Your Daily Dose of WTF?

Today's Daily Does of WTF is big enough to last a lifetime.

So... remember Republic, MO? Where they banned Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel and Twenty Boy Summer? Where Speak was accused of being soft-core porn? (But luckily the Vonnegut Memorial Library is sending Republic students copies of Slaughterhouse Five.

Well... in 2009 a female middle school student accused a fellow student of rape. The school district made her write a letter of apology to the guy who raped her. Made her hand-deliver it, and then kicked her out for the rest of the year.

The next year, when she returned, her mother asked for special protection. Nope. She still had to take classes with the guy who raped her. So he raped her again. In the school library. And plead guilty to the charges, so was CONVICTED OF THE CRIME.

Let me repeat that-- HE ADMITTED HE RAPED HER. HE IS A CONVICTED RAPIST FOR THIS CRIME.

So, the girl sues the school. The school says the lawsuit if "frivolous".

I just... what? I mean, really, WHAT THE FUCK?

Honestly, the DA should be looking at criminal charges against the school district.

Hat tip to Pam for pointing this out to me.

Jezebel article about all this.
Springfield News-Leader article about this.
News-Leader article about the book banning.


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Body of Christopher Creed staying in schools!

I haven't read The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci so I can't really comment on content and how good it is. (But it is a Printz Honor, so that counts for something.)

It's being used in the Appleton (Wisconsin) Public School District as required reading in 9th grade. After reading it, the students talk about gossip and bullying and the consequences.

It's been challenged.

The reconsideration committee (which is always convened, but hasn't had to meet since 1984!) says to keep it. The superintendent has the final say and we'll see what he says, but I'm hoping he keeps it.

And not just because censorship is bad and un-American.

But because I used to be a 9th grader in Appleton public schools. I was in honors English and the way my hazy memory works, we read several short stories and poems, and we had to read a novel of our choice every quarter and write a really long book report on it. We spent a lot of time on grammar and the subtleties of language, connotation and denotation, and word choice. It drove me batty at the time but is actually one of the more useful things I learned in school.

We only read 1 novel-length book as a class the entire year. We only read this book because all 9th graders were required to read it, followed by a mandatory unit on suicide and why we shouldn't do it.

The book was the super-relevant and relate-able Romeo and Juliet. Now I'm a nerd and was in honors English so I didn't mind. (I had also already read it a few times.) It's a good classic that's easy to introduce at that age and if you're college-prep honors track, I think a grounding the classics is good. Many of the girls found it one of the more enjoyable "school books" we had to read. I was just happy because we were reading something and not deconstructing the differences between glitter, flash, and sparkle. Or having pop quizzes where we had to write down ALL the prepositions in 3 minutes. Even then, we spent most of the unit analyzing meter. What I remember most is realizing that Romeo and Juliet are both really, really annoying characters who make horrible life decisions.

BUT. It wasn't really relevant. None of us connected to it on a personal level. We all saw it as an easy way to work in a mandatory unit on suicide with a book that we should all read. We saw it as a nice-try-but-kinda-stupid gimmick.

And I bet today's 9th graders feel that The Body of Christopher Creed being tied to units on bullying is also gimmicky. But I also bet it's a book they connect to much more deeply and because of that, no matter how gimmicky, the tie-in lesson will have more impact and stay with them much longer.

And, with current issues we have with bullying and suicide and the current "It Gets Better" campaign* those are lessons we need to be keeping in schools in every form that we can.


*And to all my younger readers-- IT DOES GET BETTER. Mama always said that maybe if we stopped telling students that high school would be the best years of their lives, we'd cut the teen suicide rate drastically. I agree. My high school experience was pretty good, actually, all things considering, and those years are still some of the worst in my life.


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.

Book Unbanned

We don't often hear about this, especially in countries where books are seriously banned country-wide.

Well, Fei Du by Jia Pingwa is now available again in China. 13 years after publication, it's been unbanned!

I can't find an English translation of it, although Jia's Turbulence is available in English.

Filling in the Gaps with Banned Books

Two of the banned books I read for the banned book challenge are also on my Fill in the Gaps list. And, one was on the list of doom, and one was one of Anita Silvey's 100 Best Books for Children: A Parent's Guide to Making the Right Choices for Your Young Reader, Toddler to Preteen.

I do love it when books count for multiple challenges!

Whale Talk Chris Crutcher

Ok, first things first. All the editions of this book I've seen feature a white guy, running. WHY?! The book is about a swim team, and narrated by a black/Japanese/white guy.

Anyway, TJ is adopted and has some anger issues and goes to a school where athletics are everything and the letter jacket is the holy grail. Various coaches are always on him to use his full potential to help bring glory to the school and join a team, but TJ's having none of it. Then, he decides to form a swim team, which gives all the misfits he can find a chance to earn their own letter jacket and stick it to the system that's been making their school lives hell.

I did not love this one nearly as much as I was told I would. I mean, it was good, but I just didn't click with it. Mainly, I wasn't a huge fan of TJ, and the story is entirely in his voice. He's just... too good. His main problem is that he doesn't like jerks in authority positions (which makes him even better to a teen audience!) and his anger issues (but he only gets mad at the bad guys, and only lashes out at people we see are bad people and deserve it, so it's totally ok!) His self-righteousness annoyed me.

But, I lettered in academics and choir (yes, seriously) so what do I know?

Julie of the Wolves Jean Craighead George

My mother has been trying to get me to read this one since I was 10. I've been resisting for a number of years now for two main reasons.

I really, really disliked the other Jean Craighead George book I've read, My Side of the Mountain.

I don't like survival stories in general. They're just not my thing.

But, I like my mom, and it's only of Silvey's 100 Best, so I thought I'd read it. Plus, it's often banned, so it fit with the challenge.

Miyax is 13 and has run away from her husband in Barrow, Alaska and is trying to get to Point Hope, where she can get a ship to San Fransisco, where she can go live with her penpal. She quickly gets lost on the North Slope and observes, then is adopted by, a wolf pack in order to survive. Along the way there's lots of information about wolf behavior (George spent lots of time observing wolves) and Miyax is torn between her traditional Native culture and the more modern, culture of the cities and lower 48 states.

First off, after reading this, I Google Maps'ed these cities to see where they are. HOLY CRAP! I mean, Barrow's up on the top of Alaska. Her journey is insane.

Anyway, I'm always wary of books written by outsiders to the culture they're writing about. George seems to have done a good job (but uses the word Eskimo instead of Inuit.) The issues of being torn between two cultures is good, but Miyax's view by the end of the book is very black-and-white. There's no gray areas, which bug me, but does match with a 13-year-old view's of the world. Although, the title is a blend of the cultures, as Julie is Miyax's English name, but her time with the wolves is spent in traditional clothing and living the traditional lifestyle she learned from her father.

But, when it boils down to it, Jennie doesn't like survival stories. I loved the descriptions of the landscape of the North Slope, but it was the flashback scenes of Miyax's life up until she ran away that I enjoyed.

Banned Books!

Story of my life: Last night, I finally broke down and purchased Thriller so I could dance around in my kitchen to real music instead of me just singing the bits and pieces I remembered. (Also, that album is AWESOME. It was the best "time to mop the store" music EVER when I worked at the co-op grocery store.) Anyway, I was going back and forth because it's the end of the month and so I had already spent all of my "fun money" budget with a few too many trips to the bookstore this month. And, of course, today I get a gift certificate to Amazon. Face, meet palm.

In other news, I have AWESOME "problems." Really, life is pretty good right now. The sun's even out. Now all I have to do is decide what to eat for dinner tonight.

So, tomorrow I'm finishing up the Banned Book Challenge. Hopefully. There is some mad-dash-to-the-finish-line reading going on over here.

Anyway, in light of that, I thought I'd review some of the banned books I've read for the challenge this week. Sound good? Good.

I already reviewed Speak which is banned because apparently we can't talk about rape in books, even when it never gets described.

Also, for this challenge, I reread Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, because I haven't really been getting into anything I've read lately, so I thought I'd go to something I knew I'd love. Also, this time, I actually read Harry Potter in the Philosopher's Stone. Anyway, it's banned, because Harry and his friends do magic, which is considered by some to be Satanic.

I also read ttyl Lauren Myracle

This book is told entirely in Instant Message, entirely in chat speak. If you're not used to talking to teenage girls online, gird your loins.

Maddie, Angela, and Zoe are best friends as they head into their sophomore year of high school. Maddie's preoccupied with getting the popular girls to like her, Angela falls too hard and too fast for the wrong guy, and something is just not right with Zoe's relationship to her English teacher.

This one gets banned because there is talk about sex, drinking, and shaving your pubes when wearing a bathing suit. Also, I suspect there is issue with the fact that the icky teacher uses church as an excuse to get icky with Zoe. I have also seen a few complaints (mainly in online reviews) that the chat speak is destroying the English language.

Chat speak annoys the hell out of me, but it did lend authenticity to the character's voices. Although, I kinda got the feeling that Zoe was the type of girl to spell her words out and use capitalization, but she didn't.

Overall, I did really enjoy this book. The friendship of the three girls is real and zapped me right back to high school. Many of the decisions they make were STOOOOOOOPID, but guess what kids-- teens aren't know for their awesome decision making skills. It was funny and a quick read. I don't have an overwhelming desire to read the rest of the series (mainly because of the chat speak) but I can see why teens love this one. They should.

Also, at one point, Zoe (I think) mentions thumbprint cookies. I thought about those for the rest of the book (I read it in one sitting) and then had to go make some. But now they're gone.

Gossip Girl

I'm giving away the banned book of your choice--see the bottom of this post for details.

I figured that this week all my reviews will be related to Banned Books Week.

I was never interested in reading Gossip Girl, but when it appeared on ALA's Top Ten Most Banned Books list, I had to see what all the fuss was about. I immediately fell in love with the series. (It's banned because there is sex, drinking, and lots of swearing. These books are populated with not-nice people.)

WARNING: I'm reviewing series books so there will be spoilers for the previous books in the series--it's the nature of the beast.

I really really enjoyed the first 6 books in this series. I did not like the last 6. Well, I guess I didn't like the last 5 and kinda liked the prequel. Sadly, I was too attached to the characters, so I had to keep reading to find out how everything would eventually go down.

There is a marked decline in quality of the books in later half of the series, which spend a lot of time setting up the spin-off series, and then things really get bad in the last two titles, when the ghost writer takes over.

Nobody Does It Better

Blair and Nate spend all their time having sex. Randomly, Blair moves in with Vanessa (WTF?!) Jenny's about to get kicked out of Constance Billiard for hanging out with rockstars and is talking Rufus into boarding school (Hello, we have a new series, The It Girl please buy it!).

Jenny's turned into this major bad girl, which I don't like, because she doesn't even do it well. Dan's gone completely off the deep end in a way I don't understand and... I mean, really? Such a decline! I really thought this was the book where the ghost writer takes over.

Nothing Can Keep Us Together

Graduation Day! Blair's moved into the Yale Club and on with her love life. Nate's just always weeping and Dan just gets weirder. And, OF COURSE they're doing a remake of Breakfast at Tiffany's. Uh-huh. But it is the graduation party to end all graduation parties.

Also, you know things are bad when even I know that your brand-name dropping is messed up. There's a scene where Jenny and Elise are in the lower school bathroom and everything is Hello Kitty, because one of the parents happens to own Hello Kitty. Except, where you could own Sanrio, I don't think you can actually own Hello Kitty.

Also, all anyone ever talks about is how big Jenny's boobs are. As such, there is no way she would be able to wear tops from Anthropologie. Trust me--those clothes are not made for the well-endowed.

Only In Your Dreams

Blair's off to London, where she shops like a fiend. Serena's filming her movie and living Audrey Hepburn's life, all the while hoping to seduce her costar. Meanwhile, Dan has discovered yoga and Vanessa is homeless... and a nanny? And Nate's picked up some skanky town girl in the Hamptons. Hello Summer Vacation!

Would I Lie To You

Everyone's in the Hamptons for the summer, including some sketchy Eastern European Blair and Serena look-alikes. Ok, Dan's not in the Hamptons, but he got drunk and made out with a guy, so he's obviously gay. Yes, obviously. Um...

This is the book where the ghost writer picks up and all the characters get even more weird. Dan, especially, gets really out of character. Also, general quality has gone down as well--typos all over the place!

Don't You Forget About Me

This is the final goodbye. But Serena loves Nate! And Nate loves Blair! And Serena! And given that he ran away, he's not going to Yale because coach is withholding his diploma. And Blair's parents are wackier than ever which leads to the perfect set-up for a brand-new series they want you to read, The Carlyles. But... there's a going away party to end all going away parties... and the curtain falls as our characters scatter across the Ivy League.

It Had to Be You

Cecily von Ziegesar came back to write this prequel and the writing quality is definitely back up there with the earlier volumes of the series but... I still had some problems with it. This takes place the winter, spring, and summer before Serena goes off to boarding school.

Parts are really puke-inducing--oh look! Here's Nate getting stoned for the first time, here's Blair watching Breakfast at Tiffany's for the first time, here's Serena doing her first shot, Dan smoking his first cigarette, Jenny wishing she had boobs, Vanessa shaving her head...

You knew all that was coming BUT here's the big thing...

Serena loves Nate. And almost gets with Nate, but Blair also likes Nate and her life is falling apart (did you know her dad was gay? Because Blair didn't!) and so Serena lets Blair have him and selflessly sits in silent anguish...

First off, if Serena knows she loves Nate NOW, then why is it such a huge revelation when she realizes it two years later? Also, this changes everything in the regular series. Knowing Serena has been consciously lusting after Nate all this time? Really? I feel like I almost have to go back and reread the series with that lens. UGH.

Also, while the book takes place two years before the first Gossip Girl, they forgot to actually set it in that time. The first book came out in 2002, so this book should be taking place in 2000. But... they're watching Marie Antoinette, which came out in 2006.

Usually the series was much better about these details. sigh

Ok, Book Give Away Details:

To celebrate our right to read, I'm giving away banned books. All you have to do is check out the banned book lists on my sidebar and email me (kidsilkhaze at yahoo dot com) with your choice of book (if it's a series, you can choose any volume in the series). If you blog about the contest and email me the link, I'll give you an extra entry. Multiple winners will be selected. The contest ends on midnight on Sunday and is open world wide. GO READ!

Banned Book Give-Away

It's Banned Books Week!

To mourn the loss or attempted theft of intellectual freedom and to celebrate the right to read, I'm holding a contest.

Take a look at my side bar at the Banned Books lists. Pick any book listed and email me your choice: kidsilkhaze at yahoo dot com. Blog about the contest and email me the link, get another entry. Multiple winners will be selected!

Now! Go celebrate your right to read!

Banned Books

So many banned books, I had to create a new list. :( Link is on the side bar.

More Winners and the like

Now Reading: Un Lun Dun
Just Finished: The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, The Brothers Grimm: Two Lives, One Legacy, The Talented Clementine,Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages was this year's winner for the Scott O'Dell prize for historical fiction.

Dewey is a weird kid-- there's something wrong with her leg that makes her limp and she spends all of her time making gadgets and fiddling with stuff. Her dad is working on some top secret project that is going to help win the war and when her grandmother dies, she goes off to live with him.

Dewey didn't realize how top secret this project was. She didn't realize she was moving to a place that didn't officially exist... All she knew was everyone was living out in the desert working on the gadget. The gadget would win the war. The gadget would make everything better.

Suze has been living at Los Alamos for awhile when Dewey moves there-- Suze is a bit awkward and bossy and both of her parents are working on the project-- her mom's a real scientist, not just a typist or secretary like the other moms. When Dewey's dad has to go to Washington for awhile, Dewey moves in and the pair form an unlikely, but entirely realistic, friendship.

What's great about this book is the portrait of day-to-day life at Los Alamos-- you never think about kids living with their families, going to school, and being kids. You never think about the divisions between scientist kids and military kids. And you never think about Los Alamos just plain not existing... (well, at least I never thought about those things.)

This balances the line perfectly of being meticulously researched and historically wonderful, while not letting this detail overshadow the actual story. I liked how realistic the interactions between the kids were-- this unlikely friendship took a long time to develop and it never came across as hokey or simplisitic.

My favorite part of the book was how delicately it dealt with some very large issues that need to be tackled when dealing this topic-- it put them in there so you knew people were worrying about them, but Dewey hears about them and deals with them in a way that is very true to her age. In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) Feynman (a minor character in this book, much to my delight) talks about the horror of what they had done after the first test. The book captures this horror well with the adults and the confusion of the kids at what's going on.

Something happens about 3/4 of the way through the book that is a bit of a spoiler so I'm not going to talk about it too much, but it was just too much and I don't really think it was necessary (but it might be for the sequel that I am very much looking forward to!)

The other thing is... I'm assuming that if you're reading my blog, you know what the gadget was-- you know what was invented at Los Alamos during WWII to win the war. Dewey and Suze, and therefore the reader, never find out was the gadget was, and I'm not sure how much sense the ending of the book is going to make if you don't know. I also don't know if the intended audience is going to automatically know what the gadget was...

Still, an excellent book and a well-deserving win.

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, I promised I'd review this years Newberry winner, The Higher Power of Luckyby Susan Patron.

I wanted to wait down until all the fervor over SCROTUM faded away. And then it came back. And then it faded again.

Anyway... Lucky really surprised me. I hadn't heard anything about it before Newberry day and in reading the description-- it didn't sound kid-friendly. It sounded like it was going to be really nostalgic and an adult book written for kids.

It wasn't! I was so happy!

Lucky lives with her French guardian (he absent father's ex-wife) in the middle of the desert. She likes to eavesdrop on 12 step meetings to find out how people find their higher power-- higher power sounds like a handy thing to have, but Lucky's hoping to avoid hitting rock bottom in order to get it. Hitting rock bottom doesn't sound like much fun.

At the same time, Lucky's worried her guardian is going to go back to France-- she seems homesick and her passport was out the other day.

Deep down, this is a really sweet tale that will appeal to younger readers, but also has some really big issues for older readers to get into.

Most enjoyable was the large cast of wacky, but believable, characters. A good book and my favorite Newberry winner of the last few years.

Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Lawson was a Newberry Honor book that is being found in the YA section at all the libraries I've visited!

Hattie is an orphan who inherits a homesteading claim in Montana. In order to keep the claim, she has to cultivate a large portion of it (which involves clearing it first!) and fence off most of it. By hand. By herself. She knows nothing about farming. Or cooking. Or anything. She wants to keep the claim, but she'll be lucky if she even survives.

Her next door neighbors are helpful and nice and the first friends Hattie makes, but one of them is German, and it's smack in the middle of WWI. Montana is rife with anti-German sentiment, loyalty leagues and other things making things hard for Hattie's friends. How can she reconcile her soldier-friends killing Germans across the ocean with her German neighbor fencing her claim in the middle of the night?

Tragedy and hope about in another great example of what historical fiction should be in this book that's perfect for Tweens and those right on the kidlit/YA break.

My favorite part was the ending and how it was handled. The author's note at the end is great, as are the recipes!

The Pull of the Ocean by Jean-Claude Mourlevat won the Batchelder award for translated work this fall.

The Doutreleau children are all sets of twins, except for the Yann, the seventh and the last. Yann is small and mute, but notices everything and communicates with his older brothers silently. One night he wakes up to his parents fighting and lets his brothers know they have to leave, to escape. For days they walk, following Yann's inner compass to the ocean.

This is more than just a retelling of the Tom Thumb. This story is told in brief accounts of people who saw the children and interacted with them only briefly-- sometimes only seconds, never more than an hour or so. Interspersed are the accounts of the children, but never Yann.

This book is surprisingly powerful and moving without ever being overwrought, over-contrived, or melodramatic. I couldn't put it down and it haunts you long after you turn the final page-- I highly recommend!

Banned Books!

Ok, so instead of always talking about banned books here, I just update my list-mania lists over at Amazon and they're all nicely linked up in the side bar.

But yesterday, I read that Of Mice and Men is being challenged in Newton, IA.

This makes me incredibly sad, because I have a very warm spot in my heart reserved for Newton. Newton may be a small town in central Iowa, but, when I was in college, it was the big town. Iowa City was far enough a way that it was a preplanned excursion, but we'd go to Newton at the drop of a hat. We'd all pile in the car and drive along Highway 6 with the windows down and the radio up and check out their Super Walmart (Because nothing is more fun than buying oodles of fabric at 1 am) or the Perkins, or everyone's favorite Mexican joint with margaritas bigger than your head-- La Cabana.

There was a time senior year when we went to La Cabana pretty much every weekend. Even my Tex-Mex snobby friends (they're from Texas, so they know what they're talking about) like that place!

Plus, it's the home of Maytag blue cheese. Yummy.

But I think I liked those drives the best-- 6 is curvy and hilly and at dusk in summer, full of fireflies. And on those nights, singing along with the radio on our way to Newton (sometimes it wasn't Newton so much as the escape from campus) with the warm summer air and the smell of summer-- hay and green things, tinged with falling humidity... I fell in love with those nights. I fell in love on one of those nights.

And now they're challenging Steinbeck.

New Things

I'd fallen so behind on updating recently banned and challenged books that I changed the way I do that.

All recently banned and challenged books are in my Listmania Lists at Amazon, and I've now provided handy-dandy links over to the left, so go check out what they're telling you not to read now!

Books I Missed the First Time Around

Man, am I ever behind in my blogging duties. I was going to put together my Best of 2006 list, but I haven't talked about half the books on the list yet. Ah well.

None of these will be on the list, but it's what I feel like talking about right now.

Anyway... so this summer I finally read Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry and The Agony of Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Both are the first books in extremely popular series that I never read when I was the target audience, but wish I had. Interestingly enough, I liked Alice a lot more than Anastasia, but when I was a kid, it would have been the other way around.

Quick summaries:

Anastasia hates her name, her fourth grade teacher, liver, and pumpkin pie. She loves making lists, writing poetry, her wart, and her goldfish. When her parents announce she's going to have a little brother, she adds her parents and babies to the list of things she hates. Over the school year, both lists change as items are added and deleted in this funny and moving book.

Alice is about to start sixth grade at a new school in Silver Spring. ALl she really wants is to be on safety patrol, but they were all chosen the year before. Instead of being placed in Miss Cole's class (who will sometimes drive you home in her sports car) or Mr. Weber's class (who takes everyone on a camping trip in the spring), she has Mrs. Plotkin, who is boring and old. If she only had a mother, Alice would have help navigating her transition into being a teenager, but, left on her own, is she really just going backwards and not growing up at all?

I also read Starting with Alice, which is the first of 3 prequels to the Alice series.

Both Alice and Anastasia are accurate and touching portrayals of the 10-13 years, which are not fun. I think I liked Alice better now because Naylor picks up on a lot of the mishaps that I can now look back on and laugh about. Lowry picks up on those feelings that still hurt.

Also, remember that show on PBS that you got to watch in reading class where this woman would read a story or a chapter while the guy drew illustrations? Once, she read this story about a girl whose brother takes her jeans shopping and she walks in on a guy in blue underwear in the dressing rooms. I always wanted to know what the story is and wanted to read it. I remembered it the first time I ever fell into the Gap. I was very excited when I was reading The Agony of Alice and THERE IT WAS! And then I was very annoyed because she was buying Levis. At the Gap. The Gap only sells Gap brand!

How Opal Mehta compares...

Ok, so I finished Second Helpings. I really liked it.

Jessica Darling’s grandmother, Gladie, knows more about her love-life than Jessica does herself. In fact, all the seniors at Silver Meadows nursing home know more about Jessica’s life than she does. Jessica fully blames Marcus, who she refuses to talk to, because he’s been talking to Gladie.

But the mysterious editor of the gossip email, Pineville Low knows more about everyone’s life and their dark secrets and everyone assumes it’s Jessica. It’s caustic, it’s cutting, and Jessica hasn’t had a public outlet for such things since she quit the newspaper when the administration tried to censor her post 9/11. No one seems to notice that Jessica’s secrets are in the email as well, including the fact that Manda is planning on stealing Jessica’s boyfriend.

At home, her mother is too wrapped up in Bethany’s upcoming baby to care about anything else. Bethany has moved back in for the final months of her pregnancy and Jessica’s father hasn’t spoken to her since she quit the cross country team.

But it’s senior year and Jessica has to decide where to go to college. Over the summer, she ran into Paul Parlipiano, her crush-to-end-all-crushes who convinced her to go to Columbia University. It was going to be a hard sell to her parents, who fear New York City, but after 9/11, does Jessica really want to move to the city anyway?

It’s only a matter on months before Jessica finally gets to leave Pineville for good, but where is she going to go? And what will happen before then?

This was a beautiful continuation of Sloppy Firsts. Jessica speaks so well for all of us smart girls who grew up in Middle America.

I also read How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. There has been a lot of talk about how this is just a case of recycling in a formulaic genre. These arguements are being made by people who have obviously not read the books in question.

First of all, I wouldn't consider McCafferty's works as part of the YA chick-lit genre. They're more sophisticated than that. The writing style is a step above and the subject matter is more complex and probes deeper than most YA novels. Second of all, Opal Mehta reads like it was written by a teenager. The writing style lacks style... it's just not that good. The story is nice, but nothing special. Entire paragraphs are essentially lifted wholesale and there are other similarities that are harder to write up, but were unique to McCafferty's work before this.

But, that said, I'm not sure it's entirely Viswanathan's fault. In Sloppy Firsts, McCafferty thanks Claudia Gabel, her editor's assistant "who also gave me precisely the feedback I needed to write the book that I'd always wanted to read". She's thanked again in Second Helpings "for convincing me that I hadn't succumbed to 'sucky sequel syndrome'". She isn't mentioned in the acknowledgements for Charmed Thirds. But Claudia Gabel rears her head again in the acknowledgments for Opal Mehta. It smells fishy to me!

Also, Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada has taken Peter McPhee's Runner (Sidestreets) out of the school curriculum.

100 best!

My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett

According to the cat, the beasts of Wild Island have a baby dragon tied up and make him give them rides across the bay. He’s forced to ferry them all day and all night and if he doesn’t, they twist his wings! He doesn’t have any friends, except maybe the alligators, who say "hello" to him maybe once a week if he’s lucky.

After hearing this, the author’s father, Elmer Elevator decides to be a sneak onto a boat bound for the port of Cranberry, on the Island of Tangerina, where he could then walk across the rocks to Wild Island and rescue the baby dragon.

But the animals of Wild Island know there’s a stranger there and they don’t like it one bit. Everyone knows that people who go to Wild Island are never seen again. Elmer Elevator has seen the cat, so he knows this isn’t entirely true, but he must use all of his wit and cunning if he’s going to keep the animals off his trail and to save the dragon!

I would have really loved this book when I was 8. But I'm no longer that young, and as an adult, it held little appeal for me. It was too nonsensical and simplistic. There was no character development or subplot or anything... like I said, great when I was 8. Not so much now.

Also, parents in Manteca, CA are challenging Mark Mathabsne's Kaffir Boy: The True Story Of A Black Youths Coming Of Age In Apartheid South Africa. God forbid we show honors level seniors what the world is made of today.

Lots of Reading!

This weekend, I cleaned my apartment, hung out with some people, took my computer into the shop... but mainly, opened all the windows, and laid on my couch in a patch of sunlight and READ.

First off, I (finally) finished Moll Flanders. I kinda liked it? Maybe? I think after awhile, it was just the same thing over and over and over again... I would have liked it a lot more if it had been half as long.





The Fair Garden and the Swarm of Beasts: The Library and the Young Adult by Margaret A. Edwards was phenomenal. When reading it, you must remember how *old* it is and how things have changed since its initial publication. Little things like the use of "Negro" and "gay" (for light and carefree)... Obvious things like the not far-fetched but still a long way off idea of one day ocmputers answering our factual questions... and the weird, like when she was talking about books that we aren't required to read in school but should be reading... like Hemmingway, Remarque, Huxley, and Dostoevsky... all things that you now have to read in high school!

I was also very struck by the change in reading levels. She includes several book lists and there are several titles on the "Adult Titles for Good Readers" and "Advanced Reading" that are now standard fare at the junior high and highschool levels-- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye , and The Grapes of Wrath...

There is also a strong "us" vs. "them" mentality when she discusses the challenges of librarainship in an urban setting (in this case the highly-segregated Baltimore). But it is very much middle class white folk bring literature to poor black people...

But Edwards speaks a lot of truth that librarains, as a profession, still haven't owned up to. We are obsessed with cataloging and not with customer service. In our obsession with processing and cataloging, we see the book more and more as a mere object and forget the ideas in it that are so necessary... "We do everything to the book but read it."

She also hit on some very good points-- do we librarians hate the stereotypical image of a proper old ladying shushing everyone because it hits a little too close to home? AND is one of the main reasons we're so bad at customer service because anti-social bookworms are who is drawn to the profession? I don't think our anti-customer service attitude is nearly as bad as portrayed by Edwards, but I think there are still issues.

But more than anything else, my head is swirling with thoughts on how to improve service, and different types of programming we can do and more than anything-- HOW TO GET PEOPLE READING. Because really, that's what it's all about, right?

Also, The House of Dies Drear just survived a challenge in Rockingham County, VA.

One, two princes here before you...

Apparently, we're not over this yet! A parent in Lexington, Mass is challenging King & King

Seriously? In Massachusetts??? It makes me want to cry.

And more bannings...

When Jeff Comes Home by Catherine Atkins is restricted in Irving, TX middle schools--students must have written permission to check it out.

Three Wishes : Palestinian and Israeli Children Speakby Deborah Ellis has been removed from the curriculum in an advanced reading program in York, Ontario, Canada.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is challenged in Marion County, FL

It Stops with Me: Memoir of a Canuck Girlby Charleen Touchette has been unsuccessfully challenged in the Woonsocket, RI public library.

The King Never Smiles : A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadejby Paul M. Handley isn't even out yet, but the country of Thailand has pre-emptively banned all imports AND is blocking access to the Yale University Press website.

The Lovely Bones: A Novelby Alice Sebold has been unsuccessfully challenged in Malibu, CA. I might have mentioned that before, but I can't remember...