Melissa Jackson, Ballou Sr High School librarian in Washington DC with one day's delivery of books from the Guys Lit Wire book fair. See the GLW site for the latest post and a list of books still available for under $10 (!).
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By: Colleen Mondor,
on 5/18/2011
Blog: Chasing Ray (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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By: Colleen Mondor,
on 5/10/2011
Blog: Chasing Ray (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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By: Kelly Fineman,
on 5/4/2011
Blog: Writing and Ruminating (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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By: Trisha, Gayle, and Jolene,
on 4/25/2011
Blog: The YA YA YAs (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: georgia bragg, how they croaked, Reviews, Non-Fiction, guys lit wire, kevin o'malley, Add a tag
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By: Trisha, Gayle, and Jolene,
on 3/28/2011
Blog: The YA YA YAs (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Reviews, Fiction, guys lit wire, marc aronson, charles r. smith jr., pick-up game, Add a tag
Filed under: Fiction, Reviews
2 Comments on Pick-Up Game edited by Marc Aronson and Charles R. Smith Jr., last added: 3/30/2011
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By: Colleen Mondor,
on 5/18/2011
Blog: Chasing Ray (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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By: Colleen Mondor,
on 5/10/2011
Blog: Chasing Ray (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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I'm asking that everyone blog, tweet, fb and/or email tomorrow about the Guys Lit Wire Book Fair to help Ballou High School. I'm trying to sustain momentum (from yesterday's lesson) and get more books bought off this massive list. If you do tweet about it, please use the #booksforballou hashtag so we can get something trending. Regardless of how you get the word out, please link to the GLW post which has all the pertinent info and the list.
If you need reminding of why this project matters so much, take a look at the video from the Ballou library as made by librarian Melissa Jackson. This is what sold me on the project and I'm sure it will capture your attention as well. It's put up or shut up time folks, and we have absolutely got to do something to change this.
As always, thanks so much for all that you do.......
By: Kelly Fineman,
on 5/4/2011
Blog: Writing and Ruminating (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: guys lit wire, Add a tag
As many of you know, I put up a monthly post over at Guys Lit Wire, a blog dedicated to writing about books that are of interest to teen male readers. Not that they aren't also interesting to teen female readers and/or some adults, but . . . well, you get the idea.
For the third year in a row, Guys Lit Wire is running a book fair. Last year, blog readers were responsible for sending hundreds of books to two schools located on Native American reservations out West. This year, our book drive is to benefit Ballou High School in Washington, D.C., which is in dire need of books on almost every topic. In a school of over 1200 students, there were only about 1150 library books earlier this year. That's less than one per student, whereas the ALA recommends a ratio of 11 books to 1 student. Like Colleen Mondor, who wrote the post I've linked to below, I have more books in my house than this school has for its entire student body. And folks, that ain't right.
There is a list of requests and more information about how to order books from Powell's for the book fair or to send requested titles at this GLW post. I hope that you'll participate if you're able!
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By: Trisha, Gayle, and Jolene,
on 4/25/2011
Blog: The YA YA YAs (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: georgia bragg, how they croaked, Reviews, Non-Fiction, guys lit wire, kevin o'malley, Add a tag
You probably know that King Tut is dead. But do you know how he died? Or how he was prepared for mummification, or what Howard Carter did to poor Tut’s mummy?
Tutankhamun is the first of nineteen “awfully famous” people whose death is discussed in Georgia Bragg’s How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous, with illustrations by Kevin O’Malley. As you might guess, this is a book about death. And not just any old deaths, but gross, disgusting, and miserable deaths. On the few occasions in which the death itself wasn’t actually too gruesome, relatively speaking, what happened to a person’s remains after death, well… As the introduction to the book warns, “If you don’t have the guts for gore, do not read this book.”
Bragg’s irreverent, sometimes snarky tone (e.g., subtitle of the Marie Curie chapter: “You Glow, Girl”) makes How They Croaked a casual, quick read. Beginning with King Tut, Bragg covers her subjects in chronological order. Each brief chapter is kicked off with a caricature by O’Malley. After explaining why the subject was famous, Bragg then focuses on describing the death in gleeful detail. Several illustrations are interspersed throughout the chapter, which concludes with collections of facts pertaining to the subject or the time period.
Take the musician and composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, for example. After describing Mozart as former child prodigy who “grew into a gawky teen with a huge head. He still cried easily and always loved a good fart joke, but his cute, moneymaking prodigy years were definitely over. His father was not amused.” (p. 68) Bragg then goes on to explain how doctors attempted to treat Mozart’s ailments with leeches and “concoctions of warmed turpentine, wax, powdered Spanish fly, and mustard.” And, for anyone curious about leeches, at the end of the chapter, you can learn the steps for successful leeching and recommended leech dosages for adults.
Then there’s James A. Garfield. While the chapter’s subtitle, “James Who?” reflects his general obscurity, it’s fair to say that I will no longer forget exactly who he was. I don’t know what party he belonged to or whether he actually accomplished anything substantial as president, but I do know that I found the chapter devoted to him the most disgusting.
Other subjects of How They Croaked include Cleopatra, Henry VIII, Napoleon, and Charles Darwin. There’s not much diversity—the historical personages are most European and mostly male—which was about the only thing I was disappointed by.
As part of describing some pretty horrible deaths, Bragg also integrates information about how the lack of medical knowledge and technology affected a few of the deaths. (See: Garfield, James A.). Not to mention, it’s not always how a person dies, but what happens to their body after death that can disturb.
Readers can browse How They Croaked or read it in one sitting. Chapters do not need to be read in order and it makes for good recreational reading. While I’d recommend it more for entertainment than research purposes, it does include a comprehensive bibliography as part of the backmatter.
You can read the Beethoven chapter and listen to a short interview with Bragg at the NPR website.
Book source: ARC from publisher.
Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.
Filed under: Non-Fiction, Add a Comment
By: Trisha, Gayle, and Jolene,
on 3/28/2011
Blog: The YA YA YAs (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Reviews, Fiction, guys lit wire, marc aronson, charles r. smith jr., pick-up game, Add a tag
It’s not just basketball games that go down at The Cage, the fenced-in court on West 4th Street in New York City. In Pick-Up Game: A Full Day of Full Court, nine short stories introduce a handful of players and spectators there on one July day.
I’m calling Charles R. Smith the point guard in Pick-Up Game, since it’s his photographs and poems that lead in to the stories that comprise the book. Told in different voices, from different perspectives, each story picks up where the previous story leaves off. As co-editor Marc Aronson writes in the Afterword, “We chose the setting and the date and gave each author a time slot. Each author knew who was on the court because we didn’t let an author write a new story until the previous one was done. Each writer came on the court knowing who was playing, who had won, but ready to tell his or her own story.” (p. 164)
As a whole, Pick-Up Game is a dynamic collection–some of the stories are funny, some are poignant, but all have strong voices and are written with verve. Smith’s poems, written in various formats, celebrate the game and serve as a sort of introduction to the following story; I particularly love “My Boys” (p. 35-36). The cast of characters is diverse, both in terms of skin color and life experiences. Many appear in multiple stories, which provides additional flair. It’s fun for readers, and also a bit fascinating to see the different sides of characters like Caesar, first introduced in Willie Perdomo’s “Mira Mira,” but who pops up in several other stories.
If there is a drawback to this format, it’s that some of the stories were so strong, so interesting that I wanted to keep reading about some of the characters. Like KaySaan, from Bruce Brooks’ “Laws of Motion,” a 6′ 10″ self-described nerd from a basketball-loving family who doesn’t know anything about basketball himself. Or Cochise, the Mohawk ironworker in Joseph Bruchac’s “Head Game.” And, though he never tells his own story, Waco.
Besides Perdomo, Brooks, and Bruchac, the rest of Pick-Up Game’s list of authors consists of Walter Dean Myers, Sharon G. Flake, Robert Burleigh, Rita Williams-Garcia, Adam Rapp, and Robert Lipsyte. The contributors, the short length of the book (160 pages, excluding the Afterword and biographical information about the authors), and the energy of the stories make this an especially good choice for reluctant readers and basketball fans in general. For folks who aren’t basketball fans, while most of the stories are from the perspective of hardcore players and fans, a handful of stories, like Flake’s “Virgins are Lucky” and Rapp’s “Just Shane,” are not.
Book source: public library.
Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.
Filed under: Fiction, Reviews
2 Comments on Pick-Up Game edited by Marc Aronson and Charles R. Smith Jr., last added: 3/30/2011
By: Trisha, Gayle, and Jolene,
on 2/28/2011
Blog: The YA YA YAs (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Reviews, Non-Fiction, guys lit wire, Not YA, jay burreson, napoleon's buttons, penny le couteur, Add a tag
When we think of history and history changers, we often think of people. Maybe laws, like Brown v. Board of Education, or devices, like the computer. Molecules generally are not the first thing that come to mind.
Maybe they should be.
Just as metals have changed the course of history (gold, bronze, iron, anyone?), so have molecules. In Napoleon’s Buttons: 17 Molecules That Changed History, authors and chemists Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson delve into seventeen groups of molecules, explaining their historical importance and chemical makeup.
Take spices like pepper, nutmeg, and cloves. They were so important to Europeans, and so expensive, that kingdoms launched fleets of ships searching for their source and new trade routes. What made them so desirable? In chapter one, Le Couteur and Burreson breakdown both the historical and chemical reasons for this, as well as how the world changed as a result.
One side effect of long journeys over the open ocean was scurvy. (Well, perhaps “side effect” is not a strong enough phrase, since scurvy could be lethal.) Scurvy is caused by a deficiency of vitamin C, ascorbic acid–the subject of chapter two. It turns out that most vertebrates produce ascorbic acid in the liver. Since primates—including humans—do not, we must ingest it in some way as part of our diet, whether from oranges or industrially manufactured pills.
(Let me tell you, as someone who used to watch James Burke’s Connections2 and Connections3, and is a fan of microhistories, I love reading about these kinds of relationships.)
We are then introduced to rest of the molecules first by their historical context—why is it so important in terms of world history?—before Le Couteur and Burreson examine its chemistry. In addition to describing how different elements are bonded, they include diagrams of chemical structures, which helps readers spot similarities between different molecules. Considering each chapters is around 20 pages long, they pack a lot of information into the book while keeping it very readable. The historical sections clearly detail their rationale for inclusion, and while the chemical explanations are at times complex, overall, it’s enough for laypeople to get the gist of the hows and the whys.
The authors acknowledge the choice of which molecules to include were personal ones and that the “book is not about the history of chemistry; rather it is about chemistry in history.” As such, it omits major figures like Humphry Davy, who would certainly appear in books “about the history of chemistry.” Depending on your personal interests, you may find some chapters more fascinating than others, and some chapters were heavier on the chemistry than the rest.
As for the title, it comes Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812. One theory to explain the French army’s failure is that tin buttons were used on their uniforms to fasten trousers, jackets, and greatcoats. In cold temperatures, tin disintegrates into powder, which obviously would not keep clothes fastened and therefore increased the soldiers’ exposure to the cold. There are several problems with this theory, though, one of them being that “the disintegration of tin is a reasonably slow process.” (If it’s elements that you’re interested in, pick up Sam Kean’s The Disappearing Spoon, recommended by another Guys Lit Wire blogger last year.)
Book source: public library.
2 Comments on Napoleon’s Buttons: 17 Molecules That Changed History by Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson, last added: 2/28/2011
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By: Trisha, Gayle, and Jolene,
on 1/24/2011
Blog: The YA YA YAs (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: blank confession, pete hautman, Reviews, Fiction, guys lit wire, Add a tag
Shayne Blank looked like a “middle-school bad boy picked up for shoplifting.”
He wasn’t.
Shayne was actually sixteen, at the police station to confess to killing someone. Detective George Rawls usually handled cases involving teenagers, so five minutes before his shift ended, he was handed Shayne’s case.
While Shayne tells his story to Rawls, Mikey Martin tells us his version of the same events. Mikey is the shortest junior at Wellstone High, and the first student to meet Shayne. He was with Shayne when Jon Brande gave Mikey a paper bag and told him to hold onto it for a little while. Mikey didn’t want it—he knew Jon dealt drugs—and when he heard rumors of locker searches and drug sniffing dogs, he got rid of the bag. Only Jon demanded it back, and if Mikey couldn’t return it, then he wanted monetary compensation. Mikey can’t afford to pay Jon, and Shayne quickly became involved in their dispute. But what exactly happened after that and what is Shayne confessing?
Blank Confession gets off to an intriguing start and stays tense from beginning to end. Not unrelentingly so, but in a way that still makes you keep turning pages, curious and unsure of what will happen next. It’s easy to see why Blank Confession made YALSA’s 2011 Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers list. While Pete Hautman keeps the story fast-paced, he does take his time letting the story itself develop; we don’t find out right away whom Shayne claims to have killed, or why. Instead, he starts at the beginning, with Shayne’s arrival in school and how he became entangled with Mikey’s problems. Shayne himself is just as big a mystery as the events he and Mikey describe, and it is partly this that keeps the story compelling while we wait to find out about the crime Shayne claims to have committed.
Hautman uses an alternating narrative to great effect in Blank Confession. The chapters are short, with Mikey’s chapters picking up where Rawls’ questioning of Shayne leaves off and vice versa. Mikey’s chapters are written in first-person and the chapters with Rawls and in the interview room are written in third-person from Rawls’ point-of-view, but in both cases, we never get into Shayne’s head. We know only what Mikey and Rawls observe, and what Shayne wants them to know. It makes for a fascinating interplay between what Mikey actually sees happening and what Shayne is—or isn’t—telling Rawls.
Because of this, I thought Hautman wrapped things up a bit too tidily and conveniently. It was nice to have the major questions answered, but I didn’t need as many answers as Hautman provided. On the other hand, I know there are readers who will be pleased by this and find the ending satisfying.
Book source: public library.
Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.
Filed under: Fiction, Reviews
6 Comments on Blank Confession by Pete Hautman, last added: 1/26/2011
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By: Trisha, Gayle, and Jolene,
on 11/22/2010
Blog: The YA YA YAs (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: stephen wallenfels, Reviews, Fiction, guys lit wire, pod, Add a tag
Dropping down through the clouds, silent like a spider on a web, is a massive black sphere.
It’s a mile away, at least, but even from this distance it dwarfs the neighborhoods below. I brace myself for the horror of watching houses crushed with people inside. But it stops well above the trees, maybe five hundred feet off the ground. It hovers soundlessly. (p. 14)
At 5:00 in the morning, just days from his sixteenth birthday, a painfully loud metallic noise jarred Josh from his sleep. Hundreds of miles to the south, twelve-year-old Megs was already awake, waiting in a car for her mother to return from a job interview. The noise that shook them both, as well as millions of other people, announced the arrival of giant spaceships capable of making people and cars on the street disappear in a second.
Short chapters and a fast-paced, alternating first-person narration make POD a quick, engrossing read. Stephen Wallenfels continually ratchets up the novel’s suspense by raising the stakes for both Josh and Megs. Josh is stuck at home in Prosser, Washington with his father (his mother was away at a conference), unable to leave the house to gather supplies or see if his friends are okay, or anything else, really. He initially comes across as pretty self-centered—concerned about his mom, yes, but also a bit whiny in his petty rebellions against his father’s instinctive reaction to chart and plan everything he can to survive as long as possible.
Megs’ situation is the more immediately suspenseful, and not just because she was more sympathetic than Josh from the start. Her single mother parked their car in a hotel parking structure and instructed Megs to stay their until she returned. But with dangerous men breaking into and ransacking nearly every vehicle in the garage, she should leave the car and find someplace safer to hide, right?
While Josh and his father struggle to ration their remaining food and water, Megs must scavenge for supplies. With communications out, no one knows what the ships will do or what’s going on in other parts of the world; Josh doesn’t even know if his mother is still alive. And when, on day 13, all electrical devices—even battery-powered ones—suddenly stop working, survival becomes that much tougher.
Each chapter in POD covers a day in Josh or Megs’ life. Because the narratives focus on the more suspenseful or dramatic events of the day (and skipping over a couple of days), the story doesn’t really drag. This also allow Wallenfels room for character development; by the end of the story, Josh is a much more sympathetic character.
However, by the end of the story, readers will also have some unanswered questions. Thankfully, according to Wallenfels’ website, he is currently writing a sequel to POD.
Book source: public library.
Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.
Filed under: Fiction, Reviews
2 Comments on POD by Stephen Wallenfels, last added: 11/24/2010
By: Trisha, Gayle, and Jolene,
on 8/23/2010
Blog: The YA YA YAs (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Reviews, Fiction, ya historical fiction, guys lit wire, walter dean myers, fallen angels, Add a tag
Richie Perry wasn’t supposed to be in Vietnam. Yeah, he’d enlisted in the Army after graduating from high school because he couldn’t afford college and someone had to support his family, especially his younger brother, Ken. But an Army doctor said Richie had a bum knee, so he wasn’t fit for combat duty. And definitely not for duty in Vietnam.
But there was a paperwork mix up. Richie was shipped off to Vietnam while the rest of his unit was sent to Germany, and although Richie arrived in Vietnam, his medical papers didn’t seem to have made it at all.
Richie can’t leave Vietnam without the medical profile. While they wait for it to arrive, Richie is to stay with the squad he was assigned to. He’s in the infantry, part of a squad with a couple other guys new to Vietnam: Peewee and Johnson, both of whom are black, as is Richie, and Jenkins. Rumors around the camp say that the war will end soon, but in the meantime, patrols are still needed, landing zones must be secured, and villages visited. And in spite of the rumors, it seems as if the fighting is getting worse. It doesn’t help that Captain Stewart is volunteering the squads under his command, including Richie’s, for duties in an attempt to increase his kill totals, hoping this will lead to his promotion. Nor does the soldiers’ suspicions that a racist sergeant is putting the black soldiers in the most dangerous positions.
Prolific author Walter Dean Myers is in fine form in Fallen Angels. It’s not a romantic depiction of war, but a terribly human one. Bonds are formed among the squad members, making the toll of seeing friends die that much greater. They are forced into situations where they must kill or be killed; characters—characters readers come to care for—must kill in order to survive, and in some cases, they will die anyway.
Myers doesn’t linger excessively on sentimentality, however. The colloquial dialogue, including some racist and homophobic language used by the soldiers*, is realistic and sharp. Richie is a sympathetic narrator, and since Myers is equally adept at writing battle scenes and quieter moments, Fallen Angels is fast-paced, thoughtful, and very readable.
If you’ve read Sunrise Over Fallujah (discussed here earlier this month), Richie’s name may be familiar, since he is the uncle of the main character in the former book.
* probably one of the reasons Fallen Angels is frequently challenged. It was the 36th most challenged book between 1990 and 1999, and 11th on the list of the 100 most challenged books between 2000 and 2009.
Book source: public library.
Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.
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By: Trisha, Gayle, and Jolene,
on 6/28/2010
Blog: The YA YA YAs (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Reviews, Fiction, guys lit wire, Not YA, blood oath, christopher farnsworth, Add a tag
When I first heard about Blood Oath, I admit was skeptical. A vampire secretly working for the president, protecting the country from threats? Seriously? I was also a bit intrigued, though, so when I had the chance to read the book, I was willing to give it a try. And I found Christopher Farnsworth’s novel to be a sometimes humorous, sometimes gruesome, always entertaining thriller. Seriously.
Over 140 years ago, Nathaniel Cade swore an oath “to support and defend the nation and its citizens against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Cade’s vampire intelligence and physiology have made him extremely effective at what he does, defeating foes regular humans would have no chance against, regardless of how well trained they are.
Zach Barrows is horrified to discover that his new job is to serve as Cade’s liaison to the president. Zach is twenty-five year old, formerly the president’s deputy director for White House affairs. He’d dreamed of being chief of staff, and now he’s stuck in a job he never would have wanted even if he’d known that it existed.
And forget on the job training. Less than a day into the job, Zach and Cade are notified of a suspicious shipping container in Baltimore. Zach must help Cade battle enemies old and new while struggling to come to terms with his new position and the realization that not only do vampires exist, but so do things even worse than vampires.
Blood Oath is primarily told from Zach’s point of view, which might disappoint readers expecting to solely follow “the president’s vampire,” as the book cover puts it. And it has its crude moments, so it’s not for everyone. (As an example, my favorite line, from pp. 121-122, Cade in response to Zach’s mistaken impression that “vampires were all sex gods with the ladies”: “Humans are our food. Do you want to have sex with a cow?”) Zach is not exactly a likable character, but you don’t need to like him to become involved with the story. Character development is not the draw here, it’s the plot, action, and the clever way Farnsworth integrates historical and supernatural elements into his story. Zach serves as a sort of (rude and egotistical) counterpart to the reader, asking the questions that we, as readers, have about Cade and his service. I think this structure is partly what makes the story work successfully. Farnsworth writes with an authority that had me willing to suspend my disbelief from the very beginning of the book, but Zach’s reactions to his situation also contribute to this, and the more he believes in what he’s seeing and doing, the more plausible everything is to the reader. To be sure, I was never fully convinced of Cade’s original motivation, but ultimately, I enjoyed Blood Oath too much to really care.
Book source: public library.
Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.
3 Comments on Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth, last added: 7/1/2010
2. This month, I've got an article up at 
GLW will feature 23 regular posters, plus a bunch of other, less-regular sorts. The site officially went live today, and there are already a few posts there so you can get a sense of what it'll look like. Expect posts at least Monday through Friday of every week (at least one per day). And expect the posts to focus on books that guys will enjoy. Which is not to say that gals might not like them as well, but, really, the focus is on teens with a Y chromosome here..jpg?picon=441)
It is a sign.
I am amazed by Smith’s versatility as a writer! To go from poetry, to picture books to fiction (the wonderful Chameleon!!) to short storiess and to do it all well is the sign of a great talent.
I need to read his other books now!