Thursday, October 27, 2011
Stargirl
by Jerry SpinelliLike many high schools, things are pretty typical in Leo's high school. So when a strange hippie chick in a range of weird costumes shows up and starts singing to people in the cafeteria, cheering for the other team, and generally acting like all the unspoken norms and rules don't apply to her.
For a while, people aren't sure what to make of her. Eventually, they embrace her, and a wave of individualism sweeps through the school. Leo optimistically daydreams of a new dawn, until the tide begins to turn. When their sports team begins to win for the first time ever, people suddenly start to care that Stargirl, as she calls herself, cheers for the other players as much as she does for their own, and start to view her as a traitor. The shunning is complete and Leo, her boyfriend, gradually notices it and finds himself swayed, as well, beginning to be embarrassed by the very things that he once admired.
This book doesn't go for the happy ending, as a movie or an episode of Glee would, with everyone discovering her wonderful heart again at the end, though there is a glimmer of hope. Instead, it goes deeper, and Leo finds himself talking with a wise old friend of his about the nature of her and him and the stuff of stars and stargirls. There are lessons here, to be sure, but they are imparted with a sort of longing and a mystical feel that keeps them from being earnest or preachy. In the end, Leo looks back wistfully, and still full of more questions than answers.
Note: there is a followup as well, Love, Stargirl, that I will be adding to my to-read pile, as I am curious how a sequel to this would unfold.
Labels: 2000, friendship, good stuff, growing up, teen
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Alice Week II: the Giveaway
When Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland was released in theatres, I did a roundup of fun new Alice books.
This week, the DVD will be released, and to celebrate, I am giving away a copy of Alice!
(Yes, I'm a tiny bit of a Carroll fangirl, but just a bit.)
The book in question comes from Chronicle Books, and the text of my review back in March went like this:
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
By Lewis Carroll Compiled by Cooper Edens
This edition from Chronicle Books is an interesting way to go if you want to see some of the many portrayals of Alice, in that it features not one illustrator, but an extremely plentiful selection of images from of host of different artists.
From the time Alice came out of copyright in 1908, every major illustrator has had a crack at it, and many lesser-known ones, besides. It' s well-loved, a real classic, and has a massive following of collectors, so why not? This is a good sampler of some you may never have seen before, as well as old favourites like Arthur Rackham.
It's not as cohesive in look because of this, and is large and a bit floppy in format, so if you want something for just a nice straight read-through, there may be better editions, but for the curious who want to talk about illustrations and how they relate to text, to peruse lots of pictures and styles, or get a pretty solid overview of different ways Alice has been drawn, this is a really good way to get that. I even found some illustrated versions that I have never seen, and I've seen a pretty good range of them, being an Alice fan myself.
Sound interesting? To enter to win a copy (I have one from the publisher to give away), tell me in comments about your favourite classic.
(Please remember to leave me an email address so I can let you know and ask for your mailing address!)
------------------------------------
***And the winner, drawn by Misterpie from a well-scrambled batch of names written on lips of paper is:
kgirl!
(I know, we are so high-tech around here!)
This week, the DVD will be released, and to celebrate, I am giving away a copy of Alice!
(Yes, I'm a tiny bit of a Carroll fangirl, but just a bit.)
The book in question comes from Chronicle Books, and the text of my review back in March went like this:
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland By Lewis Carroll Compiled by Cooper Edens
This edition from Chronicle Books is an interesting way to go if you want to see some of the many portrayals of Alice, in that it features not one illustrator, but an extremely plentiful selection of images from of host of different artists.
From the time Alice came out of copyright in 1908, every major illustrator has had a crack at it, and many lesser-known ones, besides. It' s well-loved, a real classic, and has a massive following of collectors, so why not? This is a good sampler of some you may never have seen before, as well as old favourites like Arthur Rackham.
It's not as cohesive in look because of this, and is large and a bit floppy in format, so if you want something for just a nice straight read-through, there may be better editions, but for the curious who want to talk about illustrations and how they relate to text, to peruse lots of pictures and styles, or get a pretty solid overview of different ways Alice has been drawn, this is a really good way to get that. I even found some illustrated versions that I have never seen, and I've seen a pretty good range of them, being an Alice fan myself.
Sound interesting? To enter to win a copy (I have one from the publisher to give away), tell me in comments about your favourite classic.
(Please remember to leave me an email address so I can let you know and ask for your mailing address!)
------------------------------------
***And the winner, drawn by Misterpie from a well-scrambled batch of names written on lips of paper is:
kgirl!
(I know, we are so high-tech around here!)
Labels: 2000, Alice, giveaways, Publisher Reviews
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
A Week of Alice: A Compilation
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
By Lewis Carroll
Compiled by Cooper Edens
This edition from Chronicle Books is an interesting way to go if you want to see some of the many portrayals of Alice, in that it features not one illustrator, but an extremely plentiful selection of images from of host of different artists.
From the time Alice came out of copyright in 1908, every major illustrator has had a crack at it, and many lesser-known ones, besides. It' s well-loved, a real classic, and has a massive following of collectors, so why not? This is a good sampler of some you may never have seen before, as well as old favourites like Arthur Rackham.
It's not as cohesive in look because of this, and is large and a bit floppy in format, so if you want something for just a nice straight read-through, there may be better editions, but for the curious who want to talk about illustrations and how they relate to text, to peruse lots of pictures and styles, or get a pretty solid overview of different ways Alice has been drawn, this is a really good way to get that. I even found some illustrated versions that I have never seen, and I've seen a pretty good range of them, being an Alice fan myself.
By Lewis Carroll
Compiled by Cooper Edens
This edition from Chronicle Books is an interesting way to go if you want to see some of the many portrayals of Alice, in that it features not one illustrator, but an extremely plentiful selection of images from of host of different artists.
From the time Alice came out of copyright in 1908, every major illustrator has had a crack at it, and many lesser-known ones, besides. It' s well-loved, a real classic, and has a massive following of collectors, so why not? This is a good sampler of some you may never have seen before, as well as old favourites like Arthur Rackham.
It's not as cohesive in look because of this, and is large and a bit floppy in format, so if you want something for just a nice straight read-through, there may be better editions, but for the curious who want to talk about illustrations and how they relate to text, to peruse lots of pictures and styles, or get a pretty solid overview of different ways Alice has been drawn, this is a really good way to get that. I even found some illustrated versions that I have never seen, and I've seen a pretty good range of them, being an Alice fan myself.
Labels: 2000, 2010, Alice, lukewarm, Publisher Reviews
Friday, October 02, 2009
Give a Boy a Gun
By Todd Strasser
Written in the wake of the Jonesboro and Columbine rampage killings, this teen fiction book digs into the background of a fictional school shooting and the boys behind it. It is written as the interview notes of a reporter who went to the town and spoke to children, parents, and school faculty members who recalled what they could of the boys going years back, as well as the events of the hostage-taking. Among those notes, in footnotes at the bottom, are interspersed statistics and small facts about other real-life shootings, gun fatalities, and plenty of quotations from the documentary “Making a Killing, “ about the arms industry.
The book itself, I thought was quite well done. I know a lot of parents might react to this with horror, wondering why kids need to read about it. There are a few answers there. One is that it’s a fear our kids live with, a fact that hovers in the background of their lives at school now, the worry behind every lockdown. One school in the area my library serves has had two already this year. One based on a toy gun that was rumoured to be real, and one on a bomb threat. It’s October 1st as I write this, less than one month in. So yes, we may wish kids didn’t have to think about it, but they do.
So. With that said, this book manages not to glamourize the boys or the event, nor does it make it into a horror show. I really thought the author pulled the punch at the end, in fact, so there is very little in the way of gore. What is most shocking in the body of the book is the anger in the shooters and the entitlement in the in-crowd of jocks and the way the faculty support it.
For all that, though, Strasser does drive home a point hard, time after time. He just doesn’t use the body of the work to do so, which I appreciate, because there is little worse in terms of enjoyable reading than a book with a purpose. Instead, he hammers away at you with the facts, all the more chilling for being true. That gun deaths kill more children than all diseases combined. That for 1995, in seven states, there were more shooting deaths than traffic fatalities. That in 1995 alone, more Americans were killed by firearms than soldiers killed in 3 years of the Korean War and well over half of the number of soldiers killed during 8 years in Vietnam. (If you have seen the Vietnam War Memorial in D.C., that last fact is staggering, because you have a visual for it.) That military analysts have noted strong and marked similarities between “shooter” video games and training used by the military to break down soldiers’ resistance to shooting another human. And over and over, the seeming indifference of arms manufacturers, who continue to market guns whose only logical use can be to kill people, not to mention the tactics used to sidestep attempts to regulate their product.
Taken whole, it gives recommendation for things that need to change, it indicts the gun lobby strongly, and it shows not sympathy, but a level of understanding for how this can come to pass when conditions in a school or community are just the exact recipe for such a disaster.
If you worry that such a book might provide instruction or glamourize this kind of action, I would say I think it is not providing what kids who are wondering about it are looking for. Instead, it feels more like a call to action, a heads up about the need for change. It’s a good read, and a tricky balancing act is handled well here by Strasser.
Written in the wake of the Jonesboro and Columbine rampage killings, this teen fiction book digs into the background of a fictional school shooting and the boys behind it. It is written as the interview notes of a reporter who went to the town and spoke to children, parents, and school faculty members who recalled what they could of the boys going years back, as well as the events of the hostage-taking. Among those notes, in footnotes at the bottom, are interspersed statistics and small facts about other real-life shootings, gun fatalities, and plenty of quotations from the documentary “Making a Killing, “ about the arms industry.
The book itself, I thought was quite well done. I know a lot of parents might react to this with horror, wondering why kids need to read about it. There are a few answers there. One is that it’s a fear our kids live with, a fact that hovers in the background of their lives at school now, the worry behind every lockdown. One school in the area my library serves has had two already this year. One based on a toy gun that was rumoured to be real, and one on a bomb threat. It’s October 1st as I write this, less than one month in. So yes, we may wish kids didn’t have to think about it, but they do.
So. With that said, this book manages not to glamourize the boys or the event, nor does it make it into a horror show. I really thought the author pulled the punch at the end, in fact, so there is very little in the way of gore. What is most shocking in the body of the book is the anger in the shooters and the entitlement in the in-crowd of jocks and the way the faculty support it.
For all that, though, Strasser does drive home a point hard, time after time. He just doesn’t use the body of the work to do so, which I appreciate, because there is little worse in terms of enjoyable reading than a book with a purpose. Instead, he hammers away at you with the facts, all the more chilling for being true. That gun deaths kill more children than all diseases combined. That for 1995, in seven states, there were more shooting deaths than traffic fatalities. That in 1995 alone, more Americans were killed by firearms than soldiers killed in 3 years of the Korean War and well over half of the number of soldiers killed during 8 years in Vietnam. (If you have seen the Vietnam War Memorial in D.C., that last fact is staggering, because you have a visual for it.) That military analysts have noted strong and marked similarities between “shooter” video games and training used by the military to break down soldiers’ resistance to shooting another human. And over and over, the seeming indifference of arms manufacturers, who continue to market guns whose only logical use can be to kill people, not to mention the tactics used to sidestep attempts to regulate their product.
Taken whole, it gives recommendation for things that need to change, it indicts the gun lobby strongly, and it shows not sympathy, but a level of understanding for how this can come to pass when conditions in a school or community are just the exact recipe for such a disaster.
If you worry that such a book might provide instruction or glamourize this kind of action, I would say I think it is not providing what kids who are wondering about it are looking for. Instead, it feels more like a call to action, a heads up about the need for change. It’s a good read, and a tricky balancing act is handled well here by Strasser.
Labels: 2000, good stuff, issues, teen
Monday, August 06, 2007
Cassie Loves Beethoven
by Alan Arkin.
This book would make a wonderful read-aloud for a child maybe 5-10 years old. Why the wide range? Well, it's gentle enough for a younger child who can sit still long enough for a chapter or two a night but needs light themes, but is fun and has enough depth of feeling and discussable ideas to suit an older kid, too.
It is, in short, about a cow who discovers classical music and the awe of Beethoven. Well, I certainly can relate to that, because he is my favourite, too. She becomes determined to learn to play his music, to feel it deeply, to taste what it might have been like to be him, to have the soul she hears in the notes. The book writes beautifully about music and its power to move the spirit - you can really hear the author's own love for it. Cassie the cow does, in the end, learn a valuable lesson, too, but the lesson is not that harsh, and the book never takes on a lesson-giving tone. While not as funny as I had been led to expect, this was nonetheless a great read, and one that I will keep in mind for a couple of years from now.
This book would make a wonderful read-aloud for a child maybe 5-10 years old. Why the wide range? Well, it's gentle enough for a younger child who can sit still long enough for a chapter or two a night but needs light themes, but is fun and has enough depth of feeling and discussable ideas to suit an older kid, too.
It is, in short, about a cow who discovers classical music and the awe of Beethoven. Well, I certainly can relate to that, because he is my favourite, too. She becomes determined to learn to play his music, to feel it deeply, to taste what it might have been like to be him, to have the soul she hears in the notes. The book writes beautifully about music and its power to move the spirit - you can really hear the author's own love for it. Cassie the cow does, in the end, learn a valuable lesson, too, but the lesson is not that harsh, and the book never takes on a lesson-giving tone. While not as funny as I had been led to expect, this was nonetheless a great read, and one that I will keep in mind for a couple of years from now.
Labels: 2000, animal story, early chapters, good stuff, middle grades, music theme
