graphic novel · middle grade

Awkward- Svetlana Chmakova

StephanieLeave a comment

Fun story about this book.

A year or so ago, my daughter and I were cleaning out the car, and she pulls a copy of Awkward by Svetlana Chmakova (JY, 2015) out of the pockets on the back of one of the front seats. “Mama!” she gasped. “Is this Brother’s book???” (Even looking at the screen right now, she said, “Hey, Brother has that book!”)

“Probably,” I said, and tossed it in the bag. Apparently my son had left it stuffed in the seat pocket at some point. It looked new-ish; in 2015, he would’ve been 12/13, so this book would’ve been perfect for him back then. Since he’d already read it (we asked him about it later on), it went on my shelf, and I picked it up one night after I’d run out of library books. (*horror music*)

Peppi’s the new girl in town, and right away, she makes a major flub, tripping and falling into a nerdy guy in the hallway, earning herself the nickname of “nerder girlfriend.” And how does she handle it? By shoving the nerdy guy so hard that he falls. NOT one of her finest moments, and Peppi feels terrible about it, so terrible, in fact, that she can’t figure out how to apologize, even after Jaime- that’s the nerdy guy- is assigned as her science tutor.

But Peppi’s got bigger problems. Her school home is Art Club, and the problem is that this year, Art Club isn’t being allowed a table at the school’s club fair because, the principal said, they haven’t contributed enough to the school. SO not fair, especially since Science Club, Art Club’s arch rivals, will be getting a table. Or, uh, they would have been getting a table, until the Art Club/Science Club shenanigans got Science Club booted, too. A competition to regain a table gets heated in ways that Peppi never expected, and along with learning about friendship, hard work, and support, she and the other members of Art Club will learn a lot about compromise.

Awkward is an adorable graphic novel that captures the weirdness that is middle school and places it in a not-so-likely-but-still-fun-to-read scenario. Svetlana Chmakova’s style is reminiscent of Raina Telgemeier, so if you enjoy her books (and I do!), this is definitely in your wheelhouse. Peppi is a typical middle schooler, making wrong decisions, feeling terrible about it, and then having no clue how to remedy the situation. She’s scared, she’s brave, she’s terrified, she’s outgoing, she’s all of us at that age, a million different people in one ever-changing body. The lessons she learns aren’t necessarily ones that most middle schoolers are often ready to take to heart in their own lives (it’s really, really not easy having to be the odd man out in order to stand up for a friend or a stranger, for example), but reading them in entertaining graphic novels like Awkward that aren’t at all preachy certainly helps foment better understanding of the consequences and outcomes.

The Art Club/Science Club rivalry was fun to read, although not all that realistic in terms of the club rivalry (at least in any school I’ve ever been to), but who says that needs to be a thing? Kids form all sorts of rivalries in school and take just about any chance to ‘other’ kids for any reason- cool kids verses the losers, jocks verses nerds, etc- maybe this rivalry will mean something to a reader who sees themselves on one side or the other.

(Very small content warning for a secondary character whose father calls said character’s mother a bitch in front of the child, without the mother present. There’s some marital fighting spoken about, I believe- I don’t have the book in front of me right now. I don’t *think* the fighting is depicted, but I very well may be misremembering- and the character and her mother end up leaving. I mention this not as a spoiler, but if you’re passing this book along to a younger child to read, you may want to read that section first- the name-calling is somewhere around halfway-ish through, and the fighting and leaving is towards the end- so that you’re prepared for any questions, or to bring it up and discuss with your child.)

Awkward is primarily written for middle schoolers, but this really works for all ages. Ms. Chmakova really captures that awkward middle school feeling, when you’re responsible for so much but in control of so little, and the future seems both blossoming with possibility and like something out a horror movie, all at the same time. Super fun book, and I’m glad I spent an evening curled up with it.

Visit Svetlana Chmakova’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction · romance

Their Pretend Amish Courtship- Patricia Davids

Stephanie3 Comments

Category romance isn’t my normal speed when it comes to romance. I’m much more into contemporary romance, single titles, and stories that go beyond what category can offer (but if category is your thing, that’s cool too! Tomato, tomahto, and all that; I’m a huge fan of Brussels sprouts, which aren’t everyone’s thing either. Takes all kinds). But while we were on vacation, I was browsing the paperbacks for sale at the Branson Walmart and came across a copy of Amish Covert Operation. Yes, that’s a real book (and it’s pretty highly rated!). Category romance has some seriously amazing titles, and I knew that when I came home, I wanted to seek out and read something with a title like that. And that, friends, is how I picked up a copy of Their Pretend Amish Courtship by Patricia Davids (2017, Love Inspired).

At twenty-two, Fannie is practically an old maid by Amish standards. All she wants is to spend her life working with horses instead of keeping house for some random man, but her parents are really starting to worry that she hasn’t settled down yet. With her sister being newly engaged, Fannie’s on the cusp of being shipped off to Florida to help her aging grandparents, ruining the plans she has to help save a friend’s business with a horse show. But with the help of next-door-neighbor Noah, who’s also unmarried and Amish and wants nothing more than to see if he has a shot at playing professional baseball, things just might work out. A fake courtship will help both of them: Fannie’s sister will go off to Florida (what she really wants!), Fannie will stay home in order to spend more time with her new beau (and those horses!), and Noah will get to spend the summer playing baseball and learning if he has what it takes to go pro. Everything will be just fine.

But of course it isn’t. Things with the horses grow more and more complicated, Noah can’t make up his mind about playing ball or giving it up forever and joining the church, and Noah and Fannie bicker like no one’s business whenever they’re within half a mile of each other. What’s worse, their families are so excited about the possibility of the two of them marrying that they start to feel terrible about their lies and deception. It’ll take- of course- a near-tragedy for things to come to a head, but everything will of course work out, Amish-style.

Oof. Cheese-fest with a religious twist right here! Fannie and Noah’s constant bickering was juvenile and irritating; there were a few times I had to reread their conversations because I wasn’t sure if they were actually being serious with the taunts and barbs they were exchanging- no one actually fights like that, do they? The language they used was as immature as they were, to be sure, but their dialogue made me roll my eyes a few times as well. I couldn’t really buy them as a couple or feel any kind of attraction between them, despite the author constantly referring to their history as childhood friends.

The faith-based aspects of the book were more than a little heavy-handed. Obviously, reading a book about the Amish is bound to contain some of that, and that’s fine, but it didn’t occur to me until later on that this was published by Harlequin’s inspirational romance line, and those do tend to be heavier on the religious messages (another reviewer on Goodreads rightly points out that Amish romances are written not by the Amish themselves, but mainly by evangelical Christians. I’ve read interviews with Amish women who refer to these books as, basically, nonsense, which is interesting). I’ve read single title inspirational romances in the past that worked well (Always the Baker, Never the Bride by Sandra D. Bricker really shines here; nowhere does it feel preachy or get weighted down by proselytizing, which is rare for this genre, from what I’ve read), but this, with the two characters quoting Bible verses back and forth on a fairly regular basis, felt more than a little forced.

Despite those flaws, and despite the fact that there’s just so. much. horse. stuff. in this book (I am NOT a horse person; heaven help me if my daughter ever goes through a horse phase because I will have ZERO clue what to do), this isn’t a terrible read. It moves along quickly and Noah’s baseball dilemma adds an intriguing aspect to the story; I don’t think I’d ever considered that an Amish man might want to leave his community and go into professional sports. I do wish Ms. Davids had gotten more into Fannie’s sister’s story; close to the end of the book, her sister, who is still in Florida, has ditched her Amish fiancé and has apparently hooked up with a local Mennonite man in her grandparents’ town. Now THAT is a story I want to hear more about!!!

Any category romance readers out there? I read a few back when I was younger, but they usually don’t turn my crank, literarily speaking. I prefer the longer, meatier romances most of the time, but I’m always willing to give a book a shot. 😉

Visit Patricia Davids’ website here.

fiction · romantic comedy

Waiting for Tom Hanks- Kerry Winfrey

Stephanie4 Comments

Contemporary romance rooted in romantic comedies of the 1980’s and ’90’s? Sign. Me. Up.

I requested Waiting for Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey (Berkley, 2019) from the library the second it became available and I was still the second person in line…which was okay, because I had a stack of other books to read first, but wouldn’t you know, it became available on the Thursday of our vacation, when we wouldn’t return until Monday. But you better believe that as soon as we got home and I unpacked the bathroom bag and started our laundry, I was at the library, picking this up.

I realize I may have a problem.

Annie is twenty-seven, a freelance-writing loner who still lives in her childhood home with the nerdy Dungeons-and-Dragons-obsessed uncle who finished raising her after her parents died early, one after the other. The romantic comedies her mother raised her on are still front and center in her own heart; they are, in fact, the only action she’s getting these days. Unable to make a connection with guys, Annie’s holding out for Tom Hanks- not the celebrity himself, but what he represents from all of his romantic comedies: a guy who is kind, funny, thoughtful, a little sarcastic but with a heart of gold and the need for the same deep, forever kind of commitment she’s longing for. Of course, Annie’s best friend thinks she’s a little nuts, but Annie knows what she wants, and she refuses to settle for less.

The news breaks that a mega-famous director will be filming a rom-com in Annie’s neighborhood, and Annie can’t believe her luck when said director turns out to be her uncle’s college roommate. Annie’s in as his personal assistant, which means plenty of time to ogle/humiliate herself in front of Drew Danforth, the male lead of the film. He’s got a reputation as a Hollywood prankster, but before too long, Annie realizes she needs to forget all the old Hollywood stereotypes, because what she has with Drew just might be the real deal, if only she can believe in something slightly less perfect than that flawless rom-com she’s designed in her fantasies.

This was cute. All the references to the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan/Sandra Bullock romantic comedies of the 80’s and 90’s made my heart so, so happy. I binge watched everything that Meg Ryan and Sandra Bullock were in during those years; I practically have the entire scripts of French Kiss and While You Were Sleeping memorized (you ever realize how creepy those movies would both be if someone tried to pull off the stunts that the main characters did in real life? Most romantic comedies are like that. All these people committing fraud and breaking and entering, among other crimes, in order to pretend to be someone they’re not is more than a little weird, to be honest. How did this genre grow so popular?). So a book that centered around the movies of my teenage years was enough to make my not-exactly-old-but-no-longer-young heart sing a little.

The premise drew me in a little more than the characters, however. Annie has the tragic rom-com character backstory, having lost both of her parents while still young, but her inability to change and her need to cling to the idea of the perfect happily-ever-after grew stale halfway through the book. Drew was more palatable, although at times I wondered what on earth possibly drew (ha!) him to Annie, with as wacky as her behavior could be. Uncle Don, however, was eleven thousand kinds of adorable, with his Dungeons and Dragons obsession, his awkwardness and nerdy side that dressed up as Chewbaca and could quote from all the nerd favorites: Star Wars, Star Trek, Tolkien. He completely and totally accepted himself for who he was, he was content with his simple life, and he loved the people around them exactly as they were. More Uncle Dons in fiction, please!

This is a light read, and would’ve made for a great vacation read, had it not appeared in the library when I was an eight hour car ride away. 😉 Waiting for Tom Hanks is not without its flaws, but it’s sweet and cute and will tug at your heartstrings if you spent way too much time in your youth wishing you could could wake up with hair just like Meg Ryan. (In this case, sadly, wishes never did come true. Alas.)

Visit Kerry Winfrey’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

nonfiction · religion

Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others- Barbara Brown Taylor

Stephanie2 Comments

I’m so busy hunting for books from my TBR most of the time that I’ve been neglecting the New Books shelf at my library, but just before we went on vacation to Branson, Missouri with my mother this year, I stopped by that shelf to see what I could find to take with me on our trip. A good, relaxing vacation read should probably have a beach on the cover, maybe a fancy drink with a little umbrella in it or a pair of sunglasses, but I can’t do anything normally, so I leaped at the copy of Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others by Barbara Brown Taylor (HarperOne, 2019). I often say I’m not hugely religious, but this book sums up where I sit religiously: I may not have all the answers, or any of them, but I relish the opportunity to observe and appreciate what is sacred in the beliefs of others.

Barbara Brown Taylor was, for many years, an ordained Episcopalian minister. After leaving her position as minister, she taught World Religions at Piedmont College in Georgia. As Piedmont is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches (and also located in a very religious part of the south!), the vast majority of her students were Christian, and most of them were encountering religions other than their own for the first time in their lives. Some of them couldn’t handle this and dropped the class early on or after a single field trip to another house of worship (one left a Hindu temple in tears, so upset that the worshipers could be so very wrong in their beliefs); others opened their minds and hearts and learned to experience what Ms. Brown Taylor termed ‘holy envy’: appreciating parts of these other faiths and using what they learned to make them a better practitioner of their own faith.

The leaps and bounds some of her students make are incredible, but it’s the insights that Ms. Brown Taylor experiences while teaching and the glimpses into houses of worship of non-Christian faiths that make this book explode with life and color and light. If you’re at all interested in religion or faith or the practice thereof, or the beauty that comes from education and growth and deep respect and appreciation for the many facets of humanity, this is a book you can’t afford to miss.

Holy Envy called to me from the very first page. I love reading about religion, the facts and the hows and whys, and I especially love reading how people experience and live out their own faiths. The concept of holy envy wasn’t one that I’ve ever realized had a name before this, but it’s definitely one I’ve felt over and over again as I’ve studied Judaism and its weekly Shabbat celebration and its relentless pursuit of social justice, both the Muslim and LDS sense of community, the Mennonite commitment to creating a sustainable lifestyle, the Catholic commitment to maintaining tradition, the list could go on and on. It was in reading through my Goodreads TBR list when it was up to 332 books that I came across the books of Rachel Held Evans, may her beautiful soul rest in peace, and I understood that another person’s faith doesn’t need to be my own for me to appreciate it and learn from it. And since then, I’ve never looked back, and that is why Holy Envy felt like home right from the start.

Ms. Brown Taylor speaks of many things in these pages that hit home for me; I constantly found myself reading a paragraph, staring at the wall or out the window as I considered what I’d just read, then reading the paragraph again, and nodding. Her reminder of the best way to learn about another faith being to talk to a practitioner of that faith felt pointed a bit in my direction; while I do enjoy a good memoir about a person’s experience of leaving a faith, I do need to keep in mind that that’s not always the best way to learn about the tenets of that particular religion, or what its best practice looks like. I’m always glad for such a gentle prod in the right direction. 🙂

Her notion on suffering gave me pause, and I wrote it down in my reading binder because I found it so very poignant:

The sooner they learned to accept the human condition with equanimity, the sooner their suffering would end- not their pain, but their suffering- since suffering is so often a measure of how much we want things to be different from the way they are.

That rang so true to me. Far too often, I fight against how things are in my own life, when instead I could accept it, incorporate it- still work to change it, yes, but with grace and peace in my heart. I need to spend more time considering this…maybe I should cross-stitch it on a pillow or sampler, or paint it on my living room wall.

The other quote that stuck with me was the following:

Eventually all people of faith must decide how they will think about and respond to people of other (and no) faiths. Otherwise they will be left at the mercy of their worst impulses when push comes to shove and their fear deadens them to the best teachings of their religions.

The above goes for people of no faith as well, I think. Some nonbelievers are nonbelievers solely because they don’t believe; others have had poor experiences with religion in the past and no longer believe. No matter one’s belief status, it’s crucial that we learn to understand and appreciate what makes us unique; it’s not necessary to incorporate each other’s beliefs, but to acknowledge it, find what speaks to us, and use it to become better people, better human beings, so that we can better take care of each other. Because loving each other is everyone’s sacred duty, and we’ll never accomplish that goal without first understanding each other.

Holy Envy is a beautiful book full of love and wonder and awe, not only at the divine, but at the people who practice so many forms of faith, and it’s absolutely one of the best books I’ve read this year. Barbara Brown Taylor has made me a fan for life with this one book and I’m very much looking forward to reading everything else she’s written.

Visit Barbara Brown Taylor’s website here.

nonfiction

All the Rage: Mothers, Fathers, and the Myth of Equal Partnership- Darcy Lockman

Stephanie3 Comments

Another vacation book! Super relaxing beach read, right?

All the Rage: Mothers, Fathers, and the Myth of Equal Partnership by Darcy Lockman (Harper, 2019) ended up on my TBR list not too long ago, and as luck would have it, another local library had a copy waiting for me on its New Books shelf the day we were there to play in its children’s department. After DNF’ing two other books I’d brought with me on vacation, I finished this one while stuck in traffic on our way home…and then had to contemplate the horror of either reading the car manual…or not reading at all. Life lost all meaning at that point. (Okay, not really, but it was close.)

Incorporating an enormous amount of data in one book, Darcy Lockman has written a book about Every (Straight) Woman’s Problem: the husband who doesn’t help. Study after study after study shows that men don’t help out around the house. Not with kids, not with food (the purchasing or the preparing), not with cleaning, not with any of the daily minutiae that makes the family work- dentist and doctor appointments, buying new soccer cleats, scheduling the vet appointment, sending birthday cards to Great Aunt Mildred. No matter if you’re a full-time housewife or employed full-time, if you were born with a uterus and live with a partner born with a penis, all these jobs and more are likely yours all the time, and the overwhelming odds are, Ms. Lockman shows, that you’re overwhelmed and angry about it, or as angry as you let yourself get- because at some point, the vast majority of us just become resigned to it, and the cycle continues.

Is there anything to be done about this? Probably not all that much, seems to be the conclusion of this book. While Ms. Lockman does portray one man who seems to understand that men as a whole have got to step up to the plate more, she does point out that, unfortunately, men have felt entitled to women’s labor (both physical and emotional) since the dawn of time, that our doing all of this work benefits them and there’s very little benefit to them doing their part to schedule the vet appointments and researching soccer cleats. And the culture backs them up, penalizing women monetarily at work for becoming mothers, while rewarding fathers with higher pay. Each of her claims is backed up with hard data; odds are that if you’re a woman, you’ll recognize far too much of this in your own life and be feeling all the rage while reading it.

So, yes, I was obviously able to identify with most of this book. My husband does take care of our daughter when he’s at home; he plays with her, gets her food, takes her to the park, supervises her while she’s in the tub so she doesn’t drown or flood the bathroom (the latter is much more likely these days). He puts his dinner dishes in the sink (I rinse them and put them in the dishwasher), he leaves his socks all over the living room floor, I can’t honestly remember him ever cooking a vegetable, and I would bet every cent in our bank account that he has zero idea what our daughter’s doctor’s name is. Dads generally get not only the fun jobs (outside play, cool school projects like baking soda volcanoes, teaching a kid to ride a bike), they get the jobs that are one-and-done or close to it: change the oil in the car and you’re done for another five or six months, maybe more. Dishes? Every day, sometimes three times a day. Cooking? Every night, at least; more often if you’re home with small children all day. Laundry? If you’re not a nudist, it’s never actually done. Women’s work is everyday drudgery; men get to kick back while we’re still scrubbing the crud out of the kitchen sink. Again.

My friend Sharon made the most excellent point about books of this genre, which seem to be popping up more often. Go look at the Goodreads reviews of this book. Check out the Amazon reviews. Look at the names of the people who reviewed the book. Scroll down, keep scrolling. Look for a man’s name. Did you find one? No, you didn’t. Because the only people who are reading this book, and books that discuss this very real problem (according to some studies, unequal division of labor is one of the top three reasons couples divorce), are women. Where are the men? Why aren’t they reading this book? Can we start shelving it in Men’s Self-Help? Most likely not; Ms. Lockman cited one example of a woman who told her husband she was ready to divorce him because of his lack of help with anything, including the kids. He sobbed, he begged…and afterwards, nothing changed, and he still didn’t help. Is it that most men just don’t value their marriages enough to wash the dishes a few nights a week and change their share of diapers? Why do they not feel as invested in their homes as women do? Why do they not feel invested enough in their marriages to lighten their wives’ loads, even when the wives beg for help?

All the Rage raises more questions than it gives answers. It’s still a worthy read, especially if you’re thinking it’s just you. “It’s every one of them,” my mom told me while we were on vacation, discussing a recent night out with her friends where they discussed their husbands’ lack of help around the house. “Every last one of them acts like that.” This book, sadly, backs that claim up, and neither Ms. Lockman nor I see much changing anytime soon without the catalyst of a massive cultural shift.

Visit Darcy Lockman’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction · YA

The Drowning of Stephan Jones- Bette Greene

StephanieLeave a comment

Another book that’s been on my TBR for years. Always good to clear out some of that backlog, right? We’re talking YEARS, like probably since around 2005. You may be more familiar with the author’s more well-known work, Summer of My German Soldier; that one tends to make a lot of high school reading lists, but I didn’t read it until my early 20’s. I learned of The Drowning of Stephan Jones by Bette Greene (Laurel Leaf, 1991) from a friend, and her review had me rushing to put it on my list. Now, all these years later, it’s a dated but unfortunately still relevant and poignant read.

Content warnings abound. This book is about hatred and homophobia that runs deep enough to kill, and the pages are filled with an enormous amount of slurs and prejudice, much of it coming from people purporting to be Christian, including a pastor, including during sermons (it does happen; my husband witnessed it while attending a church in Louisiana in 2005. He didn’t return). There are multiple instances of violence, including a murder by- as the title suggests- drowning, and the book ends as so many of these cases do, without a clear sense of justice. Consider what you’re ready to handle at the time before selecting this book; it’s a painful read.

Carla Wayland is suuuuuuuuuper in love with Andy Harris. He’s gorgeous and popular, he’s smart, he works in his dad’s hardware store… It seems almost impossible that he could be into her, too, but there he is, asking her out. There’s just one little problem: an incident Carla witnessed at the hardware store, involving the way Mr. Harris, Andy’s father, treated two gay men. At first, Carla’s sure that Andy is on her side; those two men weren’t hurting anyone, but Andy’s firmly in his father’s camp, repeating all the Bible verses about homosexuality (and conveniently ignoring the entire rest of the book, of course). Irritated by her librarian mother’s politcal and social activism, Carla’s willing to giggle and overlook Andy’s virulent homophobia, wishing she could just fit in for once, even if that nagging feeling of doubt that Andy’s not right keeps squirming away in her conscience.

When Prom night arrives, what Carla expects to be the most magical night of her life turns into the stuff of nightmares when Andy’s torment of Stephan Jones and his partner Frank Montgomery goes too far. There’s no happy ending for anyone in this book, but neither is there true justice, and in that aspect, The Drowning of Stephan Jones mirrors real life a little too well.

First off, this was first published in 1991, so it’s more than a little dated by YA standards. I remember reading a lot of books written in this style when I was growing up, and honestly, I’m impressed that this book even made it to print in ’91. I was 11 then, and when LGBT issues were brought up in any kind of media, it was either about AIDS (the movie of And the Band Played On wouldn’t be made for another two years, but Magic Johnson announced he was HIV-positive that year) or was more for laughs- remember all the laughs Friends went for when Ross’s wife Carol left him for another woman? When Ellen came out of the closet by accidentally announcing that she was gay over an airport loudspeaker? So kudos to Ms. Greene and other authors who were out there pushing these boundaries and opening the doors and the minds of YA readers at the time; I’m grateful that this book and others like it (I did read Annie On My Mind in high school!) existed. Just know that if you read it now, the dialogue, in particular, shows the book’s age.

The story is told not just from Carla’s perspective, but from Frank’s, and Stephen’s, and even Carla’s mother gets in on the action. All these viewpoints help round out the story; Carla’s librarian mother, who, because of her past, has learned to use her voice and stand up for what she believes in, is a particularly likable character. Carla, however, is maybe a bit on the immature side and frustrating to read- while this could be because I identified better with her mother than with her due to my age, I felt it was more due to Carla’s constant need to fit in, to the detriment of her integrity (needing to fit in was never something I was concerned about when I was younger. I didn’t fit in with the popular crowd, and I didn’t care, because a lot of them were terrible, mean people). She does learn, but it’s at a high cost to many people, and while this story goes beyond being a simple cautionary tale, it doesn’t make Carla’s eye-rolling rejection of her mother’s humanitarian ideals any less irksome.

What bothered me about this book was the ending. Obviously, there are no spoilers when I say that in The Drowning of Stephan Jones, Stephan Jones drowns, and if you’ve read what I’ve already written, you realize his drowning is no accident. There’s a scene at the end where I feared Frank, Stephan’s partner, was about to enact terrible, bloody revenge, but the revenge he does enact is of a different sort, one that plays upon and ultimately serves to further the town’s overwhelming homophobia. It’s not a scene that I think would clear an editor’s desk these days simply for that reason, and while it may have seemed fitting retribution back when this was first published, it left a sour taste in my mouth as I read it twenty-eight years later. If only books were more fluid and more easily updated…

The Drowning of Stephan Jones is an all-too-real novel of what happens when people listen without questioning what they’re ‘carefully taught,’ as the Rodgers and Hammerstein song goes. It’s a story of what happens when we go along with the crowd without raising our voices for the sake of popularity, for the sake of safety. And it’s the disappointing story of justice unserved, of the culmination of people who have been carefully taught being placed in positions with the power to decide who deserves justice and who doesn’t. Not an easy read, to be sure, but still as applicable today as when it was written…which is bitterly disappointing, to say the very least.

Do you often read backlist like this? I find it especially interesting to examine how styles have changed and social attitudes differ. Most of the time, there’s notable differences, and while the LGBT community has made incredible strides since The Drowning of Stephan Jones was first published, there are far too many people who have yet to catch up. The work continues…

Visit Bette Greene’s website here.

nonfiction

The Emergency Teacher: The Inspirational Story of a New Teacher in an Inner City School- Christina Asquith

StephanieLeave a comment

Another book that has lingered on my TBR for far, far too long. Slowly but surely, I’m clearing out the older ones!

Public education and policy has long been one of my areas of interest, which is how The Emergency Teacher: The Inspirational Story of a New Teacher in an Inner City School by Christina Asquith (Skyhorse, 2005) ended up on my list in the first place. I remember a few friends reading this when it first came out, which is how I became aware of it and added it to my list, so I thought it would be more popular and more available than it was, but I ended up needing to obtain a copy via interlibrary loan.

Having long been interested in education, journalist Christina Asquith answered the city of Philadelphia’s call for 1500 emergency teachers. No real qualifications necessary, just show up, attend a few meetings, and boom, you’re a teacher in one of the most underfunded districts in the state with kids who’ve been passed along without having any of their needs, educational or otherwise, met for ages. What could possibly go wrong?

The answer is everything. Supposedly assigned to teach middle school history and Language Arts in the school’s actually non-existent bilingual program, Ms. Asquith is given no curriculum, no books, no assistance, and more students than she has desks for. Some of her students have spoken English from birth; others arrived last month from Puerto Rico and speak little to no English. A handful are there to learn; others are entirely illiterate; some have emotional problems that could never be addressed by but still must be dealt with in a school setting, and these students affect the entire class. One or two other teachers step up and aid Ms. Asquith in her attempts to educate such a motley group of students with so many competing needs, but for the most part, the school throws her in the deep end and walks away, only stopping by to check on her when they’re making sure she adjusts test scores in order to ensure the school doesn’t get shut down.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book, and books like this. The Emergency Teacher is well-written; it’s a smooth read (though I did find it a little slow to start; it begins with the history of Philadelphia’s school system, and while it’s interesting and depressing, it drags a little. Don’t worry though, it does pick up), and I did enjoy hearing Ms. Asquith’s story, the difficulties she faced, and the (few) victories she had over her year as an emergency teacher. But I found nothing ‘inspirational’ about it, as the title suggests. Instead of being moved, I was angered. Angered that this is the state of education that far too many students must contend with. Ms. Asquith, although as well-intentioned as the other emergency certified teachers, had no idea what she was doing (having had no training in classroom management or even how to teach) and admits that she struggled badly and failed her students as much as everyone else in her first months of teaching. Other emergency teachers didn’t even bother teaching after the first few weeks- middle school isn’t easy to teach even for seasoned veterans of the educational system, and these were kids that had been failed over and over again, by society, by the educational system, by their families who had also been failed. Expecting them to sit and listen as though they had been privileged to receive only the best their entire lives is beyond the pale. To be clear, Ms. Asquith understood better than some of the other teachers what she was getting into; others chose to give up close to immediately, whereas she did not. She did maintain contact with several of her students after her year of teaching, but there are few happy endings when the book concludes. In a place dubbed as ‘The Land of Opportunity,’ opportunity can be hard to come by unless you’re born into a family ripe with it.

The Emergency Teacher and books in this genre, including many of those by Jonathan Kozol and Alex Kotlowitz, are maddening and will leave you feeling helpless. While schools in these books have flooded hallways, leaking roofs, and are unable to afford neither teachers nor toilet paper, other schools in richer neighborhoods have attached planetariums, Olympic-sized swimming pools, and offer dual enrollment at local colleges so that students graduate high school with not only a high school diploma, but also an Associate’s degree. The way we fund education in the US is an utter travesty, and nowhere is it exposed more fully than in these books.

The Emergency Teacher. Inspirational? No. An excellent highlight of a major, major emergency in this country? Absolutely.

Visit Christina Asquith’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

romance · YA

I Believe in a Thing Called Love- Maurene Goo

Stephanie2 Comments

I still love YA.

I don’t know if that will ever really change. I don’t read it quite as much as I used to, but the genre itself still calls to me. Books about the time in your life where so many roads are open, where possibility reigns and the future isn’t necessarily set it stone, what’s not to love about that? To be sure, there are a lot of YA novels that deal with extremely heavy topics- heaven knows being a teenager hasn’t ever been simple or easy, in any era- but a good light YA is a nice counter to some of the heavier nonfiction I read. The premise of I Believe in a Thing Called Love by Maurene Goo (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017) sounded adorable and exactly the kind of lighthearted YA romance I enjoy, which is how it ended up on my TBR list.

Desi Lee, first generation Korean American teenager and superstudent extraordinaire, is a mess around guys. Get her in front of one she finds cute and something terrible is bound to happen within minutes, which is why she’s never had a boyfriend. Enter Luca, the hot new artsy guy at school. Despite accidentally showing him her underwear close to immediately after their first meeting, Desi actually feels like this might work out with Luca, but just like she does for everything else in life, she needs a plan, something with concrete steps to check off so that she doesn’t screw this up. Thus Desi creates her list to achieve true love, based on the steps she’s gleaned from the K-dramas she watches with her widowed father.

But of course, while some of the steps go smoothly, life isn’t a scripted K-drama, and eventually Desi’s carefully-made plans go awry. Making things right is never easy, but even when she has to make things right, there’s a K-drama to help show her how.

There’s a lot to enjoy in this novel. While Desi’s a bit Type A and kind of a basket case from time to time, she’s also driven and goal oriented, which is admirable. Her attempts to connect with her widowed father are beyond sweet (is there a ‘dead mother trope’ trend in YA right now, or are all the dead mother books I’ve been reading lately just a coincidence? Starting to feel like I’m in a Disney movie, minus the helpful singing/housecleaning animals…), and I really, really enjoyed the peek into Korean American immigrant/first generation culture (it’s kind of funny; my husband came to the US with his family from Belgium when he was three; he grew up with one foot in both cultures, and it’s only obvious sometimes, usually in regards to things like cultural trivia, that he wasn’t born here and was raised by immigrant parents, which makes my daughter a first generation American on that side. Kind of neat to be able to wonder what her feelings will be on that and what parts of her experience will mirror Desi’s). I have friends who love K-dramas; I’ve never seen one, but this book really made me want to check some out! Ms. Goo includes a list of the K-dramas she loves in the back of the book, which is awesome and helpful.

What didn’t work for me were a few of the things on Desi’s list. ‘Making a list of the things I need to do to snag this hot guy/girl’ isn’t a unique trope, which doesn’t bother me, but Desi takes things way too far, at one point intentionally causing a car accident in order to further her plan to get Luca as her boyfriend, and that felt entirely unrealistic to me (and I’m not one to think that YA characters have to be exemplary in their behavior, but HOLY CRAP, WHAT A TERRIBLE IDEA, and no one makes as big of a deal about this as I think it warranted). Desi’s ridiculously smart, which I know doesn’t necessarily mean mature or full of good decisions, but yikes. Yikes, yikes, yikes. By the end, she’s hurt a lot of people and thrown away her interview at Stanford for Luca- granted, it was to help him during what she thought would be a difficult time, and it all ended up working out anyway (this is YA romance, of course; HEA for life!), but taking that kind of gamble on a boy when you’re seventeen isn’t the greatest idea, and it felt a little icky to me that as dedicated as she was before, Desi went down that road the moment a boy showed up. She’s the kind of character that could benefit from a year or so with a therapist, working on her self-esteem and some techniques to relax in mixed-gender social situations; having a boyfriend isn’t going to change all the problems that caused her to think she needed to make such a list in the first place.

So I liked this, but didn’t quite love it. I think I have another novel by Maurene Goo on my TBR, and as I did enjoy her writing style, I’m definitely hopeful that I’ll fall head over heels with her other books. 🙂

Do you watch K-dramas? Have you ever? Have you ever intentionally caused a car accident in order to make someone fall in love with you, and did you complete your court-ordered therapy afterwards (because that’s the only real outcome I can imagine for such a situation)?

Visit Maurene Goo’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

food · food history · nonfiction

Better Than Homemade- Carolyn Wyman

Stephanie2 Comments

Food history! The history of food has always fascinated me. Books on cooking trends, food usage and availability, food justice, wartime rationing, and other food-related topics are absolutely my jam (hehehe. Jam. Get it?). And while I’m not exactly a foodie, I’m far from a ‘Break out the processed foods, guys!’ kind of gal. I cook probably about 90% of what we eat from scratch (right down to bread, yogurt, jam/preserves, veggie burgers, etc). I haven’t yet mastered tortillas and my granola bars have been crumbly in the past, but I’m comfortable in the kitchen and love trying new things. That said, Better Than Homemade: Amazing Foods That Changed the Way We Eat by Carolyn Wyman (Quirk Books, 2014) absolutely belonged on my TBR list, because, well, FOOD.

The second World War changed so much all over the world, and American food culture wasn’t exempt from these shifts. Food preservation technology had advanced, thanks to the need to store and ship food to the troops overseas, and the food industry poured a lot of effort into making the American public more comfortable with processed foods in an attempt to unload their leftover stock (and increase profits, of course). Processed foods were celebrated as time savers, as healthier alternatives to fresh (yes, really! Why have the vitamins that are actually in a certain food when you can strip them all out, then spray on a synthetic version? Looking at you, white bread…), and as technological breakthroughs for the modern home. Better Than Homemade brings this era to life in an examination of beloved (mostly) American products that revolutionized- and not necessarily a good way!- the way we eat.

Warning: you may see large portions of your childhood displayed in these colorful pages. Cheez-Whiz, spray cheese, Velveeta, Kool-Aid, snack cakes, the history of all these products and evolution of American food culture are laid out in this easy and fun-to-read book. It’s nostalgia between two covers, although you might be squinting at some of the products in a queasy haze, thankful that your tastes have grown and expanded.

I really enjoyed reading the brief histories of the companies who made some of my favorite childhood foods and viewing the different product packaging (it was kind of neat to recognize the labels and packages from my childhood on the pages that featured a lineup of product packaging). I don’t use many of these products any more- I do keep potato flakes around for a certain bread recipe; I keep a tube of refrigerated biscuits in the fridge for breakfast sandwiches; I do use cooking spray, occasionally I’ll spring for some Aldi-brand Tater Tots, and I still have some seriously ancient boxes of Jell-o in the pantry- but I ate Hamburger Helper, canned pasta in various forms, boxed macaroni and cheese, and crescent rolls as a kid, and my mother still uses Minute Rice, so reading through this book was a food-related stroll back through my younger days, days with far less concern for my own nutrition.

The funniest part of this book was turning the page, seeing a product I hadn’t thought about in years, and then having the television jingle from a commercial the company put out in 1987 run through my head. Like, SERIOUSLY, brain? There isn’t any better use for the brain cells storing that song??? This is why I did so badly in high school chemistry, you guys; my brain is too busy keeping a death grip on the Carnation Instant Breakfast jingle from when I was nine years old, and the rest of me is over here wondering what it was I came into the kitchen for…

If you’re interested in the intersection of food history and pop culture, or you’re my age (39 today!) or older and feel like revisiting the foods you ate growing up, a serving of Better Than Homemade just might hit the spot. 😉

Visit Carolyn Wyman’s website here.

fiction · YA

Internment- Samira Ahmed

Stephanie3 Comments

Sometimes a book comes along that fits eerily well into the current cultural and political environment of the times. Internment by Samira Ahmed (Atom, 2019) is one of those books.

First off, content warnings. Internment focuses on racial and religious discrimination, and there are multiple instances of racial and religious hatred, including insults. There are also multiple scenes of violence and several deaths. It’s not hard to deduce that this book draws heavily from the current political climate, so be sure that this book, with its heaviness and reality-based horrors, is something you can handle at the time. It’s not an easy read.

Internment begins in a time when the United States government has begun placing heavy restrictions on the activities of Muslims, from where they work to how late they can stay out (history students, does this sound at all familiar?). Teenager Layla Amin is bristling under the unfairness of it all, but her parents are trying to stay optimistic. All their optimism crashes to the ground, however, when the authorities show up at their house one night to take them away to a Muslim concentration camp in the middle of the desert, run by guards who (for the most part) lack any shred of humanity, with other Muslims charged with keeping them in line (if you’re familiar with the term ‘kapo,’ this would be an example of it). Torn away from everything familiar, Layla can hardly believe that her once-comfortable life in the Land of the Free has been reduced to…this.

Almost immediately and often without thinking through the potential consequences, Layla begins making plans for freedom, enlisting other teenagers she befriends, as well as a sympathetic guard, who helps her contact her non-Muslim boyfriend back home. Slowly, Layla and her friends begin to enact changes around the camp, but the blowback and the repercussions are serious and deadly. The culmination of it all will leave you at the edge of your seat, frantically flipping pages and praying for resolution for Layla and all others forced into this kind of captivity.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it: given the current political climate and with daily stories about the horrors of migrants, asylum seekers, and others, including children, in camps with questionable-to-downright-horrific conditions, this isn’t an easy read and will break your heart several times over. Layla is a bit on the young side for her age, and while she’s obviously intelligent, she’s also reckless and doesn’t always think things through (although if she did, I’m not sure this story would have been so action-packed, so her more imprudent nature serves its purpose for the story). More in the interest of brevity, the story concludes much quicker than it would have in real life, wrapping up a bit more neatly than reason leads me to believe it would play out currently, and though the director of Layla’s camp veers slightly toward ‘caricature’ in his overt monstrosity and lack of self-control, Internment is still a chilling, way-too-close-to-reality novel that is worth the read.

In a world where we have camps where children are taking care of other small children, reading this had me rage-screaming in my head, but I don’t regret picking it up- quite the opposite, in fact. Internment will stick with me as I continue to struggle to find ways to voice my fury at the actions carried out by my country. Nothing ever feels like enough, but doing absolutely nothing isn’t acceptable to me: as Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Internment and the daily onslaught of news are both depressing reminders of that.

Visit Samira Ahmed’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.