ADV = adventure and exploration
ALEX = Alex Award winner
B/M = biography and memoir
GN = graphic novel
GNF = general nonfiction
HIST = historical fiction
HUM = humor
LOI = literature of inclusion
P = poetry
SCI = science and nature
SPO = sports
TECH = technology
AGE OF BRONZE: A THOUSAND SHIPS
Shanower, Eric. Image Comics, 2001. ISBN: 9781582402000. GN, HIST
Here is volume 1 of Shanower’s ongoing epic graphic novel retelling of the Trojan War. When the author/artist first undertook this project, he estimated it would take nine years to complete. At this writing ten years have passed, and the end is still not in sight. Along the way Shanower has collected two Eisner Awards for his efforts (the Eisners are the Oscars of the graphic novel world) and the allegiance of countless fans. What distinguishes this particular effort—aside from the creative imagination Shanower brings to his retelling of this world classic—is the prodigious research he devotes to ensuring the accuracy of every detail, both textual and visual. The result is an authentic depiction of the classical world that provides the epic’s setting. Shanower’s art is not only authentic and apposite; it is masterful in its use of black and white and beautiful in its careful draftsmanship. If ever a graphic novel deserved to be called art, it is this brilliant undertaking.
Bragg, Rick. Pantheon, 1997. ISBN: 0679442588. B/M, LOI, ALEX
A Pulitzer Prize–winning national correspondent for the New York Times, journalist Bragg has written a memoir of his early life (he was born in 1959) growing up in near poverty in the American South. He was the second of three sons of an abusive, alcoholic father who died at age 40. Somehow Bragg’s mother, whom he clearly adores, provided love and back-breaking hard work, scrimping, saving, and doing without, to keep her family together. Bragg doesn’t spare his readers his anger, and some reviewers have found this and his tendency to dwell on his own accomplishments annoying. But teens will identify with the emotional tenor of the book and be gratified by Bragg’s ultimate success and the realization of his lifelong dream: to buy his mother a house of her own.
AMERICAN SHAOLIN
Polly, Matthew. Gotham, 2007. ISBN: 9781592402625. B/M, ALEX
Polly, a Princeton graduate and Rhodes Scholar, spent two years in China in the early 1990s determined to transform his anemic-looking body into a fighting machine, as it were. His destination was the Shaolin Monastery, birthplace of kung fu and home to a celebrated cadre of fighting monks. The elaborate subtitle of his book speaks volumes about his adventure: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of the Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China. In addition to vivid and often droll accounts of his training and various bouts of kung fu action, Polly also gives some serious attention to the changing culture of Communist China in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
AMERICAN VOYEUR
Denizet-Lewis, Benoit. Simon & Schuster, 2010. ISBN: 9781416539155. GNF, LOI
The author, a freelance journalist, delivers sixteen articles that were originally published in such sources as the New York Times Magazine, Spin, and Slate. Deftly combining journalism and sociology, he examines some of the further reaches of modern culture such as life on the “down low,” that is, black men living as heterosexuals while secretly engaging in gay sex; and also the desperate lives of homeless gay teens living in San Francisco’s Castro District. Denizet-Lewis’s interest in youth culture and considerations of sexual identity is manifest in the large number of his essays and reports that feature this age group and topic—pieces like a fascinating look at contemporary teen dating practices, the lives of young gay married men, a middle school transgender girl living as a boy, and more. What lends these pieces their particular immediacy is the author’s practice of what he calls “immersion journalism”: spending a great deal of time in the company of his subjects to establish emotional rapport or, as he puts it, “waiting around for people to be themselves”—and recognizing and recording those moments when they are.
AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
Kalman, Maira. Penguin Press, 2010. ISBN: 9781594202674. GN, GNF
Borrowing a celebrated phrase from the Declaration of Independence for her title, gifted artist Kalman offers a wonderfully idiosyncratic celebration in words and pictures of a beautiful America and its democratic form of government. Her strategy is simple: beginning with the January inauguration of Barack Obama, Kalman offers a month-by-month, yearlong journey across America that winds leisurely from coast to coast. Each month on the way is devoted to a separate theme; thus, February offers an affectionate nod to Abraham Lincoln; March reports on “the essence of democracy,” a town hall meeting; August features America’s immigrant population; and so forth and so on to December’s evocation of our first president, by George! Reading Kalman’s book-length testament is to experience happiness itself, so delightful are her often whimsical, brilliantly colored illustrations, which are accompanied by her sparer, hand-lettered text. Sprinkled throughout are photographs that offer a nicely realistic counterpoint to her stylized illustrations, which—like all her work—evoke the great artist Matisse. Some may call this a picture book; some, a graphic novel. But every reader will surely call it wonderful.
ANGELA’S ASHES
McCourt, Frank. Scribner, 1996. ISBN: 0684874350. B/M
Angela’s Ashes is arguably one of the most celebrated memoirs in American literary history. McCourt is an amazing storyteller, and his memoir of growing up the eldest of eight children in Depression-era Ireland is beautifully and movingly told. With an alcoholic father and a depressed mother, it’s no wonder the family lived in such poverty and squalor that three of McCourt’s siblings died of complications from starvation. Despite the worst sort of privation, McCourt never lost his sense of humor and as an adult recalls his early years with tenderness and generosity of spirit. His memoir deservedly won virtually every major literary award in America, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. This modern classic is indispensible reading for young adults and, indeed, for readers of all ages.
ANNE FRANK: THE BOOK, THE LIFE, THE AFTERLIFE
Prose, Francine. Harper, 2009. ISBN: 9780061430794. B/M, HIST, LOI, GNF
Novelist and discerning critic Prose offers a universally praised, innovative reexamination of Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, treating it as a “consciously crafted work of literature” as well as an inadvertent work of history. As might be expected, her analysis of the work is thoroughgoing, discerning, and thought-provoking, while her attention to the larger Anne Frank phenomenon that has grown up since Diary’s first publication is fascinating. Teachers will find her thoughtful attention to the use of Diary with students particularly helpful. A highly recommend and important book.
In Reading like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them, Prose writes persuasively of the necessary interrelationship between reading and writing, suggesting that the former is essential to the latter. In making her case she includes excerpts from master writers like Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Mansfield, Samuel Johnson, and more. How do you learn to write? First you read, read, read! Excellent advice, beautifully written and argued.
ARDENCY: A CHRONICLE OF THE AMISTAD REBELS
Young, Kevin. Knopf, 2011. ISBN: 9780307267641. P, HIST, LOI
Young, a celebrated poet and professor of English and creative writing at Emory University, has written a tribute, in verse, to the Amistad rebels, Africans who mutinied on the slave ship bringing them from Cuba to the New World. The mutiny was quickly put down and the Africans imprisoned, but their act of resistance has been an inspiration to all those seeking freedom ever since. Himself an African American, Young spent twenty years working on this poetic project, bringing remarkable dedication and a huge investment of self to it. Part of the book is written in the form of a libretto—entirely appropriate, since all of his language is like beautiful music.
AWKWARD AND DEFINITION / POTENTIAL / LIKEWISE
Schrag, Ariel. Simon & Schuster, 2008. ISBN: 9781416552314 / Touchstone, 2008. ISBN: 9781416552352 / Touchstone, 2009. ISBN: 9781416552376. GN, B/M, LOI
Originally self-published and created while she was still a student, Schrag’s multivolume memoir is always candid and often funny and touching. Awkward and Definition, a compilation of the first two books in Schrag’s original four-volume graphic novel, bring to vivid life Schrag’s high school freshman and sophomore years in Berkeley, California, in the mid-’90s. Potential and Likewise record her junior and senior years, respectively. Potential also records her growing awareness of her homosexuality, which is dealt with candidly and more fully explored in Likewise. Schrag is particularly outspoken and visually explicit in dealing with her sexuality, which has caused some problems in libraries, but the book will undoubtedly strike a chord for teens questioning their sexuality as well as those who recognize themselves in the uncertainties and fears Schrag expresses.
BEAUTIFUL BOY
Sheff, David. Houghton Mifflin, 2008. ISBN: 9780618683352. B/M
Sheff, a journalist and contributing editor to Playboy, writes movingly about his son Nic’s horrifying, decade-long addiction to methamphetamines and other drugs. As is often the case with addicts, it is as much Nic’s seemingly willful recidivism, lies, and broken promises that are as painful to his family as his addiction. Worse, of course, is his willingness to do virtually anything to get drugs and the money to buy them, including stealing his 8-year-old brother’s savings, living on the streets, breaking into the family home to steal, and on and on. So debilitating is his son’s behavior that self-blaming Sheff is himself driven into therapy. Interestingly enough, the son, Nic, has written his own memoir of his addiction, Tweak, listed below.
Thompson, Craig. Top Shelf, 2003. ISBN: 1891830430. GN, B/M
Thompson’s award-winning graphic memoir is an extraordinarily ambitious autobiographical work, weighing in at 582 pages. The author/artist’s efforts pay off as he creates a singularly successful and fascinating coming-of-age story, a large part of which is a tender story of first love. Born into a religious family in Wisconsin, Thompson also movingly recalls his difficult childhood and his ultimate loss of faith. Blankets has been hugely successful, winning two Eisners, three Harveys, and two Ignatz Awards. Thompson credits the fact that he didn’t want “to do anything cynical and nihilistic, which is the standard for a lot of alternative comics.” He brought the same generous sensibility to his earlier graphic novel, Good-bye, Chunky Rice.
THE BRIDGE: THE LIFE AND RISE OF BARACK OBAMA
Remnick, David. Knopf, 2010. ISBN: 9781400043606. B/M
Remnick, editor in chief of the New Yorker, has made a significant contribution to the literature about the forty-fourth president. In his exhaustively researched biography that focuses on Obama’s life before his election to the presidency, Remnick proves the truth of the old cliché that “the child is father to the man.” He seems to have talked to virtually everyone who was a factor in the making of the man, giving particular focus to Obama’s quest, as a young person of mixed race, for community and of course—in the absence of his own—a viable father figure. There is much material here that has previously been unavailable, including a lengthy profile of that missing father. Smoothly written (Remnick calls it biographical journalism), the book gives special attention to Obama’s role as a bridge between cultures—hence the title—and his life as a black man and community organizer. Indeed, Gwen Ifill, senior correspondent for PBS News Hour, praises Remnick for “not ducking the discussion of race and for peeling back several layers of the onion that is Barack Obama.” Readers of this will also want to read the president’s own two autobiographical works, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. As for his mother, an excellent recent biography is Janny Scott’s A Singular Woman.
González, Rigoberto. University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780299219000. B/M, LOI
González’s wrenching memoir of a first-generation Mexican American immigrant focuses on his growing up gay in a culture that finds that condition of being anathema. He recalls being beaten, for example, for wearing his mother’s clothes and the social and familial opprobrium of being an overweight, bookish “mariposa.” There are triumphs along the way, however: the son and grandson of migrant workers, he becomes the first in his family to graduate from high school. But that was only the beginning of his education, which has led to his being an associate professor of English and Latino studies at the University of Illinois. Readers of this book may well want to have a look at Richard Rodriguez’s similar work, Days of Obligation.
THE CALVIN AND HOBBES TENTH ANNIVERSARY BOOK
Watterson, Bill. Andrews and McMeel, 1995. ISBN: 0836204409. GN, HUM
Speaking of comics, here is a generous collection of classic Calvin and Hobbes strips from the 1980s. The strips are accompanied by Watterson’s invaluable commentary, which ranges from the origins of “Spaceman Spiff,” Calvin’s intergalactic alter ego, to the artist’s strategy for creating stories. There are a number of other collections out there, but I’ve chosen this one for the sake of the commentary by this elusive artist (have you ever tried to find a picture of him?). Of course, serious fans will refuse to settle for anything less than the magnificent, gorgeously produced and printed three-volume The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. Yes, it costs $150, but it’s worth every penny.
CANDYFREAK
Almond, Steve. Algonquin, 2004. ISBN: 1565124219. B/M, HUM, ALEX
Candy lovers, have I got a book for you! Here’s a man—author Almond—who shares your passion, only in his case it’s more like an obsession. In fact, he claims to have eaten a piece of candy every single day of his life! Consider this memoir, then, a real-life Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Speaking of factories: Almond even goes on a road trip to tour some of these but finds, to his chagrin, that many candy manufacturers guard their secret ingredients nearly as jealously as the makers of Coca-Cola or the Colonel’s chicken with its eleven secret herbs and spices. He has better luck with small regional manufacturers of such treats as Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews, Goo Goo Clusters, and Idaho Spuds. Sweet!
COLUMBINE
Cullen, Dave. Twelve, 2009. ISBN: 9780446546935. GNF
Journalist Cullen has given readers by far the most complete account yet of the 1999 shootings that helped usher in a decade of similar school violence. He has combined countless interviews with a careful sifting of written documents and the paper and video trail left by the shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. In the process he debunks several prevailing myths—for example, the goth angle, the notion that specific students were targeted—but is relentless in his pursuit of the question why. To answer that he offers complex psychological profiles of the two teens, showing that Harris was a sadistic psychopath, and Klebold, an angry depressive. He also offers an in-depth look at the impact on the community, the school, and the students of the shootings. An invaluable book for those who are concerned about the spirit of violence that seems to be infecting our country.
COUNTING COUP
Colton, Larry. Warner, 2000. ISBN: 0446526835. SPO, LOI, ALEX
In Native American culture the term counting coup refers to winning prestige in battle by acts of bravery. In Colton’s modern context it means performing well on the basketball court. A writer for Sports Illustrated and a former professional baseball player, Colton spent a year researching this book on the Crow Indian reservation in eastern Montana. His original plan was to write about the Hardin High School boys’ basketball team, but instead he became fascinated by the girls’ team, the Lady Bulldogs, and especially by the life of the team’s Native American cocaptain, 17-year-old Sharon LaForge. He follows her life on and off the basketball court for a year and is even adopted into the tribe by her family. Nevertheless, he pulls no punches in describing the tensions between the white and Indian members of the team as well as investigating conditions on the reservation involving parental alcoholism and grinding poverty. Happy endings are elusive on the reservation, and Colton’s conclusions are mixed, though LaForge’s iron determination offers some hope for better days. A similar book that readers of Counting Coup will enjoy is Eagle Blue by Michael D’Orso, which is set in the remote Native American communities of the Alaskan bush. Like Colton, author D’Orso embedded himself in the community to record, in this case, the 2004–05 season of the Fort Yukon high school basketball team. Both were Alex Award choices.
THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY
Larson, Erik. Crown, 2003. ISBN: 0609608444. HIST
The subtitle of Larson’s epic work of narrative nonfiction—Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America—may not tell the whole tale, but it certainly points readers wondering what this book is about in the right direction. The fair is the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, one of the most spectacular expositions of them all, thanks in large part to the architect and director of works Daniel Hudson Burnham, who was also responsible for New York’s famous Flatiron Building and Union Station in Washington, DC. When Chicago was selected in 1890 as the prospective site, Burnham and his partner John Root brought aboard the participation of such other fabled talents as Frederick Law Olmsted, Louis Sullivan, and Richard M. Hunt. Despite this abundance of genius, the construction of “The White City” was not without its difficulties, among them inclement weather, labor unrest, a financial panic, and more. While Larson is vividly recreating this, he is also telling the parallel story of Dr. H. H. Holmes, a serial killer who built his World’s Fair Hotel only a short distance away. The handsome doctor lured young women whom he then murdered in his “hotel,” which was equipped with a gas chamber, a crematorium, and a vault in which he suffocated his victims. All of this and cameo appearances by the likes of Buffalo Bill, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, and others combine to make a nonfiction narrative that is as compulsively readable as an E. L. Doctorow novel.
DOONESBURY AND THE ART OF G. B. TRUDEAU
Walker, Brian. Yale University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780300154276. GN, HUM
One of the great contemporary cartoonists gets his due in this definitive study of his art. Trudeau began drawing his sui generis comic strip in 1968 as a student at Yale. Two years later the strip went public, and now—more than forty years later—reaches an audience of some one hundred million. Walker examines Trudeau’s creative process from inspiration to finished artwork and gives attention not only to the celebrated comic strip but also to Trudeau’s other art, as well. His book is beautifully designed and generously illustrated with representative Trudeau strips. There is too little political literature for YAs, and Doonesbury provides an invaluable and highly accessible remedy for this. Walker—son of Mort Walker, creator of Beetle Bailey—is a highly regarded comics historian. Anyone with even a passing interest in this lively art form will enjoy Walker’s piece de resistance The Comics: The Complete Collection, a compilation of his previous two volumes of comic strip history.
EAARTH: MAKING A LIFE ON A TOUGH NEW PLANET
McKibben, Bill. Times Books, 2010. ISBN: 9780805090567. SCI
One of America’s finest and most influential writers on the environment, McKibben here wrestles with the issue of global warming. His amply supported premise is that Earth has been so changed by the depredations of global warming that it deserves a new name: the Eaarth of the title. And he makes such a compelling case for this that it seems incredible that there are still those who deny the phenomenon, which McKibben first described twenty years ago in his book The End of Nature. The author now feels that warming has reached a stage that cannot be reversed, but he offers thoughtful and cautiously optimistic recommendations for surviving its impact. To say that he simply calls for reducing the scale at which life is now excessively lived would be reductive and is only one of his partial solutions, another being the dramatic reduction of carbon emissions. For anyone who cares about the future of the planet—whether Earth or Eaarth—this is essential reading as, indeed, is McKibben’s entire oeuvre.
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Little, Brown, 2009. ISBN: 9780316069908. GNF
The prospect of becoming a father was the catalyst for novelist Foer (see the entry for his Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) to write this indictment of factory farms and other producers of meat for America’s dining tables. Though an occasional vegetarian over the years, Foer remembers his grandmother’s meat-included cooking with fondness, but his carefully documented investigation of modern methods of food production—including assembly line slaughter—is horrifying, especially when he turns his attention to animal intelligence, emotions, and capacity to feel pain. And Foer’s definition of animals also includes fish. The author’s first nonfiction book is compulsively readable and completely unforgettable. It’s must reading for young adults who are considering their own diets and whether they should include meat. Chances are that more than one will choose to become a vegetarian or even a vegan after reading Foer.
THE ENDURANCE
Alexander, Caroline. Knopf, 1998. ISBN: 0375404031. ADV, HIST, ALEX
Beginning with Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm and Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, one of the most popular forms of adult nonfiction for YAs has been the adventure tale. There’s nothing terribly mysterious about this: the nonfiction we’re talking about here is narrative nonfiction, that is, a record of reality presented by using the tools of fiction writers. And what better, more suspenseful story is there than one of survival, whether it’s contemporary or—like Alexander’s story of the ill-fated 1914 Shackleton expedition to the South Pole—historic? Following the loss of their ship the Endurance, the crew of twenty-seven found themselves stranded in Antarctica for twenty-two months during which time they had to endure two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds and temperatures that plummeted to a hundred degrees below zero. With statistics like these, could anyone of the crew have survived? That, of course, is the question that will attract readers and keep them reading until the last page of this amazing story that Alexander has told with elegance and drama.
B., David. Pantheon, 2005. ISBN: 0375423184. GN, B/M
First published in France, this memoir in graphic novel form recounts the author/artist’s experience of growing up in the 1960s with an older brother, Jean-Christophe, who suffered from epilepsy. It is also the story of the family’s years-long search for a cure, a search that takes them from medical science to such new age “remedies” as macrobiotic diets, mediums, acupuncturists, and more—sadly, all to no avail. The author—whose birth name is Pierre-François Beauchard—dealt with this and his fraught relationship with his brother by retreating into an elaborate fantasy world that he created in drawings that are an integral part of his narrative. Some American readers may be put off a bit by the very European sensibility evidenced here, and some may find the expressionist black-and-white art ugly, but it’s hard to imagine anyone not being touched by their cumulative power. A founder of L’Association, a French comic artist collective, David B. is regarded as one of the world’s greatest graphic artists, and Publishers Weekly has called this “one of the greatest graphic novels ever published.” (The first half of this story was published in the United States in 2002. This edition contains both volumes.)
ESSENTIAL PLEASURES: A NEW ANTHOLOGY OF POEMS TO READ ALOUD
Pinsky, Robert, ed. Norton, 2009. ISBN: 9780393066081. P
The former poet laureate assembles a generous (528-page) collection of poems that lend themselves to being read aloud. Arranged by type of poem—narrative, love poems, odes, parodies, and so on—the collection spans centuries and contains both familiar poems and ones that will be new to all but the most expert readers. A CD of Pinksy reading the poems is included and may be illuminating to those who are novices at oral interpretation. For librarians who use poetry in programming, this is an essential purchase. Consider this in concert with Mark Eleveld’s The Spoken Word Revolution. During his term as America’s poet laureate, Pinsky started his Favorite Poem Project, inviting Americans to submit their favorite poem. A number of these were then selected to be read by the person who submitted them; the readings were videotaped for inclusion in a new national archive. This anthology collects many of those poems. What sets it apart from other anthologies is that each poem is introduced with an essay by its submitter, who explains the significance of the poem to him or her. The results, published in Americans’ Favorite Poems: The Favorite Poem Project Anthology, are sometimes surprising, often heartwarming, and always uniquely insightful. It’s an excellent complement to the anthology above.
EVERY LIVING THING
Herriot, James. St. Martin’s, 1992. ISBN: 031208188X. B/M
In the same vein as his modern classic All Creatures Great and Small, the British veterinarian shares more recollections of his life work with animals in the 1950s. This fifth and final memoir (Herriot died in 1995 at the age of 79) is every bit as touching and involving as the first four and is required reading for animal lovers everywhere. (Thanks to the international success of his books and the BBC dramatization of the first, Herriot became a cultural phenomenon, and fans may be interested to know there is a World of James Herriot Museum in Thirsk, North Yorkshire.) Other titles by Herriot include All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Things Wise and Wonderful, and The Lord God Made Them All.
FAST FOOD NATION: THE DARK SIDE OF THE ALL-AMERICAN MEAL
Schlosser, Eric. Houghton Mifflin, 2001. ISBN: 0395977894. GNF
Atlantic Monthly correspondent Schlosser offers a definitive and often disturbing look at America’s unhealthy love affair with fast food and the burgeoning industry that feeds the habit. From the inhumane breeding of animals on factory farms to the exploitation of workers—the largest share of them being teenagers—to an in-depth profile of McDonald’s to an examination of chemically enhanced flavors, Schlosser offers an investigative reporter’s indictment of an industry that many reviewers have rightly pointed out evokes Upton Sinclair’s pioneer muckraking works, especially his exposé of the meat-packing industry, The Jungle. Schlosser’s book was turned into a 2006 fictional film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Greg Kinnear.
Canada, Geoffrey, and Jamar Nicholas. Beacon, 2010. ISBN: 9780807044490. GN, B/M
Author Canada—founder of the widely praised Harlem Children’s Zone—grew up in the South Bronx in the 1950s when violence was an integral part of childhood. His careful examination of the strata of physical violence notes its seemingly inexorable movement from fists to sticks to knives to—ultimately—guns, and shows how such weapons became part of everyday life … and death. Canada’s memoir of his early life—first published in 1995 (still available from Beacon)—has now been turned into an exceptional graphic novel by the artist Jamar Nicholas. His addition of art to a (necessarily) abridged text brings a visceral immediacy and a visually powerful context to the still urgently important text. The availability of these two different but linked versions of the same book should greatly expand its potential readership.
FUN HOME: A FAMILY TRAGICOMIC
Bechdel, Alison. Houghton Mifflin, 2006. ISBN: 0618477942. GN, B/M
The subtitle, A Family Tragicomic, speaks volumes about this quite brilliant graphic novel. It promises and proceeds to deliver in spades. Bechdel’s father was a third-generation mortician, and she and her brothers grew up calling the funeral parlor the “Fun Home.” And, yes, this was ironic, for there was not much that could be described as “fun” about the cult cartoonist’s childhood (she’s the creator of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, which has been in publication since 1983). Much of the book is devoted to her fraught relationship with her father, who—in addition to being a mortician—was an obsessive restorer of the family’s huge Gothic revival house. Bechdel’s childhood friends called it a mansion, but to her and her brothers it was just a home. It was definitely not where the heart was, for Bechdel’s parents had a troubled relationship largely because Bechdel’s father was not only emotionally remote but also a closeted homosexual, who had clandestine relationships with his students and even with the family’s male babysitter. Of course Bechdel didn’t know this at the time. Nor did she know that she herself was a lesbian until much later. Bechdel describes her childhood as “a still life with children.” Readers of her outspoken memoir will be grateful she broke the silence. Fun Home received the prestigious Eisner Award in the category Best Reality-Based Work. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
GEEKS: HOW TWO LOST BOYS RODE THE INTERNET OUT OF IDAHO
Katz, Jon. Villard, 2000. ISBN: 037550298X. TECH
Computer geeks rule, as Katz, a writer for Rolling Stone and Wired magazines, discovered when he devoted his column on Slashdot (http://slashdot.org) to the subject and received thousands of e-mails in response, most of them from young kids who had been branded “geeks” and subjected to teasing, tormenting and worse. Katz was particularly intrigued by an e-mail from a 19-year-old young man living in rural Idaho. Named Jesse Dailey, he and a friend, Eric Twilegar, repaired computers for a living but felt woefully out of place and misunderstood in their environment. Intrigued, Katz traveled to Idaho to meet them and then decided to write about them at the same time the two decided to move to Chicago in search of better lives. Katz chronicles their efforts while also writing about the larger world of geek culture and its societal implications. In the meantime he became a mentor for the boys, encouraging them and helping in whatever ways he could. His story assumes a dramatic urgency when—during its writing—the Columbine shootings took place and America became aware of outsiders and the bullying to which they are often subjected. Selected as a Best Book for Young Adults, this is a compelling read and an important book for YAs who need their consciousness raised.
GOOGLED: THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
Auletta, Ken. Penguin, 2009. ISBN: 9781594202353. TECH
Based on extensive research and countless interviews and allowing for a certain degree of titular hyperbole, New Yorker media columnist Auletta writes a thoughtful history and penetrating analysis of one of the world’s most important media companies. Begun as an Internet search engine by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were Stanford graduate students, Google has become vastly more—a digital empire that generates more than $20 billion in ad revenue annually. As Google grows, Auletta notes, it expands into all areas of traditional media—newspapers, publishing, movies, television, and more—both in the United States and internationally. Will it become a universal portal to all the world’s knowledge? Perhaps. Certainly if it can overcome copyright issues, its controversial book digitization project could offer that hitherto elusive dream, a universal library. As Google continues to change the world of information, its impact on today’s young adults and those of tomorrow will be enormous, and accordingly, this book makes for imperatively important reading.
HIGH EXPOSURE
Breashears, David. Simon & Schuster, 1999. ISBN: 0684853612. ADV, ALEX
The author is not only an avid mountain climber but also a celebrated, four-time Emmy Award–winning cinematographer. It was his latter role that took him to Mount Everest in 1996 to make the IMAX film Everest that later became another award winner. Coincidentally the author and his crew were at Everest when a devastating storm at its summit took eight lives, a tragic accident about which Jon Krakauer writes in his celebrated book Into Thin Air. Though Breashears escaped exposure to this particular storm, he has had many other adventurous experiences—some of them near fatal—climbing the world’s mountains. What compels people to risk their lives in pursuit of peaks? Breashears admits he can’t answer that question. Perhaps, in the final analysis, the reason for climbing a mountain, no matter how forbidding, is, simply, the familiar “Because it’s there.” Readers of Breashears’s fascinating memoir will decide that for themselves.
I AM AN EMOTIONAL CREATURE: THE SECRET LIFE OF GIRLS AROUND THE WORLD
Ensler, Eve. Villard, 2010. ISBN: 9781400061044. GNF
In a collection of dramatic monologues, the author and playwright (The Vagina Monologues) gives voices to teenage girls from all over the world. Employing a variety of literary forms ranging from poetry to blog entries, Ensler writes powerfully of such issues as genital mutilation, arranged marriages, anorexia, sex, and more. Her work is insightful, searing, and deeply emotional. Here she is, for example, on materialism: “What happened to not showing off your wealth? / What happened to kindness? / What happened to teenagers rebelling / Instead of buying and selling?” Ensler has an extraordinary capacity for finding the heart of an issue and casting it in emotional terms that will acquaint older teens with their own capacity to feel and to understand the heartbreaking plights of other teenage girls from around the world.
Angelou, Maya. Random House, 1991. ISBN: 9780553354584. P, LOI
Arguably best known to YAs for her powerful memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou is also a gifted poet, as she evidences in this fifth collection of her work. Though she writes in a variety of poetic forms, she brings a common element of lyricism and grace to her often moving poems about the black experience. Their inherent drama is further testimony to the fact that in addition to being a poet and a memoirist, Angelou is a performer, and hearing her read her own work is a revelation. Students will also enjoy vocally interpreting these poems.
THE ICE MASTER
Niven, Jennifer. Hyperion, 2000. ISBN: 0786865296. ADV, HIST
Niven tells the story of the ill-fated voyage of the ship Karluk. Setting off from British Columbia in 1913 as part of a journey of discovery organized by the explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson on behalf of the Canadian government, the trip soon sours when the ship becomes trapped by pack ice and sinks in January 1914. While the Karluk is still afloat, Stefansson and five others leave the ship to “go hunting,” though there is a body of opinion that they simply abandoned the ship and its remaining crew, whose struggle to survive ends in the death of eleven. In retrospect, it is obvious that the ship should never have set sail. Its captain, Robert Bartlett, had grave reservations about its seaworthiness from the beginning, and its chief engineer, John Munro, described its engine as “a coffee pot never intended to run more than two days at a time.” Unfortunately Stefansson overruled them, and the result was a disaster. Niven is a screenwriter, and she has brought her expertise to a cinematic and dramatic account of this sad story.
THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS
Skloot, Rebecca. Crown, 2010. ISBN: 9781400052172. B/M, TECH, LOI
The “immortal” of the title refers to the cells of the eponymous Lacks, an African American woman who was admitted to the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1951 suffering from cervical cancer. Without her knowledge or permission, doctors took tissue samples from her cervix and used them to create the first “immortal” cell line, named HeLa. These cells were widely used in medical research that led to the discovery—among others—of the polio vaccine. The sale of her cells over the years generated millions of dollars in income, none of which the Lacks family saw. Skloot’s story is the result of some ten years of research during which she became close to the Lacks family, especially Lacks’s daughter Deborah. Not only is the story one of injustice, poverty, and racial discrimination, it is also—more positively—the story of the creation of the field of bioethics, an important advance in the field of medicine. Despite its complexities the book is accessibly and vividly written and, in parts, reads like a combination of fiction and investigative journalism.
IN THE HEART OF THE SEA
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Viking, 2000. ISBN: 0670891576. ADV, HIST, ALEX
Philbrick, director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies, has written a dramatic account of yet another ill-fated voyage, this one of the whaler Essex, which inspired Melville’s Moby Dick. Leaving its home port of Nantucket in 1819, it reaches the South Seas when it’s sunk after a sperm whale rams it. Its twenty crew members take to three small whaleboats and drift for more than ninety days. So short of rations are they that some resort to cannibalism to survive. When finally rescued off the coast of Chile, only five are left alive. Subsequently three more are found alive on a small island. The third boat vanishes and has never been found. As Sebastian Junger did with The Perfect Storm, Philbrick has brought a disastrous sea voyage to vivid life while also giving considerable attention to its home port. Philbrick’s book, a real contribution to maritime history, received the National Book Award.
INTO THIN AIR: A PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF THE MT. EVEREST DISASTER
Krakauer, Jon. Villard, 1997. ISBN: 0679457526. ADV, ALEX
The disaster in question took place in the spring of 1996. On assignment from Outside magazine, journalist Krakauer joined a commercial expedition that was scheduled to guide novice climbers to Everest’s 29,000-foot peak. Though the mountain has been conquered numerous times since 1953 when Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay became the first to accomplish the feat, advances in equipment and climbing techniques in the years since have somewhat diminished the perils involved in the undertaking. Nevertheless, Krakauer wondered, is it safe for tour companies to guide wealthy but inexperienced mountaineers to the peak? (Anyone willing to part with $65,000 can make the ascent!) As the reader learns, the answer is a resounding no. Even Krakauer, a skilled climber, found extreme difficulties once the expedition reached the mountain’s so-called dead zone at 25,000 feet. Such an extreme altitude can cause disorientation and muscular disorders. For Krakauer it was as if his blood had turned to sludge and his extremities to wood. Nevertheless the group pressed on until the day they were to reach the summit. Then, out of nowhere, a violent storm caught the group. Krakauer managed to escape but eight others died, including two of the best climbers in the world. Clearly Everest, “the goddess of the sky,” remains a force to be reckoned with.
Krakauer’s book is one of two (the other being Junger’s The Perfect Storm) that were largely responsible for ushering in the new age of narrative nonfiction. Though still nonfiction (reality is not manipulated), this form borrows narrative techniques from fiction writing. Krakauer’s book is a perfect example of this technique in action and remains a model to this day. Into the Wild, another book by Krakauer, runs a close second to Into Thin Air in popularity, especially since a major motion picture version starring Emile Hirsch and directed by Sean Penn was released in 2007. Krakauer’s book and the movie based on it tell the story of a young man named Chris McCandless who set off to test himself against the Alaskan wilderness. Captivated by the writings of Tolstoy and Thoreau, McCandless, after graduating from Emory University, left his possessions behind, donated his entire savings of $24,000 to charity, and hitchhiked to Alaska, vanishing into the wilderness. Four months later he was found dead of starvation. Does he deserve the reader’s sympathy or is the fault one of his own hubris, inexperience, and ignorance of wilderness survival? And why did he undertake such an impossible mission in the first place? These are questions that Krakauer attempts to answer as he unfolds this fascinating story. Like Into Thin Air, this title is highly recommended and is sure to be a classic of nature writing.
JESUS LAND
Scheeres, Julia. Counterpoint, 2005. ISBN: 1582433380. B/M, ALEX, LOI
Journalist Scheeres grew up in Indiana in the 1970s, and it was there that one day she and one of her two adopted black brothers see a sign proudly proclaiming “This Here Is JESUS LAND.” And so it certainly is for her family, thanks to her devout parents. Religion is also omnipresent at her school, but it does not save her and her brothers from vile expressions of racial prejudice. In fact there is almost no expression of love in the pious protests of the self-styled religious who surround her. To backslide from the ordained order is to receive a stiff punishment. In Scheeres’s case and that of her brother David, that means being sent off to a fundamentalist reform school in the Dominican Republic, where punishment and humiliation of various sorts are the order of the day. Somehow Scheeres manages to distance herself from these bitter experiences and recalls them with remarkable equanimity, which is—come to think of it—a far more sincere expression of religion than any she experienced growing up.
JOHNNY CASH: I SEE A DARKNESS
Kleist, Reinhard. Abrams, 2009. ISBN: 9780810984639. GN, B/M
This graphic novel biography of American singer Johnny Cash by a German author/artist is a multiple award winner in Europe. As is appropriate for a book about the Man in Black, Kleist’s treatment, both in text and art, is tinged with darkness as he limns the singer’s life from childhood to midcareer success (a flash forward brings the story up to Cash’s last years as he selects songs for his American Recordings series). Kleist pulls no punches as he examines Cash’s troubles with drugs and the disintegration of his first marriage. But he also pays appropriate tribute to one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century. What is truly remarkable about this book, however, is how a German has managed to capture the essence of this quintessentially American singer/songwriter/performer.
KAMPUNG BOY / TOWN BOY
Lat. First Second, 2006. ISBN: 1596431210 / First Second, 2007. ISBN: 1596433310. GN, LOI, HUM
This two-volume graphic novel memoir recalls the Malaysian cartoonist’s childhood growing up in the 1960s. The first volume focuses on his early life in a small village (kampung); the second, on his teen years at a boarding school in town. Both volumes are distinguished by their affectionate humor, gift for caricature, and capacity for capturing universal coming-of-age experiences. Lat’s black-and-white illustrations are a delight, often laugh-out-loud funny and affectionately nostalgic. While the experiences may be foreign to Western readers, the spirit of mischief (telling the ’rents you’re going to the library and going instead to the local arcade) is universal. The books also demonstrate the universality of the comics medium and its ability to cut across cultural and geographic boundaries.
THE LAST BOY: MICKEY MANTLE AND THE END OF AMERICA’S CHILDHOOD
Leavy, Jane. Harper, 2010. ISBN: 9780060883522. B/M, SPO
There have been other biographies of the late baseball icon, but none as good as this one. It’s a sad story that Leavy tells about the disconnect between popular image and reality. The product of prodigious research—the author conducted more than five hundred interviews—Leavy’s in-depth portrait handily demonstrates that baseball fans during Mantle’s legendary career refused to acknowledge any truth that was at variance with the player’s heroic image. In fact, the reality was far from the legend. Mantle was an alcoholic, verbally abusive to his family, and a serial womanizer. Growing up a devoted fan, Leavy became a sportswriter for the Washington Post and twice interviewed her childhood “hero,” an opportunity that brought home the unfortunate truth about Mantle the person. In today’s celebrity-ridden, tell-all culture, it’s hard to believe that there was a time so innocent that such a deeply flawed human being could have attained Mantle’s legendary status, but it was, as Leavy demonstrates, just such a time. Hers is a cautionary tale that invites young readers to develop critical thinking and to question the tropes of popular culture. Leavy is also the author of acclaimed biography Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, an excellent book to read in concert with The Last Boy, for while Koufax attained the same degree of celebrity, he was a model of integrity in his private life, a too rare case where legend and reality actually coincided.
LOGICOMIX: AN EPIC SEARCH FOR TRUTH
Doxiadis, Apostolos, and Christos H. Papadimitriou. Bloomsbury, 2009. ISBN: 9781596914520. GN, B/M
The truth being sought here is the logical foundation of mathematics, and the searcher is the late British mathematician/philosopher Bertrand Russell, whose biography in graphic novel form this is. The coauthors are themselves philosophers but bring an accessible style and strategy to their intellectually stimulating story. It begins with a celebrated speech by Russell in which he expresses his well-known pacifist ideas that are then a catalyst for the flashback that will recount his lifelong quest. In an intriguingly metafictional way the coauthors bring themselves and others into a frame story that discusses Russell and his colleagues and the taint of insanity that visited so many of their lives. This is a superbly original graphic novel that demonstrates the flexibility of the form and the capacity of text and drawings to interact to make even abstruse material accessible. (It should be noted that I could have placed this book in the fiction section, since the authors acknowledge some fudging of facts. But the essential theme, supporting incidents, and ideas are sufficiently factual that I decided to place it here.)
A LONG WAY GONE
Beah, Ishmael. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007. ISBN: 9780374105235. B/M, LOI, ALEX
Beah’s memoir tells the horrifying story of how, when he was 12, rebels invaded his hometown in Sierra Leone, and separated from his parents, he began a ghastly life of wandering until he was recruited into the military and—equipped with an AK-47 rifle and fed a diet of amphetamines—was turned into a killing machine along with other young boys his age. For three years he participated in the slaughter of rebels in Sierra Leone’s ongoing civil war. Fortunately he was saved from this life by the United Nations and, after a period of rehabilitation, was chosen to address the United Nations in New York. When he was 17, he managed to move to this country permanently, graduating from Oberlin College in 2004.
Washington Post book critic Carolyn See has said, “Everyone in the world should read this book. We should read it to learn about the world and about what it means to be human.” And there is no arguing with this assessment, whether the reader is an adult or a young adult.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: THE WOMAN BEHIND LITTLE WOMEN
Reisen, Harriet. Holt, 2009. ISBN: 9780805082999. B/M, HIST
Reading Alcott’s most famous novel has been a rite of passage for American girls since the book’s publication in 1868. But what of the woman who wrote it? Readers will find the fascinating answer here in a book that grew out the author’s research for her screenplay of the first television documentary about Alcott, an episode of the PBS series American Masters. Alcott was the daughter of the educator and philosopher Bronson Alcott, a brilliant man who was nevertheless totally unequipped to deal with the practicalities of the world. This visited enormous hardship on his wife, Abigail, the Marmee of the highly autobiographical Little Women. It also meant that Louisa had, of necessity, to become the family breadwinner—which, happily, she was able to do through her writing, not only her half-dozen children’s books but also through her highly successful potboilers, all written either anonymously or pseudonymously. Her childhood and young adult years in Concord, Massachusetts, make for fascinating reading, as the Alcotts were close friends of Ralph Waldo Emerson (who often provided financial assistance to them), Henry David Thoreau (upon whom Alcott had a crush), Nathaniel Hawthorne, and other luminaries. As a protofeminist Alcott was clearly years ahead of her time and remains an example to young women to this day. There are a number of other good biographies of Alcott; one of the best of these is John Matteson’s Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father.
MAKES ME WANNA HOLLER: A YOUNG BLACK MAN IN AMERICA
McCall, Nathan. Random House, 1994. ISBN: 0679412689. ALEX, B/M, LOI
Now a lecturer in the Department of African American Studies at Emory University, McCall was a reporter for the Washington Post when he wrote this angry memoir-cum-commentary on black male life in America. Born in poverty in Virginia, McCall grew up to be sentenced to twelve years in prison for armed robbery. Working as prison librarian, he discovered and was inspired by the work of black novelist and essayist Richard Wright. After being released, McCall completed his education determined to become a writer. He was subsequently hired by the Post. Replete with rape, drugs, guns, robbery, and racial prejudice that sometimes segues into outright hatred, McCall’s memoir is a harrowing read. Perhaps most disturbing is his assertion that serving time in prison has become a rite of passage for young black men. Selected as an Alex Award winner, Makes Me Wanna Holler has been popular with teens since its publication and is still relevant to studies of race and culture in America.
Sedaris, David. Little, Brown, 2000. ISBN: 9780316777728. HUM
Though obviously edgier, Sedaris’s hilarious personal essays may remind older readers of the late Robert Benchley, who, like Sedaris, was a master of self-deprecating humor and whose essays published in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s are still as fresh and clever as they were when newly minted. One suspects Sedaris will have equal staying power. Any one of his collections could have been featured here, but this one, which finds Sedaris and his boyfriend Hugh moving to France, is a particular favorite with YAs. The title is a reference to Sedaris’s awkward attempts to learn French, which advance haltingly, from his speaking “like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly.” No wonder his frustrated teacher acidly tells him, “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.” As always, when Sedaris isn’t taking potshots at himself, his targets of choice are his family. In this volume it’s the author’s father, Lou, who is the principal target, but his mother also appears on the firing line. In fact his entire family have so often been in his crosshairs, it’s a wonder they haven’t sued him for contempt of clan, but one suspects they’re too busy laughing to file suit. The reader certainly is.
NAME ALL THE ANIMALS
Smith, Alison. Scribner, 2004. ISBN: 0743255224. B/M
In 1984 when the author was only 15, her beloved 18-year-old brother was killed in an automobile accident. This touching and beautifully written memoir tells the story of how she and her family coped with this monumental loss. Devout Catholics, Smith’s parents find solace in their religion, but the author has less success, losing her faith and trying to find it in questioning how and why this tragedy could happen. Blaming herself, she begins acting out both at home, slipping out in the middle of the night, and also at her Catholic high school; but her teacher nuns excuse rather than confront her behavior. More seriously she becomes secretly anorexic, though no one seems to notice her alarming weight loss (or if they do, they fail to comment or act). Smith subsequently enters a “forbidden” love relationship with another girl. It being the 1980s blame has to be assigned when the relationship is discovered, and it is the other girl who bears the brunt. As the third anniversary of her brother’s death looms, Smith even considers suicide. Will she find healing and redemption?
Dominick, Andie. Scribner, 1997. ISBN: 0684842327. B/M, ALEX
When the author was 9, she was diagnosed with diabetes. The disease was no stranger to her, however, since her older sister also suffered from it. Indeed, when Andie was a little girl, she and brother were in the habit of playing with their sister’s discarded needles! The sister, Denise, brought a degree of normalcy to Andie’s new life that was otherwise controlled by her disease. Unfortunately, as Denise grew older, she began using cocaine and otherwise neglecting her health. As a result, she died when she was 33, and it was Andie who discovered her body. Dominick spares her readers no details of the grittier aspects of her own diabetes, writing about the details of her daily injections, her necessary eye surgeries, her abortion when she became pregnant at 17, and, when she married, her decision to have a tubal ligation to avoid passing on her disease to any children she might have had. Clearly this is not a happy story but an important one, and like many nonfiction accounts of illnesses, this book has had a large readership among teens.
NICKLE AND DIMED
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Holt, 2002. ISBN: 0805063889. GNF, ALEX
Is it any longer possible to survive in America earning only the minimum wage? Social critic and journalist Ehrenreich decided to find out, and between 1998 and 2000, she spent approximately three months living in three different states (Minnesota, Florida, and Maine) working as an unskilled laborer, taking jobs as a Wal-Mart “associate,” a nursing home aide, a cleaning woman, a hotel maid, and a waitress. Earning $7 an hour or approximately $300 per week, she quickly discovered the answer is no—especially in her case, since she refused any government assistance in the form of food stamps, Medicaid, or housing subsidies. Luckier than most, since she has no children to support and is in good health, she still found herself routinely working two jobs and living in rundown motels or trailer parks. Many of her coworkers, she discovered, were living in their cars and—like her—working seven days a week without any time off. Working conditions were deplorable: unskilled workers are constantly supervised because they are not trusted; they are discouraged from communicating with one another because talking on the job is regarded as “time theft”; and they are routinely victims of verbal abuse. Worst of all, Ehrenreich writes, is that the working poor are essentially invisible to middle- and upper-class Americans who barely recognize their humanity. This is an important (and highly readable) book that many young adults have embraced and that all of them need to read to understand enduring problems of class and poverty in America.
THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF LATINO LITERATURE
Stavans, Ilan, ed. Norton, 2010. ISBN: 9780393080070. GNF, LOI
Booklist called this a “keystone” collection and no wonder, for it includes 201 entries gathered from over five centuries of writing from Latino/Spanish-speaking countries. In so doing it dramatically demonstrates the diversity of cultures and traditions that inform this world—then and now. At a time when the Latino population in America is burgeoning, this is an invaluable collection that will introduce teens—and adults—to a culture rich in tradition and art. Consider it especially important in the continuing absence of any significant body of Latino literature published for young adult readers. In Spanglish, another book of interest to YAs, Stavans, the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, has written an illuminating study of the newly hybrid language that has emerged from the growing encounters between Spanish and English (the two most widely spoken languages in the United States)—and between Latino and Anglo cultures and traditions. Much of the fascinating study in linguistics is devoted to an invaluable lexicon of more than two thousand terms; equally intriguing is the author’s exemplary translation of the first chapter of Don Quixote into Spanglish. Spanglish is an important work that can be used in concert with the Norton Anthology above. Though controversial among linguistic purists, Spanglish may be the language of the future as the Latino population of America continues to grow.
ONE HUNDRED DEMONS
Barry, Lynda. Sasquatch Books, 2005. ISBN: 9781570614590. GN, B/M, HUM, ALEX
“Is it autobiography if parts of it are not true? Is it fiction if parts of it are?” Barry asks in the introduction to this generous collection of twenty cartoon stories that first appeared in the e-zine Salon’s Mothers Who Think department. The answer from most of her readers will be, “Who cares? Just get on with the stories,” which she does. And all have her signature mix of the poignant and the briskly humorous. What further connects them are their subjects: each one is about a personal demon, ranging from head lice to dancing, from hate to magic, from cicadas to dogs, and more. Each successive cartoon panel is filled with her hand-lettered text and her wonderfully idiosyncratic and sui generis expressionist cartoons. While the content comes directly from her past, Barry acknowledges in her introduction that the concept came from a book she found at the library (yeah!). It was about a painting exercise called, yes, “One Hundred Demons,” and one example of the inspiration it offered was a hand scroll painted by a Zen monk named Hakuin Ekaku in sixteenth-century Japan. An appendix shows demon-ridden readers how to paint their own demons. “Come on!” Barry concludes. “Don’t you want to try it?”
PACKING FOR MARS: THE CURIOUS SCIENCE OF LIFE IN THE VOID
Roach, Mary. Norton, 2010. ISBN: 9780393068474. TECH, SCI, HUM
Roach, a journalist with a gift for the offbeat, tackles the life of astronauts in space, giving her readers a sometimes comic but always informative take on the subject. How, for example, are bodily functions handled in space? What about space sickness? What’s it like to be weightless? (She finds out herself by taking a parabolic flight on a McDonnell Douglas C-9.) The author has treated her subject with her customary wit and spirit and has seemingly covered every aspect of her sometimes challenging—and queasy-making—subject. Indeed, the book might well have been subtitled Everything You Didn’t Know You Wanted to Know about Physical Life in Space. It’s a terrific read.
Although this book was, surprisingly, not an Alex Award selection, Roach’s earlier book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers was an Alex choice. In it the author demonstrates that what happens to human corpses shouldn’t happen to a (dead) dog! Shall we say that cadavers simply get no respect? They’re decapitated for use in plastic surgery education, used as test dummies, and—of course—employed (talk about cheap labor) in medical research and experimentation. The author’s research included interviewing a whole host of people who use cadavers in various ways. While Roach treats her subject with respect, she also enlivens it with the occasional zinger: being a cadaver is like being on a cruise ship—“you spend most of your time flat on your back.”
Junger, Sebastian. Norton, 1997. ISBN: 9780393337013. ADV, ALEX
Junger’s breathtaking account of the Halloween Gale of October 1991—the “perfect storm” of the title—was one of the first popular contemporary examples of what is called narrative nonfiction; that is, nonfiction whose author employs the tools of the novelist as did Truman Capote in his modern classic In Cold Blood. Like Capote, Junger focuses on the human aspect of the story, giving particular attention to the captain and crew of the fishing boat the Andrea Gail that was lost with all hands in the devastating storm. Junger’s account of what the experience of the storm, with its 110-foot waves and 120-mile-per-hour winds, must have been like is breathtakingly suspenseful, as is his further account of another boat—a sailboat—also caught in the storm and the dramatic rescue of its crew by the Coast Guard. In the wake of the storm he returns to the ship’s home port, Gloucester, Massachusetts, to gauge its residents’ responses to the tragedy, adding a further human element to his story. Along with Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, this book also began the current trend in crossover adult books for young adults.
In War, Junger, whose writing career seems to be constantly putting him in harm’s way, writes about the fifteen-month period during which he was embedded with a U.S. Army unit, the Second Platoon, Battle Company, in the Korengal Valley of eastern Afghanistan. This example of immersion journalism offers readers an up close and personal view of some of the heaviest fighting in Afghanistan, and Junger was present every step of the way, even surviving an IED attack that blew up the Humvee in which he was riding. The best part of the book, however, is not the action—though there’s plenty of that—but rather Junger’s empathetic portraits of the unit’s members and his larger considerations of the nature of combat and its psychological and emotional impact on those involved.
PERSEPOLIS / PERSEPOLIS 2
Satrapi, Marjane. Pantheon, 2003. ISBN: 0375422307 / Pantheon, 2004. ISBN: 0375422889. GN, B/M, ALEX, LOI
In this two-volume memoir in graphic novel form, Satrapi, who was born in 1969, vividly recreates her childhood in Iran during the period of the fall of the Shah—to whom her family is distantly related—and the Islamic revolution that followed. Life under a fundamentalist government is radically different than here in the United States, especially for women, and Satrapi has considerable difficulty adapting. Indeed, her rebellious streak endangers her family to the degree that when she is 14, she is sent to study in Europe. Volume 2 continues this story, recounting her four-year education in Vienna. Problems of culture shock and assimilation end with Satrapi living on the streets and, as a result, returning to Iran. There she makes an unfortunate marriage but, more fortunately, goes to art school. Ultimately her marriage ends, and the still outspoken and rebellious Satrapi returns to Europe and ultimately settles in France, where these two books were first published to great critical acclaim. Satrapi’s black-and-white drawings might best be described as expressionistic, though some have called them faux naive. Whichever, they provide a perfect complement to her memorable text.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Guibert, Emmanuel, Didier Lefèvre and Frédéric Lemercier. First Second, 2009. ISBN: 9781596433755. GN, ADV
In 1986—during the Afghan war with Russia—the French photojournalist Lefèvre traveled to a remote region of northern Afghanistan to join a team of Doctors Without Borders. His record of the subsequent three-month period he spent in their company is contained in his extraordinary black-and-white photographs, which comprise part of the visual content of this mixed medium work. The other part is found in Guibert’s realistic cartoons. As is normally the case, text is either contained in speech balloons or as captions to the images. The combination of all three elements heighten the reality and the visceral impact of the reader’s experience. Published in three volumes in Europe, this collaborative effort has sold more than a quarter of a million copies there. It is, as Booklist magazine said, “a magnificent achievement.”
THE RADIOACTIVE BOY SCOUT
Silverstein, Ken. Random House, 2004. ISBN: 037550351X. TECH
Silverstein, an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, tells the remarkable story of a suburban Detroit teenager named David Hahn. Working on his Boy Scout atomic energy badge in the early 1990s, Hahn became fascinated with nuclear energy and decided to build a model nuclear reactor in his backyard. Posing as a physicist, he was able to garner much of the necessary information to build a reactor. Using blueprints from an old physics book he managed to make significant progress toward his goal until the experiment began emitting enough radiation to jeopardize the entire population of his hometown—at which point the Environmental Protection Agency was alerted and took away the lab to be buried at a nuclear waste dump in Utah. Who says American enterprise is dead?
RATS: OBSERVATIONS ON THE HISTORY AND HABITAT OF THE CITY’S MOST UNWANTED INHABITANTS
Sullivan, Robert. Bloomsbury, 2004. ISBN: 1582343853. GNF, ALEX, HIST, B/M
Not surprisingly, the “city” of the title is New York, where the rat population has been estimated at as high as eight million. In the interest of fairness, however, some have also estimated it as low as 250,000. In either case, it’s a whole lot of rats! Based on a Talk of the Town piece he wrote for the New Yorker magazine, Sullivan’s up-close and personal look at the vermin covers everything from their New York history to their ecology and from their control to their controllers. Extensive and extended notes add to the more-information-than-you-might-care-to-know nature of this offbeat volume.
Less offbeat than Rats, but equally well written, is Sullivan’s The Thoreau You Don’t Know. The book, about he of Walden Pond fame, aims to reveal unfamiliar—or unremembered—aspects of Thoreau’s character, laying to rest the clichéd picture of the hermit philosopher and emphasizing, instead, his gregarious nature, natural wit, and love for dancing and singing. Sullivan certainly doesn’t stint on other biographical detail, but he manages to bring his own brand of wit to the proceedings. On a highly personal note: Thoreau was also a carpenter who helped build a house for Ralph Waldo Emerson’s sister-in-law across the street from the Emerson House. I’ve had the pleasure of staying in that house a number of times, since it is now owned by friends of mine in Concord, where Thoreau, of course, lived.
ROCKET BOYS
Hickam, Homer H. Delacorte, 1998. ISBN: 038533320X. B/M, HIST
Set in the small town of Coalwood, West Virginia, in the 1950s, in the wake of Russia’s launch of Sputnik, this affecting memoir captures Hickam’s boyhood fascination with rockets and rocket science. Growing up to be a NASA engineer, Hickam is a gifted storyteller who borrows the techniques of fiction (some critics suggested he borrowed a few too many) to write a compelling story that begins in 1957, the year he was 14. Deciding to build a rocket of his own, he enlists the aid of a clutch of friends, and the boys form the Big Creek Missile Agency (BCMA), ultimately building and launching a rocket that soars to an altitude of 31,000 feet. Of course, the road to success is full of potholes, and Hickam describes them all to good comedic and occasionally dramatic effect. A counterpoint to this story of the future is the decline of the West Virginia coal mines, a trend made personal by the fact that Hickam’s father was the superintendent of the local mine. While the father dreamed that his son would grow up to be a mining engineer, Homer had different ideas, and his mother, hoping a career in rocket science would help him escape the mines, was an enthusiastic supporter of them. This charming story of overcoming obstacles is enriched by Hickam’s portraits of Coalwood locals, many of whom became involved in one way or another with the BCMA. Rocket Boys was made into a successful 1998 film titled October Sky.
Two years later Hickam published a sequel to Rocket Boys titled The Coalwood Way. This one finds Hickam a senior in high school who is more interested in dating than in rocketry. However, the decline of the mine continues and tension between the boy’s parents grows more tangible. Less successful than Rocket Boys, this is nevertheless a lovely and nostalgic evocation of small-town life in the late 1950s.
THE SECRET FAMILY
Bodanis, David. Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN: 0684810190. SCI
A former academic—he lectured for many years at Oxford University—British author Bodanis has written a fascinating book about a typical day in the life of a typical family of five: mother, father, son, daughter, and infant. His methods, however, are anything but typical. Essentially he puts the family and its environment under a microscope, showing the reader not only the visible world but one that is so tiny as to be invisible to the naked eye. Did you know, for example, that there are upward of ten thousand mites on your pillow? And do you have any idea how many truly disgusting ingredients—chicken feathers and belly stubble from pig carcasses, for example—are added to your food? Yum, yum! He also examines the internal workings of the family’s individual bodies and brains, explaining in fascinating detail what motivates and drives us to do the sometimes baffling things we do during a quotidian day. Readers will never look at the world around them in quite the same way again. In his second book, Electric Universe, the prolific Bodanis delivers a thoroughly accessible and, indeed, fascinating history of electricity, focusing his attention on the all-too-human scientists and theoreticians, discoverers, and inventors whose work has informed the dynamic field. Expect to find the famous likes of Samuel F. B. Morse (the telegraph) and Alexander Graham Bell (the telephone) in his pages along with the lesser known (Heinrich Hertz, discoverer of radio waves, and William Shockley, he of the transistor).
THE SHALLOWS
Carr, Nicholas. Norton, 2010. ISBN: 9780393072228. TECH
An expansion of his influential Atlantic Monthly article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr’s book examines in detail the impact of new technology on the human brain and on how we read, process information, and communicate. As the titles of his article and book suggest, the author finds these effects—to put it mildly—not altogether salutary. He argues, for example, that Internet use is having a deleterious impact on our memories and our abilities to concentrate. A chief effect of the latter is our dwindling patience with long-form literature as the Internet trains us—consciously or unconsciously—to desire material presented in outline or bullet form. The result, he claims in his persuasive thematic argument, is a nascent but ongoing rewiring of our brains that will have far-reaching impacts on both individual lives and their social context. Often alarming but essential reading.
SHE’S NOT THERE
Boylan, Jennifer Finney. Broadway Books, 2003. ISBN: 076791404X. B/M
Boylan, now cochair of the English Department at Colby College, tells poignantly, candidly, and often humorously of her decision, at age 45, to change her gender. Though born as a male, the conviction that she was “in the wrong body, living the wrong life was never out of my conscious mind—never.” How she went about changing from James to Jennifer and its impact on her family—she was married with children—and on her friends—the novelist Richard Russo among them—is an integral part of this fascinating memoir. In her former male self, Boylan was the author of four successful novels (see the entry for James Finney Boylan in the fiction section), and she brings those storytelling skills to her compellingly readable recollections. Reliable and accessible material about transgender and transsexual persons is still limited in our society, as is meaningful discussion of how we define gender, so this book definitely fills a gap. A short story by Boylan—“The Missing Person”—appears in my anthology How Beautiful the Ordinary.
SHIP OF GOLD IN THE DEEP BLUE SEA
Kinder, Gary. Atlantic Monthly, 1998. ISBN: 0871134640. ADV
Just imagine: a ship, the SS Central America, carrying six hundred passengers from the California gold fields in 1857 sinks two hundred miles off the Carolina coast. More than four hundred passengers die in the shipwreck, and twenty-one tons of gold are lost in the worst peacetime shipwreck in American history. This is the raw material that journalist Kinder has to work with, and he definitely makes the most of it in this action-packed story. To the mix he adds the quest, 130 years later, of salvager Tommy Thompson to find the Central America and recover the lost gold. In telling his story, Kinder moves backward and forward in time, essentially telling two interrelated stories at once. The fascinating result is another fine example of the current popularity of narrative nonfiction, the kind where you don’t want to give away the ending. But just remember that the gold is worth—in contemporary money—a billion dollars, and the ship may be resting on the bottom of the ocean in waters eight thousand feet deep. Can Thompson possibly find it and retrieve the gold?
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING
Bryson, Bill. Broadway Books, 2003. ISBN: 0767908171. GNF, SCI, HUM
The indefatigable and always popular nonfiction author Bryson has, over the years, written about a wild variety of subjects ranging from travel to walking to words. So perhaps it was inevitable that he should, sooner or later, write a book about, well, everything. The genial Bryson begins at the beginning with the big bang and then examines the aftermath, including the ultimate evolution of Homo sapiens. Bryson has a wonderful gift for making often abstruse science accessible to the general reader, and YAs will be fascinated by his take on both the cosmic and the comical. To gather his cornucopia of information, Bryson read systematically through the relevant literature and traveled widely to interview the experts in the numerous fields he examined. The result is a delight that People magazine called “science with a smile.” Readers who’d like more Bryson should look for his classic A Walk in the Woods, about his adventures hiking America’s Appalachian Trail; or his book At Home: A Short History of Private Life, in which he takes a less macroscopic look at the world around him by focusing his close attention on his own home and what it tells him about the evolution of domesticity. All of these are highly recommended.
THE SPOKEN WORD REVOLUTION
Eleveld, Mark, and Marc Smith, eds. Sourcebooks, 2003. ISBN: 1402200374. P
As the coeditors of this groundbreaking anthology demonstrate, poetry has come full circle, returning to its oral roots, as it has become a wildly popular performance art. Open mic nights now abound, offering unpublished poets an opportunity to share their work with audiences, and poetry slams have become a popular form of creative competition, one that often provides excellent programming for public libraries. In fact, coeditor Smith, himself a celebrated poet, is the creator of the poetry slam. His coeditor, Eleveld, is a high school teacher in Peoria, Illinois, and a noted champion of oral poetry. In addition to a generous sampling of exemplary work, the editors include essays that trace the history of the form from 1950s Beat poetry to contemporary rap, hip-hop, and other performance art. In 2007 Eleveld edited a second collection, The Spoken Word Revolution Redux. This one too is a mixture of poetry and historical and critical essays. In one of these, the former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser describes performance poetry as “a turning back toward the excitement our ancestors felt as they sat close to the fire and listened to their shaman tell stories.”
STITCHES
Small, David. Norton, 2009. ISBN: 9780393068573. GN, B/M, ALEX
Presented in graphic novel form, this story of the Caldecott Medal–winning illustrator’s young life in the 1950s takes the reader on a harrowing journey into one of the darkest of dark childhoods. With a cold, uncaring mother, an often absent father, and an angry, hostile older brother, Small lived a life of emotional isolation. Worse, when he was a child, he received massive radiation therapy from his radiologist father designed to cure his sinus and breathing difficulties. As a result, he developed cancer and—without being told of his condition—underwent throat surgery at age 14 that left him virtually mute. He left home at 16 to pursue a career as an artist. His evocation of this period in black-and-white drawings and ink washes is absolutely haunting and the situations depicted, often horrifying. It’s a wonder that Small survived to create this extraordinary memoir that Françoise Mouly, the art editor of the New Yorker, says “breaks new ground for graphic novels.” And so it does.
SWIMMING TO ANTARCTICA
Cox, Lynne. Knopf, 2004. ISBN: 0375415076. B/M, SPO, ALEX
Cox’s first-person account of her extraordinary physical skills and accomplishments as a long-distance swimmer makes for compelling reading. Though she originally planned to become a speed swimmer, Cox quickly discovered a gift for long-distance feats. By the age of 15, in fact, she had already set a new record for crossing the English Channel. She subsequently became the first to swim the Straits of Magellan, caught dysentery from swimming in the garbage-infested Nile, risked shark attack in swimming the Cape of Good Hope, and realized a life’s dream when she swam the Bering Strait from Alaska to Russia. Cox is particularly gifted at cold-water swimming—in part, she is the first to acknowledge, because of her degree of insulating body fat. Thus, she was able to negotiate the near-freezing water temperatures of her Anatarctic swim without a wetsuit! Cox’s is an amazing story of accomplishment and adventure that has captivated teen readers since its publication.
TRUE NOTEBOOKS
Salzman, Mark. Knopf, 2003. ISBN: 0375413081. GNF, B/M, ALEX
As a favor to a friend, Salzman—author of such teen-friendly books as Iron and Silk and Lost in Place—visited a creative writing class at Los Angeles’s Central Juvenile Hall, a lockup for some of LA’s most violent juvenile offenders. To his surprise he found the experience so rewarding that he became a volunteer teacher himself. This book is an account of his first two years there. Not only does he offer his examination of the experience along with some beautifully realized verbal portraits of the young men he encountered, so too does he include generous samples of their writing (with their permission), much of it revelatory and much of it excellent in conception and execution. Though he finds the experience wonderfully positive, he acknowledges a pall that hung over each class: the fact that many of his students were accused of such violent crimes—including murder—that they would soon be transferred to adult prisons. This naturally led Salzman to wonder, “What is the value of a positive experience if it is only temporary?” His answer:
How do you weigh the advantages against the disadvantages of affection, or of aspiration? After all I’d been through with the boys—some of it wonderful and some of it terrible—all I could say was that a little good has to be better than no good at all.
An Alex winner, this book was hailed by Booklist as “wonderful.” And so it is.
Another YA-friendly title by Salzman is Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia, in which the author recalls his teenage years growing up in Ridgefield, Connecticut. As readers of his earlier book Iron and Silk will know, Salzman grew up with a passion for all things Chinese and, as readers of this memoir further learn, was determined to lead the life of a Zen monk as a young adult. He studied Chinese, practiced Chinese brush painting, rigged up a monk outfit, walked barefoot in the snow, and so on, to good eccentric effect. All of this is engagingly and often humorously told, but the real attraction turns out to be Salzman’s relationship with his acerbic social worker father, which adds a nice cutting edge to this delightful memoir.
TWEAK: GROWING UP ON METHAMPHETAMINES
Sheff, Nic. Atheneum, 2008. ISBN: 1416913629. B/M
Written when he was 22, Sheff’s memoir covers much the same ground as his father’s (Beautiful Boy, above) but with a first-person, present-tense intensity that is unsettling but certainly essential reading for anyone considering using meth, for those who have become addicted, and for their families.
THIS BOY’S LIFE: A MEMOIR
Wolff, Tobias. Atlantic Monthly, 1989. ISBN: 0871132486. B/M
Here is the classic coming-of-age memoir, though not the first about the Wolff family. That honor goes to Wolff’s brother, Geoffrey, and his memoir of their father, the wonderfully titled The Duke of Deception. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and Tobias Wolff himself proves to be a master of deception, living a life of borderline juvenile delinquency, forging checks, stealing cars, altering school transcripts, and more. Early on, however, he changes his name to Jack to distance himself from his father, even though they live apart. In the meantime he lives a peripatetic life with his mother, who is attracted to abusive men—most notably Dwight Hansen, with whom the family settles in the town of Concrete, Washington, near Seattle. Hansen’s most notable contribution to Wolff’s adolescence is his attempt to teach the boy to fight (a situation reminiscent of Bil Wright’s Sunday You Learn How to Box). Jack’s life remains unsettled even after he is accepted to an exclusive prep school but, unable to maintain his grades, is expelled in his senior year; he finally joins the army and serves in the Vietnam War. This wonderful memoir was made into a 1993 movie starring Robert De Niro and a very young Leonardo DiCaprio.
THE TIPPING POINT
Gladwell, Malcolm. Little, Brown, 2000. ISBN: 0316316962. TECH
New Yorker writer Gladwell’s book about trends is one of those rare titles that appear at just the right time to capture the public consciousness and create not only book-selling buzz but also serious discussion and debate. Though not intended as such, The Tipping Point became a case study of its own investigation of when and why certain phenomena reach a critical mass, or tipping point, and become what the author describes as “social epidemics.” Gladwell found that a surprisingly small number of people (whom he calls mavens, salesmen, and connectors) or even one influential person can create fads and trends both local and national. Among his examples are the sudden decrease in crime in New York, the surprising fad of wearing Hush Puppies, and smoking among young people. The idea that one could control tipping points is ominous as an exercise in public manipulation, and Gladwell’s book is an important contribution to sociology and social dynamics. Gladwell is also the author of the best-selling Blink, a book about snap decisions made within the first two seconds of observation. Like The Tipping Point, this too dissects a phenomenon that could easily lend itself to mass manipulation.
Lanier, Jaron. Knopf, 2010. ISBN: 9780307269645. TECH
Lanier, who coined the term virtual reality, offers a cautionary look at the pervasiveness of computer technology in our culture and in our commerce. He is particularly concerned about the less than positive impact of Web 2.0, which—he argues—is creating a “hive mind” at the expense of individuality. Among the examples he offers is Wikipedia, with its group efforts at the expense of individual creativity and expository efforts. He is also concerned about the fragmentation of information on the Web that negatively impacts an individual’s ability to pursue information and reasoned argument in greater depth. This is an important book for young adults whose lives will be powerfully—and perhaps negatively—affected by the issues Lanier addresses.
WAITING FOR SNOW IN HAVANA: CONFESSIONS OF A CUBAN BOY
Eire, Carlos. Free Press, 2003. ISBN: 0743219651. B/M, LOI
Born in Havana in 1950, Eire spent an idyllic childhood as the scion of a wealthy, influential, and occasionally eccentric family. His father, a judge, believed he was the reincarnation of Louis XVI, for example, and the highly religious Eire imagined he saw the face of Jesus at his school window. All of this changed in 1958 when Fidel Castro deposed the Batista regime. Castro, whom Eire calls “Beelzebub, Herod and the Seven-Headed Beast of the Apocalypse rolled into one” outlawed religion, declared Christmas illegal, and sucked the joy out of the 8-year-old Eire’s life. Though many of his friends left Cuba in the wake of the revolution, Eire’s family remained until 1962, when the author and his brother, along with 14,000 other children, were airlifted to Miami. Eire then lived with foster families for three years until he was reunited with his mother. Sadly, he never saw his father again. Gorgeously written and as compulsively readable as a good novel, Eire’s critically praised memoir won the 2003 National Book Award in the nonfiction category. Published in 2010, a sequel, Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy, recounts Eire’s early years in America, focusing on his attempts to acculturate and become a “real” American. The author is now a professor of history and religious studies at Yale, where he received his PhD.
WHEN I WAS PUERTO RICAN / ALMOST A WOMAN
Santiago, Esmeralda. Addison Wesley, 1993. ISBN: 0201581175 / Perseus, 1998. ISBN: 0738200433. B/M, LOI, ALEX
Consider these two volumes a single memoir rather than separate books. Together they eloquently tell the story of Santiago’s early childhood in Puerto Rico, her arrival at age 13 in the Brooklyn barrio, and her life there during the 1960s. The eldest of eleven children, she and her family often live in poverty, and as is often the case, the girl has to assume adult responsibilities at a young age, acting as a translator for her single-parent mother and struggling to find a home between two worlds. Her life starts to change when she is accepted to New York’s prestigious Performing Arts High School and begins to pursue acting opportunities while at the same time trying to develop a persona apart from her strong-willed Mami. The author writes candidly about her sexual coming-of-age and her relationships with a number of different men, most important, a Turkish filmmaker. It is her affair with him that ultimately is the catalyst for her decision to find an independent life. Santiago’s is a classic story of acculturation and growing up in America. Readers might want to compare Santiago’s two-volume memoir with that of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis memoirs (above), as well as Nicholasa Mohr’s short story collections, El Bronx Remembered and In Nueva York.