Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork

Marcelo, a 17-yr-old, high school senior who is also on the Autistic spectrum. Marcelo is fixated on two things...religion and his IM (inner music) – his own brand of inner noise.

Marcelo is anticipating his final year at Paterson - a school for disabled kids – and his job in the stable. Dad has other ideas he wants him to work at his law firm to get a taste of the real world. Dad makes a deal with Marcelo – if he follows the rules for the summer he will allow Marcelo to decide where he attends his final year of high school. Marcelo becomes a mailroom worker with Jasmine. She is open and honest and doesn’t really want him there. But, a friendship develops. Each gives the other a listening ear without judgements attached.

The law firm is defending a windshield manufacturer for negligence. The windshield is supposed to splinter and break instead it breaks in big pieces and kills and maims people. Marcelo and Jasmine discover a photograph of a girl who lived through the horror. Now, Marcelo must decide what to do – get in touch with the lawyer for the girl and share that the company knew about the problem, or stand by his dad…

It's a story of a young man entering the bigger world and figuring out what it means to stand.

This is an excellent book for anyone who has worked with kids on the spectrum. It really provides an insight into what their world is like. How scary, how exciting and how different their view is from what we accept as our reality.

I loved this!

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Laurie Halse Anderson is amazing! This is another book that has you on edge the entire time.

You enter the world of a Lia - a girl slowly starving herself to death. You hear her inner battle - the belief that hunger is strength. The desire to eat and the decision to stay strong. The understanding that driving requires some calories - but there is always a price to pay.

Lia is a senior who finds out that her ex-best friend, Cassie, has just died. Cassie was found alone in a motel room. Cassie had purged herself to death. She was bulemic and the wear and tear of her disease eventually killed her.

She died alone...
She called Lia over and over...
Lia ignored the calls...
Cassie is dead...

Anderson has a way of weaving a story in bits and pieces and before you know it you are embedded in the tale.

As I read this I kept debating if I really liked Lia. She had so many positives in her life, so many moments when others tried to reach out to her. But, she kept giving in to her own demons...until...

Lia's little step sister loves her, idolizes her and Lia becomes a different person with Emma. But, she crosses the line and Emma witnesses her downfall.

This is EXCELLENT!!

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

I want to speak after I read this - I want to tell everyone I can to read this story. To read this story and then to listen very closely for the silence of those teenagers in your life. That is sometimes the only way they can really communicate!

Mel begins freshman year as an outcast by choice. As the world moves forward Mel is stuck – the words are stuck in her throat, her forward motion is stuck, her life is stuck. But, you the reader, don't really know why she is stuck... there are clues. But it's late in the book that Mel actually tells what happened that night at the party before school started.

Mel is ostracized for calling the cops on a party – when she was actually reporting something very different that underage drinking. How do you fit in after that? How do you get to the point where you even want to fit in? That is what Mel explores through this yearlong journey.

I don't want to say too much...I don't want to give anything more away. But, this is a heartbreaking story of a girl who just doesn't know how to move on. And then a teacher, not a cardboard cut-out adult, but a flesh and blood teacher, starts to break through Mel's shell.

Read it!!

Chanda's Secrets and Chanda's Wars by Allan Stratton

Chanda is a spirited teenager growing up poor in a small city in a fictional African country. She is very smart and loyal to her mother and her family.

The story opens with Chanda buying the coffin for her 1½ year old sister. Chanda’s good friend Esther no longer attends school, but earns a living doing odd jobs for tourists (hooking). It is only after a horrible attack and rape that Esther admits that this is the only way to earn money to buy back her siblings following her parents’ deaths. Then mama becomes sick. She leaves the family to go to her ancestral home. Chanda goes seeking her and finds her almost dead in an old cattle shed. As Chanda brings her mama home the neighborhood is faced with a dilemma. They all know it’s AIDS, but no one can voice that. Chanda is tired of the secrets, calls it what it is and celebrates her mother’s life.

There are more secrets for Chanda to keep or share, but through this she grows from a young girl to a young woman.



Chanda's Wars picks up right where the first book stopped.

Chanda again attempts to save her family – this time from an evil rebel leader who steals children, brands and brainwashes them to fight in his army while he kills families and loots villages. When Soly and Iris are stolen Chanda tracks the group cross country with Nelson’s (the boy her family wanted her to marry) reluctant help. Using a bees’ nest, a slingshot and the cover of darkness, they create enough confusion to rescue Soly, Iris and Nelson’s brother Paka, maim General Mandiki, and escape into the bush.

This story deals with the awful realities the children in Africa must face as they are thrown into the midst of civil wars. When Soly and Iris are taken, General Mandiki tells them that to return to their family would be certain death for them and their loved ones. He brands them with a hot iron on their chests and tells them that noone will trust them if they see his brand.

Parts of this story reminded me so much of A long Way Gone. It is a reality that I hope we never have to experience!!

Looking for Alaska by John Green

This is one of those angst filled high school books that I love! There are quirky characters, cardboard adult figures, and amazing pranks.

All sounds rosy at Culver Creek boarding school in Birmingham, Alabama. But...
(can't you almost hear the da da da daaaaa music)

Miles Halter decides his life as a nothing high school student just isn't enough - so he transfers as a junior from Florida to Alabama. He is roommates with Chip aka the Colonel. And the third leg of the friendship triangle is Alaska. An odd duck of a girl that every boy is in love with, every girl wants to be her friend, and she is driven by unspoken demons that rear their head when she is mighty drunk.

This threesome studies, dreams, smokes and plans pranks together.

Then tragedy... (there is that music again)
You knew there would be tragedy - that's how all these books work.

But, the book doesn't end with the tragedy -rather it divides the book into before and after. The chapters in the first half of the book are all the number of days before and the last half are the number of days after.

I really can't say much more... I don't want to give anything away. But, I really enjoyed this...

I will tell you there is an ongoing theme of trying to find your way out of the labyrinth - you can decide what it is that keeps you stuck inside the labyrinth. For Alaska it's suffering. For Miles it's invisibility. For Colonel -not sure...

A Hole in my Life by Jack Gantos

This the first biography I've read in a long time. It's the second book for my YA lit class that we are reading together.

Jack has the writing bug – but can’t seem to figure out how to go about writing. Instead he floats through life making questionable choices, but not actually getting into much trouble until he meets Rik. Rik offers him the opportunity of his life – serve as second mate on a sailboat smuggling hash to NYC from St. Croix and earn $10,000. It seems like an easy way to make the money he needs to get into college – so Jack agrees.

The mission is doomed from the beginning, with storms, a broken sextant and a crazy skipper. But, Jack is hopeful. They arrive in NYC and aren’t caught until most of the hash is sold. Though Jack was not directly involved with the sale of drugs, he was an accomplice and put into prison.

Here his life begins to change. For the first time – he actually has something to write about. He uses the Brothers Karamazov as a journal and writes himself into a better frame of mind as he works in the prison hospital as an X-ray tech. After 15 months he is released.

The book is graphic in it's description of prison life and exploits. It is also very free in the details about doing drugs. I wanted to like Jack - but I really didn't care about him very much. So, if this was meant to be a cautionary tale about drug use - it was lost on me!!

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

This is the first book for my YA Lit class. It was an interesting one to start with. I had read other Hinton books, but not this one.

Hinton does a great job of pulling you in to a gang of boys who look, from the outside, as if they have nothing going for them. Yet watching the events play out from inside - through Ponyboy's eyes - you have a completely different sense.

The story is told by a 14 year old on the edge of the gang, the school, the family. His is the textbook definition of an outsider from so many different angles. Yet, he also belongs to many different groups. He describes himself as a person who sees the sunset. His friend Johnny calls him Gold after Ponyboy recites a Robert Frost poem. Let's see - how may other 'greasers' would be able to recite poetry? How many non-greasers would be able to recite poetry?

I found the story sad, yet in a very detached way. Maybe it's because I am so many decades away from 14 - or maybe because this was an assigned book, but I wasn't able to sympathize the way I usually do. Instead, I could respect Ponyboy and the rest of the gang's perspective.

But, my motherly side wanted to shout at them and shake them and remind them that 'rumbling' will not make the problem go away, it only exacerbates it if they beat the Socs. So - for a pack of unmothered young men - they make some lousy decisions and come to some amazing ahha moments.

My favorite part is that it doesn't end at any event - instead it ends as it begins..."I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home."