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Two Remarkable Teacher Educators: Teri Lesesne (1952-2021) and M. Jerry Weiss (1928 – 2021) by Jeff Kaplan
My familiarity with Young Adult Literature is tied to the influences of colleagues. One of the most prominent influences has been Jeff Kaplan. Jeff was always encouraging and supportive of any work that I was trying to do. Today he remembers two colleagues that we have lost this year, Teri Lesesne and Jerry Weiss. Jeff has been around long enough to know the work of these two amazing educators from a front row seat.
Jeff has written for the blog several times and frequently it is during this time of year. In part, that is due to the fact that Jeff has studied banned books and censorship in the classroom. Clearly, today is a departure from that topic, but you can revisit his earlier posts at these links: one, two, three, and four.
Once again, thanks for these wonderful remembrances.
Two Remarkable Teacher Educators:
Teri Lesesne (1952-2021) and M. Jerry Weiss (1928 – 2021)
by Jeff Kaplan
Two remarkable teacher-educators in the field of young adult literature died this past year – Teri Lesesne and M. Jerry Weiss. In the lives of those who love and advocate for good books for young people – and kids of all ages – these two distinguished teachers and scholars – leave an imprint that all can envy.
Teri Lesesne
M. Jerry Weiss
When I was a kid, nobody ever talked about becoming a teacher educator. People – adults and friends – talked about becoming doctors and lawyers and maybe, teachers...but, never teacher educators. Oh, yes, parents who I knew – who were teachers – might mention that they took education courses in college, but they were quick to add, "I never learned anything in those education courses. All I ever learned about teaching, I learned on the job. In the classroom. In real time."
I can't imagine, though, that would be true if they had taken courses with these two engaging and inspiring educators. Teri Lesesne and Jerry Weiss dedicated their lives to 'pushing good books for good kids' – never ever dreaming that kids did not like to read. Both thought – quite rightly – that getting kids to read was just a matter of 'finding the right book for the right kid'. Nothing more. Nothing less.
And, oh yes – they both were guided by this - that 'that kids read' was more important than 'what kids read.' And that is a small club. As they knew so wisely, most of traditional education – elementary and secondary – public and private – and even college – is spent telling kids what to read – and not asking them – "what do you like to read?"
And both knew – that if only teachers would ask their students that one question – "what do you like to read?' – the world would be a different place. At least, in public schools.
Teri Lesesne (1952 – 2021)
Dr. Teri Lesesne, - teacher, educator, leader, and advocate – died at the age of 68 on August 31, 2021, after years of battling cancer. A Texas educational trailblazer and legend, Dr. Lesesne was an author, professor, middle school teacher, and literacy advocate. She is survived by her husband of 49 years, Henry Lesesne, her son, his family, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren – as well colleagues, friends and students.
A Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, native, Dr. Lesesne lived in Texas all her adult life. She graduated from the University of Houston with an Ed.D. in 1991. After teaching in middle school for fifteen years, she became a professor at Sam Houston State University, where she was affectionately known as Professor Nana. She taught in the Department of Library Science for the greater part of thirty years.
Teri Lesesne published three books: Reading Ladders (Stenhouse, 2003) Making the Match
(Stenhouse, 2006), and Naked Reading (Heinemann, 2010). A fourth title, co-authored with Donalyn Miller, is forthcoming. To this day, her books are widely read and used by teachers and educators advocating for adolescents to read books of their own choosing.
Known by her peers as the "Goddess of YA Literature" or "The Book Lady" for her unparalleled knowledge of young adult literature, Teri touched the lives of many young authors, current and future librarians, and countless others and was especially passionate about connecting YA books to readers. She was known for saying that "the right book given to the right student at the right time would create a reader."
As distinguished teacher and author, Kyle Beers said best upon learning of her passing…
"Yes, Teri was fiercely opinionated, wildly independent, and willing to wear purple hair long before she was ever considered anywhere old enough to do such a thing (or so the poet Jenny Joseph would say). She laughed quickly, squinted her eyes and dismissed stupidity with a glance when stupidity was indeed looking us in the face, and never, never ever, backed away one bit from teaching, preaching, and celebrating the power of a book in a person's life. She understood that books offer ways out and ways in; ways to become and ways to celebrate being; ways to grow beyond who we are into people we didn't even know we had dreamed of becoming."
During her many presentations, Teri Lesesne said she learned just as much from her audience as her audience did from her. "I try to make it [professional development] as painless as possible. I spent fifteen years listening to others do professional development and I learned from all the presenters what and what not to do. I tend to be fairly informal and rather flippant. I tell jokes and stories about myself and my experiences to illustrate points I am trying to make."
Teri Lesesne was a voracious reader, and her reading became the knowledge for her own books, articles, columns, blog posts, keynote speeches, and many, many workshops attended, over the years, by tens of thousands of people. And that work turned into recognition from national and state organizations (National Council Teachers of English, Executive Secretary of the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents, International Literacy Association), and being named a Distinguished Professor of Library Science, and now a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Library Science from Sam Houston State University.
M. Jerry Weiss (1928 - 2021)
Dr. M. Jerry Weiss, Distinguished Service Professor of Communications Emeritus at New Jersey City University, passed away peacefully in his sleep on March 12, 2021, at the age of 94. A nationally recognized expert in the field of children's and adolescent literature and a pioneer in the curriculum field of study known as 'Whole Language', Dr. Weiss taught at New Jersey City University for 33 years before retiring in 1994. He was predeceased by his wife, Helen, a frequent collaborator and scholar in her own right, and four children, Sharon, Frann, Eileen, and Michael and their children.
Born in Oxford, North Carolina, Dr. Weiss completed his undergraduate work at the University of North Carolina and earned his Master of Arts and Doctor of Education degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University. He taught English, language arts, and reading in secondary schools and colleges in Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and New Jersey and conducted workshops throughout the United States, in London, Canada, Dublin, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Scotland.
Jerry Weiss was the author and editor of countless books and articles; an advisor and editor for many publishers and on a variety of reading series; a leader for numerous state and national professional organizations including serving as president of the New Jersey Reading Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents, and the International Reading Association. Dr. Weiss received the International Reading Association's Arbuthnot Award and the International Reading Association's prestigious Special Service Award. In 2006, the New Jersey City University created and dedicated the M. Jerry Weise Center for Children's and Young Adult Literature in his honor.
As a significant and early influential voice in education, Dr. Weiss inspired thousands of teachers and teacher-educators. He encouraged educators to employ everything at hand – traditional and non-traditional subjects, including film, theatre – and especially humor – to expand reading lists and to motivate young people to read – and to read again. He also discovered and promoted numerous children's and young adult authors, guiding many of them in the development of their writing and publications.
In addition to encouraging the use of trade books and guiding new writers, Weiss fought censorship nationally (having been fired from his first teaching job for using books deemed unsuitable for young people to read) and served as an educational consultant in many countries and for many publishers. As one of the earliest proponents of diverse books, Weiss often said, "To meet the diverse and changing interests, needs, and abilities of students, we must bring new books into classrooms. Good books make meaningful reading happen" Weiss also lamented that the national obsession with standardized testing, insisting that testing "has little to do with the impact of learning upon the learner," while always emphasizing that "children enter the classroom with different abilities, interests, experiences, attitudes. We can't expect any one method or set of materials to meet their needs."
The mark of a teacher – any teacher – are the people they inspire. Especially, teacher educators. No one ever starts out to be a teacher-educator. Maybe, teacher – but not teacher educator. That happens – when good teachers recognize they want to share their knowledge of teaching and learning with others.
And that is why – teacher educators – really good teacher educators – people who not only know their 'stuff' about teaching and learning – but motivate others to think long and hard about what they 'do' in the name of teaching – especially for young people – are so precious and few.
Teri Lesesne and Jerry Weiss were those precious and few. They defied convention. They defied tradition. They defied curriculum mandates and principals and teachers and politicians and ordinary people who believe that young people should read the classics and 'get on with it.' They defied those who want kids to read, "Nothing controversial. Nothing upsetting. Nothing funny."
We are indebted for their work – and their defiance of conventional odds – and for their becoming the teacher educators they were – and to this day, - for those who knew them, like myself, and for those, who knew of them only in passing - may their legacy and memory be a blessing. Amen.
Lesesne, T. (2010). Reading Ladders: Leading Students from Where They Are to Where We Want Them to Be. Heinemann.
Lesesne, T. (2006). Naked Reading: Uncovering What Tweens Need to Become Lifelong Readers. Stenhouse.
Lesesne, T. (2003). Making the Match: The Right Book for the Right Reader at the Right Time: Grades 4-12. Stenhouse.
Weiss, M. J., & Weiss, H. S. (Eds.) (1980). More Tales Out of School. Bantam
Weiss, M. J., & Weiss, H. S. (Eds.) (2000). Lost and Found. Forge Books.
Weiss, M. J., & Weiss, H. S. (Eds.) (2002). Big City Cool: Short Stories About Urban Youth. Persea.
Weiss, M. J. (Ed.) (2004). The Signet Book of Short Plays. Signet.
Weiss, M. J., & Weiss, H. S. (Eds.) (2009). This Family is Driving Me Crazy. Ten Stories About Surviving Your Family. Putnam Juvenile.
Walking a Mile in Our Own Skin: Whiteness in A.S. King's Dig by Sophia Sarigianides and Carlin Borsheim-Black
Sophia Sarigianides, professor of English education at Westfield State University, studies efforts to effect antiracist literature instruction with white teacher candidates and white students, as well as the role of adolescent constructs in young adult literature and in teacher thinking.
Carlin Borsheim-Black, Professor of English Education at Central Michigan University, studies antiracist literature instruction, especially in predominantly white and rural communities, in her research and teaching.
Dr. Sarigianides and Dr. Borsheim-Black are co-authors of Letting Go of Literary Whiteness: Antiracist Literature Instruction for White Students, which has been nominated for a 2021 Grawemeyer Award in Education.
Sophia Sarigianides
Carlin Borsheim-Black
Walking a Mile in Our Own Skin: Whiteness in A.S. King's Dig
You have to work hard to get to anything like pleasure or hope in A.S. King's (2019) Dig, and the author is unapologetic about this effect. After all, the book--though complex, subtle, difficult to follow on a first-read, and most definitely not a single-issue book--focuses on the ugliness of whiteness. Part of the discomfort of engaging with King's book is that she links whiteness to so many other shameful secrets and traumas: physical and sexual abuse; greed; promiscuity; familial neglect. That is why, despite the unlikelihood that a book like this will make it into most classrooms (due to both violence and masturbation), it needs to be known, especially by ELA teachers and teacher educators, and especially as a site for exploring whiteness.
So we're doing something a bit different for our blog contribution to YA Wednesday this round. Rather than share a plethora of texts to consider around a theme, we are drilling down--digging--into just this one text to share some insights about what we see King doing in this novel. Even folks who study racism, and whiteness in particular, might know to look for individual/interpersonal racism, institutional racism, or systemic racism. But because this book is written by A.S. King, it's not easy to decipher what she's doing about whiteness. So we took on the challenge of trying to figure it out for ourselves. We're taking this approach to engage in the practice of walking a mile in our own skin, as white readers whose work focuses on critiquing whiteness, as one way to enact antiracist ELA through literature. We hope it's helpful to other readers and teachers, too.
For readers unfamiliar with the novel, it is (mostly) set in Pennsylvania and told through five different youth narrators, one set of grandparents, and another set of brothers. Even that description sounds straightforward, but it is not, in part because King doesn't give regular names to her characters. Rather, she identifies many of the young characters by labels--the Shoveler, CanIHelpYou?, the Freak--making it tough to follow what is going on. Without giving away too much, though, all these characters' stories come together, and one way they do is through white racism.
We don't have the space to exhume all that King is doing around whiteness in this book, which integrally includes the kind of explicit, interpersonal racial violence exhibited by Jake and Bill, the murderous brothers. In this analysis, we are interested in the way she illuminates what white supremacy looks like in one white family. We want to dig around just a bit by tracing it out around the roots of the problem: the grandparents, Marla and Gottfried.
Deep in the novel, we learn Marla's secret, something she hasn't even told her husband because she is so ashamed of what it means about who she is. When she was a little girl, she needed a blood transfusion and there was a shortage of blood at the hospital, which was in the South. What the hospital meant was that there was a shortage of white blood; they did have blood from black donors, but they knew that most white patients would not take it. But Marla's mother did take it to save her life. Only later, when she was a bit older, did Marla learn about this when she was getting teased about it by an uncle who called her a "half-blood." Mortified, Marla vomited. To her, this information meant that she was "black," and therefore, inferior to other whites. In Caste, Isabel Wilkerson calls this belief the fourth pillar of caste in the U.S.: purity versus pollution. The "one drop rule" seals in a caste system meant to construct black people at the bottom of the hierarchy, with whites on top, but only if the races keep apart, something that Marla's blood transfusion violates.
In King's hands, Marla's disgust over herself, her own blood, her own racial identity as a "half-blood," turns into a deep distance between herself and her husband, as well as a repulsion toward her own children. "As sure of it [their defectiveness] as she's sure of how her body made defective children because of the blood. The damn blood." (p. 363).
When your self-image is so deeply damaged, you seek any way to repair it. So when Marla learns that Gottfried has gone bankrupt, she shows zero understanding or compassion. She just tells him to fix it, by any means. So these racist roots start to affect more of the family.
To attempt a financial fix for his bankruptcy, Gottfried returns to work for his own family, a multi-generational potato farm that already included his father and his brother, a business he previously wanted nothing to do with. Despite the fact that joining the business is something his family is offering him as a way to help him out of his financial mess, right away, Gottfried proceeds to purposefully drive the business into the ground. When his father and brother realize the extent of the damage he has done to the business, the only solution is to sell the business and divide up the land, giving Gottfried, his brother and their father portions. It is the money from the sale of this land that Gottfried invests, that gets him and Marla their big home, as well as a beach home, and $10 million in the bank.
Again, in King's hands, Gottfried's "solution" to his personal financial troubles, is to engage in "any means necessary" to financially succeed, even if doing so ruins a family business and destroys his relationships with his brother and parents for the rest of his life. Capitalist greed proves to be a close cousin to white supremacy in ways that mirror the drives behind engaging in and maintaining slavery as an institution that founded and developed the United States economy. As Clint Smith discusses in his 2021 book, How the Word Is Passed, Thomas Jefferson, the man who served as President in the White House and who penned The Declaration of Independence, also owned hundreds of slaves whom he had beaten, whom he separated and sold, during his lifetime and presidency and even after his death, all to maintain his quality of life and to settle his debts. When the goal is money, compassion for others--family members or other people's families--does not come into play. But, of course, Gottfried has no relationship with his own children, does not know all his grandchildren, and knows that he is directly responsible for their suffering since he is sitting on millions of dollars while his children suffer poverty, abuse, and severe health challenges all without any financial support from their millionaire parents. It is why Gottfried is haunted by the repetition of the robins that he accidentally ran over. Repeatedly, he remembers the two robins that he killed, only to have their image eventually become five robins in his mind, representing the five children that he has "run over" through abandonment and neglect, all rooted in racism and greed.
For A.S. King, when the roots of a family begin in racist beliefs of the "one drop rule", those beliefs require a woman to drive her husband to succeed, financially, by any means necessary, even if those actions lead to the destruction of a thriving, multi-generational family business and the loss of any relationship with his family for the rest of his life. But even when you do this to succeed, it will never be enough to make up for believing that you are not worthy, that you have a "disease" as a secret "half-blood", and so this belief starves your own children of the kind of love, connection and support that they would need to live fulfilling connected lives--which they do not.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus famously advises his children: "You never really know a man until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." Atticus means that Scout should consider things from another person's perspective, to feel sympathy for a perspective she does not understand. That is not what King is doing--and that is not what we are saying here. In Dig, King is inviting white people to walk a mile in our own skin to think about how white supremacy has poisoned the roots of our own family trees. It's not about painting white people as victims or feeling sympathetic; rather, it's about excavating whiteness in our own lives and showing us how it shapes us to perpetuate the kind of racial ugliness that King exposes.
Even More Strong Girls in MG/YA Literature (Round 3)by Lesley Roessing
Once again, we have Lesley Roessing as a guest contributor. You can never have too much of a good thing.
This time Lesley is updating her Strong Girls in MG/YA Literature and is the first contributor for our Monday Motivator. We have a lot going on Wednesdays with our regular posts and Fridays have the weekend picks. With the expanding success or those two days, we needed a place to publish our special editions and posts on timely topics.
Thanks Lesley.
Even More Strong Girls in MG/YA Literature (Round 3)
When I was an adolescent, I had few role models of "strong girls." My mother and the mothers of our neighborhood did not have jobs outside the home and, other than my teachers, I really did not know any female professionals. I was unaware of whether any of my peers facing struggles and exhibiting resiliency. I found my strong girls in books I read; Nancy Drew and her friend Georgia (George) Fayne and Jo March were the ones I remember most clearly. You can read my post on Nancy Drew here.
In the challenging world our present adolescents are facing—poverty, homelessness, parental incarceration, loss and abandonment, abuse, mental illnesses, neurodiversity, discrimination, physical differences, gender identification, immigration, divisive politics, and now the difficulties brought about by COVID—the need to see examples of strong girls (and boys) is even more crucial. More MG and YA authors are writing about these topics and including diverse characters, and contemporary books can not only provide mirrors to reflect and value readers' lives and windows to introduce readers to their peers who may be "hidden in plain sight" and to promote empathy, but maps to help adolescents navigate their complex worlds.
Besides "The New Nancy Drew" blog referenced above, I have written two other guest-blogs for YA Wednesday on "Strong Girls in MG/YA Literature" here and here as well as an additional blog that included "Strong Girl-Boy Partnerships," here.
I thought it was time to update these lists with new strong girls who are populating MG/YA novels/memoirs and hopefully school, classroom, home, and community libraries—resilient characters who face the challenges above and more; characters who can help our readers find sympathy, empathy, and resiliency. Other than possibly Wonder Woman, these characters have no superpowers; their resiliency is their power.
Note: I based my MG/YA designations on the ages of the main characters and what I perceive to be the reader interest levels.
1. Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
One plane crash. One father's death. Two families' loss.
"Papi boards the same flight every year." (18) This year when her father leaves for his annual 3 months in his homeland, Yahaira knows the secret he has kept for 17 years. But she is unaware of who else knows. Not Camino, the other daughter who is practically Yahaira's twin. Camino only knows she has a Papi who lives and works in New York City nine months a year to support her and the aunt who has raised her since her mother died.
When Papi's plane crashes on its way from New York to the Dominican Republic, all passengers lose their lives and many families are left grieving. But none are more affected than the two daughters who loved their Papi, the two daughters whose mothers he had married.
"It was like he was two
Completely different men.
It's like he split himself in half.
It's like he bridged himself across the Atlantic.
Never fully here or there.
One toe in each country." (360)
Sixteen year old Yahaira lives in NYC, a high school chess champion until she discovered her father's secret second marriage certificate and stopped speaking to him and stopped competing, and has a girlfriend who is an environmentalist and a deep sense of what's right. "This girl felt about me/how I felt about her." (77) Growing up in NYC, Yahaira was raised Dominican.
"If you asked me what I was,
& you meant in terms of culture,
I'd say Dominican.
No hesitation,
no question about it.
Can you be from a place
you have never been? " (97)
Sixteen year old Camino's mother died quite suddenly when she was young, and she and her aunt, the community spiritual healer, are dependent on the money her father sends. Not wealthy by any means, they are the considered well-off in the barrio where Papi was raised; Camino goes to a private school and her father pays the local sex trafficker to leave her alone. And then the plane crash occurs.
"Two months to seventeen, two dead parents,
& an aunt who looks worried
Because we both know, without my father,
Without his help, life as we've known it has ended." (105)
Camino's goal has always been to move to New York, live with her father, and study to become a doctor at Columbia University. Finding out about her father's family in New York, she makes a plan with her share of the insurance money from the airlines. But Yahaira has her own plan—to go to her father's Dominican burial despite the wishes of her mother, meet this sister, and explore her culture.
When they all show up, readers see just how powerfully a family can form.
grasps my hand
I feel her squeeze
& do not let go
hold tight." (353)
"It is awkward, these familial ties & breaks we share." (405)
After the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 just two months after 9/11/2001, it was sometimes a spontaneous reaction for passengers to clap when the plane landed, one of "the many ways Dominicans celebrate touching down onto our island." (Author's Note).
An article about Flight AA587: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/remembering-americas-second-deadliest-plane-crash/248313/
2. Wonder Woman: Tempest Tossed by Laurie Halse Anderson
Wonder Woman is the most popular female comic-book superhero of all time. In 1941she emerged, the creation of lawyer-psychologist-professor William Marston, fully formed as an adult to chronicle the growth in the power of women. Readers of DC comics knew her as Princess Diana of Themyscira but how did she become the symbol of truth, justice and equality.
Author Laurie Halse Anderson, somewhat of a Wonder Woman herself, a woman of strength, compassion, and empathy, approachable and full of warmth, speaking truths and working for justice, was the perfect person to bring Wonder Woman to life. In Tempest Tossed she teamed with artist Leila del Duca to fill in the adolescent years of Diana, tossed from her homeland on her 16th birthday as she tries to save refugees, becoming a refugee herself exiled in America. In her new homeland, she finds danger and injustice and joins those who fight to make a difference.
Wonder Woman: Tempest Tossed shows the strength of women but most of all the power adolescents can wield when they find their purpose.
3. Flight of the Puffin by Ann Braden
Four young adolescents on opposite sides of the country; four outsiders who feel alone; four who are connected through one act of kindness and many acts of support that let them know they are not alone.
Libby comes from a family of bullies—her father, her older brother, and, by all accounts, her grandfather. Her mother and the rest of her family ignore her, making her feel unwelcome in her own home. Her school assumes any actions on her part are acts of bullying, but she is only trying to make her world prettier with paint and glitter. After she finds a rock left by her beloved former art teacher that states, "Create the world of your dreams," she decides to do just that.
Them." (11)
When Libby is given some index cards and colored pencils for a class essay assignment, she instead makes cards with pictures and positive sayings, such as "You are amazing." (13) She decides to pass them out to "to "anybody who needs it…. Like if someone gets bullied and they're feeling alone, then maybe this can help them remember that the bully isn't always right."(103) She makes more and more and, grounded by her parents, even climbs out the window to distribute her cards. "What kind of person would sneak out into the rain to leave index cards around town for nobody in particular? A person who doesn't have a choice." (176)
Vincent is a seventh grader, across the country in Seattle, who doesn't fit in, not at school and not at home where his single mother wants him to be more creative. Vincent is interested in triangles and puffins and being accepted for himself. But the boys at school bully him and call him a "girl," like that is a negative thing. "I'm not trans, and I'm not gay. And I'm not a girl. It's like T said. I'm just me." (161)
T also lives in Seattle where they and their dog Peko live on the streets, having run away from a family who does not accept them.
"It's possible to keep going.
for longer than what
anyone else
would expect." (79)
"But flying away
doesn't solve everything." (143)
Coincidentally in a town near Libby, Jack, a 7th grader, is still grieving the accidental death of his younger brother Alex—Alex who loved glitter and butterflies. Jack has become a big brother to the younger students and a helper to the administrators of his 2-room school and, when the grant that is keeping his school afloat is threatened, he vows to save it. But he does not understand the state's insistence on a gender-neutral bathroom, and he finds himself standing up for something that begins to feel wrong. When he becomes embroiled in a public debate, he finds his supporters to be those people he does not admire, and he begins to question his views and those of his family. Finally discussing Alex with his mother, Jack says, "What if a boy doesn't want to do boy things? Or doesn't always feel like a boy? Or even…doesn't feel like a boy or a girl?" (194)
Libby hears about Vincent and mails him one of her notes. Vincent meets T on the streets and learns more about them and receives advice on how to stand up to his bullies ("I don't have to be scared. I don't have to feel bad. I don't have to feel like I am less than them."). And when Vincent hears about Jack on the news and "reaches out from across the country" by mail to tell him about T and kids in his school who may transgender "but don't say," offering his support, Jack realizes, as they all do,
"I am simultaneously understanding two things…
That I have been alone.
And that I don't have to be." (171)
Ann Braden's new novel is a story about the importance of communication and community as the four young adolescents connect with each other but also with their own family members, changing perspectives and values. It is a compelling, simply-told story of identity and the power of being oneself. Many readers will recognize themselves in these characters and their families and communities, and other readers will learn about those they may someday meet or might already know, hiding in plain sight in their classrooms or neighborhoods. This is a wonderful, much-needed novel about empathy, support, and standing up for ourselves and others.
"Sometimes I feel like someone took a slingshot and shot me high into the air, and now I'm waving my arms and trying to find a soft place to land." (96)
Sixth grader Joy Taylor's life is in upheaval. Her family moved from their house to a small apartment when her father lost his job. Now she can hear her parents arguing, and Joy feels she has to stay strong and support her younger sister. "No matter what I say to Malia, I know we're far from okay." (85)
In her new building she makes friends—Nora, Miles, Elena, and Oliver, who let her in on their secret, the Hideout, a hidden room where they gather as a group or individually as a refuge from their families. The number one rule for the Hideout is "We can't let adults find out about it." (51)
Joy and Nora have a common interest in movies—Nora scripting and filming them and Joy scoring them. They start a dog walking business together to raise money for their passions and are on their way to becoming close friends.
But then Joy becomes obsessed with finding out who wrote a poem on the Hideout wall:
"I'm tired of smiling
When actually I'm falling apart
I'm tired of hiding
The pain that's inside my heart." (89)
She knows she can help this person if only she could find out who is feeling like she is.
Joy and Nora's friendship deteriorates when Joy pushes Nora to help her discover the poet and then when she unwittingly beaks the "number one rule" of the Hideout. In addition she loses a dog she is walking. When trying to fix this disaster Joy finds a way to create community and win back her new friends and find them a new soft place to land.
Janae Marks' new novel gives fourth through seventh graders some mystery, a little adventure, and a lot of family and friendship challenges.
4. Fighting Words by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
"I told you, nobody goes into foster care for good reasons. Foster care might be better than anything you've ever had in your life so far, and it still will never be as good as what you should have had. If the family you were born into was what it should have been." (175)
Della and her older sister Suki were not born into a family that was "what it should have been," what every family should be, even minimally. Their mother was incarcerated and her parental rights terminated for blowing up a motel room cooking meth. The girls never knew who their fathers were, and with their mother in prison, they continued to live with Clifton, their mother's boyfriend. Suki, a young child herself, raised her six-years-younger sister, keeping her own secret to keep Della safe—until the night that Suki was out, Clifton came home, and Della, now ten years old, was no longer safe. The sisters escaped, Clifton was arrested, and the girls went to live with Francine, a product of foster care herself.
Della, the narrator of the story, finally makes friends at her new school and begins a somewhat normal life. When Francine takes her for a walk in a park, she notes, "Some people passed us because they were walking faster than us. Other people passed us from other directions. Some of them had dogs on leashes sniffing the dirt. It was a lot of people doing something I never knew people did." (164), and my reading heart broke.
Through Francine, her new fiend Neveah, the friends she makes at the Y program, Maybelline at Food City, Coach Tony, and even Dr. Penny, her school principal, Della finds the strength to organize the girls to stand up to classmate Trevor who sexually harasses them, to her teacher who ignores their complaints, and to Clifton in her own court case. After Suki attempts suicide and Della learns her secret, she has the strength to help Suki re-gain her strength to face Clifton, at least through videotaped testimony.
When she goes for therapy, her psychologist tells her, "What Clifton did to you and Suki—that's common."…"Honestly?" Dr Fremont said. "You're probably not the only kid it's happened to in your class." (200) According to the Department of Justice and the CDC, "one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused by the time they reach age eighteen.…Among other things, children who are sexually abused are over ten times more likely to attempt suicide than those who aren't. " (Author's Note)
It is imperative that this story and stories like that are in classrooms for those who need it. As Nevaeh explains her love for a certain book in which the character lives in a car, "I was glad, you know, to read it in a book. To know that it didn't only happen to me." (121) In Fighting Words Della shares the worst part of the story—but she also is able to share "the very best part of this story." (259)
5. A Home for Goddesses and Dogs by Leslie Connor
"You'll be all right. You come from strong." (1) In the months after her death, Lydia Bratches-Kemp finds out just how true her mother's words were.
Thirteen-year-old Lydia has experienced many challenges in her young life. Her father left home when she was six, at the same time her mother became ill with a heart condition. Lydia helped take care of her mother for seven years until she died. But it wasn't all sadness; her mother homeschooled her so they could spend time together enjoying nature and making art and goddesses, collages from old photographs bought at a flea market.
When Lydia is taken in by her mother's sister Bratches and her wife Eileen who live in the small town of Chelmsford, CT, a town of farms and strong women and girls, she undergoes a myriad of new experiences. She attends a school where the twelve 8th graders, who have known each other and all the townspeople their whole lives, welcome her with open arms, especially Raya and Sari who show up on her doorstep on weekends and take her to visit every farm and teach her to snowshoe. She, Bratches, and Eileen live with the kind 90-something-year-old Elloroy, owner of their house, who is, in his words, "almost dead" and Soonie, his sweet, old greyhound.
And last there is Guffer, the dog whom Bratches, Eillen, and the reluctant Lydia adopt. "I wanted to stop them and ask., Are you sure? Sure you don't want to wait and see how one rescue goes before you get yourselves into another? Not to liken myself to a dog, exactly. But I had been taken in." (45) Lydia, by her own words was not a dog person, but as they train the "bad" dog, she becomes more and more attached. "It'd been twelve weeks since Aunt Brat had first driven me up Pinnacle Hill in her boxy car.… We'd [Guffer and I] arrived the same week; We'd both had our lives changed." (311)
As she deals with secrets—hers and Bratches'; new family, friends and neighbors; pymy goats; a missing father, and her first kiss, she settles in as a member of this close community. "I soaked up the scene. There was something so easy, so right, about watching my friends peel off their boots and jackets in the front hall and something so everyday about Guffer coming to inspect their empty footwear." (237)
But her love for Guffer also gives her the strength, supported by her new family, to face the adult bully who threatens him. "'Turns out I'm pretty strong,' I told [Elloroy]." (369)
6. Mazie by Melanie Crowder
"Nana says you have to know where you come from to have any hope of figuring out where you need to go…" (1)
It is 1959. Seventeen year old Mazie Butterfield is looking forward to high school graduation, moving to New York City, and becoming a Broadways star; her entire life has been moving toward this goal—ballet lessons, singing lessons, and local theater productions. But Mazie also loves Nebraska, her home, her family, and especially her boyfriend Jesse. Jesse has his own dreams—to study the stars, but he knows that he needs to stay and take over the family farm.
When Nana dies unexpectedly, Mazie follows Nana's wishes and leaves abruptly for New York, Mrs. Cooper's boardinghouse, new roommates, endless rounds of auditions, homesickness, and heartbreak. But she perseveres. "I love my home and my family and what I come from. It's just—I know there's more to life than what's here in front of me. And I'd be a fool to think this me, the right now me won't change a little along the way." (28) "Without my big Broadway dream, I'm not sure I even know who I am." (31)
At auditions Mazie is cut off in mid-song, mid-dialogue, and mid-dance, and she worries that her money and her six weeks will run out. Slowly she finds herself changing who is she and how she looks to try to fit in. "I don't want to go back to where I was, always wishing for something out of reach. But what if being here means I become someone I don't recognize anymore? Am I still even me?" (145)
When she finally lands the role of understudy in a touring company of an industrial musical, Mazie seems to be expected to change even more. She immerses herself into the play, learning all the female parts, making friends, making enemies, and avoiding the advances of the director. Her tenacity and diligence pay off when the lead bows out, and Mazie changes her name and her look to try to fit the role. "If what I wanted was to live surrounded only by things I understood, I never would have left home. But I wanted to step into the wider world." (149)
After a visit home, Mazie learns to follow her dream, even though there is a cost—but maybe at a slower pace—and navigate her new world without rejecting her old one and changing what is important.
Adolescent readers will love Mazie and following her as she shares her journey through her narration. In Mazie Melanie Crowder has created another character who is strong, resilient, a problem solver, and who learns to meet her dreams on her own terms. Readers who are interested in the acting, musicals, romance, and especially following a dream will love this story.
 7. I Can Make This Promise by Christine Day
"I think about Roger. He was the first person to ever say those words to me. 'You look Native.' And it didn't feel presumptuous. It didn't feel like a wild guess. It was like he recognized me. Like he saw something in me." (24)
Twelve-year-old budding-artist Edie Green knows she is half Native American and that her mother was adopted and raised by a white couple at a very young age. But that is all she knows about her heritage, and she has never thought to ask for whom she is named. She discovered that she was "different" on the first day of kindergarten, a day she remembers in great detail, a day when her teacher's questions about "where she was from" panicked her. But this was something she and her mother never discussed.
The summer before seventh grade, Edie and her friends discover a box in her attic, a box with pictures and letter from a young woman named Edith who looks just like Edie. When she asks her mother about who she was named after, her mother lies, and a few days later they have a fight when Edie wants to see a movie featuring a Native American character. Now Edie doesn't know how her mother will react when she tells her she has found the box and has read Edith Graham's letters. Even her mother's older brother, Uncle Phil, won't tell her the secret.
When Edie's mother finally shares her past and the past of her birth family, "I didn't picture this. I wasn't ready for this horrific injustice." (230)
I Can Make This Promise shares a time of intolerance and injustice in U.S. history, a time before the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 became a vital, necessary piece of legislation.
8. My Life in the Fish Tank by Barbara Dee
In seventh grade, Zinnia Manning's life changed dramatically. "Sometimes the bottom step fell out, and everything changed all of a sudden." (146) That was the year her beloved older brother Gabriel, away at college, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and sent to Redwoods Village, a residential treatment center.
Asked to keep her brother's condition "private," Zinny has nowhere to turn. Her mother has quit her teaching job, stopped cooking dinners, forgetting to buy groceries, and spends her days in her bedroom arguing with insurance companies; when anyone asks about Gabriel, she lies. Her father barely comes home for meals. Zinny's older sister Scarlett cuts off her hair, becomes distant, and refuses to visit Gabriel. Her younger brother Aiden becomes obsessed with turning a school project into a "survival" project but never actually works on it.
However, it appears that everyone in school and town seem to know that there is something wrong with Gabriel, and, when Zinny refuses to talk, she loses her two best friends. An avid science lover, she begins spending lunchtime in the science room with Ms. Molina and is very excited about crayfish they will be observing in their classroom. She also is "invited" to join the school counselor's weekly Lunch Club where, although reluctant to participate, she meets four 7th and 8th graders who also have home problems and are supportive of each other.
As the year progresses, "It was like after it happened, we were in a different time zone from everybody else. A parallel universe. And we needed some kind of new, not-yet-invented time measurement. Abnormal Standard Time. Also a compass and a map." (9) Later, when Scarlett admits that the last time she was happy was 'Definitely before Gabriel,' Zoe thinks, "She didn't need to explain; I knew that 'Definitely before Gabriel' was a complete sentence." (177) It is a year of changes. "I guess it would be weird to go through this and not change." (178), and when her group's crayfish escapes, Zinny learns, "There's stuff we can control and stuff we can't." (240)
Asked to finally describe her feelings, Zinny admits she is "'Mad. Tired. Worried.' Then I heard myself say: 'Ashamed.'" Mr. Patrick, the counselor assures her that all her feelings "all million of them—are completely okay. There's no right way to feel about it, and no wrong way either." (258)
The chronological narrative is interspersed with flashbacks that let Zinny and the reader fill in missing puzzle pieces as a family copes with the challenges of mental illness. This isn't a novel about mental illness; it is a story of a family affected by mental illness.
Bipolar disorder is a mental health disorder characterized by dramatic or abnormal mood changes typically fluctuating between major depression and extreme elation, or mania. The estimated number of teenagers with bipolar disorder is currently 2-3%. However, mental illness in general is common in teenagers. Approximately one in five teens (aged 12 to 18) suffer from at least one mental health disorder. (Polaris Teen Center). Because mental illness affects so many families—those of our readers and their classmates, it is crucial that novels on this important topic be available in all libraries and classrooms to generate the important conversations that need to be held.
"But mental health is different [than cancer or heart problems]."
"It just is. People make fun of it."
"Because they don't understand." (259)
9. Violets Are Blue by Barbara Dee
Barbara Dee brings us yet another strong girl this year.
"Actually blue violets do exist in nature," Cat FX said cheerfully. "Purple ones are more common, but just because something is weird doesn't mean it's not real." (ARC, 256)
Seventh grader Renata's life is in turmoil: Her father has suddenly moved out and to Brooklyn and is getting married and having twins. She finds out her that parents are getting a divorce, and her only friend in school is mean to her. Then her mother decides that they will move to a new town where she can work in a different hospital and Rennie can begin again in a new school.
The only constant in Rennie's life is her obsession with special effects makeup which is learning from videos posted by Cat FX. "Little by little, step by step, she'd start transforming herself into different fantasy creatures.… 'Don't be afraid to explore the weirdness of these characters,' Cat FX would say as she was applying Elmer's glue to her eyebrows. 'Because here's my secret message: there's good weird and bad weird.… Good weird tells the world who you really are.'" (ARC, 25-26)
In her new school Wren, as Renata now calls herself, is making small transformations to navigate new peers and begin making friends. "At school it was like everyone was onstage all the time." (185) She becomes friends with Poppy, but she is not sure how to read the popular Avery who may be a "mean girl " like her former friend. And there is Kai who she can talk to but others see as "weird" and who may like her more than as a friend.
When Poppy discovers Wren's gift for applying fantasy makeup, she talks Wren into doing the makeup for the school musical, Wicked. The drama kids are impressed with her talent. "I had a funny feeling right then, like I was floating above the table, looking down at myself. And hearing my own voice saying, 'See, Wren. This is how it looks when you finally fit in.'" (ARC, 86)
While on her trips to her Dad's, she is well treated by her father and his new wife Vanessa, things are strange at home. Her mother has been sleeping a lot, misses her shifts at work, accuses Wren of "talking behind her back" to her father, and puts a lock on her door. Wren is having trouble communicating with her. And then Wren finds pills in her mother's bathroom, pills that her mother admits to taking from the hospital for the pain in her knee.
"But I couldn't stop thinking about this other feeling I had: how sometimes when Mom looked at me, it was like she didn't even see my face. Like my features had been deleted, one by one, and all she was seeing when I stood in front of her was white foundation, and powder, layer on top of layer, making ne go blurry. Until finally I disappeared too." (ARC, 218)
As Wren faces the complexities of her mother's addiction and rehabilitation, she discovers that sometimes, as with Cat FX's directions about mermaid makeup, people frequently "[leave] something out." But now she has Krystal; her extended family—her father, Vanessa, and the twins; her new friends—Poppy, Avery, Kai, and the drama kids; and a therapist.
Barbara Dee's newest new novel tackles yet another crucial topic that affects more of our readers than we may know and belongs in every middle school classroom to generate important discussions. Based on the staggering data from the combined 2009 to 2014 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health, about 1 in 8 children (8.7 million) aged 17 or younger lived in households with at least one parent who had a past year substance use disorder (SUD). About 1 in 35 children (2.1 million) lived in households with at least one parent who had a past year illicit drug use disorder. (www.samhsa.gov)
10. Beyond Me by Annie Donwerth-Chikamatsu
On March 11, 2011, a magnitude-9 earthquake, the strongest earthquake in Japan's recorded history, shook northeastern Japan, unleashing a savage tsunami. More than 5,000 aftershocks hit Japan in the year after the earthquake. The tsunami caused the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant resulting in the release of radioactive materials. (LiveScience.com and National Geographic.org)
Beyond Me is one story of this tragedy. Fifth-grader Maya lives in Japan with her American mother and Japanese father, grandmother, and great grandfather. On March 9, 2011, at the end of their school year, her class feels an earthquake, different from earthquakes they have experienced before.
On March 11th at 7:44am the "earth shudders." Beginning at 2:46pm an earthquake struck the eastern coast "so strong it pushed Japan's main island eastward, created a massive tsunami, and slashed the eastern coastline in size." (89) And even though Maya's family lives miles from the tsunami, they are affected, and Maya is terrified. She chronicles the 24 days after the earthquake, sometimes minute by minute, as she shares her thoughts and feelings over what is happening in her house, her town, and, through the news, the people of Northeast Japan. The house shakes, food is rationed, and transportation has stopped, but she and her family are safe.
Readers see Maya overcome her fears and reach out with her mother and father to help those most affected by the disaster. She and Yuka fold paper cranes and ask for sunflowers seeds to plant, and Maya writes notes to the "People of the Northeast." Maya continues journaling for 113 days after she and her best friend plant sunflower seeds on her grandparents' farm, strengthening and helping to heal Earth as the mug she put back together with lacquer and gold dust.
Through free verse, timelines, and creative word placements readers take this journey with Maya as they learn a lot about nature and the effects of earthquakes. This book would pair nicely with Leza Lowitz's Up from the Sea, a verse novel that focuses on the story of one town and one boy directly affected by the tsunami.
 11. Blended by Sharon M. Draper (MG)
Sixth grader Isabella Badia Thornton is a gifted pianist. She also is the daughter of a mother who is white and a father who is Black, a mother and father who are divorced. Izzy spends one week at each house: her mother's small house where she grew up and where they live with her mother's boyfriend John Mark and her father's mansion where they live with his girlfriend Anastasia and Darren, her "totally cool" teenage son. On Sundays Isabella is exchanged between parents at the mall, never a pleasant experience. "Is normal living week to week at different houses? Is normal never being sure of what normal really is?" (161)
Izzy's dad introduces the idea of racism and discrimination when he explains why he always dresses well. "The world looks at Black people differently. It's not fair, but it's true.…the world can't see inside of a person, What the world can see is color." (39)
In school her social studies class studies Civil Rights, and the students learn about contemporary racism when a peer's action is directed at her best friend Imani who is Black. After the incident Isabella asks her father, "Do you think people think I am Black or white when they see me? Am I Black? Or white?" "Yes," is his reply. "Yes." (90)
Mr. Kazilly, the language arts/social studies teacher who loves to teach sophisticated vocabulary words, helps the students unpack the incident, but Izzy learns that sometimes it is even those—as the boy she likes—who claim they are not racist who also make racist remarks.
The effects of racial profiling become all too real when Darren and Izzy stop for ice cream on the way to her piano recital and returning to their car are confronted by the police who are looking for a bank robber. Darren is pushed to the ground and 11-year-old Izzy is shot in the shoulder.
Sharon M. Draper's Blended is a novel about growing up in a racially-diverse and blended family but is also a book about how we are viewed by others, racism, and identity. The short chapters are organized under the titles "Mom's Week," "Dad's Week," and "Exchange Day."
12. The Places We Sleep by Caroline Brooks DuBois (MG)
Sometimes we need a new friend to help us become strong.
"the year we moved to Tennessee,
the year of the terrorist attacks,
the year my period arrived,
the year Aunt Rose died,
and the year Dad left for Afghanistan." (166)
Twelve year old Abbey is, as the boys in her new school call her, an Army brat. She has moved eight times, but this time she is not living on base with others like her. This time she attends a school where there is only one other new girl, Jiman, a Muslim-American of Kurdish heritage, born and raised in New Jersey.
Abbey is shy, uncertain, voiceless,
"I worry about people speaking to me
And worry just the same
When they don't." (27)
"Here's what I'm used to being:
the last to be picked,
that girl over there,
the one hiding behind her hair
counted absent when present,
the one who eats alone,
sits alone,
the quiet type,
a sit-on-the-sidelines type,
the girl who draws,
and lately
'Army brat.'" (107-8)
Luckily over the summer before school began, she made a new best friend, Camille, who is athletic and confident and has no trouble standing up to bullying.
As Abbey deals with her new school and the taunts of the other 7th graders and the boys on the school bus, the Twin Towers are hit and Abbey's Aunt Rose is missing from her office on the 86th floor of the World Trade Center.
"Was she aware,
Unaware,
Have time to prepare…
Have time to think, to blink,
Time to wish, to wonder,
Did someone help her,
Was she alone,
Did she whisper a prayer,…" (24)
During this year Abbey contends with her periods, her missing aunt, her mother's temporary absence to New York to take care of Aunt Rose's husband and children, the "Trio" of Henley Middle ( the popular Mean girls), the eventual deployment of her father, and, on a positive note, the attentions of Jacob—Camille's other best friend. Abbey also notices how people are treating Jiman who remains confident, appears comfortable alone, and stands up when her little brother is harassed, but has no one championing her. At times Abbey feels she should speak up on behalf of Jiman, but she continues to keep quiet, losing herself in her art.
"What I don't do
is tell them to shut up,
to leave people alone for once
because mostly I'm relieved
that they've forgotten
about me. "(120)
Through art, Abbey finally gets to know Jiman and gains strength from her, strength to become an upstander rather than a bystander. With Camille, Jacob, and Jiman as friends, Abbey realizes,
"Sometimes it takes an eternity to figure things out,
Especially when you're in middle school." (245)
Caroline Brooks DuBois' debut novel written in free verse and formatted creatively on the pages is a coming-of-age novel, a novel of fitting in, gaining confidence, showing tolerance and kindness towards others and standing up—for oneself and others.
13. Lily's Promise by Kathryn Erskine (MG)
Sixth grader Lily, painfully shy, is attending public school for the first time. She had always been homeschooled by her father, and, before he died, he encouraged her talk to other kids "Girls make excellent friends" and left her a Strive for Five challenge: "to speak up, make herself heard, step out of her 'comfort zone' at least five times… and pretty soon, it [will] become second nature.' (18-19)
On the first day Lily, overwhelmed at the noise and rudeness of the students, (1) makes her first friend, Hobart (not a girl) and (2) observes many instances of bullying, some against Hobart (and even the new teacher) and most generated from Ryan and his followers. During the year as she forms a group of new friends from those students many others would think different, she finds her courage and voice to become an upstander, rather than a bystander, earning her the five charms left by her father. Lily and her new friends influence both young adolescents and adults, such as Hobart's father, alike.
One unique and very compelling element are the chapters narrated by Libro (the book) is it reflects on the characters and events of the preceding chapter and on the author (Imaginer) herself.
14. A Place at the Table by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan (MG)
Two adolescents who help each other between strong together.
"Elizabeth turns again to look at me, her face slightly shocked. I don't think I've ever said anything much in class before. She gives me a thumbs up. Raising my hand in class, making friends with Elizabeth and Micah; I'm very different from the girl I was at the start of sixth grade." (211)
"I have to talk to you. About what happened at the mall.… Sara is my friend. You shouldn't have spoken to her like that. And I heard what you said to Ahsan yesterday…. There's a difference between being mean and being racist, Mads." (223-224)
Sixth grade is challenging. Sara had to leave her small Muslim school and enter a large middle school where the kids know each other and there are very few Muslim students. And to make matters worse, her mother runs the cooking club, teaching them to cook South Asian food from her native Pakistan.
The year becomes equally challenging for Elizabeth. She is the child of a British mother who has been depressed since her own mother's death and a Jewish American father who travels all the time for his job. "Why can't I have normal parents? A mom who remembers things like cookies for synagogue. A dad who's home and can remind her." (165) And her best friend Maddy becomes friends with Stephanie and begins spouting her parents' racist remarks at Sara.
When Sara and Elizabeth become cooking partners and then friends, they both undergo change. Sara learns she doesn't have to stay invisible, and Elizabeth learns to stand up for what she feels is right, especially for friends. "If we're going to be real friends, not just cooking partners, that means we stick up for each other." (149) Sara and Elizabeth may come from different cultures but they have much in common, such as mothers who are both studying to take their citizenship test. Children of immigrants in neighborhoods where the Christmas lights cover houses, they both feel different from those in their community, other than Micah, their Jewish half-Latino friend.
Through cooking and combining cultures for a cooking contest recipe, they discover friendship and that others, such as Maddy and Stephanie, are not always what they assumed.
Written in alternating chapters by two authors who mirror their characters, Sara and Elizabeth will help 4th- 8th grade readers build conversations about friendships, prejudice, and following passions.
15. Starfish by Lisa Fipps (MG)
As soon as I slip into the pool,
I am weightless.
Limitless.
For just a while. (1)
Eliana Elizabeth Montgomery-Hofstein, know as Ellie or El, was re-named Splash by her older sister at her fifth birthday party when she joyfully cannonballed into the pool, her chubbiness causing a great splash. Since that day Ellie has been bullied by her classmates, her older brother, and, sadly, her mother who puts her on endless diets, posts fat-shaming articles on the refrigerator, decides what Ellie eats, plans to force her to have bariatric surgery at age 11, and referred to her once as "a big ol' fat thing."
Her only allies are her father, her best friend Viv and Viv's mother, and the school librarian. She survives with her Fat Girl Rules—rules that help her to not get noticed, and with poetry and daily swimming.
As I float,
I spead out my arms
And my legs.
I'm a starfish,
Taking up all the room I want. (41)
Even though her weight does not bother her, the constant bullying from family members, classmates, acquaintances, and strangers does. Ellie has trouble standing up for herself.
But every time I try to stand up for myself,
the words get stuck in my throat
like a giant glob of peanut butter.
Besides, if they even listened,
They'd just snap back,
"If you don't like being teased,
Lose weight." (4)
When Viv moves away, her place is taken by a new neighbor who becomes a second best friend and who shows her what a supportive family looks like. As a Mexican-American living in Texas, Catalina faces her own taunts and stereotype assumptions.
"Stereotypes stink.
They give people an excuse to
Hate people who are different
Instead of taking the time
To get to know them." (76)
At school there are the Mean Girls—Marissa and Kortnee —with lots of followers to do their bidding, like loosening the bolts on Ellie's desk.
Then Ellie gets to know Enemy Number 3, a male classmate who bullies her constantly, and finds that, living in poverty, he has challenges of his own and is probably fighting his own bullies.
But I just don't understand how
Someone who's bullied
And knows how horrible it feels inside
Turns around and bullies others.
That's pure garbage." (150)
Ellie's father takes her to talk to Dr. Wood, a therapist, and after her initial rejection ("Dr. Woodn't-You-Like-to-Know) and many sessions, Ellie learns how to face her bullies, even her mother, and to discover feelings of self-worth and the importance of talk.
"No matter what you weigh,
You deserve for people to treat you
Like a human being with feelings." (179)
Ellie is an appealing character, witty and stronger than she knows and a true friend. I cried for her, I cringed for her, I hoped for her, and I cheered for her.
This is not as much a book about bullying but standing up to bullies and the value of not merely tolerance or acceptance, but respect. It is a book that belongs in every library to be read by those who need it—the bullied and the bullies and the bystanders—for empathy, self-worth, and respect.
16. The Life I'm In by Sharon Flake (YA)
Everyone has a back story. Charlise Jones, the bully in The Skin I'm In, has a back story, a story that shows that she was not always a bully; she was not always unhappy. When her parents died and Char was left to be raised by Juju, her older sister, her life changed. She bullied others, especially Maleeka Madison, and after repeating grade seven multiple times, dropped out of school.
When the story begins, we see Charlese's life as it now is. Char has been kicked out by her sister and put on a bus to go to live with her grandparents. But she has decided that is not where she will go, and readers bear witness to the all-too-common and inevitable fate of a runaway.
Even Charlese, brighter than she gives herself credit, knows what is happening to April, a fellow traveler, who brags about her new job on a cruise ship that she paid for in advance. "'Three hundred and fifty dollars,' she says. 'For what?' "The job.' "You gotta pay for a job? I thought they paid you.' 'The good ones cost.' She still owes 'em money, she says. 'I'm supposed to pay the rest when they pick me up.'(65)
When April meets up with Anthony, the man who offers to pay the remainder for this job, she leaves Char with her baby girl and, with the innate goodness that we learn is a characteristic of her, Charlese tries to take care of and provide for Cricket who she now thinks of as her child.
Finally, desperate for money and lured by the smooth talking and attentions of Anthony who gives her plenty of money to pay her rent and buy necessities for Cricket, she is slowly lured into a world of forced prostitution and abuse, dependent on her "Daddy." Her new family are her fellow victims: Gen, Rosalie, Kianna, Katrina. "We like sisters. Better than sisters 'cause they would cut or kill somebody for me." Readers observe with horror the brainwashing and dependency that typically occurs in relationships between the victims and their pimps. "But he ain't beat me lately. Him and Carolina feed us and give us clothes—so they not all the way bad.… There are worse houses to be in, worse daddies to have. I know that for sure now. So I close my eyes and thank God I got it as good as I do." (225)
A powerful read with a strong female character who rises from the pages. I wanted to shout at Char and hug her and save her. Those who have read The Skin I'm In (and I cannot wait to re-read) will see the return of Maleeka and Miss Saunders as they help Maleeka through the life she's in.
17. Love, Jacaranda by Alex Flinn (YA)
"I've been alive sixteen years, and this is the first time since my granny died that anyone has ever noticed me." (10)
Jacaranda is a high school junior and works as a bagger at Publix in Florida. Her mother is in prison for attempted murder and, after her aunt refused to care for her, Jacaranda began her journey through the foster system. Her future goals are to graduate high school and possibly become a Publix manager one day. But as of now her goal is to get a solo in her high school spring concert.
When a favorite customer asks her to sing, she sings the Publix jingle, and is unknowingly recorded by another customer. The video goes viral, and Jacaranda's life changes. An anonymous benefactor sees the video and sponsors her to a prestigious arts school in Michigan where she realizes that her dreams can be much bigger.
The reader follows Jackie, as she now calls herself, through her daily emails to her sponsor as she navigates her new world, taking nothing for granted—real meals, new fashionable outfits, friends who support her, mentors, visits to New York City, even jealous classmates, and ever-widening opportunities. She loves everything about her new life and doesn't take anything for granted. "Do you know what I love most as MAA? You might think it's the surroundings or the people or the opportunities. I love all those things. But the best thing is the predictability…. I didn't have that type of predictability in foster care, and I sure didn't have it with my mother." (253)
And she now has a wealthy boyfriend—a nice, compassionate boyfriend whose main goal is use his wealth to help others. But as she fits in and earns roles in the school musicals, Jackie constantly worries that Jarvis and her new friends will no longer accept her if they discover her secrets. "It was always so shameful being poor, even though it's a matter of luck when you're a kid." (131) Jackie tries to hide her background and her mother's situation even as she meets a classmate who is brave enough to share her own past homelessness.
Reading Jacaranda's story through her emails to her benefactor lets readers live through not only her linear story but learn about her teachers, her past, and her thoughts that may not be accessible in even a first person story narrative. The emails also allow for short read-alouds at the beginning or ending of a class period. Alex Flinn's new novel tells a story of a strong teen facing the challenges of poverty, talent, acceptance, and relationships.
18. The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart (MG)
"You see, I'd walked into that gas station alone. And I'd walked out of it alone. Just like I'd walked in and out of gas stations alone every day for, like, years. And maybe right then and there, holding that kitten, is when I'd just had enough of all that aloneness." (7)
Coyote Sunrise and her dad Rodeo have been living in a school bus and driving around the country for five years. Five years since Coyote's two sisters and her mother died in a car crash. Five years since they had spoken of their family, visited their hometown, seen Coyote's grandmother, or even used their real names.
But one day at a campground, spending the day with a new friend and her mother, Coyote noticed, "It felt like a family. Like a sister and a mom. I liked it. I wouldn't have been willing to admit right then that it felt like that, or that I liked it—but it did, and I did." (44) But after that one day, as was their custom, Rodeo and Coyote get back in the bus to move on and share once-upon-a-time stories.
"Once upon a time, there were three girls. Sisters. Once upon a time, there was a mom.
And, once upon a time there was a box.… And they'd all promised, all three sisters and one mom had promised to come back for the box of memories…no matter what, they'd come back for that box." (56)
In a weekly phone conversation with her grandmother, Coyote learns that the park where she, her sisters, and mother buried a memory box will be bulldozed for development, and she makes a decision. "I had to get myself, and a bus, and my dad, all the way across the country in less than four days. And I had to do it without my dad noticing." (62)
Along the way they pick up a cast of characters, diverse people with their own problems: Lester is returning to a woman who wants him to give up his passion for music; Salvador and his mother are fleeing an abusive father/husband; and Val is running away from parents who refuse to accept her as she is—and of course, Ivan, the cat. Traveling with these people and helping them solve their problems, Coyote finds the support and family she needs to give her the strength to do what she needs to do to help her father acknowledge and move on from his loss and to help her fulfill her promise to her sisters and mother.
"I guess sometimes life does seem like too much, especially during the big moments. But usually you can dig inside yourself and find what you need. You can find what you need to grow into those big moments and make 'em yours." (299)
Dan Gemeinhart's novel allows us to join this family, as if we were riding along, and share their sorrows, their failures, and their successes as we witness Coyote's and her father's healing.
19. Abby, Tried and True by Donna Gephart (MG)
Abby Braverman's friend Catriella Wasserman moved to Israel the summer Abby turned twelve. An introvert, Abby only had the one friend. While kids at school didn't exactly bully Abby, they didn't take the time to know her, and the girls told her she needed to be more outgoing and that she probably wouldn't speak up even to save someone's life. Luckily Conrad, the eighth-grade boy who moved into Cat's house, became a good and sensitive friend and possibly a boyfriend. And Abby had a close, supportive family—her two moms, her Jewish grandparents, and her older brother Paul.
"[Paul] was an extrovert. Being social was easy for Paul, and he already had two best friends, Jake and Ethan, to do everything with. Paul was not a turtle. He was an otter. Otters were fun and outgoing, Everyone loved otters." (65)
But that summer another tragedy struck. As Abby wrote in her journal,
"One day my brother said, "I have cancer."
With those words—that one word--
Oxygen left the room
And then came back, forever rearranged,
Nothing has been the same since.
There is only before…and after." (186)
This is a story of a young girl who is navigating the challenges of middle school, a new friendship and relationship, and the fear of losing her brother, frightened that the girls at school may be right, that she will be too scared to be able to help what it is necessary. But she learns she does have that courage: "Being brave is when you're scared to do something but you choose to do it anyway because you know it's the right thing to do." (197)
This is one of the novels crucial to have in school and classroom libraries, to put into the hands of children who need it. Many readers will see themselves in this novel—whether coping with these same issues or others—and other readers will learn empathy for their peers who may be going through more than they know, hiding in plain sight. There are adolescents who are painfully shy or who lose their good friends and families living with a child who has cancer. As happens in adolescence, this is a year of highs and lows; fortunately, in Abby's world, the good outweighed the bad.
Each year in the U.S. there are an estimated 15,780 children between the ages of birth and 19 years of age who are diagnosed with cancer. Approximately 1 in 285 children in the U.S. will be diagnosed with cancer before their 20th birthday. (www.acco.org) Although cancer in children is rare, it is the leading cause of death by disease past infancy among children in the United States. In 2021, it is estimated that 15,590 children and adolescents ages 0 to 19 will be diagnosed with cancer and 1,780 will die of the disease in the United States. Among adolescents ages 15 to 19 years, about 5090 will be diagnosed with cancer and about 590 will die of the disease. (National Cancer Institute) Young men between the ages of 15 and 35 are at the highest risk for testicular cancer, the cancer that afflicts Paul in the story. (Author's Note)
20. Taking Up Space by Alyson Gerber (MG)
Middle school, especially seventh grade, is challenging: first crushes, jealousy, mean girls, dances, invitations or no invitations, and puberty. Bodies are changing, and young adolescents are beginning to fit in their bodies differently. It is a stage where most preteens believe that their parents are knowledgeable about things. But what if your parents aren't? What if parents can afford to feed you, but forget to feed you?
Sarah loves playing basketball and being on a team with her two BFFs. In fact, Sarah is one of the best players on the team—until her body starts changing and she is slower and now is worried she will be kicked off the team. She loses her confidence and becomes obsessed with only eating what she interprets from health class and her mother is "good" food. Bananas have too much sugar and starch. Even one snack is too much. No more bread. But as Sarah and her crush Benny enter a cooking contest together, she finds that she likes to cook and that her one best friend who also likes Benny now no longer wants to be friends. Suddenly Sarah feels she is taking up too much space since many of the girls are mean to her and her mother can't be bothered to shop and cook for her.
Sarah begins controlling her food in order to control her life. "For lunch I have an apple and half a turkey sandwich again which gives me this feeling I can do anything. I'm in charge of what happens to me. It's weird how eating less makes me feel so much stronger." (70) Soon it takes over her life. "'…I'm hungry and tired of counting and worrying but I don't know how to stop." (117)
After Sarah collapses on the court, her coach and the school counselor become involved and Sarah finds out why her mother rarely food shops or cooks but hides candy all over the house. And it is an answer that has nothing to do with her love of Sarah.
Eating disorders and positive self-image are critical topics for young adolescents, and this newest MG novel by Alyson Gerber, an #ownvoices author, will generate small group conversations that may be sensitive but need to be held.
Over one-half of teenage girls and nearly one-third of teenage boys exhibit unhealthy weight control behaviors. According to the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA), eating disorders are more common among females than males with as many as 10 million girls and women afflicted. Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia primarily affect people in their teens and twenties, making the majority of adolescent athletes vulnerable. 62.3% of teenage girls and 28.8% of teenage boys report trying to lose weight. 58.6% of girls and 28.2% of boys are actively dieting; even among clearly non-overweight girls, over one-third report dieting.
Taking Up Space belongs in every middle school library to be read in ELA or health classes or with a counseling or therapy group, independently or in book clubs with other ED novels or books about adolescent challenges and resilience.
21. Ordinary Hazards by Nikki Grimes [memoir] (YA)
"Where do memories hide?
They sneak into
Hard-to-reach crevices,
and nestle quietly until
some random thought
or question
burrows in,
hooks one by the tail,
and pulls.
Finally, out into the light
It comes
Sheepishly." (304)
Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carry, said in a speech, "You don't have to tell a true story to tell the truth." In Bridging the Gap, I wrote that a memoir is how the memoirist remembers the events—triggered by sights, smells, conversations, incidents—tempered by time, life, and reflection. Ordinary Hazards is Ms Grimes' life, as remembered and reconstructed, from 1950 through high school, a life of hazards but also awakenings, the story of the birth and growth and dreams of a writer. "Somehow, I knew writing could take me places." (230)
Written in haunting free verse, the author takes readers through a life of foster homes, separation from her sister, a schizophrenic alcoholic mother and an abusive stepfather, too many residences and schools to keep track of, multiple visits to various hospitals for diverse reasons, and neighborhood gangs, pain and loneliness, as "the ghosts of yesterday come screaming into the present without apology…" (9)
But readers are also introduced to a loving foster family, the refuge of libraries, relatives and girlfriends and God, and finally the black music and dance performances, authors, and speakers who opened her world to possibilities. Grimes was finally reunited with her older sister Carol, her father and his appreciation for the arts, and a teacher who pushed her to write more and better. By high school she had learned
"I've been tested, though,
and already know
on my own,
that I'm a survivor." (228)
This reading engaged my heart, and I felt honored to witness the memories and reflections of a favorite children's and YA author.
22. My Family Divided by Diane Guerrero with Erica Moroz [memoir] (YA)
"Suddenly we saw a white police van pull up. Seconds later, two guards herded some inmates out onto the curb. My mother was among them.." (124)
When Diane Guerrero was 14 years old, her undocumented immigrant parents were deported to Colombia. Her older step-brother having previously moved away, this left Diane, an American citizen, on her own in Boston, dependent on the charity of family friends. "Neither ICE nor the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families had contacted me. This meant that at fourteen, I'd been left on my own. Literally. The same authorities who deported my parents hadn't bothered to check whether I, a fourteen-year-old citizen of this country, would be left without family adult supervision, or even a home." (115)
An adaptation of her adult memoir, co-authored by Erica Moroz, describes the life of the television actress Before and After Deportation as she struggles with ambivalent feelings towards her parents, poverty, and depression. "[At my senior recital] I ended with a jazz standard called 'Poor Butterfly.' It's about this Japanese woman enchanted by an American man who never returns to be with her. I'd chosen it because it struck a powerful chord in me. The abandonment. The hoping and waiting and yearning for something that doesn't happen." (153)
But this is also the story of the 11.4 million unauthorized US immigrants (2018), 500,00 of whom were deported (2019), others who are living under the constant threat of deportation and a family divided.
23. One Jar of Magic by Corey Ann Haydu (MG)
"If only I had three wishes." Many times we think we could make things better if we had three wishes, or even one wish. We spend time dreaming and planning how that magic would change our lives—for the better, of course. But even though we love the idea of magic, and we delightedly watch magicians perform their tricks, we realize that magic is an illusion. A definition of magic is "the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces," the key word being "apparently."
Belling Bright is a town run on magic; magic completes homework, changes weather, provides fancy clothing. And the most powerful, famous person in town is the one who has the most magic. It is assumed that magic makes everything in the town better and that those who control magic know how best to use it, especially Wendell Anders.
Rose Alice Anders has been told over and over how, on the day of her birth, her father captured 161 jars of magic which means she is now the one destined to become as, or more, magical when she turns 12 and can begin catching magic in jars on New Year's Day. "I'm Rose Alice Anders and my father is Wendell Anders and he captured one hundred sixty-one jars of magic because I was born, and everyone is waiting to see what my first year will bring, what my legacy means. Who I am." (69)
But what if Rose is "Not Meant for Magic"? And what does that even mean? Is one meant for magic if they need magic? What if they can succeed on their own—without magic? Maybe being "Not Meant for Magic" is even better, maybe it means "…you are meant for something else." (263) But how can Rose please her explosive father without following in his footsteps. "Wendell Anders is so big he makes you believe in the exact way he sees the world." (279)
As Rose navigates school and mean girls and a best friend who appears to be moving in another direction, she struggles with the impending New Years' Day capturing and the expectations of her father. Luckily she has the constant support of her older brother Lyle. And support comes from a new place, along with a new way of looking at things.
This new novel by Corey Ann Haydu will generate deep thinking and important conversations about identity. This novel gently introduces domestic abuse in ways that even upper elementary readers can understand and discuss. "…maybe I don't see magic very well, but I see other things, important things, things I have been trying not to see." (84) "My father is a hundred wonderful things. But he is also a few not-wonderful things." (164)
This magical novel shows what magic really is—and isn't. As in Haydu's Eventown, readers discover the power of being oneself.
24. Ben Y and the Ghost in the Machine by K.A. Holt (MG)
In BenBee and the Teacher Griefer, readers were introduced to "the kids under the stairs"—Ben B, Jordan, Javier, and Benita Ybarra, or Ben Y as she refers to herself—and their summer school teacher, Ms. J. In this sequel, the story focuses on Ben Y who is still grieving her older brother Benicio's death a year before. We learn that Benacio was the creator of Sandman, the video game in which the four misfits became friends with each other and their teacher (whom they taught the game). It is also this game though which Ben Y and her brother communicated when he moved away to expand the market for his corporate backers.
Who chooses
Who decides
Who is cool
And who is weird
And who is dumb
And who is smart
And who fits here
And who fits there
And what is right
And what is wrong? (214)
School is tough. The kids, other than her three new friends, are unkind, and the Vice Principal, Mr. Mann, is a bully, but there is a new student, Ace, who is not afraid to stand up to him and doesn't appear to care what the other kids think. In fact she is called Dress Code for constantly breaking the dress code and earning detentions and Mr. Mann's anger—and Ben Y's admiration.
And sometimes
you see someone
or meet someone
and you hear al little
*ping*
in your heart,
and you know,
just like that,
this is someone
who's like you,
boom. (77)
When Ben Y accidentally over-processes her hair in an attempt to be more like Ace and has to shave her head, the bullying increases.
"and maybe
just maybe
the safety
of being the same
is better than
the danger
of being you." (119)
Even realizing he is dead, Ben Y retreats into game-chat conversations with her brother, and when it appears that someone is answering her as SB10BEN, she tries to solves the mystery; however, when she discovers the answer, she is not quite sure how she feels about the imposter.
At the same time Ben Y becomes so obsessed with finding out how Mr. Mann, adolescent defender of human rights, has become the bully he now is and with ruining his reputation and while also trying to understand her ambivalent feelings for Ace, that she forgets her three good friends. "It feels really bad to feel invisible to the person you thought could see you the best of any other person in the world." – Jordan (358)
In a year filled with grieving family members, complicated relationships, looking for "safe places," and somewhat of an identity crisis, Ben Y learns the value of friendship and that "everything is better with a confetti cannon." – Ms J, Sandbox player.
Many readers will see themselves—and others may learn some empathy for their peers who feel they may not fit in but may need to—in K.A. Holt's newest free verse and game-talk novel.
25. Sylvie by Sylvie Kantorovitz [memoir] (YA)
Christine: "I hate being different!"
Sylvie [thinking]: "Her too?"
Christine: "But really, we are ALL different! In one way or another. And some differences come from US! Like how you love to draw!" (177)
In Sylvie Kantorovitz's graphic memoir, readers literally watch Sylvie grow up through the author's own illustrations. The memoir begins in France where Sylvie, her brother, and her parents live in the school where her father is principal and continues through the birth of two more siblings and later a move during high school to Lyon.
Sylvie has many worries in common with many of her readers. She doesn't want to be different. She was born in Morocco, so some of her classmates say she is not "French." "Oh, how I wish I was born in France like all the others!" (73) She and her younger brother Alibert are the only Jewish children in their school. "Whenever possible I let people assume I was like them." ((74)
Sylvie also has a complicated family life. Her parents are always fighting. While she father is kind and supportive, her mother is very hard on her. "[An A] doesn't count if the others also got As." (6) Her mother's values are very different from Sylvie's. "Being 'feminine' was important to Mom. It didn't feel that important to me." (110-111) Her mother always seems to be angry, and when Alibert does not do well in school, he is sent away to a boarding school. Sylvie just doesn't understand her mother. "Could Alibert be right? Could someone actually LIKE being angry?" (135) "Was I allowed to feel so conflicted about my own mother? Could I feel shame and anger and still love her?" (131)
In school when the teacher asks the students if anyone knows what they want to be when they grow up, to Sylvie's surprise, everyone else does. "I was the only one without a plan for the future. Was something wrong with me?" (38)
In her last year of high school Sylvie has a boyfriend, Pierre, and hearing about his family's troubles—his mother is depressed and sometimes stays in bed all day, "I wondered if every family had an ongoing drama, hidden from the outside world." (239) Maybe her family is not so different.
Through it all from a young age, Sylvie realizes that "drawing was what I really loved to do." (10) but because of her mother's disdain, she didn't see it as a profession. Finally, with her father's support and the courage to confront her mother, Sylvie has come up with a long-term plan for independence.
A memoir is an account of one's personal life and experiences built on the memory of the writer and formed by the present reflection on the past. This memoir is enhanced by its visual quality. But what I would find most important to adolescent readers is the realization that while we all are different, at the same time we are all very much alike.
26. Get A Grip, Vivy Cohen by Sarah Kapit (MG)
Middle-school student Vivian Jane Cohen loves baseball and wants to be a knuckleball pitcher when she grows up. This has been her goal ever since, three years before, she attended an Autism Foundation "social thingy" and met Major League pitcher VJ Capello who showed her how to pitch a knuckleball. "The problem is, I've never pitched in a real game. I don't play for a team. And I don't know if I ever will." (1)
It's Vivy's mother who thinks that being the only girl on a baseball team would be too much for Vivy's challenges. "My challenges. Of course. It always comes back to that, doesn't it? And I do know I have challenges, but sometimes I feel like Mom doesn't see all the things I CAN do." (91) And her supportive father doesn't speak up. And her big brother Nate, who says she throws a wicked knuckleball, has been MIA from her life lately.
As an assignment for her social skills group, Vivy has to write a letter to someone. She chooses VJ Capello (same initials as hers), and they soon start writing back and forth as Vivy, in letters to and supported by VJ, describes her journey after she finally convinces her mother to let her join the Flying Squirrels: bullying by the coach's son, support from and friendship with her catcher, and the ups and downs of pitching well ["Could it be true? They weren't staring at me because I'm weird, but because I can do something really well?" (106)] and pitching not so well.
Then Vivy is hit in the head with a ball and has to convince her mother all over again.
Through all her trials and tribulations, [It's not like anyone ever told me that I'm brain-damaged or anything. But… normal kids don't have to go to therapy and social skills group all the time. Normal kids don't have mothers who worry about every little thing they do…. Normal kids don't get called monkey girl." (220)], Vivy is supported by the missives from VJ. "I know you're facing difficulties that are somewhat unique…I can't really say what it's like to be an autistic girl on a baseball team. I'm sure it's hard. As a Black, Ivy League-educated knuckleballer, I know a few things about being an outsider even on your own team." (63)
When Vivy finds out why Nate has been so secretive, it is her chance to support him and his new relationship in the same way as VJ tells Vivy, "Just know this: You have another knuckleball pitcher rooting for you." (50)
27. When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller [Winner of the 2021 Newbery Medal] (MG)"Long, long ago, when tiger walked like man…" ¬– Korean folktale
Folktales relate the stories of a culture but they recount and extend the stories of folk and families. They are universal, but when it is your story, "It's special." (68)
Lily feels she is invisible, a QAG (quiet Asian girl); sometimes it is her magic power. And she depends on her older sister Sam. But when Lily, her mother, and sister move back to Washington state to help her Halmoni, who is dying of cancer, Lily can no longer be invisible. To try to save her grandmother, she needs to face the tiger that only she nelieves in. Lily's Halmoni tells her, "… the world is bigger than what we see." (32) "When you believe [in you], that is you being brave. Sometimes, believing is the bravest thing of all." (51)
But Lily learns that sometimes you don't save the person; it is enough to believe in the traditions of the culture and share the stories of the people.
"It's kind of like these folktales have a mind of their own. Like they're floating around the world, waiting for somebody to come along and tell them." (68)
Stories are important. The librarian tells Lily, "The thing I've learned is that stories aren't about order and organization. They're about feelings. And feelings don't always make sense. See, stories are like … Water. Like rain. We can hold them tight, but they always slip through our fingers."…But remember that water gives us life. It connects continents. It connects people. And in quiet moments, when the water's still, sometimes we can see our own reflection." (206)
Magic. Family. Friendships. Loss. Stories. And the most beautiful writing (Teachers will want to use passages as writing mentor texts). I read in two days, the writing, the characters (even new friend Ricky), and the story swirling through me.
28. A Soft Place to Land by Janae Marks (MG)
29. From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks (MG)
Statistics affecting our children:
• The rate of wrongful convictions in the United States is estimated to be somewhere between 2 percent and 10 percent. When applied to an estimated prison population of 2.3 million, that means 46,000-230,000 innocent people are locked away. Once an innocent person is convicted, it is next to impossible to get the individual out of prison. Wrongful convictions happen for several reasons; one is bad lawyering by unprepared court-appointed defenders. (Chicago Tribune. March 14, 2018)
• African-American prisoners who are convicted of murder are about 50% more likely to be innocent than other convicted murderers. (National Registry of Exonerations, 2017)
• Currently, an estimated 2.7 million children—or 1 in 28 of those under the age of 18—have a biological mother or father who is incarcerated. According to the National Resource Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated, approximately 10 million children have experienced parental incarceration at some point in their lives. (http://www.yawednesday.com/blog/resil...)
"All the lying was wrong. But maybe it was okay to do something wrong if you were doing it for the right reason."(180)
Zoe Washington, a rising 7th grader who loves baking and aspires to be the first Black winner of the "Kids Bake Challenge" and publish her own cookbook, is in a fight with her former best friend Trevor, and is not looking forward to a summer without him and her other best friends Jasmine and Maya. But her life changes when, on her 12th birthday, she receives a letter from Marcus, her biological father, a man who she has never met because he has been in prison from before her birth—for murder.
"For the longest time, I didn't care whether or not I knew my birth father. I had my parents, and they were all I needed. But [Marcus'] letters were making me feel that a part of me was missing, like a chunk of my heart. I was finally filling in that hole." (121)
Zoe decides to write back, and as she and Marcus exchange letters and music recommendations, she begins to suspect that he doesn't seem like a murderer. He admits that he did not kill the victim and that there was an alibi witness whom his lawyer never contacted.
Since her mother has forbidden communication with Marcus (and has been confiscating his letters for years), Zoe confides in her grandmother who explains, "People look at someone like Marcus—a tall, strong, dark-skinned boy—and they make assumptions about him. Even if it isn't right. The jury, the judge, the public, even his own lawyer they all assumed Marcus must be guilty because he's Black. It's all part of systemic racism."(133)
Zoe researches the Innocence Project, and she and Trevor, friends again, go on a search for Marcus' alibi witness in a plan to first prove to herself that Marcus is innocent and if so, to exonerate him.
This is a truly valuable story to begin important conversations about social justice and disparities
30. Merci Suarez Can't Dance by Meg Medina (MG)
When the science teacher asks Merci's lab group, "What do you scientists predict would really happen in this catastrophic scenario (earthquake)?" Lena answers, "Everyone would be really upset. The ground under their feet would be moving in a way they hadn't expected. Everything they thought was safe forever would be crumbling. They wouldn't know how to make it better or what to do next. They'd want things like they were before." (258) Lena is actually describing a real-life catastrophic scenario—the break in friendship between best friends Hannah and Merci, but she may as well be describing Mercedes Suarez's entire seventh grade year.
I knew when I first met Merci Suarez in Meg Medina's short story "Sol Painting" in the anthology Flying Lessons, that I would want to learn more about this young girl who was entering the confusing world of adolescence. I was thrilled when her story was expanded into a novel, Merci Suarez Changes Gears, in which she navigates sixth grade as a scholarship student at the private Seaward Academy and copes with the fact that her beloved grandfather has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
Now in seventh grade Merci is still challenged by middle school drama, shifting friendships, and the unkind comments of other students, supported by her two best friends Lena and Hannah and her very close, extended family, but things have changed. "…really the world is just spinning. I'm sick with all the trouble I'm in and sick with all the things that are different this year, too.… Nobody is the way they're supposed to be." (188-9)
Merci's brother has left for college, her aunt is dating, Hannah is hanging out with her enemy Edna, and Edna stands up for Merci against the school bully. No one is who she thinks they are. Preparing a science project, Merci reflects, "A geode sort of reminds me what Lolo used to say about people. That we all hold surprises." (154) And later, she wonders, "Why are people so complicated? Bad guys should always be just bad guys, and good guys should always be good guys. That way you'd be able to like them or hate them all the way through." (332)
On top of all this, her grandfather's condition is worsening. "Lolo barely moves. He's fading like one of those colorful street paintings Mr. Cahill works on. 'Everything vanishes,' h[Mr. Cahill] told us at the festival. 'Live in the moment. That's the whole point.' I swallow hard just thinking about the fact that it's true about people too. They vanish, sometimes a little at a time." (314)
Merci also begins thinking about boys and kissing and new ethical issues; when an incident happens at the school dance, she can't decide whether to own up or try to fix the problem. "Mami says feelings are tricky because sometimes they get disguised." (92)
But through all of this, she does make a difference in her school. Explaining the persistent microaggressions by Jason and the other kids at her private school to Miss McDaniels, "It's like getting paper cuts all the time, miss. They don't look like much, but they hurt, especially if you get a lot of them, day after day." (337-8) Maybe Merci Suarez can't dance but maybe she can use dancing to make a difference.
31. Shine, Coconut Moon by Neesha Meminger
"After September eleventh, I never felt more un-American in my whole life, yet at the same time, I felt the most American I've ever felt too. I never knew it, but this has been a recurring theme throughout my life and it seemed to get shoved into my face after the attacks on the World Trade Center." (150-151)
Samar Ahluwahlia is an Indian-American teen living in Linton, NJ, with her mother who turned her back on her family and religion. When the events of September 11th occurred, shaking Sam as well as her classmates and community, she didn't realize that those events would affect her personally. Until her Uncle Sandeep rang their doorbell.
"Before Uncle Sandeep walked back into my life, I'd never cared that I was a Sikh. It really didn't have much impact on my life,…. But that was before 9/11. The Saturday morning that Uncle Sandeep rang our doorbell had one of those endless, frozen blue skies hanging above it; the same kind of frozen blue sky that, just four days earlier, had born silent witness to a burning Pentagon and two crumbling mighty towers in New York City. And the cause of all those lost lives was linked to another bearded, turbaned man halfway around the world. And my regular, sort of popular, happily assimilated Indian-American butt got rammed real hard into the cold seat of reality." (10)
After becoming re-acquainted with her personable, loveable and loving, optimistic uncle, visiting his gurdwara (temple), and watching the harassment and hate aimed against him even though he is Indian, American, and Sikh, rather than the Middle Eastern and Muslim, Sammy decides she wants to learn more about Sikhism and meet her family, hoping to have what her best friend Molly has with her large Irish family. "This discovering more about myself stuff is addictive. It's like starting a book that you just can't out down, only it's better because the whole book is about you." (110)
After being termed a "coconut" by an Indian girl at school and learning about the WWII Japanese internment camps, Sam begins researching intolerance, joins a Sikh teen chat group, and convinces her mother to take her to visit her grandparents where she is exposed to the traditional "values" that caused her mother to rebel.
However, when Molly includes their childhood enemy Bobbi Lewis in their friendship and Sam finally acknowledges that the supportive Bobbi has changed or maybe isn't whom she thought, Sam realizes, "If we give them a chance, people could surprise us. Maybe if we didn't make up our minds right away, based on a few familiar clues, we'd leave room for people to show us a bunch of little, important layers that we never would have expected to see." (149)
Through the repercussions of 9/1l, her newly-expanded family and group of friends, her research into history and the Sikh religion, and experiencing the narrow-mindedness of her boyfriend, some of the kids at school, and even her grandparents, Sam realizes the dichotomy of being a coconut. "I thought of Balvir's definition of a coconut: brown on the outside, white on the inside, mixed-up, confused. And then Uncle Sandeep's: The coconut is also a symbol of resilience, Samar. Even in conditions where there's very little nourishment and even less nurturance, it flourishes, growing taller than most of the plants around it." (247)
32. Furia by Yamile Saied Mendez (YA)
"My mom smiled through her tears, 'Mamita, you can't have it all. You'll see.'"
Although I wanted to yell that this was the greatest lie told to girls like us for centuries, seeing the defeat in her eyes, I couldn't find my voice." (231)
Camila Hassan is one of the best futbol players in Rosario, Argentina. On the field she is known as La Furia, but she has to keep this part of her life secret from her mother and her abusive father, an ex-player himself. Her brother Pablo is working his way to national fame, and the family's hopes are centered on his success, but Camila proves herself to be an even better player.
When her childhood friend (and possibly more as of the night he left to play international soccer in Italy) returns home and declares his love, asking Camila to come to Italy with him, she feels sure that it is possible to have it all, but she learns that not everyone feels the same.
This is a novel of preconceptions and choices and the rights of girls to stay safe and follow their dreams.
"One day, when a girl was born in Rosario, the earth would shake with anticipation for her future and not dread." (296)
33. Chirp by Kate Messner (MG)
"All summer she'd been hoping she might find her way back to that girl in the picture, but she'd been thinking about it all wrong. It wasn't about finding her way back.…She'd have to find her way forward." (226-227)
Mia had been the type of girl that jumped off high rocks into the water, aiming for the Olympics in gymnastics, fearlessly trying new things. And then something happened that made her lose her voice, her confidence, her courage.
When her family moves back from Boston back to Vermont, Mia has a chance to help her grandmother with her cricket farm and business. As she observes the crickets and learn that "only the males chirp," she wonders, "Was it that [the females] couldn't chirp at all, no matter what? Or were the boy crickets so loud that they never got the chance?"
With the help of new friends she meets in Launch Camp, Mia solves the mystery threatening her grandmother's business and helps grow the cricket business. "Mia especially loved she had a new friend. One who was brave enough for both of them." (88) Through Warrior Camp, she slowly regains her confidence and courage to tell her parents about what happened in Boston as she learns to chirp loud enough to be heard.
Kate Messner's newest strong girl is the heroine of an important novel that teachers and librarians could pair with Barbara Dee's new novel Maybe He Just Likes You for MG readers—girls and boys.
34. Rescue by Jennifer A. Nielsen [historical fiction] (MG)
"Maman once told me that surviving in an occupied country meant we had to learn to live in the middle—somewhere between accepting our fate and outright resistance. With my next step, I left the middle." 97
On May 10, 1940 Germany invaded France. On May 11, Meg's British father left to fight the Germans, working on secret missions for the Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.). Almost two years later, 12-year-old Meg is helping the resistance in The Perche. When she is sought for questioning by the Nazis, Meg leaves France. With her are a young boy named Jakob and Arthur and Liesel, who are posing as his parents. Meg is tasked to help them escape to neutral Spain so that Arthur will give orders to free her father who was being hunted as an enemy of the Nazis. All Meg has to go on is a code from her father and a spy book from an injured resistance fighter. As Jakob and Meg work together and try to solve the code, they realize that there may be a traitor among them.
"Jakob stuffed his hands in his pockets. 'I was taught that everyone has three choices in life. To be part of the good, part of the evil, or to try standing in the middle. But I don't think that's true anymore. There is no middle. Those who refuse to choose one side or the other only get in the way of those who are doing good, and in that way, end up helping those who wish to do evil.'" (111)
Espionage. Secrecy. Danger. Mystery. Betrayal. Resistance. Heroes. Enemies. Traitors. Spies. This novel has it all and will engage the most reluctant of readers and challenge the more proficient readers.
"This war seemed to me like a chain of dominoes stacked on their ends. With the first invasion, one tile had toppled another, and then another and another. And not only in the destruction of governments and border lines but destroying dreams for the future and traditions of the past. Destroying families." (147)
Rescue is another well-written history fiction novel with engaging developed characters by Jennifer Nielsen. The Rules of War which title many of the chapters will generate conversations among readers.
35. The First Rule of Punk by Celia C. Perez (MG)
The first rule of punk is to "be yourself," but that's hard when your mom moves you a thousand miles from your home, friends, and father in Florida for two years in Chicago; when your SuperMexican Mom is always criticizing your Spanish, your clothes, and your vegetarianism; when the Mexican students in your new school call you a coconut—brown on the outside and white on the inside, and your new principal finds your talent not traditional enough to honor the man the school is named after.
Maria Luisa, or Malu, is the child of a divorced English professor mother and a record-store owner father. She makes zines, hates cilantro and spicy food, speaks mostly English, and loves punk. She feels "like Mom's Maria Luisa and my Malu are two different people. The only thing we have in common is an accent over a vowel."
She and her mother move to a Mexican neighborhood and middle school in Chicago, and Malu is not sure she will make friends (especially after meeting Mean Girl Selena), but she meets a group of outsiders and talks them into forming a punk rock band, the Co-Co's. When their act is cut from performing at the school's Fall Fiesta for not "fitting in," Malu plans an Alterna-Fiesta talent show where they will perform and she will sing in Spanish a song that is "not your abuela's music. "I looked over at Joe, Benny, and Ellie, who were blowing straw wrappers at each other. 'My friends.' I might have actually found my Yellow-Brick-Road posse." (318)
Told through a mixture of prose and zines, this is Celia C. Perez's first novel.
36. Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me by Gae Polisner (YA)
Adolescence is not simple, but especially not for fifteen-year-old JL Markham. JL is overwhelmed with every teen challenge there is, and, on top of it all, the ghost of Jack Kerouac is haunting her family: JL's father left for a 6-month job on the other side of the country for 6 months, then a year, now possibly longer; her mother suffers from dissociative disorder and continually writes letters to Jack Kerouac; her Nana is sure everything is "all right" but she constantly recounts her one kiss with Jack Kerouac when she was a young girl. And is it a coincidence that JL's name, Jean Louise, is similar to Jack Kerouac's real name Jean-Louis? What is the power of Jack Kerouac over her family?
In other bad news, her best friend forever (literally), Aubrey, has dropped her for two other friends who don't appear to like her. Her 19-year old, cool, sweet boyfriend Max is seen as a loser by others and, while not pressuring her into sex, is impatiently waiting until she turns 16; he is a poet at heart (and an ardent reader) but underneath a typical teenage boy. The tropical butterflies she raises do not live very long, which she knows but still makes her sad.
JL is a study in vulnerability and resilience. She has tough choices to make—to choose her boyfriend over her best friend; to have sex with Max even though she has vowed to wait until she is 16; to abandon her mother, betray her father and grandmother, and go to California with Max after his graduation. While it may appear that author Gae Polisner has heaped her heroine with more than one teen can expect, the sad truth is that many of our adolescents face some, if not all, of these challenges—family breakups, parental mental illness, sexual pressures, loss and abandonment.
Besides well-developed characters, I appreciate a well-structured plot. JL's story is told in flashbacks at different times and while this could be annoying, under Polisner's artful crafting, each flashback adds more complexity and understanding to the present plotline. A letter that JL is writing to Aubrey intersperses chapters and ends the story, letting us even further into the heart of the main character; we have seen where she was and we learn how far she has come. A hero's journey? A coming of age? As JL realizes "I'm just me, a sixteen-year-old girl." (270) Maybe things will now feel "okay."
37. Seven Clues to Home by Gae Polisner and Nora Raleigh Baskin (MG)
"But something else is pulling at me, knocking around in my insides, starting out like a whisper, like a song I sang all the time, but now I forget the words. (146)
Joy and Lukas met in second grade when, celebrating summer birthdays, they discovered their August birthdays were only two days apart. And they became best friends for the next five years. They even knew they would always be best friends, "Keepers of Secrets, Wizards of Clues, Growers of Gardens, King and Queen of Summer Birthdays, Holders of Hearts" (193)
But "there are some moments that change everything…" (157)
When Lukas dies on Joy's twelfth birthday, she lives through a year of pain and grief. On her thirteenth birthday, she decides to follow the clues that, as was their tradition, Lukas had left for her birthday the previous year.
This captivating novel which grabbed my heart and squeezed it, as I wanted to keep reading but couldn't face finishing and leaving these lovable characters, is written in alternating chapters narrated by Joy and Lukas.
Readers follow Lukas though the day before Joy's 12th birthday as he hides the clues leading to her present and wrestles with giving her the heart necklace that will declare his new feelings, fearful that she will not feel the same. Readers shadow Joy on her 13th birthday as she escapes the house and follows the clues around town. "I don't think I've been on my own, unaccounted for, this long in my whole life. But it feels good. Kind of like being let out after being hidden away—even if I did the hiding myself—like the sky clearing, and the air smells so fresh." (133)
We experience the depth of their friendship through memories and their commitment to the birthday clues. We also meet the family and townspeople who care about them.
There are moments that change everything and books that change everything. Seven Clues will be that book for many readers, especially those experiencing loss.
38. When You Know What I Know by Sonja K. Solter (MG)
"What if I hadn't gone down to the basement?…
What if I hadn't laughed at first?…
What if he thought that's what I wanted?…
What if these What-Ifs are right?…" (12-13)
Almost-eleven-year-old Tori is besieged with "What-Ifs" after she was sexually abused by her beloved uncle. At first her mother doesn't believe her.
"Honey, you must have
misunderstood.
You know how he plays around,
how goofy he is--
just like you." (6)
Her grandmother takes Uncle Andy's side. And her little sister Taylor is too young to tell, and her father lives across the country with his new family, and Tori doesn't want to tell her best friend Rhea. So is she to deal with this alone?
In the aftermath of the incident, Tori retreats from school, her best friend, trick or treating, chorus, and
"My world has gone
like my voice." (22)
"I don't say anything.
My Self
are still
Missing" (28)
Tori struggles with anger, shame, and sadness. When Uncle Andy says that Tori has started lying about things, her mother realizes that Tori has been telling the truth. She informs the school where her teachers are supportive and takes Tori to a therapist to work through the trauma. Tori finally shares her secret with her sister and Rhea, and her father comes to visit, but Tori wonders if she should have known better.
"I feel like
A stupid kid.
Who should have known." (62)
But when other kids come forward with allegations against Andy, Tori realizes,
"I do feel bad for them,
I do. But…
But it means
I'm not crazy." (169)
As Tori works her way through her trauma with the help of family, friends, and therapist, she has glimpses of healing,
"Do you think it's possible
To be happy in the middle of it all,
To feel your cheeks ache again with joy?" (199)
This is a novel critical to have available for young adolescents to read independently or, more effectively with a teacher, counselor, or therapist. Every 73 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted. And every 9 minutes, that victim is a child. One in 9 girls and 1 in 53 boys under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult (RAINN.org). Most people who sexually abuse children are friends, partners, family members, and community members. About 93 percent of children who are victims of sexual abuse know their abuser (YWCA.org). In writing Tori's story, the author's "hope…is that readers will be encouraged to tell their own truths…" (Author's Note, 208)
39. The List of Things that Will Not Change by Rebecca Stead (MG)
Beatrice narrates this story when she is twelve. "Telling a story is harder than I thought it would be." (35) This is the story of Bea when she was ten, "…a different me, a person who doesn't exist anymore." (2)
Bea's dad is gay and, when Bea was eight, he and her mother divorced. But they made her a list of things that would not change: specifically that they each still loved her and they still loved each other (but in a different way) and would still be a family (but in a different way) and they would always live near each other so Bea could have a home with each of them.
When Bea was ten, her father married Jesse. Their relationship was accepted and celebrated by most people—but as Sheila tells Bea, "You might as well know right now that there are people who will try to make you choose between who you are and who they want you to be. You have to watch out for those people." (140) The best part of the wedding was getting a new sister. Bea and Sonia have so much in common but why is Sonia not as excited?
This is a story of family and friends and love and acceptance, but it also is a story about feelings: worry and guilt and accepting oneself. As Miriam, Bea's therapist, helps her discover, "There are a lot of feelings behind feelings." (74)
A perfect story for upper elementary and middle grade readers, especially those who may be navigating complex feelings, changing family relationships, and complicated friendships as they discover who they are and who they are becoming.
40. Jackpot by Nic Stone (YA)
What would you do if you won the Mighty Millions Jackpot—all or even a portion of two hundred twelve million? What if even just some of that money could keep you from becoming homeless again, allow you the dream of college, take care of the health of your mother and little brother?
About 15 million children in the United States – 21% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty threshold. Rico Danger, the main character of Jackpot, is one of these children.
"…I think that this is totally what I've secretly wanted—being a normal teenager with friends that I hang out with in basements on Saturday nights…"
But Rico doesn't have time to hang out and make friends. She works as many shifts as possible at the Gas 'n Go to help her mother pay the rent and for other necessities, while juggling high school and taking care of her little brother while her mother works double shifts. Rico plans the budget, does the shopping, and worries about the bills, being the financially-responsible household member. She agonizes about their lack of health insurance, especially when her young brother gets sick. She dreads becoming homeless as when her mother's boyfriend kicked them out. And she keeps her head down at school, ashamed of her thrift store clothing.
But on Christmas Eve, working at the Gas 'n Go, Rico sells two lottery tickets to an older woman who lets her keep one of the tickets for herself. When it is announced that one of the lottery winners bought the ticket at her store, Rico is sure it was the ticket bought by this woman, the ticket Rico did not choose. As the winnings go unclaimed, Rico plans to find this woman, remind her of the ticket, and hopefully get a cut of the winnings. She swallows her pride and asks Alexander Macklin, the handsome, rich, popular Zan who was also in the store on Christmas Eve, to help her identify and find this lady.
As Rico and Zan and his two friends spend more time together, she experiences not only the life she was missing but learns that things—and people—are not always what they seem and maybe they all have more control over their circumstances than she thought.
All the characters captivated me from the beginning. An added bonus were the short chapters told from the point of view of objects—the lottery ticket, the taxi cab, bed sheets, ….
41. Sadie by Courtney Summers (YA)
"And so it begins, as so many stories do, with a dead girl." (1)
Cold Creek, Colorado. Population: 800.
Nineteen-year-old Sadie Hunter's younger sister was murdered—not far from the trailer park where they lived. Mattie was the sister Sadie loved with all her heart and raised from the time Mattie was born but especially after their mother, Claire, left. Sadie is sure she knows who murdered Mattie—their mother's ex-boyfriend who abused 10-year-old Sadie and possibly Mattie, the man whom they knew as Keith but others knew under a variety of names in different towns.
Sadie takes off to avenge her sister's death, following lead after lead, determined to track down Keith and kill him. And along the way she finds other victims—and other perpetrators.
Three months after Sadie's car is found abandoned and law enforcement has declared her "another runaway," her surrogate grandmother, May Beth Foster, reaches out to radio personality Wes McCray, the WNRK New York producer of the show Always Out There, as her last hope of finding Sadie. "I can't take another dead girl." (9)
As he searches for Sadie, interviewing people who knew her, detectives in the towns Sadie traveled through, and those who came in contact with her during her quest, following leads and hunches, at times wishing his boss would let him quit the assignment, Wes becomes more consumed as the story that will become his serialized podcast develops.
Alternating chapters between "The Girls" podcast episodes with its in-person and phone interviews and Sadie's first-person account from the day she left, we learn about the strong, resilient, resourceful teen who grew up in poverty, without love, bullied because of a stutter, whose only concern is avenging Mattie's death and saving children like her.
"Girls go missing all the time." (15)
42. Say It Out Loud by Allison Varnes
"So you left the only real friend you had to avoid getting picked on." (140)
After Tristan and Josh cause problems on the school bus, teasing everyone and putting gum in Ben's hair, sixth-grader Charlotte Andrews' best friend Maddie goes to the principal. The boys retaliate by focusing their bullying on her. Afraid of being bullied herself, Charlotte walks past their seat and abandons Maddie. When it becomes clear that Maddie no longer considers her a friend, she feels guilty but doesn't have the courage to fix things. Charlotte continues to stand wordlessly by as the bullying becomes worse.
Charlotte has always been nervous about speaking out loud because of her stutter. "I hate the moment when someone realizes I'm different. It changes the way they look at me." (11) Maddie was the one person, besides her parents, who never looked at her differently.
Since she cannot think of any way to make Maddie feel better, Charlotte starts writing encouraging notes to other students, first to Ben and then to random students. "…I don't sign them with my real name. No one is going to care where they came from. It's the words that matter." (127) The note writing campaign spreads. "Did I cause this? Is that even possible? I've left so many notes all over the school. Could it be that my words inspired other kids to leave notes of their own?" (230)
Meanwhile her mother makes Charlotte take the musical drama class and, even though she has a beautiful voice, she flubs her audition for her favorite musical The Wizard of Oz and is cast in two minor roles. But she has a great attitude: "I still wish I had a role where I could at least get a little glammed up, but watching the other kids get into their costumes reminds me that every role is important. And I'm going to be the best apple tree and horse's butt there ever was." (174-5)
And even when the snobbish Aubrey, who is cast in the role she wanted, is mean to her, Charlotte leaves her a supportive note. "It's so hard to give her a compliment when she was horrible about me trying out for Glinda. But this is about making her feel better, not my hurt feelings. Even if it is hard to say, I know I still have to be kind." (105)
When the drama program is threatened, Charlotte uses her new note-writing strategy to organize a letter writing campaign by cast and crew, finding her voice.
Through this, Charlotte finds the courage to speak out and right her wrong, moving from bystander to upstander. "If I'd just had the courage to stand by my friend in the first place, things would be so different. I wasted too much time being afraid." (238)
This is a novel that needs to be in every classroom, school, and community library for grades 5-8. It can be effectively grouped with other books about Bullying, a critical topic for middle school conversations.
43. The Shape of Thunder by Jasmine Warga (MG)
Another two girls who are stronger together than apart.
With most novels I have to slide into the lives of characters, getting to know them over chapters so I can care about them and their challenges, but Jasmine Warga's newest characters, Cora and Quinn, entered my heart in their first two chapters of their story.
Former best friends, the twelve-year-olds became estranged the previous November 11th when Porter, Quinn's older brother, killed Cora's sister Mabel in a school shooting. Cora is consumed with grief as Quinn becomes consumed with guilt.
Cora mother left when she was a toddler, and she and Mabel were raised by their Lebanese father and maternal grandmother. Cora and Quinn were best friends from age two. Cora was always there to help Quinn when her brain had a "Freeze-Up" and she had trouble getting words out; Quinn was there to make the serious Cora laugh.
Mabel was the perfect sister until she started high school and started acting like a "big sister"; Porter was the typical big brother—one of Quinn's memories was when he helped her climb down from a very tall tree—until he changed and became mean, spending most of his time in his room on the Internet. "I know it's in this room that he decided to become the type of person who did the horrible things that he did. It's in this room that he decided to become full of hate. I glance all around, looking for the clues of what led him to it, but I don't find any."(96) And then came the day he took his father's gun to the high school and shot Mabel and two others. Was it because Mabel was Muslim? Why were the other two—a student and a teacher—shot?
It is almost a year from the killings when Quinn reads that some scientists believe in the possibility of time travel, and she hatches a plan for Cora and her to travel back in time to save Mabel and maybe even save Porter. Even though Cora blames Quinn for her brother's actions and refuses to have anything to do with her, Quinn realizes that Cora, a collector of facts and research, will be hooked by the idea of time travel. "Her mind is like a treasure chest of mid-blowing facts. And when she shares them with you, it makes you start to believe that the world is actually a pretty amazing place. It makes you see everything a little differently."(62) As Quinn hopes, Cora is intrigued and desperate to save Mabel.
As the two girls work together to locate a wormhole, I, not usually a fan of novels about magic or fantasy, started praying for magic to happen. "'And the thing I know about magic is that you have to look for it,' Quinn says." (123). Through the story told in alternating chapters, my heart broke for the two of them. I looked for magic and found it in this novel.
44. Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga (MG)
What happens when you have to leave your home and move far away within another, dominant culture? How does that place become "home"?
When trouble spreads to Jude's small Syrian city on the sea, a city formerly filled with tourists, and her older brother joins the revolution, seventh-grader Jude and her pregnant mother immigrate to America, leaving behind her Baba, his store, and her best friend to move in with her uncle, his American wife, and their daughter. Life in Cincinnati is very different; Jude's English is not as good as she had hoped and her popular seventh-grade cousin Sarah is afraid she will seem "weird," like her new friend Layla whose parents came from Lebanon and wears a hajab.
Jude tries to assimilate but
"I am no longer/a girl./I am a Middle Eastern girl./A Syrian girl./A Muslim girl.
Americans love labels./They help them know what to expect./Sometimes, though,/I think labels stop them from/thinking." (92)
As she learns more English, practicing slang with the four members of her ESL class, and becomes friends with Layla and Miles, a boy from her math class fascinated with stars and the galaxy, a boy who understands feeling "weird," Jude misses Baba, Fatima, and Auntie Amal, and worries about Issa. However, at the same time, she becomes closer to her aunt, speaks Arabic with her uncle, and starts thinking of the old house as home. Becoming a young woman, she begins wearing her scarves, although she has to convince her aunt that this is her own choice.
Jude discovers that belonging is complicated. Layla tells her she is "lucky" that she comes from somewhere rather than being a Middle Eastern girl in America who, if she moved to Jordan, would be an American girl in the Middle East. "Lucky. I am learning how to say it/over and over again in English./I am learning how it tastes—/sweet with promise/and bitter with responsibility." (168) Even the very American teen Sarah seems to want to embrace her other culture; she asks to learn Arabic and points out that, as cousins, they look much alike.
When Jude follows her brother's wish that she be brave, she tries out for the school musical, even though Layla says, "Jude, those parts aren't for girls like us.…/ We're not girls who/glow in the spotlight." "'But I want to be,' I say." (206)
Jude has a chance to talk to her brother and although his life is full of danger, they are both "doing It" and "We are okay with learning our lines/because we are liking the script—/maybe, just maybe, we have both finally found roles/that make sense to us./Roles where we feel seen/as we truly are." (324)
Jasmine Warga's new verse novel celebrates cultures and a strong, resilient, brave young adolescent who bridges them.
45. Genesis Begins Again by Alicia D. Williams (MG)
"We're gonna get evicted again. If we get evicted again, you said you're gonna leave…. I'm tired of coming home and our stuff's on the lawn waiting for crackheads to steal it. I'm tired of staying in people's basements! Why can't you just pay the rent! Just stop gambling and pay the rent!" (280)
Eighth-grader Genesis Anderson's family has been evicted four times already. Her father has a gambling problem and is an alcoholic but somehow he moves them from Detroit to a house in the fashionable Farmington Hills. But again the rent is not paid, and they will probably lose this home also.
Genesis has other problem, problems with other kids at her schools calling her names based on the darkness of her skin. Her parents are from complicated families with ideas about skin color and class. Genesis hates the color of her skin and the texture of her hair, wishing she looked like her beautiful light-skinned mother. "'I can't stand you, ' I say to my reflection." (10) She thinks her father has rejected her because she is dark like he is. "What if I inherited all Dad's ways? What if no one recognizes that I'm…one of the good ones?" (154) "Every single night I've prayed for God to make me beautiful—make me light. And every morning I wake up exactly the same." (157)
Even though she is finally making friends in her new school, two friends—Todd and Sophia—who know what it's like to be stereotyped and bullied and like Genesis for who she is, she tries to bleach her skin and relax her hair to fit in, become popular, and please her father and grandmother.
Through her chorus teacher's discovery of her singing talent and introductions to the music of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Eta James, Genesis finds the courage to audition for the school talent show and sing. "I can't believe it. I did it. I, Genesis Anderson, stepped out onto that stage and sang. Out loud. In Public. Alone." (249) At the actual performance, she discovers her strength. "I let each word soar. I swoop down to hug the little girl sitting on the curb with all her furniture. I visit the girl in the basement with the wrinkled brown bag passing from hand to hand. I kiss the lonely girl who hears ugly taunts from the mirror. I experience every moment. And I'm not afraid." (348)
46. Dear Student by Elly Swartz
Molly (Finding Perfect), Frankie (Smart Cookie), Maggie (Give and Take) and Autumn (Dear Student). What do all these characters have in common? challenges (OCD, parental loss, and childhood hoarding), heart, courage, resilience—and Elly Swartz, their creator.
Her best —and only—friend has moved across the country, her father left to join the Peace Corps, and her mother had to rent out their house and move Autumn and her little sister, Pickle, above her veterinary clinic. Navigating middle school is tough, even though kids some make it look easy; navigating middle school when you are shy and have lost your best friend and father and home is hard.
In his postcards her father encourages shy Autumn to seize the day and find her "one thing." Autumn thinks her one thing may be serving as the secret writer of the Dear Student column of the school paper. "It's so much easier to find the words when they aren't for me. When I don't have to say them out loud." (98) She is surprised but delighted when she is chosen. Her advisor sees something in her that she is not sure is there, and he advises recommends that she just speak from her heart.
Autumn finds that she can give good advice and, as the year begins, she makes two new friends, Cooper who just moved to their town, and Logan, who seems to have no trouble making friends and talking to people. Autumn finds her relationship with these two to be complicated.
Both friends have their challenges: Logan's mother is a human rights attorney and rarely home which makes Logan needy, and Cooper's mother works for the beauty products company that Autumn and Logan want to protest against because of their animal testing policy. "I'm a bundle of confusion. I have two friends who want something different. Something opposite."
Being Dear Student in secret is complicated. "The friend who doesn't know that I know that she asked me [as Dear Student] for advice is taking the advice I gave, But the other friend who doesn't know I'm the one giving advice is mad about the advice I [as Dear Student] gave." (192) Her mother advises, "When you care about both sides of something [safety of animals and Cooper's mother's job], it can also feel complicated.… When fighting for something you believe in, you have to stay true to yourself and focus on the parts you can control." (218)
Middle grade friendships are challenging. Logan is not quite the true friend she appears to be. When Logan forgets her birthday party, "I don't tell her that I was never really mad. Just sad. That being forgotten is the thing I am most afraid of." (112) That and some of her other actions make Autumn question friendship. Luckily, Cooper stays true, and throughout all this, Autumn has the support of Prisha, even from thousands of miles away, "You can't be afraid to do things that are important to you…. And just be you, okay?" (252)
And when it matters most, Autumn learns to speak up, as herself, not as Dear Student.
This is a book which acknowledges the complications of relationships and encourages young adolescents to find their one thing.
Sometimes We Are Stronger Together: Strong Girl and Boy Partnerships
47. A Way Between Words by Melanie Crowder (MG)
"There was no backup plan. All the worlds would fall under Somni control if someone didn't stop the priests. Apparently, that someone was [Griffin]." (150)
"She was only herself. Stubborn, impatient, all-too human Fi. How could she be any different? But Great-Aunt Una had believed she could be more. Was that why Eb had stepped in front of the blow meant for her because there was supposed to be something special about Fi? Something she could do to save Vinea that no one else could?" (116)
In Melanie Crowder's new novel, A Way Between Worlds, read will meet the ultimate strong boy and girl. Readers first meet fifth-grader Griffith who has to travel to another world to save his father in The Lighthouse Between the Worlds where we also meet Fiona, a young Vinean resistance fighter who is living on Somni and grieving the loss of her family and her world.
But their strength and heroism is tested in this sequel. In Crowder's universe, Vinea, the land of greenery; Caligo, a world made of air; Maris, where water and song intertwine; and even Earth where all elements work together, are invaded by the wicked priests who control the minds of the armies on Somni and "use that power to attack and colonize every world in their reach." (3)
Through the two books, readers are witness to Griffith's growth as he travels the hero's journey. As Fi observes, "When he first showed up on Somni, he did everything wrong—I thought he was going to bring the whole resistance down.…But he was so sure that was exactly where he needed to be…." (128)
Readers also share Fi's journey as she discovers her powers and recognizes and nurtures the powers of others.
Separately, on different worlds the two young adolescents take risks to save the all worlds, not only "theirs." "It doesn't matter what world we're from. If we don't stand together sooner or later they'll come for us all." (159)
This novel is a true sequel and cannot be understood without reading The Lighthouse Between the Worlds (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), but who would not wish to spend two novels' worth of time immersed in lovely, powerful language which provides a visual experience, with delightful characters who expand their idea of family to encompass the peoples of five worlds.
48. Trowbridge Road by Marcella Pixley (MG)
Since the first AIDS cases were reported in the United States in June 1981, the number of cases and deaths among persons with AIDS increased rapidly during the 1980s. (CDC). By the end of 1983, 2807 cases of AIDS—and 2118 deaths—had been reported. (NYC Aids Memorial).
One of those cases was June's father.
After June's father died, her mother, a celloist, shuttered herself up in her house, barely leaving the bedroom, terrified of anything that could possibly cause disease. She wouldn't go down to the kitchen because of its proximity to the door through which anything could come through, and as a result, June was frequently without food, except when Uncle Toby brought food during the week. Unfortunately, on the visits he was permitted, he missed the signs of his sister-in-law's mental illness.
When June went out, she was not to play with the other children and she needed to leave any disgustingness behind with endless baths with Clorox bleach. She spent her days in Nana Jean's copper beech tree watching Trowbridge Road and the world move on without her. "All the comings and goings of life." (8)
And then Ziggy moved in with Nana Jean. Ziggy's mother was an addict, abused by her boyfriend. Ziggy had a ferret and a fantastical imagination. And June had a friend who understood her and what she needed.
"[Ziggy's] heart was beating. It was gentle like my daddy's heart. It knew what kind of sadness lived inside that house, even before there was such a thing as AIDS. It knew what happens to a person when they hold on to secrets for too long, or what happens to a home when it becomes a holding place for those secrets, It crumbles. It burns." (288)
As June and Ziggy seek refuge in the magical Majestica where they have control of their lives.
June mother becomes worse until June realizes that she can, or should, no longer cover for her. "When I was alone with her, it was easier to pretend that things made sense. But with Uncle Toby in the kitchen, cringing every time she spoke, I found myself suddenly off balance. It was as though I had been walking on a rope bridge a hundred feet up. The bridge swayed back and forth over a raging river, but I had been keeping myself steady by pretending the bridge was strong.…I suddenly saw that the bridge was made of fayed rope, and with every step I swayed from a dizzying height. That raging water I thought was lovely would actually kill me if I missed a step." (172-3)
The two children find help though the adults who love them—Nana Jean and Uncle Toby.
This is the story of children and adults dealing with many of the problems faced by today's families—mental illness, grief, abandonment, abuse, addiction, and bullying. This is a story of the destruction caused by secrets and the healing possible though relationships and those who believe in magic. It is a compassionate story that will break hearts and give hope.
49. Born Behind Bars by Padma Ventrakamen (MG)
A boy who survives through the strength modeled by a "strong girl."
Kabir Khan, the son of a Muslim father and Hindu mother, was born behind bars in a prison in Chennai, his mother wrongly accused of a theft before he was born. He has lived his life in deplorable conditions—little food, no privacy, intermittent water availability, and no freedom. His only happiness is being with his Amma and his teacher at the prison school.
But at age 9 his life becomes even worse when, too old to live in prison, he is to be released into the streets. "I tell myself I'm free. I'm outside where I dreamed of going, but I feel like a fish in a net being lifted out of the water I've lived in all my life."(59)
Claimed by a man who says he is his uncle, he faces his first dangerous situation. "My 'uncle' is selling me." (72)
Kabir escapes and navigates the streets with the help of a new friend, the resilient Rana, an adolescent girl who has lived on the streets —and in the trees— and killing her own food—squirrel and crow stews—since her Kurava (Roma) family was attacked, her father killed. She teaches Kabir how to survive street life. He has two goals: to find his father and find a lawyer to release his mother from prison. "I can just imagine Amma walking out of that gray building—me holding one of her hands and my father holding the other." (93) His command of both Kannada and Tamil languages are an asset and when following his Amma's wishes to be good, he returns a lady's lost earring, he and Rana and rewarded with tickets to Bengaluru to find his father's parents.
In Bengaluru Kabir and Rana learn to trust and find new lives that allow them to both have hope again.
Filled with memorable characters, this emotional story will bring empathy and cultural awareness to upper elementary/middle-grade readers; its short chapters will provide a good read-aloud for teachers, librarians, and parents.
50. Paradise on Fire by Jewell Parker Rhodes
"To know yourself, you need to journey, Adaugo. Remember what's forgotten." (7)
I just met one of the strongest girls in MG/YA literature!
"I need to see everything. I need to know where to run, where to hide…where to stay. Where to fly. Escape. Flee. From what? My mind answers, 'Fire.'" (64)
Adaugo is enrolled in Wilderness Adventures, a summer camp in Paradise, Califormia, for a group of six Black teens from eastern cities. There she meets fellow campers Jay, Nessa, Kelvin, A'Leia, DeShon, and counselors Jamie and Dylan. Most important she meets Leo, ranch owner and environmentalist, and his dog Ryder.
Pretty much a loner, Addy lives with her Nigerian grandmother, her Bibi, who has raised her ever since her parents were killed in a house fire when she was four and her mother threw her out the window to safety. Since then, Addy is obsessed with mazes, maps, escape routes.
At the camp they learn to hike, climb, repel, and respect nature. Addy sees them all becoming stronger. "We're pulling far, far,…farther away from being our old selves, just city kids. I'm becoming new. More me." (87)
Leo sees Addy's needs and teaches her how to read maps and map the natural environment. He knows that in the forest everyone needs an escape route. "Forests burn. Animals' homes are destroyed. As our planet warms, there are more heat related deaths." (119) However, "97 percent of wildfires are ignited by people." (Afterword, 244)
When the six teens and their counselors leave for their final hike and campout, fire breaks out and the group disagrees on the right way out of the forest. Dylan and Jaime insist on hiking north where the ranch is , taking Kelvin and A'Leia with them while Addy's instincts tell her to go the opposite way, toward water. She is convinced there is a way out. "There's always a way out. Use your mind, your heart." (157) Jay, Nessa, and DeShon follow her, believe in her.
On a harrowing journey, the four, led by Addy, work together, employing the skills and knowledge they have cultivated on their city streets and in the wilderness. Addy realizes, "Jay's awesome; Nessa's kind; and DeShon's actually a good guy. They're my crew—never had one before. Who knew? Never knew how much I needed one." (158) "Survival is more than just me." (205)
This is a true survival story, featuring a teen who is resilient and caring and learns to rely on her instincts— and learns a love for nature. It is a novel filled with details, and information, and will engage readers looking for adventure and readers who are future environmentalists and anyone who loves beautiful language and imagery. "Pancake clouds float. Mountain clouds burst, scatter as the plane flies through them." (9) Written in short sentences, it a novel appropriate for both emerging and proficient readers and even though the characters are teens is appropriate for grades 4- and up.
I have found the most effective way to confront difficult topics while still presenting a variety of perspectives and differentiated reading experiences for our diverse readers is through reading in book clubs. Book Clubs provide safe spaces for readers to discuss these characters and how they handle challenges while sometimes connecting to their own experiences. Talking Texts: A Teachers' Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum was written to provide teachers and librarians with strategies to group appropriate books, teach discussion skills, and facilitate book clubs of disparate readers.
A middle school and high school teacher for twenty years, Lesley Roessing was the Founding Director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project at Georgia Southern University (formerly Armstrong State University) where she was also a Senior Lecturer in the College of Education. In 2018-19 she served as a Literacy Consultant with a K-8 school. Lesley served as past editor of Connections, the award-winning journal of the Georgia Council of Teachers of English. As a columnist for AMLE Magazine, she shared before, during, and after-reading response strategies across the curriculum through ten "Writing to Learn" columns. She has written 23 guest-blogs for YA Wednesday. Lesley now works independently—writing, providing professional development in-service and workshops in literacy to schools through Zoom, and visiting classrooms to facilitate reading and writing lessons. She can be contacted at lesleyroessing@gmail.com or through Facebook Messenger.
Lesley is the author of five professional books for educators on reading, writing, and grammar:
Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically & Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core
Comma Quest: The Rules They Followed. The Sentences They Saved
No More "Us" & "Them: Classroom Lessons and Activities to Promote Peer Respect
The Write to Read: Response Journals That Increase Comprehension
Talking Texts: A Teachers' Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum
and has contributed chapters to four anthologies:
Young Adult Literature in a Digital World: Textual Engagement though Visual Literacy
Queer Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the English Language Arts Curriculum
Story Frames for Teaching Literacy: Enhancing Student Learning through the Power of Storytelling
Fostering Mental Health Literacy through Adolescent Literature
Expanding our Embrace: Including Stories with International Settings by Padma Venkatraman
Padma Venkatraman is the author of BORN BEHIND BARS, THE BRIDGE HOME, A TIME TO DANCE, ISLAND'S END and CLIMBING THE STAIRS. Her novels have, in total, garnered numerous honors, received over twenty-two starred reviews, and won several awards such as a WNDB Walter Dean Myers Award, SCBWI Golden Kite Award, Crystal Kite Award, Nerdy Book Award, Julia Ward Howe Boston Authors Club Award, Malka Penn Honor, ASTAL RI Book of the Year Award, two South Asia Book Awards, two Paterson Prizes, and more. Visit her at www.padmavenkatraman.com and follow her on Twitter (@padmatv) or ig/fb (@venkatraman.padma), and learn more about her latest novel, BORN BEHIND BARS, at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/647196/born-behind-bars-by-padma-venkatraman/
I chose on my own, at nineteen, to leave my country of origin and journey half-way across the world alone, before deciding (entirely by myself) to become a citizen of the United States. I hope I'll live long enough to write that story; but my first five novels are set in India which I'll likely revisit often in my stories, because I feel a burning responsibility to write books set in South Asia with South Asian characters for our young people.
Having grown up in India, I probably have a deeper insight into its culture and history than authors who grew up here. Still, writing stories set in India for young people living in the United States isn't easy. When I revise, I must re-read with American and Indian mindsets: I can't afford to confuse mainstream readers, nor do I wish to bore readers familiar with the cultural milieu. An Indian character would take for granted many things an American reader may find odd (e.g. taking shoes off before entering a home). Even "shaking" the head isn't simple – Indians don't nod and their body language is different. And should I use Indian words/expressions? When we write stories with international settings peopled by international characters, we walk a tightrope: say too much and readers will be jerked out of the narrative; say too little and readers may complain they feel lost. Luckily, I didn't think about how much harder it is to historical fiction set elsewhere when I began my debut, Climbing The Stairs, which is set in India during WWII.
Most books published for young Americans are set in America. Many brilliant global narratives that have been published to great acclaim in our country tend to be stories that tell of immigration so that they begin elsewhere but end in the States (e.g. Inside Out and Back Again, Audacity), or feature an American protagonist (e.g. Many Stones, Orchards). Far fewer novels are set entirely in another country with an international cast. It's understandable and justifiable that books and conversations in our community focus on literature that celebrates diversity within our nation. But hearing people say they're only interested in American diversity upsets me. Unarguably, it's vital to expose young readers to all aspects of diversity within our culture. Yet we must also remember to include international narratives.
If we encounter Cuba in a history book or social studies lesson, we may only remember how this country differs from ours; when we visit Cuba through the eyes of Drum Dream Girl who lives there, we imbibe her love of Cuban music (without it sounding exotic). Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and The Jumbies reveal that other countries have rich, imaginative storytelling traditions, too. Muslim and non-Muslim readers of Amal Unbound learn that Islam can be the majority religion. By briefly sharing Tree-Ear's world-view in A Single Shard, we comprehend that people of other nationalities may be as proud of artistic heritage as we are. The Red Pencil, Like Water on Stone and Between Shades of Gray invite us to experience familial love, even though they portray genocide. News reports about violence perpetrated in another country cannot provide this subtle balance; indeed, if we don't acknowledge the potential for bias in nonfiction, it may leave us feeling righteous, superior or judgmental. One Plastic Bag reveals that people can solve problems ingeniously and without international assistance. Twenty-Two Cents demonstrates that original thinkers sometimes arrive at unique, ingenious ideas by taking quite the opposite of an accepted / American approach.
A reader remarked that A Time To Dance mirrored her disability experience, yet provided a window into the lives of people with disabilities in India. The Bridge Home's international location provides a buffer as well as a starting point to reflect on social justice issues in America.
Similarly, my latest novel, Born Behind Bars, centers a topic that is vital for us to consider, here in the United States: injustice within the criminal justice system. Born Behind Bars is inspired by the true story of a young person who was released from jail, while his mother remained incarcerated for years without having had a chance to stand trial. There are, for sure, many differences between Indian society, in which the protagonist of Born Behind Bars lives, and our society in the United States, but I hope the story will move readers deeply enough that they will discuss fundamental questions about the inequities that exist, not just in Indian society, but also in whatever society they call their own.
Introspection, and seeing the similarities among cultures is a gift that international narratives may bring. But they can do more. When we read books we love, we identify with characters. So, when we read a book with an international protagonist, we don another nationality - albeit superficially and fleetingly. We are forced to see through other eyes, minds and hearts; encouraging us, hopefully, to stop labeling human beings "aliens." We experience shared humanity through the universality of emotion (although emotions may be expressed differently, depending on time / place / circumstance). We encounter new problem-solving approaches. We appreciate that one question may have several valid answers. We respect other paradigms regardless of whether we share them. We acknowledge that other country's citizens feel patriotic fervor and increase our knowledge of their achievements - knowledge necessary to cultivate humility in our hearts. Humility of this kind is to be treasured, not feared, because such humility is perfectly capable of peacefully co-existing with a healthy pride in one's own nation.
Just as we're individuals and members of families, we're American and global stewards. Just as self-interest is often secured and promoted when we work for our family's welfare, our national interest often requires international co-operation (not competition). Co-operation is founded on trust. Trust is built on a foundation of knowledge and understanding that stories foster because they transport us - not only into another place or time but into another's soul – affording insights into world history and culture even if we can't travel, and encouraging us to breakdown stereotypes and prejudices so we move beyond tolerance, toward mutual acceptance. Stories are keys that unlock compassion.
If there's one thing that the pandemic has taught us, it's that there's an urgent need for humans to come together, and that cooperation is a far more compassionate and intelligent way to move forward than competition. And international stories can lay the groundwork for global connections by nurturing empathy, which may help readers unite in the future to defeat crises that threaten to destroy the earth we humans call home.
Novels, Memoirs, Graphics, and Picture Books to Commemorate September 11th by Lesley Roessing
Updated!! 9/11/2021
A friendship with Lesley Roessing is a gift. During the last several years we have been able to meet up twice at NCTE Conferences. Aside from these all too brief face to face meetings, we have managed to stay connected through email and through Lesley's wonderful blog posts. She is one of the most prolific readers and book reviewers I know. She keeps me informed about books and authors that need to be on my radar. I am always grateful for her blog posts.
Perhaps her most important posts have been those associated with 9/11. Without question, there are events in our lives that become markers because of their impact on society. For me, I remember clearly three crucial events -- The assassination of President John F. Kennedy, when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and when planes struck the twin towers on 9/11/01. All three shaped how I see and respond to people and the world we inhabit. (I am quite sure the day Covid 19 began to personally effect my life --March 12, 2020-- will be another.)
Reuters/ Sara K. Schwittek
Lesley has write about YA literature surrounding the events of 9/11 on three different occasions. You can find them below:
9/7/2018: Eleven Novels for Nine/Eleven: Studying & Discussing 9/11 through Diverse Perspectives" by Lesley Roessing
9/9/2019: 15 Novels to Generate Important Conversations about the Events & Effects of Nine Eleven by Lesley Roessing
9/9/2020: Examining the Events of September 11th through MG/YA Novels by Lesley Roessing
These year is the 20th time we will recite the names of those we lost. We have to acknowledge that non of the students in our k-12 schools were not alive, yet the consequences of those reverberate through their live in a variety of ways. In politics, in immigration policies. and in armed conflicts, just to mention a few. Of course, we must consider the lives of people who lost family and friends.
This year Lesley marks the event by reviewing more books and collecting some comments by YA authors who have written about that fateful day.
20 MG/YA Novels to Commemorate the 20th Anniversary of 9/11
(+1 Graphics Collection)
by Lesley Roessing
No historical event may be as unique and complicated to discuss and teach as the events of September 11, 2001, the day terrorists crashed planes into, and destroyed, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. At the time of this event no child in our present K-12 educational system was yet born, but, in most cases, their parents and educators would have been old enough to have some knowledge of, and even personal experience with, these events, making this a very difficult historic event for many to teach. However, with the devastation and impact of these events on our past, present, and future and as ingrained a part of history these events are, they need to be discussed and understood as much as possible.
On this 20th anniversary, the incidents of September 11, 2001 are still vivid in the minds and hearts of those who experienced and were able to comprehend these events. Many of our students have still not learned about the events, and many others do not realize the impact of those events on their world. One of the most effective ways to learn about any historical event, and the distinctions and effects of that event, is through a novel study—the power of story.
I have found the most effective way to confront difficult topics while still presenting a variety of perspectives and differentiated reading experiences for our diverse readers is through reading in book clubs. It has been eye-opening—and rewarding—to visit schools and facilitate book clubs using novels written about the events of 9/11 from differing perspectives. When classes read 5-6 novels about 9/11 in small groups of students who are collaboratively reading, they can access differing perspectives to a story and generate important conversations within each book club and between book clubs. Book clubs gives readers safe spaces to discuss sensitive topics and their own feelings. A complete unit on this topic for English-Language Arts and Social Studies classes is outlined—with daily focus lessons and student examples—in chapter 10 of Talking Texts: A Teachers' Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum
I have previously written three guest blogs for YA Wednesday on novels set around 9/11 and decided on this anniversary to interview some of the authors of these important and necessary novels which should be in every community and school library and grade 4-12 ELA and social studies classroom libraries.
I asked some of the authors three questions, requesting that they choose one to answer. I share their fascinating answers.
Jewell Parker Rhodes, author of Towers Falling
Wendy Mills, author of All We Have Left
Gae Polisner, author of In Memory of Things
Tom Rogers, author of Eleven
Kerry O'Malley Cerra, author of Just a Drop of Water
Nora Raleigh Baskin, author of Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story
Julie Buxbaum, author of Hope and Other Punchlines
Catherine Stine, author of Refugees
1. How/Why did you decide to write a novel about the effect of 9/11
Tom Rogers, author of Eleven:
Most story ideas emerge over time, but I can pinpoint the birth of Eleven to September 11, 2008. My nephew was visiting us in California and asked, "Uncle T, what's the big deal about 9/11?" His question shocked me at first, but a bit of digging revealed that schools weren't teaching about it; the topic was too fraught, and there were almost no books for kids to help tell the story of that awful day. Ironically, my nephew had just interviewed an older friend of mine, a Holocaust survivor who speaks to schoolkids about his experience so that humanity will never forget. I realized we need to be telling the story of 9/11 to future generations so that we, too, will always remember how the world changed that day.
Gae Polisner, author of The Memory of Things:
After 9/11, and pretty much for the first time in my life, I was having a hard time coping. I had young children at home and suddenly didn't feel our world or country was safe for them anymore. Of course, in my earliest childhood, I was raised against a backdrop of, and always well aware of, war as my father was a young M.A.S.H. surgeon in Viet Nam, gone for a whole year. But beyond that, my childhood had felt safe and our country was in a peaceful and prosperous period where it -- we -- all felt pretty invincible. Until 9/11.
For weeks after, then months, that stretched closer to a year, I felt scared and off balance. Living under an hour from my beloved NYC (where I had lived pre-children), I didn't want to go in, ride over the bridges, visit landmarks I had loved. I was searching for ways to cope, and my brain started telling me to write about it. Write it out in story, with characters who are resilient and figure out how to rise against the immediate backdrop of destruction and despair. And so were born Kyle and the bird girl. Only typing this answer now does the "bird rising" connection even come to me.
2. How did you decide on the perspective your novel presents or the characters/setting you created to tell the story of the effects of 9/11?
Wendy Mills, author of All We Have Left:
The primary emotion we associate with 9/11 is grief and anger, but when I decided to write this story, I knew I wanted to shine a light on the incredible bravery and strength of the people trapped in the Towers, as well as the families dealing with the loss of their loved ones. I thought it was important to remember that on one the darkest days of human history that there were still these bright moments of light, of humanity. Alia's story showed us the extraordinary courage of ordinary people that day, and I chose Jesse and her family, fifteen years after the events, to symbolize one family's journey from grief and anger to ultimately a place of acceptance and forgiveness.
I wanted to write a story that showed how important that day was to our country, but also to show the strength of the human spirit in the face of tragedy.
Jewell Parker Rhodes, author of Towers Falling:
I love fifth graders! Selecting three fifth grade characters was an intentional choice. In eight years, they will be old enough to vote and defend our country. They need to know America's history, past and recent. Because adults are traumatized by 9/11 memories, we have steered conversations away from this pain. But we need to be strong and engage children. Essentially, all youth born post-9/11 are, nonetheless, experiencing its' traumatic legacy.
In Towers Falling, Deja, an African American, experiences homelessness because her father, a survivor, has psychological trauma and is unable to work. Her family, too, represents how mental health and medical bills are the leading cause of homelessness. Her friend, Ben, is Jewish American and a New York transplant from Arizona, because his parents are divorcing. His father's repeated deployments and PTSD has fractured his family but not his empathy for his friends. Sabeen, a Muslim-American, represents how post 9/11, religious prejudice and the scapegoating of Muslim Americans as terrorists, continues.
Sabeen, Ben, and Deja with their open hearts and curiosity embody the foundational American values of immigration, religious tolerance, and "liberty and justice for all."
Kerry O'Malley Cerra, author of Just a Drop of Water:
In September of 2001, I, along with the rest of the world, watched in horror as the attacks on New York City, The Pentagon, and in the sky over a tiny Pennsylvania town unfolded; yet as heart-wrenching as it was to watch on TV—I was glued to my TV for days—I was also swept up with the sense of patriotism that swelled deep for months after. Everywhere I turned, red, white, and blue saluted people across town from t-shirts, to pins on our lapels, to flags boasting in the sky. Neighbors–who usually came home, pulled into their garages, and closed their doors–suddenly stopped in their front yards to talk. People came together in ways I'd never experienced before.
Within a day or two of the attacks, my alternating moods of anger, sadness, and pride suddenly had a new emotion to deal with. Fear. It was discovered that Mohammad Atta, the hijacker of American Airlines flight 11, lived just around the corner in my smallish town of Coral Springs, Florida—over 1,000 miles away from the closest attack. What if I'd seen him around? What if my family and I had eaten next to him at a restaurant? It stunned me to the core.
It didn't take long for more of the details involving that day to emerge. It seemed Atta and several of the other hijackers had made their way around South Florida unassumingly for months. But when it leaked that these men had taken flight lessons in Venice, Florida, and it was believed they'd had help from fellow Muslims living there, hundreds of "what ifs" began to haunt me. Every single one of them boiled down to the final, What if my friend's parents had helped these men?
My friend was someone I'd met in college. He had come to the U.S. to study and get away from the strict Islamic rules of his upbringing, if only for a while. We grew close, and eventually my sister, my boyfriend, and I went to visit his devout Islamic family abroad, where his parents welcomed us into their home and treated us like old friends. A few years later, wanting to be closer to both of their boys who were then living in Florida, the parents decided to move to the states—Venice, Florida to be exact.
Flash forward to the days following September 11, I found myself doubting my friend's family when I'd heard they were being questioning in connection to the attacks. Had they helped these terrorists somewhere along the way? I'd love to say I believed they were innocent, but I'd be lying. It took me a day or two to really know in my heart that they weren't involved. Not these loving, welcoming people. I hated myself for having ever wavered in my thoughts of them to begin with, but the emotion of that tragedy ran deep. The emotion and fear of those days controlled me.
Not long after, I talked to my friend and asked how he and his family were doing. He told me that the FBI had cleared his parents, but life had become difficult for all of them. I listened to him talk, and though I didn't admit it to him then that I had doubted them myself, he knows now. So do his parents, and I cannot thank his father enough for reading several drafts of this book and helping me get it right.
The feeling of regret stuck with me for a long time. Being a teacher, I looked at kids around me who rarely saw racial lines, and I wondered if this boy—my college friend—and I had been younger when September 11 happened, would I have ever doubted his family? Would I have had the prejudice that seemed to come with age? I began asking questions to anyone who wanted to discuss the subject. Soon I was taking notes, scouring the Internet, and reading books; I was amazed to learn that many non-practicing Muslim kids in the United States actually turned to mosques for answers following 9/11. The basis for my story developed in my head before I even realized I was writing it.
As a former history teacher, this was a story I knew needed to be told. It's the type of novel I myself would have used in a classroom to supplement the textbook and to show kids, who didn't experience that day firsthand, the enormity of the event that happened on our own soil and took thousands of lives—six of them from my own small town, a thousand miles away. I want children to know that sentiments changed from minute to minute, teetering between patriotism, alarm, grief, and so much more. One of my favorite scenes in the book is the one where Jake and his dad attend a memorial service three days after 9/11. That event is real. It moved me the same way it moved Jake. I hope it moves you, too.
Nora Raleigh Baskin, author of Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story:
When I started writing Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story, I knew exactly how many characters there'd be, who they'd be, and in what setting I needed to place them. I even knew the title! I wanted to show how the events of 9/11 affected everyone, across the entire county. I didn't want to limit my story to New York City or to the day of the attacks. That is another story, another book, for another writer to tell.
For my story, I deliberately chose characters spanning from California to New York, rural to urban, black to white, boy to girl, Jewish to Muslim to Christian. I wanted to make them as different as I could to reveal how similar they actually are—how similar WE actually are—and to show how this tragedy connected us all in ways both big and small.
Of course I wanted to, and I could have tried to include more, but it is already a challenge for young readers (and writers!) to keep track of multiple characters. So I kept it to four. And since setting in a story also refers to time, my book begins 48 hours before September 11, 2001. I wanted to draw a line between the before and the after and show how the world changed that day.
First there is Will, a boy living in Shanksville, PA, the town where the fourth plane crashed after being diverted from its target (The Capitol building) because of the incredible heroism of the passengers on Flight 93.
I also wrote about Sergio, a boy in Brooklyn, who that morning witnessed the Twin Towers collapsing in a mushroom cloud of black smoke and white ash. He has a friend and mentor who is an EMT, who I chose because I knew I could not address the events of 9/11 without honoring the bravery of the first responders, many of whom died that day and in the days and years that followed.
I brought Aimee to life in California. Her mother had a meeting at the World Trade Center that morning and narrowly escaped death. I needed to speak about the beauty of life and how we sometimes, sadly, only fully realize that when it is almost lost.
And lastly, there's Naheed, an Iranian Muslim girl in Columbus, Ohio, whom I very consciously gave a Persian ancestry in order to point out a specific kind of bigotry. Not all Muslims are Arab; not all Arabs are Muslims; and not all Middle Easterners are Arab or Muslim or Jewish. As we know, after 9/11 the rise of Islamophobia and xenophobia exploded and was often directed blindly at anyone of Middle Eastern descent. I needed to show how the fear of terrorism generated an increase in this discrimination, an anger that was spewed widely and with ignorance.
In my small way, I wanted to help young readers open their eyes and their minds. I wanted them to learn about a time in our history that many adults felt was too hard, too scary, too sad to talk about. Reading can bring empathy, understanding, and knowledge—at least that was my hope.
Julie Buxbaum, author of Hope and Other Punchlines:
I've long struggled with the moments that cleave our lives into a before and an after, and there seems to be few modern shared before and afters quite like 9/11. Although there are a gazillion political ramifications from that day, I tend to be more interested in the personal legacies of loss. How they shape us. How we continue to live despite knowing that the world can cleave at any time. How we risk loving and losing. How we laugh in spite of it all.
Baby Hope, an entirely fictional character and photo, became the long lens that allowed me to look more deeply at those questions. She also allowed me to explore the myriad ways 9/11 still isn't over. As many as four hundred thousand people are still struggling with health conditions related to that terrible day. By framing my story with a modern teenage girl, I hoped to introduce the legacy of 9/11 to the generation born since 2001, for whom the event feels like ancient history. Unfortunately, it is not.
3. Twenty years after the events of September 11, 2001, how might you change or add to your story?
Catherine Stine, author of Refugees:
In the span of the seventeen years since my novel, Refugees was published, and a full twenty years since 9/11, life for Afghans has improved dramatically, and yet this fascinating country is also stubbornly resistant to change for reasons that I was able to profile in the book. It may have a centralized government on paper, but its localized, tribal structure holds firm. Its poppy trade is almost impossible to eradicate, as it is a huge money source, which keeps the Taliban in power. It seems likely that the Afghan army will still buckle under the Taliban. This will also set women's rights back, but hopefully, they will not lose all hard-fought ground. Pakistan's badgering influence still holds. There's the infernal question of whether the USA should be a peacekeeping force to the world, or whether it's really time to pack up and leave. These questions have no easy answers.
My intention with Refugees, was to present, through the personal lens of Johar, an Afghan boy and Bija, his little cousin, the day-to-day life, and the danger after 9/11 that also existed for those in Afghanistan. My extensive research taught me about their ancient culture, the intricacies of their tribal networks, and the stark beauty of the people. This information is relevant after all this time. Perhaps if I changed anything, it would be to hint that this was a snapshot in time, and that history often has circular cycles.
Gae Polisner, author of In Memory of Things:
I'm glad I wrote The Memory of Things when I did versus now as it would definitely have to be more political— and more divided—now. I'm always hoping young readers will see how, at that time, in the face of tragedy, we found our shared humanity much more readily and rallied together, human to human, without regard for politics.
Of course, that was on a whole, but there were splinters of misinformation and hate that arose from the event as well, and were, in fact, the spark of one form of ongoing hate in our country, and our stories deal with that . . . in The Memory of Things in particular, a moving moment when the kids head out of the subway on Stillwell Avenue on their way to Coney Island in the days after and pass heavily gated stores bearing Arabic names and signs that plead for us all to remember that they, too, are "[f]irst Americans." That was based on a sign I saw in a photograph during the research phase of my book, and if there's one thing readers take from my story after a simple sense of hope, it is that: our shared humanity.
The 20 Novels
The 20 novels reviewed in this blog each present a different perceptive on these events, whether from the view of an 11-year-old boy waiting for his father's return from a job that takes him into the Twin Towers, a 16-year-old whose family was torn apart 15 years before when her teenage brother died in the Towers, a Muslim family facing racism on the days following 9/11, an adolescent coping with the possible physical effects of 9/11 syndrome after being rescued from her day care in the World Trade Center complex, fifth graders learning about events from 15 years before, or survivors from the March 11, 2011 Japanese tsunami visiting NYC to meet with survivors of September 11,2001. The stories are set in in a variety of settings, not only New York City, but Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, Shanksville, Florida, Japan, Pakistan, and Maine. These novels portray challenges, difficult decisions, loss, grief, uncertainty, PTSD, discovery, resilience, and heroism and are written in prose, free verse, and as a play for readers in a range of ages, reading levels, and interests.
1. Baskin, Nora Raleigh. Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2016.
The events of 9/11 are challenging to describe and discuss, especially with children who were not yet born, which at this point is most of our student population. I think that is so because, as adults, we each have our memories of that day and Life Before. I was a middle school teacher on the day the Towers fell. I remember standing in my classroom as our team teachers watched the morning news. Thankfully, our students were in their Specials and were not witness to the shock and tears on our faces. I don't remember much of that day, but we were located in Philadelphia and did not immediately feel the effects. But the events o that day have affected our country and all our citizens as well as our contemporary world. The importance of studying and discussing 9/11 as part of American history is highlighted in Jewell Parker Rhoads novel Towers Falling, set in September, 2016.
Nine Ten: A September 11 Story is another novel effective in introducing young adolescent students to the many events of September 11, 2001. Nora Raleigh Baskin's novel is set during the days leading up to 9/11—in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Columbus, and Shanksvlle, Pennsylvania, where readers follow four diverse middle-grade students affected by the events of 9/11. Sergio, Naheed, Aimee, and Will first cross paths in the O'Hare Airport on September 9. The four young adolescents are Black, White, Jewish, and Muslim and are collectively surviving loss, guilt, poverty, parental absence, neglectful fathers, bullying, the navigation of peer relationships, as well as the angst of middle school, "…everything felt different, as if you suddenly realized you had been coming to school in your pajamas and you had to figure out a way to hide this fact before anyone else noticed." (p. 48). In their own ways they are each affected by 9/11, and on September 11, 2002, these four and their families again converge at Ground Zero, each there for different reasons, but this time their paths back together have meaning.
There are a multitude of important conversations to be generated by this little novel, a story of Before and After. I was especially grateful that the events and heroes of Shanksville were memorialized. In fact there are many aspects of heroism brought forth in the novel to discuss. But Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story is the story of people and three days in their lives, "Because in the end it was just about people…Because the world changed that day, slowly and then all at once." (p. 176).
2. Bunting, Eve. The Man with the Red Bag. Joanna Cotler Books, 2007.
"We don't trust anymore, and that's the saddest thing of all.'" (116)
Eve Bunting's chapter book is not about the events of September 11, 2001, but it is about the effects and repercussions that we are still experiencing from 9/11.
Kevin Saunders and his grandmother go on a bus trip out West and immediately notice a fellow traveler, Charles Stavros, a man who says he is Greek but raised in America. A man who Kevin thinks looks like "…he might be Saudi Arabian or even Iraqian, if there is such a word. He was dark skinned, with bushy black eyebrows and a bushier mustache." (2) And a man who constantly carries a red bag which he refuses to put down, even on a rafting trip.
Some of the other passengers worry that he is a terrorist and that his face looks familiar. As Kevin's Grandma says, "It's sad. People are quick to jump to conclusions now. If someone looks like that—" (10)
Kevin, a voracious reader of Joan Lowery Nixon mystery novels and his "much-read how-to-write-a-mystery book and is convinced that Stavros is a terrorist, is anxious to solve the mystery of the red bag which he is sure is holding a bomb. His elicits the help of the other young passenger, Geneva, who also wants to be a hero and appear on the Oprah show. Geneva's eyes opened wide. 'He does look exactly like a terrorist. I've never seen a real one, but I've seen pictures on TV.'" (39)
As they follow Stavros, even keeping watch on his various hotel rooms all night, they become more and more convinced that he is going to bomb an American monument, possibly Mount Rushmore, and that they can save the day. And then Kevin can write the mystery. "I didn't want him to be Greek. I didn't want him to be innocent. I didn't want to lose my big mystery adventure. But just think how scary it would be if he wasn't Greek. If he was something else! Having a mystery also meant having a terrorist aboard. And a bomb. Criminy! What did I want?" (60)
What they find ties Stavros to 9/11, but not in the way they think.
This is yet another perspective of the events and effects of September 11, 2001, appropriate for grade 4-8 readers.
3. Buxbaum, Julie Hope and Other Punch Lines. Delacorte Press, 2019.
For many people the world is divided into Before and After, the dividing line being September 11, 2001. Such is the case for Abbi Hope Goldstein and Noah Stern.
On her first birthday Abbi was saved by a worker in her World Trade Center complex daycare center. As she is carried out, wearing a crown and holding a red balloon, the South Tower collapsing behind, a photographer takes the picture that has branded her Baby Hope, the symbol of resilience. Abbi spends her childhood and adolescence in relative fame; strangers hug and cry, share their stories with her, frame and hang the photograph in their homes, and news outlets hold "Where is Baby Hope Now" stories.
Noah was a baby in the hospital, fighting for his life, on 9/11 when his father went back to his office in the World Trade Center for his lucky hat, never to return home. He and his mother now live with her new husband and Noah is obsessed with comedy.
At age 15, Abbi is experiencing a suspicious cough, keeping it a secret from her parents and grandmother. Connie, the daycare worker, has recently died from cancer, most likely 9/11 syndrome, and Abbi takes a job as a camp counselor in a nearby town, looking for some anonymity and a chance at a "happily ever after" to the story that began with "Once upon a time" (9/11). Unfortunately, Noah, a fellow counselor, recognizes her and blackmails her into helping him interview the four other people in the iconic Baby Hope picture, convinced that the man in background wearing a Michigan cap is his father and also convinced, since his mother won't talk about him, that his father chose not to come home after escaping from the Tower.
This is a novel about 9/11, one that presents yet more facets than many other 9/11 novels, such as 9/11 syndrome which is affecting many of those who were at Ground Zero, heroism and sacrifice, survivor guilt, and "[What] happens when the story you tell yourself turns out not to be your story at all." (280)
This is primarily a novel about relationships—shifting relationships with family, friends, ex-friends, strangers, and romantic partners. I absolutely adored these characters—Noah and Abbi especially (and their evolving relationship) and Noah's BFF Jack, Abbi's divorced-but-best-friends-and-maybe-more parents, her grandmother who is experiencing the onset of dementia, and even Noah's stepfather who learns to make jokes. I was sorry when the novel ended, not that the story was unfinished but my relationship with the characters was.
4. Cerra, Kerry O'Malley. Just a Drop of Water. Sky Pony Press, 2016. (Middle Grades)
Relationships are built over time, but how much can they withstand? Jake Green and Sameed Madina have always been friends. They have grown up together; they run track together; they play war games together; they have each other backs; they plan to always remain friends "but only till Martians invade the earth."
But then the events of September 11, 2001, occurred, and Martians did invade the earth, only they looked like Sam and his family—Muslim. Because one of the terrorists had lived in their neighborhood and was a client at the bank where Mr. Madina worked, Sam's father comes under FBI surveillance, and the neighborhood divides in their support. Not Jake, though. He believes in his friend and his friend's family, physically fighting the school bully who refers to Sam as a "towelhead" and arguing with his own mother whose own grief keeps her from supporting their neighbors.
When his father is taken into custody, Sam refuses to attend school, abandons his cross-country team, and distances himself from Jake, taking a new interest in the Islam religion. But Jake does not give up, and the boys reconnect to peacefully stop their racist classmates, Bobby and Rigo, from attacking the local mosque. Afterwards, Jake realizes that they both have been affected by 9/11; he has learned that you can be both scared and brave at the same time, but he has also has learned that adversity can be defeated peacefully. And Jake realizes that Sam is now different. "For the first time I see Sam, a Muslim. An American Muslim. But he is still just Sam, no matter what."
5. Donwerth-Chikamatsu, Annie. Somewhere Among by Annie Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2016.
Ema is binational, bicultural, bilingual, and biracial. Some people consider her "half," and others consider her "double." Her American mother says she contains "multitudes," but Ema sometimes feels alone living in Japan somewhere among multitudes of people.
When fifth-grader Ema and her mother go to live with Ema's very traditional Japanese grandparents during a difficult pregnancy, author Annie Donwerth-Chikamatsu's verse novel takes the reader through six months (June 21, 2001-January 2, 2002) of customs, rituals, and holidays, both Japanese and American. There are challenges, such a choosing a name for the new baby that brings good luck in Japan and that both sets of grandparents can pronounce. Ema celebrates American Independence Day and Japanese Sea Day, and she now views some days, such as August 15 Victory Over Japan Day from diverse perspectives.
On September 11, 2001 Ema experiences both two typhoons in her town and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in America—on television. As the reader traverses the intricacies of two fusing two distinct cultures with Emi and her family, our knowledge of others is doubled.
6. DuBois, Caroline Brooks. The Places We Sleep. Holiday House, 2020.
7. Gratz, Alan. Ground Zero. Scholastic Press, 2021.
Two children 18 years apart, both at the mercy of terrorists, both in death-defying situations, both fighting for their lives, and both showing courage and compassion for others as they live with grief. At one point they are both at their own Ground Zero.
Nine-year-old Brandon goes to work with his father at the Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of the North Tower. The date is September 11, 2001. He leaves his father to go down to the Mall to buy something for a friend, and while he is descending in an elevator, the first plane hits the Tower. As Brandon tries to make his way up to his dad and then, when that is impossible, back down to fulfill his father's wishes, "Brandon, hang up [the phone] and get out of the building as fast as you can." (158) and "You're strong. You can survive without me." (234), he meets Richard who takes him under his wing. "It didn't feel weird at all to Brandon to be clinging to a stranger right now. It was reassuring to connect with someone else who was sharing the struggle to survive." (104) Together, on the way down, Brandon witnesses every horror—elevators filled with people crashing, workers falling and jumping out of the building to their deaths, people catching on fire—but the people he and Richard meet collaborate to help each other until finally Brandon makes it to safety and is able to save Richard when the Tower collapses.
Meanwhile on September 11, 2019, Reshmina, an 11-year-old Afghani, lives with her family in a small village in the middle of constant fighting between the Americans and the Afghan National Army and the Taliban. Her sister had been accidentally killed by American soldiers on Hila's wedding day "We're fighting a war again the Taliban. Sometimes innocent people get hurt." (246). When an American soldier is hurt, with conflicting emotions, Reshmina hides him in her house, she puts her family and her village in grave danger. Her resentful twin Pasoon leaves home to join the Taliban and to tell them about the soldier. In danger Reshmina and her family leave to hide in a cave. "She had chosen what was right over what was easy. She had dared to be someone new, someone better, to carve a path for herself. And look where it had gotten her; buried with her family in a grave of her own making." (245) After Reshmina's ingenuity helps her family and the villagers to successfully escape the collapsed cave, the American soldiers sweep in to rescue Taz and order a strike against the Taliban. Again accidently, the houses in the village are all wiped out. "When they were all safe, they all turned and watched as the village slid down into nothing, swallowed by the great brown cloud of dust that came roaring at them like a lion." (282) "'That was not supposed to happen.' 'And yet it did,' Reshmina said." (283)
When Brandon's and Reshmina's stories converge, readers learn just how complicated is the present American military involvement in Afghanistan and the ongoing impact of revenge.
8. Levithan, David. Love is the Higher Law. Random House Children's Books, 2009.
"…even if I felt something was wrong, I would never have pictured this. This isn't even something I've feared, because I never knew it was a possibility/" (5) "'We are not supposed to comprehend something like this,' my mother says to me…. I don't want to comprehend. Instead, I will try to remember what matters." (16)
The attacks of September 11, 2001, affected our country as a whole, but it is even harder to imagine the effect on those who lived in NYC. Claire, Peter, and Jasper are three teenagers living in NYC on that date. Claire leaves her high school to pick up her brother from his elementary school; Peter has already left school and is at the record store, thinking about his impending date with Jasper; and Jasper is at home alone, his parents visiting their native Korea, before he leaves for college. None of the three are directly affected—none of their parents worked in the World Trade Center, none of their friends or relatives were killed; they were not physically hurt—but the events of this day color the year following. "I want to know why this is so much a part of me. I want to know why this thing that happened to other people has happened so much to me." (104)
Readers view the day through their alternating perspectives. We view the constructive acts of strangers as Claire observes, "There are skyscrapers collapsing behind us, and nobody is pushing, nobody is yelling. When people see we're a school group, they're careful not to separate us. Stores are not only giving away sneakers, but some are handing out water to people who need it. You'd think they'd take advantage and raise the prices. But no. That's not what happens." (14) and Peter reflects, "And the people I care about, suddenly I care about them a little more, in this existential way." (82)
Even though Peter and Jason's date does not go well, another ramification of the day, the three become friends, especially Claire and Peter who attend high school together, Jason returning to college. And the year continues, each is a little changed. As Peter observes, " If you start the day reading the obituaries, you live your day a little differently." (123)
By December Jasper observes that he has finally gone an entire day without thinking of 9/11 but then wonders what that means. Claire feels the weight of the day lighten a little, but "It is still strange to see the skyline. I have never seen an absence that it so physical." (126)
On the anniversary of 9/11 Claire retraces the steps she took on that day, and Peter and Jason finally have a second date. On March 19, 2003, the day of the United States invasion of Iraq, the three reunite, and Claire observes, "And we are so different from who we were on September 10th. And also different from who we were on the 11th. And the 12th. And yesterday." (163) Together they have found the "antidote" to the fear and uncertainty; they have each other as they individually navigate the world and remember what matters.
9. Lowitz, Leza. Up from the Sea. Ember, 2016.
"The bigger the issue, the smaller you write."--Richard Price
Instead of focusing on the overwhelming statistics generated by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan—nearly 16,000 deaths and 3,000 people missing—the event becomes even more intense and compelling as author Leza Lowitz relates the story of one town and one boy and the resilience of many.
The story begins on March 11 when Kai, a half Japanese, half American 17-year-old and his teachers and classmates experience the "jolting of the earth," and as trained, they evacuate, running for their lives, looking for the highest place, as their town is destroyed. Written powerfully in free verse, the reader feels the fury of nature as the water "churns," "thrashes," "surges," "sweeps," "charges." Kai ends up in a shelter having lost his mother, his grandparents, and one of his best friends. His father left years before to return to America.
Faced with overwhelming loss and trauma, Kai walks into the ocean but is saved by one of his classmates and convinced to accept the opportunity to go to New York City on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 where he will spend some time with young adults who lost their parents as teens in the 9/11 attacks. At Ground Zero, Fia tells him, "Bravery means being scared and going forward anyway."
Kai hopes to find his father in NYC but returns to his village to help the young adolescents who lost their families and to rebuild his town. "I want to be/ like that tree/ deep roots/ making it strong/ keeping it/ standing tall." And it is to his roots Kai returns and stays—"The quake moved the earth/ ten inches/ on its axis./ I guess/I shifted," too."
Up from the Sea, well-written as a verse novel (a format that engages many reluctant readers), would serve as an effective continuation to a 9/11 study. Readers should already be aware of the events of 9/11 to understand the connection between Kai and Tom but will comprehend the trauma and loss experienced, and resilience that is required, by anyone who faces adversity.
10. Maynard, Joyce. The Usual Rules. St. Martin's Press, 2004.
The Usual Rules is an emotional and insightful novel about the effects of the events of September 11th on the families and friends of the victims—those left behind.
The reader learns about the close relationship between 13-year-old Wendy and her mother through flashbacks: her mother's divorce, the sporadic visits of her father, her mother's marriage to her "other dad," and the birth of her half-brother. And then her mother goes to work at her job at the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001—and does not return. Wendy's world changes. "Then September happened and the planet she lived on had seemed more like a meteor, spinning and falling" (p. 175).
The reader experiences not only Wendy's (and Josh's and Louie's) loss but the suffering and uncertainty of those left behind. Could her mother be walking around, not remembering who she is? As the family hangs signs, we learn how different this loss was for many people who held out hope for a long time without a sense of closure. And this loss was different because it was experienced by many—an entire country in a way. "Instead of just dealing with your own heart getting ripped into pieces, wherever you looked you knew there were other people dealing with the same thing. You couldn't even be alone with it" (p. 95).
We see the loss through the eyes and hearts of a daughter, a very young son, and a desperately-in-love husband. Wendy leaves Brooklyn and goes to her biological father's in California. Among strangers, she re-invents her life. As those she meets help fill the hole in her life, she fills the hole in theirs. Books also help her to heal.
Even though there are quite a few characters in this novel, but they all are well-developed, and I found myself becoming involved in all their lives, not only Wendy, Josh, and Louie and even his father Garrett, but Wendy's new friends—Carolyn, Alan, Todd, Violet… On some level they all have experienced trauma and loss, and within these relationships, Wendy is able to heal and return to rebuild her family.
Although I did not want this novel to end and to leave these characters, this well-written novel taught me more about the effects of September 11, loss, and the importance of relationships and added a new perspective to my collection of 9/11 novels.
11. Mills, Wendy. All We Have Left. Bloomsbury, 2016.
September 11. A day that changed all our lives in some way. As we see in Nine, Ten: A September 21 Story, there clearly was a Before and After. But there also was a Then or That Day and an After.
All We Have Left was so compelling that I read from dawn to dusk and did not put the book down until I finished. The novel intertwines two stories, that of 18-year-old Travis and sixteen-year-old Alia who were in the Towers as they fell and the story of Travis' sister, Jesse, who, fifteen years later, is part of a dysfunctional family whose lives are still overwhelmingly affected by That Day and Travis' death.
Seventeen year old Jesse is not sure who she is, who she should be, who she should hate, and who she can love. Her life is overshadowed by 9/11, her mother's mourning, and her father's hate.
But both Alia in 2001, and Jesse in 2016, learn that "Faith and strength aren't something that you wear like some sort of costume; they come from inside you" (p.329) as does love. And Jesse realizes that she has to work on "treasuring right here, right now, because that's important." As one character says but all the characters learn, "You can fill that void inside you with anger, or you can fill it with the love for the ones who remain beside you, with hope for the future."
What I appreciated about this novel is that is shows yet another side of how 9/11 affected people, especially adolescents, those adolescents who populate American schools everywhere. I strongly feel that students should not only be learning about the events and effects of 9/11, but that, through novels, readers learn more about how events affect people and especially children their ages.
12. Padian, Maria. Out of Nowhere. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2013.
Another novel as a complement to a 9/11 Novel Study would be Maria Padian's novel about the ways life in an idyllic small Maine town quickly gets turned upside down after the events of 9/11.
"Things get a little more complicated when you know somebody's story.…It's hard to fear someone, or be cruel to them, when you know their story."
The majority of the 21.3 million refugees worldwide in 2016 were from Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia. The United States resettled 84,994 refugees. Together with immigrants, refugee children make up one in five children in the U.S. More than half the Syrian refugees who were resettled in the U.S. between October 2010 and November 2015 are under the age of 20.
In Out of Nowhere narrator Tom Bouchard is a high school senior. He is a soccer player, top of his class academically, and well-liked. He lives in Maine in a town that has become a secondary migration location for Somali refugees. These Somali students are trying to navigate high school without many benefits, including the English language. They face hostility from many of their fellow classmates and the townspeople, including the mayor; one teacher, at the request of students, permits only English to be spoken in her classroom.
When four Somali boys join the soccer team, turning it into a winning team, and when he is forced to complete volunteer hours at the K Street Center where he tutors a young Somali boy and works with a female Somali classmate, Tom learns at least a part of their stories. Tom fights bigotry, especially that of his girlfriend—now ex-girlfriend, but he still doesn't comprehend the complexity of the beliefs, customs, and traditions of his new friends, and his actions have negative consequences for all involved. While trying to defend the truth, Tom learns a valuable lesson, "Truth is a difficult word. One person's truth is another person's falsehood. People believe what appears to be true and what they feel is true."
13. Polisner, Gae. The Memory of Things. St. Martin's Griffin, 2016.
The first 9/11 novel I read, The Memory of Things is lovely story about the effects of the events of 9/11. Another reason we read is to understand events we have not experienced and the effect of those events on others who may be like ourselves. After witnessing the fall of the first Twin Towers on 9-11 and evacuating his school, teenager Kyle Donahue, a student at Stuyvesant High School, discovers a girl who is covered in ash on the Brooklyn Bridge; she has no memory of who she is. The son of a detective, he takes her home to help her rediscover who she is, why she was where she was, what she was doing there, and her connection to the events.
Author Gae Polisner wrote The Memory of Things in alternating narratives—Kyle's in prose, the girl writes in free verse—the two characters sharing their stories and perspectives, introducing adolescent readers, many of whom had were not alive during 9/11, to the effects of this tragedy in their own ways.
14. Rhodes, Jewell Parker. Towers Falling. Little, Brown and Company, 2016.
I was a middle-school teacher in 2001. It was challenging to know how to discuss the events of 9/11 as we lived through them. How is a teacher to meaningfully discuss this momentous event with students who were not even born in 2001? Falling Towers is a thoughtful, provocative, well-written, albeit emotional, novel about this topic written sensitively and appropriately for readers as young as Grade 4, an ideal novel for middle grades Social Studies classes as it focuses on not only the history of 9/11 and its place in American history but the ever-widening circles of relationships among, and connections between, Americans beginning with families, friends, schools, communities, cities, states, countries.
The 5th grade characters explore "What does it mean to be an American?" as well as why history is relevant, alive, and, especially, personal as three students—one Black, one White, one Muslim—explore the effects of the events of 9/11 on each of their families. Déja's "journey of discovery" about the falling of the Towers helps her father work through his connection to the event and his resulting PTSD.
15. Rogers, Tom. Eleven. Alto Nido Press, 2014.
"After today, everything's changed."
"Sometimes when a terrible thing happens, it can make a beautiful thing seem even more precious."
Eleven is the story of Alex who is turning 11 on September 11, 2001. I was concerned that the character would be too young for this topic. I also thought that, the character age's implied that the novel wouldn't contain the complexity the topic deserves. but, boy, was I wrong! I was hooked with the complexity of the first 2-page chapter. I wasn't sure what was happening in this introductory chapter, but it was not a feeling of confusion as much as "It could be this; no, it could be this…" and inference and interpretation, even visualization.
I also forgot that New York City kids grow up faster, taking public transportation throughout the city, but more importantly, I forgot that when you need or expect a young adolescent to rise to the occasion, he will.
Alex loves airplanes and dogs—and he doesn't realize it, but he loves his little sister Nunu who is relegated to her side of the bedroom they share by a black and yellow "flight line" down the middle of the room. And he loves his father, even though Alex told him, "I hate you," the night before 9/11. When the Towers fall, Alex rises to the occasion, taking care of his little sister and an abandoned dog, making the sacrifice to return the dog he has always wanted to his owners when the vet finds a chip, facing bullies, making "deals" in the hopes these deals and good works will offset what he said to his father and ascertain his return from the Towers, and comforting Mac, a lonely man who is awaiting his only son's return from the Towers.
In Eleven author Tom Rogers builds a character who is authentic, a kid who events serve to turn into a young man. Alex's mother had said to him, "I need you to be grown up today" and, even though he was focusing on his misdeeds of the day, he did. "I'm proud of you, young man…. Young Man. Alex liked how that sounded."
This book is not graphic but does not skirt the events. Readers hear the news announcement about the four airplanes and, more chilling, a description of an empty hospital—"There were no gurneys rolling through to the ER, no sick and wounded in pain. There wasn't a patient in sight. And he knew then that none would be coming." A powerful examination of the events of 9/11 and how they affected ordinary people—and one boy's birthday.
16. Stine, Catherine. Refugees. Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2005.
Refugees adds another dimension to the 9/11 novels.
Dawn is a foster teen who runs away to New York City and becomes affected by the events of 9/11. As she plays her flute on the streets near Ground Zero to earn money for food, she is approached by families of victims who ask her to play for them and the memories of their loved ones. As Dawn comes to believe this is her mission, she teaches herself music she feels appropriate for those of many cultures and stages of life. In doing so, she opens up to strangers and new friends, something she couldn't do with her foster mother.
Johar is an Afghani teenager, weaver, and poet. His father is killed by the Taliban, his mother is killed by a land mine, his older brother joins the Taliban, and his aunt is missing, leaving Johar to care for his three-year-old cousin. He and his cousin flee to a refugee camp in Pakistan where he works for the Red Cross doctor, Dawn's foster mother, another person who must learn to show love.
Dawn and Johar connect through phone calls and emails, and as they all work toward forming a family—one that spans the globe—the reader learns how war, the U.S. involvement, and the events of 9/11 affected those in many countries. This would be a book I would recommend for proficient readers with an interest in war or history.
P.S. After I read this book and posted my original Goodreads review, I was listening to a discussion about the days following 9/11 in the Middle East on NPR and found that I could actually follow it; therefore, I realize that I learned more than I thought from this novel.
17. Tarshis, Lauren. I Survived the Attacks of September 11, 2001. Scholastic Inc., 2012.
I SURVIVED The Attacks of September 11, 2001 is now available as a graphic novel re-adaptation of Lauren Tarshis' 2012 novel, written by Tarshis and illustrated by Corey Egbert.
"A bright blue sky stretched over New York City." That is what many of us who were alive on September 21, 2001, remember—the cloudless blue sky of northeastern United States—the contrast between the perfect day and the day which has changed our world.
As the son of a firefighter, Lucas was aware of the effects of danger and disasters. His father had been severely injured in a warehouse fire and was still not himself ("It turned him quiet."). It had been a while since they had worked together on the firetruck model in the basement. But it was another tragedy that brought them back together as a family.
Lucas had sneaked into NYC that September 11 morning to ask his uncle to intercede on his behalf. After three concussions in two years of football, his parents and doctor were taking him off the team, and Lucas loved being on a team, a team of two with his father, his dad and uncle's Ladder 177 firehouse, and especially his football team. Lucas was near Ground Zero when the planes hit the Towers, and when his father went looking for him, they were able to make it safely back to the fire station, helping others along the way.
Readers view the attacks of 9/11 up close and personal through Lucas' eyes; they experience his loss, the heroism of the firefighters, and the resilience of his father. We feel the dust of the falling Towers, see the sky fogged with dust and ashes. "It wasn't like regular dust. Some of the grains were jagged—bits of ground glass.… The dust, Lucas realized. That was the tower. It was practically all that was left."
The story ends on a realistic but positive note with Lucas, not a player, but still a valued member of the football team. "Nothing would ever be the same again." But his father told him, as time passed, it would get, not easy, but easier.
This was the first book in Tarshis' I Survived series that I have read, and I was impressed with the writing, development of the main character, and the complexity of ideas presented in such a short text. This novel could be employed for MG or YA readers who are less proficient or more reluctant readers; English Language Learners who may not be ready for a longer or more complicated text; students who are short on time through absences, trips, or other obligations or who joined the class during the unit; or as a quick whole-class read for background before students break into book clubs to read one of the other 9/11 novels.
18. Thoms, Annie, ed. With Their Eyes: September 11th: The View from a High School at Ground Zero. HarperTempest, 2002.
"Journalism itself is, as we know, history's first draft." (xiii)
With Their Eyes was written from not only a unique perspective—those who watched the attack on the World Trade Center and the fall of the towers from their vantage point at Stuyvesant High School, a mere four blocks from Ground Zero, but in a unique format. Inspired by the work of Anna Deavere Smith whose work combines interviews of subjects with performance to interpret their words, English teacher Annie Thoms led one student director, two student producers, and ten student cast members in the creation—the writing and performance—of this play.
The students interviewed members of the Stuyvesant High study body, faculty, administration, and staff and turned their stories of the historic day and the days that followed into poem-monologues. They transcribed and edited these interviews, keeping close to the interviewees' words and speech patterns because "each individual has a particular story to tell and the story is more than words: the story is its rhythms and its breaths." (xiv) They next rehearsed the monologues, each actor playing a variety of roles. Although cast members were chosen from all four grades and to represent the school's diversity, actors did not necessarily match the culture of their interviewees.
They next planned the order of the stories to speak to each other, "paint a picture of anger and panic, of hope and strength, of humor and resilience" (7), rehearsed, and presented two performances in February 2002.
With Their Eyes presents the stories of those affected by the events of 9/11 in diverse ways. It shares the stories of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, special education students, an English teacher, a Social Studies teacher, the School Safety Agent, the Building Coordinator, a dining hall worker, a custodian, an assistant principal, and more, some male, some female, some named, others remain anonymous. Written as a play, readers are given a description of each character. Read and performed as a play, readers will experience the effect of Nine Eleven on others, actual people who lived that day and persisted in those days that followed, sharing their big moments and little thoughts.
"the air felt on the outside like something that you might smell at a,
or feel at a barbecue,
but it didn't, it…it hurt you.
It hurt your windpipe.
I could feel like, things collecting on my esophagus or on my lungs,
and I don't think that is something that I will ever forget." (44)
"and you know
what an odd thing this is
a peculiar little odd thing
just a little quirk, just
an odd thing, but, ah, the day before
on Monday evening I had taken the time to shine my shoes.
'cause it's kind of weird I took the time to shine my shoes
and I did a good job, right,
and then Tuesday morning
it was a beautiful sunny day
and as I was dusting myself off
from the debris of the north tower
I—I shook my clothes off and then I looked down
at my shoes and my shoes were a whole 'nother color
they were completely covered
and I thought to myself
'I just shined them yesterday'…" (102)
And the pregnant English teacher who said,
"…during that time of feeling afraid I felt like I was
crazy to be in New York…
and I had lots of conversations with my friends about
whether or not we would…
we would consider, you know, just completely changing our
lives and leaving New York
So far I don't know anyone who has done that.
But do I plan to raise my child in New York? Yes." (90)
You know, I really believe in healing
And I believe that, the city will
um… be
healed.
I think you have to believe that." (93)
With Their Eyes was written with the thoughts and pens of a school community.
19. Walters, Eric. We All Fall Down. Penguin Random House Canada, 2006.
"The sky was so blue, without the trace of a single cloud, that it looked like a postcard. It felt more like a summer day than a September day. It was a nice day not to be in school. Then again, being in my father's office wouldn't be that much different or better. (36)
The day was September 11, 2001, a teacher meeting day during which students at Will's high school were to shadow their parents at their workplaces. Ninth-grader William's father John worked in international trade in the World Trade Center.
Upon arrival, father and son went to the 107th floor Observation Deck for a quick tour and history of the Center and view of the city. "Maybe my father was right and the World Trade Center and all the money that passed through here each day really did represent the United States." (42)
At 8:46, shortly after arriving at John's office on the 85th floor of the South Tower, they felt the force of an explosion. And as he looked out the window Will saw a gaping hole in the North Tower, billowing smoke, thousands of pieces of paper—some on fire—and, before he could look away, he was horrified to notice a man and woman jumping from windows of the building.
Will's father, as acting head of his office and fire warden for the floor, demanded that his staff and other businesses on the floor close and evacuate for the day. But at 9:03, just before John and Will were able to leave, the second plane hit the South Tower.
Readers follow the father and son as they make the harrowing journey down 85 floors through heat and smoke, formulating split-second decisions and stopping to rescue and carry an injured woman, only to experience the collapse of the building as they reach the lobby.
A quick but dramatic read, Eric Walters' novel lets readers experience a close-up account of the day and the panic and fear and heroism of ordinary people—John and Will, the men carrying a man in a wheelchair, the firemen and police—as Will discovers another side of his father and John realizes how much time he has devoted to his job rather than to his family.
The title derives from the children's rhyme "Ring Around the Rosie," a song that is actually about the Black Death during the Dark Ages. Will learns this in history class on the previous school day, a foreshadowing of events to occur.
20. Walters, Eric. United We Stand. Penguin Random House Canada, 2006.
The sequel to We All Fall Down begins on September 12, 2001 when Will's best friend's father, a firefighter at Ground Zero, last seen as he climbed the steps of the North Tower, is missing.
21. Neesha Meminger. Shine, Coconut Moon
Samar Ahluwahlia is an Indian-American teen living in Linton, NJ, with her mother who turned her back on her family and religion. When the events of September 11th occurred, shaking Sam as well as her classmates and community, she didn't realize that those events would affect her personally. Until her Uncle Sandeep appeared on their doorstep.
22. N. H. Senzai. Shooting Kabul
"The driver hit the gas and the tires squealed as the truck made a sharp turn and then accelerated right though a bombed-out warehouse onto a parallel alley. Fadi looked from the edge of the truck's railing in disbelief. His six-year-old sister had been lost because of him." (25)
Fadi's father, a native Afghan, received his doctorate in the United States and returned to Afghanistan with his family five years before to help the Taliban rid the country of drugs and help the farmers grow crops. But as the Taliban became more and more restrictive and power-hungry and things changed, Habib, his wife Zafoona, Noor, Fadi, and little Mariam (born in the U.S.) need to flee the country. During their nighttime escape, chased by soldiers, Fadi loses his grip on Mariam as they are pulled into the truck, and she is lost.
Eventually making it to America, the family joins relatives in Fremont, California. "Fremont has the largest population of Afghans in the United States" (56), and Habib takes measures to try to find and rescue Mariam. Starting sixth grade in his new school, Fadi is continuously plagued with guilt over Mariam's loss and is tormented and beaten up by the two sixth-grade bullies.
However, though Anh, a new friend, he joins the photography club and becomes obsessed with a contest that could win him a ticket to India for a photo shoot but also take him in proximity to Pakistan where he can look for Mariam himself.
Then the events of September 11, 2001, occur and "By the end of the day, Fadi knew that the world as he knew it would never be the same again." (137). Harassment escalates both at school and in the community. "[Mr. Singh] was attacked because the men thought he was a Muslim since he wore a turban and beard. They blamed him for what happened on September eleventh." (165)
When the Afghan students have had enough with the school bullies, they band together and confront the two boys, but having them cornered, decide, "We can't beat them up. That would make us as bad as they are…. Beating them up won't solve anything." (232)
Meanwhile, while looking for a photograph that will capture "all the key elements" of a winning photograph and additionally portray his community, Fadi shoots the picture which, in an unusual way, leads to finding Mariam.
In Shooting Kabul, readers meet one family of refugees living in a community of Afghans of different ethnic groups as well as immigrants from other countries. The story also takes readers through some of the background of the Taliban in Afghanistan, relevant at this time.
23. Alyssa Bermudez. Big Apple Diaries
Big Apple Diaries is based on the author's actual journals which she has illustrated as a graphic diary memoir encompassing the time from September 2000 to June 2002.
Alyssa Bermudez was the child of divorced parents, dividing her time between her Puerto Rican father who lived in Manhattan and her Italian-British mother who lived in Queens. This diary begins in 7th grade where "It seems that suddenly every grade you get and everything you do matters…. Now our friends are obsessed with who has a crush on who. And who is the coolest. There is all of this pressure to be popular and smart or face a dim future being a weirdo with no job." (10)
Alyssa is not particularly popular, but not particularly unpopular either, has a much older half-brother and two best friends, Lucy and Carmen, and is an artist who wants to become a shoe designer. In this 7th grade year, she experiences her first crush—Alejandro from Columbia. Her diary takes us through the typical middle school year familiar to most of our adolescent readers. "Yesterday I did something very stupid. I knew it was stupid at the time and I still did it anyway. It's like the drive to be popular makes me see things through stupid lenses." (83) Typical preteen, she does many "stupid things": shave her eyebrows, accidently dye her hair orange, cut school.
Two months before her thirteenth birthday, the attacks of September 11th occur. Alyssa's mother worked in a building that faced the Twin Towers. She escaped and caught the last train to Queens. Her father did work in the World Trade Center but was meeting a client in Jersey City that morning (and bought skates to skate the 19.5 miles back to his Manhattan home). Overcome with emotion, Alyssa writes no entries for that day and the following few.
After that time Alyssa recognizes, "I sort of feel like I have no control over anything. I want to come back to the normal life I knew and the Twin Towers that I visited with Dad all the time."(195) She finds herself changing, maturing: "When things can change in an instant, it's hard to accept it. I want to make the right decisions and prove my worth. I want to be brave." (211)
On her thirteenth birthday she begins to wonder "Who am I?" and begins thinking about her character and how she may want to change. Her diary takes the reader through graduation to a future where "Some things I'll take with me and other things I will leave behind." (274)
Big Apple Diaries, a graphic memoir of an NYC adolescent who experienced 9/11 as part of her middle grade years adds yet another perspective or dimension to the other novels in this 9/11 book collection.
9-11: The World's Finest Comic Book Writers and Artists Tell Stories to Remember. DC Comics, 2002.
The creative talent of DC Comics donated their time and work for this volume which tells the stories and shares the images of September 11, 2001, through 39 graphic stories that reveal diverse perspectives. This volume is dedicated to the victims of the September 11th attacks, their families, and the heroes who supported and supplied aid. All profits are to be contributed to 9-11 charitable funds. The book is a celebration of heroes and a memorial to victims.
Story contributors include writers and artists who will be well-known to comic fans and graphic readers, such as Will Eisner, one of the pioneers of American comic books and graphic novels; Stan Lee, primary creative leader of Marvel Comics; and Neil Gaiman, New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books.
Divided into five sections: "Nightmares," "Heroes," "Recollections," "Unity," and "Dreams," the diversity of stories and artwork will appeal to a variety of YA readers. There are integration of the DC heroes throughout. Readers can select the stories and artwork that speak to them. As with most anthologies, the quality and appeal of the stories and the work vary. Many are well executed and moving, others are weaker; some portray complicated emotions, and others lack depth; some may be triggering, others may not connect the reader to the events. Some are may come across as more political than others.
One of the first graphics, "Wake Up," relates the story of a young boy who dreams of his mother, a NYC police officer who lost her life. He wakes up, "doing what Mom said, standing tall because I want the bad guys to know…I'm not broken. My heart is unbreakable." (23)
In the Unity section, in the story "For Art's Sake" a comic book artist struggles with the value of his profession after witnessing the fall of the Trade Center. He tells his father, also an illustrator, "Don't you feel a little guilty? Because we're sitting here telling meaningless stories about imaginary heroes while out there, hundreds of real heroes are dead.…All comic books, all art for that matter! Painting, movies, tv…it all seems so frivolous, you know?"" (121-2) His father counsels him, "Listen, I'm not saying artists are near as brave as the men or women who ran into those buildings. We're not. But we do have a role to play. We answered a calling just like they did.…We help our country cope with tragedies like this one. We make people think, we help them laugh again, or maybe we just give 'em a place to escape for a little while." (124)
I would recommend this book to readers who are engaged by graphics, are open to a range of interpretations of events, and already have some knowledge of the events of 9/11.
…and 6 Picture Books
An effective way to begin and supplement the study of the events of 9/11 for all grade levels is through reading picture books. Here are a few examples:
Curtis, A.B. The Little Chapel That Stood. Oldcastle Publishing, 2005.
Davis, Amanada. 30,000 Stitches: The Inspiring Story of the National 9/11 Flag. Worthy Kids, 2021.
Deedy, Carmen Agra. 14 Cows for America. Peachtree Publishing Company, 2009.
Fagan, Honor Crowther. The Man in the Red Bandana. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.
Gerstein, Mordicai. The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. Scholastic, Inc., 2001.
Kalman, Maira. Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of John J. Harvey. G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 2002.
A middle school and high school teacher for twenty years, Lesley Roessing was the Founding Director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project at Georgia Southern University (formerly Armstrong State University) where she was also a Senior Lecturer in the College of Education. In 2018-19 she served as a Literacy Consultant with a K-8 school. Lesley served as past editor of Connections, the award-winning journal of the Georgia Council of Teachers of English. As a columnist for AMLE Magazine, she shared before, during, and after-reading response strategies across the curriculum through ten "Writing to Learn" columns. She now works independently, writing, providing professional development in literacy to schools, and visiting classrooms to facilitate reading and writing lessons. She can be contacted at lesleyroessing@gmail.com or through Facebook Messenger.
Lesley is the author of
and has contributed chapters to
More than Sick Lit: Representations of Chronic Illness in YAL by Darby Simpson
Darby Simpson is an English Education doctoral student at Arizona State University. She is also the Program Manager of the Writing Center and Graduate Academic Support Center at ASU's Tempe campus, and she is a former middle school and high school English teacher. Her research focuses on literacy sponsorship and peer review practices in writing instruction and representations of chronic illness in young adult literature.
More than Sick Lit: Representations of Chronic Illness in YAL
Health is on many of our minds a lot these days, as we navigate life during a global pandemic. Thinking back several years, long before the days of masks, vaccinations, and strong opinions about everything Covid-19-related, I rarely thought about my health. Sure, I occasionally had minor inconveniences like a headache or a cold, but I could generally go about my life without any major restrictions related to the use of my own body. In short, I didn't think about my health, because I didn't have to. And even though I grew up with a cousin with spina bifida, a mother with scoliosis, and a close friend with recurring health problems, I don't recall spending a lot of time thinking about others' health either. Everything changed when I had a child who was born with a chronic illness.
As I struggled through the sleepless nights that are common for parents with any new baby, I thought a lot about what it meant that my daughter would never have a "normal" life. I also tried not to think about the fact that she will likely have a much shorter life than most. I started doing some research, and eventually, I sought out guidance and understanding from an old friend that had often provided support in my life - young adult literature! I was surprised to learn how common chronic illness is in general and how little it is represented in young adult literature.
Chronic Illness Touches Most of Our Lives
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines chronic diseases as "conditions that last 1 year or more and require ongoing medical attention or limit activities of daily living or both." They also note that "six in ten adults in the US have a chronic disease and four in ten adults have two or more" and that one in four children has a chronic disease. With so many diagnoses of chronic illness documented, it is likely that most of us will experience chronic illness ourselves, will have a loved one who has a chronic illness, or both.
Chronic Illness in YAL
There are only a small number of young adult books featuring protagonists with chronic illness, and that lack of representation can be problematic. In Bishop's (1990) "Windows, Mirrors, and Sliding Glass Doors," she states, "Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange...When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience." Readers experiencing chronic illness personally or in connection with a loved one need an opportunity to see their experiences reflected in the literature they read.
While the number of protagonists with chronic illness in YAL is small, spreading awareness and increasing conversation around this topic can help. To start the conversation, I would like to share with you a couple of popular YA texts featuring protagonists with chronic illness and a few texts that are less well-known:
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Hazel and Augustus are two teens battling different forms of cancer when they meet at a cancer support group. Each has their own challenges associated with their illness, including Hazel requiring oxygen support, and Augustus having lost one of his legs. They bond over their shared experiences with illness and their interest in books. As the two fall in love, they are constantly reminded of the possibility of death and its presence in their young lives. At the same time, their time together also emphasizes the importance of living each day to the fullest. This bestselling book was also made into a popular film by the same name. Readers may also be interested in this brief interview with author John Green as he discusses his book and the characters in it.
Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott
Stella, Poe, and Will are three teenagers with cystic fibrosis (CF) who are patients in the same hospital where they are undergoing treatment for various complications from their chronic illness. Stella and Poe have been friends for years as they spent their childhood in and out of the same hospital, only meeting Will for the first time at the start of the novel. A unique challenge of cystic fibrosis is that patients can pass bacteria to each other that is dangerous and potentially deadly for other CF patients. As Stella and Will begin to fall for each other, they defy the rules to remain at least 6 feet apart, stealing back one foot of that distance after having so much stolen from them by CF. This bestseller is based on a screenplay for a film by the same name. While CF is an illness that can vary wildly from patient to patient, Five Feet Apart sheds light on the meticulous daily care required to manage the symptoms of this chronic illness.
The Memory Book by Lara Avery
Win the national debate tournament, graduate as valedictorian, go off to college and become a successful lawyer. These goals are all within reach for Sammie McCoy, who has every detail of her life planned out. Sammie refuses to settle for anything less, even when she is diagnosed with Niemann Pick Disease Type C (NPC), a rare genetic disorder that will eventually steal her memory and then her life. As disease interferes with her plans and she begins to experience symptoms of memory loss, she starts to record her memories in a book for her future self so she can remember the most important parts of her life. When things begin to change for Sammie, she learns more about herself and who and what are most important. Sammie's story brings attention to this rare disease and to the experience of a teen coming to terms with their development of chronic, terminal illness.
Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O'Neal
This new adult novel introduces readers to Priya, who became ill and was diagnosed with Lyme disease while studying at Stanford. Leaving school to move home to New Jersey and continuing to feel sick starts to wear on her, and her friends at Stanford have moved on without her. She relies on her online friend, Brigid, and an online support group of other young adults suffering from various chronic illnesses and disabilities. The story takes an interesting turn when Priya meets Brigid in real life and learns that her "chronic illness" is lycanthropy. While being a werewolf is certainly different from the true chronic illnesses the other characters have, there are still similarities in Brigid's experiences that those with chronic illness may connect with. Priya and Brigid's friendship and the chronic illness support group also highlight the importance of friendship on the sometimes lonely road of navigating chronic illness.
The Girl Who Wasn't There by Penny Joelson
Kasia spends most of her time at home due to her condition: myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), also called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). She frequently watches the world through her window. While typically nothing happens, one day she believes she has witnessed a kidnapping. Uncertainty in what she saw leads her to pursue a girl she saw in the window across the street, who she later learns may not actually exist. As she searches for answers to this mystery, readers also get a thorough glimpse into what it is like for Kasia to live with ME. Author Penny Joelson lives with ME herself, and her first-hand perspective told through Kasia's story aids in calling attention to the realities of living with ME in a way that anyone with chronic illness may be able to connect with.
Author Penny Joelson also wrote a personal essay for We Need Diverse Books in 2020 discussing her experiences with ME, why she had to write this book, and what teens living with ME shared with her about their own experiences.
I will continue to read and promote YA texts featuring protagonists with chronic illness, and I encourage you to check them out too. Additionally, for more information about support for students with chronic illness, visit the resources section of this CDC webpage.
What Book Should I Offer in my YA Course?
There are so many great YA books available that you really don't have to settle for good.
The books you offer your students maybe shouldn't be a collection of the "best" books; instead, maybe it should be a collection of great books that meet the goals of the class. Do you want to cover the history of the classification? Are you interested in current trends in the field? Are you trying to focus on diverse texts in general or the do you want texts that are representative of the preservice teachers you are teaching and their future students? Are you trying to find a representative text from every literary genre? Do want your students to know about all of the major awards?
Like most of those who teach YA literature, I have my favorites. Yet, I know I can't just teach only those books. They may not meet the needs of my students or the needs of their future students. Instead, I try to select a sprinkling of great books that attempt to answer the questions above.
I try to cover a range of genres, a sampling of award winners, and books that provide a variety of diversity that provide windows, mirrors, and sliding doors (Sims Bishop). About two weeks into every class, I begin to think of books I wish I could include.
I have created webpages in the past for other classes. Here are links to some of those. You can see how things have changed and, how, they have stayed the same.
For my make believe class in 2018
I felt that my last two classes were successful. At the same time there are myriad of things that I would change.
Below are my choices for this year. What would you add or subtract. When I have done this in the past, I have received many suggestions. Many have been books that I love and have used in the past. Occasionally, someone has an interesting suggestion or two. What are your suggestions? What have your students liked in the past? Like most of you I don't mind a fairly large "to be read next" stack.
The Books for my 2021 YA Course
For my choices, I tend to lean heavily on books that have nominated for or have won the National Book Award. Generally, I have included a few books from the early years of YA--The Outsiders, The Chocolate War, or The Contender. This year I am skipping over the history and the oldest book I am including is Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.
Instead, I am selecting award winners and books that represent the diversity of my students and of those they might be teaching in the future.
Here is a list of the books that we will be using in my class.
Holes by Louis Sachar
Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
New Kid by Jerry Craft
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
The Poet, X by Elizabeth Acevedo
Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai
Realm of Possibility by David Levithan
March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell
I'm Not Dying with You Tonight by Gilly Segal and Kimberly Jones
The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman
Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay
Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith
If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth
To Build a Heart by Maria Padian
Dig. by A, S. King
The Last True Love Story by Brendan Kiely
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
In addition to this group of novels, the students will be selecting on of four by Chris Crutcher-- Stotan, Ironman, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, or Period 8. It has been awhile since I have included a Crutcher novel. I felt it was time to revisit his work and discuss why he has such staying power.
I also have four days when they have a choice within a genre -- a middle grades, a science fiction, a fantasy, and a work of nonfiction. They can select any work with in the genre, but I provide a smaller selection to help them. These options have been provided through the work of our University Teacher Development and Resource Library (TDRL). You can find link to recommendations in each genre at the class page here.
The resources that have been provided in collaboration with the TDRL are fantastic. You find suggestion for graphic novels and tips for finding Children's Literature and YA within the TDLR. Hopefully, you work at an institution that has such a useful recource. I hope you take a few minutes to browse around.