October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard, by Lesléa Newman

My take: The author of Heather Has Two Mommies had been due to deliver the keynote speech at the University of Wyoming’s Gay Awareness Week just days after gay student Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in 1998. She ultimately delivered her talk, but understandably felt the incident at her core. Since then, she has completed this collection of poems about Matthew, his attack, and its aftermath in which she writes imagined responses from assorted perspectives — the attackers, Matthew’s family, a police officer, the fence upon which Matthew was strung up, a nearby deer, the road.

It was beautiful and stark and painful to read, and ultimately I felt I needed to keep it at arm’s length in order to get through it. I can see this being a good addition to a resource room or school library. I also think it would pair well with recordings or performances of modern slam poetry to explore verse as a tool for recording and understanding current and historic events.

Pages: 112

Thank you for calling. Due to her late night Cybils reading, sprite is unable to come to the blog. Please feel free to leave a message or try her blog again at a later time. Thank you.

I’m totally cheating in the interest of being in bed in seven minutes. Here is the summary I gave of a novel I did not shortlist for the Cybils:

The Difference between You and Me, by Madeleine George

From the jacket: “Jesse cuts her hair with a Swiss Army knife. She wears massive green fisherman’s boots every day. She’s the founding (and only) member of NOLAW, the National Organization to Liberate All Weirdos. Emily is th evice president of student council. She has an niternship with a local big business. She loves her boyfriend. At least she thinks she does. But there’s no denying her feeling sfor Jesse. When they meet up every Tuesday in the bathroom of the local library, the physical connection they share is undeniable.”

My take: Oh, how I wanted to love this book. It’s firmly in my wheelhouse of politically progressive teen novels.

And I liked it. It had a few really great lines (including one comparing a boy’s kisses to cantaloupe), a (perhaps cheesily so) happy ending, an endearing main protagonist, and several positive messages.

But I had some huge problems with it (most of which I feel could have been sorted out by a strong editor), too.

First, it had way too many issues it was tackling. We covered sexuality (questioning of, discriminating against because of, and parental dismissal of), breast cancer (parental survival of and parental death due to), sprawl (in a thinly veiled attack of WalMart), corporate involvement in education, and hoarding. And those were just the major ones.

Second, it’s written from three perspectives. One character (Jesse, told in third person) is clearly the protagonist we are meant to identify with. The second (Emily, told in first person) is her love interest. And the third (Esther, also in first person) is a new and quirky friend.

Sometimes books told from multiple perspectives can really work for me (as I wrote last night), but other times I feel like it’s an author not wanting to have to figure out how to get across a second person’s perspectives/motivations/important plot point. This book, I feel, falls into the latter category.

Jesse’s sections are strong and could have carried the novel with some revisions.

Emily’s seem to exist merely to explain how StarMart (really, it’s that thin a veil) and the other sources of tension in the novel arise. Unfortunately, Emily is written essentially as a caricature. At face value, she’s an idealized teen girl — pretty, popular, involved, ambitious, nice. Also, egotistical, shallow, and not very smart. The most interesting thing about her is that she likes kissing Jesse. And I would be fine with all of that, but she’s one of the narrators of the story. We’re meant to identify with her in some way, but the author can’t be bothered to round her out.

And Esther gets only two chapters, mostly so she can talk about her mother’s death and Joan of Arc, her role model of tough chicks taking charge and getting stuff done.

Oh, and there was the editing snafu where the room where Emily and Jesse would meet for their trysts moved around the building. That should have been caught in proofing, but is merely a minor quibble in light of the other, more egregious problems I had with the book.

All in all, I felt like I was reading a draft version of the novel I wanted to be reading. But of all books I’ve ever wanted to throw across the room, I liked this one the best.

Pages: 263

Since today was Veterans Day, I thought this book, which I included on yesterday’s Cybils shortlist, would be a good one to review today:

Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am, by Harry Mazer and Peter Lerangis

From the jacket: “Everything has always come easily to Ben Bright. He’s a solid student, landed the lead in his high school play, and has been with Ariela, his amazing girlfriend, for as long as either of them can remember. Everyone expects great things from Ben. So when Ben enlists in the army right out of high school, they are devastated.”

My take: Aimed at middle schoolers, this slim novel takes a look at 15 months in the life of Ben Bright, his parents, his autistic brother, his best friend, and his girlfriend. Ben surprises everyone in his life with the announcement just before graduation that he would not be heading to college, as expected, but instead has enlisted in the reserves and will be heading to basic training. While this isn’t a choice anyone in his life is thrilled about, they all come around to acceptance before he leaves home and is ultimately shipped off to the front lines.

But then they learn that there has been an explosion in Iraq and that Ben has been injured. He has suffered a severe brain trauma that has left him without any memories and with the need to relearn even the most basic bodily functions. He doesn’t recognize his loved ones, who must struggle with how best to support him — and each other — in the following months.

The novel is divided into three sections (Before, During, and After), with the early parts of the story nearly all told from Ben’s perspective. The final (and understandably longest) section of the book shifts from Ben in various stages of recovery to fiancée Ariela away at college to various other characters. This is one of those instances where the change in perspective is a useful one as we see the way everyone strives to be supportive of Ben’s recovery while still fraying at the edges of their own lives. There are no easy answers, although the ending is a hopeful one.

This story of a young man who chooses to serve his country and his loved ones who are forced to serve it, too, should be read by everyone.

Pages: 148

Today was our first Cybils deadline, where we had to share the top 15 books of what we’d read thus far.

Mine were, in no particular order:

• Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip, a contemporary romance focusing on a boy whose interests include pitching, photography, and hanging out with his grandfather
• The Fault in Our Stars, a contemporary romance between two kids who have cancer
• Come August, Come Freedom: The Bellows, The Gallows, and The Black General Gabriel, historical fiction of a Virginia slave who led an unsuccessful rebellion for freedom
• Chopsticks, a novel of ephemera that blends the lines between the real and the imagined
• How to Save a Life, a contemporary coming-of-age novel about two teen girls whose lives intersect when one of them agrees to give up her impending baby to the other’s mother for adoption
• Pinned, the coming-of-age tale of two classmates, both of whom are struggling to overcome a disability
• Ladies in Waiting, historical fiction set in the court of Charles II focusing on three teen girls in the innermost circle of the queen
• Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, a coming-of-age story of a Mexican-American boy in the 1970s
• Gone, Gone, Gone, a teen romance set in the D.C. suburbs in the aftermath of 9/11 and during the sniper attacks
• My Own Revolution, historical coming-of-age fiction set in the Communist era of Czechoslovakia
• DJ Rising, in which a teenage boy struggling to make ends meet at home gets the chance of a lifetime to follow his dream
• The Boy on Cinnamon Street, a contemporary romance involving a girl who’s suffering from PTSD
• Finding Somewhere, a poetic (in turn of phrase, not in terms of format) story of two teenaged horse thieves
• Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am, the story of an injured Iraqi war vet aimed at upper middle schoolers
• Winter Town, a contemporary romance novel I’ll be recommending to everyone who likes a slightly angst-ridden holiday read

1. Optional: Become a Cybils judge.
2. Request books from your library.
3. Request more books from your library.
4. When the holds all come in at once, go pick up the books from the library.
5. Put the books in a bag. (They don’t belong to you after all, and you’d feel awful if you hurt them because you hadn’t learned how to juggle before taking up this fitness regime.) While a canvas bag will allow for ease of mind, a large and sturdy plastic bag will add to the difficulty of the routine, as you will have to carry it in unusual ways to keep the books from breaking the bag, exercising different sets of muscles.
6. Take the books with you while running other errands. Bonus fitness points may be gained should these errands generate additional parcels to juggle.
7. Carry the books and all additional packages/bags/hangers of dry cleaning nearly a mile to get home. (Should you live closer, feel free to take an extra walk around the block or up and down the driveway.)
8. Repeat steps 2-8 later in the week.