Stephen King Declares His Love for Writing: Book Review of Billy Summers

 

Billy Summers by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Billy Summers is a gun for hire who has taken his last job, and then will exit quietly from his current associates and life of crime. That’s the plan, anyway, though Billy is aware that the last job of a hitman never goes as planned. For Billy, this is certainly true.

The job is strange from the start, as Billy is asked to embed himself into a suburb and wait for another hitman to be extradited. Then he is to kill him outside of the courthouse. As Billy settles into his temporary life, he makes friends with the neighbors and relishes his cover story that he is an author who has been ordered to hole up and write. Billy has a taste for high literature, and he begins to enjoy writing and having barbecues with his neighbors. But as Billy knows, the life does not belong to him, and it cannot last forever.

Billy Summers is Stephen King’s ode to writing. Through Billy, King shows the satisfaction of writing, the way that a story can make our experiences more meaningful as they become works of art. For Billy, the desire to write becomes a drive that stays with him even as his life gets harry. Writing, dare he imagine, may bring him a kind of redemption.

I enjoyed the beginning of Billy Summers very much. As the story went on, I did not love it quite as much, but I still enjoyed it. The book is neither horror nor supernatural, but crime fiction that is self-aware, almost jubilantly self-aware. While it is not my favorite King novel, it is certainly up there--better than many. Of course, my love of Stephen King is well-known, and I will almost always give his work the benefit of the doubt--though there are no such doubts for Billy Summers.

Would I teach this book? Certainly not to middle schoolers or high schoolers, but I could envision its place in a workshop or literature class on crime fiction. Possibly in a dream college course in which I taught Stephen King’s oeuvre. Wouldn’t that be a class? A lady can dream, can’t she?

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A Long Walk to Water, but a Short Read for Middle School

 

A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story-Paperback by Linda Sue Park
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park is a short novel that combines the narratives of two children from South Sudan. Nya’s storyline takes place in 2008 and focuses on her eight-hour daily journey to collect water for her family. She sets out in the morning carrying a large jug, and ventures through the heat and thorn covered ground. The second storyline belongs to Salva, based on the true experiences of a man who, when he was eleven years old, was forced from his village when gunfire erupted near his school building. Salva traveled on foot, without his family, first to a refugee camp in Ethiopia, and then, after he was driven out from there, continued on to another refugee camp in Kenya.

The book really belongs to Salva. Nya’s sections are shorter and less developed. We learn about Salva’s losses and tragedies, the violence that he encounters over and over again, as well as the danger and sadness that is multiplied because he is traveling without his family.

Would I teach this book? I am currently teaching A Long Walk to Water, and it is a widely taught book in middle schools. Among the topics the book discusses is water scarcity, war, and perseverance. Students have a wide range of responses, including several of mine that found it too upsetting to read.

My students' reaction to the violence was a bit surprising to me, probably because I make assumptions about the movies they’ve seen and the news footage to which they’ve been exposed. As part of the unit, we watched a short PBS video which another teacher at my school shared with me. Lost Boys of Sudan, features interviews with two young men who were brought to America after living in refugee camps for years. The documentary includes images of South Sudanese refugees, including some pictures of emaciated children. I think that while children are exposed to a lot on their screens, they do not sit around the family TV and watch the six o’clock news, which is real, unlike most of the content they consume on their own. Most people do not watch the local news the way that they used to.

The impact of the book and the video hints at a larger discussion about children and the media they take in, as well as the news content to which they are exposed. I do not have it all figured out, but I do believe that at some point, people need to know what is going on in the larger world and be aware of both the atrocities and the wonderful things that are happening. I do not, however, have a magic age when children need to understand the terrors of war.

Admittedly, I did not enjoy reading the book so much, and felt that it was too short in some places and too long in others to do Salva’s (or Nya’s) stories justice. My students, however, were not bored by the book and were excited to discuss it as they were reading. Any time they are excited to discuss the reading is a win.


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We Need Diverse Books: Book Review of Flying Lessons & Other Stories

 

Flying Lessons & Other Stories by Kwame Alexander
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Flying Lessons & Other Stories is an anthology of short stories edited by Ellen Oh as part of We Need Diverse Books. The stories have characters and authors from a range of backgrounds and about a range of topics but all have adolescent main characters.

The opening story, for instance, by Matt de la Peña, is about a boy who is Mexican American and who wants to spend his summer working on his basketball game. He spends every day at a gym where the best players, adult players, play. The story is told in second person and has an honest tone that students appreciate. It is also used in Units of Study for Reading: Investigating Character as a tool to think about characterization, which is where I discovered the book.

In Meg Medina’s story, “Sol Painting, Inc,” a girl plans to make her father’s one man, one truck painting enterprise into a multimillion dollar chain. The last job of the summer turns out to be painting the exclusive private school where she will start in the fall. This was not her decision, and she learns some big lessons working under her father and alongside her brother. .

It is not easy to find good short stories for young readers. A few years back when I was teaching a creative writing class to elementary students, I found very few options. The works in Flying Lessons are a bit above most elementary school students and perhaps still a challenge for many middle school students. Not out of their reach, but they do need scaffolding. The stories are also good, well-written, and don/t talk down to their young target audience. In addition, they offer a diversity of characters that was also quite difficult to find a few years ago.

Would I teach this book? Emphatically, yes. There are no clunkers in this anthology and there is so much for students to think about. We did some writing that involved modeling sentence structure after the sentences in stories and writing scenes from a different character’s perspective. I am so glad to have found this book.

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If My Daughter Says It's Good, then It's Good: Book Review of Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea

 

Dog Man: Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea by Dav Pilkey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In Dog Man: Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea by Dav Pilkey, Chief has a crush, Petey gets discouraged, and that mean pig, Piggy, is back.

If you haven’t read a Dog Man book before, you probably don’t have kids who are middle school or younger and you do not teach K-6. My daughter was introduced to Dog Man through a summer reading program and has been loving the books ever since.

Dog Man is a combination of a dog’s head on a man’s body, a surgery that was necessary after a police officer and his dog were hurt in an explosion. While Dog Man does not speak, he is awfully expressive and he has friends that communicate, as well. In addition to Chief, he has Sarah Hatoff, a journalist, a robot friend named 80-HD who communicates through art, and Lil Petey, who lives with him part time.

Dog Man books are full of humor, including puns, silliness, and potty jokes. In this book, there are funny songs, including ones that made me laugh out loud—I won’t tell you which one—you’ll have to guess. You can pick up anywhere in the series, as the books are more about humor than they are about plot.

Would I teach this book? Parents have told me, in the past, that the only thing their kid reads is Dog Man. Usually, they are not happy about this. However, there are kids who don’t read anything, and I am of the school that supports any kind of reading. Certainly, I would not sway a kid from reading a Dog Man book. If I were teaching a Dog Man book, it would be in a few different scenarios. For example, if I were teaching graphic novels, children's literature, or graphic writing. Perhaps in a middle school class if we were discussing humorous writing, then Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea would be a good choice.

My daughter requested that we review this book together, so consider this review co-authored by her.

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An Ode to My Adolescent Self: Book Review of The Giver

 

The Giver by Lois Lowry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Giver by Lois Lowery is one of those books that you will think about for a long time after you finish it. The premise is an interesting one: after the world has been through war and a lot of bad stuff, people decided to take away most choices and make life uniform and simple. Now, every child reaches the same milestones at the same time at a yearly ceremony. And once you have a job, that is where you stay for the rest of your life.

Jonas begins the book waiting for the Ceremony of Twelve, when he and all the other children born the same year as him will find out what they will be doing for the rest of their lives. Where his other friends seem to know where they will fit, Jonas has no idea where he will be placed.

Life in Jonas’s world is all pre-scripted—there are words to say to apologize, words to say to comfort, and words to say for the few emotions that they are allowed to feel. Of course, Jonas is about to learn that things aren’t always as they seem and that there might be other ways to live.

The first time I read The Giver it hit hard—I was an adolescent and always felt that I was different and that everyone noticed. I struggled with how formulaic life seemed. As much as I hated the feeling of being different I wanted to be different—I wanted to stand out. I wanted, like Jonas, to be marked for extraordinary things.

From the other side of childhood, it is still a great story. It still packs a warning for society. In many ways, though, I have a better understanding of how I fit into the world and the self-knowledge to know that I am no outcast. Like many, the way that I change the world is more local than global, but I work to have a positive impact and to help others to have a positive impact.

The plot of The Giver does not feel as surprising this time around, perhaps because we are using it to discuss the hero’s journey and perhaps because YA books about post-cataclysmic society are more common. It is still an enjoyable and intense book to read.

Would I teach this book? Yes. The Giver fills a deep need for adolescents: to know that they are different, important, and not just impacted by the world around them, but also impactful on the world. It is a book that makes them think about choices and the power to choose. Perhaps they are not yet thinking about things like giving up rights in order to gain safety, but some day they will. There’s a good chance that at that point in their lives they will remember The Giver.

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A Fun Book of Children Battling to the Death: Book Review of The Hunger Games

 

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins a long time ago, but reread it as it is one of the books students could choose to read as part of a unit on dystopian fiction. The unit dovetails into learning about the hero’s journey and writing a personal narrative of their own hero’s journey. .

As the TedTalk we watched on the hero’s journey points out, The Hunger Games very closely follows the progression of the hero’s journey. Katniss volunteers as tribute, which correlates with the “call to adventure” and then she is whisked away to the capital, leaving District 12 behind and travels to the new world of the Capital. She has her ultimate crisis, but I won’t spoil it for anyone who has not yet read the book.

The first time I read The Hunger Games, it sucked me right in and I read the rest of the books in quick succession. I saw the first movie, but don’t remember it so well, but I think I liked it, though not as much as the book. I have not seen any of the other movies. The book is a fast read, exciting, with lots of action, and it is difficult not to love Katniss, who is tough and good with the bow and arrow, but can be very caring when she wants to be. Finishing the book the second time around, I did feel an urge to reread the rest of the books, though, I am not rereading them right now, due to the new TBR stack I have for the classes I’m teaching.

Would I teach this book? Well, yes, I would, and I am. It’s good to have this book as a choice, as it is quite violent, and for middle school readers, some of them are sensitive to the content and are not prepared for it. However, for those who do read it, there are great conversations about a government who would use children in this way, about the choices that Katniss has to make, and also about comparisons between Haymitch and Effie, among other topics. It is a fun book to teach.

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