Sunflower Seeds Don't Actually Grow Inside of You: Book Review of Ghost

 

Ghost by Jason Reynolds

When Castle first stumbles into a track practice, he can’t believe that anyone would need to practice running—it is just something the body does. However, his competitive streak kicks in and he starts racing against one of the team members. The impressed coach asks his name and Castle tells him to call him Ghost. He allows himself to be talked into going out for the team. Coach makes clear, however, that if he wants to be on the team, he will have to stay out of trouble. For Ghost, this might prove to be a challenge.

What started Ghost running in the first place was domestic violence, and the trauma, combined with the financial strain of his now single-parent household, makes him respond to teasing in ways that do not always reflect the best of him. His mother works in a hospital cafeteria and is taking classes to become a nurse. Every night they eat leftovers she brings from work, but still, there isn’t money for things like new clothes. Ghost doesn’t want to make her feel bad, so he tries not to mess up and he doesn’t ask her for anything. When Ghost does lose it, you can’t help but feel for him.

Would I teach this book? I did teach Ghost this year. It was one of the books my sixth grade students could choose during a book club unit and almost every kid who read it loved it. The author, Jason Reynolds, who also wrote Look Both Ways, is a fantastic writer. One of the best things that he does is not talk down to his audience followed closely by not making things melodramatic. His characters feel real and genuine and are very sympathetic. Even though Ghost does not have an easy life, you don’t pity him, you root for him.

For this unit, students worked together in book clubs, each with their own jobs. At the end of the unit, they made slideshow presentations to share their reflections on the book. I am happy to share materials if you reach out, and if you have materials to share, I would appreciate that, too!

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Adolescent Angst at Its Best: Book Review of The Outsiders

 

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

When I was in seventh grade, I read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. I loved it so much I read every other book Hinton wrote. I was delighted to learn that Hinton was fifteen when she wrote The Outsiders--as an aspiring writer, I found it inspirational. Her writing felt fresh even though it had been written before I was born.

The Outsiders, as the title suggests, is about a group of teenagers who live on the outside of town, and operate on the outside of the social scene. Their group is called the Greasers for their slicked back hair. Most of them have rough home lives, very little money, and few prospects. The main character, Ponyboy, is the youngest member of a gang of Greasers. An orphan, he lives with his older brothers Darry and Sodapop, both of whom work to make ends meet. Still in high school, Ponyboy is different from the rest of the gang, because he is the dreamer, the kid who excels at school but might walk home by himself in the dark without considering that he is an easy target for a group of Socs. The Socs, shorts for Socials, are the in-town kids, whose parents buy them expensive cars but cannot seem to give them the attention that they crave. They also like to jump lone Greasers.

Though the Greasers and the Socs seem to live in two different worlds, Ponyboy meets Cherry, a Soc who does not seem snobby, but seems kind and understanding. Meeting Cherry sets of a series of events that changes Ponyboy’s and the lives of every other character, forever.

Would I teach this book? I am teaching The Outsiders to my seventh graders, and I am glad that I am. First, that I can remember reading The Outsiders in middle school and still remember it clearly shows what an impact it had on me. When I reread it this year in order to teach it, I noticed that while the book is emotional and hits many of the adolescent angst notes, the prose itself is quite simple. Simple prose can sometimes make class discussions about themes and characters easier, as students are not taking as much time untangling the prose. The Outsiders is sad at times, but also has action and a lot of heart. It is a fun book to teach.

In fact, Hinton is considered to be one of the earliest authors to write in the genre of YA (young adult) literature. By writing gritty and realistic books for the young adult age group, as opposed to the often sappy chapter books for kids or the adult books that often don’t hit the mark for adolescents, she filled a space that had up to then been empty.

Instead of assigning an essay, my brilliant colleague helped me do a project with the students in which they designed T-shirts to represent the different characters. It was a fabulous project that the students enjoyed and encouraged them to think symbolically.

So, yes, teach The Outsiders. There’s a good chance that your students will appreciate it. And if you haven’t read it yet, read it already.

 

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Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle: Book Review of Stephen and Owen King's Sleeping Beauties

 

Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King

Thank you to Montgomery County Public Libraries for making Sleeping Beauties, a collaboration between Stephen King and Owen King, free and readily available to the public.

In Sleeping Beauties, a powerful feminine force has created an epidemic in which women form a cocoon around themselves when they fall asleep. Once they form the cocoon, they don’t wake up.

As women around the world fight to stay awake, the men do not know what to do. Some try to cut away the cocoon, which makes the women respond violently and to often kill the male who woke her up. As more women fall asleep, the men try desperately to find an answer to wake the women. But maybe they don’t want to be woken up.

One of the themes of this book is the violent behavior of men. Men abuse, fight each other, harm animals. Women, however, work together and create new opportunities. While there is some violence amongst the women, it is rare. And while men do work together, it always brings violence, even when they’re getting along.

As an allegory, the book presents an extreme view of the cruel behavior of most men. The criticism of men within the book is frighteningly harsh. I am surprised by how extremely bad the men are painted. One of the focal points is a women’s penitentiary, and nearly every woman has been lead to incarceration as a result of being treated abominably by men.

The plot is interesting and while the characters are pretty flat, it is still fascinating to see where they lead and to learn the fate of the women—and the men. I just can’t wrap my head around the hard headedness of the male characters in this book.

Would I teach Sleeping Beauties? Probably not. The starkly negative look at men’s behavior is so extreme that it would need to be discussed and I am not sure it could be explained in a satisfying way, even as an allegory. Discussing a gendered epidemic in our post Covid world would certainly spark conversation, especially since Sleeping Beauties was published pre-Covid.

 

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Sharing Is Caring: Introducing My Kids to Ramona Quimby

 

Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary

Mark the date on the calendar—my daughter and I read our first real chapter book together! And it was a Ramona book. Does it get any better than that?

Ramona Quimby is probably Beverly Cleary’s (the famed children’s book author’s) best known character. Ramona is precocious, funny, and perhaps the most frustrating younger sibling of all time. As a book character, she is delightful.

Beezus and Ramona is a classic. While it is the first book about Ramona, it is actually attached to her older sister, Beezus’s, point of view. Beezus is nine years old and often straddled with looking after Ramona, who is four years old. Beezus is the neat, sensible sister, and Ramona is the noisy, troublemaking, attention loving sister. Beezus finds that life with Ramona is often unfair, because Ramona always seems to get her way, even when, especially when, she does not deserve it.

Take, for example, in the opening scene, when Ramona is riding her tricycle indoors and playing the harmonica, making Beezus absolutely wild—the only way to get her to stop is to do what Ramona wants to do. How will Beezus be able to put up with her exasperating sister?

Each new chapter is a new adventure, and through each one, the reader sees not just Ramona’s wackiness, but also Beezus’s resilience.

Would I teach this book? Given the opportunity, absolutely! I have loved Beverly Cleary’s writing since I was very young and am happy for the opportunity to read it to children or use it in a children’s literature course. Cleary’s sense of humor and imagination in Beezus and Ramona is just as brilliant now as it was when it was first published, nearly seventy years ago.

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Every Book Should Begin with Boogers: Book Review of Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds

 

Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks by Jason Reynolds

While sixth grade was not yesterday for me, the drama and intensity which stood behind every day events still feels close. The slight from a friend that turned the whole grade against me, or standing on stage in front of the whole school and misspelling a simple word during the spelling bee, or shining during the school play. All of these felt like they held such weight as would change my life—and perhaps they did. This was the time when I adopted the mantra, “Hope for the best, but plan for the worst,” but I really thought it meant: assuming the worst will ward off bad luck. As my son has taken to quoting Bluey, “That’s not how the world works, kid.”

Jason Reynold’s Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks brought me back to the feeling that every moment of life was monumental and representative of what my life was and would be. Reynold’s stories are both full of more difficult experiences than losing the spelling bee and are more hopeful than assuming the worst of all situations. In fact, none of the many characters in Look Both Ways seems to be without a strong belief that the future will bring good things.

The book is a series of linked short stories, all of which begin as the school bell rings to signal the end of the day. Each has different main characters with different challenges. In the opening story, a boy and a girl discuss the nature of humanity, debating whether or not we are boogers. In another story, a female skateboarder struggles to understand the violence of jealous boys. In another, a girl tries to deal with the absence of her mother, her hero, because between her job and going to school, there is little time left for the daughter. The stories feel honest and address problems beyond What will I wear for school picture day? and Will my crush notice me? Though, to be fair, some of those questions are there.

In her review of Look Both Ways for The Washington Post, Mary Quattlebaum writes that Reynold’s stories show the “playful, often profound” relationship between the individual children and the world around them. While there are many profound interactions between the adolescent characters and those around them, I hesitate to think of them as playful. For example, in “The Low Cuts Strike Again,” a group of children whose parents are cancer survivors scheme to make money off of adults around them—and while there is some humor in the interaction—for example, as they buy candy from the local candy lady—it seems more conflicted than playful. Speaking of her wares, the candy lady tells the group of children, “Retro candy. Hard to get, and used to cost only a penny a piece when I was a little girl, but I gotta charge y’all four cents more. Attitude tax” (31). In this example, the adult has a back and forth with the kids about how they speak to her and their lack of respect. While “attitude tax” is a humorous idea, the interaction seems more chastising than playful.

In another review from the New York Times, Nalini Jones states that Reynolds shifts between different characters’ points of view with “dexterity.” This talent is especially clear in the story “Skitter Hitter,” as within the story, Reynolds moves between a female skateboarder and a bullied private school boy’s points of view. In the third person attached narration, we first see Pia skateboarding through the hall and out the door at the end of the school day, avoiding interaction with her peers. As the story describes what Pia did not do, it describes another female student as, “The only other skater she respected” (46). In describing how Pia thinks of the other girl, it shows Pia’s own confidence. As the story moves into Stevie’s point of view, the boy who undergoes nearly constant bullying, the section opens up with, “Stevie was never ready to go. Because to go meant to get got by Marcus and the boys” (49). Here, while Stevie, like Pia, wants to be alone, it is for an entirely different reason: fear of bullies and not the desire for isolation.

Overall, Look Both Ways is an honest book for young readers that does not speak down to them or make life look either rosy or bleak. While the characters have significant challenges, like having sick parents, they act with hope and make their own hope. They do not have expectations of cotton candy rainbows, but they certainly do not assume that life will be a series of let downs. As they know, and could have taught me when I was that age, “That’s not how the world works, kid.”
Would I teach this book? Emphatically, yes. Look Both Ways is an option in the African American Literature unit, but none of my students chose the book, so I used it as a mentor text. It was a great text to use in order to discuss Windows and Mirrors, as well as using the internet to research unfamiliar vocabulary and references. If you are interested in some of how I used it, please DM me.

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