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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Death in the Post-Death Era: Book Review of Scythe

 

Scythe by Neal Shusterman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In Neal Shusterman’s Scythe, the world has reached a post-death era. There are no illnesses and nearly any injury can be healed and people brought back to life. Only a scythe, a person chosen for the job, can bring someone death. The scythes of the world are seen as both carrying out a noble and necessary job and as untouchables, estranged from nearly everyone except other scythes.

It happens that Scythe Faraday has decided that he needs to take on an apprentice and he meets two young people who seem as though they may be capable of the job. Though he can only choose one, he believes that healthy competition between them will allow him to choose the best person for the job. Of course, Rowan and Citra, two teenagers with unremarkable backgrounds, while not thrilled about being chosen to apprentice, have enough healthy competition in them to fight it out.

As the two learn more about what it means to be a scythe and all the knowledge that is required that they learn, they seem uncomfortably drawn to the life. That is, until another scythe decides that he does not like the idea of two apprentices and is determined to change the playing field altogether.

Scythe, an option for the dystopian book club I am now teaching, is my favorite of the picks. The world is beautiful and terrible. The people lost a good deal of understanding of what life is when they lost death. And now, the scythes bring back some of the value.

There are elements to the world that are particularly interesting--for example, “turning a corner” which means that after you get so old, you turn back the clock to a younger year, such as twenty or thirty. People can live for virtually ever and therefore can have many families and start over and over again. There is no poverty unless a person chooses it. Everyone is comfortable, though some are more comfortable than others.

Why did I enjoy this book so much? Well, it is very violent, though that is not what I appreciate about it--I am not so fond of violence. I suppose it is the almost whimsical world where many things have lost their traditional value, and simplicity is one of the ways to regain meaning. Perhaps it is because the idea of a person’s job being to murder is so terrible and horrible. Or perhaps it is just the right balance of macabre and magical. In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Would I teach this book? Yes. However, it is not the best choice for every student, because it is so dark. For students who find themselves affected by violence, this would not be the book to steer them towards. Perhaps Hunger Games or Maze Runner, which are actually less violent, would be better choices for students who are not drawn to such things. Or even The Giver--though it, too, is dark, as the other novels are. Apparently dystopian novels tend to be dark. Go figure.

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Death Games on Planet Boy: Book Review of Maze Runner

 

The Maze Runner by James Dashner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In The Maze Runner, James Dashner’s YA dystopian novel, Thomas wakes with no memory to find himself in a self-sufficient community of boys. The boys have organized themselves and each has a job, from cooking to cleaning to growing crops to raising livestock, each boy has his role—the most dangerous of which is maze running.

The area the boys live in is surrounded by a maze, and the maze runners wake early and return just before sunset, spending their days running through the maze, memorizing turns in order to make maps and look for some kind of escape.

Doesn’t sound so bad, right? Better than slaughtering animals. It would be, if it weren’t for the grievers, mechanical monsters that mostly come out at night, but have also been known to haunt the maze during daylight hours, as well.

Thomas’s arrival is like a slice of pizza from a still hot pie—the cheese pulls and pulls, uncovering the other slices. Any safety the boys thought they had is gone. Any chance of survival relies on solving the maze, and Thomas might be the key the boys need to escape.

As a dystopian novel, the story is very stylized, especially in terms of the all-boy society that has arisen. In many ways, the boys are not stereotypical at all—they get along well and rarely fight. They are totally responsible and no one seems to slack off at their jobs. They are even pretty nice to each other. The Gladers, as they call themselves, are almost the antithesis to Lord of the Flies. As they say, “Sucks to your auntie.”

Would I teach this book? James Dashner does an excellent job of creating a suspenseful and exciting plot that brings up questions such as: Should we sacrifice some for the good of all? What are the limits humans will go to save themselves? What happens when you give children power?

Coincidentally, The Maze Runner is one choice in the dystopian book club based on Units of Study that I am currently teaching. Several of my students are reading the book and seem to be enjoying it so far. I am also enjoying the connections that the Units of Study asks students to make as well as offering students a variety of book choices at different ability levels. So, yes, thumbs up on teaching the book in a middle school class. Keep in mind that there’s a lot of violence, so those who are sensitive might not enjoy it as much. There is also a whole lot of boy, so if you are looking for heroines, you won’t find them here.

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Everyone Has a Cinderella II: Review of Stephen King's Gwendy's Button Box.

 

Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Gwendy’s Button Box , written with Richard Chizmar, is not Stephen King’s finest—in part because it is so short. For a work by Stephen King it feels truncated. Not like a short story—his short stories are generally full and do not feel lacking—but as though someone had said keep this one short, and perhaps they did.

During the summer before middle school, Gwendy is approached by a strange man in a bowler hat who wants to talk. He has no designs on Gwendy, but he does have a proposition for her—take the button box, enjoy its power, but don’t abuse it. Gwendy appreciates what the levers do—one produces silver coins and one produces magical chocolate animals that act like a drug to soothe the body and elevate the mind. The different colored buttons across the top represent areas of the world, and to push one would bring disaster to that place. The black button, the cancer button, as Gwendy thinks of it, will bring a particular kind of violence.

As Gwendy grows older, she finds that the box has a curious affect on her: she becomes a natural winner, seemingly good at everything. Though she tries not to call attention to her new gifts, sometimes they call attention to themselves--and not always in a positive way.

Would I teach this book? Being that it is not my favorite, I doubt it. However, it is an entertaining book and would probably be enjoyable for many high schoolers. I might recommend it as a pleasure read. It is not, however, the substantial read that is the typical Stephen King book. In fact, I might call it King Light.

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