Week 3 – Between Shades of Gray by Rita Sepetys

Written by: Ruta Sepetys
APA Citation:  Sepetys, R. (2011). Between shades of gray. New York: Philomel Books.
Cover image: http://www.readingaftermidnight.com/authors/ruta-sepetys/review-between-shades-of-gray.html

Summary of the plot: Lina is living an ordinary life in Lithuania when she and her family are arrested by Soviet officers and sent on a cattle car north of the Arctic Circle to a work camp in Siberia. There they endure terrible conditions including exhausting farm work, freezing cold and food scarcity.

Keywords: Lithuania, Forced labor camps, World War II

My assessment: This book of historical fiction blew me away. I have studied the Holocaust extensively but haven’t ever read about this part of it.  While an entertaining read, the book was also able to delve deeply into the character’s thoughts.

“Was it harder to die, or harder to be the one who survived?” (N.P.).

“Whether love of friend, love of country, love of God, or even love of enemy—love reveals to us the truly miraculous nature of the human spirit”(N.P.).

Audio review: This novel is well read by Emily Klein.
Audio citation: Sepetys, R. (2011). Between shades of gray. [Audio Recording]. New York: Penguin Audio.

Review from School Library Journal:
Gr 8 Up–This novel is based on extensive research and inspired by the author’s family background. Told by 15-year-old Lina, a Lithuanian teen with penetrating insight and vast artistic ability, it is a gruesome tale of the deportation of Lithuanians to Siberia starting in 1939. During her 12 years there, Lina, a strong, determined character, chronicles her experiences through writings and drawings. She willingly takes chances to communicate with her imprisoned father and to improve her family’s existence in inhuman conditions. Desperation, fear, and the survival instinct motivate many of the characters to make difficult compromises. Andrius, who becomes Lina’s love interest, watches as his mother prostitutes herself with the officers in order to gain food for her son and others. To ward off starvation, many sign untrue confessions of guilt as traitors, thereby accepting 25-year sentences. Those who refuse, like Lina, her younger brother, and their mother, live on meager bread rations given only for the physical work they are able to perform. This is a grim tale of suffering and death, but one that needs telling. Mention is made of some Lithuanians’ collaboration with the Nazis, but for the most part the deportees were simply caught in a political web. Unrelenting sadness permeates this novel, but there are uplifting moments when the resilience of the human spirit and the capacity for compassion take over. This is a gripping story that gives young people a window into a shameful, but likely unfamiliar history.
Source Citation for book review: Steinberg, R. (2011). Between Shades of Gray. School Library Journal, 57(3), 170.

Recommendations for library or classroom use: This book could be used as outside reading for a social studies class. I would also recommend it to teens, both for individual reading and for book clubs.

Image source: http://www.readingaftermidnight.com/authors/ruta-sepetys/review-between-shades-of-gray.html

Week 2 – Looking for Alaska

Written by: John Green
APA citation: Green, J. (2005). Looking for Alaska. New York: Penguin.
Book cover image: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44640217

My summary of the plot: Miles (Pudge) Halter decides to go to a private school. There he meets “The Colonel” and Alaska. The Colonel and Pudge are roommates and become friends. Pudge experiences his first awkward relationship and also falls in love with Alaska.
Spoiler alert: Alaska is in a world of drama and makes a bad decision to drive one night after drinking alcohol. The rest of the novel deals with the results of this night.

Keywords: Boarding schools, death, religion

My Assessment: This is a stunning debut novel. John Green does not shy away from the tough topics, especially death. It contains many beautiful passages such as this one:

“People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn’t bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn’t bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn’t even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn’t bear not to.”

Audio review: This audio book is exceptionally well done. The narrator perfectly captures the different teenage voices.
Citation for audio book: Green, J. (2008). Looking for Alaska. [Audio Recording] Grand Haven, MI: Brilliance Audio

Professional Review: Gr 9 Up– Sixteen-year-old Miles Halter’s adolescence has been one long nonevent–no challenge, no girls, no mischief, and no real friends. Seeking what Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps,” he leaves Florida for a boarding school in Birmingham, AL. His roommate, Chip, is a dirt-poor genius scholarship student with a Napoleon complex who lives to one-up the school’s rich preppies. Chip’s best friend is Alaska Young, with whom Miles and every other male in her orbit falls instantly in love. She is literate, articulate, and beautiful, and she exhibits a reckless combination of adventurous and self-destructive behavior. She and Chip teach Miles to drink, smoke, and plot elaborate pranks. Alaska’s story unfolds in all-night bull sessions, and the depth of her unhappiness becomes obvious. Green’s dialogue is crisp, especially between Miles and Chip. His descriptions and Miles’s inner monologues can be philosophically dense, but are well within the comprehension of sensitive teen readers. The chapters of the novel are headed by a number of days “before” and “after” what readers surmise is Alaska’s suicide. These placeholders sustain the mood of possibility and foreboding, and the story moves methodically to its ambiguous climax. The language and sexual situations are aptly and realistically drawn, but sophisticated in nature. Miles’s narration is alive with sweet, self-deprecating humor, and his obvious struggle to tell the story truthfully adds to his believability. Like Phineas in John Knowles’s A Separate Peace (S & S, 1960), Green draws Alaska so lovingly, in self-loathing darkness as well as energetic light, that readers mourn her loss along with her friends.
Citation for book review: Lewis, J., Jones, T. E., Toth, L., Charnizon, M., Grabarek, D., & Raben, D. (2005). Looking for Alaska. School Library Journal, 51(2), 136.

Recommendation for library or classroom use: I would recommend this book for a 10th-12th grade English class. I would also recommend it for recreational reading for both males an females.

Week 2 – Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

Written by: Benjamin Alire Saenz
APA Citation:  Saenz, B.A. (2012) Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Cover image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle_and_Dante_Discover_the_Secrets_of_the_Universe

My Summary of the plot: Aristotle (nicknamed Ari) is a lonely 15 year old Mexican-American growing up in El Paso in the summer of 1987. His much older sisters are grown up and married. His brother is mysteriously absent and his father, suffering PTSD from Vietnam, is very distant. The only person he is close to is his mother. He says, “I was mostly invisible. I think I liked it that way. And then Dante came along”(p. 23). After he meets Dante at the pool the two become good friends. Dante teaches Ari to swim, to read poetry, and to star-gaze among other things.
Spoiler Alert: Dante develops feelings for Ari and eventually Ari returns those feelings.

Keywords: Gay, Latino, Coming of age

My Assessment: This is an important novel because there are very few gay Latino authors writing Young Adult novels. The parents in this book are universally awesome and very supportive of their sons. I’m not sure how realistic that would have been in 1987. Both sets of parents show a lot of affection to each other. Aristotle’s parents like to sit on the porch and hold hands. Ari thinks:

https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/35544187/holding-hands (page 140)
While this is a beautifully written book I have a hard time with it because the resolution is so quick at the end of the book. Less than one page remained of the book when they finally admitted that they loved each other. Ari thinks,

“This was what was wrong with me. All this time I had been trying to figure out the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been so close and yet I had always fought them without even knowing it. From the minute I’d met Dante, I had fallen in love with him. I just didn’t let myself know it, think it, feel it”(p. 359).

Audio review: This audio book is excellent. The reader perfectly captures the accents and is believable as a teen voice.
Audio citation: Saenz, B.A. (2013). Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe. New York: Simon & Schuster Audio

Review from Library Journal
Read with a convincingly teen-sounding voice by Tony Award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda, this 1980s-set coming-of-age novel, which was awarded a 2013 Printz Honor, will be a popular addition to YA collections. Both Aristotle and Dante are of Mexican heritage but seem to have little else in common. The boys meet during summer break and help each other discover their place in the world and their identity — ethnic, sexual, and family. Aristotle’s family relationships are complicated, with a brother in prison and older, married sisters. Dante is an only child whose college professor father moves the family to Chicago for a sabbatical. Over time, the teens and their families develop a relationship that deepens through adversity. Aristotle saves Dante’s life. Dante, openly gay, falls in love with Aristotle. VERDICT A thought-provoking read for teens struggling to develop individuality.
Source Citation for book review  Youse, C. (2013). Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Library Journal, 138(12), 43.

Recommendations for library or classroom use:
I can’t wholeheartedly recommend this book for gay teens because so little of it shows a positive relationship. The entire book shows Ari fighting his feelings for Dante. I did hear that Saenz is writing a sequel. Perhaps reading the two books together would change my mind about this.

Fan art

Image from: http://cherryandsisters.tumblr.com/post/106621650894/i-bet-you-could-sometimes-find-all-the-mysteries

 

Week 1 – A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck

Written by: Robert Newton Peck
APA citation: Peck, R. N. (1972). A day no pigs would die. New York: Random House.
Peck, R. N. (2010). A day no pigs would die [Audio Recording]. New York: Listening Library.
Book cover image: https://www.rainbowresource.com/viewpict.php?pid=019897

My summary of the plot: This book gets your attention right away. It starts out with the main character saving a calf’s life by pulling it out of its mother. Then he reaches into the mother’s throat to pull out a goiter and saves her life also. Young Robert receives a piglet as thanks from the grateful neighbor. He lives on a farm in Vermont with his parents and aunt. The family is poor but making it until…{Spoiler alert}…the piglet grows up and is barren. The pig eats too much to be kept as a pet and so must be butchered. In an ironic twist of fate, Richard learns that his father is also dying. In a heartbreaking scene, Richard and his father butcher the pig. The end of the novel finds the 13 year old boy arranging his father’s funeral.
Okay. I know that every animal story out there from Charlotte’s Web to Marley and Me ends with the animal dying. But for some reason, I did not see this one coming and it is brutal…and also beautiful.

Keywords: Farm life, Shaker, Fathers and sons

My Assessment:
* I loved this book but it might not be for city slickers or the faint of heart. Kids that grow up on farms know more about the mating, birth, and dying of animals than city kids do.

In one of the most poignant scenes, Robert ends up putting on his father’s clothes as he assumes the role as head of the house. The clothes are ill-fitting and Robert cries out, “Hear me God…It’s hell to be poor”(145).

* Scholastic rated this book as having a 5.5 grade level with a 690 Lexile rating. http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/book/day-no-pigs-would-die#cart/cleanup

 Audio Review: The narration on the audio book was well done. In particular, the father’s voice was very evocative. The narrator’s voice enabled me to vividly imagine the characters.
Citation for audio book: Peck, R. N. (2010). A day no pigs would die [Audio Recording]. New York: Listening Library.

Review from School Library Journal:
Gr 7 Up–Originally published in 1972, Richard Peck‘s (sic) classic about hardscrabble farm life in Vermont and the too early entrance into adulthood for nearly 13-year-old Rob is still relevant today. Matters of life and death are treated in a straightforward manner, and the values shared in the story still ring true. Narrator Lincoln Hoppe gets it just right, from the pure joy of Rob receiving his piglet Pinky as a reward for a neighborly good deed to the heart-wrenching climax. There is a graphic scene involving the mating of Pinky to a neighbor’s boar that could be upsetting to younger children. However, every young adult should be familiar wit
h this poignant, powerful story.–Ann Brownson, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston
Citation for book review: Brownson, Ann. (2011).  A day no pigs would die. School Library Journal, 64.

Recommendations for library or classroom use: Middle school age. It would be most appropriate for small group or individual reading.

 “Need is a weak word. Has nothing to do with what people get. Ain’t what you need that matters. It’s what you do”(120).