Recap CLAY and ERAGON...

In a nut shell we thought CLAY by David Almond "creepy". Some of us thought it was "creepy" good while others of us thought it was "creepy" bad. For those of us who didn't care for the book the main issue was the "bad child". In the end, we discussed who/what Clay really was - was he real? magic? or simply an alter ego to express what happen? Was the book using magic realism or playing on hypnotic games?

If you are expecting another SKELLIG this may be a bit disappointing. There's not really the warm sense that the magic of SKELLIG created in this tale. It's more along the lines of a Stephen King type book. As a matter of fact, if you enjoy Stephen King you will probably enjoy this book.

ERAGON by Christopher Paolini, on the other hand, was more widely well-liked by those who had read it. A typical hero journey, but with many twists and turns to keep the adventure exciting for any reader. Characters are well developed and well-used. For example, Brom's character tends to slow the learning of Eragon and keeps the story from moving too quickly. What more could you want, legends, dragons and a young adult who is key in saving his world!

ALA announces Teen's Top Ten 2007...

Making the list:

1. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer (Hachette Book Group USA/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2006).
   
2. Just Listen by Sarah Dessen (Viking Children's Books, 2006)
   
3. How to Ruin a Summer Vacation by Simone Elkeles (Flux, 2006).
   
4. Maximum Ride: School's Out - Forever by James Patterson (Hachette Book Group USA/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2006).
   
5. Firegirl by Tony Abbott (Hachette Book Group USA/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2006).
   
6. All Hallows Eve (13 Stories) by Vivian Vande Velde (Harcourt, 2006).
   
7. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer (Harcourt, 2006).
   
8. River Secrets by Shannon Hale (Bloomsbury, 2006).
   
9. Bad Kitty by Michele Jaffe (HarperCollins, 2006).
   
10. Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks (Chicken House, 2006).

The entire news release from ala can be read at http://www.ala.org/ala/pressreleases2007/october2007/newmoon07.htm

Interesting that the number one book picked is the sequel to TWILIGHT which our group all enjoyed! Of course, to complete the series one should continue on with ECLIPSE after NEW MOON.

Any of the other ones sound good for future book club choices?

CC & Me...

Here's the photo that I mentioned in the comments section of STAYING FAT FOR SARAH BYRNES.

I don't know who actually took the photo or what credit I should give, but I thank whomever it was that took it as I am actually in it! The original photo (without my notation) can be viewed at http://www.chriscrutcher.com/content/blogcategory/117/96/

Just thought I'd share.

What we've read so far (revisited & updated)...

What we've read so far...

2007
Jan. - Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare & Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
Feb. - Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Mar. - The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Apr. - Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David
Levithan
May - An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
June/July - Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
August - Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac
September - Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher

2006
June - Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson
July - Hoot by Carl Hiassen
Aug - Luna by Julie Anne Peters
Sept. - Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Oct. - Hitler Youth by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Nov. - Blankets by Craig Thompson
Dec. - NO MEETING

Recap of STAYING FAT FOR SARAH BYRNES

In honor of Banned Book Week we read Staying fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher. Chris Crutcher is an author that has dealt with censorship and challenges with nearly all of his books. Writing realistic fiction, Crutcher bases many of his characters' experiences on real life scenarios that he has seen, but many adults find hard to believe. Our group had a good discussion of the book led by Heather. Some questions that we pondered were:
Did Lemry as a teacher overstep her bounds? The answer from our group was quite definitely "yes", but we also felt that she did the right thing and took the responsibility for her actions.
Did the timeshift in the story work or not? We felt that the timeshift built up the sense of how long Sarah Byrnes had lived in her environments and a it gave a sense of crescendo by not revealing too much at a time. We actually discussed how a lineal timeline would could have bogged the story down too much.
Who do you think it the prime audience for this book? High school for sure. This is one book we read that we felt was not on the younger end of the ya spectrum.
How did you feel about the characters? Out of all the characters, Jody was the one that several folks felt was a bit too contrived. Would someone really just blurt out the whole abortion issue right in class? Most of us saw it coming in the story line, but perhaps that's because of us all being adults. Teens may have an easier time seeing Jody as a full grown character. Some of us felt she may be a little too shallow to be 100% believable.
Our favorite parts? 1. Mark getting up and facing his classmates and Jody. We felt this was an important piece as it lets the ready sense that he'll really be ok. 2. Ellerby simply asks "Can I use the phone?" and then does. We loved the sensibility and the strength when faced by an intimidating situation. 3. We all cheered the vigilante heroism of Carver although we all understood the seriousness in reality of doing something like that. 4. Overall, we enjoyed the transformation of Eric from the grade school, over-weight scaredy-cat to an internally stong young adult who would "rather have Sarah Byrnes alive and not be my friend" than backing down from doing something about the situation.

Want to know more about Chris Crutcher? Check out his website at
http://www.chriscrutcher.com/

October's book will be Clay by David Almond.

We had interest in switching our November book and a request for something with dragons so our new November book will by Eragon by Christopher Paolini.

Did I miss something that you want to share about Sarah Byrnes? Members, please post your comments!

Recap of CODE TALKER

Okay, folks, we had a very interesting, intense conversation about this book, but after a glass of wine and having been on vacation, I let my secretarial duties slide a little. I pretty much just enjoyed the conversation and didn't really take any notes. However, I know we were all pretty compelled at this story and amazed at how well Joseph Bruchac weaved fictional characters into historical events. It was easy to forget that this was fiction and not a memoir. This book was intense from the Indian Mission School experience to the battle of Okinawa. Eye opening in both areas that few of us knew much about - the Indian Mission Schools and the Pacific side of WWII.

Several expressed interest in seeing this required reading in curriculums. The book offers a selected bibliography at the end and we added a couple others:

Archuleta, Margaret L. Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Experiences. Phoenix, AZ: Heard Museum, 2000.

Nerburn, Kent. Neither Wolf Nor Dog. California: New World Library, 2002.

Know any other good resources? Have comments? Let's hear the from the rest of our group - especially if you missed the meeting but read the book. Cheers!

Discussion Questions for BOY MEETS BOY

Thanks to Leah for putting these together.

Boy Meets Boy Discussion Questions:

1. Does this story remind you of your first love?

2. How are gay relationships similar to or different than straight relationships in the story?

3. Infinite Darlene is different than any other character in the books, and in young adult writing. How did you react to her?

4. How successful did you find the book in imagining a reality for teens in which queerness is normal? How important is it to do this?

5. Does this book do a good job of portraying a range of sexual orientations?

6. Is this text written more for cultural insiders (queer teens) or cultural outsiders (anyone else)? What made you think this?

7. Is sexual orientation seen as innate in this book? Is it positive or negative? Fixed or fluid?

8. Does this book do a good job of representing diversity outside of sexual orientation?

9. Does this book have something to offer straight teens?

Upcoming books...

Here's the rest of summer and fall book reading schedule for our club. Thought it might be good just to have it posted for easy reminders.

August book: Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two by Joseph Bruchac

September book: Staying Fat for Sarah Byrns by Chris Crutcher (in honor of banned book week at the end of September - Crutcher is a frequently challenged author and a huge proponent of Freedom to Read.)

October book: Clay by David Almond (one line sentence to describe it... The author sets a Frankenstein monster story in a small, contemporary English town. Guess what we're honoring this month? Trick or treat anyone?!)

November book: Anahita's Woven Riddle by Megan Nattal Sayres

December will be a break - no book

January book(s): American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang AND Cuba 15 by Nancy Osa. (We're doing two this month to make up for our December hiatus.)

June/July Meeting Recap of BOY MEETS BOY

We finally had our June meeting in July due to schedule conflicts and class demands, but it was worth the wait. In honor of Pride Month (June) we had selected Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan. This is a book that we all felt was an important book for any teen.

Although the main character has known that he was gay since kindergarten and was the first openly-gay third-grade class president and has a truly accepting family, many of the other characters have deeper struggles. Paul, our main character, does have the one thing that is new to him, his first serious feelings for a boy named Noah. What starts out seeming a little too "perfect world" ends up being an uplifting and fun story with some very real moments in the book. One of the thoughts about the "too ideal" beginning was that the perspective of the book is told from Paul's perspective and for Paul, up until he meets Noah, things have been very easy and ideal. Even the character of Infinite Darlene, who seems over the top and in no way a possibility, develops into a real person, although a few of us still had a hard time wrapping our heads around her being both the Homecoming Queen AND Quarterback since we wondered just what kind of a body it would take to be both. The most grown up perspective comes from Tony who needs a huge amount of support from his friends but also needs to have a super amount of inner strength to deal with his parents, who don't accept him being gay but do really love him. His understanding of his parents actually gives him the courage he needs and the parents are not portrayed as terrible people. Kyle is probably the most confused of the characters and the one thing that seems to capture the essence of anyone coming to terms with their sexuality when they realize that they may not fall conveniently into a socially-acceptable norm.

The book deals with some very universal truths that anyone can understand and connect with... mainly, "The Crush". Who hasn't had a crush on someone? Who hasn't wanted to be with someone or been with someone that made their mind and heart race? Especially during the teen years? We all connected with this book on that issue alone.

Older teens may find it a bit to young for their reading level, but the enjoyment of a quick read is still worth offering this book on a reading list. Plus it remains one of the stronger GLBT books out there with a positive outlook. There is a lot to consider and think about within the mere 185 pages of this book!

Our leader for our book discussion actually developed a wonderful set of discussion questions that we hope to post soon.

Ok, fellow bookclub members... that's my wrap on the book. Have anything else to add? Please do! See you at the next meeting...

Next book: Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two by Joseph Bruchac

What bloggers need to know...

Worried about blogging... Here's a very helpful article.
http://www.avivadirectory.com/blogger-law/

By the way - the link above is a "deep" link, but I in no way have anything to do with the content at this site. See point number two of the article for why I'm making this perfectly clear that the article is not part of our site and is indeed operated by another group altogether! You can check out the rest of their website at http://www.avivadirectory.com

Enjoy and Happy Blogging.

Celebrate! Good times!...

We celebrated some of our members graduating from CSC with their new MLIS this past May!

Congrats, Ladies! We're all very proud!

Abundance of Katharines by John Green...

We had a good meeting the other night. Those who attended all enjoyed the book greatly. We discussed the theme of "mattering" and "not doing". Interestingly, we talked about how "mattering" wasn't just a teen-angst issue, but that many people struggle with the concept well into adulthood. "Not doing" was the other primary theme we saw. All three main characters were in some way "not doing" something. We all really liked Hassan's character. Some of the best "throw away lines" come from his character. Catch phrases and one liners that spoke a truth without dwelling on it caught our attention. Such as Green's comment when Colin discusses wanting to like coffee and that Katharine "liked her coffee the way she liked her boyfriends... bitter". We felt the characters were treated respectfully, but not necessarily reverently. Footnotes were an added part of the story. People felt that they went easily into the story and didn't pull you away from the storyline. We all really liked that the core relationships in the books really focused on friendship rather than romance (even though there is some of that too). We felt this book was emotionally real. We also liked the fact that the book basically begins and ends with a road trip. The one disappointment to the book we decided was the cover. It either gives the impression of a self-help book or a chic lit book, of which it is neither.

Group members - Did you miss our meeting? Did I miss something you want to include? Please add your comments to this post.

Recap of NICK & NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST

This recap is from Kate P. after the group discussion on April 30. More comments to this post? Please add.

A good and interesting light read for older teens; we universally liked the romance aspects of the story. We thought it would be a good audio presentation or even a stage presentation to get the full effect of the numerous songs. Check out I-tunes and the Nick and Norah website for some song lists!

The pacing was frenetic in keeping with the punk/club scene and we debated the positive and negative aspects of the intriguing 2-author writing. In the beginning the voices of Nick and Norah were quite separate, then they blended as the story unfolded: a bit too blended for most of us. We also discussed the story taking place in one (albeit long) night and felt overall that it could have been drawn out more for realism.

All in all, not an overly "discussable" book but a good one~ not great, but good.

Recap of January 2007 meeting...

In which we read Witch of Blackbird Pond and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. Feel free to post your own comments about these books to this posting.

Sent January 2007:
We had a cozy little meeting last night with Kate, Leah, Camille & Jenn T. sitting around the fireplace and sipping hot cider and eating cornbread and other snackies. Thanks to Camille for hosting and Kate & Leah for braving the cold to join us. As usual we had a good discussion of the books and felt that both had some interesting similarities with themes - prejudice, intolerance, family. An interesting theme that came up for Roll of Thunder was Quiet. We also discussed how these books, though written as historical fiction, really related to issues that were current at the time they were written: McCarthyism vs. witch trials; Civil Rights vs. Post-Slavery/Depression era issues.

Recap of TWILIGHT...

Here's the recap of Twilight by Stephenie Meyer after our group discussion. Again, feel free to add your own comment to this post.

Sent in February 2007:
We had a nice meeting last night and decided that we aren't real sure precisely why we liked this book (Twilight) as much as we did, except that we all seemed to have a "thing" for vampires. Overall we thought it was well written and engaging although there were a few plot devices that didn't work quite as well as we thought they should. Anyone else have issues with the whole "venomnous" fangs being a little too rattlesnake bite-like?! As, I believe, Kate mentioned in one of her e-mails prior to last night's meeting, not necessarily literary merit winner, but a fun and captivating story of young love and a little occult thrown in the mix.

Recap of HOOT

Here's the recap I shared after our group met to discuss the book Hoot by Carl Hiassen. Feel free to add your own personal comments about the book to this post!

Sent back in July 2006:
We had a nice discussion. In general we felt it was an "ok" book. Not as rivoting compared to our first one nor our next one either, but it was a good fun summer read. We thought some of the websites stretched the ability to really pair with curriculem outside of perhaps social studies/environmental studies and even then we thought there were probably stronger books on such issues. We liked the message of kids finding a cause and standing up and doing something that they believe in. We liked the relationship between Roy and his family. We thought the other characters were a bit caricatured, but one of the members added that even his adult books tend to do that. Not one that we felt we'd rave about, but perhaps recommend in the right circumstances as a librarian or parent for some fun reading. We did think it was nice to read a book that would be interesting to boys without it being too sport heavy or macho-centric.

What we've read so far...

2006
June - Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson
July - Hoot by Carl Hiassen
Aug - Luna by Julie Anne Peters
Sept. - Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Oct. - Hitler Youth by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Nov. - Blankets by Craig Thompson
Dec. - NO MEETING

2007
Jan. - Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare & Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
Feb. - Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Mar. - The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Apr. - Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David
Levithan
May - An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

Original book suggestions...

Here's what was on our original list... interesting to see where we've been and what we're doing now!

Previous (I've taken off the current ones that we have/are reading):
- Flush -- Carl Hiaasen (YALSA best of 2006)
- Eragon -- Christopher Paolini
- The Lightning Thief -- Rick Riordan (YALSA best of 2006)
- Counting Coup --Larry Colton (Nonfiction)
- Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida -- Victor Martinez
- The Tequila Worm -- Viola Canales (Pura Belpre Medal book)
- Day of Tears -- Julius Lester
- Invisible -- Pete Hautman (we said books by earlier, but this is the one I'm most curious about as I've read others, but I'm open to rereading Godless or Sweet Blood too)
- Books by E.R. Frank
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time -- Mark Haddon
- Esperanza Rising -- Pam Munoz Ryan
- Criss Cross -- Lynne Rae Perkins (Won this year's Newberry)
- The Arm -- Nancy Farmer (Sci Fi)
- Books by Philip Pullman
- Twilight--Stephanie Meyer (YALSA best of 2006)
- The Game of Sunken Place -- M.T. Anderson

More Book Ideas

Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The most concise yet interesting description of the book from bordersstores.com:

It's just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery . . .

Set during World War II in Germany , Markus Zusak's groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich . Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can't resist -- books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau .

This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.

Some others from my Borders newsletters that sounded interesting:

Golden by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (written when she was 19)

Bras & Broomsticks by Sarah Mlynowski (perhaps a bit of light reading if needed)

Burned by Ellen Hopkins (not sure, but has the possibility to be a �female� Chocolate Wars)

Hush by Jacquline Woodson (a current best seller about a relocated family)

Others that have peaked my curiosity from other lists/libraries:

Cuba 15 by Nancy Osa (A Pura Belpr� Honor Book about a girl whose both Cuban and Polish in ancestry, but very much American and how she deals with expectations of her family and her own)

Black, White & Jewish: Autobiography of a shifting self by Rebecca Walker

From Publishers Weekly: The daughter of famed African American writer Alice Walker and liberal Jewish lawyer Mel Leventhal brings a frank, spare style and detail-rich memories the this compelling contribution to the growing subgenre of memoirs by biracial authors about life in a race-obsessed society. Walker examines her early years in Mississippi as the loved, pampered child of parents active in the Civil Rights movement in the bloody heart of the segregated South. Torn apart by the demands of their separate careers, her parents' union eventually lost steam and failed, leaving Walker to shuttle back and forth across country to spend time with them both. Deeply analytical and reflective, she assumes the resonant voices of an inquisitive child, a highly sensitive teen and finally a young woman who is confronted with the harsh color prejudices of her friends, teachers and families-both black and Jewish-and who tires desperately to make sense of rigid cultural boundaries for which she was never fully prepared by her parents.(non-fiction, biography � sub-genre: autobiography)

Happy Birthday Bookclub!

Readers Of Young Adult Literature (ROYAL) bookclub started with a conversation in the parking lot of the College of St. Catherine between Jennifer B., Kim S. & Jenn T.

We decided to keep things relatively informal and invited folks we thought would enjoy the club. That was a year ago April! That's right... we are 1 YEARS OLD! Happy Birthday!

Welcome R.O.Y.A.Lty members...

Here we can blog about our thoughts on books - both for our group or ones we're reading on our own and highly recommend- as well as meeting updates and recaps. I will be "back-blogging" a bit to provide a little more information about our group and some of our past meeting recaps.