Book talk: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

High school is hard, but if you're Arnold Spirit -- "Junior," to everyone -- you're the only Native American at a high school full of mostly white kids. Smart, beautiful white kids who have money and nice clothes and cars and parents with jobs.

Junior is poor. Junior was born with a big head and should've died at birth because he had problems with his brain. He has a lisp, a stutter, ugly clothes, an alcoholic dad, and a best friend - Rowdy - who will not speak to him. Junior lives on a reservation -- called "the rez" -- and he knows that being poor and Indian really, really sucks. Forgive my language. I'm just quoting him.

From the time he was born, Junior has had to struggle for his survival. Everything he has, he has had to fight for, whether literally or physically fist-fight for. On the first day of high school on the rez, Junior picked up a textbook. When he saw the name inside, he realized the textbook was over 30 years old. That's what the Indian kids get: not even second-best. The dregs. It angered Junior so much that he threw the textbook, and it hit his teacher right in the face, resulting in a suspension for Junior.

Every cloud has a silver lining -- sometimes even for Indians -- and the teacher convinced Junior to attend a better school, named Rearden, twenty-two miles away from the reservation. You know how poor Junior is? He often has to hitchhike those 22 miles to and from school. A few times he walked the whole way, and he got blisters. It was awful. You try being the only Indian in a school full of whites. See how long YOU last.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. 230 p.
2008 Boston Globe Horn Book Award for Fiction. 2010 Young Readers' Choice Award.
Booktalk to high school.

Sherman Alexie

Book talk: Underground by Shane Evans (Virginia Readers' Choice, 2012-2013)

For this booktalk, I’m going to ask you close your eyes and keep them shut. I want you to pretend that you’re a young African-American slave, and you and your family are trying to escape to freedom. You’re terrified. It’s dark, and you have to be absolutely silent and creep out of the master’s house and into the woods. You don’t know which is more horrifying: the journey you’re about to take, or the prospect of getting caught. The other slaves’ eyes are full of fear, and so are your parents. You don’t know where you are going, but you do know that you’ll always travel by night and you must be absolutely silent no matter what. You have to be braver than you think you can be, because now you’re part of the slaves’ underground railroad to freedom.

Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom by Shane W. Evans. Unpaged. Roaring Book Press: 2011. Booktalk to primary grades. Virginia Readers’ Choice, 2012-2013.

Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom

Booktalk: Because I Am Furniture (Virginia Readers' Choice)

Anke is a normal 9^th grade girl who plays volleyball, writes poetry, resents the popular kids, and has a crush on a senior boy. But her home life is far from normal. Her father is verbally abusive, physically abusive, and sexually abusive. Anke has an older brother and an older sister, both of whom seem to bear the brunt of her father’s abuse. Anke’s mother is mostly silent and powerless. The children never have people over to the house: it’s almost unthinkable. So Anke does what she can in order to stay emotionally and physically alive in a house which feels like a prison. Even the title – Because I Am Furniture – gives you a view into her mental state. Anke doesn’t feel human at home: she feels like an object, taken for granted, hardly noticed, like furniture. Yet Anke dares to be hopeful. She made a list of things she could live without, and here are some of the things she listed: cars, cell phones, whitening toothpaste, Polo cologne, choosing sides … a father. Because I am Furniture by Thalia Chaltas.

Because I am Furniture by Thalia Chaltas. 352 p. Viking: 2009. Virginia Readers’ Choice for 2011-2012: high school. Due to subject matter, know both the text and your audience when booktalking this title.

Booktalk: Ways to Live Forever (Virginia Readers' Choice)

How many times have you said, “When I grow up… ?” Probably lots of times. When I grow up. It’s a normal childhood phrase. Sam is 11 and doesn’t say it. He says, “if I grow up.” He has leukemia, and he’s been through chemotherapy several times. The leukemia also comes back, unfortunately. Pretty sad, huh? So you’re thinking, why would I want to read a sad book? There are a bunch of reasons, but the best one I can think of is that Sam is a really cool and brave person. He met his best friend, Felix, in the hospital, and they’d do crazy stuff like stealing a trolley and riding around in it, or asking their tutor to help them make things which explode. Sam is also a fact collector and an expert list maker. He really likes wolves, and he wants to break some silly world records. He’s a normal kid with a normal family who has to think about death and dying, because it could be around the corner for him. Just getting to know him was one of the coolest things about his story. Ways to Live Forever by Sally Nicholls.

Ways to Live Forever by Sally Nicholls. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2008. 212 p. Booktalk to middle school. Virginia Readers’ Choice 2011-2012 for middle school.

Booktalk: How to Heal a Broken Wing [Birds; 3]

Cities are full of tall, glass buildings, and sometimes poor birds fly into the glass and hurt themselves [show pp. {1-2}]. No one saw this poor bird fall [show pp. {3-4}], but little Will spotted him lying on the sidewalk, his wing broken. A bird with a broken wing cannot survive for long in the wild. Will and his parents took the bird home. They gave the bird food, water, a safe place, and time. It takes a long time to heal a broken wing. Read about this bird's recovery in How to Heal a Broken Wing by Bob Graham.

How to Heal a Broken Wing by Bob Graham. Unpaged. Candlewick: 2008. Booktalk to pre-k, younger elementary.

Booktalk: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane [Kate DiCamillo; 3]

[Hide the book cover.] Abilene LOVED Edward. She loved him with all her heart and soul. [Now show cover.] Edward is _not_ a person. He's a beautiful china rabbit, made out of the finest porcelain china. And Abilene was the little girl who owned and loved him.

But there were two problems. The first was this: Edward doesn't really love anyone or anything, even though he's smart and capable of love. The second problem happened on a ship. As you know from stories, bad things can happen on the sea. Abilene was taking a cruise with her parents, and she was taking excellent care of Edward. Sadly, though, two boys grabbed Edward and started throwing him around. Edward went overboard. He sank like a log, deep into the depths of the sea. Months passed. He had lots of time to think. He felt very, very alone. You could even say he missed Abilene. Sometimes the sea spits out its treasures, though. An old fisherman named Lawrence found him, and Edward's adventures started back up again. But I want you to remember the most important fact: Abilene loved Edward. And the love had finally lodged itself into Edward's formerly cold heart. The title is your first clue: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. 228 pages. Candlewick, 2006. Booktalk to intermediate grades [3rd-6th].

Booktalk: The Magician's Elephant [Kate DiCamillo; 2]

[Show cover]. The magician messed up. I mean, this magician really, really blew it. You know how magicians can make a bouquet of flowers appear out of nowhere? Well, this magician intended to produce a bouquet of lilies, but instead he inadvertently conjured up an elephant who fell from the sky, landed on a lady in the audience, and broke both her legs, crippling her. Huge, huge mistake! The magician ended up in jail. But the elephant didn't disappear on anything. The elephant is real, and he meets with a sad fate: he ends up chained up in a room in a rich lady's house, all alone. There's a young boy, Peter, who is all alone, too, in this story. Peter is not literally chained up, but he's chained up in other ways. An old soldier, who is not Peter's father, owns Peter. Peter is sort of a lonely young servant. And one day he disobeys his master and goes to a fortuneteller. The fortuneteller tells Peter something which could change his whole life --- and, not to give anything away --- could change the life of this poor, lonely elephant. Can a huge mistake result in something wonderful? The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo.

The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo. 201 p. Candlewick, 2009. Booktalk to intermediate grades [3rd-5th] and to middle school.

Book talk: The Underneath by Kathi Appelt (Newbery Honor, 2009)

Our theme so far has been ‘hang in there.’ As you know, it’s another way of saying ‘survive’ or ‘endure.’ This novel, The Underneath, shows us the embodiment of survival and endurance. When you look at the cover of The Underneath [display cover], you see three animals cowering, probably in fear: Ranger, a hound dog chained to the house, and two cats. An unlikely trio. They’re living beneath a beat-up shack in the middle of an obscure forest in far east Texas, with bayous, creeks, wilderness, snakes, turtles, frogs, and alligators. The owner of the shack is a terribly cruel man who lives alone, and his only name is Gar-Face. Gar-Face hates other people and animals, too. He’s abused Ranger, who lives alone under the house in fear and hunger and solitude. But Ranger’s life starts to show a little hope and love when a pregnant cat shows up. She’s literally been thrown away by her owners. When she gives birth to two kittens, she and her kittens live with Ranger in the underneath and love him completely. They’re their own little family, as odd as it may seem. The cat and her kittens make Ranger’s life worth living. Yet there is such danger in the forest. There is a snake who is over 1,000 years old, plotting revenge. There’s an enormous alligator whom Gar-Face wants to catch and kill. And there’s a mysterious, beautiful hummingbird whose appearance to a creature or person announces that person’s impending death. Who will die? Who will survive? The Underneath by Kathi Appelt is a truly amazing novel, beautifully written and brilliantly imagined.

The Underneath by Kathi Appelt. 313 p. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2008. Booktalk to advanced intermediate readers, middle school, high school, adult. Newbery Honor, 2009.

The Underneath

Hang in There: Booktalk 2

Have you ever driven your parents crazy with your whining, especially over summer vacation? That is exactly what eleven-year-old Megan is doing to her parents during their summer break in Vermont. Megan’s parents are both artists, and between nine a.m. and noon, Megan is supposed to be engaged in “creative pursuits,” which means art or writing, and no cell phone, no Internet, no television: you get the picture. Poor Megan: she starts to doodle, and then she rips it up. She’s bored. So her mother, one of those “back to nature” types, suggests that Megan go on a hike. Only problem is: Megan gets lost, and she’s got her innocent little dog Arp [not Arf, it’s Arp] with her. Megan actually managed to get lost on the Appalachian trail, too, which stretches on for miles and miles and miles. During my favorite part, she keeps fantasizing about Oreo cookies which are supposedly in a bag hanging from a nail in one of the trail shelters. Only, there’s an animal much larger than Megan that wants those Oreos, too. Can Nature Girl make it on her own? Nature Girl by Jane Kelley.

Nature Girl by Jane Kelley. 236 p. Random House, 2010. Booktalk to elementary [3^rd-5th] and middle school.

Hang in There: Booktalk 1

Most of you have tripped and fallen at some point, right? When our author, Raina Telgemeier, was in sixth grade, she fell and tripped, knocking out her two front teeth. Only, it wasn’t that simple. She hurt the bone above her teeth, and did some pretty serious damage which required multiple surgeries. This caused her to miss a fair amount of school, and she spent a lot of time in pain and unable to eat. But notice the title and the cover: it’s Smile.

In spite of its painful subject matter, Smile is a funny and thoughtful book. Raina has the normal problems of a pre-teenager: at one point, she’s writing a note to her friend about a boy she likes, and her teacher intercepts it, and the whole class finds out who she has a crush on. But there are also times when she’s so worried about her surgeries that she can’t focus on school, and her grades suffer. She gets teased more than most kids do because of her teeth. Yet Raina is a cool, kind-hearted, brave girl, and Smile tells a great story. Smile by Raina Telgemeier.

Smile by Raina Telgemeier. Graphic novel: 213 p. Scholastic, 2010. Booktalk to elementary [3^rd-5^th] and middle school.

Your Medical Diagnosis Is ... : Booktalk 2

[Once again, you’ll be doing first-person narration. If you have any football stuff, like a helmet, wear it. Or, if you have any books by or about Malcolm X, hold them, cover facing out.]

I don’t look sick, do I? [Long pause.] Yeah, I got you fooled, just like everyone else: my parents, my teachers, my girlfriend, and my brother, who is also my best friend. Before my senior year in high school started, I had my routine physical, along with bloodwork. And I got some very bad news. Yeah, I’m terminal. Terminal, as in - dying. Dead. Gone. Sooner rather than later. It’s a blood disease, and I’m not going to bore you with the gory details. [Put your hand up to your ear as if you missed a comment from the audience.] What’s that? Skip school? Are you kidding? And miss all the drama? Miss being around the hottest girl in school, who actually _chooses_ to hang out with me? Miss being around my ignorant government teacher, who spews propaganda in spite of my efforts to correct him? Miss being on the football team? [Pause, look insulted.] Yes, that’s right, I made the team. Okay, so the coach is a close personal friend of the family. Okay, so the only sport I only have a chance with is cross country. I’m dying: I might as well go all out. You know all those people who say “I’d like to do X before I die?” Well, that’s my own personal homework assignment that I created just for me. There’s something else you need to know. I’m 18, which means I can keep my medical stuff all to my lonesome self. If I want to tell my parents, that’s fine. If I don’t want to tell them, well, heck, that’s perfectly legal, too. So which did I choose? Get the book, lazybones. Don’t give me that look - you’d be difficult, too. I’m under deadline. Deadline by Chris Crutcher.

Deadline by Chris Crutcher. 316 p. Greenwillow Books, 2007. Booktalk to high school, adult.

Your Medical Diagnosis Is ... : Booktalk 1

[You’ll be doing the next three booktalks in first person narration. For this booktalk, you’ll need a pair of dark sunglasses to wear.]

Most of you think dark glasses are pretty cool, right? Well, I don’t wear them to be cool. I wear them as protection from your stares. That’s right -- you. See, I’m slowly going blind. My name’s Natalie, and I’m a regular teenager, except for the fact that I was born with some abnormalities in my eyes, so it’s always been hard for my eyes to adjust to light, which then causes a host of other problems. As a kid, I started tripping, falling, and having serious accidents because my vision was deteriorating. Reading became hard because I couldn’t see the letters, and by the time I was in middle school, I could not see well enough to get from classroom to classroom. It was scary and embarrassing. I had to count and memorize the steps between classes, and even then, things could go wrong. The summer before I started high school, I had my seventh eye surgery operation. It did not make my eyesight any better. And soon after that, just as the doctor hinted, my eyesight started to get worse. Basically, I’m getting ready to go completely blind. I can’t function in Western Allegany, my small public high school, because it just doesn’t have any technology for the blind. So my parents have sent me away to a Baltimore school for the blind, which is where I am now. It’s got an interesting group of teens. I live in dorm with a group of girls, some of whom are cool, and some of whom aren’t. I’m learning Braille and how to get around with a cane, which is harder than you think. When you’re blind, you’re far more vulnerable than sighted people, also -- both physically and emotionally. In spite of all that they’re teaching me here, there’s one thing I can promise you. No one and nothing can prepare you for going blind. This is my story. Blindsided by Priscilla Cummings.

Blindsided by Priscilla Cummings. 226 p. Dutton Children’s Books, 2010. Booktalk to high school, even adult.