Students Recommend, I READ!

A couple of my adolescent literature students recommended The Compound by S.A. Bodeen a semester or two ago, and I saw only last week it was on the office shelf, so I picked it up. I know I always tell my students that we should take our students' recommendations as seriously as we want them to take ours, as teachers. And yet, I balked. But I was glad I guilted myself into reading this one. Bodeen sets up this story good and it goes strong all the way through. Eli is torn from his twin brother and maternal grandmother for six years when his father takes Eli, his sisters, and their mother into The Compound, a nuclear bomb shelter he's built over the last few decades, meant to keep them alive for at least 15 years. That is, until things begin to go awry. And it's only then that Eli begins to ask questions about why they're stuck down there for another seven years. It's a thriller.

Eating Habits: Where'd They Come From?

In Patricia Lauber's non-fiction picturebook, What You Never Knew About Fingers, Forks, and Chopsticks (illustrated by John Manders), we get answers, sometimes serious other times funny, to just this question. Going all the way back to the Stone Age, Lauber speculates how cavemen could have developed the first knife-like instrument: a piece of flint to possibly cut meat. The funny part is her idea how a caveman could've stubbed his toe on a piece of the sharp stone, cutting himself, and then thinking, basically, Well, if it can cut the meat of my toe, perhaps this flint can make cutting meat to eat easier too. Lauber moves forward through time to the Bronze Age and well beyond, then from one culture to another, showing how different cultures or peoples have taken to eating. It's a cool book. Kids should like it.

A Graphic Collection of Native American Trickster Tales

Though a great many of us have either heard or read Trickster tales (Br'er Rabbit being among the most common to the general readership, while the form is also closely associated with American Indians), this book edited by Matt Dembicki (himself not an Indian) is indeed one of a kind. Though it is jam-packed with Native American trickster tales (mostly involving animals or animal/human beings), what sets this book apart from any other is the format. In place of the text-based rendering of such tales, we get these very stories but set to comic book form.

Though a very interesting concept and a fairly solid collection of graphic shorts, the trickster tale does tend to be a tad overdone (though I get that this is the concept for the book). Most of them are of the "here's how this animal ended up looking this way or that" variety. I'd recommend educators using this book selectively. Teachers can read the book, choose their favorite tales and bring those to class. The alternative is that students would read the whole book and wonder if this is it for Native American writing, which is so not Dembicki's hope for the book: from his "From the Editor" note:

"The point wasn't to westernize the stories for general consumption, but rather to provide an opportunity to experience authentic Native American stories, even if it sometimes meant clashing with Western vernacular.

"I hope this book serves as a bridge for readers to learn more about the original people of this land and to foster a greater appreciation and understanding among all inhabitants" (225).

My particular favorites that I'd so use with middle school readers/writers/artists include "Rabbit and the Tug-of-War"by Michael Thompson and illustrated by Jacob Warrenfeltz, "Rabbit's Choctaw Tail Tale" by Tim Tingle and illustrated by Pat Lewis,  "Giddy Up, Wolfie" by Greg Rodgers and illustrated by Mike Short, and "When Coyote Decided to Get Married" by Eirik Thorsgard and illustrated by Rand Arrington.

Visit cartoonist Dembicki's blog for news on this book: http://matt-dembicki.blogspot.com/.

Chris Crowe's Next Biography

Just As Good: How Larry Doby Changed America's Game, written by Chirs Crowe and Illustrated by Mike Benny (http://mikebenny.com/) is due out in January of 2012. I love Crowe's other books: Getting Away With Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case, Thurgood Marshall: A Twentieth Century Life, and the novel Mississippi Trial, 1955, and though I haven't read this picture book, I'm so looking forward to it!

Though Crowe has written fiction, he's quickly become a first rate biographer, whose focus is the Civil Rights Movement and various of its predecessor events and figures. Partner this latest book with We Are the Ship and Strong Right Arm, and you've got a great unit on baseball, the part African Americans have played in it, and the struggle for equal rights.

A Great Read, In Spite of Our Own Dry Weather

The Dust Bowl: Through the Lens: How Photography Revealed and Helped Remedy a National Disaster by Martin W. Sandler is a great collection of famous and not so famous photos of the Dust Bowl era, including perhaps the most famous of them, "Migrant Mother" shot by Dorothea Lange. Each photo comes with some really solid research oftentimes tied directly to the photo, other times using the photo as a place from which to start. Partner it with Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust and you've got yourself a very interesting and moving set of reads.





Other titles of interest by Sandler:

Vaqueros: America's First Cowmen (Henry Holt, 2001)

America Through the Lens: Photographers Who Changed the Nation (Henry Holt, 2005)



Another Great Read Coming Soon! Heart-Shaped Cookies: Stories

Heart-Shaped Cookies and Other Stories by David Rice
Bilingual Review Press; ISBN: 9781931010795; $15.00
Due out in August 2011!
This collection of stories is long overdue. If Rice had borrowed this one from me and I was the library, he'd owe me a ton of cash in late fees. Teachers, myself included, have asked Rice to put together another collection that would include stories from his first book, Give the Pig a Chance and Other Stories, a book that didn't make it into the classroom because of certain stories. Check out the table of contents of it and you'll see what's the first clear marker that Pig would not be so much used in schools. But he selected a few pieces out of it, among them my all-time favorite of his stories, "Tina la Tinaca," a tragic piece like no other. He also includes stories previously published in separate anthologies but never in a singular collection. And a ton of new stuff, like seven or eight micro-stories. Closing the book is the play version of his story "She Flies," that appeared in another of his collections, Crazy Loco.

Soon to be published: Maximilian and the Mystery of the Guardian Angel: A Bilingual Cuento

Maximilian and the Mystery of the Guardian Angel: A Bilingual Cuento by Xavier Garza Cinco Puntos Press; ISBN: 9781933693989; $12.95
Due out late July.
Not only is this book a fun read, if you're literate in English and Spanish, you get twice the enjoyment seeing how it's a bilingual edition. Garza is a huge fan of Mexican wrestling, and this book's got it; he likes tales of the supernatural, and this one's got some of that (or does it?). Get it, you'll enjoy this next of Cinco Puntos' top notch products.