Tag Archives: teen

The Dark Endeavour – Kenneth Oppel

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oppelKenneth Oppel’s novel This Dark Endeavour was a finalist for Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards and it’s no wonder. It’s a terrific book. We’ve been talking about it at school recently as several of my colleagues have read it and think it would make a great addition to the classroom. I agree. The language of the novel is almost old-fashioned, but the action will appeal to boys and the elements of romance will appeal to girls (or vice-versa) making This Dark Endeavour the perfect gateway drug to introduce students to classic novels like, well, Frankenstein.

Sixteen – year – old Victor Frankstein lives with his twin brother, Konrad, younger siblings and parents in a chateau in Bellerive on Lake Geneva. They also share their home with their cousin, Elizabeth. Their friend Henry also spends a great deal of time at the chateau. They four teenagers spend their time riding, boating, studying and exploring the centuries old chateau.

One day, the foursome discover a narrow passage behind a bookshelf and upon further investigation, a door with the greeting “enter only with a friend’s welcome.”  Upon gaining entry, they find “tables scattered with oddly shaped glassware and metal instruments – and row upon row of shelves groaning with thick tomes.”

When the young people are discovered by Konrad and Victor’s father he says, “You’ve discovered the Biblioteka Obscura I see.” Mr. Frankenstein is a local magistrate, a powerful and intelligent man who encourages his children’s intellectual pursuits but is none too happy about their discovery of this Dark Library.

You must understand that these books were written centuries ago. They are primitive attempts to explain the world. There are some shards of learning in them, but compared to our modern knowledge they are like childish dreams….This is not knowledge….It is a corruption of knowledge and these books are not to be read.

But when Konrad falls seriously ill, Victor returns to the Dark Library looking for a cure and This Dark Endeavour ramps up the fun.  Victor, Elizabeth and Henry try to  gather the ingredients for the Elixir of Life in the hopes that its mystical properties will restore Konrad’s good health and their quest is what propels the plot forward. It’s exciting and dangerous work, but Victor is a character readers will easily root for – even though he is hot-tempered and sometimes struggles to do the right thing – especially where it concerns Elizabeth.

Careful readers will spot some of the literary shout-outs embedded in the novel. For example, Victor seeks the help of Dr. Polidori who was, in fact, a real physician and writer ( 1795 – 1821), consort of Lord Byron and credited with writing the first vampire story, “The Vampyre.” Dr. Polidori lives on Wollstonekraft Alley. Fans of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein might recognize Wollstonekraft as Shelley’s mother’s name. Wollstonekraft  (1759 – 1797) was a writer and feminist, well-known for her work A Vindication of the Rights of Women. It’s references like these which would make This Dark Endeavour such a great book for the classroom.

See You at Harry’s – Jo Knowles

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seeyouh

I spend as much time reading about YA fiction as I do reading the books, it seems; I am always adding new titles to my list and often the same book will be recommended time and time again. That was the case with Jo Knowles’ book See You at Harry’s. It was waiting in my mailbox at school today – I’d ordered it from Scholastic before the March Break. I started reading it during my third period Grade Ten English class and just finished it a few minutes ago.

The happiest day of  Fern’s life was the day she “threw up four times and had a fever of 103 degrees.” It’s a day lodged in Fern’s (yes, she’s named after the little girl in Charlotte’s Web) memory because it’s the day she didn’t have to share her mother with her two older siblings Sarah and Holden (yes, he’s named after that Holden).

That day at home, my mom spent every minute with me. My older sister and brother were at school, and my dad was working at my parents’ restaurant. I was eight and had never been home alone with just my mom before, at least not all day and definitely not with her full attention.

Shortly after Fern’s recovery, her mom discovers she’s pregnant and instead of being the youngest, Fern suddenly has to contend with a new baby brother, Charlie.

When See You at Harry’s begins, Fern is twelve. Her sister is eighteen, Holden is fourteen and Charlie is three. Her world is chaotic because her family is chaotic…and while Fern might not always get the attention she craves, in that self-centered way all twelve-year-old’s crave attention, she is by no means neglected. She shares a close sibling bond with Holden and there is much to admire in their relationship. Things are little more complicated with Sarah and there’s Charlie.

“I wanna go to school,” he says.

“School is overrated.”

“Huh?”

“Look. All little kids want to go to school. And kindergarten is pretty great. But it just goes downhill from there.”

“Oh.”

“Enjoy your freedom, bud.”

Fern knows what she’s talking about, too. She’s just starting seventh grade and it starts to go downhill on day one. I think a lot of middle school kids will see themselves in Fern. She is, as her mother once told her, “a special soul.”

Fern’s parents run the family restaurant. Her mom is a little on the flaky side and her dad is always coming up with crazy  and embarrassing schemes to improve the business. In all the ways that matter, though,  this is a nuclear family. They aren’t perfect, but they are real. They’re distracted and selfish and  human and fragile.  It takes a  terrible  tragedy to  fill up their empty places.

While this book might not appeal to some of my  students (it is geared for middle school readers, after all), I think many of them will be quite moved by Fern’s family’s story. I was.

 

Claws – Will Weaver

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Claws-9780060094751There’s something for everyone in Will Weaver’s YA novel, Claws, but that might have been part of the reason I didn’t love this book. Is Claws a family drama, a suspense thriller, an adventure novel?

Jed Berg is sixteen. He lives with his parents, Gary and Andrea, who are successful (a freelance house designer and lawyer respectively) and according to Jed, “the most successful couple [he] can think of.” Sometimes Gary even lets Jed drive his mint 1969 Camaro. Jed is a good student, a better- than – average tennis player and goes out with Cassie, a popular and pretty senior. Life is good. Until it’s not.

Weaver admits that he “set out to write an unremittingly sad novel.” Partial to a quote by Chekhov which states that “life will sooner or later show its claws,” Weaver endeavors to unravel Jed’s surprisingly uncomplicated teenage life. He says: “I essentially wrote the novel around that idea (of life tipping upside-down).”  (from the author’s website)

And Weaver isn’t lying. Crap starts heading towards Jed at a rapid rate starting with Gertrude, a surly pink-haired girl who has evidence that Jed’s father is having an affair with her mother. Unsure of how to handle this new information, Jed tries to figure out whether or not he has a clear picture of his parent’s marriage. But then, Weaver throws the reader another twist: Gertrude isn’t being exactly honest about her identity. And then when all the infidelity cards have been played, Jed finds his own life going off the rails in ways that are both realistic and, perhaps, slightly melodramatic.

I have to give Weaver props; I kept turning the pages. Jed was likeable and intelligent. His parents and older sisters were sketched in, though,  and so it wasn’t easy to see things from a perspective other than his, but I suppose that’s the point. When you’re a kid, you want to believe that your parents will always be together. I still remember sitting at the top of the stairs with my brother, Tom,  listening to my parents talk about divorce. I was twelve. That’s 40 years ago and I have the clearest memory of it.

I wish Weaver had found another way to show his claws at the end of the book, though. It felt slightly contrived to me, but I suspect that the climax will elicit the desired result from teenage readers. It’s certainly well-written and deserving of its place in my classroom library.

The Geography of Girlhood – Kirsten Smith

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girlhoodTurns out The Geography of Girlhood was written by someone who knows a lot about teenage girls – at least in the movies. Kirsten Smith is the co-writer of some classic teen flicks including 10 Things I Hate About You, Ella Enchanted and one of my all-time, never-get-sick-of-it faves She’s the Man. (I can not stress how much I love She’s the Man. I’ve seen it many times and it still makes me laugh I love that I can share it with my students when we study Twelfth Night.)

When The Geography of Girlhood starts, Penny is just fourteen.  Having rowed herself out into the middle of the bay to contemplate her life she thinks: “One day, I’ll find my way away from here/ and go somewhere real/ and do something great/ and be someone wonderful.”

Of course, the problem with being a teenage girl is that there’s a whole lot of crap to wade through before you get that “someone wonderful.” Fourteen, Penny intones, “is like rotten candy.”

The novel, told in free verse form, follows Penny from the end of grade nine until just after her sixteenth birthday.

Penny is jealous of her  perfect, older sister, Tara, her “long torso,/ the breasts lodged high/ like tea cakes/ on her powdery skin.” She longs to experience “love” as she imagines it exists between Tara and Bobby, her sister’s boyfriend. “I look at her/ and memorize everything./ So when the time comes,/ and the boy’s eye glitters like a crime,/ I will know what to do.”  We learn about Penny’s complicated feelings for the mother who left her, who, in fact “always wanted to leave wherever she was.”

Readers will recognize themselves in Penny. While it’s true that fourteen was a L-O-N-G time ago for me, I can totally remember that feeling that  “you look good only once a week/ and it’s never on the day of the dance.”

Penny navigates the treacherous geography of  her girlhood, in language that is both  poignant and pointed.  She falls in and out of love in the way of all teenaged girls. She makes stupid choices and does stupid things, but she is also smart and resilient and open to all the possibilities life has to offer.

“If anyone tells you that life is predictable,/ DO NOT BELIEVE THEM,” she remarks.

I really enjoyed this book.

 

 

Wonder – R. J. Palacio

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R. J. Palacio’s debut novel Wonder is wonderful. It tells the story of ten-year-old August (Auggie) Pullman who was born with “a previously unknown type of mandibulofacial dysostosis caused by a autosomal recessive mutation in the TCOF1 gene,” or, in other words, he’s not “normal” looking.  Auggie has already had twenty-seven surgeries in an effort to correct some of the problems, but he has  come to terms with the way he looks. He doesn’t like it, but he accepts it.

August lives with his parents and 14-year-old sister Olivia (Via) in North River Heights, which is located at the very top of Manhattan. His parents have decided to take the very brave step of enrolling August in school for the first time. Until now his mom has been home schooling him. They are all hyper-aware of August’s stare-inducing face, but  his mom and dad also understand that they can’t protect him forever.

Wonder follows August through fifth grade, not only from his point of view, but from the perspective of some of his classmates and his sister, too. One of his new friends, Summer, says:

I sat with him that first day because I felt sorry for him. That’s all. Here he was, this strange-looking kid in a brand-new school. No one was talking to him. Everyone was staring at him. All the girls at my table were whispering about him. He wasn’t the only new kid at Beecher Prep, but he was the only one everyone was talking about. Julian had nicknamed him the Zombie Kid, and that’s what everyone was calling him.

August’s favourite day of the whole year is, you guessed it, Hallowe’en.  He says it’s “the best holiday in the world. It even beats Christmas. I get to dress up in a costume. I get to wear a mask. I get to go around like every other kid with a mask and no one thinks I look weird. Nobody takes a second look. Nobody notices me.” If that doesn’t break your heart, I don’t know what will.

Olivia is also spreading her wings and her fierce love for her brother is  tinged, realistically, with some adolescent id. For example, she doesn’t want her parents to attend a school play because they’ll bring August and she doesn’t want her new high school friends to see him.  Despite understanding the extreme nature of Auggie’s problem  – she would never call it deformity, but there you have it – she is starting to want some of her mother’s very  August – focused attention for herself. Still, she is a good sister.

August is  smart and funny and well-supported by parents who love him and understand that they cannot shield him from life’s cruelty forever. He is beginning to make his way in a world that may not always show him kindness and yet he is so buoyed by the love of his family and the support of friends, one can only imagine that he will be just fine.

If  the ending is perhaps just the teensiest bit instructional, the proffered lesson is one I can get behind. We must be kind to each other. Cynical readers might also argue that Wonder‘s ending is a bit saccharine. I disagree. Instead, I agree with Auggie’s mother when she  tells him: “You really are a wonder.” And so is this book.

A must read.

All Unquiet Things – Anna Jarzab

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allunquietthingsAnna Jarzab’s first novel All Unquiet Things is  mature and thoughtful. Kirkus called it “a sophisticated teen mystery.” It’s actually hard to believe that this book is written for young adult readers; its prose, while not exactly sophisticated, is a cut above many other books published for young readers.

It was the end of summer, when the hills were bone dry and brown; the sun beating down and shimmering off the pavement was enough to give you heatstroke. One winter came, Empire Valley would be compensated for months of hot misery with three months of torrential rain, the kind of downpours that make the freeways slick and send cars sliding into one another on ribbons of oil.

All Unquiet Things is the story of Carly, Neily and Audrey, students at Brighton Day School, a prestigious private school outside of San Francisco. Through a series of flashbacks – told from Neily and Audrey’s perspective – we learn about how Carly and Neily’s middle school friendship blossomed into something more, and how the arrival of Carly’s cousin Audrey changed the dynamics of their relationship.

These teenagers are smart, but they also have a lot of other issues including deadbeat or overly demanding parents. Neily’s parents are divorced and according to Neily his father “hadn’t really parented me since I was very young and I tended to get away with most things….” The girls have problems of their own.

So what’s the mystery? Well, Carly’s dead. (Don’t worry – her ghost doesn’t speak.)  Someone shot her four times and the circumstantial evidence points to Audrey’s alcoholic/drug addicted father Enzo, so he’s serving time in jail. Audrey is convinced that her father is innocent and even though her relationship with Neily has been strained by events, she seeks him out to help her try to figure out who really ended her cousin’s life.

Their investigation exposes the slimy underbelly of Brighton’s facade, but also allows the reader a glimpse into the messed up lives of students with too much money and not enough parental involvement. As Neily and Audrey try to figure out what really happened to Carly, they become friends, at first united in their search for the truth but then because they grow to genuinely care for each other.

You can’t really see whodunnit early on, which makes this a perfect read for students who like a page-turner. All Unquiet Things works on another level, too. Neily has to consider how he has been shaped by his love for Carly and how that love, no longer sustainable or attainable, is holding him back from living a fulfilling life. Audrey has to own up to her own part in Carly’s story and come to terms with the fact that her father might not be capable of all she hopes for him.

All in all, a terrific book.

 

 

 

A Family Secret – Eric Heuvel

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family secretEric Heuvel is a Dutch comic book artist, so A Family Secret, a story which takes place in Amsterdam during the second world war, is perhaps a topic especially close to his heart.

Jeroen is looking for items to sell at a flea market held on Dutch Queen’s Day. He decides to head over to his grandmother’s house, hoping to score some good stuff without actually have to visit with his grandmother. Snooping through the attic, he comes across a scrapbook filled with items marking the German occupation of Holland.

“I”ll tell you why I started this scrapbook,” his grandmother tells him. Jeroen is thinking: I hope this doesn’t take long. It turns out, though, that her story is riveting.

When I was twelve or thirteen I read Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. It was one of those turning point books for me, as I am sure it was for many other young people. Here was a real teenager, coping with typical teenage problems but under extraordinary circumstances. Decades later, while visiting Amsterdam, I was priviledged to visit the house where she and her family were hidden away. I can’t begin to explain to you the feeling of stepping behind the hidden door and heading up the stairs to the annex where she spent just over two years of her short life.

A Family Secret tells another one of the, I suspect, hundreds of thousands of personal stories about that horrific time in history. Jeoren’s grandmother tells of her father, a Dutch police officer, forced to make choices she doesn’t understand until years later, about her brothers, one who joins the resistance and one who joins the Nazis and of her childhood friend, Esther, a  German Jew who fled with her parents to the safety of the Netherlands…only to discover there was no safe place for them.

The graphic novel format of this particular story makes it a perfect read for reluctant readers, but all readers should get something meaningful out of the personal choices the characters are forced to make in times of great distress.

These atrocities continue to be written about, as they should. We should never be allowed to forget.

Borderline – Allan Stratton

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borderlineAllan Stratton’s YA novel Borderline wouldn’t necessarily be something I’d pick up on my own, but I am trying to read more ‘boy’ books, especially those that might appeal to reluctant readers. I’ve inherited a class this semester and the majority of them are boys and many of them wouldn’t exactly put reading at the top of their to-do lists. I always think the key to reading success is to find just one book that they like. Borderline could be that book for someone.

Sami Sabiri is almost sixteen. He’s a pretty average teenager; he lives in an American suburb, crosses swords with his strict father,  and tries to stay out of the way of bullies at the expensive private school he attends. He’s also Muslim.

At first, Borderline doesn’t seem like anything more than the pretty standard YA fare. Sami is likeable and relatable and his life is just ‘other’ enough to be intriguing. The fact that he is Iranian offers plenty of opportunities to discuss today’s headlines, too, because suddenly Sami finds himself in the middle of an FBI investigation.

The agents grill me to a crisp. Questions about Dad, his work, who he knows, what he does. I hardly hear a word….”We’re Americans,” I blurt out. “Mom and Dad – you can’t put them on a plane. You can’t send them off to be tortured.”

Sami’s journey to discover the truth about his father’s supposed terrorist activities is also a journey of self-discovery. Suddenly he has a reason to stand up and be counted. As his loyalty to his father wavers, he finds hidden reserves of strength and courage. If the resolution is, perhaps, a little too convenient, it won’t really matter to the majority of young readers. Sami is a character worth rooting for.

As to whether my reluctant readers would like this book – I think they would. The writing is accessible with a minimum of flowery prose. It’s pretty much straight-up plot and I think most of the boys in my current class would enjoy it.

Bliss – Lauren Myracle

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blissBliss Inthemorningdew (no, I’m not joking!) is new at Crestview Academy. It’s tough enough to be the new girl, but Bliss’s life is further complicated by her unusual last name and the fact that her parents are hippies. Bliss has spent her entire fourteen years living in unusual places: a tent, the basement of a college and, most recently, a commune. Now she lives with her very formal maternal grandmother in Atlanta, dumped there by her parents who have run off to Canada to protest the Vietnam War. Or Nixon. Something, anyway. They’re sort of non-entities, in a very strange way.

This is a situation neither Grandmother not I would have chosen, but Grandmother is nothing if not morally upright, which made it impossible for her to turn me away. She’s also uptight, and it seems that often the two go together.

Although life with her Grandmother is odd (at least in the beginning), Bliss is looking forward to having something she hasn’t ever had before: a friend. Soon is she is navigating the impossibly complicated world of teenage drama and it’s a world about which she knows very little.

Lauren Myracle’s novel Bliss isn’t really a coming-of-age story, though. It’s sort of part mystery, part ghost story, part thriller. On some levels it works very nicely; I had no trouble turning the pages as I raced along to the book’s conclusion. In other ways, the book is perhaps a bit bloated. There’s commentary on racism, mentions of the Klan and many of the characters in this book are concerned with Charles Manson and the now infamous murders which took place during the summer of 1969.  Myracle opens chapters with quotes from Manson and quotes from the Andy Griffith Show, perhaps as a way of balancing extreme good and extreme evil. For my money, Bliss might have benefited from a little judicious editing and more of a focus on what was really intriguing:  new girl tries to fit in and gets caught up in creepy hi-jinx.

Bliss is a likable character. I’m not sure I understand why her parents dumped her. She’s smart and kind and open-minded. It was easy to be with her and to fear for her safety. I’m certain teens will find lots to like about this book

I Am Not Esther – Fleur Beale

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i-am-not-estherDespite the praise Fleur Beale’s YA novel, I Am Not Esther has received (Kirkus called it “an engaging and credible survival story of an unusual nature”), I wasn’t particularly moved or invested. Perhaps the story was just geared a little young for me or perhaps I just felt that the story – which was intriguing, for sure – was just a tad superficial.

Kirby is 14 and has spent much of her young life looking after her  “dizzy flake of a mother” mother. Just after Christmas, Kirby’s mum announces that they are leaving Auckland (New Zealand) and moving to Wellington. Everything happens so suddenly, Kirby doesn’t even have an opportunity to process this before everything changes again. Kirby’s mum announces that she is going to do missionary work in Africa and Kirby is going to be staying with relatives she didn’t even know she had. Worse, her uncle and aunt and cousins are members of a strict religious sect.

They’re religious. They all are. They’re called Children of the Faith. They threw me out when I was sixteen because I…because…

So, lickety-split Kirby is dropped off at her Uncle Caleb and Aunt Naomi’s house and expected to adapt to an alien and strict way of life. There is no radio or television. The family prays and works. Punishment for disobedience, Kirby learns quickly, involves long hours on your knees or seclusion in a windowless room learning bible verses. Uncle Caleb changes Kirby’s name to Esther.

Caleb and Naomi aren’t horrible people; they just believe in something Kirby doesn’t. And, clearly, neither does her mum. So one of the problems with the book is why Kirby wasn’t dropped off with to live with the brother (she has five of them and three sisters) who also left the church. It seems non-sensical to me that she would leave her daughter to a life that she had trouble living herself.

Kirby adapts as best she can; what choice does she have? She never even hears from her mother, it’s like she drops off the face of the earth.  She finds a friend in her older cousin, Daniel, and the guidance counsellor at school. When the resolution comes it isn’t all that compelling because it’s not like Kirby’s life was ever in danger. And although Kirby is a likeable character, the book itself was only just okay. That said, I suspect younger readers would really enjoy it.