The most amazing book about autism you have never heard of!

Frenz, Florida (2013) How to be Human:  The Diary of an Autistic Girl.  Creston Books.



Opening lines:  "Not too long ago, my friend and I had a discussion about which was worse, anorexia or autism.  She argued anorexia was worse because it can kill you.  At the time, I couldn't come up with a good enough rebuttal, so the conversation ended."

Books can let us enter the minds, bodies, selves, and contexts of those who are different from us. Some recent books like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and The Speed of Darkness admirably use fictional characterizations to get us inside the minds of people who have autism.  This book is different from those in a couple of ways.  First of all, the author, who goes by the name Florida Frenz, is herself autistic.  Secondly, she wrote the book as she was growing up with autism. So it is truly from a kid's perspective.

 It includes a running narrative, her own illustrations, and several charts of the author's devising.  Her illustrations show us how, when she hears the sound of fingers snapping, it feels to her like "pushing soapy plates together"; the difference between the way she looks on the outside and what she feels like on the inside; what her internal emotional thermometer looks like; and lots of images of how she tries to navigate the differences between outside appearances and inside feelings.

This is not a long book -- it is bound like a children's picture book and comes out somewhere between 30 and 40 pages --but it is not really written for little kids.  Though the images break up the space of the page, there is a fair amount of text here.

This book would be great for upper elementary through college (and beyond) to help classmates, family members, friends, persons with autism, anyone who has ever felt like an alien in their own land, and pretty much anyone understand what one autistic person's take on life is like.  I found it interesting and compelling and well worth the read.

Amazing Novel for High School History, Music, and English teachers

Anderson, M.T. (2015)  Symphony for the City of the Dead:  Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad.  Somerville: Candlewick.



Opening lines:  "An American agent met with a Russian agent one bright summer morning when the world was collapsing inthe face of Nazi terror.  It was June 2, 1942, the Second World War was not going well for the Allied forces.  Most of Europe had already been conquered by the Nazi German onslaught.  France had fallen, and so had Norway, Denmark, Poland, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia.  Now the Germans were deep inside Russia, clawing away at the country's innards."

In Symphony for the Dead, M.T. Anderson (author of Feed, Octavian Nothing, and the hilarious Jasper Dash books) takes us to the depths of despair and starvation, and to the unlikely possibility that a nervous and starving Russian composer in the besieged city of Leningrad could, through the music of a symphony, give Russians enough hope to turn the tide of the war.  Anderson has never underestimated the ability or maturity of an adolescent or young adult reader, and make no mistake, this non-fiction regular text book (that is to say, it is not a graphic novel) is a  challenging one.  But it is also utterly gripping,  From the opening story of how Allied spies smuggled Shostakovich's symphony to American shores to the flashback story of Shostaokovich and his struggles to survive as a musician in the schizophrenic would of Russian fine arts under the paranoid and monomaniacal Lenin, this book is gripping.  In these pages, you will find the tragic story of Lenin, who trusted no-one, and how he decided to trust Adolph Hitler who declared he would never invade Russia.  Lenin's trust was so strong that even as the Germans were striking deep into Russian territory, killing Russian soldiers and destroying Russian planes and airfields as they went, Lenin forbade Russian soldiers to return fire.  Here you will find the story of the desperate conditions within the besieged city of Leningrad and how people ate furniture glue, shoe leather, and eventually turned to cannibalism to survive.  But here you will also find the hope of a symphony which kindled Russian hope and encouraged the Americans to come to their aid.

This book might work as a supplemental text in a high school classroom, but I think it would be far more successful as a go-to book for that student reader in your class who is obsessed with history or music and wants to read a powerful story without any sugarcoating.

Though as I mentioned before, there is some talk of canibalism, it is certainly not celebrated.  Though there is despair here, there is also hope.  While not well suited to younger kids, if it was used in the high school, this book would be unlikely to be challenged.

The writing is superb, the story is gripping, and it is probably the best book I have read this year.  Buy it.

Graphic Novels: D-Day, Artemis Fowl, Amelia adaptation, Shakespeare, and Vampires

Capa, Robert; Morvan, Jean-David; Trefouel, Severine (2015)  Omaha Beach on D-Day.  New York:  First Second.



Opening Lines:  "January 27, 1944.  Italian front, three miles from Cisterna di Latina.  The allied troops were unable to advance, immobilized by the Wehrmacht's fierce resistance. The Americans had blanketed the area with artificial fog to hide their positions from the German artillery.   I was determined to make the most of the situation."

This is not a graphic novel about the invasion on D-Day, although it includes that.  This graphic novel is the story of a war photographer, Robert Capa, who went along on the D-Day invasion and got some of the best photographs of that action.  Combining black-and-white comics with excellent reproductions of Capa's photographs, and including some regular-text essays, this book follows Capa through the end of the war and a bit beyond.  Along the way we see him interact with everyone from common soldiers to General Eisenhower and the writer Earnest Hemingway.  The book also takes an interesting digression to figure out which soldier was in the iconic photo of an American soldier swimming to the Normandy shore, pushing a life preserver in front of him.

This book will not give you a full historical and strategic overview of the invasion that turned the tide of World War Two, but it will take you deeply into one man's perspective.  Although the text is a secondary source biography, the photographs reproduced in the book offer an excellent opportunity to allow history students to consider the value of photographic primary sources and the research required to fully understand them.  The photos are, it must be said, spectacular.

There is plenty of smoking and drinking in this book (as there was in World War Two) and some fairly vague references to Capa's amorous affairs, but this book should be suitable for fifth or sixth grade and up and is unlikely to prompt any challenges.

If you know a child who loves World War Two, photography, or journalism, I would encourage you to get hold of this one.




Colfer, Eoin; Donkin, Andrew ((2013)  Artemis Fowl:  The Eternity Code.  New York:  Hyperion



Opening lines:  "Excerpt from Artemis Fowl's Diary, Disk 2.  Encrypted.  My name is Artemis Fowl and I am a genius.  The last two years have been exhilarating, even by my own high standards.  It had all started with the internet, but then these days, it always does."

In this adaptation of the third book in Colfer's excellent series, Artemis Fowl tries to sell a underworld investor the chance to get ahead of the market on Artemis's latest invention, a computer cube that makes smart phones look dumber than dirt.  When the deal goes bad, Artemis's faithful bodyguard, Butler, takes a bullet meant for him and the criminal gets away with the cube., Artemis must enlist the help of Captain Holly Short of the Lower Elements Police Recon (that's LEPrecon); Foaly the technical genius centaur; and the flatulent dwarf, Mulch Diggums to try to get it back.

This is a rip-roaring action graphic novel, but one that requires a fair amount of thought from the reader to understand the levels of subterfuge involved in reclaiming the cube.

Though this is a violent graphic novel, it pales in comparison to the tamest violent PG 13 film.  It is probably best for fourth grade and up.  Artemis consistently employs logic to make his decisions, which may be useful for high school math classes doing a unit on logic.

This is a fun one.  I recommend it, especially for classroom libraries.




Spender, Nick; Haynes, Stephen (2008) Macbeth  Brighton, UK: BOok House..



Opening lines: "When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain?   When the hurley-burley's done, when the battle's lost and won.  That will be ere the set of sun.  Fair is foul and foul is fair; hover through the fog and filthy air."


A couple of years ago, my amazing student Courtney R. was spending a semester in London and I asked her to keep her eyes open for any graphic novel adaptations of Shakespeare's plays.  She brought back this one and inscribed it with a kind note and an apology.  "Sorry if this version isn't the best."

I finally got around to reading it a week ago and I have been trying to figure out ever since whether this version is the best, the worst, or somewhere in between.  The illustrations are very thoughtfully done in a way that makes them both exciting and faithful to the book.   Spender favors light from fireplaces and dark shadows to give the whole play an authentic and creepy quality.  And it would be a great way for students to get to know Macbeth in the way it is traditionally presented (that is to say, not with updated costumes and sets to make it look like it is taking place in Vietnam, the moon, or downtown Cleveland.)

Unfortunately, however, the creators made the choice to typeset the words rather than have them be hand-lettered in classic comic book tradition.  That might not seem like a big deal, but that lettering allows the graphic novel text to carry more emotion and emphasis (even though we often don't consciously notice it when we are reading.)  This version, though, will strike you as cold and sterile because of the type.  The other drawback is that in this adaptation they have cut out Lady Macbeth's speech about being determined enough in the murders to "rip the babe from her breast" and also the gatekeeper's speech about the effects of drink.  While that makes it easier to put this version in your classroom library without fear of a parental challenge, it leaves out two scenes that are considered by many to be important parts of Shakespeare's play.

If you are teaching Macbeth, I would encourage you to have a look at this version.   It may be a very helpful tool for you.




Gownley, Jimmy (2006) Amelia Rules: What makes You Happy and Amelia Rules: Superheroes.  New York:  Atheneum.



Opening lines:  "It's weird...  In a way, I can't believe fourth grade is over.  But on the other hand, I can't believe it took so long. Every day you sit in class and the clock seems to stand still.  Then one day you look behind you and wonder where it all went."

First, a clarification.   This is not the same Amelia who graces the pages of Melissa Moss's excellent Amelia's Notebook series.  There are some great things about this Amelia.  She is plucky, we get to share her frustration with some aspects of life, and she is sometimes funny,  The artist draws her in a way that makes her seem like a pretty sympathetic eight-year-old.

At the same time, there are some things about this series that give me pause.  While Gownley doesn't quite go the way of the Marvel Superheroines overly busty forms, he does have a penchant for showing teenage female belly buttons and some of the scenes he favors are, well, a little odd.  Amelia Rules!: Superheros, for example, opens with a daydream sequence in which one character, Reggie Gabrinski,, imagines he is a superhero named MiracleReggie and is fighting Space Ninjas.  When it looks like he is on the ropes, he sends a psychic distress call and a female superhero in a miniskirt and crop top comes to the rescue.  After she defeats the villains, Reggie suggests that it is smootchy time.  Now, all this is perfectly in line with the average adolescent boy's fantasy world I suppose, including the fact that the woman whom his fantasy is centered upon is his teacher, but honestly, it is a little creepy.

If that were an isolated thing I would let it go.  But soon after that we see Amelia's mom in a short nightshirt and then a little while after that young Amelia imagines herself as a sixteen-year old wearing (wait for it) a crop top and a belly button ring.  After a while, there seems to be a certain sort of inevitability to it. Like all females should dream of growing from awkward eight-year-olds to shapely, scantily clad bombshells.

Maybe I am being oversensitive (as the dad of two daughters who I want to have a wide variety of options for their lives), but because of this, I would take a pass on this series.




White, Kiersten; Di Bartolo, Jim (2014) In the Shadows  New York:  Scholastic.



Opening Lines:  Um, the first 33 pages are images with no text, so I would have to say it doesn't exactly have opening lines.

When my friend Kris gives me a book and tells me to read it, I do.  She teaches middle school and was the one who introduced me to the amazing work of Adam Rex.  When she told me to read this one, I did., even though it didn't look like the sort of thing I would like. In the Shadows is an excellent example of something that isn't exactly a graphic novel, but I am not quite sure what I should call it.  A hybrid, maybe?  It tells the story in much the way Brian Selznick does in The Invention of Hugo Cabret.  It alternates between a series of single page illustrations that tell the story, to chapters that are just text.  Some books written this way can be jarring as you move from comprehending images to comprehending text.

The story of this one is complicated.  A group of rich people gather in an old mansion on a stormy night.  They have captured a baby demon who grants them impossibly long life.  When an intruder tries to stop them, He sets in motion a conflict that will continue through several lifetimes.  As we alternate from time period to time period, we gradually get more and more of the story and come to understand the most recent situation where the man who opposes the demon captors takes two young people into his confidence and involves them in a tremendous final struggle.

Though I am not a big fan of horror, this is a very readable book and might be an excellent choice for middle school teachers that want to give struggling students the experience of completing a fairly lengthy book without having to read that much text.  This is also a book that encourages rereading.  Teachers should preview it, however, to get a sense for how to describe the book to potential readers who might be put off by the occultish parts.

Basketball, Magic Tricks, Dogs, Road Trips, and Biohazardous Material: Five Good Adolescent Novels

Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem; Obstfeld, Raymond (2013) Sasquatch on the Paint  Disney/Hyperion.



Opening Lines:
Hey, Chewbacca!  How do you say 'loser' in Wookie?"
Don't look, Theo told himself.  Don't look!  No good can come from looking.

Theo Rollins grew several inches during the summer between seventh and eighth grade and now everyone expects him to be this amazing basketball star.  Theo hasn't played much and can't really control his new, taller self that well, and so, when he makes the team, his lack of skill starts to make his life miserable.  Soon he is trying harder than ever before and finding that he is failing at basketball, at the academic games team that he excelled on the year before, and that a girl that he maybe likes has coined the name Sasquatch for his on-court performance.  Add to this his widowed dad who may have started secretly dating again and a false accusation that Theo has been stealing and you have a story that will hook both basketball players and those who don't get excited about the game.

This would be a great book for middle grades PE teachers to read aloud for five minutes per classroom while their students stretch out, but it also a good enough story to go in any classroom library.  I don't know how much of the novel was written by the famous ballplayer Abdul-Jabbar, but the on-court scenes do ring true.

Theo's friend Gavin is a bit of a troublemaker, but there is nothing in this novel that would be likely to cause anyone to challenge it.  It is probably best for readers as young as fourth or fifth grade, but could be enjoyed by readers well into high school. It is worth a look.




Curtis, Christopher Paul (1995) The Watsons Go to Birmingham 1963  Austin: Holt, Reinhart and Winston.



It had been years since I read this.  I remembered that it had something to do with the Birmingham bombings, but the rest was kind of hazy.  When I reread it, I realized that I had forgotten how much of it was funny, how much was touching, and how much was gripping (and even a little scary).  If you haven't read it for years, check it out.  If you have never read it before, you are in for a treat.

Kenny is a good kid, growing up in the largely African-American city of Flint, Michigan.  When his older brother, Byron keeps getting into trouble and hanging out with kids his parents don't approve of,  Mom and Dad decide it is time to take a road trip to Alabama, where Kenny will be spending the summer under the close eye of Grandma Sands.  When they arrive in Birmingham, Kenny finds himself learning a lot more than he ever thought he could about goodness and evil in the world.

Along the way there are these wonderful moments, like when Byron gets his tongue stuck to the frozen car mirror when he and Kenny are supposed to be scraping the ice off it, or like when Kenny's friend cheats him out of almost all of his army guys, or some of the best moments in the book are when Byron stands up for Kenny.  It is a fine book.

I suppose some parents might object to teaching kids about injustice and inequity and racism, but perhaps that would be a good reason to start some excellent discussions -- and Curtis does tackle these problems on a level that makes sense for a middle school audience.

Ideal for fourth grade and up, this book seems suited to both language arts and history classes.




Evens, Lissa ((2012) Horton's Incredible Illusions: Magic, Mystery, and Another Very Strange Adventure.  New York: Sterling.



Opening Lines:  Stuart Horton sat at the kitchen table and looked at the front page of the crummy little newspaper he'd just been given.  Then, with a feeling of foreboding, he began to read.

I am a bit conflicted about this one.  It is a nice enough story.  Stuart Horton, a remarkably short 10- year-old, has inheirited his late Uncle's magician gear.  Along with his friend April, he agrees to curate an exhibit of that gear at the museum.  While trying to figure out how the tricks work, Stuart and April find themselves repeatedly transported to distant lands where they must solve puzzles to return home.  Meanwhile, back home, someone is trying to invalidate Stuart's Uncles's will and take the magic tricks away from the kids.

All this is fine and makes a nice adolescent novel, but there were some things I got stuck on.  For one, as a self-identified nerd, I took some issue with Stuart's dad, who makes crossword puzzles for a living and speaks in a strange hyper-vocabularied speech (for example, instead of "I'll make you a lunch", Stuart's dad says "And I shall prepare a portable container of noontide comestibles for you." (72)).  Some of the adult characters are like that,  A little too exaggeratedly quirky to seem real (or even funny).  But the bottom line is, it is a nice enough book.

I could imagine some third graders reading this book, but it probably would work better for fourth through sixth as the oldest. There are one or two extremely minor cases of mild vulgarities being used ("hell" for example, on page 124.)  I doubt this would be enough, however, to get the book challenged.  This would be a good one for the classroom library.  I doubt there is enough here to make studying it in class worthwhile.




Henkes, Kevin (1995) Protecting Marie  New York: HarperCollins.




Opening Lines:  Fanny Swann popped the only red balloon, pretending it that it was her father's heart.  And then, within a matter of minutes, her anger dissolved into tears. After slapping at the remaining balloons, Fanny turned toward her mother, wrapping herself around her, burying her face in her mother's dress.
"It's because of me," Fanny said between sniffles.  "I know its because of me."


All her life, Fanny has wanted a dog.  She had a puppy briefly, but that creature introduced an element of chaos into her house and her father, an artist whose life is intensely ordered, couldn't handle the unpredictability that the dog brought into their lives.  For Fanny, this was the deepest betrayal and now she feels like she can never trust her father again.  So when he brings home a new dog, this time a mature one, Fanny feels like she can't trust him.  What if she falls in love with this dog, then her dad gets rid of it?

Fourth grade and up for this one.  I think it would make a good read-aloud book or would be a good addition to your classroom library. It could work in literature circles too, but thematically it is of moderate depth.  Nothing objectionable here that I noted.

This one is worth a look.




Sachar, Louis  (2015) Fuzzy Mud  New York: Delacorte.

 

Opening lines:
Woodridge Academy, a private School in Heath Cliff, Pennsylvania, had once been the home of William Heath, after whom the town had been named.  Nearly three hundred students now attended school in the four story, black-and-brown stone building where William Heath had lived from 1891 to 1917 with his wife and three daughters.


Tamaya Dhiladdi is in fifth grade, and so she walks home with Marshall Walsh who is in seventh grade.  When Marshall is threatened by a bully named Chad Hilligas, he convinces Tamaya to take a shortcut with him, and soon the two of them, pursued by Chad, are deep in a woods that holds a frightening secret, a genetic experiment gone very wrong.

This would be a good story for language arts class -- Sachar's writing ability is unquestionable -- but it would also be an excellent choice for either science class or math class.  The kids discover an experiment designed to provide biomass energy -- but which, has mutating and is now growing at an exponential rate.  Graphics at the beginning of each chapter and equations within the text remind the reader who quickly two cells can grow to over 4 trillion cells. This book could easily be used in a biology class to intruduce both scientific and ethical issues.  It would also work for Language Arts -- maybe for literature circles.

This one is probably best for fifth grade and up.  Nothing too objectionable here.  And it is a really good book.  You should buy or borrow it soon.

Second Grade Read-Aloud Recommendations.

I don't know why, but I have had two different former students email me for recommendations for good read-aloud books for second grade.  Here are some possibilities pulled from the email I sent in reply..  Feel free to comment if you have some other ideas.

Hmmm, a second grade read aloud?  Well, I know Kate DiCamillo has some wonderful books about a pig (I looked it up, -- it is called the Mercy Watson series) that are quite funny.  Let me look at my shelf and see what else I can find.  Hang on. 

Okay.  Two categories:

Classic Second grade Read Alouds:

Charlotte’s Web  by E.B. White

Trumpet of the Swan also by E.B. White

Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown

Horrible Harry by Suzy Kline

The Boxcar Children (the first one) by Gertrude Chandler Warner.

More recent books I think would work as second grade read alouds:

Get Ready for Second Grade, Amber Brown by Paula Danziger

Bink and Gollie  by Kate DiCamillo  (I find this book hillarious)

Vergie Goes to School with us Boys By Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard.  (Picture book – but worth reading to them)

Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki

The Tale of Desperaux by Kate DiCamillo  (this may be a little over their heads at the beginning of the year, but might work toward the end of second grade.)

The Cam Jansen series by Keri Arthur  (lots of fun)

Because of Win Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

Two YA Books With Shakespearean Echoes and One Without

So I am teaching an Honors course in Young Adult Literature and Shakespeare.  My amazing students have so far written one paper that connects Shakespeare's Tempest and the narrative arc of the Harry Potter series and another paper that connects Romeo and Juliet and John Green's The Fault in Our Stars. The next unit sets them free to think about other ways that YA literature and Shakespeare can be read side-by-side.  So I starting to read some books that have those connections explicitly or implicitly.  In that spirit, here are three YA books I have recently read that are, to greater or lesser extent, kinda Shakespearean.

Dionne, Erin (2010)  The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet. New York: Puffin.



Opening line:  "I hadn't figured out a way to stop time, join the circus, or make myself invisible."

Hamlet Kennedy has a difficult life.  She is in eighth grade, her name is Hamlet (courtesy of her Shakespeare-obsessed parents), her younger sister Desdemona is joining her in middle school (courtesy of the fact that she is a genius) and seems to be having an easier time getting to know the popular kids, her parents have volunteered to make a presentation about Shakespeare in her English class in full Elizabethan dress (courtesy of the fact that they are English professors), and finally, there is this boy she likes (and you can imagine how that is going).  Hamlet's other problem is her English teacher keeps nagging her to read aloud in class, which Hamlet finds embarrasing.  How can she possibly escape all these potential doom scenarios?

To tell the truth, when I first saw this book, I envisioned that it would be some version of the play Hamlet, only with a female protagonist and somehow updated to a modern school.  It isn't.  But it still would be a valuable book for those interested in Shakespeare to read. It is more about a kid who learns to appreciate Shakespeare far more deeply than she ever thought she might.  And Hamlet Kennedy does discover that she has a talent for reading out loud and acting.  This theme of discovery is a good one, especially for middle school students.

This book is suitable or middle school and early high school.  These was nothing in here that I thought would offend anyone.  It is a fun read, but there is probably not enough thematically here to justify using it as part of the curriculum.  Excellent addition to a classroom library, though.





Mandel, Emily St. John (2014) Station Eleven.  New York: Vintage.



Opening lines:  "The king stood in a pool of blue light, unmoored.  This was act 4 of King Lear, a winter night in the Elgin Theater in Toronto."

This isn't a children's book.  It isn't really a young adult novel either, but it is a book that high school students can read and will love and one that is easily paired with King Lear or other Shakespearean plays.

It starts on a stage in Toronto, where we meet Arthur Leander, a famous film actor who has returned to the stage to play King Lear.  Arthur will have a heart attack and die on stage on the same night that an outbreak of a pandemic flu will begin sweeping the globe, killing most of the humans on the planet.  A few chapters later, the book will start again, this time with Miranda who is on the South coast of Malaysia when the epidemic begins claiming lives.  Miranda is on assignment for the shipping corporation that employs her.  We also find out that in every spare moment after work, Miranda is drawing a comic book about Doctor Eleven, who lives on a damaged space station of his own design.  And two chapters after that, the book starts again, this time with Kirsten, an actor who plays with a travelling theater and orchestra many years after the plague, wandering the decaying highways of Michigan, performing for the little towns that have sprung up.  When they arrive at one such town, where Kirsten's friend and her husband had dropped out of the travelling symphony to raise a family, Kirsten finds her friend is nowhere to be found and the townspeople are strangely tight-lipped about the matter.

And from there we are swept into a story that moves forward and backward in time, slowly revealing connections between these characters and also telling the history of the world before and after the pandemic.  There are several plots in the midst of this, all of them compelling and despite the apparent disjointedness of those plots, it all come together nicely in the end.

Someone more gifted than I am can perhaps do some thinking about ways in which the plots connect to Shakespeare, but I can tell you that it manages, like the best of Shakespeare's plays, to follow a few little lives and somehow convey an epic sweep of action.  I can also tell you that Mandel is an excellent writer and not only constructs a completely believable world within the book (several actually), but also does so with beautiful attention to the sound of the words she uses.  Some chapters seem downright poetic.

As I said, this would be a good novel for high school.  There are some references to sex and one relatively minor gay character, and a bit of violence, but if this were a film, I imagine it would be PG 13.  I doubt it would be challenged.  My brother uses this one in the high school English class he teaches and says it works very well.  It would also be good for your classroom library and might work as a read-aloud.

Regardless of whether you use it or not, though, you will enjoy reading this one.  Go buy it.




Lu, Marie (2014) The Young Elites.  New York:  Putnam.




Opening lines:  "I'm going to die tomorrow morning.  That's what the Inquisitors tell me, anyway, when they visit my cell. "

Adelina Amouteru was exposed to the blood fever when she was young.  It scarred her face and body, turned her hair silver, and also gave her mysterious powers.  After she killed her abusive but economically powerful father she attracted the attention of the Inquisition and new she is sentenced to die.  On the day of her execution, though, she is rescued by the Young Elites, a secret society of people like her dedicated to rescuing other paranormals and bringing down the oppressive rule of the king and his Inquisitors.  Adelina feels attracted to the leader of the Young Elites, Enzo, but at the same time, the leader of the Inquistors, Toren Santoro has a powerful hold over her as he has imprisoned her little sister.  Eventually, Adelina is presented with the choice of whether to use her powers to help the Young Elites or to ally herself with the Inquisiiton.

And the choice she faces might sound familiar (Anikin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker, Richard the Third, Neo from The Matrix, and so on).  It is a classic being-tempted-by-the-dark-side kind of a narrative.  Such a choice can end with the protagonist choosing the good side (Luke, Neo) or the dark side (Anikin, Richard) but what makes the story interesting is usually the struggle of their choice.  Anikin and Richard, for example, are pushed by circumstances toward a dark choice.  Anikin fights against it.  Richard embraces it, but also spends some time justifying it (as Shakespeare's villains do).  Luke and Neo are sorely tempted, but manage to stand strong.

Adelina struggles with both sides, but as I read it, doesn't so much make a decision as have it decided for her.  Perhaps this is saying something about the nature of a woman's choices in her world.  For me as a reader, though, it so eroded my ability to care about her as a character that by the end I didn't much care for her or the book.  This may have just been my take as a reader, and so you may want to check it out yourself (it is a fairly popular series).  Though I had hoped I might be able to use it in my class (to pair with Richard III,) I don't think this book would lend much to such a conversation.

This book would be best for high school.  There are some fairly passionate love scenes and one of the main characters is a bisexual courtesan.  This might cause the book to be challenged.  Frankly, though, I wasn't impressed enough to even consider fighting for it.

You are certainly welcome to read it yourself, of course, and set me straight.

Mighty Jack, Secret Coders, and Red's Planet: Three Excellent Graphic Novels for Middle School (including one good for math class)

Ben Hatke (2016)  Mighty Jack.  New York: First Second.




Look, just go get this one.  Right now.  Preferably from an independent bookstore in your area -- but otherwise from Amazon.  Go now.

Why havn't you gone?  What are you waiting for?  You think I am kidding? This is Ben Hatke we are talking about!  He does an excellent job with the graphic novel form, and boy, does he know how to weave a good tale.  Seriously.  And I love the way it is possible to fall right in to the world of his books, wander around for a while, have some adventures, and then come out again in time for dinner.

All right. Fine,  A plot summary?  Really?  Won't take my word for it, huh?  Okay, so there is this kid named Jack.  Summer is beginning, but since his mother has to work, his dad isn't on the scene, and his little sister, Maddy, is autistic, it is Jack's job to watch over her.  When they are at the farmer's market, a guy sells Jack some magic beans in exchange for the keys to his mother's car (the con artist will look awfully familiar to readers of Hatke's Zita the Spacegirl series).  Police recover the car eventually, but Jack's mom is angry.  Eventually Jack and his sister plant the seeds in the backyard and this crazy alien garden grows and soon both of them (and Lilly, a neighbor girl who likes swordfighting) are battling plants with tentacles, exploding plants, and something far harder to get rid of.

Well, yeah, sothe book is incomplete.  So what?  It leaves you waiting for the sequel.  That isn't a bad thing.  It gives students something to look forward to.

There. Satisfied?  Look, that plot summary doesn't begin to do it justice.  You know middle school kids who need to read this thing.  Actually, you know fourth graders who need to read this.  And maybe some high school students who are not afraid to be reading something allegedly written for younger kids.  Actually, who are we kidding,  You need to read this thing.  It is really good.

Seriously,  Graphic novels this good don't come along every day.  Go get it.

Nothing objectionable in this book -- just awesomeness.  No, listen, you can thank me later.  Just go get the book!





Yang, Gene Luen; Holmes, Mike (2015) Secret Coders.  New York:  First Second.



Opening lines:  "Listen.  I'm going to tell you a story -- a story about me.  But I am telling you so you'll remember -- remember about you.
     I wasn't that thrilled about moving, but I downright dreaded Stately Academy."

Hopper is a new girl at Stately Academy.  Though she has trouble fitting in, she is more troubled by the angry janitor who yells at her and the creepy birds that seem to be staring at her.  When she finally finds a friend, Eni, and then she finds a robot in the janitor's shed and at the same time, she also finds a mystery.  One that will require math and logic to solve.

And maybe that part scares you, because you have read other graphic novels that try to weave mathematics into a story and you fear that this one will be clunky too.  And honsetly, maybe it is a little clunky here and there, but Gene Yang is such a gifted graphic novel artist and so skilled at telling a story through words and pictures that it is unlikely you will even notice the clunkiness -- even as you are subtly being taught how binary programming language works, and how to code directions for an ambulatory robot.  This book is well worth getting for your classroom, even if you don't teach math.

I would recommmend it for fourth grade and up.  There is nothing in here that would be problematic for marents or community members that I noticed. This is a good one.  Well worth buying.




Pittman, Eddie (2016)  Red's Planet  New York:  Amulet



Opening lines:  "Hey, here's a good one...  The Mysterious Zeke Heainey Incident by Ivan Gadunt.  Pine Mountain, Georgia -- On a cool October night, a full moon shone brightly over the tall Georgia pines.  It was one of those cold nights that stories are written about... stories told around campfires on other cold nights, under less impressive moons.  On a lonely country road, an even lonlier old pickup truck rambled along, down the lonely road of destiny.  Zeke Hainey was returning from a weekend hunting trip, his only companions:  a cuo of bad coffee, his old hunting dog, and a fading radio station.
      Aw, c'mon!  Stop the boring stuff and start reading the good parts, will ya!"


Red tries to run away from her latest foster home and is apprehended by a police officer, who puts her in the back of his prize vintage cop car.  Then that car is taken away by aliens looking for collectables and Red finds herself on a distant planet alternately excited and fascinated, scared, and having the time of her life.  She meets some rather odd friends along the way and maybe finds a home.

The art in this one is a slight characature style, funny, but real enough not to be distracting, The book is fascinatingly told and is often kind of funny.  Readers and young as fourth grade might like this one, though some of the humor will go over their heads.  I found nothing in this book likely to get it challenged or banned.  I recommend buying it for your classroom library.