"The F-- It List" Literary Review

The F- It List by Julie Halpern
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Every once in a while there will be a book that comes along that will become one of those stirring sticks of controversy... Boy oh boy I can't wait to see the reality television-esque turmoil that will erupt once this book gets released. First and foremost, look at that title!! "The F-It List" implies exactly what you think... it's a list with things that the protagonist Alex and her cancer-striken friend Becca want to say "F it!" and just do within their lifetimes. But along the way, both of the girls become stronger both within their friendship and their individual lives. Becca struggles with chemo and the fact that she may not survive to graduation, while Alex deals with more menial aspects of teenage life, such as saying "I love you" to a boy she truly loves, but she's still insecure.

This is a great book for teens to indulge with and connect to.... The only downside is the proverbial usage of vulgarity. Oh well, teenagers will be teenagers.

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"Boy Toy" Literary Review

Boy Toy by Barry Lyga
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a disturbing read that provokes human thought and interaction... Josh is an eighteen year old baseball player who just wants to graduate from high school and go to college. The only problem is that he's being haunted by Eve, his seventh grade history teacher who molested him, and the scandal that has somehow turned him into a social pariah.
The message is that Josh wants to be normal, but furthermore, understood teenager. Baseball, girls and straight A's take up most of his time. However, when a controversy involves you and puts pressure on you, it's hard to deal with.

As a teacher reading this, it was more like a horror story considering the molestation factor, but Lyga presents the book in a way that makes it a disturbing, upsetting read in which the reader doesn't want to put it down. I even gave up sleep to finish this page-turner. However, I have concerns letting young adults (especially my own students)read this for the events and content involved, for the simple fear of possible controversy.

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"Entwined" Literary Review

Entwined by Heather Dixon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I don't really know where to begin on this review, simply because this book didn't really affect me that much. Which is the most tragic thought concerning a book! I'd rather hate a book because it has evoked correlating emotions, instead of just having a blah or "okay" feeling.

Let's compile a list:

1) Azalea, our protagonist, is the eldest, aka the leader, of her twelve sisters... And they ALL happen to be too whiny for my taste.

2) Why do they all have awkward names? Azalea, Bramble, Clover, Delphinium, etc... WHY?!

3) There's a family drama issue that I won't reveal for fear of spoilers, but this issue is remnant throughout the book and never seems to be resolved until the actual resolution. I felt like that young adult readers would absorb this issue and could even entice rebellion within readers themselves. As a teacher, I want students to discover lessons from literature, and even though the primary idea would be to detect that there is an issue, some readers may not grasp this.

4) The plot is quite simple, but does introduce complicated twists that don't seem to be delivered fluidly... Keeper is our antagonist, and we don't fully realize that he's a bad guy until it's too late... (SURPRISINGLY, much like the princesses themselves).

5) The original fairytale is one to encourage love, yet the love story is dismal. I definitely wanted more!



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"Ship Breaker"- Literary Review

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For fans of futuristic and dystopic literature, here's one that you'll enjoy! I won't even say that it's anything similar to The Hunger Games, other than it is geared towards Young Adults, simply because it can hold its own in this genre.

Nailer is a teen who is scraping for metal in deserted ships in the Gulf Coast region. He works dawn to dusk crawling in tight places for copper wire and signs of oil, and his only refuge is in the loyalty that he tries to foster with his crewmates. When he and a fellow crew member find a shipwrecked schooner off the coast of their island, Nailer wants nothing more than to find a way to escape his life and abusive drug addict of a father. However, he never expected to find Nita.

Nita is a swank, aka rich girl, who is a pawn in corporate trading to gain monopoly over the known world. She finds Nailer and promises him an escape to paradise if he can help her return to her father. Nailer, despite every instinct to say no, accepts. They are chased by bounty hunters, greedy corporate assassins and pirates, and even Nailer's father, Richard, in an adventure that I would consider exciting on an epic scale.

Adventure stories are not often well constructed, but with a dystopia, there's a lot of room to create a "new world". Bacigalupi does this with perfection; he constructs a desolate world, connects it to his teenage protagonist, which furthermore allows a young adult reader to connect with it. The aspect of abusive parent also plays in well, because despite pirates, disease and danger lurking around every corner, it's worse when it exists at home within your own family.

As a teacher, I would recommend this title to students as a great coming of age story, as well as an interesting and engaging read.

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"The One and Only Ivan" Literary Review

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What an adorable little book that helps portray the message of helping others to today's youth! Applegate's Newberry Winner, "The One And Only Ivan" is a must read for young adults and anyone who just wants to read a feel-good tale.

Ivan is a gorilla who has lived at a mall for almost 27 years (!) and has a fondness for creating art. He draws, paints and sculpts for his animal friends Stella, an elderly elephant and Bob, a stray mutt. On the day a young elephant Ruby shows up, Ivan is forever changed by the notion to protect this newly introduced innocence, and he strives to make a change. He is "the mighty silverback" and will stop at nothing to save Ruby from the horrors that come with exotic animal showmanship.

The most impressive feature of this title was the style in which it was told. It is very simplistic and quite easy to speed through. It is a page turner indeed. This is not a style that can be mastered easily, and Applegate succeeds tremendously at telling the story of Ivan's mission to save Ruby, the humor that exists between the animal friends, and the sadness that lies within the backstory of animal captivity. This author will punch you in the gut when she has Ivan tell you his history, as well as have you cheering for him during his endeavors. I don't think I've ever done this for a young adult book, besides for perhaps Katniss in "The Hunger Games".

As a teacher, it is lower on the lexile level for students to read, however I would assign it for them to analyze for major themes, as well as develop connections to nonfiction texts and events, much like the true Ivan in which Applegate based this fiction work off of. I enjoyed reading "The One and Only Ivan", and I believe that many young adult readers will as well.

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"The Graveyard Book" Literary Review

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first of my Young Adult lit class reads and I feel like I've stepped off on the right foot!

Bod has grown up in the graveyard ever since the murder of his parents. After his escape, he's adopted by a set of ghosts and a mysterious guardian, Silas, only prepared with the knowledge that a man named Jack is out to get him. Bod has many adventures with ghosts and ghouls within the graveyard, but also many encounters with the criminal minds of humans in the real world. Specifically, an outing with a new friend Scarlett may forever change his life in the ways that he thinks he knows it.

Having read "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman, (and not being a fan), I was hesitant to read this Newberry winner simply for the absurdity that could be served within the fantasy genre. However, considering that it was also a Newberry winner, may have persuaded me to go at it, instead of choosing another young adult pick for my class. Gaiman constructs a fantasy world that we encounter within our everyday reality; the graveyard is indeed mysterious and at some times, creepy. Furthermore, his character of Nobody "Bod" Owens, is a young boy who is trying to deal with the fact that all of his family members are the deceased visions that exist within this ghastly setting. Bod is still adventuresome, finding trouble behind unmarked headstones and down deep dark caverns, and all of these tales are somehow supposed to set him up for the encounter with Jack--the killer of his mortal family-- when he becomes older.

My issue was that the suspense was always building up to it and although it did indeed deliver us to a delightful twist, it dropped off after that. Bod does indeed encounter Jack, but after that, well.... I feel like it had much more potential with this plot line, considering that it was the one that I was focused the most on. My other, more subservient, issue is the context of using a graveyard as a setting. Yes, we have ghosts, crypts, headstones, ghouls, chants, and most of all--stories! I loved hearing all of the stories, but I felt like Gaiman kept trying to get them to all connect, even though they didn't actually or necessarily need to. Furthermore, what was the deal with Silas? His job is to Bod's guardian, yet he is neither mortal, nor dead. Help someone? Because this is the thing that I'm remembering most from this book and it shouldn't be.

As a teacher, I'd recommend this book to a young reader who was fascinated with the supernatural and wanted something different to read. It does have potential to be openly criticized by a large, younger audience, which is what I think Gaiman's goal was to achieve. Bod is a character who constantly asks how things work, and I feel like the readers will do the exact same.


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Teacher Read- "The Hot Zone"

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book because I will be teaching it this fall as the new non-fiction text in the English 9 curriculum, and since I'm such a good teacher, I better know what it was about. For this review, I will be analyzing "The Hot Zone" for its educational merits.

Preston investigates an outbreak of a dangerous viral strain- Ebola (Marburg, Ebola Zaire, Ebola Mayinga and Ebola Reston are all varieties that pose threats in this book), and its devastating effects on the human population from Kitum Cave in the heart of the African continent to a laboratory right outside Washington D.C and involves everyone from the amateur researchers to U.S. Army personnel who think they are familiar with disease....until this epidemic.

I specifically liked the narration of the text and how it is presented in smaller chapters that host individual stories that will eventually come together. We start the book off with Charles Monet who explores Kitum Cave, and Preston immediately twists the story and shows us how Monet is infected with a mysterious disease and dies in a short turn around rate. Preston also shows us the stories of doctors, nurses and other patients who interact with infected people and makes sure the reader understands the fear that comes with this unknown viral threat.

Folks- watch out for the vivid imagery! My male teenage students will love when Preston describes "organs turning into mush" and "blood dripping from every orifice", but if you're queasy, you may want to avoid it. I personally enjoyed the detail, but I also had to stop frequently and go wash my hands because I felt metaphorically contaminated.

NOTE- PETA representatives may object to this book as well, because the main reason the virus spreads is through human-primate interaction.... So how do you think the Army removes a threat of lethal virus when it's found in a laboratory of research monkeys? If you're clueless, whelp, read the book to find out.

I think that this will be a beneficial text to use in a classroom, especially in conjunction with science classes covering viruses and primates. I plan on having students investigating different diseases, writing persuasive essays about disease prevention and animal rights, as well as even doing a quarantine demonstration where the kids can do anything by sit in a chair for a certain amount of time....OH WAIT-they already do that! :)


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