Reading Encouragement

Students in our class have come up with many exciting ways to interest students in voluntary reading. I've given contact info for some of the ideas that may require some more explanation :-)

• Book talks
• Book clubs
• Student book reviews - morning announcements, blogs, podcasts (Morgan), posted in library catalog (Denette)
• Reader's theater
• Displays - display case in hall, banned book week
• Library webpages - top 10 lists, promote new books, newsletters
• READ posters with teacher and favorite books
• Student book talks - 1st person
• Author studies/visits
• "Book Fair" of library books (check out not sale) - MaryAnn
• Reading incentive prizes
• Culture Share of Literature - Nancy
• Booktalks to Go (powerpoint/ book basket classroom visits)
• SSR
• Reading Aloud
• Book Pass - Caryn
• Whole school 1,000,000 pages read
• After school book party
• Book of the month voting
• Sports corner with magazines, books, guest speaker - Bethley
• Movie night
• Speed dating books- Colleen, Lori
• Read-aloud list for teachers
• Question of the Week - Colleen
• Shelf Talkers - Colleen
• Technology Trance - Lori
• YALSA's Top Ten - Jan
• Great Works of Cow Literature - Jan
• Trackstar Interactive Book Activity - Jan

Graphic novel: Stitches: A Memoir (Small)

"If there’s any fight left in the argument that comics aren’t legitimate literature, this is just the thing to enlighten the naysayers." (Booklist starred review, July 2009).

David Small is a Caldecott Award winning illustrator (2001 Medal, So You Want to Be President? written by Judith St. George and 1997 Honor Book, The Gardener written by his wife Sarah Stewart). He also illustrated one of my daughter's favorite books when she was young, Imogene's Antlers. This is his memoir of growing up in Detroit with a mother who was cold and cruel and a distant physician father. It is bleak. It is horrible.  The pictures add tremendous power to the story. The story is told in shades of gray: the father is always shown as smoking. His mother is scary. Almost as scary as HER mother who eventually locks her husband in a room and sets the house on fire (she is -thankfully- committed to a mental institution at this point). Small gets cancer from the X-Ray treatments his father gave him to treat his sinus problems as a young child. The growth on his throat was left for years before it was removed and cancer discovered. This story is bleak, bleak, bleak.  Finally Small gets help from a psychologist who is drawn as a white rabbit (think Alice in Wonderland).

This is an adult book with appeal for high school students. It was on the Best Book for Young Adults and on the Alex Award List (books written for adults with appeal to YA). It was nominated for the National Book Award (Young Adult section). Readers with happy home situations will be reminded how lucky they are and become more aware of what terrible obstacles others may be facing. Readers who have their own difficulties at home may find hope in Small's ability to come to terms with his experiences. He is at his mother's bedside when she dies and forgives with a squeeze of a hand.

A powerful book.

multicultural - three cups of tea (Mortenson)

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Journey to Change the World -- One Child at a Time by Greg Mortenson, with coauthor David Oliver Relin, was the whole campus read at WSU this year. It is an important book that can be read by middle and high school students. It has been adapted for grades 3-6 (reading level 5.6) and also for K-3 in a picture book titled Listen to the Wind.

Mortenson first came to Pakistan to climb K2, the world's second-tallest peak. The attempt failed, and Mortenson's life was saved by villagers who found him and nursed him back to health. He vowed to return and build them a school - and thus begins the inspiring story how Mortenson managed to build 50 schools in rural Pakistan and Afganistan.The portraits of con artists, philanthropists, mujahideen, Taliban officials, village elders and ambitious school girls are compelling. There is plenty of suspense, at one point Mortenson is kidnapped. As the book moves into the post-9/11 world, Mortenson and his coauthor Relin argue that the United States must fight Islamic extremism through collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and improve access to education, especially for girls.

These books can help young people understand the culture of this part of the world and help them think critically about what is the best way to improve our relations with other countries. The books inspire too - showing that one very determined person can make a real difference. The book adapted for upper elementary focuses more on young people including the perspective of Mortenson's 12 year-old daughter who accompanied her father one of his trips. The picture book is close in content to the longer books but is written in the voice of the children in the first village where Mortenson was rescued and built his first school.

I don't know of many nonfiction adult titles that have been adapted for young readers like this one. Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth is the only one I can think of. I would introduce the book by talking about Korphe the small village in Pakistan where Mortenson was rescued and his work to provide a school for its children. I would start by asking students if they believed that one person could make a real difference in the world.

Poetry - how to (un)cage a girl

Edwards winner, Francesca Lia Block (Weetzie Bat) writes of love and sex, food and bulimia, and vampires and Hollywood in this small volume of autobiographical poetry. How to (un)cage a girl has 3 parts: "year at the asylum", "in the lair of the toxic blond", and "love poems for girls".

Fans of Block's books and "older angst-filled poetry readers" (if they are girls) will love these poems though some poems will be more appreciated by adult readers since they move far past teen territory to motherhood and marriage. A fan who met Block on her MySpace page helped create the photo on the book jacket.

A tasting:
from vampire in the city of the lost
once there were these two girls
   who were really bored
and they put on their shortest skirts
   and their highest heels
the ones that made their toes bleed
and they applied perfume to all their pulse points
and they went out into the shiny city
where they met this tall vampire with a shaved head
and a body tattooed with the stories of the centuries
and the face of a matinee idol
please please drink our blood they begged
tossing their hair away from their long swan necks
please make us into the immortal dead

 from happi happi joy joy and sad in hawaii
...sad had heard that bit of folk wisdom--
if you knew you were going to die tomorrow
wouldn't you feel stupid for not eating more
   birthday cake
or, should it  be added, going to Hawaii?--

Nonfiction - Charles and Emma Darwin

Charles and Emma: the Darwin's Leap of Faith (Heiligman)
YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction 2010
Printz honor book 2010
National Book Award nominee 2009

To marry/not to marry - the first chapter opens with Charles Darwin, recently returned from his historic voyage on the Beagle, deciding whether to enter into matrimony. He has drawn a line down the middle of a page and is entering reasons pro and con for this big decision.

Happily he decides to marry and finds a wonderful partner in his cousin Emma. They have a long and happy marriage resulting in 10 children, mutual support and intellectual discussions. Emma is deeply religious. She was extremely close to a sister who dies and she looks forward to one day seeing her again in heaven. During their marriage, Charles doubts Biblical teaching more and more as he develops his theory of natural selection. This is a terrific biography based on Darwin family letters and papers. The reader learns much about Victorian life and how Darwin's scientific ideas developed. Darwin was very worried about how society would accept what he knew was a revolutionary theory. Actually by the time he went public with his ideas, it was accepted pretty easily. Interesting that it can still cause such a fuss today.

Probably not for everyone, but students who are interested in science should certainly be introduced to this excellent biography. All middle and high schools should own a copy.

Fantasy - Graceling (Cashore)

Some people in Cashore's fantasy world have special "graces" or superhuman powers. Lady Katsa's grace seems to be killing. From early childhood, she has been feared. Now she is in the service of her uncle, the King, discouraging unrest by killing or maiming disloyal subjects. But Katsa isn't happy with this life. She has secretly formed a Council that seeks to right wrongs. Katsa meets (and fights) Po, a foreign prince who has a special grace of his own. Together they embark on a quest  to rescue Po's cousin. Lots of action and romance. Katsa is a strong female character trying to figure out how to live with her grace. As the Booklist review notes "...from her first kill to her first experience of lovemaking, Katsa’s womanhood is integral to her character".

Graceling was Cashore's first published book. The prequel Fire came out this year. I really enjoyed Graceling and plan to read Fire this summer when I allow myself the luxury of reading related books (my general plan for trying to stay up with YA lit is to not read other books in a series, continually moving on to new authors, new series). Graceling is recommended for grades 8-12 and a good one to suggest to Tamora Pierce fans. It also reminds me of Megan Whalen Turner's Attolia books with their political intrigues.  I would introduce it to students by describing when Katsa's grace is first identified: at age 8, a man tried to grope her and she struck him dead.

Mystery/Survival Adventure- The White Darkness

Sym is obsessed with the Antarctic and the romantic figure of  Captain Oates from Scott's doomed expedition to the South Pole. But Uncle Victor is even more obsessed.

The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean, a British writer, won the 2008 Printz Award. It is both a mystery and a survival story. Teenage Sym heads off on a weekend trip to Paris with her mum and her dead father's business partner who she calls Uncle Victor.  Somehow it turns into a trip to Antarctica while her mother is left in English searching for her passport - which Sym eventually finds in her Victor's raincoat pocket. Creepy hah? Other travelers on the luxury trip begin failing ill and dying and the rescue plane is blown up. Victor steals an all terrain vehicle and sets off across the frozen land with Sym, a filmmaker and his teenage son in search of the mythical Symmes's Hole. Soon Sym needs all her courage and survival skills.

Despite lots of action, this book is for better readers because of its sophisticated use of language and imagery.  I liked it - not sure how popular it is with students.

Historical Fiction: Storm in the Barn (Phelan)

This year's winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction is Matt Phelan's first graphic novel, The Storm in the Barn. It is a story of the Dust Bowl but much more. It is interesting how a graphic novel can pack in action and emotions. Jack is an 11 year-old boy living in Kansas in 1937. He hasn't seen rain since he was 7 years old. The story is told in dust colors, tans and grays, with other colors only used to emphasis something - blood or memories of green fields. Jack is small for his age, tormented by bullies, and considered useless by his frustrated father. His sister is suffering from dust pneumonia. When he begins to see flashes coming from an empty barn, he worries that he may have dust dementia. Here the realistic story moves into the folktale realm - a "Jack" tale of a brave boy who saves his family by facing a monster with courage and ingenuity.
Hstorical fiction, fantasy, action and aspects of a problem novel work altogether in a book that you can read in an hour. I like it because the emotion in this book is very real. I think middle school and even high school students who read this book will be left with a very distinct idea what it was like to live in this time of history. I would pair it with Out of the Dust (Hesse), one of my favorite historical fiction titles. That book is also a different sort of historical fiction since it is written in free verse. Both books involve you and make you appreciate the suffering of people at this time.

Realistic fiction - Punkzilla

Punkzilla (Adam Rapp)
14 year-old runaway, Jamie (nicknamed Punkzilla because of his love of music), was living in a shelter in Portland, Oregon when he learned that his older brother was dying of cancer in Memphis. He sets off across country to be with his brother who had been exiled from the family after coming out of the closet. The story is told through stream-of-conscious letters that Jamie writes to his brother, interspersed with older letters from his family that he carries with him. Jamie has ADD and is physically immature for his age. He can't or won't live up to the expectations of his rigid, retired military father (the Major).

This is a very raw book to read. There is drug use, stealing, violence and sex. Jamie is living on the edge. The cover illustration is a good one - showing a vulnerable young person with a mask pushed up. The wearing of a mask happens in the story but it is also symbolic.

Punkzilla is a Printz Award honor book (2010). The author, Adam Rapp, is an accomplished playwright and screen writer. His young adult novels are bleak in their unflinching look at marginalized youth. Other titles are Under the Wolf, Under the Dog and 33 Blowfish.

2010 Printz Winner - Going Bovine

Part road trip & part fantasy, tragic yet humorous and heartwarming- this year's Printz winner, Going Bovine by Libba Bray, is special. I had it sitting around for quite awhile before I started reading it - I think I was confused by the cover. But once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down. I think older teens will feel the same way.

Cameron is a 16 year old slacker. His family is somewhat disfunctional and he is drifting though high school. Odd things begin happening to him and he is diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob (Mad Cow) disease. In the hospital he meets Dulcie, an alluring angel and sets off on a wild road trip to save the world. Dulcie flits in and out of his life but he has a constant companion in Gonzo, a hypochondriac dwarf. It's a hallucinogenic event mixed with adventure from New Orleans to Disney World.

Readers will have to sort out what is real and what is dream but they will find the experience both fun and powerfully moving - my definition of a great YA book.