Memoir-ette, le Froo

Beautiful Monsters and Their Beautiful Hairs, Chapter 7

2010-11-21T19:13:00.002-05:00

VII.

My shaman is colors. He is ashen coffee skin. He is cotton ball white Brillo hair on his head and on his upper-lip. He is orange button-up shirt. He is red guitar leaning by his chair. He is blue bicycle chained to the rack out front. He is all of these colors and mostly a grandfather's smell which today is tinged with the salt smell of sea water. To my shaman, Bruce Lee is a genius. This time we are meeting at the Presidio which is a very fashionable fresh air bistro overlooking the bay. My shaman has ordered us every appetizer on the menu and he hasn’t touched a thing. He tells me that, even without touching them, the crabs taste like they came out of a can. He tells me that, even without touching them, the breaded shrimps were frozen up until a second before they were put in the fryer. He points to the bay and says, “What I’ll never understand is what is so hard about just catching a fish.”

On the table beside the fake orchids that are the table’s generic centerpiece is my shaman’s oracle device. The black orb isn’t shiny and the white paint on it is faded almost all the way. The Magic 8-ball has seen many days, it seems. Just as soon as I think it, my shaman tells me that there are bigger fish to fry than the trivial timeline of his Magic 8-ball’s existence. It isn’t rolling around because it’s sitting on the flat surface of its lens. My shaman tells me that we aren’t sitting here so that I could contemplate nor so that he could review the Magic 8-ball’s personal history.

“The Magic 8-ball,” he tells me, “is a very private thing.”

What my shaman hasn’t told me is why we are sitting outside on such a cold day. My shaman, it seems, isn’t ever cold. I have never seen him wear a sweater. As for myself, I am shivering on the inside of a black denim jacket lined in wool. Even though the sky is clear and sunny, a rumble of thunder persists behind the blue. The TV meteorologist’s forecast, accurate and scientifically viable as ever, didn’t say anything about electric clouds in the sky. Not that there are any. The sky is clear blue. My shaman chuckles silently at it. His nostrils flare and his belly bounces beneath his shirt. He leans back in his seat, points up to the sky, and says, “It’s a wonder to me that you haven’t been struck by lightning.” He continues, “I don’t have to look into the Magic 8-ball to see that it thinks the same thing as me.”

Then my shaman asks, “What do you think of the ceviche?”

I don’t consult with my shaman for long on this occasion. Though I come with a list of fifty-four questions, the Magic 8-ball stops answering after the first three stating as a matter of fact, “This girl has too many questions.” My shaman concurs and sets the mystical orb back down on the table. He asks the waiter for the check and we leave without ordering any entrees or desserts. As I leave, my shaman suggests to me that it is never a good idea to come at the Magic 8-ball with lists of questions. My shaman informs me as he is unlatching his bike lock from the bicycle rack on the walk away from the Presidio, “It is some times lazy and does not like to be over-worked.”

A month and three days after Valentine’s Day is St. Patrick’s Day. For whatever reason, the ogre who is now my live-in boyfriend is preparing a celebration. I ask him if he is Irish and he points to his eyes and says, “What do you think?” I am not really sure about anything when it comes to the ogre who is now my live-in boyfriend. On February 15^th, I awoke to find him pulling some clothes out of a suitcase the size of a modest four-seating dining room table. He hadn’t told me then, but I knew that it meant he was moving in. A month has passed and I still hadn’t gotten his name. When I call to him, the ogre who is now my live-in boyfriend, I just say “Hey!” and he seems to respond without taking offense. A month has passed and it is two days until St. Patrick’s Day which, it turns out, is a big deal to my ogre live-in boyfriend. Even the fish hadn’t cared as much about that particular holiday. Even though he was a selkie and, for the most part, Ireland is where his stories come from. He is, after all, nothing short of a folklore-ish sort of creature from that place.

Ogres, it seems, don’t care much about where creatures’ stories come from. They just Bogart everyone else’s holidays. I am told that ogres celebrate Easter just as they celebrate the Equinox and Mitaartut, the Greenlandic Halloween which takes place on January 6^th. Why they celebrate all those days I think might have something to do with being greedy. What I don’t know about ogres can fill a book. Multiple books, even. If I think about it, it might already have. I consult the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales and find nothing of any use to me. Ogres, it seems, aren’t classically regarded as good-looking sorts with blond hair, freckles, and a penchant for indie rock music and 1990s Seattle grunge. Either the Grimm brothers didn’t know shit about ogres or my ogre live-in boyfriend has broken the mold of what is true about most ogres. My ogre live-in boyfriend whom I call out as “Hey!” is also very very old. As he has moved in with me, so have the pair of silent green parrots. It is like taking care of Sue again when I am cleaning up the carpet of their shit. My ogre is, unfortunately, not inclined toward house-cleaning so, much like when Sue lived with me, I am always on my hands and knees on the carpet scrubbing the bird shit away.

“If we knock down that wall, do you think we could fit a hundred guests in here?”

My ogre live-in boyfriend asks me this while pointing at the kitchen wall which separates my apartment from the one wherein the old bat used to live. I take a moment to consider it and I don’t know so I don’t give an answer. The thing I’ve learned about ogres is that I don’t think they really care regardless of what anyone would have to say. I think, If he is asking, he probably already has his mind set to do it anyway. I think, I wonder if this means that I’ll have to pay a contractor.

He shrugs his massive shoulders and his thinned, worn-out Police baseball shirt rises to just over his belt. The sleeves of the shirt reach to about his elbows. Those blue sleeves. I wonder how he manages to find clothes that fit him. When they’re in the laundry bin, they look too small to fit his gigantically large frame. Something about the way he doesn’t break the floor when he stomps around the rooms with his gigantically large ogre feet is somewhat disorienting. I am always wishing that I had some measuring tape with which to measure him when he is asleep. I make a mental note to buy some measuring tape some day. Since my ogre live-in boyfriend has moved in, my sense of size and space has all but distorted so that it’s all like a magical equation that makes sense to people with –ologies and PhDs. If I was so inclined toward the sciences, I might just have a new study to undertake.

“I don’t think we have the time, anyway,” my ogre live-in boyfriend says. “The party is only in two days.”

What I don’t tell him is that the party will fall on a Thursday and that I doubt so many of his friends will show up. But, then, I don’t know about what kind of schedules the friends of ogres have. I don’t know about what they determine as appropriate party-nights. What I don’t consider is how my upstairs neighbor will take to not being invited. Since he is always playing his videogames, I doubt he’ll mind at all. What I don’t consider is how, since he is not invited, I will probably not know anyone at my own party.

Surrounding the sofa in the living room is what my ogre live-in boyfriend is calling his “work studio.” All scattered about and lying upon each other are now, at least, two hundred paintings. My ogre live-in boyfriend tells me that, until the day before Christmas Eve when I had seen him at the show, he had never picked up a brush to paint. He says, “I hadn’t ever even picked up a pencil to sketch.” Every single day of the month and a day that he has lived with me, my ogre live-in boyfriend barely does anything but plan for this party and draw and paint all day. It is a sad affair that most of the paintings are of the parrots. It is a sad affair that most of the paintings look nothing like me.

Even though I’ve never mentioned it, I’d like him to paint something of a swan. Even though I’ve no pictures of her, I think I’d like to see him paint a portrait of my darling swan-daughter, Sue.

As I am cleaning up the bird shit on the carpet for the fourth time in the day, my ogre live-in boyfriend is stacking up his paintings and moving them out of the way. He says that it is important to make as much room as possible for our guests coming by in two days. Though he doesn’t know how to work a vacuum, he says aloud that he thinks that we should clean the carpet. He says, “Dander and other allergens are collected amid carpet fibers.” He says, “A lot of people, even those without diagnosed allergies to dander and dust, suffer reactions from inhaling or even brushing their skins against carpet.” As I am scrubbing up after the green parrots, hands and knees itching from the carpet, I nod and agree that this would be a good idea. For a moment, I consider how my nose has begun to water a bit and that I might have developed a psychosomatic allergic reaction to what my ogre live-in boyfriend has suggested might be a dormant allergy or sensitivity to the particles harbored between carpet fibers although I had never before had a symptom of it. I wonder, too, if I have the instruction manual for how to use the vacuum cleaner.

My ogre live-in boyfriend is careful with his paintings. While he is careful of his paintings and moving them out of the way, he spills a paint can on the coffee table. He doesn’t even notice. And I don’t say a thing about it.

I get up from all-fours to my hind quarters which on proper humans are called “legs” and walk up to the coffee table with a rag covered in layers of some-crusted, some-fresh parrot shit and set about wiping off the paint from the coffee table.

Children's and Young Adult Literature Book Lists

2010-11-17T20:16:00.005-05:00

Below are three separate evaluations projects that I have submitted in the last year. For parents, educators, and librarians, I tried to create a varied and thorough suggested reading list that would prove a kind of glimpse into the young reader selections available. The titles were selected by me and, as are listed in the second and last series of evaluations, by way of some research into popular and acclaimed young reader websites and resources. I've made this available because people have shown interest in the past as I've been talking about my assignments and the books that I've been reading. Feel free to ask me questions about the books I've read or with any questions about the courses I've taken, the other papers I've written to do with young readers and youth library services and information literacy, and for additional resources.

Title: A Northern Light
Author: Jennifer Donnelly
Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Strong Female Protagonist
Recommended Age: 13+
Curricular Connections: American History, English Literature, Language Arts/ Vocabulary, Women’s Studies
Selection Source: Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book (2004)

Review: Told as a fictional account of a young girl in the early 20th century, A Northern Light is the story of Mattie Gokey’s coming of age framed by the real-life murder of a young girl in Glenmore, a northern mountain lake resort. Mattie is a brilliant writer with bigger dreams than can possibly become a reality given her situation: after her mother's death from cancer, she is charged with being the caretaker and centralizing figure in her modest farm home. Donnelly presents us with a protagonist who is bright, yet innocent. Her insecurities about her talent, her brilliance, her strength, and her sexuality speak true to any girl or woman who has struggled to identify herself against a backdrop of life's hard-knock circumstances. Mattie’s friends and relations are a great bonus to the landscape that Donnelly creates for Mattie’s coming of age. Her best friend, Weaver, is a high-achieving black boy. Her childhood friend, Minnie, is newly married and pregnant. Her love interest, Royal, is the neighboring farm boy—a kind of beautiful simpleminded Adonis that suddenly shows interest in Mattie. Mattie’s family, too, is filled with important characters, each very real and each a kind of person that every reader can say he or she knows in his or her own life. Her father, brothers and sisters (particularly her tomboyish little sister, Lou), and her uncle grow to be their own characters full of life and vivacity despite being tied to the narrative of such a strong protagonist.
Interwoven with Mattie’s story is that of the suspicious drowning death of a young woman who was staying at the lodge wherein Mattie is employed. The woman’s traveling companion—her apparent lover—has gone missing and is presumed dead, as well. Mattie holds with her the last communication made by the young victim, Grace: letters that passed between her and the missing beau. A mystery unfolds as rumors that the names the guests had given aren’t their real names at all. Mattie indulges herself—quite guiltily, might I add—in the correspondences and in imaging the life that Grace left behind.

Evaluation: Having finished this novel, my eyes welled with tears for Mattie and for Grace and for me. It is a historical fiction that touches upon racism, platonic female-male friendships, women's liberation, censorship and intellectual freedom, and, most of all, what it's like to be...a girl. My heart swells with hope for Mattie and for the sadness of the loss of Grace's life. It is such a strong read and it totally deserves of the honors that it's received since having been first published. I do, however, want to relate that it is a difficult book to value immediately. At first, it reads slowly and the distinct timelines (the time after Grace’s body is discovered and the time leading up to Mattie’s arrangement to work at the lodge, Glenmore) are a bit cumbersome to get through. However, there are bits and pieces to interest readers that will keep them going. As an educator, I appreciate the way Donnelly ties the chapters together with new words that Mattie is learning and word games that she plays with her friend, Weaver. It certainly taught me some new words!

Title: American Born Chinese

Author: Gene Luen Yang

Genre/Cultural Theme: Graphic novel, Memoir, Asian (Chinese) experience in the US

Recommended Age: 9+

Summary: American Born Chinese is a graphic memoir—closely autobiographical—about the Chinese American experience told through three stories. First is the experience of Jin Wang (a fictionalized version of a young Gene Luen Yang, the author) who is transplanted from San Francisco's Chinatown to a neighborhood and elementary school where he is the only Chinese-American. Second is the fable of the Monkey King who aspires to be taken seriously by all the other kings and gods. Finally is the story of Chin-Kee and his visit to his American family. Chin-Kee is reminiscent of Mickey Rooney's Chinese landlord character in the "Breakfast at Tiffany’s" film and Gedde Watanbee's Long Duk Dong exchange student character in "Sixteen Candles." He is the ultimate annoyingly stereotypical Chinese character, cousin to a white family, wreaking havoc with his inability to speak lucidly and his invasive cultural traditions. American Born Chinese follows these three Chinese characters through their journeys navigating the stereotypical divide, either in school (like Jin) or in community (like the monkey king). The overtly “Chinese” Chin-Kee character is a caricature of the Chinese stereotype and how American culture has depicted the Chinese living among them.
Yang presents a delightful discussion on the topic of social acceptance and self-identification that reaches out to young readers in particular with a sincere tone and anything but a condescending manner. Moreover, it feels personal. Yang expresses in a very relatable and novel way the very honest portrayal of what it feels like to be different and to be, perhaps worse, obviously different.

Evaluation: American Born Chinese has won accolades and awards from critics and audiences. It is a suitable read for all ages at all levels of reading ability—for children younger than ten or eleven years-old, parents or teachers can guide reading or read it to them. The story has a universal theme that is particularly powerful for young readers from children to YA: be yourself. It is a quintessentially contemporary American work that echoes the American independent spirit, yet acknowledges the desire of the individual to fit into society and to build community with peers.

Suggested extension activities: I would encourage parents or teachers to use the dual narrative format of the graphic novel to engage young readers’ artistic and creative abilities. A great activity would be to have students draw a comic strip of one aspect of their day—it can take place at home or at school or anywhere that they spend a majority of their time interacting with peers. This activity would be appropriate across all ages and grade levels. A second activity would focus on multicultural awareness and a discussion on stereotypes. American Born Chinese includes episodes of stereotyping and ethnic generalization that echo early television shows and entertainment and presents them to readers beside realistic portrayals of Chinese/Asian characters. Presenting students with images from television shows and films, magazines, and other entertainment media that depict gender and cultural stereotypes and having them compare those images to their own experience and to more current media portrayals of ethnicities and different cultures can encourage students to question what they see on TV.

Title: Annie on My Mind
Author: Nancy Garden
Genre: LGBT Romance
Recommended Age: 14+
Curricular Connections: Social Studies, Religion, Current Events (Gay Marriage)
Selection Source: Teenreads.com (Author Profile: Nancy Garden) from http://www.teenreads.com/authors/au-garden-nancy.asp

Review: Liza is the stand-up seventeen year-old. She’s an aspiring architect attending a New York City prep school. She’s never been a problem for her parents. In fact, she has a great relationship with them and with her younger brother. At the start of Annie on My Mind, Liza is walking through a museum, getting ideas for sketches when she encounters Annie, an oddball romantic seventeen year-old, just like her. While Liza’s and Annie’s friendship blossoms, Liza’s school life is heading in opposite directions: at once she is hailed as an upstanding student and president of the student body and dealing with the internal conflict of realizing that she is different from the other kids. Liza and Annie develop a friendship which troubles both girls to define. When they It is during a three-day suspension for standing up for her principles when another student gets in trouble for ear-piercing, when Liza and Annie realize that they’re in love and not just in that platonic way, both girls (though Liza, primarily, since it is told with her as the central protagonist) strive to understand and accept their kind of affection for one another and their relationship.
In the midst of all this, Liza and Annie agree to care after pair of teachers’ cats while the teachers vacation. This chance changes Liza’s life forever and helps her realize that she (and Annie) is not alone in this world and that her feelings aren’t “wrong,” just different. That is where the plot unfurls; when Liza has to face her fears of opening up her personal life—her struggles to identify herself and her sexuality, her commitment to her family and to her dreams of attending a prestigious university—and facing all of it in the public eye of her family and her school…when it’s no longer possible for Liza to be true to herself and to be happy with who she is and wants to be unless she can do so proudly.

Evaluation: This is a book that I hadn’t known existed until I came upon the title while looking for a “good” YA LGBT book to read. This is a book that, immediately upon reading, got me to call my best friend of fifteen years, the first openly gay lesbian at our Catholic high school—my best friend since before she outed herself to the school and to her family—and tell her, “Somewhere out there, this book had been around, existing for almost two decades when we were going through our crisis in being accepted in high school. When you were the lesbian and I was the straight girl friend and no one understood and everyone treated us badly.” It was amazing to me that it took me until I was twenty-eight years-old to find it and, when I did, I resolved to share the story of Liz and Annie with any adolescent I met—gay or straight—that struggled to find, accept, and share his or her own identity with the rest of the world. It is an important book. It is a book that should be read far more than it is. And I’m glad that it’s out there, for someone to find. Someone like me. Someone like my best friend, Ani. Yes, Ani.

Title: Battle Royale
Author: Koushun Takami
Genre: Popular Adult Fiction, Foreign (Japanese), Action/ Adventure
Recommended Age: 15+

Curricular Connections: Civics/ Government (Socialism, Nationalism, Fascism), Foreign Language (Japanese)
Selection Source: Personal collection

Review: Battle Royale is a Japanese novel that, since coming out amid controversy in

Japan

in 1999 and despite being quite a tome (it is over 600 pages), has become so popular that it has spawned a series of Manga and movies based on it. The rules of the Battle Royale: Stranded on a deserted island and armed with nothing but what has been provided: a bag with maybe a weapon/ maybe a tool/ maybe nothing, the students have 24 hours to kill one another off until only 1 survives. If the game hasn't been "won" in 24 hours, collars that have been place around their necks will detonate and kill the remaining "players." Battle Royale follows one class of students as they are abducted and forced into this game. It is a fast, action-packed read that is filled with teen characters, dialogue, and themes that are very familiar and real to readers of all ages and all ethnicities.
Battle Royale takes place in an alternate

Japan

wherein youth rebellion and angst has been countered by the military and government by a punishment-of-sorts/ game show. In this televised and popular game, a class of Japanese junior high/high school students are selected at random and entered against their will in a high-stakes game of survival. Think of "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell, and Suzanne Collins’, The Hunger Games as related titles.

Evaluation: Takami's novel is more than just a standard Lord of the Flies YA fare, it offers an in depth look into

Japan

's nationalistic state. It is a hyper-real

Japan

in which socialism, fascism, and nationalism take precedent over the individuals within the society. It screams dystopia, revolution, rebellion, and individualism from the perspective of young teens who are, literally, struggling to survive against all odds.
When I first read this, I was blown away at how richly Takami enters into a dialogue with the reader about the perils of staunch nationalism. I learned more about

Japan

than I'd ever thought to be interested in, despite the hyperbolic and hypothetical alternate-reality of the fiction. It really is an amazing read. The movie version, which is in Japanese as the novel was originally written, centers mostly on the action-packed Battle Royale game and highlights the plights of the central characters in the story. Both are excellent for YA readers and for adults, particularly those of us with an axe to grind with Big Brother.

Title: Blue is for Nightmares (Blue is for Nightmares Series, #1)
Author: Laurie Faria Stolarz
Genre: Supernatural Mystery/Suspense, Strong Female Protagonist
Recommended Age: 13+
Curricular Connections: Contemporary Fiction
Selection Source: Popular Teen Series in Barnes Noble Teen section

Review: Stacy is having nightmares. Mostly, it’s just one nightmare: She’s running in the forest, running away from a pursuer and running to save her best friend, Drea, screaming out for help from somewhere in the darkness. As this nightmare has persisted, Stacy has become more and more certain that it’s a prophecy of an impending terror. She knows this because she’s inherited the ability of precognitive dreams from her grandmother, a witch. But, more pressing than any nightmare predictions of danger are the trials and tribulations of being a teenager in her waking life. Stacy is in love with Drea’s on-again/off-again boyfriend,

Chad

. The every day lives of Stacy and her boarding school-residing friends get nothing but more complicated by the mystery and suspense of the plot beginning to unfold as Stacy’s nightmares start becoming true in her waking life, and her crush on Drea’s boyfriend becomes more than their friendship can handle.

Evaluation: I was looking for a popular teen supernatural or horror series that I might read the first book of for this project. My only stipulation was that the series didn’t involve vampires, werewolves, or fairies. Since the Twilight phenomenon, countless of beautiful-but-misunderstood monster series have sprouted and, for the most part, they are little more than blatant attempts to take a bite from the Twilight golden apple. I was looking for something that harkened me back to the days when I was a YA reader, devouring book-after-book of R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike series—genre mysteries told through the teen perspective, plot-driven and hyper-realistic. Perhaps the only reason that I picked up the first of the Blue is for Nightmares series is because it was the closest thing I could find to Stine’s Fear Street books…literally, since it was the series closest to where Stine would have been on the bookshelf. Finding nothing new from Stine (and nothing more than a new Twilight-like series from Christopher Pike—all about teen vampires—ick!), I turned to the back cover of Blue is for Nightmares and, having found some interest in the summary, took a dip into the first chapter at the bookstore. What I ended up taking home that day was probably the closest thing I have come to, thus far, in my quest to matching the delight and suspense of the genre mysteries of my YA readership days. I started and finished the book in the same day that I bought it (on a Friday) and have already promised to give it to a friend’s thirteen year-old daughter, herself an avid reader. This book comes totally recommended by me, particularly for female early teen readers.

Title: Cuba: My Revolution

Author: Inverna Lockpez (writer) and Dean Haspiel (artist)

Genre/Cultural Theme: Cuban Revolution, Graphic novel, Historical fiction, Memoir

Recommended Age: 16+ (brief nudity, non-sexual)

Summary: In 1959, Fidel Castro marched into Havana as the leader of the Cuban Revolution against the US’s interests in dictator/president Batista’s reign over the island. Sonya—a fictionalization of writer Inverna Lockpez—is a 17 year-old girl who gives herself to the guerrilla as a medical assistant though her ambition prior to her engagement in activism was to be an artist. Sonya is a symbol of the artistic, intellectual youth presence of the Cuban Revolution. Tired of the corruption of Batista’s government—overrun by mob money and playing different global interests against the benefit of the Cuban people—Sonya takes up the cause of the Revolution. As she gives up her dreams to be an artist, she doesn’t give up the artistic spirit nor does she forgo her principles, the same principles that drive her to be active in the first place. Those principles enable her to see the hypocrisy of the Revolution’s supporters from the Cubans to the way the guerrilla is managed and to the way that it becomes something other than what it promised it the Cubans that it would be. The Cuban Revolution and Sonya’s journey through the life of a guerrilla doctor is only a part of the narrative though it is a generous part of it. There are also elements of her family life, her romantic life, and her social life.

Evaluation: I think that the brief nudity for the couple of pages of a violent interrogation is the reason for my recommending an elder teenager to read this and, honestly, that alone would make it unacceptable for using in addendum to a class’s reading list. Otherwise, I think that this is a great novel for teaching Latin American politics or history, Women’s Studies, artistic or intellectual expression civil rights issues, etc. Because of the comic book-style graphic format, I think a lot of teens would be interested in the story which they may or may not have heard about short of the images of Che Guevara on t-shirts or the “Castro hats” that are hip and are fashioned in the guerrilla/ Fidel Castro model. It’s informative from the perspective of someone within a revolution, someone who is on both sides of the debate and who is, because of idealism and youth’s vigor, engaged in her own society which is captivating and honest, much like in Persepolis.

Suggested extension activities: Activism is an important element of a democratic society. Education in politics, the role of the individual’s role in his or her own government, and exercises in debate are important skills for students to learn. I think it’d be interesting for students to learn first-hand the difficulty of coming to a consensus on government. A great classroom activity for a civics, social studies, or history middle-to-high school class would be to create a class manifesto based on students’ ideas for the way they want their class to be governed. As a mediator, the teacher could transcribe the class’ ideas and then hand them back to the class on a different day. Then, the class can enter in a discussion or the teacher can create assignments that have the students discussing how the will of the class as dictated to the teacher may or may not serve the individuals of the class. They can do a separate creative project—either graphic or written—where they envision themselves, at their own age, living a day in the life under the government that the class had created for itself.

Title: Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
Author: Chris Fuhrman
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Recommended Age: 12+
Curricular Connections: English Literature (Poetry), Religion
Selection Source: Teenreads.com Ultimate Reading List

Review: Comic books, William Blake, Catholic school uniforms, incest, crushes...Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys pretty much covers the gamut of coming of age. At its core, the novel is one about realizing that the world of boyhood and the world of adulthood are two different places. Francis Doyle, Tim Sullivan, and their friends go to Catholic school. They are a wildly imaginative group of adolescent boys who live vicariously through the comic books that they read and the comic books that they want to write. In their quasi-imaginary world, Sister Assumpta is their peg-legged super-villainous arch-nemesis head mistress. Francis—the novel’s protagonist—is a kind of cool-headed misfit on the verge of manhood getting his first feelings of lust and romance when he meets Margie Flynn, another classmate. Their friendship and blossoming romance is the kind that echoes those of the classic coming of age tales until Francis finds out a secret about Margie. Francis’s friendship with Tim is another central aspect of the novel. Tim is the resident genius of the group of boys. He is the emotionally mature, brooding, and speculative one of the group, a kind of misfit ring-leader of sorts, in spite of his small stature and physical frailty.

Evaluation: Fuhrman’s only novel was adapted into a film of the same name by producers Jodie Foster (who also plays Sister Assumpta) and Jay Shapiro, and director Peter Care in 2002, and was finalized just after Fuhrman died of cancer. The film, like the movie, is a poignant, sad, and moving picture into the lives of Francis, Tim, and Margie. Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys is truly a special work of fiction. The characters and the story are as real and relatable as they get. Particularly for the students who ask those Big Questions and for the ones who question what it is to live an authentic life at a time when everything is so uncertain, this is a must-read.

Title: First Star I See

Author: Jaye Caffrey (author), Lynne Adamson (illustrator)

Genre/Cultural Theme: Fiction, Strong female protagonist, ADHD awareness

Recommended Age: 9-12

Summary: Paige Bradley is a day-dreaming fourth grader who gets the chance of a lifetime when the lead actress of her favorite all-time television show, Star Warriors, comes to her school. Paige’s one chance to meet Renee Lastrapes who plays Dr. Kelsey Strongheart is winning a school essay contest, but Paige’s Achilles Heel is her ADHD—a learning disability that makes it difficult for her to pay attention to class and to stay on task. It is a seemingly monumental task for Paige, but she’s invested. After all, meeting Dr. Strongheart is her dream! With the support of her mom and the school principal, Mr. Rodriguez, Paige can try to overcome her disability and hone into those creative skills and that wild imagination so that she can turn in the best essay on stars in the school.

Evaluation: Caffrey wrote this novel for both adults and young people. Evidenced by the parent talking-points which she presents after the story, the intention is to enlighten families about what ADHD is and encourage positive interventions including discussion, therapies, and academic sensitivity on the subject of ADHD. For that reason, I think that, ideally, this book would be read by parents and teachers/educators in tandem with the young readers. It is interesting to see how Paige’s mind works because of the ADHD and to see how effective adult involvement can ease and even enrich her experience as a student and, certainly, at home.

Suggested extension activities: First Star I See is the perfect example of a tandem parent/teacher-and-student reading activity. At the very least, parents can use Caffrey’s discussion topic appendix to open dialogue with children about what ADHD is and what can be done about an ADHD diagnosis. Similarly, teachers—especially teachers working with special education or inclusion classes in the Language Arts or English subjects—can assign First Star I See as the class reading book and discuss with students the different ways that ADHD doesn’t hold Paige back from participating in the contest. With Paige—as with characters in other novels who struggle with their own personal obstacles—students can develop an understanding of what “multi-faceted” means. Teachers can ask students to draw up pros and cons charts or tables identifying strengths and weaknesses. Then, the students can write about ways that they can overcome challenges. Youth services librarians would do well by the community if they helped parents and families dealing with academic difficulties by setting up displays that identify books with themes appropriate to different kinds of special education needs: ADHD, autism, dyslexia, speech delay, etc. The books that are highlighted should give a broad selection of grade levels and genres. Librarians can also prepare and provide book lists for parents and children with more titles. Additional materials could include pamphlets from outreach organizations in the community, schedules for reading tutoring for children and adults at the branch/school, etc.

Title: Gym Candy
Author: Carl Deuker
Genre: Sports, Realistic Fiction
Recommended Age: 13+
Curricular Connections: Health
Selection Source: FAME Florida Teen Reads 2009-10 Selection

Review: Mick Johnson knows football. His father having been a high school and college football record-holder and would-have-been NFL star, football and the aspirations to live up to his father’s glory days of yore are the only thing that Mick Johnson can truly say he knows and even loves. Even since starting school, Mick’s chronology has been mapped out according to the pursuit of NFL ambitions. There is no way to overestimate the way the sport consumes Mick’s life. It’s no surprise, then, that, upon entry into high school, the only thing that matters to Mick is making the football team, achieving starting line status, and performing to maximum ability in each game of the season. In one very telling statement Mick says of himself, “I don’t know if I can stand being ordinary.” It’s that very conflict which drives Mick to do things wherein Mick’s faith in his moral character is tested. In the quest of becoming the best player on the field, Mick begins training at a local gym where he meets a trainer that offers him the opportunity he’s always sought: to be the best, so above the rest that it’s an unnatural feat. That’s when Mick gets caught up in the use of “gym candy,” or steroids and hormones. What ensues is a rollercoaster of performance, emotions, and guilt. In the end, Mick has to make a choice between what really matters in life and what he’s willing to do in order to achieve it.

Evaluation: The good thing about Gym Candy is how I—and readers like me, who knows embarrassingly little to nothing about the game of football, can keep up with the momentum of the games without feeling left in the dust. Deuker’s narrative is quick and simple, particularly in the portions of the story wherein the games are involved. I could, literally, read them quickly and be engaged in Mick’s emotional investment in the game. In this way, the book read incredibly fast. For as much as I don’t get into sports, at all, I’m an avid viewer of sports dramas like Remember the Titans and TV’s “Friday Night Lights.” There is nothing like a straight-forward underdog story that builds momentum with quick dips into action-packed sports montages and evocative music. The catharsis that comes at the end through the success of victory on the field or some “greater win” is outrageously satisfying to me. I guess that’s why I gravitated toward this novel. In many ways, I guess that’s why I was able to give it a chance in spite of my disinterest in the sport or in characters like Mick with whom I have little prospect of relating.
Gym Candy is a great read for a reluctant reader and for any sports enthusiast male reader, in particular. It’s a morality tale that, in many ways, seems necessary to be told. There are many seemingly relatable aspects to Mick’s story: living up to his father’s aspirations for him, the changing natures of high school friendships, engagement in sports or hobbies that are all-consuming, the allure of peer pressure to use drugs, the struggle to fit in and be accepted by a team, and—with a very minor focus—the pursuit of intimate relationships with (in Mick’s case) girls. However, despite the relatively low reading level required to read and understand the book, I fear that the readers to whom this narrative is geared just simply wouldn’t want to read this or any book. I fear that’s a sad situation since, for kids in Mick’s shoes, the most important thing to find is a support system and a source of empathy and understanding. As with all teen real-life “issues” (i.e. drug use and addiction, physical and emotional abuse by adults, eating disorders, mental disorders, etc.), steroid use and obsessive need to succeed in sports seems to me to be pandemic particularly prevalent in communities wherein the only way “out” is seen as the big leagues, be it college ball or straight into professional sports careers. I think this is a novel which would work best in a middle school to high school set in those areas of the country—where it could really reach kids who are relating directly to Mick and his singular drive to making it as a sports star.

Title: Hairstyles of the Damned

Author: Joe Meno
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Recommended Age: 13+
Curricular Connections: Social Studies (Race Relations in the United States)
Selection Source: Personal collection, and Teenreads.com Word of Mouth October 2006

Review: Published into a digest-sized/pocket-ready book by Punk Planet, Hairstyles of the Damned is literally the perfect fit for that YA reader—male or female—who doesn’t carry his or her book bag to school because, well, he or she just “doesn’t care.” Joe Meno tells a story that is so genuine in the reading that it’s hard to believe it’s actually fiction; it reads more like an autobiography of coming-of-age in the “wrong side of the tracks” Chicago of the 1990s. There is nothing phony about Brian Oswald’s story. Hairstyles of the Damned is the tale of Brian’s teenage years wherein nothing is more important than punk rock, girls, and making it through the day. He is a fictionalization of any kid who feels like the outside is the only place he or she would want to fit in. Making mix-tapes, hanging with his pink-haired girl best friend, making out with girls in his friend’s basement, smoking pot, and navigating through the cliques of punk rockers is pretty much all that Brian cares about. He has a rocky home life, struggles to fit into a mostly-black neighborhood in Chicago, and battles with emerging sexuality.

Evaluation: Hairstyles of the Damned is a testament to living through angst-ridden adolescence through the school of hard knocks, even when the hard knocks sound more like the drumbeat of a Jawbreaker or Misfits song. It is about male-female friendships and where to draw the line. It is about race relations. It is about acceptance. It is about being a nonconformist. It is about growing up and figuring out exactly what that even means. It is a kind of High Fidelity for a YA reader except that, like adolescence, Hairstyles of the Damned takes itself a little more seriously.

Title: Homeboyz

Author: Alan Lawrence Sitomer
Genre: Black Experience in Fiction, Realistic Fiction
Recommended Age: 13+
Curricular Connections: Current Events, Black History Month
Selection Source: FAME Florida Teen Reads 2009-10 Nominee

Review: Teddy Anderson is a teenager with everything going for him: He’s a computer genius in whom the NSA has shown recruiting interest. He’s a self-taught martial artist. He comes from a strong family who has always supported each other in good times and in bad. Everything changes for Teddy and his family when Teddy’s younger sister becomes the tragic victim of a gang-related drive-by shooting. After the loss of Tina, the youngest Anderson, the entire family falls apart. Mrs. Anderson becomes a virtual zombie of herself. Mr. Anderson tries to cope with the strain the loss puts on his wife and on his son, desperate to hold the family together. Teddy…Teddy is another story. Upon Tina’s death, Teddy goes into revenge mode, swearing to exact vengeance on the gang and gangbangers that killed his sister. Using his computer savvy and his martial arts skills, Teddy hits the streets and, promptly, lands himself in the slammer. As punishment, Teddy is entered into a probationary house arrest period during which he is forced to mentor a twelve year-old wannabe gangbanger, Micha. Homeboyz is about Teddy and Micha’s relationship and how the boys change one another. It is about loss, coping, and family.

Evaluation: I came to Homeboyz never having been a fan of straight-from-the-Hood culture, fiction/non-fiction, or music. However, the story of Teddy, Micha, and the Anderson family is one that is very poignant and feels authentic to the reader. I can see how this novel would seem relevant to the YA reader of today, particularly those readers who are immersed in urban life or hip hop-culture in the media. Male YA readers will respond to this story and this novel. Sitomer does a wonderful job of creating characters with whom a reader can, at once, empathize with and sympathize for, even when the reader is not wholly on their “sides.” Were I at the helm of a highschool English class—in my current urban setting, Miami, more exactly, I would very much consider adding this novel to my class readings.

Title: I Heard the Owl Call My Name

Author: Margaret

Genre/Cultural Theme: Fiction, Adventure, Native American (Kwakiutl peoples) experience

Recommended Age: 10-14

Summary: Mark is young priest who is assigned a vicarage in Kingcome, a small Native American village in the Pacific Northwest/ British Columbia, where the Kwakiutl people are both holding onto traditional village life and trying not to shut out the world around them. Much of I Heard the Owl Call My Name is about Mark building relationships with the villagers in hopes to be there for them, as a pastor but also as a friend. From the moment he comes into his post, he senses the differences between himself, a white young man with no experience running his own parish or living on his own, and the people of the village, including the first Indian he meets, Jim. Through the passing of the seasons and through his willingness to participate in the lives of the Kwakiutl peoples, Mark becomes a part of the community. He shares with them the ups and downs of daily life of individuals as well as a tribe that is, very possibly, slipping into antiquity as the world outside Kingcome engenders upon the young people of the village who seek education and success in the white world.

Evaluation: I find that it’s difficult for me to see how young readers can identify with much of the “historical” Native American narratives and the traditional myths of the different peoples. I Heard the Owl Call My Name is both a step forward and a step backward in terms of my interests for Native American themed literature for YA. Because it is set in the early 1970’s, it’s not particularly separate of the experiences of a contemporary reader. It’s about the way of life in a small, traditionally isolated community and how it is changed as society outside encroaches upon it. Normally, I would find that a priest protagonist through whose perceptions a narrative is experienced would interfere with a contemporary YA reader’s appreciation of the story because it’s so disconnected from his or her own experience, but Mark is an incredibly empathetic character whose compassion and faith is admirable to religious and nonreligious folks alike. Much of his education of Kwakiutl traditions is shared with the readers and as Mark learns, the readers learn too.

Suggested extension activities: A journaling exercise would be great as an extension activity for I Heard the Owl Call My Name since much of the narrative is presented in a kind of day-to-day and intimate fashion. The reader is made to feel very close to Mark through his candid and direct observations and reflections. The tone of the novel is reminiscent of memoir or journaling; therefore, a great way to connect young readers to this narrative is to encourage them to express their reflections on the novel by tying a reading journal exercise to the chapters that they are asked to read for class if being assigned to read the book incrementally. The reflections can be done in class and graded as class work or quizzes. Teachers can introduce this assignment (or series of assignments) by focusing on the subjective nature of the grading—based more on effort and individual assessment of the material rather than on regurgitating facts. This will encourage students to engage with the literature and read for themselves, rather than for the grade themselves. Obviously, students will be required to have read the sections/chapters when doing this assignment. Based on their writing, teachers will be able to figure out if students are completing their reading assignments. In keeping with the youth services library activity for The Girl Who Helped Thunder, youth services libraries and school libraries can include I Heard the Owl Call My Name among titles selected for highlighting Native American experience literature as a non-native experience of a white man integrating with the culture of the Kwakiutl.

Title: The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Secrets behind What You Eat (Young Reader’s Edition)
Author: Michael Pollan and Richie Chevat
Genre: Informational
Recommended Age: 12+
Curricular Connections: Health, Food Nutritional Sciences, Agriscience
Selection Source: YASLA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults (2010 Nominee)

Review: Fact: There is corn in everything. Michael Pollan doesn’t think this is a good thing. He doesn’t hate corn or corn farmers or food industry workers…but, he knows that corn shouldn’t be everywhere…in everything. Omnivore’s Dilemma is about the current food industries: commercial industrial, organic industrial, local sustainable, and the hunter/gatherer variety of food production. In it, Pollan determines to follow the river of gold—corn, that is—from the various fields which yield the corn to the food lots where the corn is consumed by livestock to the drive-thru and supermarket aisles where we buy it. The book is a kind of overview of the food industry as it is known today: mostly commercial industrial and organic industrial. It is alarming how essential facts about how food is grown, raised, processed, manufactured, legislated, and, ultimately, sold and consumed are covertly concealed from us, the consumers of it. Pollan introduces his readers to real farmers, real food scientists and veterinarians, real industry specialists, and, most effectively, himself. Facts abound in Omnivore’s Dilemma. They are inarguable tidbits of data regarding what’s on nutrition labels, time tables and charts to help track changes in food production and consumption in the

United States

, and what food legislations and food economics mean to the food itself.

Evaluation: Perhaps one of the most effective things about Dial’s Young Reader’s Edition of Omnivore’s Dilemma is how genuinely geared the language and presentation is to young readers without seeming to condescend to a lower intellect. Rather than patronize young readers, Pollan and Chevat discuss the same issues with less complex phrasing and with more conversational instructional side notes than, say, a science class textbook. The language never feels forced or pedantic; instead, it seems to read naturally as though the book had always been intended for young readers. Though I haven’t read the adult (original) version of Omnivore’s Dilemma, I have read and listened to Pollan speak on similar issues on talk shows, NPR interviews, and in magazines and blogs. Pollan seems naturally adept at discussing important issues with some scientific gravitas without making it jargon-heavy or boring with data. I think Omnivore’s Dilemma is a must-read for any children, teens, or parents. It provides essential facts on the different food industries and offers some interesting insight on historical significances of food, food culture, and the economics of food. It isn’t about converting the population into vegetarianism (Pollan is a meat-eater) or moving everyone into a local sustainable diet, it’s about educating people on what is in their food, why it’s in there, and hoping they can be a little more conscious about the things they put in their mouths.
For the record, this is probably the most important book I’ve read in years. Years. And I kind of already knew a lot about this anyway.

Title: Plain Truth

Author: Jodi PicoultPublisher

Genre/Cultural Theme: Fiction, Legal drama, Strong female protagonist, Amish experience in the US

Recommended Age: 15+

Summary: Ellie Hathaway is a big-city defense attorney who, in the midst of a very successful career, finds that she has to disconnect in order to reevaluate her life and her priorities. For that, she flees Philadelphia for a stay with her aunt in Lancaster County where in a nearby Amish barn unbeknownst to her, her future client—an 18 year-old Amish girl, Katie—has been charged with infanticide of her newborn child. Though Ellie wants nothing more than to ignore the pleas of her aunt to take on the case, Ellie relents and ends up not only defending Katie but also living with her. Ellie becomes a sort of defacto extension of Katie’s family, immersed in their Amish traditions and experiencing the essential opposite of the kind of life she knew in Philly. Through their work together on the case to either prove Katie’s innocence or guilt—since that is undetermined for quite a lot of the novel, the two unlikely paired women develop a friendship that helps them discover who they are and what they want out of life.

Evaluation: For a YA book on Amish culture, I may suggest other titles, particularly because this novel, at 405 pages isn’t exactly an immediately satisfying read. The level of the writing and the ease of understandability are appropriate for 15+ most definitely, but short of avid female readers, I don’t think this book would be very interesting for the YA readers. However, it is a good introduction to the discussion of differences between secularized urban life and more conservative religious traditions in more rural parts of the US. Also, as a legal drama—though most of the legalese probably wouldn’t hold up to much speculation—it’s interesting and can keep the attention of teenagers with a particular interest in law though many of those readers may already be reading John Grisham novels and the like.

Suggested extension activities: This novel has great extension activities potential because of the legal drama aspect. A mock trial would be a wonderful exercise for this novel or any similar legal dramas or novels. I would divide a class up in two and act as the judge and jury. Half of the class would be assigned the part of the defense and the other half would be assigned the part of the prosecutor. Regardless on their personal stances on the “case,” I would have them act as researchers and use this exercise as a platform to teach information literacy and researching skills. Another activity could involve research on different American religious traditions, particularly those that look or live differently/ separately. Collecting photos and stories—both fiction and informational—from different American communities could be a wonderful exercise for students, educationally and creatively.

Title: Runaways (Comic Series)
Author: Brian K. Vaughn (creator), Joss Whedon, Michael Ryan, and Christina Strain, et al.
Genre: Fantasy/Science Fiction

Curricular Connections: English Literature
Selection Source: Teenreads.com (review for item of series “Dead End Kids” book)

Review: Runaways is a comic series by Brian K. Vaughn and published by Marvel Comics. The basic premise of Runaways surrounds six adolescents/teens whose parents annually meet, during which the kids aren't present. These kids end up becoming familiar with one another making them a band of loose friends. Little by little, the kids start suspecting that their parents are keeping secrets from them. One year, the kids spy on their parents and find them out to be...super villains of the supernatural/extraordinary variety. By and by the discoveries, the kids inherit their parents' powers (either naturally or by acquisition) and struggle to come into their own with these new identities.
Note: Brian K. Vaughn is no longer writing the series. He is the creator and worked on the first volume. Joss Whedon of TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly fame has also written for Runaways.

Evaluation: It's almost like the classic story of coming of age except that it's, well, comic book-y. It's got great graphics, dialogue, and story. The plot continues through the series which began in 2003 and is ongoing. It's a really great series. It ties in adolescent angst, kids' relationship/identity with their parents, and a lot of the things that make YA literature accessible to teens in with the comic book, superhero-esque format. Runaways is a really deserving member of any YA collection. And, let's hear it for good YA comic series!

Title: Seedfolks

Author: Paul Fleischman (author), Judy Pederson (illustrator)

Genre/Cultural Theme: Realistic fiction, Multiethnic/ multicultural

Recommended Age: 10-14

Summary: It is a vacant lot where trash is dumped and bottles collect, wherefrom passersby turn so as not to face the desolation of urban life, the disconnection the feel from nature, and the alienation they perpetrate from their neighbors. It is Cleveland and, for two seasons of the year, it is frozen solid and covered under feet of snow. As people from all across the world and nation migrate to the big city, they find themselves increasingly alone and embittered by the doldrums of city life and the increasing distrust of their neighbors—painted in different colors, sounding like different tongues. It is here where a little girl mourning the father she never knew plants some lima beans in the dead of winter so that her father can know that she is his daughter and so that he can be proud that she has followed in his footsteps. That one gesture triggers a community of immigrants of all ages and all dispositions to find a spot in the vacant lot and plant there, caring for it, and visiting it. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different person—a different gardener—and through those short first-person narrations, the reader comes to experience the differences and similarities of the disenfranchised, the lonely, the young, and the old.

Evaluation: Seedfolks is a book expressly written for children and young readers as an effort to open discourse on multicultural awareness, according to the books author, Paul Fleischman, in the book’s epilogue. It is the perfect vehicle for young people to experience the perspectives of others—some like them and some vastly different. It offers a platform for discussing various themes including multiculturalism, immigration, various cultures and nationalities, the state of modern day US society, industrialization, community activism, environmentalism, etc. It is short and easy to read making it a great choice for reluctant readers and/or in-class reading.

Suggested extension activities: Involving students in community action is a great way of getting them interested in social activism and empowering them as individuals that can make a difference. Though Seedfolks focuses on a community garden bringing people together, there are many different kinds of services that students and young persons can participate in both rural and urban communities of varying economic levels. Offering extra credit for participation in extracurricular volunteer work and inviting families and friends to join in will encourage students to engage with the community. Starting a class vegetable and herb garden (container or ground) can teach kids about the value of nutrition, responsibility, and team work. Caring for and maintaining the garden can be a part of the class—either daily or weekly—and, even without giving grades or extra credit for the work that they do, teachers can use the exercise as a valuable lesson on working to achieve something—the literal and figurative fruits of labor—and teach them about the process of trial and error. Similarly, starting a kids’ garden at a local public library can foster appreciation for the environment and for general health and well-being.

Title: Skim

Author: Mariko Takami (writer) and Jillian Tamaki (artist)

Genre/Cultural Theme: Graphic novel, Asian Experience, Teen depression/ suicide, LGBT coming of age

Recommended Age: 15+

Summary: Kim, “Skim,” is a teenager at an all-girls’ prep school on the outer fringes of the social scene. She’s a chubby Asian quasi-Goth/would-be-Wiccan outsider who spends most of her time with her best friend, Lisa, and being apathetic about home and school with the exception of her English class. When the most popular girl in school gets dumped by her perfect boyfriend just before he kills himself, the entire school population—students and faculty—become obsessed with teen depression and outreach to potential suicides. Skim takes place in the time of this heightened awareness in Skim’s school and follows Skim as she navigates between being herself and finding out who she really is.

Evaluation: The process of self-discovery is arduous, particularly for teenagers who, on top of their self-imposed pressures to figure out who they are and what their place in the world is, have the need to identify themselves to their peers, families, and adults around them. Skim’s experience in the novel borders on the mundane. There are no particularly outrageous or unbelievable or monumental events that occur personally to her. However, what she’s going through in those very “normal” days is some of the most difficult stuff that a teenager has to go through. The discussion on teen depression is poignant, mostly because of the way that it illustrates the disconnect between adults and the children over whom they loom as authority figures and responsible parties. Moreover, adolescence and teenage years are those during which—like Skim—most teenagers begin to discover not only who they are sexually but what they want in terms of all the meaningful relationships in their lives.

Suggested extension activities: I think it would be very hard to fit Skim into a curriculum. However, I definitely think that it would be a great amendment to discussions on teen depression or suicide in middle and high schools. One activity that I would suggest in keeping with Skim’s themes is to open up discourse between students of middle and high school ages about the potential issues that could cause or exacerbate teen depression. I think students don’t like to be put on the spot or made to feel like they’re revealing “too much” about themselves. Because of that, I would encourage them to draft situations that teens deal with that cause emotional stress for them and have them randomly draw them and discuss them and why those situations cause stress and what teenagers can do to manage that stress positively.

Title: Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Author: Marisha Pessl
Genre: Mystery/Suspense, Strong Female Character in Fiction, Popular Adult Fiction
Recommended Age: 15+
Curricular Connections: English Literature, Social Studies, US History (Counterculture Movement, Antiwar Movement of the 1960s-1970s, Domestic Terrorism), Civics/Government
Selection Source: Personal Collection, USAToday.com Best Selling Books Database

Review: When Special Topics in Calamity Physics opens up, Blue van Meer—the story’s protagonist—let’s you know that someone dies. She tells you that someone’s died and that, even in the present—long after it had happened, she’s still thinking about it. That’s when Blue starts telling the reader the story of her coming of age. A time when, after years of traveling between college towns wherein her dad, a political science professor, would find temporary teaching jobs, Blue and her dad finally seem to settle in one town. In this town, Blue is enrolled in a classy prep school. A particular professor at this school takes an interest in Blue—and, possibly, in her father. Hannah Schneider, a near middle-aged teacher at her school, woos Blue into joining a kind of intellectual elite hob-knob club of students. What is astonishing about the narrative is the way in which it’s told. Blue is an exceptionally brilliant girl who, in her narration, references everything from “Casablanca” to Shakespeare to Marlowe…who, by way of the pedantry while road-tripping with her father, knows more about history and politics than most people with tenured professorships at leading universities. Yet, despite all of the references and high-brow intellectualism of Blue’s words, it never comes off sounding as condescending or patronizing. Everything about Blue is genuine. Everything about her story is engrossing.
As Blue’s life becomes more settled among the Blueblood in St. Gallway’s (her prep school), mysteries begin to take shape. Hannah and the students in her inner circle become suspects of intrigue. Blue’s dad, even, becomes a source of mystery and unspoken truths. Blue’s coming of age, then, takes place among a tension of suspense, a mystery of epic proportions.

Evaluation: Pessl presents such an intriguing story that the reader is immediately sucked into Blue’s world. Blue is an exemplary literary force. She is brilliant, perceptive, and curious. It takes a bright reader to follow along the path that Pessl has laid out in Blue’s narration. For that reason (and due to its page-length), my recommendation is that a reader be in the latter high school grades or beyond. However, the pay off for the reader comes in spades. Besides the engrossing story and unraveling mysteries of the plot, the book’s value exceeds entertainment. It is a story with links throughout classic literature,

history, and classicism. It is truly a remarkable book that lends itself to any audience.

Title: Stargirl
Author: Jerry Spinelli
Genre: Romance, Realistic Fiction

Recommended Age: 9-12
Selection Source: 2005 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults, and Teen Reads Ultimate Reading List

Review: Lee Borlock is an average kid in an average Arizona high school. Stargirl is anything but average. The story of their friendship and romance is one to which most any teenager can relate. From a distance, Leo is consumed by Stargirl’s confidence in her individuality and the way she so naively persists with her antics despite being a kind of laughing stock among the students. Stargirl plays the ukulele in the cafeteria, fancies costumes above the hippest fashions, dances in the rain, meditates in the desert, and keeps her pet rat with her at all times. Though Stargirl is perceived as an outsider by the entire school, a great flaw in the matrix of high schoolers’ need to fit in, Lee is drawn to her precisely for that reason. The students of Mica Area High School’s relationship to Stargirl are characteristic of the fickle nature of teenage attention and affection. She is interesting to them because of her oddity, yet while they singularly attack her for her eccentricity and unabashed individuality, they are, too, wildly interested in keeping her in the spotlight so as not to miss any of her antics. As Lee and Stargirl’s friendship blossoms into a relationship, Lee finds himself questioning his own character. Though Stargirl can stand to be the outsider and even seems to flourish in the wake of disdain from the other students, Lee cannot. In spite of liking her just as she is, he pressures Stargirl to conform. Because she so likes him, she does.

Evaluation: From the moment Stargirl dances her way into the cafeteria, she is in your heart forever. Like Lee, the reader becomes fascinated and a little in love with Stargirl. For those of us who’ve always felt like the outsider and wished to have the confidence to walk with our heads held high through the hallways of our high schools, Stargirl becomes a kind of hero. It is easy to see why Lee likes her and why he is fascinated by her. It is a truly sad moment when Stargirl succumbs to conformity for the sake of keeping Lee’s affection and, really, for the sake of making Lee feel at ease with himself.

Title: The Teen Guide to Global Action: How to Connect With Others (Near and Far) to Create Social Change
Author: Barbara A. Lewis
Genre: Informational
Recommended Age: 10+
Curricular Connections: Science (Environmental), Current Events, Civics, Leadership
Selection Source: YASLA Popular Paperbacks for Young Readers (2010, Change Your World or Live to Regret It title)

Review: The Teen Guide to Global Action is a sort of DIY handbook for teens and young adults interested in social responsibility and activism. The book starts off with a questionnaire/survey to help readers narrow down their areas of interest and potential activity. It goes on to break down into sections of social causes (education, environment, homelessness, etc.) and into further categories of local and global initiatives with which they can participate. The focus of The Teen Guide to Global Action is to offer outlets for readers to seek information on the world around them and the world in which they live. It shines the light on social issues that volunteers and activists can participate in advocating. Lewis and Free Spirit Publishing make it clear to readers that there are countless ways in which people can partake in activism. Their idea is that anyone and everyone can find a vehicle through which he or she can make social change. The book offers names of organizations and contact information, research strategy guides and suggestions, bios of successful teen activists, and tips for joining and/or starting advocacy groups.

Evaluation: This is a great starter book for adolescents and teens who are seeking out ways of making a difference in their local or global environments. The way that the material is presented resembles a kind of teen magazine format—columns of text vs. margin-to-margin page-fuls of text deliver the information, side bars with additional information (i.e. blurbs on web sites or groups), and mid-section bios of teens who’ve made a difference—making it easy to read and relatable to young readers. The information never seems overwhelming, at all. In fact, most of the data is written in short paragraphs. The book lists a lot of different outlets that teens can research (including information and URL regarding how to research effectively using the Internet) from their own desks. It is a great stepping-stone for the actively-minded teen. Later this week, I’ll be sharing it with my friend’s thirteen year-old step daughter who has voiced interest in environmental causes.

Title: Wake (Wake Trilogy Series #1)
Author: Lisa McMann
Genre: Supernatural fiction, Mystery/Suspense

Recommended Age: 13+
Curricular Connections: Literature
Selection Source: Popular Teen Series in Barnes Noble Teen section

Review: Janie doesn’t dream…at least, not her own dreams. Instead, Janie manages to fall into the dreams of anyone sleeping and dreaming in her near vicinity. It’s like she has grand mal seizures on the outside while being transported into the subconscious psyches of the people around her. To Janie, that’s not so cool. In fact, it’s ruining her life. Knowing people’s secrets is only a part of the problem. Mostly, it’s ruining her life because it interferes with every single day and every single aspect of her life. As kids fall asleep from boredom in class, Janie plummets into their dreamscapes. As the elderly in the nursing home she works at sleep, she’s thrust into the memories of their long lives—most of them memories of difficult emotional times and life struggles. Janie is a kind of slave to sleep and dreams, unwillingly sacrificing her own sleep, dreams, and sanity in the process. At seventeen and in the throws of her junior year, Janie’s life becomes complicated by a recent romantic interest and her burgeoning independence.

Evaluation: When I state that I devoured this book in less than a three-hour nonstop reading session on a Sunday morning-to-afternoon I am saying so in all honesty. Considering that I’d previously read Blue for Nightmares and that this book’s synopsis was remarkably similar (teen girls walking into other people’s dreams find a mystery that they need to solve), I wasn’t really looking forward to getting started on Wake. However, I was pleasantly surprised. First, the narrative is written in short, to-the-point sentences, with various breaks—sections divided into days, times, etc. This style helps the reader move swiftly through the text, a bonus for any YA book and for any suspense story, in general fiction. Second, Janie as the protagonist is completely relatable without having to be made out as some mousy, socially awkward imbecile—something I relate quite whole-heartedly and unabashedly to, say, Bella from the Twilight Saga books. Though Janie is the protagonist, the narrative isn’t told through her first person perspective. I’ve learned to find this refreshing since reading a lot of these YA books and in my own reading of [what I refer to as] urban fantasy pulp series, like Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Series, and Patricia Briggs’ series, and Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Norville books. I find that a third person narrator has a lot to offer the reader, even when it’s mostly limited to sticking alongside one singular character, as is the case in Wake. Third, the way the “dream catcher” idea is presented and later only-somewhat-developed in the story is refreshing. We, the readers, learn about Janie’s ability just as she learns about it. She doesn’t have the answers, nor do we. A nice relationship is developed between reader and protagonist for this reason. There is an element of mystery and suspense in that fact, too, which sets this novel apart from Blue is for Nightmares. Finally, Wake presents a character whom I’d like to continue following through her discoveries. I fully intend to read the following books in the series beginning with the sequel, Fade.
It seems like this is an easy series to get into and that, in turn, provides some refreshing escapist fiction without being too over-bearing on the supernatural tip. In fact, it’s barely “supernatural” at all—more preternatural, really. A part of me rues at even putting it in the genre of supernatural YA fictions involving magic or monsters. Though I would give the book 3 ½ stars for the story, alone, I add the ½ star because of the way that it gets me to want to read more about Janie and her adventures because I’m sure there are bound to be many more.

Title: What I Saw and How I Lied

Author: Judy Blundell
Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery
Recommended Age: 12+
Curricular Connections: World History or US History (any history class studying WWII/post-WWII era)
Selection Source: 2008 National Book Award winner for Young People's Literature, and 2009 Best Books for Young Adults from http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/bestbooksya/09bbya.cfm

Review: Evie is a fifteen year-old growing up in post-WWII New York when her step-father returns from the war and takes Evie and her mother to Palm Beach, FL. All the promise of Paradise is stunted by the realization that, off-season, the city is a veritable ghost town populated by a handful of tourists and residents who, mainly, work keeping hotels running at their basest operational standards. It is in this setting that Blundell stages Evie’s coming of age and sets the stage for the mysteries that unfold as Evie and her family befriend some characters who are staying in and around their hotel, the Mirage. As Evie gets her first taste of love with the dangerously ambiguous former solider, Peter, and her parents strike up a friendship with the Graysons, a couple of hoteliers from New York, a plot of slow-moving, engrossing, and rich noir unfolds. What I Saw and How I Lied presents a coming of age mystery in a landscape that its fifteen year-old protagonist must navigate while she tries to discover the fine lines between social propriety, romance, and adolescence vs. adulthood.

Evaluation: There aren’t a lot of YA novels that grab me in and compel me to stay reading them. What I Saw and How I Lied is one of the few that has done that in my adulthood. What I loved about this book is the way that Blundell never panders to the ignorance of a YA reader. Rather than talk-down to her reader or rather than skip over the reasons that certain things are the way they are (there is a historical context that many YA readers won’t be familiar with), Blundell seamlessly integrates post-WWII history, social factors, etc. into the narrative so that, at once, entertains and educates the reader with just enough to pique his/her interest in the fiction and historical references made in the novel. The tone is supremely noir while remaining intelligible and relevant to a teenager. It is engrossing in its entirety. I have recommended this book to adult friends who like mystery and to ones that teach YA readers.

Title: Witness

Author: Karen Hesse

Genre/Cultural Theme: Poetry (narrative), Historical fiction (1920s, US), Black American experience, Jewish American experience, Multiethnic/multicultural relations, Racism

Recommended Age: 12+

Summary: A 1924 Vermont town is the setting for this unique poetic narrative that depicts a community in turmoil at the news of the Ku Klux Klan’s arrival. Hesse uses short poems told in the voice of a handful of the town’s residents, among them a six year-old Jewish girl, Esther, transplanted from New York after her mother’s death; a twelve year-old black girl, the single landlady from whom Esther and her father rent a room, Sara Chickering; Leanora, who takes up caring for an elderly “half-blind” white veteran of the Civil War, Mr. Fields; a white mid-50’s working class couple, the Pettibones, who are at odd ends of the spectrum of opinions on the arrival of the Klan; a progressive doctor, Fitzgerald Flitt, and a progressive newsman, Reynard Alexander; a bob-haired rum-runner, Iris; and two white men—a preacher, Johnny Reeves, and Merle Van Tornhut—who have themselves joined the Klan. With varying and oftentimes opposing perspectives on the same situation and the way that Hesse’s plot develops from poem to poem, Witness truly does stand out as a novel way of addressing issues of race, racism, community, relationships, etc. Among the historical elements within Witness’s timeline are the murder trial of Leonard and Leopold in Chicago and the election of President Coolridge, a Vermonter.

Evaluation: The experience of reading Witness, alone, is a valuable one. The narrative takes place through short poems told in the experience of individuals. It is a creative way of illustrating the experience of that 1920’s American racism that is so heavily drawn upon for other more straightforward narratives in literature and films. It’s almost like it’s presenting a Billie Holiday song or some slave song Spiritual on the page—not lacking musicality, necessarily, merely presented in verse. It is difficult to quantify or qualify the value that this kind of book would have on the young readers who are exposed to it. Suffice it to say, teachers can use Witness to present something personal, unconventional, and interesting to students who are either desensitized or apathetic about American history and American race relations.

Suggested extension activities: As a creative writer as well as an educator, I encourage educators to take advantage of teaching different themes in social studies subjects by introducing various literary forms of fiction and nonfiction. Hesse’s book is an excellent opportunity to expose young readers and students to the social viability of the poetic form. Students in social studies and history classrooms can write poems or dramatic episodes focused on events or themes covered in the class, whereas students in English or literature courses could be encouraged to think of a social issue and express their thoughts in poems or dramatic episodes. Integrating current events from newspaper or online news sites is a good way of teaching kids research and source evaluation skills. Having students work on creative writing projects based on current event themes and how socio-political and geopolitical events affect their lives is a great exercise across the subject-spectrum.

Children's and Young Adult Literature & Materials Evaluations

2010-11-15T15:56:00.001-05:00

Multicultural Young Adult Book Evaluations

Cristy Moran

University of South Florida

Title: American Born Chinese

Author: Gene Luen Yang

Publisher: First Second

Copyright year:

Genre/Cultural Theme: Graphic novel, Memoir, Asian (Chinese) experience in the

Recommended Age: 9+

Yang presents a delightful discussion on the topic of social acceptance and self-identification that reaches out to young readers in particular with a sincere tone and anything but a condescending manner. Moreover, it feels personal. Yang expresses in a very relatable and novel way the very honest portrayal of what it feels like to be different and to be, perhaps worse, obviously different.

Title:

Cuba

: My Revolution

Author: Inverna Lockpez (writer) and Dean Haspiel (artist)

Publisher: Vertigo/ DC Comics

Copyright year: 2010

Genre/Cultural Theme: Cuban Revolution, Graphic novel, Historical fiction, Memoir

Recommended Age: 16+ (brief nudity, non-sexual)

Summary: In 1959, Fidel Castro marched into Havana as the leader of the Cuban Revolution against the

’s interests in dictator/president Batista’s reign over the island. Sonya—a fictionalization of writer Inverna Lockpez—is a 17 year-old girl who gives herself to the guerrilla as a medical assistant though her ambition prior to her engagement in activism was to be an artist. Sonya is a symbol of the artistic, intellectual youth presence of the Cuban Revolution. Tired of the corruption of Batista’s government—overrun by mob money and playing different global interests against the benefit of the Cuban people—Sonya takes up the cause of the Revolution. As she gives up her dreams to be an artist, she doesn’t give up the artistic spirit nor does she forgo her principles, the same principles that drive her to be active in the first place. Those principles enable her to see the hypocrisy of the Revolution’s supporters from the Cubans to the way the guerrilla is managed and to the way that it becomes something other than what it promised it the Cubans that it would be. The Cuban Revolution and Sonya’s journey through the life of a guerrilla doctor is only a part of the narrative though it is a generous part of it. There are also elements of her family life, her romantic life, and her social life.

Title: First Star I See

Author: Jaye Caffrey (author), Lynne Adamson (illustrator)

Publisher: Central Recovery Press

Copyright year: 2010

Genre/Cultural Theme: Fiction, Strong female protagonist, ADHD awareness

Recommended Age: 9-12

Title: The Girl Who Helped Thunder and Other Native American Folktales

Author: James Bruchac and Joseph Bruchac (retold by), Stefano Vitale (illustrator)

Publisher: Sterling Publishing

Copyright year: 2008

Genre/Cultural Theme: Folk tales and legends, Native American (various)

Recommended Age: Reading level is appropriate for 10+, but content is ideal for all children

Summary: The Girl Who Helped Thunder and Other Native American Folktales presents the young reader to a rich history of folktales and legends of the Native American peoples throughout the various regions of the

. The stories are presented by region and celebrate the diversity among the native peoples. At the beginning of each geographical section, the Bruchacs introduce readers, briefly, to the geography of the area and the demographic of the native populations there including a brief discussion on typical lifestyle elements of the different nationalities and tribes there. For the most part, the stories are short (mostly between one and six pages long) and are presented with vivid, wonderful illustrations.

Evaluation: The Bruchacs are raconteurs by trade. It is evident by the way that they write the different stories that, on top of being good at storytellers, they are also well-versed in different Native American legends and mythologies. The experience of watching and listening storytelling is something that’s lost on the pages, even of such a lovely comprehensive book like The Girl Who Helped Thunder. Fortunately for the reader, the printed word allows for the dissemination of the stories and invites new opportunities for storytelling between parents or teachers and children. This book and the stories therein would make for great reads-aloud in a classroom or a group of children, either one at a time, or in groupings by region—as suggested by the Bruchacs in their presentation—or by types of characters or tales (creation stories, different lessons or themes, for examples).

Suggested extension activities: A school or other youth services library can celebrate Native American culture, traditions, and literature by setting up table displays or bulletin displays to highlight materials. I would encourage focusing on local tribes or peoples, historic and contemporary. Highlighting current reading materials (as well as movies) is important because it helps kids of non-native decent to understand that Native Americans are still viable parts of our community and that they’re not only historical figures, nor are they mere stereotypes. Though this is not a traditional “extension activity” for students, I believe it’s an essential, purposeful activity for youth services librarians. A student activity for could include grouping the class into different geographical areas of the US and having them enact one of the myths or stories of that region or present creative projects—individually or as groups—to the class. While they work on the presentations, students will learn about

history, Native American cultures, the value of mythology and folklore on a universal scale, and develop creative thinking and project skills.

Title: I Heard the Owl Call My Name

Author: Margaret Craven

Publisher: Dell Publishing/ Random House

Copyright year: 1973

Genre/Cultural Theme: Fiction, Adventure, Native American (Kwakiutl peoples) experience

Recommended Age: 10-14

Title: Kingfisher Treasury of Jewish Stories (Kingfisher Treasury of Stories Series #5)

Author: Adele Geras (compiled by), Jane Cope (illustrator)

Publisher: Kingfisher

Copyright year: 2003

Genre/Cultural Theme: Short fiction, Jewish theme

Recommended Age: 10-14

Summary: Like the other titles in the Kingfisher Treasury of…children’s stories series (including Animal Stories, Irish Stories, Magical Stories, Monster Stories, Stories for Six Year-olds, etc.), the Kingfisher Treasury of Jewish Stories is a collection of short stories is guided by one central theme. The stories in the Kingfisher collection vary in style, setting, and moral. Included are stories by the following authors: Lynne Reid Banks, Leila Berg, Ruth Craft, Phyllis Rose Eisenberg, Deborah Freeman, Sheila Front, Adéle Geras, Barbara Diamond Goldin, Marilyn Hirsch, Tamar Hodes, Miriam Hodgson, Judith Kerr, Michael Rosen, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Some of the stories—like Hirsch’s “Captain Jiri and Rabbi Jacob,” Rosen’s “The Judgment,” and Geras’s “The Golden Shoes”—are fables that take the reader outside of the realm of the present day and present characters that are Jewish and that are obvious in their intent to teach a lesson or deliver a moral. Other stories—like Eisenberg’s “A Mensch is Someone Special,” Hodes’ “Special Fridays,” and Banks’ “Batata”—are more present-day based and more directly relative to the contemporary young reader. While not all of the stories present situations which can only be appreciated by Jewish readers, many of the stories involve Jewish holiday celebrations, Yiddish dialect, and Jewish history—a few of the stories (though only a handful) touch upon World War II.

Evaluation: I believe that young readers can appreciate many if not all of the lessons from the Jewish-themed stories in the Kingfisher collection. Moreover, appreciation for a major immigrant population and cultural/ethnic minority in the

is also very important—if not on a global scale, most definitely on a local and community scale. All of these stories have those classic valuable children’s lessons and morals that are, in most cases, cross-religious and cross-cultural. They are also great places to start for discussions between parents and their children or teachers and their classrooms on themes including cross-cultural relations (see: “Special Fridays”), self-acceptance and self-awareness (see: “The Cat Who Thought She Was a Dog and the Dog Who Thought He Was a Cat” and “Batata”), etc. It will, however, be difficult for non-Jews to “get into” this collection as parents, I believe, since it is very clearly a Jewish-themed book.

Suggested extension activities: Public schools across the country give days off for Jewish holidays as teacher work or vacation days. Any one of those Jewish holidays is an opportunity for teachers to foster both multicultural awareness and sensitivity. Moreover, using Jewish themed stories or stories by Jewish authors during those times for reading and comprehension assignments is a good way to include those materials without interrupting the general course of curricula. That being said, individual stories can be selected by teachers from the Kingfisher’s Treasury of Jewish Stories—even if the entire book isn’t assigned as mandatory reading for those purposes. Teachers can either read a story aloud to the students and conduct a short quiz on the facts and themes of the story, or hand out copies of the stories to students and follow with a quiz. Depending on the demographic of the school and the surrounding community, a school librarian can determine if a Jewish books and materials display is appropriate for religious holidays or during other times of the year like a multicultural awareness week. A great class activity would be to hold a holiday party where students and their families can cook or bake Jewish snacks and goodies along with other things that families might bring.

Title: Plain Truth

Author: Jodi Picoult

Publisher: Washington Square Press

Copyright year: 2000

Genre/Cultural Theme: Fiction, Legal drama, Strong female protagonist, Amish experience in the

Recommended Age: 15+

. Also, as a legal drama—though most of the legalese probably wouldn’t hold up to much speculation—it’s interesting and can keep the attention of teenagers with a particular interest in law though many of those readers may already be reading John Grisham novels and the like.

Title: Seedfolks

Author: Paul Fleischman (author), Judy Pederson (illustrator)

Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers

Copyright year: 1999

Genre/Cultural Theme: Realistic fiction, Multiethnic/ multicultural

Recommended Age: 10-14

society, industrialization, community activism, environmentalism, etc. It is short and easy to read making it a great choice for reluctant readers and/or in-class reading.

Title: Skim

Author: Mariko Takami (writer) and Jillian Tamaki (artist)

Publisher: Groundwood Books/ House of Anansi Press

Copyright year: 2008

Genre/Cultural Theme: Graphic novel, Asian Experience, Teen depression/ suicide, LGBT coming of age

Recommended Age: 15+

Title: Witness

Author: Karen Hesse

Publisher: Scholastic, Inc.

Copyright year: 2003

Genre/Cultural Theme: Poetry (narrative), Historical fiction (1920s, US), Black American experience, Jewish American experience, Multiethnic/multicultural relations, Racism

Recommended Age: 12+

Suggested YA Books and Materials: Reading Project 1

Cristy Moran

University of South Florida

1. Annie on My Mind

Author: Nancy Garden

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Genre: LGBT Romance

Recommended Age: 14+

Rating: ***1/2

Page #: 233

Curricular Connections: Social Studies, Religion, Current Events (Gay Marriage)

Selection Source: Teenreads.com (Author Profile: Nancy Garden) from http://www.teenreads.com/authors/au-garden-nancy.asp

Review: Liza is the stand-up seventeen year-old. She’s an aspiring architect attending a New York City prep school. She’s never been a problem for her parents. In fact, she has a great relationship with them and with her younger brother. At the start of Annie on My Mind, Liza is walking through a museum, getting ideas for sketches when she encounters Annie, an oddball romantic seventeen year-old, just like her. While Liza’s and Annie’s friendship blossoms, Liza’s school life is heading in opposite directions: at once she is hailed as an upstanding student and president of the student body and dealing with the internal conflict of realizing that she is different from the other kids. Liza and Annie develop a friendship which troubles both girls to define. When they It is during a three-day suspension for standing up for her principles when another student gets in trouble for ear-piercing, when Liza and Annie realize that they’re in love and not just in that platonic way, both girls (though Liza, primarily, since it is told with her as the central protagonist) strive to understand and accept their kind of affection for one another and their relationship.

In the midst of all this, Liza and Annie agree to care after pair of teachers’ cats while the teachers vacation. This chance changes Liza’s life forever and helps her realize that she (and Annie) is not alone in this world and that her feelings aren’t “wrong,” just different. That is where the plot unfurls; when Liza has to face her fears of opening up her personal life—her struggles to identify herself and her sexuality, her commitment to her family and to her dreams of attending a prestigious university—and facing all of it in the public eye of her family and her school…when it’s no longer possible for Liza to be true to herself and to be happy with who she is and wants to be unless she can do so proudly.

Evaluation: This is a book that I hadn’t known existed until I came upon the title while looking for a “good” YA LGBT book to read. This is a book that, immediately upon reading, got me to call my best friend of fifteen years, the first openly gay lesbian at our Catholic high school—my best friend since before she outed herself to the school and to her family—and tell her, “Somewhere out there, this book had been around, existing for almost two decades when we were going through our crisis in being accepted in high school. When you were the lesbian and I was the straight girl friend and no one understood and everyone treated us badly.” It was amazing to me that it took me until I was twenty-eight years-old to find it and, when I did, I resolved to share the story of Liz and Annie with any adolescent I met—gay or straight—that struggled to find, accept, and share his or her own identity with the rest of the world. It is an important book. It is a book that should be read far more than it is. And I’m glad that it’s out there, for someone to find. Someone like me. Someone like my best friend, Ani. Yes, Ani.

2. Battle Royale

Author: Koushun Takami

Publisher: VIZ Media

Genre: Popular Adult Fiction, Foreign (Japanese), Action/ Adventure

Recommended Age: 15+

Rating: ****

Page #: 624

Curricular Connections: Civics/ Government (Socialism, Nationalism, Fascism), Foreign Language (Japanese)

Selection Source: Personal collection

Review: Battle Royale is a Japanese novel that, since coming out amid controversy in

Japan

Battle Royale takes place in an alternate

Japan

Evaluation: Takami's novel is more than just a standard Lord of the Flies YA fare, it offers an in depth look into

Japan

's nationalistic state. It is a hyper-real

Japan

When I first read this, I was blown away at how richly Takami enters into a dialogue with the reader about the perils of staunch nationalism. I learned more about

Japan

3. Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys

Author: Chris Fuhrman

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Recommended Age: 12+

Rating: ****1/2

Page #: 200

Curricular Connections: English Literature (Poetry), Religion

Selection Source: Teenreads.com Ultimate Reading List

Review: Comic books, William Blake, Catholic school uniforms, incest, crushes...Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys pretty much covers the gamut of coming of age. At its core, the novel is one about realizing that the world of boyhood and the world of adulthood are two different places. Francis Doyle, Tim Sullivan, and their friends go to Catholic school. They are a wildly imaginative group of adolescent boys who live vicariously through the comic books that they read and the comic books that they want to write. In their quasi-imaginary world, Sister Assumpta is their peg-legged super-villainous arch-nemesis head mistress. Francis—the novel’s protagonist—is a kind of cool-headed misfit on the verge of manhood getting his first feelings of lust and romance when he meets Margie Flynn, another classmate. Their friendship and blossoming romance is the kind that echoes those of the classic coming of age tales until Francis finds out a secret about Margie. Francis’s friendship with Tim is another central aspect of the novel. Tim is the resident genius of the group of boys. He is the emotionally mature, brooding, and speculative one of the group, a kind of misfit ring-leader of sorts, in spite of his small stature and physical frailty.

Evaluation: Fuhrman’s only novel was adapted into a film of the same name by producers Jodie Foster (who also plays Sister Assumpta) and Jay Shapiro, and director Peter Care in 2002, and was finalized just after Fuhrman died of cancer. The film, like the movie, is a poignant, sad, and moving picture into the lives of Francis, Tim, and Margie. Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys is truly a special work of fiction. The characters and the story are as real and relatable as they get. Particularly for the students who ask those Big Questions and for the ones who question what it is to live an authentic life at a time when everything is so uncertain, this is a must-read.

4. Hairstyles of the Damned

Author: Joe Meno

Publisher: Punk Planet Book Series, Akashic Books

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Recommended Age: 13+

Rating: ****

Page #: 290

Curricular Connections: Social Studies (Race Relations in the

United States

)

Selection Source: Personal collection, and Teenreads.com Word of Mouth October 2006

Review: Published into a digest-sized/pocket-ready book by Punk Planet, Hairstyles of the Damned is literally the perfect fit for that YA reader—male or female—who doesn’t carry his or her book bag to school because, well, he or she just “doesn’t care.” Joe Meno tells a story that is so genuine in the reading that it’s hard to believe it’s actually fiction; it reads more like an autobiography of coming-of-age in the “wrong side of the tracks” Chicago of the 1990s. There is nothing phony about Brian Oswald’s story. Hairstyles of the Damned is the tale of Brian’s teenage years wherein nothing is more important than punk rock, girls, and making it through the day. He is a fictionalization of any kid who feels like the outside is the only place he or she would want to fit in. Making mix-tapes, hanging with his pink-haired girl best friend, making out with girls in his friend’s basement, smoking pot, and navigating through the cliques of punk rockers is pretty much all that Brian cares about. He has a rocky home life, struggles to fit into a mostly-black neighborhood in Chicago, and battles with emerging sexuality.

5. Homeboyz

Author: Alan Lawrence Sitomer

Publisher: Hyperion Books for Children

Genre: Black Experience in Fiction, Realistic Fiction

Recommended Age: 13+

Rating: ***1/2

Page #: 304

Curricular Connections: Current Events, Black History Month

Selection Source: FAME Florida Teen Reads 2009-10 Nominee

Review: Teddy Anderson is a teenager with everything going for him: He’s a computer genius in whom the NSA has shown recruiting interest. He’s a self-taught martial artist. He comes from a strong family who has always supported each other in good times and in bad. Everything changes for Teddy and his family when Teddy’s younger sister becomes the tragic victim of a gang-related drive-by shooting. After the loss of Tina, the youngest Anderson, the entire family falls apart. Mrs. Anderson becomes a virtual zombie of herself. Mr. Anderson tries to cope with the strain the loss puts on his wife and on his son, desperate to hold the family together. Teddy…Teddy is another story. Upon Tina’s death, Teddy goes into revenge mode, swearing to exact vengeance on the gang and gangbangers that killed his sister. Using his computer savvy and his martial arts skills, Teddy hits the streets and, promptly, lands himself in the slammer. As punishment, Teddy is entered into a probationary house arrest period during which he is forced to mentor a twelve year-old wannabe gangbanger, Micha. Homeboyz is about Teddy and Micha’s relationship and how the boys change one another. It is about loss, coping, and family.

6. Runaways (Comic Series)

Author: Brian K. Vaughn (creator), Joss Whedon, Michael Ryan, and Christina Strain, et al.

Publisher: Marvel Comics

Genre: Fantasy/Science Fiction

Recommended Age: 12+

Rating: ****

Page #: n/a

Curricular Connections: English Literature

Selection Source: Teenreads.com (review for item of series “Dead End Kids” book)

Review: Runaways is a comic series by Brian K. Vaughn and published by Marvel Comics. The basic premise of Runaways surrounds six adolescents/teens whose parents annually meet, during which the kids aren't present. These kids end up becoming familiar with one another making them a band of loose friends. Little by little, the kids start suspecting that their parents are keeping secrets from them. One year, the kids spy on their parents and find them out to be...super villains of the supernatural/extraordinary variety. By and by the discoveries, the kids inherit their parents' powers (either naturally or by acquisition) and struggle to come into their own with these new identities.

Note: Brian K. Vaughn is no longer writing the series. He is the creator and worked on the first volume. Joss Whedon of TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly fame has also written for Runaways.

Evaluation: It's almost like the classic story of coming of age except that it's, well, comic book-y. It's got great graphics, dialogue, and story. The plot continues through the series which began in 2003 and is ongoing. It's a really great series. It ties in adolescent angst, kids' relationship/identity with their parents, and a lot of the things that make YA literature accessible to teens in with the comic book, superhero-esque format. Runaways is a really deserving member of any YA collection. And, let's hear it for good YA comic series!

7. Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Author: Marisha Pessl

Publisher: Penguin Group

Genre: Mystery/Suspense, Strong Female Character in Fiction, Popular Adult Fiction

Recommended Age: 15+

Rating: *****

Page #: 528

Curricular Connections: English Literature, Social Studies, US History (Counterculture Movement, Antiwar Movement of the 1960s-1970s, Domestic Terrorism), Civics/Government

Selection Source: Personal Collection, USAToday.com Best Selling Books Database

Review: When Special Topics in Calamity Physics opens up, Blue van Meer—the story’s protagonist—let’s you know that someone dies. She tells you that someone’s died and that, even in the present—long after it had happened, she’s still thinking about it. That’s when Blue starts telling the reader the story of her coming of age. A time when, after years of traveling between college towns wherein her dad, a political science professor, would find temporary teaching jobs, Blue and her dad finally seem to settle in one town. In this town, Blue is enrolled in a classy prep school. A particular professor at this school takes an interest in Blue—and, possibly, in her father. Hannah Schneider, a near middle-aged teacher at her school, woos Blue into joining a kind of intellectual elite hob-knob club of students. What is astonishing about the narrative is the way in which it’s told. Blue is an exceptionally brilliant girl who, in her narration, references everything from “Casablanca” to Shakespeare to Marlowe…who, by way of the pedantry while road-tripping with her father, knows more about history and politics than most people with tenured professorships at leading universities. Yet, despite all of the references and high-brow intellectualism of Blue’s words, it never comes off sounding as condescending or patronizing. Everything about Blue is genuine. Everything about her story is engrossing.

As Blue’s life becomes more settled among the Blueblood in St. Gallway’s (her prep school), mysteries begin to take shape. Hannah and the students in her inner circle become suspects of intrigue. Blue’s dad, even, becomes a source of mystery and unspoken truths. Blue’s coming of age, then, takes place among a tension of suspense, a mystery of epic proportions.

Evaluation: Pessl presents such an intriguing story that the reader is immediately sucked into Blue’s world. Blue is an exemplary literary force. She is brilliant, perceptive, and curious. It takes a bright reader to follow along the path that Pessl has laid out in Blue’s narration. For that reason (and due to its page-length), my recommendation is that a reader be in the latter high school grades or beyond. However, the pay off for the reader comes in spades. Besides the engrossing story and unraveling mysteries of the plot, the book’s value exceeds entertainment. It is a story with links throughout classic literature,

history, and classicism. It is truly a remarkable book that lends itself to any audience.

8. Stargirl

Author: Jerry Spinelli

Publisher: Random House

Genre: Romance, Realistic Fiction

Recommended Age: 12+

Rating: ***

Page #: 208

Curricular Connections:

Selection Source: 2005 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults, and Teen Reads Ultimate Reading List

Review: Lee Borlock is an average kid in an average Arizona high school. Stargirl is anything but average. The story of their friendship and romance is one to which most any teenager can relate. From a distance, Leo is consumed by Stargirl’s confidence in her individuality and the way she so naively persists with her antics despite being a kind of laughing stock among the students. Stargirl plays the ukulele in the cafeteria, fancies costumes above the hippest fashions, dances in the rain, meditates in the desert, and keeps her pet rat with her at all times. Though Stargirl is perceived as an outsider by the entire school, a great flaw in the matrix of high schoolers’ need to fit in, Lee is drawn to her precisely for that reason. The students of Mica Area High School’s relationship to Stargirl are characteristic of the fickle nature of teenage attention and affection. She is interesting to them because of her oddity, yet while they singularly attack her for her eccentricity and unabashed individuality, they are, too, wildly interested in keeping her in the spotlight so as not to miss any of her antics. As Lee and Stargirl’s friendship blossoms into a relationship, Lee finds himself questioning his own character. Though Stargirl can stand to be the outsider and even seems to flourish in the wake of disdain from the other students, Lee cannot. In spite of liking her just as she is, he pressures Stargirl to conform. Because she so likes him, she does.

9. Twilight Saga (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn)

Author: Stephenie Meyer

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Genre: Supernatural Romance

Recommended Age: 12+

Rating: ***

Page #: n/a

Curricular Connections: English Literature

Selection Source: Recommended by former student (Rebecca, college freshman)

Review: Any list of recommended YA books would be remiss to leave out Stephenie Meyers’ phenomenally popular urban fantasy series. Besides spawning a franchise of blockbuster movies, t-shirts and memorabilia, and fan clubs, Meyers’ books have reaffirmed that YA readers are eager for new, interesting material to read. Meyers has been able to successfully translate famed classical YA staples into a hip, modern series that appeals to a broad range of readers. Bella is a classic teen girl with her own idiosyncrasies of character, her own fears and insecurities, and her own willfulness. Edward Cullen and Bella’s best friend, Jacob Black, are set archetypes for romantic interests of both real and fictional teen girls alike.

Twilight, the series’ first book, is a take on Jane Austen’s seminal Pride and Prejudice wherein the characters of the sensible and comely Elizabeth Bennet and the proud and rich Mr. Darcy are transformed into the clumsy and plain Isabella Swan and the fabulous and undead Edward Cullen. New Moon, the series’ second novel, does for “Romeo and Juliet” in the present day what “West Side Story” did for the play in the world of staged musicals and 1960s cinema. Eclipse, the third novel in the series, is a reimagination of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Breaking Dawn, the series-ender of the Twilight Saga, is the only book of the series that is a singular work of fiction, basing its plot and themes entirely on those previous novels in the series which have set its foundation.

Evaluation: Above all, the Twilight Saga is an inspiring series for YA authors, educators, and parents who are looking for something to whet the appetite of young readers. Female YA readers, in particular, will look to this series as the perfect statement of wistful young love and the hopes for their own romantic lives. Reading the Twilight Saga as an adult is finding the aspirations and naiveté of young love. It is remembering why it was both hard and wonderful to be a teenage girl. Meyers’ writing, story conception, and originality are not what make the Twilight Saga important reads and recommendations. Valuing the series on those criteria would be a grave mistake since it they are not what makes the series neither viable nor valuable as assets to a collection. What does make the series an essential part of any YA collection is its value in contemporary literary society and popular culture.

10. What I Saw and How I Lied

Author: Judy Blundell

Publisher: Scholastic

Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery

Recommended Age: 12+

Rating: ****1/2

Page #: 288

Curricular Connections: World History or US History (any history class studying WWII/post-WWII era)

Selection Source: 2008 National Book Award winner for Young People's Literature, and 2009 Best Books for Young Adults from http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/bestbooksya/09bbya.cfm

Review: Evie is a fifteen year-old growing up in post-WWII New York when her step-father returns from the war and takes Evie and her mother to Palm Beach, FL. All the promise of Paradise is stunted by the realization that, off-season, the city is a veritable ghost town populated by a handful of tourists and residents who, mainly, work keeping hotels running at their basest operational standards. It is in this setting that Blundell stages Evie’s coming of age and sets the stage for the mysteries that unfold as Evie and her family befriend some characters who are staying in and around their hotel, the Mirage. As Evie gets her first taste of love with the dangerously ambiguous former solider, Peter, and her parents strike up a friendship with the Graysons, a couple of hoteliers from New York, a plot of slow-moving, engrossing, and rich noir unfolds. What I Saw and How I Lied presents a coming of age mystery in a landscape that its fifteen year-old protagonist must navigate while she tries to discover the fine lines between social propriety, romance, and adolescence vs. adulthood.

Evaluation: There aren’t a lot of YA novels that grab me in and compel me to stay reading them. What I Saw and How I Lied is one of the few that has done that in my adulthood. What I loved about this book is the way that Blundell never panders to the ignorance of a YA reader. Rather than talk-down to her reader or rather than skip over the reasons that certain things are the way they are (there is a historical context that many YA readers won’t be familiar with), Blundell seamlessly integrates post-WWII history, social factors, etc. into the narrative so that, at once, entertains and educates the reader with just enough to pique his/her interest in the fiction and historical references made in the novel. The tone is supremely noir while remaining intelligible and relevant to a teenager. It is engrossing in its entirety. I have recommended this book to adult friends who like mystery and to ones that teach YA readers.

Suggested YA Books and Materials: Reading Project 2

Cristy Moran

University of South Florida

13. A Northern Light

Author: Jennifer Donnelly

Publisher: Harcourt, Inc.

Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Strong Female Protagonist

Recommended Age: 13+

Rating: ****

Page #: 383

Curricular Connections: American History, English Literature, Language Arts/ Vocabulary, Women’s Studies

Selection Source: Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book (2004)

Review: Told as a fictional account of a young girl in the early 20th century, A Northern Light is the story of Mattie Gokey’s coming of age framed by the real-life murder of a young girl in Glenmore, a northern mountain lake resort. Mattie is a brilliant writer with bigger dreams than can possibly become a reality given her situation: after her mother's death from cancer, she is charged with being the caretaker and centralizing figure in her modest farm home. Donnelly presents us with a protagonist who is bright, yet innocent. Her insecurities about her talent, her brilliance, her strength, and her sexuality speak true to any girl or woman who has struggled to identify herself against a backdrop of life's hard-knock circumstances. Mattie’s friends and relations are a great bonus to the landscape that Donnelly creates for Mattie’s coming of age. Her best friend, Weaver, is a high-achieving black boy. Her childhood friend, Minnie, is newly married and pregnant. Her love interest, Royal, is the neighboring farm boy—a kind of beautiful simpleminded Adonis that suddenly shows interest in Mattie. Mattie’s family, too, is filled with important characters, each very real and each a kind of person that every reader can say he or she knows in his or her own life. Her father, brothers and sisters (particularly her tomboyish little sister, Lou), and her uncle grow to be their own characters full of life and vivacity despite being tied to the narrative of such a strong protagonist.

Interwoven with Mattie’s story is that of the suspicious drowning death of a young woman who was staying at the lodge wherein Mattie is employed. The woman’s traveling companion—her apparent lover—has gone missing and is presumed dead, as well. Mattie holds with her the last communication made by the young victim, Grace: letters that passed between her and the missing beau. A mystery unfolds as rumors that the names the guests had given aren’t their real names at all. Mattie indulges herself—quite guiltily, might I add—in the correspondences and in imaging the life that Grace left behind.

Evaluation: Having finished this novel, my eyes welled with tears for Mattie and for Grace and for me. It is a historical fiction that touches upon racism, platonic female-male friendships, women's liberation, censorship and intellectual freedom, and, most of all, what it's like to be...a girl. My heart swells with hope for Mattie and for the sadness of the loss of Grace's life. It is such a strong read and it totally deserves of the honors that it's received since having been first published. I do, however, want to relate that it is a difficult book to value immediately. At first, it reads slowly and the distinct timelines (the time after Grace’s body is discovered and the time leading up to Mattie’s arrangement to work at the lodge, Glenmore) are a bit cumbersome to get through. However, there are bits and pieces to interest readers that will keep them going. As an educator, I appreciate the way Donnelly ties the chapters together with new words that Mattie is learning and word games that she plays with her friend, Weaver. It certainly taught me some new words!

14. Blue is for Nightmares (Blue is for Nightmares Series, #1)

Author: Laurie Faria Stolarz

Publisher: Llewellyn Publications

Genre: Supernatural Mystery/Suspense, Strong Female Protagonist

Recommended Age: 13+

Rating: ***

Page #: 283

Curricular Connections: Contemporary Fiction

Selection Source: Popular Teen Series in Barnes Noble Teen section

Review: Stacy is having nightmares. Mostly, it’s just one nightmare: She’s running in the forest, running away from a pursuer and running to save her best friend, Drea, screaming out for help from somewhere in the darkness. As this nightmare has persisted, Stacy has become more and more certain that it’s a prophecy of an impending terror. She knows this because she’s inherited the ability of precognitive dreams from her grandmother, a witch. But, more pressing than any nightmare predictions of danger are the trials and tribulations of being a teenager in her waking life. Stacy is in love with Drea’s on-again/off-again boyfriend,

Chad

Evaluation: I was looking for a popular teen supernatural or horror series that I might read the first book of for this project. My only stipulation was that the series didn’t involve vampires, werewolves, or fairies. Since the Twilight phenomenon, countless of beautiful-but-misunderstood monster series have sprouted and, for the most part, they are little more than blatant attempts to take a bite from the Twilight golden apple. I was looking for something that harkened me back to the days when I was a YA reader, devouring book-after-book of R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike series—genre mysteries told through the teen perspective, plot-driven and hyper-realistic. Perhaps the only reason that I picked up the first of the Blue is for Nightmares series is because it was the closest thing I could find to Stine’s Fear Street books…literally, since it was the series closest to where Stine would have been on the bookshelf. Finding nothing new from Stine (and nothing more than a new Twilight-like series from Christopher Pike—all about teen vampires—ick!), I turned to the back cover of Blue is for Nightmares and, having found some interest in the summary, took a dip into the first chapter at the bookstore. What I ended up taking home that day was probably the closest thing I have come to, thus far, in my quest to matching the delight and suspense of the genre mysteries of my YA readership days. I started and finished the book in the same day that I bought it (on a Friday) and have already promised to give it to a friend’s thirteen year-old daughter, herself an avid reader. This book comes totally recommended by me, particularly for female early teen readers.

15. Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith

Author: Deborah Heiligman

Publisher: Henry Holt Books for Young Readers

Genre: Biography, Romance, Historical Non-fiction

Recommended Age: 12+

Rating: ***

Page #: 262 (including appendices: chronology, selected bibliography, etc.)

Curricular Connections: Science (Evolution studies)

Selection Source: YASLA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults (2010 Winner)

Review: Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species forever changed the face of science. Darwin’s master-work did for the study of biology what Einstein’s Theory of Relativity did for physics. Heiligman dips into the story of the man rather than the science, in Charles and Emma. It is Heiligman’s argument that the story of Charles’ decision to marry Emma is analogous with the greater perceptions of his theories of evolution and that, in the context of their pairing, Charles’ and Emma’s beliefs and personalities represent those which would serve as critics to Darwin’s work. Charles and Emma is divided into chronological chapters, each which begin with a line or two quoted from letters either to or from one of the titular Darwins. The narrative takes the Darwins from 1838 through 1880, the majority of their relationship and the height of Charles’ professional career. In many ways, Charles and Emma is a love story between two people and between two modes of thinking: the scientifically minded Charles and the conservative religious Emma.

Evaluation: The first thing I want to say is that I have knocked off a star based solely on the difficulty that I have had “getting into” this book. As soon as I had read about it on the YASLA website, I knew that I would pick this book as one of my choices for non-fiction YA. Perhaps it is partly due to that excitement of getting immersed in the story that I am so disappointed in the pace at which it reads. I just could not, for the life of me, get into the narrative. Minus one star for that. Otherwise, I wasn’t too impressed with the story. The story itself is interesting and would make for a good selection for any YA into period romances because, in a way, that’s kind of what this book is like. However, I found it lacking in that regard too. Perhaps I found it dry or too slow-reading and that is why I had such difficulty really liking it. I’m not sure.

16. Gym Candy

Author: Carl Deuker

Publisher: Hougton Mifflin

Genre: Sports, Realistic Fiction

Recommended Age: 13+

Rating: ***

Page #: 313

Curricular Connections: Health

Selection Source: FAME Florida Teen Reads 2009-10 Selection

Review: Mick Johnson knows football. His father having been a high school and college football record-holder and would-have-been NFL star, football and the aspirations to live up to his father’s glory days of yore are the only thing that Mick Johnson can truly say he knows and even loves. Even since starting school, Mick’s chronology has been mapped out according to the pursuit of NFL ambitions. There is no way to overestimate the way the sport consumes Mick’s life. It’s no surprise, then, that, upon entry into high school, the only thing that matters to Mick is making the football team, achieving starting line status, and performing to maximum ability in each game of the season. In one very telling statement Mick says of himself, “I don’t know if I can stand being ordinary.” It’s that very conflict which drives Mick to do things wherein Mick’s faith in his moral character is tested. In the quest of becoming the best player on the field, Mick begins training at a local gym where he meets a trainer that offers him the opportunity he’s always sought: to be the best, so above the rest that it’s an unnatural feat. That’s when Mick gets caught up in the use of “gym candy,” or steroids and hormones. What ensues is a rollercoaster of performance, emotions, and guilt. In the end, Mick has to make a choice between what really matters in life and what he’s willing to do in order to achieve it.

Evaluation: The good thing about Gym Candy is how I—and readers like me, who knows embarrassingly little to nothing about the game of football, can keep up with the momentum of the games without feeling left in the dust. Deuker’s narrative is quick and simple, particularly in the portions of the story wherein the games are involved. I could, literally, read them quickly and be engaged in Mick’s emotional investment in the game. In this way, the book read incredibly fast. For as much as I don’t get into sports, at all, I’m an avid viewer of sports dramas like Remember the Titans and TV’s “Friday Night Lights.” There is nothing like a straight-forward underdog story that builds momentum with quick dips into action-packed sports montages and evocative music. The catharsis that comes at the end through the success of victory on the field or some “greater win” is outrageously satisfying to me. I guess that’s why I gravitated toward this novel. In many ways, I guess that’s why I was able to give it a chance in spite of my disinterest in the sport or in characters like Mick with whom I have little prospect of relating.

Gym Candy is a great read for a reluctant reader and for any sports enthusiast male reader, in particular. It’s a morality tale that, in many ways, seems necessary to be told. There are many seemingly relatable aspects to Mick’s story: living up to his father’s aspirations for him, the changing natures of high school friendships, engagement in sports or hobbies that are all-consuming, the allure of peer pressure to use drugs, the struggle to fit in and be accepted by a team, and—with a very minor focus—the pursuit of intimate relationships with (in Mick’s case) girls. However, despite the relatively low reading level required to read and understand the book, I fear that the readers to whom this narrative is geared just simply wouldn’t want to read this or any book. I fear that’s a sad situation since, for kids in Mick’s shoes, the most important thing to find is a support system and a source of empathy and understanding. As with all teen real-life “issues” (i.e. drug use and addiction, physical and emotional abuse by adults, eating disorders, mental disorders, etc.), steroid use and obsessive need to succeed in sports seems to me to be pandemic particularly prevalent in communities wherein the only way “out” is seen as the big leagues, be it college ball or straight into professional sports careers. I think this is a novel which would work best in a middle school to high school set in those areas of the country—where it could really reach kids who are relating directly to Mick and his singular drive to making it as a sports star.

17. The Handmaid’s Tale (Format: CD Audiobook)

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Goose Lane Editions

Genre: Dystopian, Strong female protagonist

Recommended Age: 16+

Rating: ***1/2

Page #: n/a

Curricular Connections: Contemporary American Fiction/Literature, Women’s Studies

Selection Source: Popular adult fiction

Review: In a dystopian

America

—now termed the Republic of Gilead, women have become nothing more than breeders for aristocratic households, most of which are headed by commanders of the “new” society. The Handmaid’s Tale is narrated by one such woman who is, at the present time of the narrative, placed into the home of a commander and his former-televangelist wife, Serena Joy. Under the ownership of the commander, the narrator is named Offred—the slave to Commander Fred, her owner to whom she is enlisted as a breeder. Throughout the narration—told in a kind of stream of consciousness fashion, Offred replays the events leading up to her capture and forced servitude to the commander and his wife. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood has crafted a kind of feminist foretelling of the perils of a female existence wherein women are subjugated by the totalitarian, quasi-oligarcal rule of men. Much of Offred’s narration is a kind of reflection on the loss of freedom and on the nature of the female character—heterosexual or homosexual alike. Women are feared by men when they are too free and, in Offred’s words, “freedom is relative.” The Republic’s reversal of societal norms are such that Scrabble, the board game, becomes “kinky the extreme.” Taboos include anything that allows women’s right to choose—sexual partnerships, leisure reading, writing, talking to one another, and abortion, to name a few. The bodies of women are nothing but vessels for either housework or bearing children. It is in this backdrop that Atwood explores what it is to be free and what responsibility the individual—in particular, Woman—has over the exercise of his or her own freedoms.

Evaluation: I wanted to find an audiobook that I could read and review for this project, nominally, because I’ve never “read” via audiobook. I also wanted to select a book that I’d never read and, for whatever reason, that it would be unlikely for me to read. Considering that I’d never read Atwood’s classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, but that I’ve read and enjoyed similar dystopian YA and adult fictions, I determined that this would be the right choice. My daily commute on work days (five days a week) is at least 45 minutes either way—to or from my office, so I’d have plenty of time to listen to the audiobook. Moreover, if I downloaded it on MP3 format, I could also listen to it at my office while working at my computer. Granted, this sort of seems counter-productive (certainly counter-intuitive, as well) since I would have to split my attention between two “tasks.” Then again, short of for the reading disabled or blind, I’m assuming that most audiobook audiences are splitting their attentions similarly. Long gone, in my mind, are the days of sitting silently by the radio focused solely on the story seeping through the speakers. Ergo, I would do it the way that other people do and evaluate the effectiveness of the format as well as the substance of the story.

Based on the language and sexual content of The Handmaid’s Tale, I decided on a recommended age that I felt would best be able to approach the material without making cheeky grimaces or jokes at the material. Also, listening to it, I had the experience of feeling like someone was telling me this story as though it had happened to her, in real life, as opposed to the distant awares that I would have had that I was reading fiction had I been holding a book and flipping the pages myself, forced to imagine a narrative voice. For however much as I, in the end, determined that audiobooks are not for me—as a reader—the experience of this book, in particular, made me realize the power of the human voice telling its own story.

18. I Wouldn’t Thank You for a Valentine: Poems for Young Feminists

Author: Various

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Genre: Poetry, Strong Female Protagonist(s)

Recommended Age: 12+

Rating: ***1/2

Page #: 112

Curricular Connections: Poetry, Literature, Women’s Studies

Selection Source: YASLA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults

Review: I Wouldn’t Thank You for a Valentine is a collection of poems written by female poets. The subject matters of the poems vary as do the styles of writing. This is the kind of introductory poetry collection that would work for the preteen to teen girl just whetting her appetite in the world of poetry. Because a vast majority of the poems are short (under a page-length) and written in friendly-to-the-young-reader language, the collection makes for a quick read. The novice poetry reader, in particular, will appreciate the brevity and simplicity of the verses. However, with poems by well-established authors and writers like Alice Walker, Maura Dooley, and Maya Angelou, I Wouldn’t Thank You for a Valentine is also a solid choice for the reader who is seeking substance and theme and room for analysis in literature without being too dense with poetic conventions or heightened literary rhetoric.

Evaluation: My quest for finding substantive, varied poetry anthologies for young adults didn’t really boast too many favorable results, but that’s probably because I have high standards for poetry being a lifelong student of poetry and a poet myself. One of the first poetry collections that I remember reading was a required text for my seventh grade English class. That collection held mostly the classics, no more recent than perhaps a Walt Whitman or Robert Frost poem here or there. Unfortunately, that’s not what I was looking for now. I think that, given the way that students have moved away from classical literature and varied literary forms, the only kinds of poems that would really speak to young readers are those which directly reflect their voices with some sense of who they are as readers and as individuals in their own right. In this way, a collection like I Wouldn’t Thank You for a Valentine works for a specific subset of young readers, the independently intellectual, emotional, and spiritual woman or girl. It is not an intimidating read which makes it kind to YA readers new to poetry, and makes it a good example of something that the reader can attempt at doing on her (or his) own.

19. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Secrets behind What You Eat (Young Reader’s Edition)

Author: Michael Pollan and Richie Chevat

Publisher: Dial

Genre: Informational

Recommended Age: 12+[1]

Rating: *****

Page #: 298 (not included: glossary, reference source list)

Curricular Connections: Health, Food Nutritional Sciences, Agriscience

Selection Source: YASLA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults (2010 Nominee)

Review: Fact: There is corn in everything. Michael Pollan doesn’t think this is a good thing. He doesn’t hate corn or corn farmers or food industry workers…but, he knows that corn shouldn’t be everywhere…in everything. Omnivore’s Dilemma is about the current food industries: commercial industrial, organic industrial, local sustainable, and the hunter/gatherer variety of food production. In it, Pollan determines to follow the river of gold—corn, that is—from the various fields which yield the corn to the food lots where the corn is consumed by livestock to the drive-thru and supermarket aisles where we buy it. The book is a kind of overview of the food industry as it is known today: mostly commercial industrial and organic industrial. It is alarming how essential facts about how food is grown, raised, processed, manufactured, legislated, and, ultimately, sold and consumed are covertly concealed from us, the consumers of it. Pollan introduces his readers to real farmers, real food scientists and veterinarians, real industry specialists, and, most effectively, himself. Facts abound in Omnivore’s Dilemma. They are inarguable tidbits of data regarding what’s on nutrition labels, time tables and charts to help track changes in food production and consumption in the

United States

, and what food legislations and food economics mean to the food itself.

Evaluation: Perhaps one of the most effective things about Dial’s Young Reader’s Edition of Omnivore’s Dilemma is how genuinely geared the language and presentation is to young readers without seeming to condescend to a lower intellect. Rather than patronize young readers, Pollan and Chevat discuss the same issues with less complex phrasing and with more conversational instructional side notes than, say, a science class textbook. The language never feels forced or pedantic; instead, it seems to read naturally as though the book had always been intended for young readers. Though I haven’t read the adult (original) version of Omnivore’s Dilemma, I have read and listened to Pollan speak on similar issues on talk shows, NPR interviews, and in magazines and blogs. Pollan seems naturally adept at discussing important issues with some scientific gravitas without making it jargon-heavy or boring with data. I think Omnivore’s Dilemma is a must-read for any children, teens, or parents. It provides essential facts on the different food industries and offers some interesting insight on historical significances of food, food culture, and the economics of food. It isn’t about converting the population into vegetarianism (Pollan is a meat-eater) or moving everyone into a local sustainable diet, it’s about educating people on what is in their food, why it’s in there, and hoping they can be a little more conscious about the things they put in their mouths.

For the record, this is probably the most important book I’ve read in years. Years. And I kind of already knew a lot about this anyway.

20. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Author: Jane Austen (original novel, Pride and Prejudice) and Seth Grahame-Smith

Publisher: Quirk Productions, Inc.

Genre: Horror, Humor, Historical Fiction—early 19^th century

Recommended Age: 15+

Rating: ***

Page #: 317

Curricular Connections: English Literature

Selection Source: Book Club Selection (my book club is the Horror Book Club based out of Miami headed by Cristal Bernard Locke), Popular contemporary fiction/YA fiction (innumerable best-seller lists)

Review: It begins, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” That is all that anyone needs to read in order to know what Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is going to be like. The title, alone, should tell any reader what the book is going to be about, but that first line tells the reader the kind of book that it is going to be. Grahame-Smith is going to retell Austen’s seminal classic romantic tale of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy as though zombies were populating Meryton and the world-at-large.

It’s difficult to give a synopsis on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies since it’s based on such a classic, known work. Suffice it to say, for the most part, the plot of the novel follows along the lines of the original work. Obviously, in this version, zombies are added throughout, as are discussions on zombies, recollections on the Bennett girls’ martial arts zombie-fighting training, zombie attacks en route to one place from another either by carriage or on foot, and the turning of some rather known major players in Austen’s original work into “plagued” zombie-folk. Moreover, the Elizabeth Bennett of this version is saucier, more biting, angry, and ready to launch into fisticuffs with even the not-so-dead and very much alive if they cross her (see: the Bingley sisters). There is, too, some more insight into the persuasions of Mr. Darcy, something that Austen never saw fit to do in a novel about ladies. The humor, too, in cleverly interwoven within the narrative. Suddenly, things that maybe didn’t seem so funny in the original work will find some “zing” in the retelling—even in the sans zombies parts.

Evaluation: I have something to confess: I didn’t read this book for my book club. At the time that the book was selected, I had begun to get really busy with work and the Spring semester had started and, quite frankly, I had better things to do. Cut to April 2010, after months of seeing this book on the YA shelves and seeing it come up on various teen/YA reading lists, I finally decided to pick up my copy already figuratively gathering a thick layer of dust from my pile of Books-not-yet-Read But Intending-to-be-Read and get to it…for homework. I should also state that I am a huge fan of Austen’s original novel which I’ve read over a dozen times since first reading it in high school (well before it was ever assigned to me in senior year English class). Similarly, I am as big—if not, bigger—a fan of the BBC “Wet T-Shirt Darcy” miniseries from the 1990’s. I own it on DVD (after having owned it on VHS) and watch it at least three times a year or more often, depending on my moods. Moreover, I am a huge fan of zombies. I love them. I mean, not like I’m in love with zombies, but, more like, I’m a horror film buff and have been since childhood. I watch zombie movies and read comics about zombies. I enjoy the entire zombie lore and look at it with a critical eye believing that it “says something” about contemporary society and humanity (something I learned from watching the father of zombie films, George Romero, speak on a documentary about his films). I guess the question is why it took me so long to get around to reading it. Regardless, that’s what I’ve done. Now, I’ve read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies…something I think anyone who hasn’t already should do because, to put it simply: It is fun.

Note: This book might be more suited for a reader with familiarity with Austen’s original novel and with the language of that era of literature. It is, to say the least, difficult for me to imagine teens without a real appreciation or without some linguistic dexterity truly enjoying this book or even really being able to.

21. The Teen Guide to Global Action: How to Connect With Others (Near and Far) to Create Social Change

Author: Barbara A. Lewis

Publisher: Free Spirit Publishing

Genre: Informational

Recommended Age: 12+

Rating: ***

Page #: 125

Curricular Connections: Science (Environmental), Current Events, Civics, Leadership

Selection Source: YASLA Popular Paperbacks for Young Readers (2010, Change Your World or Live to Regret It title)

Review: The Teen Guide to Global Action is a sort of DIY handbook for teens and young adults interested in social responsibility and activism. The book starts off with a questionnaire/survey to help readers narrow down their areas of interest and potential activity. It goes on to break down into sections of social causes (education, environment, homelessness, etc.) and into further categories of local and global initiatives with which they can participate. The focus of The Teen Guide to Global Action is to offer outlets for readers to seek information on the world around them and the world in which they live. It shines the light on social issues that volunteers and activists can participate in advocating. Lewis and Free Spirit Publishing make it clear to readers that there are countless ways in which people can partake in activism. Their idea is that anyone and everyone can find a vehicle through which he or she can make social change. The book offers names of organizations and contact information, research strategy guides and suggestions, bios of successful teen activists, and tips for joining and/or starting advocacy groups.

Evaluation: This is a great starter book for adolescents and teens who are seeking out ways of making a difference in their local or global environments. The way that the material is presented resembles a kind of teen magazine format—columns of text vs. margin-to-margin page-fuls of text deliver the information, side bars with additional information (i.e. blurbs on web sites or groups), and mid-section bios of teens who’ve made a difference—making it easy to read and relatable to young readers. The information never seems overwhelming, at all. In fact, most of the data is written in short paragraphs. The book lists a lot of different outlets that teens can research (including information and URL regarding how to research effectively using the Internet) from their own desks. It is a great stepping-stone for the actively-minded teen. Later this week, I’ll be sharing it with my friend’s thirteen year-old step daughter who has voiced interest in environmental causes.

22. Wake (Wake Trilogy Series #1)

Author: Lisa McMann

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Genre: Supernatural fiction, Mystery/Suspense

Recommended Age: 13+

Rating: ****

Page #: 210

Curricular Connections: Literature

Selection Source: Popular Teen Series in Barnes Noble Teen section

Review: Janie doesn’t dream…at least, not her own dreams. Instead, Janie manages to fall into the dreams of anyone sleeping and dreaming in her near vicinity. It’s like she has grand mal seizures on the outside while being transported into the subconscious psyches of the people around her. To Janie, that’s not so cool. In fact, it’s ruining her life. Knowing people’s secrets is only a part of the problem. Mostly, it’s ruining her life because it interferes with every single day and every single aspect of her life. As kids fall asleep from boredom in class, Janie plummets into their dreamscapes. As the elderly in the nursing home she works at sleep, she’s thrust into the memories of their long lives—most of them memories of difficult emotional times and life struggles. Janie is a kind of slave to sleep and dreams, unwillingly sacrificing her own sleep, dreams, and sanity in the process. At seventeen and in the throws of her junior year, Janie’s life becomes complicated by a recent romantic interest and her burgeoning independence.

Evaluation: When I state that I devoured this book in less than a three-hour nonstop reading session on a Sunday morning-to-afternoon I am saying so in all honesty. Considering that I’d previously read Blue for Nightmares and that this book’s synopsis was remarkably similar (teen girls walking into other people’s dreams find a mystery that they need to solve), I wasn’t really looking forward to getting started on Wake. However, I was pleasantly surprised. First, the narrative is written in short, to-the-point sentences, with various breaks—sections divided into days, times, etc. This style helps the reader move swiftly through the text, a bonus for any YA book and for any suspense story, in general fiction. Second, Janie as the protagonist is completely relatable without having to be made out as some mousy, socially awkward imbecile—something I relate quite whole-heartedly and unabashedly to, say, Bella from the Twilight Saga books. Though Janie is the protagonist, the narrative isn’t told through her first person perspective. I’ve learned to find this refreshing since reading a lot of these YA books and in my own reading of [what I refer to as] urban fantasy pulp series, like Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Series, and Patricia Briggs’ series, and Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Norville books. I find that a third person narrator has a lot to offer the reader, even when it’s mostly limited to sticking alongside one singular character, as is the case in Wake. Third, the way the “dream catcher” idea is presented and later only-somewhat-developed in the story is refreshing. We, the readers, learn about Janie’s ability just as she learns about it. She doesn’t have the answers, nor do we. A nice relationship is developed between reader and protagonist for this reason. There is an element of mystery and suspense in that fact, too, which sets this novel apart from Blue is for Nightmares. Finally, Wake presents a character whom I’d like to continue following through her discoveries. I fully intend to read the following books in the series beginning with the sequel, Fade.

It seems like this is an easy series to get into and that, in turn, provides some refreshing escapist fiction without being too over-bearing on the supernatural tip. In fact, it’s barely “supernatural” at all—more preternatural, really. A part of me rues at even putting it in the genre of supernatural YA fictions involving magic or monsters. Though I would give the book 3 ½ stars for the story, alone, I add the ½ star because of the way that it gets me to want to read more about Janie and her adventures because I’m sure there are bound to be many more.

Carlotta Valdes and All the Sightseeing in the World Won't Kill Us Both

2010-09-10T20:16:00.000-04:00

You fall asleep somewhere between north Florida and Alabama. Or at least that's what you think. Maybe once you've woken up to pop two more Alprazolam, but then you're fast to fall back asleep. When you wake up your neck is sore and you're sure you have a bruise the size of Kansas on your outer thigh from all the pressing it to the seat's armrest. The girl next to you has been asleep pretty much any time you've opened your eyes which, considering the amount of sleep you're sure you've gotten, is impressive. The new "Karate Kid" movie is already finished. It had started about the time you'd first shut your eyes on the flight, just as you were first putting on your MP3 player to listen through some self-hypnosis sleeping track and, then, to listen to the playlist of songs your boyfriend suffered to make for you. By the time you ask to purchase a pillow and blanket, the flight attendant informs you that you're less than an hour and a half from your destination and you reconsider before taking down the brim of your hat again and snuggling further into your over-sized brown cardigan and pressing your thigh against that armrest again until you're so sore that you're comfortable and numbed. The next time you open your eyes, you're descending. Two blinks later, you've landed. It's fifty-something degrees Fahrenheit outside in San Francisco. It's also 11:32 p.m. Where you're from it's thirty degrees hotter and three hours later. In this way, you feel lucky.

I reserve the right to have my doubts, even when I'm in love. Moreover, I reserve the right to have those doubts however I choose. I can harbor them if I want to, not that I want to, but I can. It's my right. Today, I exercise that right though, by "today" I'm speaking only figuratively. The today through which I pondered the veracity of my doubts was a few days ago, at worst, a week ago, more like. Today, in the very technical sense, the only doubts I have have more to do with whether or not I should pull the comforter from the washer already and if it will make a difference as to whether or not I'll get them onto the bed before I call it a night. Then, back to when that today was the present-tense kind of today, I had my doubts. They were new and they were still mine. They were what hope had to contend with and what faith had to battle. My doubts had little to do with love I had for the Bear and more to do with what was right and what was right for me. That, and I wondered if he loved me anymore. And I wondered why, if he did, and why not, if he didn't. Suffice it to say that, today, I'm glad I let the ship of doubt off its rope and off to sea.

What I still hold on to is that I am not difficult. I am not impossible. I am, merely, a girl.

My therapist is what he has self-termed a "male liberationist." At first hearing that, most people who don't know my therapist would assume that he's some misogynist, some feminist-hating cad. To that I counter with the obvious question as to whether it would make any sense, then, that I, seeing as I am as quintessentially female in psyche as can be construed as "typical" in any Intro to Psychology text, would have stuck with him for so long. So long, meaning, thirteen years. What my therapist has self-termed "male liberation" has more to do with the separation from the idea of "masculine" from the bereft-of-emotion Cro-Magnon-esque barbarian image. He thinks women have far exceeded men in our ability to express emotion, surrender to fantasy, and appreciating their intuitions. Though I've never told him as much, I consider my therapist to be the foremost scholar in gender psychological studies. The things he says are, to me, as true as the Declaration of Independence is to the core of the American spirit. I've never told him as much but it's true.

For all of my doubting, my therapist reminds me that I am a girl. He tells me that it's OK and that's it's good and that it's right and that it's true and, for all of my doubting, I just have to keep remembering that I'm a girl and that, in the end, I'm supposed to be doubting if I want to stay that way. The problem is, well, the same thing as the reason for why I love the Bear in the first place: The problem is that I'm a girl and he's a man and, well, that's just the rub. What we'd thought would have been the problem was the fear of having a panic attack on the plane ride to and/or from San Francisco. Either way it's a good five hours-plus flight. Either way there's a five hours-plus window for me to go mad. As I'm sitting in his office recounting my trip, the good and the bad of it, he tells me that he's glad that I had my doubts. Moreover, he's glad that I confronted them and that I forced the Bear to confront them too.

He says, "You're a girl. He's a man. It's normal. If this hadn't happened, it would be abnormal. Just remember that."

The Bear, he thinks I'm complicated. He calls me "difficult." He looks at me just when I've started talking and have maybe gotten half a dozen words in and he furrows his brow and he shakes his head and stops me and says, "I'm so confused." I think, I haven't even started yet. I still don't even know what I'm really talking about. The Bear, he thinks I'm impossible. I think the Bear is impossible. I think he's complicated and I think he's difficult. I think that, today, this is the most normal thing I have ever thought.

I look at the Bear and his face is lined with frustration and a ball of regret drops in my stomach like ten tons worth of horrible. I want to cry because I haven't yet started. I haven't even gotten to the point. In fact, I don't even know what the point is. The Bear says, "Cristy you're so confusing. You lost me. I got lost five minutes ago" and I hadn't even been talking for one. What I had to learn to do was stop talking, gather my thoughts, ignore the feeling that he hated me, and just move on to the point. The first thing I had to say was to apologize. Then, I had to just say what I'd been meaning to say all along.

Seems simple, but it took me two days to realize it.

So much for being quick-witted.

Seems obvious, but it took me three days to realize that we're as different as we are and about two seconds to realize that I love him for all those differences rather than for all the similarities.

So much for female intuition.

My therapist tells me that I'm not always right but I'm right a lot of the time. He says that this has a little to do with my being a girl but mostly due to just me, the person I am and the way I think about things. All those moments I felt the Bear hating me, I was probably right. He was hating me and hating me thoroughly. If I could hypnotize him to tell me the truth, I might even get him to admit to it today, but I can't and he won't otherwise. What I had to learn, and I had less than a week to do it, was that I might not be impossible, but I'm impossible to him. What I had to learn, and I had less than a week to do it, was that it's OK.

Don't tell him, but I almost left.

Don't tell him, but I almost walked out on him.

The reasons I didn't do it had nothing to do with the size of the city that I was entirely unfamiliar with. I stayed because I had faith, even though I've heard him wonder about it to me. I didn't leave because with faith comes the knowledge of hardship and the trust that there's a bounty for those who finish the fight, even if it's not the big prize pot that other fighters get when they've won the heavyweight title. It happens that I believe in the adventure, even though I don't appear to. It happens that I take risks, even though I talk about anxiety. It happens that I see clearly, even though I sigh with confusion. It's not in my nature to give up. When the Bear looked at me and I knew he hated me, I couldn't just throw in the towel. However much I wanted to save him from the burden of my company for the rest of my trip, I couldn't just escape into the wild of the city and let this whole beautiful thing end. Doubts, a part of them anyway, have to do with the perception of options. I reserve the right to have my doubts and I reserve the right to use them to see the way out of things. I can have an escape route. I should. It's the way I operate. I go in a house, I want to know where the bathroom is. I want to look at the window and gauge how far I'd have to climb to sneak out if the going gets tough. What kept me there, working through all the rough spots, was that he was learning too. And I have faith that, while we're both stubborn assholes, we're going to keep learning past the point when things even will seem mundane.

Don't tell him, but I believe that I'm leading sometimes.

Don't tell him, but I've already jumped off the cliff with nothing but a parachute.

When It Rains and When It Pours and When the Car Won't Start

2010-08-09T17:05:00.001-04:00

I'm am growing increasingly lethargic and I'm not sure why. At first, I thought it was because I was PMS-ing, and I was, but then I wasn't, and I'm still lethargic. I've slept a solid eight to ten hours a night and I'm finding it difficult to wake up. Instead of getting out of bed at the first alarm, I turn it on and wait for the second one to go off an hour later. When it does, I keep snoozing it. Every ten minutes, I snooze it again. After four refusals to wake up, I've had it. Forty minutes has passed since my last alarm of the morning, and I give in and give up. But only partly. For the next twenty minutes, I lay in bed and pet the dog or wrestle with him. It may appear to be a gesture of love and caring, but it's not. It's the most selfish thing I do all day. It's my excuse to keep laying in bed. I get into the shower and out, make coffee, let the dog out and back in, toast some bread, pack a lunch, and jet out the door in less time than it took me to ultimately concede to the final alarm.

It's something of a wonder that I'm always early to work. Sometimes by more than an hour. When you take into account that I have a forty minute drive to work, it's even more so. This includes near daily stops for ciggies and/or gas. Sometimes, if I forget to make or run out of coffee, it includes a stop at either a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts drive-thru. Perhaps the inability to be late is something of my true superhero nature shining through procrastination to do anything other than be at work, anything other than get out of bed. Scientists should study me.

For what it's worth, I'm clearly overwhelmed. Some days, it's worse than others. Some days, I barely feel it at all. Long gone are the days when I would hit the gym for over an hour at seven in the morning. I wouldn't have to be at work until nine, but I was there, in the same strip mall, sweating my ass off in really unbecoming pants and sports bras just to stay sane. Going to the gym with some sort of religious obligation--there was no fervor there--became something of a mind-saver. Long gone are those days. Those days of over a year of dedication to nothing more than just going, just showing up. It's not like I was a supermodel figure then, I was just, you know, able to do twenty or so girly push-ups at the drop of a dime. I maybe could've squatted the shit out of most people. Except, you know, people who give a shit. I maybe could've squatted the shit out of, you know, most people just because I was kind of bored. For what it's worth, I couldn't care less about getting my ass into a gym though, some might say with that aura of professional conviction, that it might lessen the "whelming" and put the wind back in my sails enough to at least want to get out of bed at a reasonable hour.

At least my fashion hasn't suffered. At least my love life's finally taking off. Until it doesn't anymore, I suppose. Until it's back to having to make appointments at the gym or suffer the pangs of really not having anything to wake up for anymore.

I'm not really sure when all of this started. The lethargy, I mean. For a few weeks, I was high-as-a-kite on the novelty of love. The Bear, to this day, gives breath to my drowning. Still, with my head above water a bit as it's been this week or so, I'm drawn into the heaviness of Yeah, I've just about had it with the way things are going. I might still be high on The Bear's promise of ever but for the fact that the ticker counting down to the day he'll arrive is down to two and now I've got to face the rest of the shit I'm trying not to live for anymore.

Maybe a year ago, I'd written about some Spanish saying I'd heard on some talk radio show. The whole "Work to live not live to work" thing that I'd postulated on and on about until it had become something entirely else that I'd been writing myself into. Now, I'm back at that place, wondering about the hold that things other than the things that I want having a hold on my every-day. The routine and the mundane, for a while blissfully having fallen into the background of my every-day, now back at the forefront as I have to consider what the Hell else I'm going to do with my life. Suddenly, I'm back into awares that work, society, obligations to either or both have all become a drudge for me to wade through. And, for what? And, why? No reason but because, now, I'm looking elsewhere to find some sense of belonging, some sense of fulfillment. Given the sense of priority that The Next Move has on me right now, the looking around and realizing the weight of my job and my life's idiosyncratic relationships, I am, as stated, overwhelmed. It seems answering the big question I've been seeking this whole time has done nothing but served to make me realize how tired I am of it all. While my dreams are brilliant with longing and a newfound possibility of 1+1=1 with The Bear, the waking hours are such a strain. I guess no one says it's going to be easy.

This morning, I woke up, took forever to make it out the door, but made it out on time. My coffee in a thermos and two small slices of toasted rye with chunky real peanut butter smeared on them and my wet hair picked up into a fancy up-do held together in black clips, I was out before eight. Then, the car didn't start. It didn't and it wouldn't and it wasn't going to let me make it to work. It wasn't going to let me make it there early and, certainly, it wouldn't allow me to make it on time. Pressured with crunching five days' worth of work into two and three-quarters at the start of the workweek, the trappings of reality locked me in the house waiting for AAA to arrive. They stranded me at the auto shop while my car battery was replaced. They wrestled me away from my office until almost eleven. And, I don't believe, they had any intention of letting me go on with a normal day. Perhaps, I postulate, it is normal. This, this tug-o-war with the things that will always keep me under, this is what is normal.

I consider this, all of it, as I'm home now, finally, albeit "early" by most people's standards. Already, by two, I was tired. Exhausted from the mill. Because, it seems, even the slackest of jobs is the most arduous of labors when you really care about getting things done right. I consider this, all of it, when I'm home, having smoked too many ciggies and having drunk too much coffee and eaten too much crap in what's been too short of a day. I consider this, all of it, and all I want to do is go to sleep already and get to Wednesday when the Bear will be here and being in love can be at the forefront of the day, even if it means that the every-day's burdens will be halted and thus procrastinated until he's gone the next week. But, even when he's here, we have to talk about the every-days. The ones that are, the ones I want to leave behind, and the ones that will be when I get to where I am going. It is an endless string of anti-dreams. It is a perpetual current taking me off to the rest of the things that adulthood has in store for us all. All the resumes I have to put out to find a single job that will have me that I may or may not want. All the discussions of rents that we may or may not end up paying so that we can, at least, be together in the same city for some certain amount of time or, at least, until one of us breaks the lease to strike out on our own. And that's not even the stuff the concerns me. That's just the baby-cake that comes along with the shower. That's just the shitty pin-the-pacifier-in-the-baby's-mouth fun stuff that all the preggers and wanna-be-preggers ladies have considered appropriate to the occasion. There's still the matter of getting up in the morning and wanting to make it out of the door.

Two days and at least I can pretend that none of it's important. Two more days of it till I can finally relax before finding myself overwhelmed again.

What Currency Is a Day

2010-07-31T11:57:00.000-04:00

I guess I hadn't really realized how quickly everything had been moving. Maybe it's the distance, maybe it's the mode of communication, maybe it's that I'd been aware of his existence for quite a few months, regardless, it hasn't really been as long as it's felt, as it feels. If "feel" is even the right word. Feelings are fleeting. Feelings are things that wisp over the surface of things that are. Better said, it seems so much more intense than the currency of a few weeks can afford, for most people I guess. The certainty I have about it. About him. About us. About really trying to make it work and about the objective being that we live in way closer proximity, even so much closer you might be able to say that we live in the exact same place and not be even a bit technically inaccurate when saying it. I guess that, when I realized it, I might've had a bit of a panic. My heart might have sunk a little bit. I might have considered the possibility that my shiny novelty had struck again, this time it had struck the heartstrings of a bear who lives three thousand miles away. Suffice it to say, I'm used to being the ultimate fad of men's love lives, the temporary most amazing thing ever. I am actually "The One That Got Away" dozens of times over, which is amazing how it's not my perspective on the matter at all. The way I see it, I am actually "The One Who Got A Bit Boring After A While, Thus Was Expelled From The Here And Now Relationship's Next-step." Chock it up to perspective. Chock it up to over a year's worth of the Memoirette and almost a decade of relatively romantic memoirettes in print. I think I can make a case against being "The One That Got Away."

When I tell The Bear that I'm writing about him, it's barely 8 a.m. where he is. He texts me whenever he wakes up from sleep, even for a little bit. He texts me hoping that I'm awake. He texts me to tell me how much he misses me even though I know it. Of that fact I am certain since, in reality, all we can do is miss one another because we're so far away.

When I tell The Bear that I'm writing about him, he responds, "About what a silly boy I am?"

I respond, "About what a silly girl I am about a magical boy who's silly about me."

When he texts his response, I know he is chuckling about it. He writes back, "That is basically us."

The issue of relative time hit me when I asked something about the last girl he'd been "seeing" though that's not how he'd describe it. The way he describes it, he might've just been exchanging physical intimacy in an arranged noncommitted, insignificant way. Considering I know the feeling, I take absolutely no issue with the nature of that nonrelationship, of that arrangement. The issue of relative time hit me when he told me that the last time he'd banged her was on the night he'd returned from Salt Lake. Under a month ago. Earlier that weekend was the first time we'd gotten to talk, actually talk...on the phone. I had been waiting to get stood up again at The Bar. Waiting with a triple-sized Kettle One and tonic, I happily sat on the phone with The Bear getting to hear his voice for the first time, falling in love with it with every breath and every reverberation of his vocal chords. It's true that so much attraction can be told by the reaction one has to another's voice. It's so true. Like a man's hands, a voice is so integral to the entire process of dissecting the person. I had absolutely no problem walking out of The Bar before my would-be-suitor would show, only partly because he was so late. Mostly, I had no problem walking out because The Bear had banged on the gong of my attraction and, even though it would be only aurally that night, I knew that the guy who was about to show up couldn't hold a candle to him. I haven't told any of this to The Bear, but it's true. It's totally true. His voice made me sure that the other guy wasn't worth the wait.

This was all just barely a month ago, hardly four weeks. Everything kind of rolled down the mountain soon after. Then was video chat. Then was IMing all day. Then was talking in bed when I woke up and he woke up. Then was talking while we were out and about, doing things without the benefit of one another's tangible company. It just kept snowballing down the mountain. It just keeps on doing it. Every day, every hour, every minute, it becomes more and more important. More significant. And I become more certain. Add to it that every day, every hour, every minute, it becomes more and more difficult to be apart.

"I think," The Pens tells me, "that the minute you guys see each other in the airport, you're going to fall in love. If you're not already, that's when it's going to happen."

Of course, I think she's right. The penetrating thought of the limited time span of this, how it's only barely just begun won't be a consideration anymore for worry, for concern. Really, it's not even now. Even if The Bear has become worried that it might be cause for me to slam on the brakes. Even if a part of me thinks that it should be cause for that very thing. Because there's no point really. No point in the worrying or the What ifs that The Bear has all too often caught me mid-way through.

"What do you want us to do?" he asks me. "Would it change anything? Would you want to change anything?"

He knows that the only thing that could be done any differently would be to just stop this altogether and he knows that's not what I want. It's certainly not what he wants. It's precisely in diametric opposition to what we want, for us. And it's good to feel that. To feel and know that we want something for us and that we're on the same page. God, for the first time in my life, I am a part of a "we" that is on the same page about an "us." For all of my What ifs and for all of my verbalizing anxieties that, by the way, are just a part of my condition, just a part of my general make-up, I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that this is what I want. What he wants is what I want and what I want is what he wants. Even if, for the time being, we're apart. Even if his ticket to Miami is set for less than two weeks from now and I'll have to wait that long to hear it said to my face and to say it back to his face: This is what we want. We want this for us. Because it's so much more than the currency of time. If time is measured out in pennies, sometimes, it's not being measured out in pennies for us. For us, each second is a five dollar bill. For us, each day is a twenty. For us, each week is a thousand.

Let My Shoes Lead Me Forward

2010-07-25T12:08:00.001-04:00

Let My Shoes Lead Me Forward, Jenny Wilson

I found him.

I'm not quite sure why or why it took so long, but I found him. And he found me. Apparently, I've been someone's dream girl like, in quotes, like, someone's "Dream Girl" this whole time. His. His dream girl. His "Dream Girl." There's this bear and he's been far and near and far and near and now he's far again and, this whole time, he's been stuck on this idea of the perfect girl, this elusive tall brunette, that's even what he calls it. He tells me that it's a joke now between he and his friends. He's been wondering if she exists this whole time and maybe a bit, when he believes that she does, where the Hell she is and why he hasn't found her yet. At some point along the way, he's totally lost faith that she exists.

And then he finds me. And it's not that easy, but he has. He's found me. Between one single friend and three thousand forty miles, some bit of data has passed his way and this bit of data has given him the hope that maybe she exists. Right now she exists. She's existed this whole time. And this whole time she's been me.

I don't want to give anyone the wrong idea, I don't wholly believe that I'm actually someone's dream girl or "Dream Girl" or whathaveyou. But it's nice to hear it and it's nice to think about in that way. It's nice to feel found. The way we talk, the way we are, on the phone, on text, through videochat...I tell him that I'm only 94% certain that he's the one for me, but I'm lying. I think a part of me knows that, while he's found me, I've found him too. That he's this guy that I didn't believe really existed either. How I've never felt such a lack of compromise in what I've wanted in a man the way that I feel it in him. How I could never find a thing to want him to change. Not, at least, now. How, most of the time, I'm fighting for relationships. How I'm, always, fighting for relationships. Fighting to prove that I'm the one, that it's the right time. Because I've been ready for something for a while.

One night, during one of our dates, we're talking and watching each other talk and thanking Baby Jesus for the technology that allows us to do so, we're considering writing Thank You notes to Google for their videochat, and I tell him, "That's it? That's all we had to do? Just find each other? Now we're done?"

He expresses that same kind of wistful incredulousness about the whole thing.

"If the worst part of it is the distance," I tell him, "then it's nothing. Then we're so good."

And I mean it. Most of the time, the distance isn't a problem. We have a plan. We have an end goal. Unlike with Long Distance Filmmaker Ex, there's a plan. Back then I wasn't ever going to move. I wasn't ever going to visit. There was no future ambition whereby we would end up together. Not for me, anyway. For him...he wanted to marry me. I guess that's when all the problems really started. The marriage talk. The way I told him that the only way it could possibly work out involved him leaving everything behind and moving here, to Miami, to a city that didn't have a place for him because I wasn't even guaranteeing that it would work out. The minute I saw him, I knew. The minute he put his arms around me, I was sure. He wasn't the one for me. He wasn't going to last. I'd just continue compromising until I couldn't anymore. And for as horrible as I feel about it now, I didn't then. We offered one another something that was important. I offered him a wonderful girlfriend who needed him and needed romantic sensitivity. A girl like that he couldn't find in San Francisco or LA. He offered me security. He offered me consolation. Someone to talk to. A man that could love me. The faith in finding the one elusive man that I felt I could truly be partners with. But he wasn't that guy. He's not. That guy. That guy is someone else. I think, for my own part, that I've found him now.

God, I hate to admit it.

The idea of admitting it, even on a blog, even to myself when no one's around to hear...that idea is a terrible terrible murder. It's tantamount to sabotage for me. I tell him that it's terrifying and that I'm scared. Though I'd dropped the ominous "What if"s about a week ago, I can't help but, even for a moment, consider the possibility. Those previous "What if"s were all about whether or not I would like him or him me, in person. The "What if"s now...they're so much more.

"I have a feeling that I'm going to hold you and I'm never going to want to let go," he tells me.

"What if we're terrified?" I ask. "What if, right there, at the airport, the minute that we first see each other...what if that's when we know?"

"I don't know," he offers.

"I guess."

"We can't know," he tells me.

And he's right. We can't know. There's no way to answer that question. The only thing we can do is keep with the plan.

"If we see each other twice a month," he says, "I think that we can be happy with that for a few months." He chuckles. He's thinking of the end goal. He's thinking that he knows it won't stay that way. That, if it really works out, there's no way we'll be willing to stay apart for that long.

Cristy says NO!

2010-07-18T22:14:00.001-04:00

I'm having difficulty writing the Girl Who Is Called Miranda stories. Since that's what I've set out to do after a three hour-long nap on a Sunday night wherein the only plans I have are to see if I can manage some videochatting with the bear 3,040 miles away, this isn't the best news for me to realize.

I've maybe been sitting here a whole of 50 minutes and maybe have written a total of three pages, none of which I can strongly stand by. I maybe mentioned the unnamed Zeus already. I maybe mentioned the ogre who was based on the Little Bird already. I maybe mentioned The Girl Who Is Called Miranda's Mother who is based on my own mother already. I maybe mentioned the swan daughter that my protagonist bore out of an egg shell after a night of drunken debauchery wherethrough she fucked a swan already. Now, I have nothing else to write and no new ideas that I can stick with long enough to write them.

I think I'd had an idea once, a few weeks ago, and I think that's how I created the mom character. Now, I'm stuck. And now is when I want something to write about and be enveloped by so that I can ensure myself that I'll be awake by the time the bear gets back into the city--the city 3,040 miles away--so that I might earn some videochat time because, frankly, I miss him already.

Thing is, I'm not forcing myself to write on account of him. I'm forcing myself to write on account of not having dedicated enough time to the Girl Who Is Called Miranda in the last few weeks, nay, months. I feel that the longer I stay away from her, the more she fades out of existence. The truth is, learning about her through the writing process has been something of a blessing for me and, in the most honest sense of the saying, it has been a true pleasure in getting to know her. Now that my cat is in heat and she's annoying the crap out of me, even when locked in the bathroom, and now that I'm looking forward to having someone to think about that is not a bear in San Francisco, now is when I am looking the most at The Girl Who Is Called Miranda and wanting to reconnect. The irony is that, in spite of living entirely within me until she lives on the page, The Girl Who Is Called Miranda has nothing new to offer. Perhaps in spite of all the recent goings-on of my life that have shifted my focus of attention from her, she is now steadfastly arms crossed over her chest, lips pursed and telling me "No" whenever I prompt her for something juicy that might interest me enough to transcribe about her. I ask her about the swan-daughter, Sue, and she shakes her head in definace of my request. I ask her about the ogre that was her live-in boyfriend and is now staying at her apartment whilst she is not there and is, instead, visiting her mother who lives in exile out in the woods, and she won't budge. This, The Girl Who Is Called Miranda, the same girl who couldn't shut up for months, months ago, when the getting was good and when a hundred and two hundred pages of stories couldn't find their way to the page fast enough. Now my cursor is flashing on the open document screen after the last line I have written and absolutely nothing is coming to me.

The Girl Who Is Called Miranda is scowling and she is quiet and, I believe, she feels a little left out.

The Girls Who Is Called Miranda, taking a page out of my own book, all she can do is say, "No." And I hate her a little bit more every second for it.

The thing is, I don't understand what is happening to me and, for a whole ten minutes while trying to fall asleep for my nap earlier, I was having the closest thing to a panic attack I've felt for a long time (years, actually) because I couldn't stop envisioning the moment of the very probable near-future wherein I deboard a plane I take from Miami to San Francisco and I see the bear in the flesh for the full 4D effect for the first time in my life. And I'm thinking of the flight that hasn't happened yet, the one going to him, the one right before I deplane there in San Fran and I think of how I might have such a horrible flight that I tumble out of the plane trembling and freaking out. I am filled with pre-worry and pre-regret and pre-confusion and pre-embarrassment because what if when I get there, it's all turned out to be for naught. What if, when I get there, he doesn't like the full 4D effect of me. The girl he can't stop thinking about. The girl he misses like Bjork misses that guy she hasn't met yet. The girl he's sure has put a spell on him. The girl who might be that girl. The girl who might be the girl he's been waiting for his whole life. What if that girl isn't me. What if he just thought she might be. Worse, what if all of this waiting and anticipation has turned out to be misleading for me as well. What if everything I think might be true is not. What if the kisses aren't special and his hands upset me. It's happened before. The what ifs the what the bear calls My What If Problem. What if the what ifs are right. What if I feel guilty and what if he feels guilty and what if this is the whole reason why The Girl Who Is Called Miranda isn't talking to me anymore. What if all of this happens, the good stuff or the bad, and The Girl Who Is Called Miranda refuses to talk to me anymore on account of it.

And, everyday, I wish I had five hundred dollars just lying around for the moment when I can purchase those plane tickets to see him, even if they're for tomorrow. Even if it means that I'll have to get on a plane before I can get to see my therapist the next time and tell him all of this that's going on and get the requisite therapy so that I can have the best chances of boarding that plane and not causing an air marshall to shoot me mid-flight due to some over-stimulated panic attack over the claustophobia of being stuck in midair in a sardine can with no escape hatch. And, everyday, the longing for him gets worse. The conversations between us become more obvious, more committed, more disturbingly real. They get the better of me and my entire campaign to remain with my head-foot securely dug into the ground. And no matter how many times I say, "Cristy says NO!" to anything about him, so that I won't work myself into a frenzy that I won't be able to back out of even if it's not right between us in the end, or even if it is and it ends up being too difficult to manage sanely. No matter all of that and I can't stand by my own resolve to keep my head on. No matter all of that and I keep inching toward the real thought that this could be really important and that this is something that I really want. Even though it hasn't worked out for me before and even though I have stated with all sincerity that things like this, things that matter but are too far to touch and too distant to hold close, are just not for me.

All of this, even The Girl Who Is Called Miranda hating me with her hate-filled eyes and her hateful silent resentment, her Cold War against me...and I find myself so happy when he's home and we can talk. Or when he's at work and he's chatting with me. Or even just when I think that he might be thinking of me, even just a little bit. And I can't say No with such conviction. And I can't care less about getting on that plane.

ABBA and Take a Chance/ Get on the Bike Therapy

2010-07-13T20:36:00.002-04:00

Living in the Memoirette is pretty wicked.

Living in the Memoriette means that I am no place and all places. It's an Internet thing. Ergo, it's science. I'm a fucking scientist. A philosopher of science, anyway. The Memoirette is a cross-dimensional playground. Or video archive. Or digital video archive. Living in the Memoirette I'm a writer, a scientist, and a godess. It's supermegadinosaur keen.

You get the point.

Living outside of the Memoirette, on the other hand, isn't peachy keen. Not when it's ninety-five and counting and it's not even eleven a.m. yet. Not when your job that you used to love has become some chore. Not when you spend all day virtually chatting with people and talking to people over the phone by way of satellites in outer space because you can't just see them and you can't just go over their houses. Because your best friend lives two thousand miles away and, maybe, just maybe, you're crushing on some bear a thousand miles and an additional time zone over to boot. And there's still the heat. It's outside. It's inside. It's totally overwhelming. It's totally smothering. It's murdering your hair and limiting what you can where and when, and it doesn't even matter if the sun's out. At night, it's murderous. It's so humid, you're drowning in your own stink. Even when you're not moving. Even when you're catching the breeze off your own abanico.

My therapist thinks I'm risk-averse.

My therapist is right about everything.

I am risk-averse.

He tells me to get on my bicycle and I tell him how I wish it was mustard yellow. He tells me to take a spin around the block and I tell him that I should've gotten a basket for it already. He tells me that the wind I catch while riding will be a cool relief in the summertime nights and I tell him that my grandmother's died.

A week after therapy, I'm done. I'm done with risk aversion. I'm done with it. I've had it. And I am staring at that reflection in the mirror of dissatisfaction and just plain fedupness. I'm there. Wherever there is, that's where I am. It's aggrivating. A day after my therapist had prescribed for me to officially get back into dating, a point he took to include setting up an online dating profile again, I'm on it. I'm on the site and I'm depressed at the lack of options that I have living where I'm living. Reading those potential suitor profiles and cruising the catalog of pictures that they've posted to sell themselves, I'm near gagging and heaving at the prospect of one of those faces staring across some cafe table to me. Those mouths yammering away about things that should interest them and about how I'm so funny and I'm so pretty. Or not. Or the opposite. The opposite's possible, too. I'm thrilled at the prospect of not receiving messages from them. This time, for a week or so later, I barely receive any. Nothing like the last time I'd had an active profile then. When I had six or seven messages a day. And I wipe my brow and thank the baby Jesus.

A week after therapy, I'm essentially committed to a trip across the country to a city whereat I didn't even bother visiting my ex-boyfriend of a year because I just wasn't that interested. Or because I thought I might die. And this time, it's for someone else. Someone that maybe will maybe won't like me and that I maybe will and maybe won't like back. And he's committed too, to coming here. Because he's not going to be my ex-boyfriend either. Or maybe he is. But not the same one. Even if they both like Star Wars and actually care about the Skywalker Ranch. Even if they both worked in "the industry." I talk to Jen about visiting New Mexico and I'm committed for a visit there too. My mom supports my job-hunting in the Southwest. She reminds me how much she loves Jennie. She reminds me how much Jennie loves me and how much I love Jennie. And I think, "This way Jennie can have a dog and two cats. She won't be lonely for pets again. We can share. More love for them anyway." And the bear is happy even at the prospect of me in New Mexico because he's sure he can find a lasso long enough. As easy as snapping his fingers.

I tell Jennie that, at this point, "I'm out of options. I have to get on a plane."

She likes it.

My therapist is right about everything all over again.

The Attack of Adolescence: Courtney Love's Behind the Music

2010-06-26T10:56:00.001-04:00

VH1's been running their new Behind the Music episode pretty regularly in the last week. I maybe wouldn't have cared too much about it at all. Even that it's Courtney Love's Behind the Music. But for the fact that a part of me needed to watch something and I had already exhausted the Gilmore Girls series DVDs in a record-breaking <1 month-long marathon viewing of seasons 1 through 7.

Some background: I had pretty much given up on TV entirely in June of 2009. Tired of paying exorbidant Comcast Cable rates for TV and Internet and tired of having "nothing to watch" despite having over 200 cable channels and the bonus digital On Demand box that gave me access to thousands more movie and television show titles, I asked Comcast to cut my cable service entirely and leave me with the bare-bones Internet service they offered. I went to the Comcast store in the Gables and dropped off my box. At that time, I made an appointment for a service-person to come by my home and cut the cable line altogether.

I have what I realized is an odd sense of consumer morality that has to do with the fact that I think certain things termed "luxuries" by the government are, in fact, part of my civil liberties as I live in a free-market capitalist society that is also democratic-based, meaning that I, as a tax-paying citizen, am allowed the freedoms to use certain things (i.e. expressways and city streets, radio and television, etc.) without having to pay additional charges to private corporations for use of them. The idea that all television signals went from analog to digital doesn't bother me in the slightest. The idea that I have to pay a digital cable service to tap into said signal...that is, unless I have a brand new television set (which I don't have nor can I afford to buy)...is something of a rock in my sneaker during a mile-long hike. Don't get me started on the Sun Pass, Florida's equivalent of the EZ Pass.

Anyway, all of this civic outrage came to a head in July of last year and, on principle, I dropped my subscription to cable access fully aware that I'd have to rely on pirated movies or TV shows that I could download online for home viewing entertainment and that I'd have to watch the Daily Show at my work computer the next day and that I'd have to get all my news from the local NPR/ PRI affiliate, WLRN 91.3 FM, on the car radio. But since those were all compromises that I'd already made, I gave in. I continued my Internet subscription with Comcast because (a) cable Internet access seems to be the best/ fastest one, (b) I download a lot of pirated music and movies, and (c) for what it's worth, Comcast's Internet rates are relatively inexpensive.

I was looking forward to delving headlong into the collection of books that were collecting dust atop my bookcases which I've termed my Haven't Yet Read But Will One Day Read books. I was looking forward to taking my dog on longer walks because I wouldn't have the excuse of having plenty of television to keep me mildly entertained at home. I was looking forward to spending time at the Downtown library so that I could borrow Criterion DVDs and HBO series DVDs since I wouldn't access to 24/7 broadcast or cable television streaming of audio-visual sewage. I didn't anticipate that the technician sent over by Comcast would be too hungover on the morning that he was to disconnect my cable to actually show up to work. He called. Sure. The appointment had been made and he'd the obligation to make sure that his client had been reached. Me, his client, I answered the phone when he called and assured him that I did, in fact, want my cable disconnected. Not that I "had" to have it disconnected, but that I'd wanted to. Leave it to Comcast to be ineffective at even disconnected my cable when I don't want it. Suffice it to say, for the past 12 months, I've been receiving free basic cable and promoted-speed Internet service because on the one day that I'd been scheduled to take ownership of my own television viewing access rights the damned technician was admittedly too hungover to make the trip to my neighborhood.

After a near-month of watching Gilmore Girls seasons 1 through 7 on DVD and having no time to watch anything else, I found myself in the hideous "nothing on television" quandary that I'd originally tried to avoid by cutting my cable service entirely. Too-tired of the marathon-streams of Law & Orders and Criminal Minds and buffets of similarly lack-luster and mind-numbingly similar television shows that plague the TV viewing population on a daily/hourly basis, I channel surfed. For three days, I've been channel surfing. In fact, the only thing I'll stop on is something that I haven't seen before and, at least yesterday, much of that was on Fox News.

I landed on VH1 for the first time in months on Tuesday night. There she was, in all her post-breakdown/ new Hole album glory: Courtney Love. And she's smoking ciggies. And she's got a "Let It Bleed" tattoo on the inside of her right arm. And she's saying that it was criminal that she was locked up in Bellevue in 2003 or whenever it was. And she's crying about how she never wanted to be hated by the whole world. And she's saying that it sucks to be a widow. And, for a moment, I'm interested. And, then the moment's over. In less than three minutes, I am over Courtney Love.

Friday night happens and, instead of catching some random mid-portion of her too-long Behind the Music, channel surfing brings me again to VH1, this time right at the start of it. The first thing I see is an image of a baby Courtney in the arms of her biological dad and her biological mom and all of this is on the screen while the Behind the Music voice over guy is telling the story of how Courtney's hippie parents may or may not have given her LSD when she was a baby because, well, it was The Sixities. Everyone was doing. Even babies, apparently. Courtney Love claims to not remember. I believe her. I mean, she was 1.

It's not long before I am overcome by the wave of deja vu. All of this Courtney Love backstory is something that I know. It is all something that, at one time and for quite a bit of time, I had cared about. In fact, I had cared a lot about it. The more I watch Courtney talk, the more pictures they put up on the screen from the late 1980's and the early 1990's, the more I remember what it was like to care about her and to care about who I wanted to be when I grew up. Here's this quasi-icon of my adolescence on a television show that I shouldn't be watching because I'd chosen to give up my cable access a year ago. Here's this woman whom I looked at as a bit of a beacon of hope that angry, misunderstood girls could be successful women if they really tried. Here's this woman I watched fall apart, personally and professionally, all the while remaining this beacon of hope for me. Because no matter how fucked up Courtney Love got, she still stood for something. She was always more than a junkie while being a junkie. She was always more than a widow while being a widow. She was always more than a fashion icon while being a fashion icon. She was always more than a grody rock star broad while being a grody rock star broad. Like Schrodinger's Cat, she was both things while the lid was on the box: this terrible celebrity and this powerful icon.

I'm watching Courtney Love and I feel pity for her and I feel some kind of pity for myself for even giving a shit enough to watch it and listen to her reasoning for every single thing she's done that sucked and never does she apologize for it and never do I want to forgive her because, well, I still admire her and I don't want her to be sorry. She can be pitiful, but she can't be sorry. Even Behind the Music can't take that away from me. From us. And we've come a long way, Courtney and I, but not really. Not really because we're still here, me on the spectator end and her on the spectacle end and I'm still itching for a ciggie everytime she lights one. Just like in the old days.

The next day, I don't want my cable anymore. I'm back at July 2009 and I'm glad as all Hell that I hadn't resubscribed when the new season of True Blood started because, well, I've been pirating it successfully for two weeks now. And I still have that collection of books atop my bookcase and it's grown considerably in the last year. And I still don't go to the Downtown library as much as I'd want to or as much as I think I should. And, during our long Friday at dusk walk last night, my dog and I had a really good time together not worrying about anything being on TV or not.

You Are Here/ You Were Here/ Welcome Back!

2010-06-24T13:41:00.001-04:00

My best friend is no longer single.

I am still single.

My therapist thinks I'm doing the right thing.

I have just called Mannykins and explained to him the replacement therapy that I'm undertaking in order to keep from texting or calling the Chipmunk whenever I feel the sudden urge. When I explain it, I explain, "I realize what I'm doing when I'm about to do it, but then it becomes this obsession. 'I can't do it. I know I shouldn't. But, I can do it. I will do it. It doesn't really matter. I miss him. I hate myself.' And it creates more anxiety. That anxiety causes more obsessive thoughts about it and, soon enough, I am derailed and given into the frustration of self-loathing." I tell Manny that I'll be texting and calling him whenever I think of the Chipmunk. Manny tells me it's OK. He knows where I'm coming from.

In case I forget, Manny says, "I'm a bit of a texter myself." I try not to noticably scoff at his gross understatement.

Therapy is essentially me verbalizing to a professional everything that I already know. My therapist says to me, "When you're talking, you come to such clarity of mind. You are more self-perceptive than most people. You're so sensitive to things that you've got at least six senses. But I've never met anyone with such a lack of follow-through."

I concur, "My lack of resolve is amazing. I am amazed by my own inability to do."

Apparently, I'm beset on all sides by fear. I am the opposite of a risk-taker. I am such the opposite of a risk-taker that I perceive risks where there are none.

I also second-guess everything. Especially, the right things that I do. I am wont to second-guess the right choice. It's like a disorder. For ten minutes of therapy last evening, I considered getting another bicycle, a newer one or one that reminds me of my old bike. The bike I had when I was thirteen.

When I get to work today, my best friend "is in a relationship" according to Facebook. Immediately, I "like" it. I actively like it. I like it, as an action. What used to be a six hour work day turns into a nine hour work day by 12:30 p.m. My friend is in from out of town for a couple of days and we have a date to catch up and be Chatty Cathy's with one another. All I can think about is how I have made an appointment with my dog to walk him when I get home from work. I keep reminding myself that, because of the whole lack-of-resolve thing that I'm trying to conquer, I have no choice but to do it. Already my mind is racing considering the way the night is going to play itself out. If I think about it for another ten minutes--which will really be another seven hours--then I will work myself into an emotional frenzy and, by the time I get home, I'll be exhausted, physically exhausted, by it all.

Last night, the Chipmunk texted me that he felt like it was a "real break-up this time."

I wrote back, "It is, sweetheart."

I wrote back, "I know what I need and you don't have it to give me."

He texted the response, "It feels like it's the end of a fully-developed, real relationship."

What he's saying is that what we've had is anything but real. What he's saying is that what we've had has lived its course and, even though it wasn't real, it was fully-developed. What he's saying is that it's over.

I wrote back, "Goodbye."

I wrote back, "Please don't text me anymore."

He didn't. He didn't respond by text and he didn't respond any other way.

What he did do was claim ownership of the break-up from a relationship that didn't count. A relationship that wasn't. It was anything but real. All of this that I held out for was for naught, just like I'd foretold. Just like I'd expressed insecurity about months ago, weeks ago, and days ago.

What he's saying is that I don't really matter. And what I'm really doing is replacement therapy so that maybe in three months, maybe by the end of summer, maybe by the time I go see the Pixies in Austin, or maybe by the time I go see the Pens in Albuquerque, maybe by then I'll be over this thing that didn't really exist in the first place.

Essentially, I'm reliving my life. I'm reliving four years ago or whatever when The Boy With the Thorn in His Side dumped me even though we weren't in a real relationship after I told him that what we did have wasn't cutting it for me. Essentially, The Chipmunk is The Boy With the Torn in His Side. Except his beard is brown, not red. And except he rides bicycle and doesn't drive a Honda Civic. The last time this happened, I was beautiful but I was a monster. This time this happens, I'm going to do the right thing and I am going to wonder whether or not I regret it for four months or something the like until I realize that I don't know what I'm even going in circles about because, in effect, it's been a fascination of my own mind. Some dumb fantasy that I created. At least that's what he's saying.

The Not Foreigner-inspired Edition

2010-06-04T15:26:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure I know what love is anymore.

The idea of love is so changed. I mean, that's what it does, right? Change. It's this abstract concept, this abstract noun, this intangible. Yet, everyone claims some kind of identity for it which is totally cool by me. I've had my own definitions for it. It's been significant, invariably, through each day of my lived-life. I guess I'm just not sure what it is anymore.

I'm talking, of course, of that romantic kind of love. The oft-poeticized love. The love that is sometimes written Love, with a capital letter to start. The Jove/Eros love. The John Cusak love. I'm just not sure what it is anymore. At least for me and to me. Last night, jogging to the phone each time my houseline rang, chanting a little mantra as a wish for who I'd want it to be, I found myself feeling like it could be something like this. Like the little jog and the little chant. But, I'm not sure that I'd decided it was. Looking back on it now--a full 11 hours after the last call that wasn't who I'd hoped it would be, I think I've determined that it's not really any kind of love that I've ever known, at all. Not the jogging and the wishful sing-song kind, anyway. It is, instead, something else. Some other thing.

The more I grow old, the more I feel like I did when I was twelve and sure that no one would ever love me the way that Lloyd Dobbler loved Diane Court or the way that Ferris Buller loved Sloane Peterson. I'm not sure why that is since, at this point, I've been loved like both enough times that I can't pretend to begin even counting half of the times. Yet, it seems so foreign, so impossible. Not for now, not like it had ever happened before. In this alterna-verse of what love is and forgetting what love is, maybe I've just forgotten what it was like. Like, what it has been like to feel love. Because I'm so tired of being disappointed when the Diane Courts of the world don't give up to the hunt of the Lloyd Dobblers of the world (ie. me) or when the Ferris Bullers of the world get more and more caught up in their own egos and drop any affection for their beloved Sloane Petersons when they realize how much cooler than the Sloanes they are. So, now, at this very place and time, there's instead of any prospect of successful love, a lack of faith in all possibility, and, essentially, a lack of trust in what I can't control.

I come to this quandary a mere three days after happily claiming aloud to He Who Should Be My Beloved outside of a bookstore with coffees in our hands and smiling stupidly at one another under the shade during a blistering hot afternoon post-lunch, "I'm feeling so much happier now that I've decided to trust you."

"When did this happen?" he asked.

"After you showed up to my dinner party last Saturday."

"So, up until last Saturday night, everything I said was a lie?" he retorts.

"No, it's not so much you that I didn't trust, but things. Like, this thing that we've got." I tell him, "I'm just happier now that I'm not trying to control everything about it."

I come to this realization about not knowing what love is and, actually, not feeling so bad about it. Feeling good about it, in fact, because feeling this kind of not-knowing is kind of liberating. It opens me up to the possibility of being surprised by a new feeling, a different feeling, a whirlwind experience of something totally novel and unexpected. My hope, of course, is that it will be unprecedented, too. It will be unprecedented in a great way, not in a sucky one, and, running its course, this novelty will be glorious in that it will have done its own on its own and it will have been something worth the experiencing of.

For all of the not-trusting of him and the cyclothymic-ness of my feelings about the whole enchilada of potential between us, I think I just ended up precisely at the other end of the spectrum, the end whereat you find that you've gone so far that you're at the beginning again, at some place where you had tried to be--you had forced yourself to be--but, now, you're just organically that way. There's no other way to be at that place. You're almost like a Bizzaro-you, but without any superpower. Rather, it's like riding a wave, which being a non-surfer, I'm not accustomed to in any respect. Shore-like or otherwise.

In fact, when Jim Henson told me today that "all [I] do is be laid back," I had to quickly counter with "No. I'm the most wound-up person you know. I even have a blog about my clothes which, by extension, means that even getting dressed is complicated for me." He couldn't but agree with the statement and retracted his previous argument.

Back to the what love is now question, I'm still not sure. It's changed. It's changed so much. Love, for a long time, was That Dog songs. Mostly crushes, mostly tornado-cones of mish-mashed emotional overloads. Here's a cow. Here's Bill Paxton. Here I am without a belt to tie me to some piping and keep me from getting swept up in it. It's been a lot of hard-work and nursing, too. Years of care-taking and nursing. Years of being the one in control so that at least someone's taking care of things. So that, at least, someone's keeping the two of us from falling apart. Love has been like that and it has been that. Love has been less about the letting someone in and trusting someone else than it has been about the honeymoon and the wartime mobile army surgical hospital a mile from the frontlines without the accompanying canned laugh tracks. And, maybe now, it has finally become something else and something other. Something that I'm not too sure of and something that I may not find out about for a while. It can, for once, be something that I cannot and will not qualify with words.

Dropping Bombs like Making Out

2010-05-25T20:12:00.001-04:00

8:01pm, Pennifer:
he's a dick, pure and simple

8:01pm, Me:
That's the thing is that I know that.

8:01pm, Pennifer:
quite a handsome one though

8:01pm, Me:
Yes.
Your words of wisdom have been shared with the land, man.
"At the end of the day, he's one good looking man. Batshit crazy or total douchebag, he's one good looking man. Take one foor the team."
I told that to my mom and she was like, "i like your attitude."

8:03pm, Pennifer:
exactly
there's nothing wrong with kissing a good looking man

8:03pm, Me:
Right.

8:03pm, Pennifer:
you're not investing anything in it anymore

8:03pm, Me:
My motto, "Kissing isn't dropping bombs."

8:04pm, Pennifer:
word
unless it is.
sometimes it is.

8:04pm, Me:
Kissing is actually NEVER an A bomb.
Unless we're in Carnivale.
And we're not.
It's just kissing.

8:05pm, Pennifer:
that's true, I guess

8:05pm, Me:
It's factually accurate.
I mean, in that vein, kissing's really not that big a deal.
Like I told The Chipmunk, we're old.

8:05pm, Pennifer:
I know. damn me for being metaphorical

8:05pm, Me:
We've done this before. No one's died.

8:05pm, Pennifer:
well, that's true
we are old.

yup

Reel Around the Fountain, Parrot-soul

2010-05-12T11:13:00.004-04:00

There isn't much going on about external souls anymore. Not casually, at least. Not in mundane conversation. Not that I've heard. I mean, no one's ever come up to me and confessed some guarded parrot's their soul or some gaggle of swans or some wild boar on the mountains of Edzhigansk. The way Frazer tells it, at least some people said such things. Mostly wizards and trolls but, nonetheless, it happened. (Side note: I don't know any wizards. I know trolls, but that's different.)

I just happened upon the external soul thing. The Girl I Call Miranda in this ongoing series of quasi-surrealistic mythology-in-modern-society stories that I write meets a good looking ogre and he sort-of-impulsively moves into her apartment. With him come this pair of green parrots. There's no explanation for it. It just happens. He never mentions it. She never mentions it...to him. She mentions it in the narrative. It's first person narration, after all. If she hadn't mentioned it, then we wouldn't know it. I say "we" and I'm purposely including myself in that. Myself, the author, is just as surprised at what The Girl I Call Miranda says. It's almost like she exists and I'm just the conduit for her telling her story. The girl who fucked a swan and bore an egg that incubated for two years exists somewhere totally separate of me. Isn't that charming.

So, the way the external soul thing happened, I hadn't even realized I'd tapped into some cross-cultural mythological archetype. I just went on for pages and pages about these stupid parrots and how they crap all over The Girl I Call Miranda's apartment's carpet and how they make all this sqwaking noise from the window sill. I don't do much research, not until I'm in need of a place to go. Not until I just want to prove something to myself or fact-check some thing that I may or may not have already learned. So, the way the external soul thing happened, it was kind of just a coincidence. Eventually, I was looking for some lore about trolls or ogres and I ended up coming across a story about a troll who held a princess hostage and the only way her true beloved could defeat him was to kill some parrot that was, in fact, the troll's soul. This is a Hindu story but that's not how Frazer writes it. He writes, "Hindoo." Actually, I'm not quite sure it's the same thing. I just think it is. Frazer's the expert, not me.

It's been months since I started The Girl I Call Miranda stories. It's been since at least December that the ogre and the parrots that are his soul have existed. I think of them every day. Those parrots. That soul. I hadn't written a poem for over a year and a half when I finally wrote one in March. One. I wrote a single poem. It wasn't great, it just was. It did it's job. It got something off my chest. It expressed it. I was OK. I wouldn't give me a gold star for it, but I might pat myself a bit on the back. The writing it was what was important. That poem was about bicycles; rather, a bicycle rider. The other night I wrote two poems. Two. I wrote two poems. Whatever they were about (the same bicycle rider perhaps in some way), they were about external souls. The things that people don't have anymore. Not that they share, anyway. I wrote two poems and they were each about external souls.

The second one I wrote, I think is clearly misunderstood. It's not about parrots. It's not about a bird. It's not told from the perspective of a cat. It's called "Trolls, No Better."

Lipstick wearing the remnants

of his parrot-soul,

took a bite while it perched with wicked eye

on my window sill.

He busies himself coughing up blood on the carpet

and I am napping, in finally-quiet.

Just because I didn't mention bicycles doesn't mean it's not about a bicycle rider. Just because I didn't mention ogres doesn't mean it's not about one.

On social networking sites, there's no escape. There's constant updating. Constant sharing. It's this link. This link that doesn't evaporate. There are backlogs in case you missed it. In case you missed it. Because that's what virtual friendship is like. You're linked-in. You're on. There's no time when you're not. In case they missed it, there's a backlog. In the cyber-net of extensive backlogging and constant presence, I know precisely the quandary of this predicament. I am selective about my virtual friendships. I have privacy filters set up to keep people at bay. I delete friends.

Now, he's my damed Facebook friend again. Fucking shoot me.

Leaving the market early last night, I made a phonecall to the one person that I didn't want to talk to. I'm not sure why I did it. Like I said, I didn't really want to talk to him. Maybe a part of me wanted to reaffirm that sentiment. Maybe I needed to prove it to myself. Cristy, this is you talking to yourself. You need to face the fire in order to know whether or not it's hot enough to burn. Just get a little closer. Once you feel the heat, step back. I'm certain that the thought process wasn't so eloquent. Nonetheless, that was probably a part of it. Prove it. So I did. I called. As soon as the phone started ringing, I regreted calling. As soon as he picked up at the other end, I wished he hadn't.

That's how things come back around full-circle. That's how it becomes just a reel around the fountain but not in that good way, just in that way that you're going around this damned fountain and not even going in for a spell, not even to get sprinkled by the water or splash around calling out for Marcello. You're just going around and around and around and, by the end of the day, you're right where you started with nothing to show for it, not even an inch above the hem of your dress is damp. It's not even damp.

Later on in the night, I send him a text and tell him that talking to him makes me "feel terrible" and that "I've exhausted the small role that I've had to play in [his] life." He responds that it's "typical" but that I probably knew he'd say that. Seriously, though, I spent the last hour before bed picking out green feathers from my lip gloss. Seriously, though, I still have the taste of bird-flesh in my mouth and it's weird since I haven't taken as much as a bite of a piece of chicken in at least thirteen years.

No more external souls. Not unless their of the non-avian variety. Damned birds make a lot of noise and crap all over the carpet. Totally not worth the price.

A Scrabble Loser with a Werewolf Heart

2010-05-07T12:18:00.000-04:00

Things I know vs. Things I don't know...the latter wins.

I know everyone thinks I should be better at Scrabble than I really am, but it wouldn't be fitting into character if I was. The game is all about strategy, not about having an extensive vocabulary and knowing how to spell. It's not about being a stickler to the rules. It's not about being Grammar Nazi. If it was about all of those things, I'd be crowned some kind of champion; people would hail me as some kind of Scrabble knight. I'd be some mythical slayer of word dragons through the realm of the Scrabble Kingdom. Scrabble's not about those things. It's a game. It's not a spelling bee, a competition. It's, simply, a game.

I'm not very good at games.

Things I know: Words.

Things I don't know: How to win at games.

Things I know: Spelling.

Things I don't know: Strategy.

I could be studied as the greatest failure of strategy of all time. All Time, like, in terms of Ever.

Gangsta Boss Man's told me, on various occasions, that I've "no game." He means it in a lot of ways, but mostly in terms of flirting and dating. Those kinds of things. He's also noted how I have no professional savvy, the kind of savvy that one needs to navigate through the politics of corporate middle-management. What he means to say is that I've got no game in that either. My mom may say the same thing. In fact, she has. It's kind of depressing, really. Not just that I've no game but that people know it. People have known it to the point of sharing said observation with me. Like, they want me to know. They're informing me for the sake of making me aware so that I can make changes. So that I can change. Thing is, I don't think it's that bad. Don't tell anyone because I don't like to admit it, but I don't care that I don't know how to play games to win them. I like being handy with a pool cue. I like smashing the competition on Jeopardy!, but I don't care for strategy. The way I see it: It is what is it. I know it or I don't. I'm the winner or I'm not, based on what I bring to the table, not on how I bluff with my poker face. Fuck it. I'm no Lady Gaga. I don't even know what that song's about. I've maybe heard it once in its entirety. But I know enough to know that I don't have one—a poker face—and that I don't want one. In many ways, I want nothing to do with Lady Gaga.

Damn, I just remembered that I had a dream about Lady Gaga last night. Maybe I'll never know why. God knows that I couldn't care less.

It could be argued that a game face is the most important face that I lack. It's the single most useful device that I could engineer, but that I won't. It won't be due to a failure in doing so, rather a failure to do so. And it won't be a failure, not if I don't try. So, maybe, Scrabble can just be enjoyed in the playing of it and not necessarily due to the wanting to win of it. And I guess that's what it boils down to, so many of my failures: The lack of ambition to develop a strategy, to play some game.

It has been a week, maybe.

It has been just shy of a week, maybe, since I gave up on the last game that I had chosen not to play, simply because it had grown dull. It had crossed the line between Things That Are Worth It Because They Could Be Fun and Things That Are Not Fun, At All. When the actual player starts treating you like a chore or, in his words, "like an assignment," then there's absolutely no reason to keep at the game, since I'm not playing ayway. Without strategy, even the only one that's playing gets bored. He'll just keep winning, keep setting his own rules, keep laying traps, and I'll just keep stepping into them and keep on with the losing of the whole thing. That's when it gets boring. When it gets boring for the only one that's actively having fun, then it becomes boring for the one that's just been pursuing the prospect of getting to the fun—when all the playing-to-win becomes just playing-for-the-joy-of-it—as opposed to having fun in the game of it all.

It's how I get to be the Big Winner. Jim Henson won the first Travelin' Scrabblin' game. It was the first time he'd ever played. I was so proud. Prouder than if I'd won myself. Watching him lay down the tiles to spell NATIVITY was a pretty special moment. He didn't know it until I mentioned it but, laying out all his 7 letters, that won him a 50-point Bingo! over the score of the actually letter tiles and board squares they'd landed on. Leaving News that night, he was glowing with self-satisfaction, totally well-earned self-satisfaction. I know beating me had something to do with it. I know winning the first time he'd ever played it had the most to do with it. The best part, I think, was winning without strategy. Winning out of sheer playing of the game. Winning from laying down tiles that formed words. Winning, even if he had to ask me once or twice if the word he wanted to put down was spelled correctly or, even, if it would count at all. Teaching him, toward the end of the game, how to put down single tiles at the corners of where two words cross in order to gain points for both new words, it made me feel great. Leaving News that night, I grabbed his hand to raise it over our heads as we walked and proclaimed, "Who's the Big Winner? Who's the Big Winner? Jim Henson's the Big Winner! Yayayayay!" Slightly embarrassed, it made him smile, chuckle, and blush a bit.

That's probably a better feeling than it would have been to win the game.

It's been a week, maybe just shy of a full seven days, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't change a thing. I'm still not itching to win. I'm glad enough with walking away a good sport. Me and my werewolf heart.

The Wisdom of Donna Martin

2010-04-05T12:18:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure she ever asks her mom if she can sleep with danger. I mean, that would be a relatively stupid question to ask one's mom. Even for Tori Spelling. Donna Martin was more concerned with sleeping with a Jew, not because he was Jewish but because he was Whatshisface Brian Austin Green's character...David Silver. That was his name. Shannon Doherty wouldn't ever have bothered to ask. Not even Brenda Walsh would ask. She would just do it. She would just sleep with danger or dangeous boys or, at least, boys with scars on their eyebrows, a brooding sensibility, a dad in jail, a predisposition to alcohol and drug abuse, and who ride motorcycles. At least Dylan wore a helmet. At least I remember him riding with a helmet. I'm not sure that boasts much for safety, though, considering the risk involved.

Donna was afraid of losing her virginity. I'm not sure why. According to anything I know about Tori Spelling--which isn't much (thankfully), but which I consider far too much for someone as unconcerned about Tori Spelling as I am--I'm sure Spelling wouldn't have asked permission for much. She seemed like a bit of a party hag in the '90s tabloid scene, her with BFF-of-the-decade, Doherty. In the Lifetime movie, the "Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?," a movie which Lifetime calls "a classic," the girl Tori plays seems to ask a lot of questions to her mother. Not that the titular question is one of them, though. Again, I stand by my assessment that it would be a relatively stupid question to ask one's mom.

There's really no accounting for why I care to write about this, at all. Nor is there any accounting for the relevance of this topic on my life. There really isn't any. It's just some thing that I'm spending some time thinking about for the sheer lack of anything else to think about.

As I type, the tab behind this active tab is that of my Gmail Inbox. As I've typed thus far, I've gone out to smoke a ciggie and returned to answer the phone twice. Having exhausted the majority of my mandatory Monday tasks during the previous three hours of my shift, I actually have that little to do. Here I am on this tab, typing away some rambling trivial nonsense about "90210" characters of yore and all I care about is that Gmail Inbox tab that I've had opened now for a total of maybe ten minutes today. There it is. Quiet. On stand-by. No notification of an email. No notification of some chat message. It's just there, idling in the background of my computer screen.

So, why does the damned thing bother me so much? What is this persistent urge to check back on it? Where does it come from? And, truly, what would it accomplish in the activation of the green dot by my Gmail handle on the chat list? The truth is fucking retarded. It's so fucking retarded that I want nothing more than to pretend that it doesn't matter. That it's not the truth, at all. That the fact that the tab is opened up at all is some mere coincidence, not deliberate in any way. How easy seems the life of the completely ignorant and self-deluded. Instead, I'm sulking away and beating myself up (figuratively, of course) for resigning myself to the compulsion of being "active," being "there." As though being there does anything for me at all when I know that it really doesn't. What I wish it did for me it's really doing against me. In this way, I am perpetrating this great fraud on myself.

In the end, there won't be anyone to whom I can complain or whine. I mean, unless I want to hear, "Who do you think you are...Tori Spelling?!" thrown at my face like a jagged rock. To which I must shake my head somberly as a reply.

There is absolutely no complaining or whining allowed...unless one is Tori Spelling, or Donna Martin, for that matter.

That being admitted [to myself, most notably], I close out the Gmail Inbox tab. It kills me, but I do it. It slays me, but only in a metaphorical sense. Really what it does is empower me. There is nothing more empowering than the mystery of absence, that the allure of the unknown. I guess that's what Donna Martin gives a shit about, retaining power through abstinence that would be lost by the discovery of sexuality. I don't blame her. Never did. She whined like fucking crazy and it pissed me off, constantly...but, in the end, she was kind of teaching me a lesson. One that Brenda Walsh never learned because, soon after she lifted the veil of her vagina, Dylan moved on to what many of us consider the "greener pastures" of the "90210" cast of characters, Kelly.