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.