The Outsiders

The Bibliography
Hinton, S. E. 1967. The Outsiders. New York: Viking. ISBN 0670532576

The Characters
Ponyboy Curtis, his brothers Sodapop and Darry, Dally, Johnny, Two-Bit and Steve are the Greasers, the main characters in The Outsiders. The main main characters are Ponyboy, Johnny and Dally. There are also other characters, the Greasers' rivals, the Socs.

The Plot
Greasers and Socs don't get along. They fight over anything and sometimes, for no reason at all, other than the fact that the Greasers don't have money and the Socs have too much. After Johnny gets beat up by the Socs, he's scared all the time. When he and Ponyboy get jumped by a couple of drunk Socs one night after the movies, things take a turn for the worse. The Socs try to drown Ponyboy, but Johnny just can't take it anymore. He kills one of the Socs with his knife, so he and Ponyboy have to run away. While they're away, the boys learn a few life lessons and, what else, become heroes after pulling kids out of a burning church. Tragically, Johnny doesn't survive long after the fire, which leads Dally, his mentor and hero, to get himself killed.

The Setting
a city in Oklahoma, or at least that's what I deduced from watching the movie and reading background information on the author

The Theme
division of social classes

The Style
first person, written from Ponyboy's point of view

The Strengths and Weaknesses
I know I've said previously that I think anyone with enough creativity and who does enough research can write anything they want to, but I think I'm going to have to retract that statement. S.E. Hinton, who happens to be female (which I didn't know prior to reading this book and doing research myself) was 16 when she wrote this book. I felt a little odd reading it and finding out that Ponyboy thinks his brothers are handsome and that some of the Socs look good in their burgandy sweaters. It seems a tad on the girly side to me. The Greasers get a little bit too emotional I think for dirty ol' boys that get into knock-down-drag-out fights. That's a definite weakness of The Outsiders.

There are strengths, too, of course. Anyone who reads this book will feel an attachment to anyone they consider a close friend. They'll relate to Ponyboy's devotion to Sodapop and Johnny's to Dally, and likewise, Dally's to Johnny.

The Review
Booklist
(November 15, 1997; 9780440967699 )

Gr. 7^-10. In a book now considered a classic, Ponyboy can count only on his friends when it comes to mixing it up with the Socs, a gang of rich kids who like nothing better than beating up on greasers like himself.

The Connection
The most perfect connection would be to read this book, then watch the film adaptation of it by Francis Ford Coppola. A lot of the girliness that I didn't like about the book was left out in the movie, although the boys do still cry a lot. Plus, all the 80s hunks are in it, like Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe and Matt Dillon.

The Graveyard Book

The Bibliography
Gaiman, Neil. 2008. The Graveyard Book. Ill. by Dave McKean. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780060530938

The Characters
Nobody "Bod" Owens is the main character of The Graveyard Book. Other characters include his guardian, Silas, and the man who killed his famiiy, the man Jack Frost. There are other characters, but these are the most important ones.

The Plot
Nobody Owens is kind of a normal boy. When he was a baby, his parents and sibling were murdered and only he escaped. And to where did he escape? The graveyard. Taken in by ghosts, Nobody spends all his time in the graveyard until he discovers what happened to his parents and exact revenge.

The Setting
an English graveyard and the surrounding town

The Theme
belonging

The Style
The Graveyard Book is written in eight (very nearly) stand alone short stories.

The Strengths and Weaknesses
The creativity of this book is definitely a strength. Neil Gaiman never fails to surprise me in the oddities that he creates. The graveyard world that Bod lives in is beautifully described and imagined, but Gaiman's world's always are.

As far as weaknesses go, since this book is made up of short stories, I think I would have been content to begin at The Interlude and finish the book from there. I really didn't care for the beginning, like, I almost put it down and didn't pick it back up, but I trudged along and finally made it to something worthwhile. I just wish it didn't take 165 pages for me to get there.

The Review
Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2008 (Vol. 76, No. 16))
Wistful, witty, wise—and creepy. Gaiman's riff on Kipling's Mowgli stories never falters, from the truly spine-tingling opening, in which a toddler accidentally escapes his family's murderer, to the melancholy, life-affirming ending. Bod (short for Nobody) finds solace and safety with the inhabitants of the local graveyard, who grant him some of the privileges and powers of the dead—he can Fade and Dreamwalk, for instance, but still needs to eat and breathe. Episodic chapters tell miniature gems of stories (one has been nominated for a Locus Award) tracing Bod's growth from a spoiled boy who runs away with the ghouls to a young man for whom the metaphor of setting out into the world becomes achingly real. Childhood fears take solid shape in the nursery-rhymeûinspired villains, while heroism is its own, often bitter, reward. Closer in tone to American Gods than to Coraline, but permeated with Bod's innocence, this needs to be read by anyone who is or has ever been a child.

The Connection
I've had the (completely ridiculous) desire to make dioramas lately, and I think Neil Gaiman's books would be perfect to do that with. His books are so artistic and, well, macabre. Who wouldn't love making a miniature graveyard scene with ghosts all around from The Graveyard Book or a mom with creepy button eyes from Coraline? I think the teens in my library would!

I Am the Messenger

The Bibliography
Zusak, Marcus. 2002. I Am the Messenger. New York: Random House. ISBN 0375836675

The Characters
The main character of I Am the Messenger is Ed Kennedy, 19 year-old taxi driver in Australia. Other characters include his three best friends, Marv, Ritchie and Audrey, and several supporting characters - the recipients of his messages.

The Plot
Hopeless and lacking confidence in his life, Ed spends most days driving his taxi, playing cards with his friends, and sharing coffee with his smelly old dog, The Doorman. After foolishly stopping a bank robbery, things change for Ed. He receives a mysterious card in his mailbox, the Ace of Diamonds, and written upon it are three addresses. Ed realizes that he must visit these addresses and deliver a message to the people that live there. Not all messages are peaceful, not all are pleasant, but all are life changing, for Ed in particular.

The Setting
an unnamed city in Australia

The Theme
overcoming mediocrity

The Style
mostly first person vignettes

The Strengths and Weaknesses
I quite enjoyed I Am the Messenger. I had heard it was a good book, but sometimes, when people say something is great, I tend to avoid it on purpose. I don't like to be let down by books. This one was not a let down, though. I enjoyed that the sections of the book were broken down into 13 mini chapters/vignettes, one for each playing card value, Ace through King. I was impressed that Ed never did anything seriously terrible, like killing the rapist, even though I thought he did and/or should have. I'm also glad he ended up with Audrey in the end, even though she was a little on the easy side. I really find no weaknesses in this book.

The Review
Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2005 (Vol. 73, No. 1))
In this winner of the Australian Children's Book Award for Older Readers, 19-year-old Ed Kennedy slouches through life driving a taxi, playing poker with his buddies, and hanging out with his personable dog, Doorman. The girl he loves just wants to be friends, and his mother constantly insults him, both of which make Ed, an engaging, warm-hearted narrator, feel like a loser. But he starts to overcome his low self-esteem when he foils a bank robbery and then receives a series of messages that lead him to do good deeds. He buys Christmas lights for a poor family, helps a local priest, and forces a rapist out of town. With each act, he feels better about himself and builds a community of friends. The openly sentimental elements are balanced by swearing, some drinking and violence, and edgy friendships. Suspense builds about who is sending the messages, but readers hoping for a satisfying solution to that mystery will be disappointed. Those, however, who like to speculate about the nature of fiction, might enjoy the unlikely, even gimmicky, conclusion.

The Connection
I think it would make an interesting scavenger hunt for teens at a library program if you sat them down with some playing cards to play silly games like Blind Man's Bluff, but then sneak secret messages on some of the cards where the teens will have to go scavenging around the library to complete these hidden tasks. It would be similar to the messages Ed receives in I Am the Messenger, but also a fun activity.

Habibi

The Bibliography
Nye, Naomi Shihab. 1997. Habibi. New York: Simon Pulse. ISBN 9780689825231

The Characters
The main characters of Habibi are Liyana Abboud, her brother, Rafik, her father Kamal and her mother Susan. Other characters include Liyana's very large extended family.

The Plot
Liyana's family moves from St. Louis to Jerusalem, the land of her father. Liyana and her brother were born and raised in the United States and she definitely doesn't want to move, especially since she just got her first kiss from a cute boy named Jackson. After the family moves to Palestine, Liyana must get used to her huge family and the difficulties of the hatred between Arabs and Jews.

The Setting
Palestine

The Theme
finding and making peace

The Style
Habibi is written in short vignettes, mostly from Liyana's point of view, but sometimes in the form of essays written by her brother or some short sequences about her father and mother.

The Analysis
I really couldn't get into Habibi. It was very political and I try to avoid political things at all cost. And I also don't like very short chapters that don't necessarily flow together. Sure all the chapters come together to create this novel, but moving from an essay by Rafik to all the things Liyana did on her 29th day of school to what you can buy in Jerusalem to brushing your hair on the porch is just way too much for me.

The Cultural Markers
This book is all cultural markers, far too many to list individually. There are entire chapters dedicated things you can buy at a store in Jerusalem "You can buy gray Arabic notebooks .... You can buy miniature Christmas cards .... You can buy glass vases handblown in Hebron and olive-wood rosaries and creamy white mother-of-pearl star pins and shiny brocade from big bolts of cloth.... You can buy painted Palestine plates and roasted chickpeas and olive oil soap made in Nablus with a red camel on the package and saffron, that spice that costs a lot of money in American grocery stores, very cheaply .... You can buy sweets and treats, gooey, sticky, honey-dipped, date-stuffed fabulous Arabic desserts on giant round silver trays..." (120-122), descriptions of life in the West Bank for Liyana's distant family and how and where they live and many cultural traditions in the chapter To the Village. "When the cars climbed the steep hill into the village, children popped out of front doors to look at them, as if cars didn't drive up there very often." "Every house was made of golden or white chunky stone." "What Liyana would discover was this was positively everyone's favorite thing to do here - sit in a circle and talk talk talk." "A muezzin gave the last call to prayer of the day over a loudspeaker from the nearby mosque and all the relatives rose up in unison and turned their backs on Liyana's family. They unrolled small blue prayer rugs from a shelf, then knelt, stood, and knelt again, touching foreheads to the ground, saying their prayers in low voices." (50-56)

The Review
Marcia Mann (VOYA, February 1998 (Vol. 20, No. 6))
Liyanna Abboud is fourteen when her parents announce that the family is moving from St. Louis, the only home Liyanna has ever known, to Jerusalem, her father's birthplace. The Abbouds are welcomed by her father's sprawling extended Arab family in their West Bank village. New family, country, languages, and customs do not seem to faze Liyana nor her brother, Rafik, much. It is the lack of peace and the lack of empathy between the Jews and Arabs that are the main sources of angst for Liyanna and her family and friends. This story is told mainly from sensitive, introspective Liyanna's point of view, with a few disrupting shifts to those of her parents, Rafik, and her grandmother. This shifting viewpoint is a sign of the obtrusiveness of the author's agenda, as the question of just who has the "right" god is pondered. Although this heavy-handed approach might not be obvious to younger teens, a less didactic tone and more well-rounded characters would improve both the quality of the book and the reader's ability to enjoy it. However, glimpses of everyday life in a holy city and of how Arabs live in present-day Israel provide an interesting backdrop, and Liyana's vaguely mystical Arab grandmother is simply charming. Habibi is an Arabic word meaning "darling" and the oft-used term of endearment Liyanna and Rafik's parents use for their children.

The Connection
The only thing I really enjoyed from Habibi were the first lines of each chapter. Liyana kept a list of first lines of stories or movies she made up and would read over them to try to think of the rest of the story for them. I think a fun activity would be to have a group of kids write down a first line like Liyana, then pass them around and see if they could come up with the rest of the story for each line.

My Pal, Victor / Mi Amigo, Víctor

The Bibliography
Bertrand, Diane Gonzales. 2004. My Pal, Victor/Mi Amigo, Víctor. Ill. by Robert L. Sweetland. Green Bay: Raven tree Press LLC. 0972019294

The Characters
Dominic and Víctor

The Plot
Two boys have fun just being boys despite the fact that one boy is confined to a wheelchair.

The Setting
the imaginations and memories of two young boys

The Theme
taken from the summary: "Fun and friendship overpower physical limitations."

The Style
My Pal, Victor / Mi Amigo, Víctor is written in both English and Spanish and describes how great friends these boys are despite their problems.

The Analysis
I liked this book. I like most books that are bilingual, in fact. Since I knew from reading the book jacket and the summary that one of the boys had a disability, I looked for it on every page and in every illustration, but I didn't see it. Then I showed the book to a coworker and asked her to find how one boy was handicapped and I spotted it on the very last page. Víctor is in a wheelchair!

The Cultural Markers
Illustrations: The watercolor-looking illustrations show the actions of the story in rich colors. The boys are Latino and have dark, shiny hair and tan skin. The illustrations are careful not to show Víctor's legs on any page, but it's done in a very clever way.

Text: There are not many cultural markers in the text, other than the fact that it's also written in Spanish.

The Review
Michelle Negron Bueno (Children's Literature)
My Pal, Victor/Mi amigo, Víctor is a beautiful and insightful portrait of true friendship. The book is about two boys, Victor and Dominic, who enjoy a variety of typical activities including storytelling, baseball, riddles, swimming, roller coasters, coloring, fishing, and playing in the park. Victor tells the funniest jokes, swims better than a fish, loves the wildest amusement park rides, claps the loudest for his friend at baseball games, and above all accepts Dominic just as he is. The typicality of their relationship becomes something more profound when we learn that Victor is disabled and lives his open-hearted, fully active life from a wheelchair. The writing is unique and full of movement. For example, the author describes scary ghost tales as “heart-booming stories” in which even “goose bumps get scared.” The Spanish text is paralleled throughout and is just as exciting. A bilingual vocabulary list is included. The illustrations are bright, colorful and active, underscoring the author’s message. All the elements of this book work together to provide children and adults with a story that is both heartwarming and thought provoking.

The Connection
I'd share this tale along with another story of a best friend in a wheelchair, Best Friend on Wheels by Debra Shirley, even though I find the title a little offensive. Maybe, if the kids are old enough, we could discuss the differences in each book, how one doesn't even mention the fact that the child uses a wheelchair and how the other draws attention to it.

The Popularity Papers

The Bibliography
Ignatow, Amy. 2010. The Popularity Papers. New York: Amulet Books. ISBN 9780810984219

The Characters
The main characters in The Popularity Papers are Julie Graham-Chang and Lydia Goldblatt. Other characters include Lydia's mom and sister, Julie's dads and various schoolmates.

The Plot
The Popularity Papers is about Julie's and Lydia's quest to be popular by the time they make it to junior high. Through several tests and experiments, lots of spying, and an occasional mishap, the girls find out that being popular is not the most important thing in the world, and that "your friends should be the coolest people you know" (205).

The Setting
an unknown elementary school

The Theme
learning that popularity is not the only thing that makes you a good person

The Style
The Popularity Papers is a journal/scrapbook style book. The text is all handdwritten and there are lots of silly drawings and doodles. Both main characters write the book, so it's from both of their points of view and both handwritings. All their plans on how to be popular by the time they reach junior high (and all the problems this causes) are sketched in the book.

The Analysis
I really liked this book. The drawings were very funny and the main characters are sarcastic and goofy, like me! The characters act just like two best friends that are beginning to make other friends, getting angry over silly things, so it seemed very realistic. The drawings are definitely the best part of the book.

The Cultural Markers
Illustrations: The illustrations show Julie Graham-Chang as a honey-skinned girl, probably Chinese or Japanese, and showed her two dads, Daddy (also of some sort of Asian descent) and Papa Dad, who has red curly hair and a matching beard. Lydia has blonde, curly hair, and so does her mom. Her sister, Melody, used to, before she dyed her hair black and became "goth." There are various other races and colors of people in the book, but everyone has their own shade and look. One of the girls' friends, Roland, and his family are from Norway, so there are several references to Norway and drawings about Norwegians. (Roland's dad's name is Thor, so he's drawn with Mjolnir, his hammer, and lightning, and a hat with wings (68)). The book is very well illustrated.

Text: Like with the illustrations of Roland and his family, there are some references to Norwegians and how they speak differently and eat differently. They ate hamburgers, but to Roland, they are called "Karbonader" (69) Even though everyone knows that Julie has two dads, there are also some hidden references to the fact that some people think that's a bad thing "But she made it soundn like having two fathers and no mom was bad" "She started to say tha tshe felt sorry for you because your family isn't normal, and Sukie told her to shut up!!!" (163).

The Review
Andrew Medlar (Booklist, Mar. 1, 2010 (Vol. 106, No. 13))
Before they leave elementary school behind, two fifth-grade best friends are determined to uncover the secrets of popularity by observing, recording, discussing, and replicating the behaviors of the cool girls, because when you’re popular, “You are just better.” In a notebook format, this heavily illustrated title shows their research in dramatic, alternating, handwritten entries and colorful, hilarious drawings. Lydia lives with her single mom and pseudo-goth older sister; Julie lives with her two dads. All the girls' family members play big roles in the process, which lasts the whole school year and realistically includes instances in which the girls misjudge and misunderstand themselves and others. Their experiences may be typically tween (boys, cell phones, camping trips, and school musicals), but their reactions to them are laugh-out-loud funny and definitely on par with, though much more feminine than, Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Ignatow offers a quick, fun, well-developed story that invites repeated readings.

The Connection
I think it would be a fun program to begin a scrapbook journal like Lydia and Julie in The Popularity Papers. The program could be based on scrapbooking and could include sharing books like Classic Scrapbooking by Vera Rosenbluth, Cut Loose!: Break the Rules of Scrapbooking by Crystal Jeffrey Rieger and, perhaps the best one, Imperfect Lives: Scrapbooking the Reality of Your Everyday edited by Tara Governo.

Grandfather's Journey

The Bibliography
Say, Allen. 1993. Grandfather's Journey. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0395570352

The Characters
The narrator's Grandfather is the main character in this story. Other characters are the narrator's Grandmother, Mother, Father and the narrator himself.

The Plot
As a young man, Grandfather leaves his home in Japan to travel to the New World. He experiences many things - traveling by train and riverboat, seeing large deserts, walking through huge cities and gazing at towering mountains. He meets new people, "He shook hands with black men and white men, with yellow men and red men" (12). He decides to travel back to Japan to get married, then he and his wife move back to the US and have a daughter, but then, after his daughter is grown, he decides he wants her to see his home in Japan. They travel back and forth between Japan and the United States, calling both countries home.

The Setting
a small village in Japan and the United States

The Theme
home is where the heart is

The Style
Grandfather's Journey reminds me of looking at a photo album with my grandparents or parents and listening to them tell the story behind the photographs.

The Analysis
The soft, watercolor illustrations in this book show Grandfather on his journey from Japan to the United States. The paintings look like photographs in an album that has been passed through many hands from generation to generation. The story is sweet and makes me long to visit faraway places.

The Cultural Markers
Illustrations: The illustrations are rich in culture in Grandfather's Journey. The characters are painted in ranges of white, tan, yellow and gold with shadows and rosy hues, not simply one plain color. The clothes the characters wear show their Japanese-American heritage, sometimes wearing silk robes and wooden sandals, other times, wearing hats and bowties, shiny shoes and carrying parasols.

Text: There are not many cultural markers in the text. There are few mentions of Japan and a mention of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on pages 26 and 27, "But a war began. Bombs fell from the sky and scattered our lives like leaves in a storm. When the war ended, there was nothing left of the city and of the house where my grandparents had lived."

The Review
Roger Sutton (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, September 1993 (Vol. 47, No. 1))
In this companion to Tree of Cranes (BCCB 9/91), Say evokes the bittersweet dilemma of the immigrant who, happy in his new country, still longs to return to the old-and once returned, wants once again to travel. The narrator's grandfather leaves Japan for America as a young man, and marvels at the magnificent fields and cities and landscapes. He returns home to marry his sweetheart, brings her to settle in California, and later, in middle-age, makes a last journey back with his wife and teenaged daughter. War puts to an end his dream to see America one last time, but many years later, the narrator himself moves to California and has a daughter of his own. Both the joy in new vistas and the ache of remembrance are captured in Say's large watercolor paintings, fresh perspectives on purple mountains' majesty and amber waves of grain. (Japan looks pretty good, too.) As in Tree of Cranes, which is about the narrator's California-born mother, the paintings are precise, cool portraits and views that fix recollections into images, and the book as a whole is an album where both a picture of a family standing amidst war's devastation and a romantic pastorale of courting lovers find their place in memory.

The Connection
This would be a good story for a Grandparents' day at the library. We could share this story and others like Grandparents Song by Sheila Hamanaka and photos of our grandparents and hear the stories of their lives, learn where they grew up and what they loved as children.