Deadline

Deadline

by Chris Crutcher

YP FIC CRUTCHER

When Ben Wolf finds out that he has a terminal illness, he decides to use the time that he has left to LIVE! He joins the football team, goes on a date with the girl of his dreams, and stands up to his overbearing Civics Teacher. Smart as a whip, Ben finds that every day has something new to teach him, and that even though his time is short, he can still make life count.

Ben challenges the adults around him all the while calmly accepting his own fate. Ben is Mr. Fix-it for all the people in his life, including his super cool younger brother (Big Wolf), his bi-polar mom, and the town drunk. He finds that he can't fix everything though. Hey-Soos, a dream visitor, helps Ben by asking the right questions. A surprise twist of fate makes Ben realize that he has a lot to be thankful for.

Ben's acceptance of his own death wasn't too believable, even with the few moments of mourning thrown in. I kept wondering if Ben took after his mom even more than he knew. I still really enjoyed the book though. The football scenes were intense. With the action narrated in the first person point of view, I felt like I was in the game too--a scary thought! Dallas Suzuki was also very believable to me: tough exterior, vulnerable interior. Ben's big younger brother, Cody, was not so believable, but he was thoroughly likable. What I liked about the book is that through deciding to live, Ben helped those around him to live once he was gone.

Nature of Jade

Nature of Jade

by Deb Caletti

YP FIC CALETTI

Jade has anxiety problems. On top of that, her friends are getting more extreme...more boy crazy, more grade conscious, more Christian. Her mother is trying to live her life for her, going to dances as a chaperone even when Jade herself doesn't go. Talking to Abe, her psychologist helps, and he challenges her to look beyond the obvious things in her life. Then one evening, through the zoo's online Elephant Cam she spots a boy standing in the elephant viewing area. He has a small baby with him, and she wonders what the connection is. Is the boy the baby's father, brother, uncle? Her curiosity peaked, Jade signs on to volunteer in the zoo's elephant exhibit. She bonds with the new baby elephant and its mother, and worries about an older female elephant that has seen many hard times. As the people in Jade's life begin to spiral more and more out of control, Jade finds an inner strength.

Jade makes for an interesting character. Her anxiety problems seem real, but since she has mostly gained control of them, those issues are not melodramatic and don't take over the plot. The boy's problems however are pretty massive, more than any of them seem to acknowledge. I'd have liked to see more resolution there. Each chapter opens with notes from a book on animal behavior--an author note about that would have been interesting. All in all though, Jade was fun to read about, and I find myself really interested in elephants now!

Schooled

Schooled

by Gordon Korman
J FIC KORMAN





Capricorn "Cap" Anderson has spent his entire life on what's left of a hippy-style commune. He has been home schooled by his fierce grandmother. His hair is long and shaggy and he wears homemade shoes. He's never seen a TV, rarely used a phone, and has had very little contact with the outside world. He doesn't know a single person his own age or even in his own generation. All that changes though when his grandmother is hurt, and she has to spend several weeks recovering. Cap moves into a foster home until she gets better.

Abruptly Cap is faced with modern life, and modern life in Claverage (C-Average) Middle School no less. The "popular crowd" quickly zeros in on Cap for bullying. As part of a prank, Cap is elected eighth-grade class president. An assistant principal looks the other way as Cap becomes target for spit balls, phoney press conferences in non-existent rooms, and other mean-spirited pranks. Through it all Cap stays true to the ethics of the sixties that his grandmother has taught him (All you need is love...and a little duck tape) and wins the heart of the student body. Of course, driving the school bus to the hospital in a police chase doesn't hurt his popularity either. Before long, Tai Chi in the morning on the school lawn becomes a social event and Tie-dye is the new fashion. When Cap goes missing just before the big dance of the year, chaos commences.

This book is classic Gordon Korman...funny, funnier, and even more hilarious with every page! Cap is a thoroughly likable character: kind and conscientious without a touch of malice. Which is good, because there is more than enough malice in the characters around him. All that changes with Cap's influence as each character undergoes a change of heart.

A fun, lighthearted read.

Poetry Month

Interested in poetry, but not sure what's good? April is National Poetry Month, and fortunately, there are many wonderful books to introduce a newbie to the very old world of poetry.

The Making of a Poem: A Northon Anthology of Poetic Forms

by Mark Strand & Eavan Boland

(821.008 MAKING)

Ever wondered if anyone still writes sonnets, or why sonnets were so popular with Shakespeare? This book focuses on different poetic forms such as the sonnet, the villanelle, the ballad, and blank verse to name a few.

What makes this book so cool is how it breaks down the explanation of each form. Each form is described at a glance: basic traits, meters, and rules. Then a history of the form's use and how it came to be is given, and finally, the contemporary context, or how poets today use the form, is given along with plenty of poetry examples.

Going over the forms like this made them so much more assessible for me. For example, the villanelle has been really popular in the twentieth century. Villanelles, because of the repetitive structure, are known to be ideal for expressing grief and pain. For a century that began with not one, but two World Wars and moved on to the Cold War and other acts of personal and global violence, the villanelle makes sense as a popular poetic form.

Poet's Choice

by Edward Hirsch

(808.81 HIRSCH)

Poet's choice is a collection of essays from Hirsch's weekly Washington Post column about poetry. Hirsch deals with a variety of topics and poets, including Reading, W. B. Yeats, Christmas Poems, Pablo Neruda, Protest Poetry, William Carlos Williams, and prose poetry. The book is divided into two sections: international poetry and American poetry. Each chapter is only two-three pages long, so these are just quick introductions to each topic and poet. This is a book to dip into, flip some pages and dip again. It's a great way to learn about new poets and poetry at the same time.

The White Darkness: a novel, by Geraldine McCaughrean

Symone, Sym for short, is a thirteen year old girl from England, who has such a hard time at school with her peers that she has created a fantasy life. It started when she watched an old television series called “The Last Place on Earth” that dramatizes Robert Scott’s ill-fated 1912 expedition to the South Pole. She already knew about Antarctica because her Uncle Victor had loaded her with books on the subject since she was small. Something about the series mesmerizes her, and especially the actor playing Titus Oates, one of Scott's party. He has become her constant companion, her soul mate, who encourages her when she’s afraid, keeps her going when all looks dark.

And she needs someone like that after Sym and her crazy uncle go down into Antarctica, first on a deluxe adventure tour that turns into a more personal and much more dangerous quest than she or you could ever imagine. Although the book is very engaging and you can’t help but be enthralled by each crazy plot development, I could not believe in her “mind” person/friend. I just don’t buy an available “alternate universe”, at least not one that materializes so conveniently exactly when you need it. But the book is worth reading, despite this quibble.

Keeping Score

Keeping Score

by Linda Sue Park

(J Fic Park)

Maggie is a huge fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The year is 1953, and she like everyone else in her neighborhood follows the games religiously. Jim, a new recruit at the local fire station, proves to be a good friend despite his being a Giants fan. He teaches her how to keep score of all of the plays during a baseball game. Soon Maggie is developing extra notations to keep track of the plays that interest her. When Jim is drafted to fight in the Korean War, Maggie applies her new skills as a Baseball statistician to help herself understand the conflict. Maggie sends Jim letters every month, but then Jim's answering letters stop coming. No one will tell Maggie what is happening. Is there a way for Maggie to help Jim?

Maggie is a great character. Despite her brother's frequently condescending attitude about her interest in baseball, she doesn't get discouraged. Instead she finds a way all her own to enjoy the sport that she loves. When her friend is hurt, she applies that same tenacity to finding ways to help him. There are several really good supporting characters in this book including Maggie's mother and best friend. The book includes several author notes both about baseball and about the War in Korea that add interest to the story.

Though I'm not at all a sports fan, I love stories about sports. Maybe it is the tension and conflict? This was such a fun book to read. I'm even thinking of trying to learn to keep score during a baseball game just because this book made it sound so interesting--and I'm horrible at math!

Down Garrapata Road by Anne Estevis

A first effort by a Texas teacher, this collection of stories about 4 different families tells about Mexican-American families living in South Texas in the 1940’s and 1950’s. The stories are told from the child’s point of view, when they are leaving childhood and becoming teenagers. The first family’s stories are all told by one daughter, and those stories are the best, especially about the relations between her mother and father – how the mother obeys the father, but makes her feelings felt in spite of his opposition. These young people had a simpler and harder existence then teenagers today, but teens can still relate to their problems of wanting to dress a certain way, and to have freedom in their social life. It’s also a good book for recording a cultural history that otherwise might not be remembered.