Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger (2009)

Julia and Valentina Poole, 20 year old twins, are given an opportunity to escape their sheltered suburban Chicago home. Elspeth Noblin, their mother's twin sister, has died and left them her fortune. She has also bequeathed her London flat, which borders on Highgate Cemetery. The Poole twins have always wondered about their estranged aunt. Their mother, Edwina, has cut off all ties with her twin sister. There is a catch to how the young Americans can claim their inheritance; Elspeth has stipulated that the girls are to live in her flat for one year, and their parents are not allowed to enter. Their London flat neighbours include Elspeth's younger lover, Robert and Martin, an eccentric crossword composer whose OCD Niffenegger poetically portrays.
Julia and Valentina embark on a journey that takes them deep into themselves and the ghosts of their family and Highgate Cemetery.
Her Fearful Symmetry brings suspenseful supernatural mystery the unsuspecting Poole twins and the reader. Niffenegger also weaves in a history of London's famous Highgate Cemetery, where likes of Karl Marx, Christina Rossetti, George Elliot and Malcolm McLaren are buried. The novel is rich in topics and themes that students can explore for book talks or for the pure enjoyment of reading. I would recommend Niffenegger's latest work to grades 10-12 as well as the enthusiastic junior reader.

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

Your life has been designed for you to give to others. You will most likely not survive past 30 years old. What is your life like?
Ishiguro creates a disturbing narrative that explores the life of clones destined for organ donation.
Set in futuristic England, Kathy H. reflects on her schooling and friends from Hailsham. She reveals the personal and emotional struggles that she endured upon leaving her protected sanctum of Hailsham.
Ishiguro brings to light the morality of child rearing, education, and cloning through the eyes of adolescence. Never Let Me Go is a powerful read that will have you reflecting on the purpose of your own life. The Vintage Canada edition that we have comes with a reader's guide and discussion questions regarding the movie version. These are GREAT resources for your English book talks. I would recommend Never Let Me Go to students in grades 10 - 12.

DEAR

SDSS celebrated Drop Everything and Read on October 19, 2010. Special thanks to Ms. Crump's English 9 class who allowed me to join them in their silent reading time.

The Possibility of Fireflies

Ellie spends a lot of time alone. Her mother is becoming increasing unhinged since her father left them. Gwen, Ellie's sister, is someone Ellie no longer knows or wants to know. She is waiting for someone to come and rescue her from school and her family. As Ellie grapples the dangers of smoking, arson, drugs, alcohol, risky sex, and an abusive mother, Paul creates an intensive narrative and gripping plot. How will Ellie choose to escape her troubled life? The Possibility of Fireflies will appeal to students in grades 8 and 9.

The Boy from the Basement

Charlie has been confined to the basement since his family moved to town from the lake. One night the back door slams shut and Charlie is locked outside. Charlie is fearful of the outside; he longs for the damp walls of his only home, the basement.
He is taken into care at the local hospital and then into a foster home. As he struggles to adjust to his new life of being 'outside', he learns about Hallowe'en, Thanksgiving and Christmas. His ultimate goal is to one day play soccer outside. But, how can he achieve this; what if father is watching him, what if father finds him? Surely, he will be punished for leaving the basement.
Shaw draws us in to the psychological journey of an abused child as he overcomes nightmares and hallucinations.
While the writing is average and the plot structure somewhat repetitive, there is a thriller aspect to the novel as we wait to see if and when Charlie's father will come back for him.

A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali

Hotel Rwanda, a critically acclaimed film, is loosely based on Courtemanche's Canadian bestseller novel, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, as well as the true life experiences of people during the Rwandan genocide.

The Power of One

PUSH

The Road

The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)


A father and son travel to the coast in a desperate attempt at survival. They are plagued by marauders, exposure, hunger and their own demonic thoughts. In a post-apocalyptic America are there any good guys? McCarthy's third person narrative is void of much punctuation and rich in allusion of parental love, sacrifice and saving grace. The conversation between the boy and man is limited as the man's memory fades of life before the apocalypse. The boy knows nothing of a world with blue sky, plants, animals and birds. The absence of nature leads to the absence of humanity; save for the love between a father and son. I cried, I rejoiced, and loved this book. This is a true American masterpiece.

Review from Booklist 2006

A man and a boy, father and son, each the others world entire, walk a road in the ashes of the late world. In this stunning departure from his previous work, McCarthy (No Country for Old Men, 2005) envisions a postapocalyptic scenario. Cities have been destroyed, plants and animals have died, and few humans survive. The sun is hidden by ash, and it is winter. With every scrap of food looted, many of the living have turned to cannibalism. The man and the boy plod toward the sea. The man remembers the world before; as his memories die, so, too dies that world. The boy was born after everything changed. The man, dying, has a fierce paternal love and will to survive--yet he saves his last two bullets for himself and his son. Although the holocaust is never explained, this is the kind of grim warning that leads to nightmares. Its spare, precise language is rich with other explorations, too: hope in the face of hopelessness, the ephemeral nature of our existence, the vanishing worlds we all carry within us. McCarthy evokes Beckett, using repetition and negation to crushing effect, showing us by their absence the things we will miss. Hypnotic and haunting, relentlessly dark, this is a novel to read in late-night solitude. Though the focus never leaves the two travelers, they carry our humanity, and we can't help but feel the world hangs in the balance of their hopeless quest. A masterpiece. -- Keir Graff (Reviewed 08-01-2006) (Booklist, vol 102, number 22, p9)

if i stay

If I Stay, Gayle Forman. (2009)


Mia has it all, a cool boyfriend, loving parents, a bright future as a world class concert cellist. One snowy day, she and her family take a drive. With her parents and her little brother now dead, Mia must decide. "What would you do if you had to choose?" Will Mia stay or will she join her dead family?

This is a FABULOUS read. I laughed but mostly cried as I read Mia's story. The first person narrative flashes between a hospital room and Mia's memories of her love, her family and her cello. Mia's friends and family try to connect to her seemingly lifeless body. While her Grandfather understands her temptation to go her best friend Kim reminds her that "you still have a family".

From Publisher's Weekly Review

The last normal moment that Mia, a talented cellist, can remember is being in the car with her family. Then she is standing outside her body beside their mangled Buick and her parents’ corpses, watching herself and her little brother being tended by paramedics. As she ponders her state (“Am I dead? I actually have to ask myself this”), Mia is whisked away to a hospital, where, her body in a coma, she reflects on the past and tries to decide whether to fight to live. Via Mia’s thoughts and flashbacks, Forman (Sisters in Sanity ) expertly explores the teenager’s life, her passion for classical music and her strong relationships with her family, friends and boyfriend, Adam. Mia’s singular perspective (which will recall Alice Sebold’s adult novel, The Lovely Bones ) also allows for powerful portraits of her friends and family as they cope: “Please don’t die. If you die, there’s going to be one of those cheesy Princess Diana memorials at school,” prays Mia’s friend Kim. “I know you’d hate that kind of thing.” Intensely moving, the novel will force readers to take stock of their lives and the people and things that make them worth living. Ages 14–up. (Apr.) --Staff (Reviewed March 2, 2009) (Publishers Weekly, vol 256, issue 9, p64)

Night

Night, a haunting account of Wiesel's teenage experience in Auschwitz and on the Buchenwald death march. He questions man's inhumanity to man; Jew and German alike. He reflects on the presence and absence of God.

"For God's sake, where is God?"
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
"Where He is" This is where - hanging here from this gallows ..." (page 64)

This a powerful read as Wiesel explores humanity's decent into madness.

Amazon.com Review

In Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust and the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers in this harrowing book, which probes life's essential riddles with the lucid anguish only great literature achieves. It marks the crucial first step in Wiesel's lifelong project to bear witness for those who died.

Slumdog Millionaire

Read the BOOK. Available @ your school library.