1. Fleischman, Paul. Whirligig. New York: Macmillan, 1998.
My friend Kim has recently returned to the joy of reading. This one is especially for her. There is a seventeen-year-old kid named Brent who has just moved to a new school. He is nervous and insecure and trying to fit in, so when he is invited to a party by his new friend and he hears the girl he has his eye on will be there, he is excited about going. Unfortunately, one thing after another goes badly, culminating with public humiliation. Soon Brent finds himself driving home drunk, and the next thing he knows he is responsible for losing control and killing a girl his age who he never knew.
Brent’s parents and their lawyer want to get him out of it, but Brent wants to do something—even though he knows he can never make it right. Eventually, the girl’s mom agrees to meet with him and sets before him a remarkable task. The rest of the story is told in a series of connected but separate stories, some of which only feature Brent peripherally, but it is an amazing and powerful story about redemption and grace.
2. Fforde, Jasper. The Last Dragonslayer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2010.
I have always thought that one of the greatest things about The Last Dragonslayer is that it is a really great fantasy story, but at the same time, doesn’t take itself too seriously. The main character, Jennifer Strange, is a fifteen-year-old Volkswagen bug-driving indentured manager for the Kazam wizarding company. The world Jennifer lives in has been slowly losing its magic for decades. Partly this is blamed on the dragons, who occupy lands separate from the humans; neither race strays into the other lands because of a treaty and some pretty powerful spells. So Jennifer, her quarkbest (kind of a spiky dog) and her . . .
Look, this isn’t working, and here is why. It isn’t the plot that makes this book wonderful (though the plot is well crafted.) It is actually the writing. Look, you are just going to have to trust me on this one. If you like really clever and funny books that are page-turners with a lot of action and twists and stuff—pick this book up and give it a shot. Then give it to a middle school or high school kid with a good sense of humor.
3. Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars. New York: Dutton, 2012.
Reading The Fault in our Stars is kind of like riding a roller coaster with quick turns that you do not see coming. This book takes a lot of quick turns. The plot line isn’t predictable, without being jarring, and the language is really breathtaking. These people you are riding this coaster with, Hazel and Augustus, are really smart and really funny and it is good to spend time with them.
Here is the plot: Hazel has cancer. It has destroyed so much of her lungs that she needs supplemental oxygen. At a support group meeting, she meets Augustus. Augustus also has cancer, which has already taken one of his legs. Hazel and Augustus are drawn together by a mutual love of reading and by a love of a book called An Imperial Affliction. That book ends inconclusively, and Hazel has always dreamed of tracking down the book’s highly reclusive author, Peter Van Houten, to find out what happens to the characters in the end. Augustus actually makes contact with Van Houten and arranges through the Make-a-Wish Foundation for the two of them to fly to Holland where Van Houten lives to ask him personally. But when they go, things get complicated.
If that description does not draw you to this book, here are its opening lines:
“Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.
“Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost anything is really.)”
I found the whole book funny, and touching, and sometimes deeply moving. Maybe the plot doesn’t convince you. Maybe the opening lines don’t convince you, but I still think you need to read it.
4. Mikaelsen, Ben. Touching Spirit Bear. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
If you’ve ever wondered what to do with a high school reader who says the only books they ever loved were Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet series this book may be helpful. The main character in this story is a kid named Cole Matthews, who generally hates everyone and everything. He keeps getting in trouble with the law, though his rich father’s lawyers always seem to get him out of trouble. One day, for no reason at all, Cole beats his classmate Peter Driscal so severely that Peter suffers brain damage. When it looks like Cole’s anger and stupidity have finally caught up with him, a social worker offers Cole another option. Cole can submit to circle justice, a restorative practice in which Cole agrees to let a Native American council decide his punishment. Cole plays along, hoping that if he appears contrite, they will go easy on him. Their recommendation, however, is that he spend a year by himself on a remote Alaskan island. And so Cole finds himself stepping off a boat onto an island equipped with a small cabin and plenty of supplies to see him through. When the boat leaves, Cole laughs, confident that his years on the swim team will allow him to swim to the distant mainland and escape. He sets fire to the cabin and starts his swim. The cold water and the tide are against him however, and he finds himself back on the island, exhausted, without shelter or supplies. Then he hears something in the woods behind him and realizes there is a bear on the island.
The book gets better and better after that. There is action, desperation, atonement, redemption, and resolution. It isn’t perfect, though. The end of this book is not its strongest part. There are interesting descriptions about circle justice, but those descriptions seem unnecessarily drawn out. But that is a minor flaw. This book will grab you, and it will not let you go for a long time. This is an excellent book for students in upper middle school, high school, and beyond.
5. Palacio, R. J. Wonder. New York: Knopf, 2012.
I will admit that I really liked this novel, but it is not perfect. The main character, Augie Pullman, was born with a combination of unfortunate birth defects. His eyes are too low on his head, he has no external ears, a cleft palate, and a misshapen nose. His favorite holiday of the year is Halloween because he gets to wear a mask. Augie’s parents decide to homeschool him. As the book opens, Augie is getting ready to go to middle school for the first time. We see Augie’s journey of triumph, terror, ridicule, friendship, bullying, insensitivity, exultation, conquered fears, awkward mistakes, and triumph—all described through the eyes of his sister, his friends, and Augie himself. It is a powerful and moving book, but I did feel that the main conflict was never really resolved. I wish it had. Still, it is a book worth reading.
6. Larson, Hope. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time: The Graphic Novel. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2012.
There are several excellent graphic novels you should not miss (including Gareth Hinds’s remarkably faithful versions of The Odyssey and Beowulf), but my favorite for this year is a new version of this classic that has been one of my favorite books since fifth grade. I was nervous when I heard this book had been reissued as a graphic novel, but I was delighted when I read it because I felt that Hope Larson really understood this book. The adaptation is true to the spirit of the original story. All the elements that matter deeply are here: Charles Wallace’s wonderful oddness, the mystery of the old ladies, the delightfully natural growth of Meg and Calvin’s relationship, the theme of uniqueness versus sameness and conformity, and the importance of faith and the distinctions between working for the light and working for the darkness. In fact, when I went back and reread a couple of chapters of the original, I was struck by how very sparse L’Engle’s descriptions are. Larson’s images fill in a lot of the gaps, and may make it easier for a new generation to find their way into the story, though I would encourage them to also read the original if they like the graphic novel version.
7. Yang, Gene. Boxers and Saints. New York: First Second, 2013.
This is actually two graphic novels about the Boxer Rebellion in China. They are fiction, but they do an excellent job of making the nature of the conflict clear. Boxers tells the story of little Bao, who has watched in anger as soldiers, empowered by European missionaries, have stolen repeatedly from and harmed members of local villages as they despoiled the countryside. Bao discovers he can channel the power of a forgotten ancestor, and he uses this power to surround himself with trustworthy friends who have suffered from the bullying of the soldiers. Bao trains his followers to protect the weak, be respectful to women, children, and the elderly, and to obey a set of moral principles as they begin their crusade to take back the land. The spirit of Bao’s ancestor, though, encourages him to be more aggressive and less merciful.
In a parallel story in the book Saints, Four-Girl has displeased her father and is expelled from her family. A Catholic missionary offers her refuge, a foster family, education, food, and shelter. As Four-Girl learns more about the Catholic Church, she begins to have visitations from Joan of Arc, who tells her how to fight a holy crusade against those who would drive the missionaries out of China.
These two stories are on a collision course about the futility of war, but along the way there is action, compassion, redemption, brokenness, and there are many moral questions. A real connection is made to the beliefs, injuries, and hopes of both sides of the war. The colorful illustrations are gorgeous and make the book easy to read. The reader will feel sympathy for both sides in the conflict, and learn some important history along the way. Teachers will find the books are a good way to interest middle school and high school readers in history as well.
8. Sheinkin, Steve. Bomb: The Race to Build and Steal the World’s Most Powerful Weapon. New York: Running Brook, 2013.
During World War II, the Germans, as part of their plan to build an atomic bomb, were manufacturing heavy water in a factory built into the side of a mountain in Norway. British intelligence forces managed to parachute a small group of members of the Norwegian resistance into the country to disrupt the work at the factory. After a botched landing, which found them miles from the target, these men skied down a mountain, through a forest, and up a frozen river. They entered the factory through a series of ventilation ducts and planted explosives. They escaped before the blast and hid in the woods. After weeks of cold and near starvation and the constant threat of being caught by German patrols, the Norwegians managed to set up a radio and reach the British. They discover that British intelligence already knew about the explosion, but they also knew that the Germans had recovered much of the heavy water they had produced and planned to transport it out of Norway the next day. It was up to the half-frozen, hungry, desperate Norwegian group to stop that shipment.
This sounds like the plot to a war movie action thriller, but it is actually a true story. It is just one of many stories in Sheinkin’s new book that describes the race between the Americans, Russians, and Germans to build the first atomic weapon. There are amazing stories of spies and counter-spies here that I had never heard before. This book shows middle school and high school students that history is not just a series of uninteresting treaties and constitutional amendments, but rather a fascinating story of moments where the actions of a small number of very brave people make a huge difference.
Historians might point out that there is more to history than these sorts of moments, but this is an excellent book to kindle in students an interest in reading history. It is wonderfully written and illustrated with black-and-white photographs. You will enjoy this book if you teach history, or if you like reading about history, or if you just like reading. I am not going to tell you what happens to the desperate Norwegians. It is an amazing story that you will have to read on your own.
9. Say, Allan. Drawing from Memory. New York: Scholastic, 2011.
You probably know someone who loves drawing or who wants to be an art teacher someday. If you do, this is a book you should order, especially if you are interested in history, memoir, Japan, art, education, a well-told story, or beautiful books. This is the story of children’s illustrator Allen Say. It is a beautiful combination of black-and-white photographs, drawings from memory, and drawings that Say made when he was just learning how to draw. It describes his early development as an artist, his disagreements with his father over whether art was a respectable profession, the teachers that nurtured him, how he had to leave home to go to school, the glory of his first studio space, how he learned to combine karate and drawing, and best of all, how he managed to get himself apprenticed to the premier cartoonist in Japan. Both the words and the art in this book are wonderful. It is hard to decide an appropriate age level for this book. First graders and younger readers would find it difficult, but it would be excellent for middle school, high school, college, and general readers.
10. Doeschler, Jan. William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: A New Hope. Philadelphia: Lucas, 2013.
This book may not be for everyone. But if you have spent time this school year trying hard to teach high school students to love the way Shakespeare plays with language and you are frustrated with the results, this may be the perfect book to relax with this summer. Doeschler has adapted the entire script of Star Wars into Shakespearean language. Darth Vader rages like an English king, Obi-Wan Kenobi speaks wisdom like Prospero, and R2-D2 gets a few soliloquies where he bemoans his robotic state that causes others to perceive his words as beeps and whistles. If at this point you are thinking you can imagine nothing more hopelessly silly, don’t buy the book. If, on the other hand, this sounds so cool your hands are starting to shake, go get it. It is a fun and funny read.