9th grade revisited, and a little more Wolf

Dear Annie,

I always love hearing about books that made an impression on your students.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing and its sequel are amazingly written books.  Hard to believe that the person who invented a futuristic slang for Feed could immerse so thoroughly in 18th century language.   The books also show the confusion many colonists felt about which side of the Revolution to support, especially when the British were actively anti-slavery.

In the days when Bob was covering the publishing industry for the Washington Post, he managed a trip to Boston to interview M. T. Anderson, and of course to visit Lizzie on the side.  The resulting article is quite lovely.

Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel

And then there's the Nicholas Flamel series, by the Irish author Michael Scott.  It's one of our biggest-selling series.  When older kids have blasted through all of Rick Riordan's Greek, Roman and Egyptian books, this is what we offer next.  It's a six-book series about fictional present-day teenage twins caught in a struggle over control of the earth and beyond. They become both allies and puppets of magical and mythical forces who want to take it over.  All the other characters in the books -- and there are many -- are either real people from history (Machiavelli, Billy the Kid, Shakespeare, Joan of Arc, and on and on...) or characters from many different mythological traditions (Gilgamesh, Mars, Prometheus, Odin, the Aztec goddess  Coatlicue and many more...).  Part of me likes books which toss in many real names, because some information is bound to be retained.  But most of the historical figures aren't very much in character -- they all are extremely skilled at hand-to-hand combat, which they indulge in frequently -- and the constant battling can get tiring.  The racing plot and the constant suspense keep folks reading, though.

And a postscript on Wolf Story, which I wrote about in my last post.  It turns out that Michael, the character in the book who's creating the story with his dad, is the actual son of the author -- a sort of American Christopher Robin Milne.  NPR tracked down the now-72 year-old, and Scott Simon did an engaging little interview. 

There's a poignant note in the back-story.  The book has a few cheery references to Michael's mother, who doesn't participate in the storytelling, but is liberated from having to make lunches at one point (and makes them at another) and generally seems grateful for getting some mom-alone weekend time.  Michael explained that his father wrote the story during the six weeks that he and his mother were in Reno where she was getting a divorce -- which his father did not want.  "This is the father pricking the son's memory with the sweetest stories that he can tell, or that he can remember," said the younger McCleery.  "I don't think you would discern that just from reading it, but once you know it's there, I think you'll know what I mean." 

Love,

Deborah

Current 9th grade favorites

Dear Aunt Debbie,

I love the idea of mutual storytelling, the ways in which kids and parents end up telling a story together -- so true to life, and so lovely.  We're excited, as always, for the arrival of the Birthday Box.

I've made it to the end of the first full week back at school, always both invigorating and exhausting.  Last year, I wrote about some of my ninth-graders' favorite books, as described in the introductory letters they write to me.  I asked the same question of them again this year, and thought I'd mention a few of the results tonight.  Many familiar titles, of course -- Harry Potter, The Hunger Games -- but a few I haven't read that sound interesting.  Such as...

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, by M.T. Anderson.  On your recommendation, I read Anderson's Feed a while ago, and found it totally compelling.  While Feed is set in a dystopian future (ah, how YA authors love dystopian futures), Octavian Nothing is historical fiction, set in Revolutionary War-era Boston.  Octavian is a young black man being raised by a group of rational philosophers who realizes belatedly that he's part of an experiment testing whether Africans are "a separate and distinct species."  It sounds like an interesting exploration of the issues surrounding slavery and utopian idealism at the time.


Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, by journalist Blaine Harden, is nonfiction, and not technically YA, though more than one of my Korean students mentioned it.  It's the true story of a man born and raised in a North Korean prison camp, and sounds intense and brutal in its details --  Shin Dong-hyuk saw his family killed, and was subjected to all kinds of overwork and abuse.  As a chronicle of recent history and ongoing abuses, it sounds fascinating.

But where, you may ask, is the nice long series with magic, supernatural powers, intrigue, and multiple sequels?  Some of my students recommend The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, by Michael Scott.  The premise: twins Sophie and Josh are interrupted in their summer jobs in San Francisco by the realization that Josh's boss is actually Nicholas Flamel, historical alchemist who was supposed to have died close to 700 years earlier, but has been making and taking an immortality potion for all that time.  There is theft and a host of evildoers, and a Codex of ancient prophecies, which apparently name the twins as actors in the battle between good and evil.  Scott draws on mythology and history -- Flamel was a real person -- and develops six books from the premise.  Maybe I should start making up my summer reading list for next year right now.

Love, Annie

YA, Part 2

Dear Annie,

We read The Ruby in the Smoke with Lizzie and she liked it, but didn't want to rush on into the others. A couple of years later I read and loved Tiger in the Well, the one about 19th-century identity theft. I'm such a huge fan of The Golden Compass and sequels that I've always thought of the Sally Lockhart series as good, but one notch below. I love the many-layered aspect of The Golden Compass, and Pullman's hostility to organized religion. So much is going on in his books at once. I should go revisit Ruby.

My favorite YA book – and by that I mean, say, 8^th grade and up – is probably
Feed, by M.T. Anderson. It’s set in a dystopian future where everyone has computer chips in their brains (“wetware”) so that they can access the internet (the Feed) just by thinking about it. IM-ing is constant. And the Feed can access your thoughts, so it’s always beaming thought-specific advertising directly to your brain. It’s kind of fascinating at the beginning of the book, and evolves darker as the story progresses. The main character meets a young woman who’s trying to resist the Feed, and although he’s intrigued he ultimately retreats into his programmed world. The beauty of the book is in the language: Anderson has created teenspeak which is completely understandable and just a bit off from the present day. There’s a great audiobook of Feed also. Our girls listened to it a lot.

Marcelo in the Real World, by Francisco X Stork is another I’ve become quite fond of. Marcelo is an Asperger’s kid, in the summer before his senior year in high school. His over-controlling lawyer father wants him to leave his special school and mainstream into the local high school. Father and son make a deal that if Marcelo can work all summer in the mailroom at his father’s law firm, then he can choose what school he goes to. Marcelo’s voice is pitch-perfect: he explains in his slightly-detached way how he analyzes and interacts with the world. The law firm gives him an array of fast-talking, sarcastic, and occasionally just plain nasty people to try to figure out. The ending wraps up a bit too neatly, but the journey is quite wonderful.

And as long as I’m on a roll with contemporary YA with male main characters, I’ll toss in
Godless, by Pete Hautman.A high school boy creates a new religion that worships the local water tower. Chapters are preceded by quotes from the bible that he writes: they all make a lot of sense – after all water is very primal. It’s all about questioning of faith and, because the object of worship is a huge water tower, risk-taking. Another piece of good writing.

Love,

Deborah