Last month, Trevor Noah interviewed Jason Reynolds on the Daily Show and even before I had read any of his books, I became a fan. He talked about writing, reading, and young people in a powerful way and made a strong argument for the need to write books that would have spoken to him as a young teen growing up in the inner city. I’ve been a follower of the We Need Diverse Books organization and without mentioning the hashtag, Reynolds made their argument with […]
Triple Cannonball on a truly remarkable book
This book was a birthday gift from my incredible husband. He went to National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) back in November, managed to get me TWO signed copies of Jason Reynolds’ books (the other was the fantastic All American Boys co-written with Brendan Kiely), and then sat on them for an entire month waiting for my birthday. I was astounded and delighted. Reynolds is quickly becoming one of my favorite young adult writers, and this book makes an excellent companion to his previous […]
Poems; Girls; Heights; Faces
Long Way Down – 5/5 To paraphrase Jason Reynolds in an interview he gives at the end of the book, this is a combination of “Boyz in the Hood” and “A Christmas Carol.” As with other Jason Reynolds novels, there’s a central conflict between what a character feels is the right thing to do based on his lived experience, the implicit messages that happen around him, the images, his history, and lots of other coded and secretive influences versus the on the paper ethics of […]
Again, I could not begin to connect these. Except I got a new kitten and as I was sequestered with her keeping the dog out, these are some of the things I read.
North Station: 4/5 Stars This is an interesting collection of longish short fiction by the Korean writer Bae Suah. It’s a recent translation (actually maybe brand new) from the University of Rochester imprint “Open Letter” and I received a subscription to their press as a gift from my old colleagues. This book presents a really interesting set of questions for me. I have read a few different books by Korean authors, but not many at all. In fact, I think it would be true that […]
Four Recent novels about teens: What I Saw and why I Lied; All American Boys; The Hate U Give; Confessions
What I Saw and Why I Lied – Judy Blundell – 3/5 This novel takes place in the years following World War II back in the US. Our narrator’s mother has a new husband who was off to the war and our main character, a teenager in high school, goes with her mom and her husband to a resort in Florida, right at the beginning of school. While she’s there she meets a local boy, a bellhop at the hotel, who is kind of ugly […]
Float like a Butterfly, knit like a Biddy
When I was the Greatest by Jason reynolds
There’s a really good scene in the middle of this novel where two friends (both 15 year old boys) are going into a Brooklyn yarn shop that’s populated by a 20 something white hipster behind the counter, several older women, and inexplicably placed huge guy. The boys are going ostensibly to buy black yarn to give to one of the boys’ brother, who is living with Tourette’s and has recently learned to use knitting as a coping strategy. The boys are buying black yarn because, […]