press, 2009. ISBN 9780385733977.


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Monday, November 8, 2010

The Earth Dragon Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 By Laurence Yep

Genre 5 - Historical Fiction

"Read any historical novel by Karen Cushman, Donna Jo Napoli, Patricia Reilly Giff, Jennifer Holm, Kathryn Lasky, Ruth White, Graham Salisbury, Geraldine McCaughrean or Laurence Yep (Be sure it is HISTORICAL, not just a fictional novel)"
The Earth Dragon Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

Plot Summary

The novel begins by introducing the characters of Henry and Chin and their relationship; Chin's father works for Henry's parents, and so the children spend a good amount of time together. The morning of [insert date here] Henry and Chin's families both survive the giant earthquake and begin to make their way out of their houses and then the city as the fires engulf San Francisco. By the end of their narrative, Henry and Chin both view their own fathers as heroes more than their previous hero Wyatt Earp.

Critical Analysis

The novel is presented in consistent third person present tense narrative with terse, immediate phrasing. This portrays a very immediate and pressing situation at first. However, because this pacing continues throughout the novel, it feels repetitive far before the end rather than compelling. The lack of varied sentence length and structure leaves it flat and bland.

The historical events portrayed are accurate in their descriptions. An afterword and photos are included at the end to explain similar actual events to the fictionalized versions. Chinese mythological belief in the Earth Dragon corresponds with the movements of the earthquake within the narrative, pulling in philosophical views along with the science of the earth's movements.

Connections


Awards/Reviews

From School Library Journal:
Yep looks at the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 from two points of view. . . Yep's research is exhaustive. He covers all the most significant repercussions of the event, its aftershocks, and days of devastating fires, and peppers the story with interesting true-to-life anecdotes. The format is a little tedious-one chapter visits Henry's affluent neighborhood, the next ventures to Chin's home in Chinatown, and back again-and the "ordinary heroes" theme is presented a bit heavy-handedly. Throughout the text, the boys compare their fathers to Wyatt Earp. But the story as a whole should appeal to reluctant readers. Its "natural disaster" subject is both timely and topical, and Yep weaves snippets of information on plate tectonics and more very neatly around his prose. A solid supplemental choice.-Catherine Threadgill, Charleston County Public Library, SC
From The Horn Book:
Alternating the story of two fictional families with short segments of factual information, Yep creates a frightening sense of immediacy in this docudrama about San Francisco's destruction in the 1906 earthquake and ensuing firestorm. . . Yep uses the growing friendship between the two boys to underscore pointed discussions of race relations at the time, which works well for the most part. The final scene is a bit forced: Henry and Chin forgo a copy of a once-cherished ""penny dreadful"" because they now see their own parents as the real heroes. Yep follows up with a brisk afterword that details the extent of the earthquake's damage, a bibliography of adult sources, and a section of archival photographs.
From Booklist:
Henry and [Chin's] stories are told in alternating chapters with a few interruptions for the insertion of earthquake information. Told in the present tense, the narration provides a you are there sense of immediacy and will appeal to readers who enjoy action-packed survival stories. --Linda Perkins

Bibliography

Yep, Laurence. The earth dragon awakes: the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2006. ISBN 0060275243.

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The Storm in the Barn by Matt Phelan

Genre 5 - Historical Fiction

"Read one of the following Scott O’Dell Award winning books"
The Storm in the Barn

Plot Summary

During the dust bowl, Jack has been unable to prove his worth on the farm to his father because there is no farming going on. His older sister is suffering from dust pneumonia and he is suspected of having dust dementia because he begins to see things. Jack and his little sister happen upon a rain spirit living in a nearby barn, waiting for the situation outside to become so dire that the people begin to worship him as a god. Jack steals from him the source of the rain and releases it, thus bringing rain to the region and ending the drought. His father then welcomes him and his assistance on the farm.

Critical Analysis

The mystical aspects of this novel are conveyed well through the visuals. The sketchiness of the lines coincide with the roughness of the situation. The muted sepia and gray tones of the artwork also convey the feel of long ago. However, the subtlety of many scenes paired with the near wordlessness of the book make it difficult to fully comprehend what the author is trying to communicate through the combination.

The historical environment, however, includes an introduction to many aspects of the dust bowl era that may have been previously overlooked or unknown to readers. The medical conditions of dust pneumonia and dust dementia compounded on top of the general hopelessness of the era give a more complete picture of how society actually reacted to the natural disaster caused by over-farming.

Connections


Awards/Reviews

Winner of Scott O'Dell Historical Fiction Award

From Publishers Weekly:
The big novelty here is the Dust Bowl setting, and Phelan's art emphasizes the swirling, billowing clouds of fine grit that obscure even nearby objects. Older readers might have appreciated more text to make up for the lack of visual clarity, but kids will identify with Jack and appreciate his success.
From School Library Journal:
Children can read this as a work of historical fiction, a piece of folklore, a scary story, a graphic novel, or all four. Written with simple, direct language, it's an almost wordless book: the illustrations' shadowy grays and blurry lines eloquently depict the haze of the dust. A complex but accessible and fascinating book.-Lisa Goldstein, Brooklyn Public Library, NY
From The Horn Book:
Illustrator Phelan's graphic novel debut brings 1937 Kansas, wracked by drought and hardship, to life, adding a supernatural twist that fits well with the extremities of the Dust Bowl. Populated with Phelan's trademark loose-lined, sparely sketched, emotive characters, this is the story of eleven-year-old Jack, who hasn't seen rain since he was seven. . . The minimalist approach to text complements the measured, masterful panel pacing; whole spreads are wordless, forcing the reader to slow down and follow the visual details of the action. Phelan's use of color is simply stunning; his palette of sepias, dusty browns, and charcoal grays perfectly evokes the desolate landscapes of the Dust Bowl and makes the occasional pop of color -- memories of green fields, stylized depictions of folktales, the angry blood-red of a "rabbit drive" -- that much more striking. The emotional landscape is equally well developed: an older sister who suffers from "dust pneumonia" and reads Ozma of Oz aloud, between coughing fits, to her younger siblings; a father who too easily dismisses his son, who never had an opportunity to prove himself on the farm, as useless. The potent subtext informs both Jack's climactic showdown with the rain figure and the book's tender, triumphant resolution.
From Booklist:
Phelan (illustrator of the Higher Power of Lucky, 2006) turns every panel of this little masterpiece into a spare and melancholy window into another era, capturing an unmistakable sense of time and place as found in James Sturm's Satchel Paige (2007) even as he takes full, masterful advantage of the medium's strengths by using fantasy elements to enrich the deep, genuine emotional content, much as Shaun Tan did in The Arrival (2008). All the more impressive is how he balances fleet pacing (thanks to low word density) with a thoughtful, contemplative homage to storytelling and storytellers, which, in the tradition of the greatest tall tales, presents an empowering message that all a child needs to change the world is courage and ingenuity. Great for a wide range of readers, this will work particularly well as a gentle introduction for those new to graphic novels or as an elegant argument on the format's behalf against dubious naysayers. A single warning: there is a restrained depiction of a rabbit slaughter, which could upset more sensitive readers.--Karp, Jesse

Bibliography

Phelan, Matt. The storm in the barn. Somerville, Mass.: Candlewick Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7636-3618-0.

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Posted by Nan, C. at 2:53 PM 0 comments

Friday, November 5, 2010

Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko

Genre 5 - Historical Fiction

"Rea[d] one of the following historical novels"
Al Capone Does My Shirts (Newbery Honor Book)

Plot Summary

Moose's family moves to Alcatraz island so that his father can work as an electrician for the prison and his sister can go to a nearby school that works with autistic children. Unfortunately, his sister does not work out in the school well enough and Moose is stuck caring for her more than he would like. Moose is socially forced to go along with the warden's manipulative daughter's plans, such as sneaking schoolmates' clothes into their own laundry done by the prisoners, and often ends up in trouble as a result. Over the course of the novel Moose helps his sister to grow and adapt, and the two of them convince their family that she is no longer the little girl they keep trying to pass her off as.

Critical Analysis

The social stigma and other problems associated with living with an autistic sibling before autism was recognized is well portrayed in this novel. The historical era's reaction to and treatment of the unknown mental condition is fairly accurate. The historical representation of Alcatraz was also quite accurate, both in the prison inmates and the worker's housing environment. This book shows what life was like for those who worked at the prison facility and their families, an often overlooked portion of Alcatraz's history.

Choldenko has quite clearly done her homework as regards Alcatraz and autism, as evidenced by her authors notes and bibliography which disclose that she worked as a docent on Alcatraz for a year in the late nineties and grew up with an autistic sister of her own. Any inaccuracies are explained also in her author's note as she explains that the weather is not exact to 1935, but is instead general weather for the area, and that the Esther P. Marinoff School is fictional, but based on the concept of schools for children with disabilities.

Connections


Awards/Reviews

From Publishers Weekly:
Choldenko captures the tense, nuanced family dynamics touched off by the narrator's sister's disability as skillfully as she handles the mystique of Alcatraz.
From School Library Journal:
Family dilemmas are at the center of the story, but history and setting-including plenty of references to the prison's most infamous inmate, mob boss Al Capone-play an important part, too. The Flanagan family is believable in the way each member deals with Natalie and her difficulties, and Moose makes a sympathetic main character. The story, told with humor and skill, will fascinate readers with an interest in what it was like for the children of prison guards and other workers to actually grow up on Alcatraz Island.-Miranda Doyle, San Francisco Public Library
From The Horn Book:
When his father gets a job as an electrician at Alcatraz, Moose's family moves to the famous prison island. Against this vividly evoked setting, Moose butts heads with the warden's scheming daughter and gets help from a surprising source for his older sister, who exhibits the symptoms of autism (the book is set in 1935, before the disease was identified). The solid novel concludes with a historical note.
From Booklist:
With its unique setting and well-developed characters, this warm, engaging coming-of-age story has plenty of appeal, and Choldenko offers some fascinating historical background on Alcatraz Island in an afterword. --Ed Sullivan

Bibliography

Choldenko, Gennifer. Al Capone Does My Shirts. New York: Putnam Juvenile, 2004. ISBN 039923861.

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Posted by Nan, C. at 7:15 AM 0 comments
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