Books for older readers

Now let's look at some newer young adult books. Always curious to know when a book goes into the young adult category...
I have another couple of books by author, Joan Bauer, who I wrote about in an earlier blog. Neither of these books are new but are new to me. Rules of the Road is about a girl who works part time as a clerk in a a branch of Gladstone Shoe Stores while she goes to high school. She is invited, or almost ordered to drive the head of the company to an important corporate meeting in Texas. This involves a few stops at shoe stores along the way and a plot to keep control of the company away from Mrs. Gladstone's son. Jenna is a great character who can sell anything to anyone but has a few family difficulties(her dad is an alcholic as was Joan Bauer's) that she doesn't mind leaving behind but, of course, she gets more than what she bargained for on this road trip. Here's a link to a unit plan for this novel. This is also a sequel.
Another good book by Joan Bauer is Stand Tall. This time the hero, Tree, is really tall but no good at basketball and dealing with going between his mom's new condo and his old house where his dad is living still confused by why his wife has left him. Into this situation moves his grandfather who just has had part of his leg removed. His brothers are off at university and Tree has a lot to deal with. But of course, this is a coming of age novel, and Tree, with the help of a new friend, Sophie, finds how to "stand tall". Both of these novels would work well with grade eight and nine students.
Looking for something with a harder edge? Another author, new to me, is award winner, Paul Volponi. Paul Volponi is a white man but both these books have black heroes and his fiction come out of his experience as a teacher of incarcerated youth on Rikers' Island and in drug day treatment centres.
The first of his books that I read was Hurricane Song which is about a boy who has just moved to New Orleans from Chicago after his mother has remarried and life is crowded with his step-father and his family. Miles' dad is a jazz musician and this is the most important thing in his life while Miles' most important love his football. A broken down car forces Miles, his dad, and his uncle to seek refuge in the Superdome which as you may remember was most equivalent to a sentence in Hell. This well-paced novel takes you through the effects of the storm, and Miles emerges as his own person.
His new novel, Response is the story of how a black high school student and father is convinced by his friends to go to the neighboring "white" town to steal a Lexus. The Lexus isn't stolen but a brief conversation in a pizza joint leads to Noah being beaten up by a gang of white youth. When the case is called a racial incident and it goes to court, Noah's life gets complicated. A very good look at racial tensions and complications and how Noah grows up. Well done!

In a slightly different direction but still a coming of age novel is Jennifer Bradbury's Shift ury's about two friends, Chris and Win, who set off on a bicycle trip across the United States the summer between high school and university. Only problem is that Win disappears, and federal authorities think Chris knows where he is. Well paced story as the mystery is unraveled.

The next book is a real page turner and somehow rather relevant with our strange Vancouver weather currently. Winner of many prizes, Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer is about what happens when a meteor hits the moon and knocks it closer in orbit to the earth. The book focuses on Miranda, a high school who lives with her divorced mom and her younger brother. Her older brother is initially away at university and her father and his new pregnant wife live some distance away but also figure in the book. This is a survival novel in the truest sense of the word. Lisa's family is safe in their own home but food is running out as is fuel and the winter is cold and long. You really are wondering if they will survive and if the world will survive. Pfeffer has also written another novel, The Dead and the Gone about a family in New York City surviving the same ecological disaster. In her blog, she says she is at work on a sequel to Life As We Knew It, and I, for one, want to read it. She is currently at work on a third novel which will link the two heroes of each story. Her blog on as she calls it,The World We Live In, is a fascinating way to see an author's thought processes.
This entry is becoming way too long and I can't stop sneezing so...

new novels for elementary students

Well, I have read a lot of novels this holiday-both those aimed at elementary students and high school students. If I was efficient as some bloggers I would have commented as I went but it was a holiday and there was that snow to shovel. Many of these books are advance copies that publishers give you free before the book is formally published. I dragged them back from the NCTE conference in San Antonio. Anyway I am going to look at a few here.
My Life in Pink & Green is an amusing book soon to come out by Lisa Greenwald about a 12 year old mature beyond her years who helps her grandmother and mother run the family drugstore in a small town in Connecticut. The store is suffering and it looks as if grandma is going to sell it, but Lucy's expertise in make up and her reluctant joining of the ecology club at school, finds a possible solution for making the business green and financially solvent. One of my friend's parents were pharmacists and she says she and her sisters are addicted to make up as a result of working in their parents' stores which reminds me of Lucy. Good coming of age story probably more appealing to girls than boys. Great can do attitude!
Another fun story for elementary girls is I, Lorelei, (Harper Collins) by Yeardley Smith (who happens to do Lisa' voice on The Simpsons). This is one for cat lovers as her book is written in the form of a journal to her dead cat (I didn't make this up and it actually is effective). In the book, Lorelei's life changes as her parents' marriage dissolves and Lorelei has to adjust. I thought this book handles a somewhat familiar situation in a novel way.
Strawberry Hill(Little, Brown and Company) is a book by well known children's poet laureate, Mary Ann Hoberman. This is a rather enchanting book set in the depression years of Hoberman's own childhood in Stamford, Connecticut. Contemporary readers will find this interesting as although Allie's setting is quite different from their own, problems are not dissimilar. Ten year old Allie's parents have been living in an apartment in a house owned by her best friend's parents, but her dad has found a house almost in the country near where he is working, and Allie has to move, forcing Allie to deal with new circumstances which help her develop her character.

Findependence Day

Well it's January 2nd and the flu has put a temporary end to my snow dealing (though I guess I had better check the state of my sidewalk) so since I am confined to home, I am playing catch up. I am sure you are all busily contemplating your New Year's Resolutions and for some reason relearning how to knit seems one I am pondering (must be the weather). I am never sure how financial savvy we teachers are which is probably why I was given this book. Like some of you I am trying to decide when it is worth retiring. I guess the question according to financial columnist, Jonathan Chevreau, is when will I reach my Findependence Day or have I reached it? Findependence means when your assets are large enough to cover your living expenses so that you don’t have to work for a living anymore. You can choose to do what you want to do.
This book tells the story of Jamie and Sheena who appear on a fictional television show because they have accumulated so much credit card debt in their twenties. The financial expert asks Jamie to tell him when he wants to be financially independent and he chooses when he turns 50 on July 4th (note pun). The book basically describes Jamie's and Sheena's sometimes circuitous path to this end (children, job loss, marital separation). We learn a new term, frugality guerillas (so much for those Starbucks lattes) and that those of us with assured pensions are "bonds" while people who don't are "stocks". Jamie is a salesman for an electronics store, and Sheena, you guessed it, is a middle school teacher and aspiring young adult author.
This is a good "read" and a relatively painless way to acquire more financial knowledge which we all can use. I definitely need to reread certain sections and put money into the new Tax Free Savings Accounts. I have been totally recommending the book to friends to buy for their children in their twenties as well as reading it themselves. This is the book that takes over where the Wealthy Barber left off.