Book Twenty Two: The Spell Book of Listen Taylor

Book Twenty Two: The Spell Book of Listen Taylor (and the Secrets of the Family Zing)
Finished: April 28
Pages: 479

Okay, so I had heard a lot about the book The Year of Secret Assignments, but never got around to reading it. I didn't even realize that this book was written by the same person until I was quite a ways into it. When my students were at the library choosing books to read, I happened to see this one and thought "Huh, that looks interesting."
I"m not going to say that my initial reaction was wrong, but man, this book was a trip, totally different than I was expecting. Not just because it was written by an Australian, and therefore was a little bit of a culture shock, or because it took me about 100 pages to realize that the setting was Australia, and that was why I was so confused, and then that it was also

Some of the characters I absolutely loved. I adored Listen, and the middle school girl I once was identified totally with the struggles that Listen went through with the horrible girls at her school: Not understanding why the girls don't like her, thinking that it was something that she did, rather than just those girls being awful bitches.
I found the Zing family to be a little too quirky to really appreciate. As much as I enjoyed the craziness of the Zing Family Secret, in the end, it was just too unbelievable for me to really accept. Some of the characters I really enjoyed, but by the end of the novel I just found them to be obnoxious. After a while, I think I just expect people to act like normal human beings, or at least, that they would change and grow as characters. The other main character in the book, a second grade teacher named Cath Murphy, I originally liked quite a bit too, but she made one bad decision after another, and in the end I had little respect for her.
Part of the reason why I decided to read this book was this interaction between two of the characters on the first page:

"Little alien starships! Putting your elevator shafts on our--" She stopped as she reached the wall, and stared at its smooth surface.
"It was just here--" She turned back to Nathaniel, who was waiting patiently.
"Yes?" he prompted.
"Huh."
"Are you awake now?"
"I was sleepwalking."
"I know"
They both stood still in the moonlight.
"It's hot, isn't it?" said the woman, after a moment. "I wonder if we should--"
"It depends on whether Listen is awake," agreed the man, peering into the hallway.
"Yes." The woman raised her voice slightly. "I wonder if she is awake?"
"COULD SHE BE AWAKE?" boomed the man.
"I HOPE WE HAVEN'T WOKEN HER!" shouted the woman.
They both paused hopefully.
A twelve-year-old girl appeared in the hallway, linking into the darkness.
"Hot, isn't it?" said the girl.

The three characters then proceed to break into a middle school swimming pool, and go for a midnight swim. Quirky! I would probably recommend this book to my students, but I'm actually not sure how many, since thinking back, there were several parts of this book are a little more risque then I have perhaps mentioned in my review. Several affairs, and more sexual innuendo than would generally be present in an American young adult book.

Good Reading,
Caitlin

Book Twenty One: The Truth-Teller's Tale

Book Twenty One: The Truth-Teller's Tale
Finished: April 27
Pages: 276

I've read a few other Sharon Shin books this year and they never disappoint. They are just what you expect: rousing fantasy with interesting and inventive magic, a few solid twists and turns of plot and a happily ever after that is moderately transparent without being overly sentimental.
Sometimes a girl just needs a happy ever after, and I was happy for these mischievous and sweet twin main characters. Mirror twins Adele and Eleda are girls gifted with the abilities Secret-Keeping and Truth-Telling, talents that get them in and out of all sorts of trouble, as well as in and out of love.
The book reminds me a lot of Robin McKinley's Beauty (my favorite of all the re-tellings of fairy tales) both in the voice of the narrator and the action being centered around everyday activities.
All in all, a delight.
Good Reading,
Caitlin

Book Twenty: Mudbound

Book Twenty: Mudbound
Finished: April 20th
Pages: 340

There are no words to express the anger, frustration, tears, and surprising hopefulness that I feel after finishing this book.

I will not even attempt to.

Good Reading,
Caitlin

Book Nineteen: Readicide

Book Nineteen: Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It
Date Finished: April 15
Pages: 150

Throughout the courses and activities I underwent in preparation for teaching, I have read numerous books that have infuriated and depressed me, and books which have given me great joy and a renewed passion in teaching. I would certainly place this book at the top of the list of books that did both. I found this book to be alternately infuriating and inspiring. I agree whole-heartedly with the author on most points in the book, and certainly plan to incorporate these ideas into my future planning and classroom activities.
Readicide is defined as “the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools” (1).
Kelly Gallagher is no moron; he gives real world examples and some pretty hard hitting studies to back up his assertions. I agree that the way we teach, and the interactions that our students have with books kills the love of reading in them. If we were to teach differently and have different goals-lifelong readers rather than good test takers-we would have the higher tests scores and students prepared for college and the real world. His strategies are things that would make intelligent, modern teachers say “duh.”
His first, and loudest claim is this: “Making sure every student has a book to take home to read is the single most important issue in our quest to develop young readers” (46). He asserts that Silent Sustained Reading in classrooms helps to foster students who like to read. Students should split their time 50/50 between high level challenging academic texts and high interest age-appropriate texts. I also like the idea of augmenting books with authentic real-world text. This means that even if they are reading a novel, the students are also assigned an “Article of the Week” that pertains to the real world around them that they read outside of class. As a teacher I am constantly surprised by how little my students know about the world they live in. These articles give students a glimpse of the world that they will soon by members of, and hopefully create active citizens.
High-stakes testing, teaching to the test, and teaching only test-taking strategies at the expense of real in-depth teaching are some of the problems that help lead to readicide. Over teaching and under teaching are also issues that he discusses, that I think will help be to balance my class discussions and activities in the coming years.
What is the real goal of education?
I would say that, as Sternberg says, we should emphasize the skills that would make our students “creatively flexible, responding to rapid changes in the environment; able to think critically about what they are told in the media, whether by newscasters, politicians, advertisers, or scientists; able to execute their ideas and persuade others of their value; and, most of all, able to use their knowledge wisely in ways that avoid the horrors of bad leadership, as we have seen in scandals involving Enron” (25).
Considering that Mr. Gallagher advocates not following set standards, that following curricular guides, and having students stop and dissect books leads to a lack of learning and turns students off of reading, I find it ironic that Wendy received this book from our English facilitator. He posits that while students need to read academic texts, they also need to learn how to achieve “reading flow”-the point in which you become immersed in what you are reading. “No student ever achieved reading flow from analyzing every nook and cranny of a complex work” (65). Instead he suggests that teachers frame texts, give them meaning before they begin reading, and focuses on the meaningful lessons rather than the trivial. Gallagher tells us not to give them excerpts but rather whole novels, because they need to learn how to read long texts because it affects the brain differently. When students see real value in reading “It’s not just a story; it’s an imaginative rehearsal for living a productive life as an adult” (79).
I’ve read a lot of Nancy Atwell’s books, including In the Middle, and The Reading Zone, and I learned more from reading her books than I did in any college class. Mr. Gallagher has many similarities, and he talks about her quite a deal in this book. I did enjoy having something familiar when he talks about several theorists that I haven’t even heard of. I do not, however, agree with him on the subject of classics. I do not believe that all books that are considered “classics” are inherently good books. Many of these books do not add anything to a classroom, and if they are not within the sweet spot of being difficult without being unattainable, there is no purpose in teaching them. I do agree with this: “I never focus on whether my students will like the books. Sure, I’d like my students to enjoy the books as much as I do, but it is important that they take away something valuable after wrestling with them” (93). The difference that I would stress in his statement, however, is that the teacher has to see the validity and importance in what they are teaching as well. If they don’t, then there is no reason to teach it; the students and the teacher will only be frustrated with the text and with each other.
There are so many other things that I would like to talk about, but I would really just be copying the entire stinking book into my blog, and that doesn’t really serve my purpose. Most importantly, this book has taught me so many strategies that I plan on implementing in my classroom next year. The book made me so angry, because we are doing our students such a disservice, but at the same time, inspired me to become a better teacher. “If we are to find our way again…we must find our courage to recognize the difference between the political worlds and the authentic worlds in which we teach, to swim against those current educational practices that are killing young readers, and to step up and do what is right for our students” (118).

Good Reading,
Caitlin

Book Eighteen: The Lace Reader

Book Eighteen: The Lace Reader
Finished: March 30
Pages: 385

I was drawn to this book when wandering around Borders with a 40% coupon burning a hole in my pocket. Since they didn't have the book that I wanted to buy, I thought I would just look around and pick up something that struck my fancy. The cover, of a woman standing in water, with lace around the edges of the book, was intriguing, and reminds me a lot of other books that I have read and enjoyed in the past, mostly the ones by Alice Hoffman (Don't judge, I was young!). In retrospect, I feel that I should have maybe looked a little further for a better book, maybe one that I would not have thrown across the room.
At first, and even up to half way through the book I really enjoyed the narration, the description, and the supernatural aspects of the book. The idea of reading lace: telling someone's fortune by looking at them through a veil of lace is interesting, and more unique than reading palms or Tarot cards. I also liked the atmosphere of Salem, with tourism encouraging witchcraft in a town that once killed "witches" although it could be an accurate depiction of Salem, I wouldn't know.
I will be perfectly honest with you. If you judge a book as "good" by your inability to put it down, then this book is certainly "good" by that standard. Usually when I say that I couldn't put the book down, at the end of the review I would talk about how much I liked the book and would recommend it to others. I literally could not stop reading this book, because I had to know more about what was going on. This book was often confusing, and ultimately made me so angry I couldn't think straight. At the end of the book I felt very betrayed, because although I had picked up on the fact that my narrator was unreliable (she admits to being in a psychiatric ward) I still did not expect the lies to be so all-encompassing. Honestly, I feel like I have read something similar a few years ago, where the narrator is such a liar that you don't even realize that whole characters are completely made up. It made me hate the narrator, because now I'm not sure what is and isn't real, and why some characters would be willing to die for her. It just didn't make sense.

Good Reading,
Caitlin

Book Seventeen: The Sparrow

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
Finished: March 28
Pages: 405

I’ve been sitting here for about fifteen minutes just waiting to have the words to talk about this book without sounding ridiculous. After going a month of reading purely academic essays, and then reading the campy hilarity that was The Somnambulist, it was a definite change to read The Sparrow, a story of what would happen if we found life on another planet and wanted to contact that life. The religious aspect of the book is that the mission to this planet is funded and populated by several Jesuit priests, whose response to new life was “Let’s go meet ‘em” The book begins with Father Emilio Sandoz as the only survivor of the mission to this planet, and it takes until the very end of the book for him to tell his story, both in the “present day” of the book at an inquiry, and through flashbacks told through the eyes of the different mission members.
The hardest part of this book is that you fall in love with so many of the characters, but you also know form the very beginning that they are all going to die. This isn’t fair. If everyone is going to die, you should be able to create a space between you and the characters. You shouldn’t think to yourself “I would like to meet/be friends with/simply be like these people.” You shouldn’t like them, or laugh at their jokes or enjoy watching them fall in love. It’s not fair. And I did. I like all these characters, especially Anne and George Edwards, these mid-50-somethings who are just so outgoing and hilarious. Let me give some examples. The first comes from your first interaction between Anne and Emilio, who at this point is her Latin professor.

“Are you allowed out of your room at night?” she asked. “Or do all the cute ones like you have a curfew until they’re senile?”
He flicked the ash off an air cigar and waggled his eyebrows. “What did you have in mind?”
“Well, I considered suggesting that we shatter our vows and run away to Mexico for a weekend of lust, but I’ve got homework,” she said, shouting the last word, “because some sonofabitch Latin prof thinks we should learn ablative way too soon, in my humble opinion, so why don’t you just come over for dinner on Friday night?”
Leaning back against his chair, he looked up at her with frank admiration. “Madam. How could I resist an invitation like that?” he asked. And leaning forward, “Will your husband be there?”
“Yes, dammit, but he’s very liberal and tolerant person,” Anne assured him, grinning, “And he falls asleep early.”

Or this:
“And yet,” Emilio said, “you behave like a good and moral person.”
He expected an explosion and he got it. She threw her fork down with a clatter on the plate and sad back. “You know what? I really resent the idea that the only reason someone might be good or moral is because they’re religious. I do what I do,” Anne said, biting off each word “without hope of reward or fear of punishment. I do not require heaven or hell to bribe or scare me into acting decently, thank you very much.”

Sometimes all the characters seemed a bit contrived, that everything came together too easily and cleanly. It's just to convenient that they had everything they needed, and everyone they needed in order to take a spaceship many light years away to Alpha Centauri: a person to be the doctor, and the linguist, and the ship captain, and the person who found the songs through the radio waves in the first place-"turtles put on fenceposts" they called it in the book, and that, therefore, it must have been designed by God. The final question of the book is, if God was behind all the good things, was he also behind the many ways in which the mission went wrong? Emilio spends the entire book trying to keep the truth away from his Father Superior because, he fears, that the truth will make them lose their faith much as he seems to have lost his, although the other priests on the trip with him are convinced that Emilio may very well be a saint. And I can see why they would have thought that at the time, and why Emilio, after all his suffering, would rage against that label as much as he possibly could. The book reminded me a lot of the movie Contact, and Emilio's struggle did have some parallels.

It was a difficult and dense read, and the subject matter and horrors it contained did not make it easier. I do think that it is a good modern sci-fi twist on the question of what would happen if we were faced with a "New World" to encounter and explore. I could certainly see that we would have similar difficulties were this to actually happen. And I could certainly see the Jesuits standing ready to be the first to go.

At the very end of the book, we discover the reason for the title:
“Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine,” Vincenzo Guiliani said quietly. “ ‘Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.’ “
“But the sparrow still falls,” Felipe said.

And the sparrow was Emilio Sandoz, Jesuit priest from the slums of Puerto Rico, who survived when he would have wished to die, and who was forced to tell the story of how he found and then lost his faith, and in doing so came even closer to God.

Good Reading,
Caitlin

Book Sixteen: The Somnambulist

Book Sixteen: The Somnambulist
Pages: 353
Finished: March 25

I really, really liked this book. I don’t think I can fully articulate why I liked this book so much, but god, it was just so entertaining. Just as the narrator says on the very first page, “Be warned. This book has no literary merit whatsoever. It is a lurid piece of nonsense, convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, written in drearily pedestrian prose, frequently ridiculous and wilfully bizarre.”, but that doesn’t stop it from being a wildly entertaining page turner that was methodically researched and ridiculously funny. There came a point that I was glad my students were reading articles just so I could finish the thing. I loved all the literary allusions: Coleridge, and Shelley, and Wilde. Not to mention that I was thinking of Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes doing magic for the entire book. I don’t think that I can tell you all the things that I loved without spoiling the mystery of the book completely.
Oh wait, I forgot, I don’t care about spoiling things for you, my illustrious fans, because, to be honest, you have all read the book.

Anyhow, I loved the narrator, and I loved the narrator’s twisting nature. When you find out the true identity of the narrator? I nearly dropped the book and my jaw, I almost yelled out loud. I wasn’t expecting it at all. I think mostly because I was reading without really thinking about the bigger picture, instead just enjoying being wound up in the mystery. There were many times when I stared at the book in confusion but then it always resolved itself, though I am still confused about so many things, but we will talk about that in a bit.

Here are some of my favorite parts of the book:
On page 194, I love this exchange between Inspector Merryweather and Mr. Moon:
“Coleridge,” Moon said mysteriously.
“Is there some significance?”
“Are you a poetry-lover, Inspector?”
“Not seen a word of the stuff since school.”
“Then at least you’ve learnt one valuable lesson today.”
“What’s that?”
“Read more.”
Later that evening, lulled by the rhythmic snoring of his wife, just as he was about to go to sleep, Inspector Merryweather would think of rather an amusing retort to this. But he would know that the moment had passed, and would roll over instead and hope for pleasant dreams.

I also loved the tone of voice that the narrator employs:
“Forgive me if the above sounds condescending—I add this last detail only for the benefit of the ignorant and for tourists. I should hope my readers educated enough to recognize the significance of Wren’s achievement without it being explained to them, but regrettably it remains the case that one must always make allowances for dullards. I cannot police the readers of this manuscript and it is a sad and tragic truth that I have never yet succeeded in underestimating the intelligence of the general public” (92). I mean, how great is that? I also love that he blatantly lies to the reader on more than one occasion, and I find myself liking characters either in spite of his warnings, or because of his little warnings throughout the book. For example, when he says that we will like the albino before the end of the book, I find myself liking him in spite of his proclivities toward arson and intimidation. I also found myself liking Mr. Moon, himself, just to spite the narrator.

The characters of Hawker and Boon were disturbing and twisted, and yet I found the Prefects to be very funny, which it would seem, would be quite the mistake to make were I to ever meet these two characters. They were easy to picture, and they were easy to see as the dues ex machina that even they professed (accurately, I might add) to be.

I enjoyed Mr. Cribb, whose very existence confuses and baffles me much as it did Mr. Moon. Is the ugly little man the spirit of the city, or something else entirely? Why does he live life backwards? I don’t know and I dearly wish to, much as I feel about many parts of the book. Why are so many things left unexplained? Like Barrabas, and how he once was Moon’s partner, and then the Fiend? Why is the book called The Somnambulist? Who is the Somnambulist anyway? What was up with the end of the book. I need explanations, Mr. Barnes! I want to know so much more, but instead we get all these little glimpses into all the little lives of all these little characters that, in the end are either completely valuable and you are glad to know them, or they are completely invaluable, and you never know until the very end.

Good Reading,
Caitlin