National Poetry Month: Inside Out and Back Again

Black and White and Yellow and Red

The bell rings.
Everyone stands.
I stand.

They line up;
so do I.

Down a hall.
Turn left.
Take a tray.
Receive food.
Sit.

On one side
of the bright, noisy room,
light skin.
Other side,
dark skin.

Both laughing, chewing,
as if it never occured
to them
someone medium
would show up.

I don't know where to sit
any more than
I know how to eat
the pink sausage
snuggled inside bread
shaped like a corncob,
smeared with sauces
yellow and red.

I think
they are making fun
of the Vietnamese flag
until I remember
no one here likely knows
that flag's colors.

I put down the try
and wait
in the hallway.

September 2
11:30 am

Inside Out and Back Again Thanhha Lai

I got to review this wonderful novel for School Library Journal. My full review is here.

If you don't want to click over and read, here's the takeaway:

1. It got a star
2. Sensory language describing the rich smells and tastes of Vietnam draws readers in and contrasts with Hà's perceptions of bland American food, and the immediacy of the narrative will appeal to those who do not usually enjoy historical fiction


Book Provided by... School Library Journal, for review

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Poetry Friday: All the Broken Pieces

All The Broken Pieces Ann E. Burg

My fingers stumble
through the scales
and through
"The Gypsy Camp."

They crowd the keys,
landing in two spots
at the same time.
They slip, clank, and clash
into sounds
that aren't music.

Watch, Jeff says calmly
when my fingers freeze
in frustration.

Jeff's fingers are
bigger than mine,
but they know how
to touch each key,
one at a time.
They unlock each sound
separately.

Jeff doesn't make mistakes.

His fingers brush
across the piano keys
like branches
of the tamarind
swaying in the wind.
How can such big hands
make such quiet music?

Matt is the son of a Vietnamese mother and the American soldier who left and didn't come back. He was airlifted out of Saigon without his mother or brother and adopted by an American family.

In his experiences on his baseball team, where a teammate blames Matt for a brother's death, and in working with a Veterans group, Matt comes to face the life he lived before and now only lives in his nightmares.

I've often talked about how I feel many verse novels could be written in short paragraphs and that's true here, but the sparsity of the text because of the verse format helps show Matt's isolation and confusion.

Round up is over at A Wrung Sponge!

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Fallen Angels

Fallen Angels Walter Dean Myers

Richie Perry can't afford college. He's stuck in Harlem with few prospects, so he enlists and goes off the Vietnam.

There are the basics of a war story-- fear, fighting, death, trying to make sense of it all, trying to stay alive.

But there's more to this one-- Perry and most of his unit enlisted for their own reasons, which goes against the standard Vietnam story we tell of draftees. Perry and many in his unit are black. While race isn't a major factor of Myers's story, it's there and sometimes it's an issue.

Myers touches on several issues, never letting them pull focus, but also not merely brushing them off.

Overall, while it's a different perspective on a war story, it holds much in common with other war stories, because the weapons and geography and reasons may change, but there is great universality in battle, in death.

We watch Perry change over the course of his tour of duty. What I really wanted to know is what happens next. Not just to Perry, but to Pee-Wee and Johnson and the others. What world did they go back to and how did they readjust? Did serving in the army open doors to them that weren't open before?

A moving story that stays with the reader.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Year of the Historical/War Through the Generations: Shooting the Moon

Shooting the Moon Frances O'Roark Dowell

It's the summer before 8th grade. Jamie's two best friends have both moved away (which happens a lot when you live on an army base. Either they're moving, or you are) and her older brother has just shipped out to Vietnam.

Jamie and her brother have always loved playing war and she's disappointed when his letters home aren't about the smells and sights of battle. But, with every letter, he sends Jamie a roll of film to develop. Jamie's days are spent volunteering at the rec center, playing gin rummy with Private Hollister, and developing film. Through TJ's photos, she sees a reality of war that she never expected and discovers new talents within herself.

This is a short, slight book. It's quiet, but it stays with you. Not a lot happens. It's summer, Jamie plays cards and develops film. She flashes back to when her brother enlisted up until the day he shipped out. Despite the lack of plot, we see a lot of growth in Jamie, and how she views the her father, her brother, the army, and war.

This is the hardcover cover, which I like better, which the picture of the moon on it, but I think that the paperback cover (above) has more kid appeal and captures more of the book's spirit, with the little green army men. The "Shooting the Moon" of the title refers to TJ's habit of taking pictures of the moon, both at home before he ships out, but also in Vietnam.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Nonfiction Monday: Two Biographies

For today's Nonfiction reviews, I give you two amazing biographies that were both Cybil nominations this year...

Leaving Glorytown: One Boy's Struggle Under Castro Eduardo F. Calcines

In January, 1959, Eduardo is only 3, but he remembers the coming of The Voice. Suddenly, The Voice is everywhere, being broadcast for hours from every radio, speakers rigged up outside. Everyone's listening to The Voice. Then, the soldiers are on every corner. As a 3-year-old, he's first fascinated by them, but then all the adults are short tempered and there's less to eat.

As he grows up in Castro's Cuba, Eduardo gets used to watching what you say, used to hunger, used to his father being gone at labor camp (for daring to apply for an exit visa), used to the jealousy as other families get their visa and his family is still stuck. They're on a deadline for the visa. When Eduardo turns 15, he'll be drafted into the army, so once he hits 14.5, his family's no longer eligible and they'll have to stay.

We don't get enough memoirs out of Cuba, especially for teens. This one is hard to put down, as we watch the situation grow worse and worse. Unlike other communist memoirs, this one's more chilling because while Mao and Lenin and the other revolutionaries are dead, Castro isn't and the situation in Cuba has only grown worse. Not only is is a good read, it's an important one.

Book provided by... my local library

Rock 'n' Roll Soldier: A Memoir Dean Ellis Kohler with Susan VanHecke

After graduating from high school in 1965 Dean Kohler's rock band landed a record deal and then he was drafted into the US Army. The deal got dropped when Kohler shipped out to Vietnam, serving as an MP in Qui Nhon, which was a port used to off-load supplies going deeper in country. Despite the fear and death and shooting, Kohler knows how lucky he is to not be on the front lines in the jungle, to not be in the Deep Serious. Things also take a better turn when his commanding officer orders him to form a rock band. Kohler's band is soon traveling the area, playing shows for soldiers who are in the thick of things. Kohler has to balance the two sides of himself, is he a musician? Or a soldier? I deeply appreciated that there are two chapters and a epilogue that take place after he returns home. While not the focus of the book, Kohler does talk about returning home and trying to decide what to do next. Re-entry is a dimension that is often sadly left out of war stories.

One thing that's interesting for me (coming from a perspective of one who has done quite a bit of cultural and academic study of the Vietnam War) is that it takes place mainly in 1967 (1966 was spent in basic training), which was when the armchair historian tends to think things were just starting to heat up. Kohler is home before the Tet offensive. This is most obvious in the music. This is, after all, a book about a rock band. They do several covers, but when I (and, I think, many people) think 1960s, Vietnam, and Music, I tend to think of music from the late 60s, early 70s. Songs like "Fortunate Son" (thanks Forrest Gump) "White Rabbit" or "Purple Haze." Kohler's band is playing current hits-- "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" "Wipe Out" "Louie, Louie" "Louie, Louie" and "Twist and Shout." I'm thinking Crosby, Stills, and Nash, but Kohler's playing music by The Hollies.

But, in the end, that just adds to the punch of the book. So much of our focus is on the later, post-Tet part of the war. We don't pay attention the what happened before and when we do, well, it was before things got bad. Even though Kohler isn't on the front lines, this is still a book about a war and forces us to re-look at our assumptions about it. While I do think older teens will enjoy this book immensely, I wonder if they'll have that same perspective. On the other hand, if we remind them from the beginning that there was a war before 1968, that can't be a bad thing.

Book Provided by... my local library

Round-Up is over at Playing By the Book

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.