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!
