Module 7: Wintergirls

Module 7: Realistic Fiction

 

Wintergirls

Author: Laurie Halse Anderson

Book Summary:

  Lia and Cassie are “wintergirls:” frozen and empty. They are best friends with their corresponding eating disorders and disorderly conduct. When Cassie dies suddenly, Lia is sent reeling on a rollercoaster of depression, calorie counting, and hallucinations. Lia’s disorder controls her life, and even her close relationship with her step-sister cannot cure her. She refuses to let people help her; she lies to her therapist and tells the doctors what they want to hear. She cannot truly be helped until she allows herself to be helped. Will she get better? Will she allow herself to unthaw?

    

APA Book Reference:

Anderson, L.H. (2009). Wintergirls. New York, NY: Speak. 

Impressions:

  I loved the way this book was written. The prose was beautiful, and the crossed out sections that show the words that Lia will not allow herself to think allow the reader to further connect with her character. The numbers written next to every food item showing calories allow the reader to dive even deeper into Lia’s psychosis.

  This book was a well-written but depressing read. It was realistic and relatable. This book illustrates how one girl deals with some dark issues from the death of her best friend to her own near death experiences. Lia is a stubborn, at times annoying, character to follow. I sometimes found myself taking her parents’ side in their various arguments even though I was given Lia’s point of view and could sort of understand her motives. However, her relationship with her sister is what saved me from putting the book down. It gave me hope that she would seek help in the end.

  I was unsure of how Wintergirls would end. It could have had a happy ending (Yay she gets better!), it could have had an awful ending (she joins Cassie and they are “wintergirls” in the afterlife), but I found myself suspecting it would go the way of Go Ask Alice where the reader is left hopeful that she is getting better then on the next page she’s dead. I suppose I liked how it ultimately ended though; I wanted Lia to have hope.

  Side Note: This is yet another book that mentions A Wrinkle in Time. What’s the deal? I had never heard of that book until this class, and now it’s popping up everywhere.

Professional Review:

Kraus, D. (2008). Wintergirls [Review of the book Wintergirls]. Booklist Online. Retrieved from: http://www.booklistonline.com/Wintergirls-Laurie-Halse-Anderson/pid=3201361

“Problem-novel fodder becomes a devastating portrait of the extremes of self-deception in this brutal and poetic deconstruction of how one girl stealthily vanishes into the depths of anorexia. Lia has been down this road before: her competitive relationship with her best friend, Cassie, once landed them both in the hospital, but now not even Cassie’s death can eradicate Lia’s disgust of the “fat cows” who scrutinize her body all day long. Her father (no, “Professor Overbrook”) and her mother (no, “Dr. Marrigan”) are frighteningly easy to dupe—tinkering and sabotage inflate her scale readings as her weight secretly plunges: 101.30, 97.00, 89.00. Anderson illuminates a dark but utterly realistic world where every piece of food is just a caloric number, inner voices scream “NO!” with each swallow, and self-worth is too easily gauged: “I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.” Struck-through sentences, incessant repetition, and even blank pages make Lia’s inner turmoil tactile, and gruesome details of her decomposition will test sensitive readers. But this is necessary reading for anyone caught in a feedback loop of weight loss as well as any parent unfamiliar with the scripts teens recite so easily to escape from such deadly situations.”

Library Uses:

  Wintergirls main themes are death and eating disorders. This book could certainly start a discussion about eating disorders. It wouldn’t be a good book to use in a discussion of dealing with death because Lia is an already troubled girl who does not deal with it very well. It could also be used in a discussion about family or dealing with divorce; Lia’s parents are divorced; her family consists of Mom “Dr. Marrigan” and Dad Professor Overbrook, Jennifer (dad’s wife) and step-sister Emma. She obviously has a hard time relating to her parents and many children could relate to this.

Module 6: The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales

Module 6: Picture Books

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales

Author: Jon Scieszka & Lane Smith

Book Summary:

     The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales is a book of “fractured” fairy-tales. The authors reinvent popular fairy tales such as the gingerbread man (renamed the Stinky Cheese Man) and Little Red Riding Hood (renamed Little Red Running Shorts). The fairy tales, or fairly stupid tales rather, have obvious endings and are not stereotypically happy. The narrator also has trouble keeping the book going. He is interrupted by the Little Red Hen, he ruins the story of Little Red Running Shorts before Red and the wolf can tell it, and he almost gets eaten by a giant. The Stinky Cheese Man is an inventive reiteration of fairy tales.

APA Book Reference:

Scieszka, J., & Smith, L. (1992).The stinky cheese man and other fairly stupid tales. New York, NY: Penguin Books USA Inc. 

Impressions:

There have been discussions in class about what makes a “good” picture book. Many of my classmates argued that a picture book was considered “good” when the pictures can tell a story without words. I tend to agree with them, but not in terms of this particular book. While the illustrations are amazing, I think the wit and the humor come from the words in the story. However, sometimes the words become part of the picture when the Table of Contents falls and squashes everybody, for example. I would still classify this book as a “good” picture book despite the fact that the pictures cannot speak for themselves.

Also, maybe the Scieszka and Smith pushed the boundaries of “good” picture books considering the book is basically a satire of book making anyway. The book starts on the end page, the Table of Contents is in a story, and there are upside down and blank pages.

Professional Review:

Burns, M.M. (1992). The stinky cheese man and other fairly stupid tales. Horn Book Magazine. 68(6). 720.

“Scieszka and Smith have done it again! Blend "Saturday Night Live" with "Monty Python," add a dash of Mad magazine with maybe a touch of "Fractured Fairy Tales" from the old "Rocky and Bullwinkle" show, and you have an eclectic, frenetic mix of text and pictures with a kinetic display of typefaces, rivaling the fireworks extravaganza on the Fourth of July. Even the page arrangement is unconventional, so that the entire book is a spoof on the art of book design, the art of the fairy tale, and whatever other art one might wish to parody. The individual tales are part of a zany whole in which the Little Red Hen, a kvetch if ever there was one, reappears periodically to complain about the dog, cat, and mouse who refused to help her plant her wheat. She and Jack (of beanstalk country) serve as a kind of running commentary on this theater-of-the-absurd in picture-book format. The concluding spread suggests that the annoying fowl gets her comeuppance — and not one she expected. Individual tales, such as "The Princess and the Bowling Ball," "The Really Ugly Duckling," or the title tale, "The Stinky Cheese Man," can be extracted for telling aloud — with great success. Who, after all, could resist a prince with foresight enough to substitute his bowling ball for the traditional pea under the feather mattresses to insure that he and his beloved live "happily, though maybe not completely honestly, ever after"? In addition, the collection includes "Chicken Licken" (newly revised), "The other Frog Prince," "Little Red Running Shorts," "Cinderumpelstiltskin," and "The Tortoise and the Hair." The farcical tone of the whole may carry this concoction to the attention of primary schoolers, but it will enjoy its real success among middle-school through senior-citizen audiences. Another masterpiece from the team that created The True Story of the Three Little Pigs!(Viking).”

Library Uses:

This book could be used in a program to encourage children to rewrite their own version of popular fairy tales. It could also be read along with the popular versions, and the children could compare and contrast.

Book Trailers (Assignment A)

  For SLIS 5420 Assignment A, I chose to create three book trailers for the Middle School reading level.

 

Enjoy the trailers,

  and Happy Reading!

 

 

 

A Wrinkle in Time

 

 

The Tequila Worm

 

 

The Westing Game

 

Module 5: Jellicoe Road

Module 5: Other Award Winners 

Jellicoe Road

Author: Melina Marchetta

Book Summary:

This book follows Taylor Markham and her friends through the territory wars. The wars are between the “townies,” “cadets,” and the students at the Jellicoe boarding school. Taylor is the leader of the students, and the readers follow her thoughts through the wars and other various happenings in her life. Taylor doesn’t know much about her past or her family, but she spends a lot of time with Hannah who lives right next to the school. Hannah is also writing a book (that is featured as a sub- story, so the readers get to meet Hannah’s characters as well). Taylor soon begins to realize though, when Hannah disappears to be with a “friend,” that the characters in Hannah’s story are real. Taylor, with the help of her friends, eventually pieces together her past and her connection to those “characters.”

APA Book Reference:

Marchetta, M. (2006). Jellicoe road. New York, NY: HarperTeen.

Impressions:

I loved the prose in this book. Marchetta is a great writer, and I look forward to reading more of her books when I have the free time. I will admit thought that when I first starting reading, I was a little bit confused with the back and forth of the story. The use of italics really helped me though, and as the story went on it became easier to follow. Also as the story went on, it was easier to see how the stories connected to one another. The main character was very troubled yet relatable, and I really enjoyed following her narration through the story. I found myself not wanting it to end. And according to Marchetta’s Wikipedia page, she is supposedly writing a screenplay adaptation of the book. I really hope, if it’s true, that the movie comes to America and doesn’t just play in Australia. 

Professional Review:

Stevenson, D. (2008). Jellicoe road (review). Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, 62(3), 124-125. DOI: 10.1353/bcc.0.0492

“Jellicoe Road is where Taylor Markham was abandoned by her mother years ago, and since then she’s been living at the Jellicoe School and with Hannah, who works at the school and who has taken a special interest in Taylor. Now Hannah has suddenly disappeared, leaving Taylor feeling abandoned all over again, and the timing couldn’t be worse: the military Cadets have returned for their annual local camping stint, making it time for the resumption of the long-running and secret territorial war between the Cadets, the Townies, and the School, with Taylor this year the leader of the School—and trying to forget her history with Jonah, the leader of the Cadets. Into this already intense and elaborate plot intertwine segments of another story about similar teenagers, a quintet of friends drawn from School, Cadets, and Townies and linked together by tragedy, and as the interpolated passages accumulate to make a clearer narrative, it becomes apparent that these segments of what was initially supposed to be Hannah’s unfinished novel is actually her true life story, which hides the mystery of Taylor’s own past. The book uncompromisingly starts with the fragments unconnected, leaving readers teased by a mystery they can’t even begin to piece together even as they’re enticed by the taut intensity of the atmosphere and Australian author Marchetta’s impeccable, long-striding style. Though the elements are melodramatic, they serve to heighten the intensity of emotion rather than the drama itself, steeping the book in loss and longing. Yet the solution to these griefs is subtly constructed before Taylor’s eyes as the people around her demonstrate that she matters deeply to them, and it’s clear that her circle is, in its own way, recreating the bonds of the previous generation and offering a happy ending that their predecessors were largely unable to find. Even readers with boringly normal lives will recognize the strains of Taylor’s individuation (about Hannah, she says, “I hate her for not working out what I need from her”), and they’ll be relieved to see her and her collection of surprising yet staunch friends finding their way at last.”

Library Uses:

Jellicoe Road would be a good book to feature in a book talk to high school students. It features some mature themes, but the major of theme of the book is family whether that family is blood related or friends that become like family. This book could also open up discussion s about feelings of loss, abandonment, and dealing with suicide.  

Module 5: The Tequila Worm

Module 5: Other Award Winners 

 

The Tequila Worm

Author: Viola Canales

Book Summary:

The Tequila Worm follows a young girl named Sofia through her young adulthood. She starts out as a young girl practicing for her first communion and eventually becomes a young woman with a scholarship to a private high school with her pick of the “big three” colleges to attend. Sofia is close to her family, and the book follows her through many family events such as her cousin’s quinceanera, the Day of the Dead celebrations, and the Christmas traditions in which Sofia is made the Christmas madrina. Sofia is away from home throughout the story, but she is not without a cure for her homesickness. All she must do to feel better is eat the tequila worm.

APA Book Reference:

Canales, V. (2005). The tequila worm. New York, NY: Wendy Lamb Books.

Impressions:

 I’m going to be honest and admit that the only reason I wanted to read this book was the title. I assumed a book entitled The Tequila Worm would be an interesting read, but I had no idea what the meaning behind it was. I know now that the significance of the tequila worm is that eating it cures homesickness. I loved that the notion of eating the tequila worm kept coming up throughout various parts of the story. Something that surprised me about this book was how it was emotionally compelling. I thought it would be a quick read about a family with facts about the Mexican American culture thrown in, but this book had me crying by the end (maybe I shouldn’t have been reading it at work). The characters are so relatable, and the situations (growing up, leaving home, family obligations) are also relatable to people from any culture who read this book. I also knew that the Spanish language would be featured in the book, but I was not overwhelmed by the Spanish that was sprinkled throughout. In fact, it added to the culture of the story.

Professional Review:

Engberg, G. (2005). The tequila worm [Review of the book The Tequila Worm]. Booklist Online.  Retrieved from: http://www.booklistonline.com/The-Tequila-Worm-Viola-Canales/pid=1504439

“From an early age, Sofia has watched the comadres in her close-knit barrio community, in a small Texas town, and she dreams of becoming “someone who makes people into a family,” as the comadres do. The secret, her young self observes, seems to lie in telling stories and “being brave enough to eat a whole tequila worm.” In this warm, entertaining debut novel, Canales follows Sofia from early childhood through her teen years, when she receives a scholarship to attend an exclusive boarding school. Each chapter centers on the vivid particulars of Mexican American traditions--celebrating the Day of the Dead, preparing for a cousin’s quinceanera. The explanations of cultural traditions never feel too purposeful; they are always rooted in immediate, authentic family emotions, and in Canales’ exuberant storytelling, which, like a good anecdote shared between friends, finds both humor and absurdity in sharply observed, painful situations--from weathering slurs and other blatant harassment to learning what it means to leave her community for a privileged, predominately white school. Readers of all backgrounds will easily connect with Sofia as she grows up, becomes a comadre, and helps rebuild the powerful, affectionate community that raised her.”

Library Uses:

This book could be used in libraries to teach children about the Mexican American culture. It could also be used in part to teach children about how to deal with homesickness when they are away from home.