Challenged/Banned Books
Green, J. (2005). Looking for alaska. New York, NY: Penguin Group.
Miles "Pudge" Halter has no real friends, no deep connections to the public high school he attends in Florida. In search of something more, something bigger, he heads off to Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama where his father is an alumnus. What he finds there is a whirlwind existence as he is swept into the storm that is Alaska Young: the beautiful, smart, mysterious, rebellious, dangerous girl down the hall. Pudge becomes immersed in the lives of his new friends: Alaska, The Colonel (his room mate) and Takumi, but he is most taken by Alaska. His life becomes anything but boring as they muddle their way through classes, pull pranks on the local rich kids (Weekday Warriors), and work to avoid being caught by their headmaster, The Eagle. Pudge not only steps outside of himself and becomes a part of a larger community, he realizes the connections we forge open us up to feeling our most euphoric highs along with our most tragic lows. This is the price we ultimately pay when we choose to live and love deeply. When the unthinkable happens to Alaska, Pudge is left reeling with the devastation and searching for answers.
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I don't know what it was that I expected when reading this book. I guess I know John Green for his emotional stories and this one certainly did not disappoint in that regard. The way he set up the story with the "before" and "after" phases was amazing and true to real life. Nothing is the same when you have been through a monumental "after". What I didn't expect was the issues that it touched on, especially for YA readers. Having had close experience with the issues and implications of teen drinking and driving and suicide (or what may later be discovered or perceived as suicide), this one left me thinking long after the story was over. I felt Pudge's guilt and sense of loss deeply.
Junior's life is filled with unlucky circumstances. Born with a variety of medical problems to a poor family on the Spokane Indian reservation, Junior is picked on constantly. He is targeted for his appearance, his poverty, and his speech impediment to name a few. He has one friend in the world who sticks up for him no matter what and that's his perpetually angry buddy, Rowdy. After an incident where Junior notices he is being taught geometry out of student texts that his mother used over 30 years prior, Junior decides he needs to make a drastic change and get a better education. He sees it as the only way to overcome the hand he has been dealt and break the cycle of poverty in his family. Junior makes the radical decision to attend high school off the reservation in a nearby all-white farm town. He faces being rejected by his people as a traitor and being rejected by the white population as an outsider. Junior's amazing sense of humor, wisecracks, cool comic book illustrations, and determination help him face the many obstacles that lay in his path and give him the strength to always have hope.
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As I read this book, there were many times where I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Sherman Alexie is a master at taking the sad truth of this character's life on a Native American reservation and creating laugh out loud moments that somehow we can all relate to on our own level. As both adults and adolescents, we have all been in love, wanted acceptance, experienced loss and fear, navigated our way through our own personal high school terrors, and wanted to make our own lives better- just probably not to the degree that Junior personally faces. But the use of humor is what takes these (at times) horribly tragic events (among them Junior's dog being shot by his father, Junior's sister running away and eventually dying in a fire, and the prevalent use of alcohol on the reservation) and makes them something we can both learn from and laugh at as we cheer Junior on from the sidelines.
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Book Discussion Reflection: There were so many great points to discuss as a group with this book. We all enjoyed reading about Arnold aka Junior's many ups and downs and the ways he found to successfully cope. While there was so much sadness, there was also so much hope in this story. Junior's hope for a better life through a better education, his hope to make friends, his hope that his sister would find peace and happiness on her journey, his hopes of making the basketball team, his hope that his friendship with Rowdy wasn't gone forever. Sherman Alexie created honest, genuine characters that we wanted to keep reading about: Junior, Gordy, Penelope, Rowdy, Roger, Grandma Spirit, Coach, and Eugene were among our favorites. We discussed how Junior recognized Penelope's eating disorder ("I'm only bulimic when I throw up.") as being similar to his dad's drinking problem ("I'm only an alcoholic when I drink.") and how he gained her trust through keeping her secret and not judging her. While Arnold knows he's getting a better education in Reardon, he sees that life there is not automatically "better". His observations of the Reardon dads having the talent of being invisible even when in the same room, makes him appreciate the support and presence he truly has from his father despite his father's drinking issues. Our group talked about why the book would get mentioned as a "Challenged/Banned" book and found it was most likely Junior's explicit mention of masturbating, the prevalent alcohol abuse, and probably some of the language. We all agreed that Junior's thoughts and ideas were very explicit but that they were a genuine representation of what most boys his age were really actually thinking. Not knowing a lot about life on a reservation, we all thought this gave us some insight as to what it might really be like since Sherman Alexie was writing from experience. While the experience was devastatingly sad at times, the humor and the message of hope told through such authentic characters made this a book we couldn't seem to put down. The illustrations were an excellent complement to the story elements- adding more humor and simple truth. We loved how some were very complicated artistic drawings and others were simpler sketches and doodles. This is a must have for a YA collection.
Goodreads
Goodreads
Goodreads
Telgemeier, R. (2012). Drama. New York, NY: Scholastic.
Callie is a middle school student who loves theater but prefers to be working behind the scenes rather than in the spotlight. She is bound and determined to make the set of this year's musical Moon Over Mississippi the best the school has ever seen- complete with special effects! Along with her fellow stage crew members, Callie experiences plenty of drama off the stage with her crush on a boy named Greg and cute twin brothers, Jesse and Justin, who join the production.
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I am a huge fan of Raina Telgemeier's graphic novels! I love the stories she weaves into the amazing illustrations. I feel like she really understands what is happening in middle school/high school. I found it interesting that this was among the "Challenged/Banned Books" when so many middle school and high school students are working to forge their identity. The characters who were struggling with either sharing or identifying their sexual orientation were honest and real.
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Book Discussion Reflection: I loved discussing this book with my book group. We all shared the common thought that graphic novels can be a good starting point for some reluctant readers because you move through the story quickly. Added to this, we also found ourselves slowing down to really "read" the accompanying illustrations and how they truly complete the story line. A lot of elements in Drama epitomized the awkwardness and drama of middle school- Callie wanting to like a boy who wasn't really interested in her, two characters struggling with how to express their sexual identity, the friend issues that happened... all these experiences were ones we could relate to as being a part of the middle school experience. We liked how Raina Telgemeier's social models for how to deal with these issues were all positive ones for young adults to identify with. One of these that we discussed was how Callie handled the boy she had liked so much at the beginning admitting he was wrong at the end and wanting to now be her boyfriend. Her response of "I think I can manage on my own." was one of strength and positivity for young girls. We all enjoyed how Bonnie's character was "super bitchy" as this added to the dramatic element and the possible actions of a person in this age group. As a group, we decided there wasn't much of a deep plot to discuss but thought maybe that was the point- that this book could be a starting point for kids in this age group to think and talk about some of the issues presented in the story. Our group as a whole was fairly new to the graphic novel scene but we all agreed that there is a lot more to this genre than we initially thought. Some of the titles we have had the chance to read address very heavy, very "grown up" topics and aren't "just a bunch of pictures". In fact, this lead us to talk about how we have often seen more serious, deeper graphic novels shelved in various libraries with juvenile or younger children's books instead of with young adult titles. As a parent and a librarian, it's so important to understand the content so we can help direct students to titles they are most likely emotionally ready for.