Language

I figured everyone would enjoy this since we're all in an English class!

Hilary

Sara Zarr on judging the National Book Awards

Sara Zarr is a writer whose thoughts I always love to read.  Her books are awesome, too.  Here are a few of her comments about being a judge for this year's National Book Award for Young People's Literature:

The judging process reminded me what a mysterious, personal transaction reading is. At first, that stressed me out. How were we going to get through these books and make decisions if we’re all so different? By the end, I marveled at really what a cool thing it is that each person can connect so differently across such a broad range of material, and that gives me hope for each of the books I’ve written and the ones I’ve yet to write.

Richard Rodriguez says that the reader re-creates the book when he reads it. If that’s true, and I think it probably is, that means 100 readers could have 100 different experiences of the same book. Which can be frustrating, but is also kind of magical and also tells you something about what it is to be a person, an individual.

Sara's comments reminded me of conversations we've had in class this semester.  I encourage you to visit her blog and read more of what she has to say.  Then tune in for the announcement of the NBA winner next week!

Jennifer Buehler

I love John Green!

Sooo this week I have decided to revisit John Green by reading his latest book Paper Towns. As of now I have not finished it but after speaking with a friend I decided to check out the blog that he did with his brother in 2007 as my own supplemental material. I have watched all of the posts for January and plan to continue because they are hilarious. So I encourage anyone who hasn't to check it out at

 http://www.brotherhood2.com/index.php/?m=200701&paged=4 

-Chloe

Author Visit!

Next Tuesday night, November 15th, Laurie Halse Anderson will visit the St. Louis County Library in Frontenac on book tour for her new historical novel Forge.

I hope some of you will get out there to see her!  The event starts at 7 p.m., and the county library is across the street from Plaza Frontenac mall.  Puddnhead Books is one of the tour stop sponsors.

Forge is a great Revolutionary War page-turner featuring an escaped child slave named Curzon and scenes from the long winter at Valley Forge.  There's humor, grit, friendship, loyalty, betrayal, a great narrative voice, and many, many cool historical epigraphs that link each chapter to voices from the time period.

Jennifer

Revisiting Countdown

Today I received a reader's guide for Deborah Wiles' Countdown.  This excerpt resonated with me, having just read everyone's weekly response papers:

History happens to real people with real feelings and real lives, everyday lives. Heroic things are done by ordinary, everyday people, every day. In Countdown, I consider each character no less heroic than those in the biographies I tell. My characters have more everyday lives, perhaps, but so did Harry and Fannie and Jack and Jackie and Pete, when they were young. And my readers were once kids, or are kids, and I want them to know that they also live lives full of everyday heroics. They make history every day. Every choice they make reverberates and becomes a part of their history, and affects others’ history as well. I chose to extend the biographies in Countdown to the present day, in order to show how every choice we make affects not just our own lives, but history as a whole—everything is connected, which is something Franny finds out for herself in Countdown.

I'll post the reader's guide on SLU Global for anyone who'd like to hear more from Deborah Wiles.  If you have suggestions for other topics you'd like to hear her address, please post them in the comments.  I will be interviewing her next Friday at NCTE.

Jennifer Buehler

The Beauty of Graphic Novels

Sorry it took so long for me to post! I am at caveman status when it comes to using technology… seriously, I even find iPods confusing.

I honestly was not excited about blogging and doing my booktalk about graphic novels. I knew nothing about them other than Manga, which is not something I am completely interested in, and comics, which I considered something for the Sunday paper. When I did go to Dr. Buehler’s office to choose a book, I was pleasantly surprised by how wrong I was about graphic novels. She showed me ones about topics I was interested in like homelessness, the Cold War, the Holocaust, etc. I chose a relatively short book and began reading. What I loved most about my experience with this graphic novel was that not only did the characters tell a story like in a movie, but the art in the book was equally as important as the content, perhaps even more!

 From a teaching perspective, I was happy to see a way for visual students to learn that didn’t involve them reading and rereading and not even processing the words. I also appreciated the amount of talent and work that goes into making such novels. I did some research as to when the graphic novel began, and it turns out they have always been around! Cave paintings and hieroglyphics are technically graphic novels because they evoke the power of pictures to help tell a story.

I know I can’t be the only one who was less than enthusiastic to have to read a graphic novel at first, and I’m wondering if anyone else was surprised by how good these novels actually are. Did anyone go through that experience of being proved wrong like me? I’m a little embarrassed for not even wanting to give this genre a shot just because of my assumption of the genre as a whole. Do you think that other people have the same assumptions and that’s why they defer from reading these books? I’m just wondering… I am definitely going to reconsider this genre, especially for education. 

My experience was definitely a good one, and I guess I should’ve known since we have yet to read any books that I don’t like in this class. 

- Jo

so this is a graphic novel....

This being my first experience reading a graphic novel I didn't really know what to expect, and honestly I still do not know how I feel. I have always loved art and literature so I do not know why I haven't read graphic novels before. When I picked up American Born Chinese I finished it easily in one sitting but at first I didn't really get much out of it........so I read it again. With the second reading I began to realize how smoothly the three different stories fit together an the intricate ways that the main character(s) came to terms with being a Chinese American. Using the ancient Chinese story as a parallel was brilliant. It used a part of Jin Wang's heritage to describe his own struggle to fit in, it showed Jin that by being himself he had a specific role to fill, that he could be both American and Chinese and that that was who he is suppose to be. American Born Chinese has opened my eyes to the world of Graphic Novels and the new hidden layers and facets it makes available to literature.
-Chloe