Dennis Foon

Another good Canadian kid, Dennis Foon, well he is now I guess after he realized that Vancouver was a far better place to live than Detroit.

Foon is a playwrite and novelist, who has done some interesting things in his life, see: http://www.dennisfoon.com/foon/biography.html.

Skud is told in the distinct voices of 4 very different teen boys. It is about bullying, gang violence, thoughtfulness, friendship, relationships and more. I really liked it. It is nice and short and easily read in a day or 2.

Green Thumb Theatre comes around to schools with plays about youth and their troubles, and they are well respected for doing so. Their work is valuable.

14

Hunger Games

I liked this book despite its lack of any redeeming qualities such as moral message or historical interest. It is plot driven, exciting, and a little distrubing since it involves children fighting to the death in a Roman gladiator type contest broadcast to a large audience via television. It was a bit of a guilty pleasure for me; I hoped the central character would win even though it meant all the other kids in the contest would have to die.

Katniss is not even that endearing as a character, being cool hearted and arrogant, but she has a strong sense of duty to her family, and is a fabulous hunter and provider even though she is only about 14 years old. They grow up fast in the future USA (called Panem), where the proles have no power to fight the power, and the government is cruel and faceless.

Suzanne Collins borrows her ideas freely from other and better books set in god-less societies such as Brave New World and 1984. These stories are somehow intriguing while they warn readers. Oh yeah, the movies Network, Mad Max, Death Race 2000, Running Man, They Shoot Horses Don't They? and many others assisted Collins I'm sure. Also, a book which I have not even heard of until just now called Battle Royale (1999) appears to be the plot of Hunger Games (2008). It is set in Japan and could be a metaphor for the ruthless competitiveness in society. It was made into a movie and then a graphic novel series. It was rejected for prizes because of its violent content.

I've noticed a popular trend to 'Lemony Snickett' character's names to parallel their personalities or their jobs. An example in Hunger Games is Effie Trinket, one of the sponsors for Katniss in the game. She has a pink wig, is shallow and self absorbed. She is a trinket. Also, Peeta is a baker, get it? Pita?

I am sometimes troubled by the portrayal of the post apocalytic future world by unimaginitive writers as being the USA. Governments have fallen, new borders, powers, and nations have been created, and yet too often they haven't expanded past the borders we know today. To me this either narrows the story's scope of the world, or points to the authors' ethnocentrism. I don't see the point of changing everything, but not really.

The reading level is YA, grade 7 and up, but the idea of an ultra-violent reality TV show pitting children against each other is adult level. It is quite the phenommenon really; consider this Hunger Games role play at a Manilla book fair. Its great! Kids go around pretending to kill each other for the games. I'm disturbed.

Dust, by Arthur Slade

Another YA book I read last year. I had forgotten about it until a student asked me to recommend a mystery yesterday, and said he didn't read much. I thought that was a way of saying that he wanted something fairly small and not too challenging. 'Dust' fit the bill.

Arthur Slade was born in Moose Jaw. Dust is set in a prairie town during the Depression, so the title fits the setting.

It is a good mystery, and a fun read because it gets a little out of control near the end. It is about an 11 year old boy who is not fooled by the 'Stranger' who seems to be offering something too good to be true, -rain. The people of the town, desperate farmers mainly, are easily victimized by the stranger and Matthew Steelgate remains, -but what can a kid do against the powerful stranger? Read it and satisfy your curiousity!

My first attempt at writing on this Blog. The book is The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, a Canadian author of American parentage. I enjoyed the book. For me it was hard to put down and I was sorry when I had finished. The story follows a young African girl, Aminata Diallo, from 1745 to London in 1802. She is taken from her home into slavery, transported to North Carolina, sold to a Jewish man from New York, lived through the American Revolution, went to Nova Scotia, back to Africa and then to London England. While in the United States she marries and has two children.
"This is the magnificently told journey of a free African girl turned into a woman and a slave. It is authoritative and brilliant. You feel you are turning pages of history, the pages of truth." Austin Clarke, author of the Polished Hoe.

nell to bairds

Looks like I am on the Baird Book Blog.

Today, Cecil and I went down to the Farmer's Market and he bought a self-published fantasy book by David Korinetz. We''ll see if it is any good, stayed tuned.

The Watchmen

Wicked Awesome, teens, adult, deep thoughts, great story line, everything but not an easy reader, take some time and give it its due, read the images.

On another note, it continues to perplex and confound me how little seems to be known in literary circles about comics. As Harvey Pekar stated: "comics are words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures" Pekar is well known in the genre of being the writer of American Splendor, though he is not an artist.

One of the side bar links took me to an article in the NY Times in which G.G. Gustines reviews A.D.: After the Deluge, by Josh Neufeld, a graphic novel about Hurricane Katrina and in New Orleans. It is written from the author's personnal experience. Gustines seems to think that this is a new type of writing for the genre of comics, which is an uninformed view, especially considering that he is a professional book reviewer. He states that After the Deluge is: " the latest example of the expansion of the graphic format to include non-fiction and reportage as well as superheroes and fantasy."

This negates any book told in the sequential art form that does not fit his 4 categories. Pitiful writing Mr. Gustines. He has obviously no idea of the scope and breadth of the genre, nor its history. I think Alison Bechdel wrote Fun Home as an autobiography; I think faithful followers of the BBB know that Nakazawa's work is reportage and autobiographical, as is Joe Sacco's; I think David B. is world famous because of his excellent work about his life and his epileptic brother (Epileptic, Pantheon); I am very sure that Larry Gonick did several very famous books in comic form about world history, making the subject fun and accessible; Has he not heard of Art Spiegelman for goodness sakes? I think he won a Pullizter Prize for Maus. His latest work is In the Shadow of No Towers. I wonder if George Gene Gustines can figure out what that's about. Chester Brown's Louis Riel?

Of course there are lots more but my ranting drains me, oh well, thanks for tuning in.

Checkout The Watchmen, its fiction, its great.

CMB

David Sedaris

Even though I said I would document books I read this past year since I became a librarian, which is not a long period of time, I cannot list off the top of my head what I have read. When I remember I must record it immediatley or loose it, which is what happened here. I read it in the fall of '08.

Sedaris is a very entertaining writer. I have only read Me Talk Pretty One Day but I think all his stuff is similar. He writes stories from his own life, everyday happenings that are not unlike what most of us experience but somehow in the hands of a skilled author end up being rather amusing. On his homepage, it mentions that he: "lifts the corner of everyday life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface." His stories are referred to by others as essays, which I guess differentiate his political and social commentary from his growing up and family stories.


He is a little like Garrison Keelor or Stuart McLean in that tradition of story telling although considerably more caustic and without the type of radio show that make Keelor and McLean such identifiable personnas such as they are in 'The Prairie Home Companion' and 'The Vinyl Cafe,' respectively. However Sedaris is a recognisable public figure due to his many appearences on TV and radio talk shows, items on Youtube.com and work for the NY Times (he became kind of famous on the NPR).

This is certainly adult reading, not for content but for style; I feel you'll relate better with more life experience. I think Me Talk Pretty One Day is a good intro to Sedaris because it is an interesting and alternative style of an autobiography, full of charm, wit, and humour.

CMB

Wow, I remembered how to 'insert link' and went a little link crazy in this one!

How to use this blog

OK its a trick, if you are here then you are using it! Did you see the stuff to the right side of the page? There are 3 headings which you may click on and see wonderful things about literacy, novels and books. They are hot inked and changing so you don't always have to see the same boring articles.

Maybe you'd like to read George Pelecanos' best list. He is pretty funny. Or USAToday's Best Seller list in the 'book's heading. So many choices for fun, and you know what they say: nothing beats fun for a good time!

http://www.fallsapart.com/

It seems as though I can not use the usual cut and paste key strokes on Blogger, so I put the URL in the title line. Here is Sherman Alexie's site.



Have you read any Sherman Alexie? I like his writing a lot. I read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and now am reading the short story set called The Toughest Indian in the World.

Diary is a YA novel and as is all his writing, I assume, based on real experiences in the Seattle-Spokane region and on his life as a Spokane and Coeur d'Lane American Indian. I loved this book. It is full of humour, wit, and cleverness of all description.

Toughest is really great adult fiction, and I think some of the stories are worthy of study, especially the one of the title name. After this I think I'll read Indian Killer (can you sense a theme by the titles?) since we happen to have it here in my house although I'm not sure if anyone has read it.

CMB

Sherman Alexie is just fine

You can see his site:

100 Girls

I liked 100 Girls a lot for a violent comic book with no redeeming factors or socially responsible aspects. I liked Vancouver's Todd Demong's art; it has beautiful deep tones, full of angst and emotion, although apparently there are other 'colourists.' I liked the plot line, told by Adam Gallardo as it is well developed, exciting and edgy.

You see this seemingly typical teen girl starts to discover that she has secret strengths and powers! She doesn't know what to do! Bad guys are after her! Where will she turn? Yeah, I wondered too till she finds some other girls just like her who were part of a secret (of course) experiment that the government (of course) doesn't know about. You may have guessed that there are 100 of them. Boy, do they lay waste to some guys who really deserve it? Yes, they do!

It is fairly derivitive though. I remember a TV show called 'Dark Angel' with Jessica Alba, from which I think Gallardo has 'used' as 'inspiration.'

Needless to say, 100 Girls will take about 100 seconds to read.

http://www.jamesheneghan.com/

Last school year I read a lot of YA fiction including James Heneghan's Payback. I liked it, it was a bit of a surprise. Sad though, yet it had an optimistic note at the end. It is about teen bullying and suicide, which can be a real deterrent to someone wanting a mood lifter, right?

Heneghan was able to get me liking his characters, feeling for them, and understanding them, which says a lot I think given how jaded I can be sometimes (see American Born Chinese).

I liked it too because he is from here and the story is set in Van.

There are a lot of good opportuities for teaching in this book.

CMB

Generals Die in Bed: A Story from the Trenches

This 1928 book is about trench warfare. Author Charles Yale Harrison was an American fighting for Canada in WW1. The title refers to the soldiers belief that the generals who were sending them into the trenches did not die in battle, but comfortably in their own beds not having to endure the horrors of the trenches of Amiens, France, where the story takes place.

The introduction compares Generals to the more well known A Farewell to Arms, and All Quiet on the Western Front, also WW1 stories, and although I liked the book a lot, I don't think I'd go that far. In a clever way Harrison is able to set a mood appropriate for the content; his writing is stark, the story is bleak, and the first third is monotonous, -much like the intolerable conditions and constant shelling by both sides. The only relief for the soldiers (and therefore the reader), is when they get out on leave. I found these parts to be the most interesting.

In one chapter the army is moved for 2 days by truck and foot to an abandoned but well stocked town in northern France. The soldiers, who had not eaten for an extended period looted the town helping themselves to all the food and booze they could consume, although their stomaches had shrunk a lot while in the trenches. You can imagine a bunch of young men, angry from the long difficlut trip, tired, and armed, with little to look forward to knowing they would quickly be back in the trenches. Many of them got sick after from sheer gluttony.

I think this book is suitable for all ages, but is a fairly quick 170 page easy reader.

CMB

Barefoot Gen

Now here is the true genius of the form realised. Keiji Nakazawa's 4 book series tells the story of the A-bomb atrocity in Hiroshima from a little boy's perspective, complete with all the horrors and emotion possible in a comic book. The black and white images of the aftermath are distrubing and compelling. The book is a type of traditional manga and has been translated from the original Japanese, which seems to add credence to the form since manga is a definite Japanese style.

Historical writing appeals to me. The graphic form of telling history especially in this case, really hits home because of the personalities of the characters. Words alone don't get the whole story, although it takes a strong artist to convey the feelings of the people well. I became more and more sympathetic to Gen and his family as I read, hoping that things would work out for the characters, but knowing that most of them would die from injuries, radiation sickness, starvation and whatnot.

It is good to learn about culture from new viewpoints, so I feel that it is important to read books like Gen, although I don't know that there are many this good. Nakazawa often refers to his family's political stance on the roots of Japanese imperialism. They felt that the war was a creation of Japanese business men who cared nothing of the damage it would do, and only of their own profit.

CMB

American Born Chinese

It should be called, 'American Bored Chinese' by Gene Luen Yang. I liked the message, which is to 'just be yourself, and life will be good.' Sound trite? It is!

The art is pretty, but has little of the emotion and feeling of what makes the sequential art form (comics) great for me, as a newly converted fan of the genre. Yang writes 2 somewhat parallel plots, one of the kid (Jin) referred to in the title, and one myth about a Monkey King. The Monkey King tries to change his stripes and become less of a monkey, more of a god or human, so he can have greater power and distance himself from his humble monkey beginnings. He is self taught and powerful, but never satisfied, and tends to let his anger control him as he destroys things.

Jin is not like the monkey, but has bad feelings about his non-whiteness in a society of whiteys, somewhere in the US. Yang shows what seems to me a type of old-fashioned racism I remember from reading crappy world war 2 GI Joe type hate comics, full of xanthophobes and xenophobes. Jin has some issues, such as self hate, the need to distance himself from his culture, and desire to assimilate to avoid persecution by the uncomically stupid and ridiculous bully. The bully is a poor character with no developement at all, and the scenes with him in it are not heart wrenching enough for the reader to feel empathy toward Jin. The bully role must be good in a novel or film so that you hate them and want to smash their face in, hoping you could just insert yourself into the scene and beat the f'@#$ out of him and get your justice! Yang fails here because the characters and images are one dimensional.

This book won a lot of praise: Printz prize winner, ALA top ten, SLJ Best Book, NPR Holiday pick? Wow, just shows you how wrong the experts can be and that you should all trust your friendly teacher librarian right here on the BBB.

CMB

I love Joe Sacco

I read 'A Safe Area: Gorazde' by Sacco, this year, and although it is a sad and true war story set in the mid '90's Bosnia, it is a fascinating book. He writes in comic/graphic novel/sequetial art form, which is a contrast to the subject matter. Sacco is a journalist with wonderful artistic skill. His drawings tell the story along with the text making for a great insight into the people's lives. He lived in the war torn town for about 4 monthes and was in danger often. Sacco puts a lot of his personality into his work; he inserts his own image in many of the drawings and is quite self-effacing. The form really helps show the human element of the war. 'Gorazde' is non-fiction and history, which I enjoy, so I would reccomend it to any YA (young adult) and adult reader.

http://www.amazon.ca/Safe-Area-Gorazde-s-c/dp/1560974702/ref=sr_1_3/181-6786948-3244365?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247247232&sr=8-3

The Alchemyst, Michael Scott

I read this book since it is a Tupper library item and many students have withdrawn it. I liked the cover, kind of Euro old school, fantasy and what not. It was very fun, exciting, quite a good adventure, suitable for ages 10+. The concepts are simple, you know, the regular good V. evil, and guess who is winning; it is the first in a trilogy. Scott is Irish, and supposedly an expert of mythology. He incorporates many of the myths that many of us have grown up with if from a Euro lineage. There is even the Witch of Endor.

Cecil

Hi there

Testing my first entry on the BBB, -BairdBookBlog.

I may try Shelfari because I think its fun.

Start posting anyone anytime.