Forged by Fire by Sharon Draper

Teachers and media specialists everywhere owe a debt of gratitude to Sharon Draper. I know that her books have been financially successful and as far as I’m concerned, she has earned every penny. I have never given Forged by Fire or Tears of a Tiger to a child and they not fall in love with it. These books are two of my “go-to” books when I have child who hates to read. As I said before, thank goodness for Sharon Draper.

When Gerald is three years old, his drug-addicted mother leaves him alone in their apartment. Gerald finds her cigarette lighter and accidentally sets their apartment on fire. He is rescued and his mother is sent to prison for child neglect and abandonment. Gerald is rescued by his Aunt Queen and he lives happily with her for the next six years. He heals emotionally and all is well until his ninth birthday. On that day his mother shows back up. It turns out that she was pregnant when she went prison, and her baby daughter, Angel, has been raised by her boyfriend, Jordan (now her husband), and her boyfriend’s mother. Gerald also meets Angel and Jordan for the first time. He tells them all that he wants to continue living with Aunt Queen and it looks as though that will happen until Queen has a heart attack later in the day and dies. Gerald is devastated. He loses the one stable thing in his life and is forced to go live with his mom and her new family.

Gerald immediately dislikes Jordan. He discovers that Jordan is both physically and emotionally abusive to everyone, and then he finds out that he is sexually abusing Angel. Gerald is brave enough to tell the father of one of his friends and Jordan is sent to prison. Unfortunately his mother refuses to believe her children and only wants Jordan back

Fast forward several years. Both Gerald and Angel have begun to heal emotionally from Jordan’s abuse. Angel has become a talented dancer and Gerald is a basketball player and all-around good kid. Then Jordan gets out of prison. Gerald’s mom wants him back in her house and soon enough he is. Although he is behaving himself for the time being, the reader knows that it’s just a matter of time until he is back to his old tricks again.

I reread Forged by Fire earlier this week because it is one of the books on North Carolina’s Battle of the Books list. I enjoyed it every bit as much this time as I did almost ten years ago when I first read it. Sharon Draper has written a book about serious issues, but has managed to do it in a way that makes it an appropriate middle school read. The book is free of swearing, and the sexual abuse happens “off camera.” As I said before, my students eat this book up. Yours will too.

Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature by Robin Brande

Talk about an opener that grabs you!

I knew today would be ugly.

When you’re single-handedly responsible for getting your church, your pastor, and every one of your former friends and their parent sued for millions of dollars, you expect to make some enemies. (p. 1)

Mena has not had an easy time of it recently. She has done something she is convinced was the right thing to do, yet now she is an outcast among all of those who meant anything to her: her friends, her church, and, most especially, her parents. She has grown up in an extremely conservative Christian family – one in which Harry Potter and even The Lord of the Rings is forbidden. She has no friends except those in church and now she has lost them. She is living a life in exile and she is miserable. Not only does she have to have to live without any friends, on her first day of school, she discovers that her former friends are going to bully her, both emotionally and physically.

In her biology class she meets her teacher, Ms. Shepherd, and gets a lab partner who is thankfully not a part of her church. Casey just appears to be a science geek, albeit one who can make her laugh. He does, however, want something from her that she thinks is impossible. He wants for her to work with him on a science project. Mena knows that there is no way her parents would let her go to a boy’s house, and so she lies in order to get there. As she discovers the life outside her church and family, the lies continue. It’s not that she’s doing anything most parents would object to – she’s absolutely not – but she does feel guilty about deceiving her parents.

Then crisis happens. Ms. Shepherd gets to the evolution section of her curriculum and Mena’s former friends rebel. They want the theory of intelligent design to be taught along with evolution. Ms. Shepherd refuses, citing the separation of church and state, and the all of the students who belong to Mena’s church pick up their chairs and turn their backs to the class. Each day, Ms. Shepherd utters the magic word, evolution, and the Back Turners assume their position. With the backing of the church, this has all possibilities of turning really ugly.

One of the things I loved about this book is that Mena takes something really bad and learns from it. It occurs to her, that had she not been ostracized, she would also be a Back Turner. And yet because she’s been given the opportunity to think about the issue, she agrees with Ms. Shepherd’s position. I also like the fact that she still feels loyal to her parents (although I would love to shake some sense into them) and she not happy about lying to them. Finally, Mena never questions her own Christian faith. She does, however, question the idea that those in her church are always right. It is possible to believe in God and to also believe in evolution. To truly solidify our faith, we must be willing to question it.

This book has characters that were really easy to like (as well as some that were really easy to dislike). Robin Brande must have had a blast writing the character of Kayla (Casey’s sister). I wish I could have had a science teacher like Ms. Shepherd. And Casey seems like an incredibly sweet lab partner/boyfriend. As I have said in previous posts, I'm a sucker for interesting characters, and this book is full of them.

I really enjoyed Evolution, Me & other Freaks of Nature. I’d love to use it in a book club setting so that we could discuss all of the issues it brings up. This was a great read.

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

As I waited impatiently for the copy of Eclipse to finally be shipped to my school library by Follett, I read a number of reviews of it by bloggers. Although many of the reviews indicated the readers were disappointed with the path the series is taking, Becky at Becky’s Book Review and Jen Robinson at Jen Robinson’s Book Page both have reviews of it that reflect the way I felt about the book. I’m not going to rehash what they said but I do want to add to it.

Many of the less-than-positive reviews I’ve read focus on the amount of agony Bella goes through as she is torn by her love for both Edward and Jacob (the reviewers say she whines too much). She wants to be a vampire so that she can always be with Edward, but she doesn’t want to hurt people, and she is acutely aware that becoming a vampire will hurt many people, most notably Jacob and her father, Charlie. Like I would, like anyone would, she just wants everyone to be friends – to be able to maintain the relationships that have been so important to her since she moved to Washington. She would be the worst kind of selfish person if she didn’t consider the long-reaching effects of her decision upon the lives of the other people she loves.

I must admit that as I read Eclipse, I kept thinking back to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the end of season 7 Buffy finds herself caring about two vampires, Angel and Spike. While Angel is her soulmate, she does acknowledge that Spike is also in her heart. She won’t deny either of them and she’s mature enough to know that she needs to grow up a bit more (or as she puts it, she’s uncooked cookie dough that needs to finish baking) before she decides upon her place with either of them.

That’s what I want Bella to do (and also what Edward wants her to do). So what if she’s five or even ten years physically older than Edward? She’ll have had plenty of time to make her decision and truly know that it’s the right one. Right now, my personal opinion is that she should choose to not become a vampire. Changing into something that will result in craving human blood forever? Into perhaps killing people? Not for me, and right now I don’t think that it’s for Bella at this point in her life. Meyer will have to do an awful lot of convincing in the next book for me to change my mind.

On a side note, the one thing I found frustrating about the novel is that I didn’t have time to reread the first two books and I needed to in order to understand some of the people that were being referred to. I never liked they way the Nancy Drew books always caught the reader up with who each character was, but I wish Meyer could have given me a little more to go on as I struggled to remember the stories of some of the minor characters.

I do love the way these books are clean reads – I can give them to any child and not worry about its appropriateness. I think I’ll hand them to my younger daughter next – she’ll love them.

Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier

Imagine living all of your life on the run with your mother. Never staying very long in any one location for fear that you might be found. Who are you running from? Your grandmother who says she is a witch.

This is what life is like for Reason. She and her mother Sarafina have spent their lives on the run from her grandmother Esmeralda. Sarafina has always told Reason that magic isn’t real and that Esmeralda is evil. But when Sarafina goes insane and is committed to a hospital, Reason is taken to Esmeralda’s house. Reason is afraid of everything in the house -- afraid of what her grandmother might have sacrificed in horrible rituals. Reason decides she is going to run away but when she leaves out of the back door, she is no longer in Sydney, Australia but in New York City. Magic is real and Reason is now on her own in a strange city and clueless about what to do next.

Reason is rescued by a girl named Jay-Tee, also magical who lives in an apartment owned by a man who loves to take magic from others in order to live longer. Reason knows that he is evil, but the confusing thing is, who isn’t? In this story in which most people aren’t obviously good or evil, Reason must try to figure out how to survive. Denying magic means that she will eventually go insane like her mother, but heavily using magic ensures an early death. Either way, her choices aren’t great.

I really wanted to like this book. I read Justine Larbalestier’s blog, and when I picked up the book from my school library, I was sure it would be a home run. I didn’t dislike Magic or Madness, but I didn’t love it either. I’m hoping to like it more after I read the next book in the series.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

I've spent the past week reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It is not the first time I've read it and it won't be the last. I truly love this book, but I've struggled to write a review of it so I'm giving up for right now. Suffice it to say that it is one of the books I'd take to a deserted island. Francie is one of the great characters in literature, and I learned more about poverty and succeeding against all odds from her than from any person I've met. Francie convinces me that what I do matters -- children can overcome their backgrounds.

One more thing -- if you have read the book and are ever in New York City, you MUST go to Lower East Side Tenement Museum so that you can truly understand how Francie lived (there's also a really good place to get fresh pickles that I'd highly recommend).

looking for alaska by John Green

As I’ve said before, there are books that are easy to review and describe, and then there are books that are more difficult. Sometimes I think it’s easier to talk about books you don’t like because there are usually specific things about a book that cause you not to like it.

That said, I’m not sure exactly how to talk about looking for alaska. John Green has written a coming of age story that reminds me of the ones I read for high school literature classes. It is not an easy story to read, but it is beautifully written and I couldn’t put it down.

Miles Halter is in the eleventh grade and he’s going off to boarding school. His life in Florida has been a bust – he has no friends, no life really at all – and he’s in search of the “Great Perhaps.” At school he meets his roommate, nicknamed Colonel, and Alaska Young, a beautiful, tormented girl who he immediately falls in love with but who has a long-distance boyfriend she never cheats on.

Although classes are harder than Miles expects, he also has a social life for the first time ever. The Colonel and Alaska teach Miles to have fun, and not through what we as adults would consider healthy means. They believe in smoking, in heavy drinking, and in elaborate pranks that get back at those they do not like (I found the pranks to be original and very funny). Things are good, and then . . .

It is easy to see why looking for alaska won the Printz Award for the Best Young Adult Book of 2006. In many ways it is a classic coming of age novel, yet it is also very fresh. It is also for mature readers. The language and sex in some scenes make it R-rated so I would recommend it for eleventh and twelfth graders.

Celebrate the Author Challenge

For my first challenge, I'm going to participate in Becky's Celebrate the Author Challenge. This challenge runs all of the 2008 calendar year. I had a lot of fun debating about which authors I'm going to read, and I think I came up with a variety of choices and alternates. I've read at least one novel by each of these authors except Robert Jordan. Some of them are favorites from childhood; others are authors I've discovered within the last few years. I'm looking forward to starting the challenge in January.

January: Diana Gabaldon
Alternates: Robert Cormier, A. A. Milne

February: E.L. Konigsburg
Alternates: Meg Cabot, William Sleator

March: Ezra Jack Keats
Alternates: Carl Hiaasen, John Updike

April: Anne McCaffrey
Alternates: Maude Hart Lovelace, Shakespeare, Barbara Kingsolver

May: Scott Westerfeld
Alternates: Arthur Conan Doyle, Willo Davis Roberts

June: Sarah Dessen
Alternates: Dorothy Gilman, Dorothy Sayers

July: Beatrix Potter
Alternates: Chris Crutcher, Sharon Creech, Emily Bronte

August: Walter Dean Myers
Alternates: Karen Hesse, P.L. Travers

September: Joan Aiken
Alternates: H.A. Rey, William Faulkner

October: James Herriot
Alternates: Robert Jordan, Anne Perry

November: Madeleine L’Engle
Alternates: C.S. Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, Margaret Atwood, Frances Hodgson Burnett

December: Shirley Jackson
Alternate: Jane Austen