Module 10: Olive's Ocean

Module 10

Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes

Summary

Twelve year old Martha is getting to ready to leave for vacation at her grandmother’s house on the beach when the mother of a classmate who died tragically a few weeks before comes to her house. She gives Martha a page from her daughter, Olive’s journal. Olive wrote in her journal that she wants to be a writer, she wants to go to the beach and she hopes she and Martha become friends. The journal unnerves Martha because she realizes that even though she didn’t know Olive well they had a lot in common.

While on vacation, Martha develops a crush on a boy who lives nearby. She is heartbroken when he plays a cruel prank on her. She wants to make some sort of tribute to Olive. She collects a jar of seawater to bring back to Olive’s mother.

Citation

Henkes, K. (2003). Olive’s Ocean. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

My impressions

This book was a Newbery Honor book in 2004 and is on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most challenged books from 200-2009. As I was reading I was trying to figure out what could possibly be challenged in this book. I was stumped until I realized that I was thinking about it in the context of my middle school library and it was probably challenged in elementary libraries. It has a mild reference to married parents having sex and a few swear words. It is a beautiful coming of age story with the added element of seeing how Martha processes the idea that someone her age died. I did find it a little slow in parts, some students may give up on this book because while there is a lot of emotional growth in the book there is not much actual action.

Review from Horn Book Magazine

Martha opens the door. A strange woman holding an envelope announces: "Olive Barstow was my daughter." Olive, a schoolmate that Martha had barely noticed, has recently been killed in a car accident; the envelope contains an extract from Olive's diary in which she shares her dreams, including the hope that Martha, "the nicest person in my whole entire class," would become her friend. With this original and compelling opening scene Henkes draws us into one summer in the life of a familiar, convincing, fully realized twelve-year-old girl. Olive's Ocean has all the elements of a traditional summer novel: a grandmother with a house by the sea, sandcastles, Parcheesi, a summer crush, and the idea of summer as the time between, the hinge time of growth and change. The book is a web of relationships with Martha at the center. A beloved older brother begins to pull away. Martha sees her grandmother with new eyes. Martha and her mother can't seem to stop irritating each other. The crush-object turns out to have feet of clay. In other hands this might be too much material, but Henkes has a jeweler's touch, strong and delicate. All of Henkes's strengths as a fiction writer -- economy, grace, humor, respect for his characters, a dramatist's eye for gesture, and an underlying good-naturedness -- are given wonderful play here. In her diary Olive reveals that she dreamed of writing a book. "Not a mystery or adventure one, but an emotional one. Maybe I can make kids change their opinions on emotion books like some authors did to me." Who were those authors, we wonder. Very likely somebody just like Kevin Henkes.

Ellis, S. (2003). [Review of the book Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes]. Horn Book Magazine, 79(6), 745-747. Retrieved from EBSCOhost

Idea for use in the library

This book would be good for a book club discussion. There are a lot of elements to it and layers that would make for a good discussion.

Module 9: True Believer

Module 9

True Believer by Virginia Euwer Wolff

Summary

This novel in verse is the second book in a series about a teen girl named LaVaughn. She lives with her single mother in an apartment in the bad part of town, but LaVaughn is smart and works hard. She wants to go to college and she knows it takes hard work to get there. She is fifteen and she is seeing things in her life change as she is growing up. Her two best friends since childhood are growing apart from her as she is taking advanced classes without them and they spend their time on other interests. A boy she knew years ago moves back into her building and LaVaughn grows interested in him, and they become friends, they even go to a dance together but she can’t tell if he likes her like she likes him.

Citation

Wolff, V.E. (2001). True Believer. New York, NY: Simon & Shuster.

My impressions

This book was a printz honor book in 2002. It is beautifully simple and very complex at the same time. The verse is simple and easy to read, but there are so many elements going on underneath the surface of the story. This book will appeal to female students because of the romantic aspects and it is a great book to show the appeal of the novel in verse and for teens to see how kids who may live very different lives than they do have a lot of the same concerns, about being left out of friend groups, worried about grades and trying to figure out if a boy likes you. I appreciated that there were adult characters in the book who loved and supported LaVaughn. So often in YA books the main character has no adult support. I really liked that this book didn’t fall into the stereotype of the kid from the ghetto figuring life out on her own. The poetry is beautiful and several lines stick with you long after you finish the book. It is the second book in a series, but it stands up fine on its own.

Review from Kirkus Reviews

When Wolff writes a book, it’s an event. When she revisits LaVaughn, as she does in True Believer, it is a prodigious gift. This book stands alone, but includes a cameo appearance by the hapless Jolly (Make Lemonade, 1993). In the course of LaVaughn's seismic 15th year, she grapples with all the big questions of teen life: the drifting away of lifelong friends, setting life goals, falling in love with the wrong man, making sense of sexuality and abstinence, and questioning the existence of God. Or, as LaVaughn puts it, "My life is so swollen with things . . ." With wisdom, snap, and a touch of profound sadness, LaVaughn confronts her best friends' slipping away to "be all the property of Jesus," the deeply wounding discovery that the boy she loves is gay, and the acknowledgment of her own character flaws. She is accused of being "uppity" for her academic achievement, her refusal to join the "Cross your Legs for Jesus Club" and her disdain of a brilliant, shabby lab partner. With every aspect of her life in tatters, LaVaughn confides in her scrappy mother (also an uppity woman) and begins to "rise to the occasion which is life," bringing together the rich cast of characters who inhabit her world at a sweet-16 party. The urban setting, in which six children in LaVaughn's fourth-grade class have died violently, is effectively but unsensationally sketched. In economical blank verse of graceful simplicity, Wolff unerringly reveals the inner depths of her heroine. While LaVaughn feels isolated in her confusion about life, she is surrounded by adults (including demanding, mentoring teachers) who will not allow her to fail. This is a coming-of-age story with both bite and heart, which poses more questions than it answers but never runs out of hope. (Fiction. 12-16)

(2001). [Review of the book True believer by V.E. Wolff].  Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/virginia-euwer-wolff/true-believer/

Idea for use in the library: In February you could do a ‘crush on a book’ challenge, where students were challenged to read a book from a collection of books that involved a character with an obsessive crush on someone.

Module 8: Something Rotten

Module 8

Something Rotten by Alan Gratz

Summary

This mystery is a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Hamilton Prince is the only son of Rex Prince, who owned Elsinore Paper in Denmark Tennessee. Hamilton has come home to Denmark for his father’s funereal. His best friend Horatio has come with him to stay with him for the summer. Soon after their arrival security guards from the paper plant show Hamilton and Horatio a video that shows Hamilton’s father claiming he was being poisoned. Hamilton asks Horation to help him find who killed his father. He also is pulled into a dispute between the paper factory and Hamilton’s ex-girlfriend Olivia about the paper company’s role in polluting the river.

Citation

Gratz, A. (2007) Something Rotten. New York, NY: Dial.  

My impressions

This is a fun book that has the feel of an old school film noir style detective movie. The main character, Horatio speaks like the tough private eye. The tie in to Hamlet is interesting and anyone who knows Hamlet will enjoy the clever ways the author tied them together. There were a few places in the book where it actually mentioned Hamlet and that bothered me because if the characters are talking about Hamlet, and it exists in the world of the story then it would be very bizarre that the same circumstances are happening in this town with similar names to Hamlet. It was jarring and  it took me out of the story.

Review from Kirkus Reviews

Gratz is cornering the niche market of novels containing dissimilar topics. Here he combines Hamlet and hardboiled detective pulp. During a vacation from their academy, Horatio Wilkes accompanies his buddy Hamilton Prince to Denmark, Tenn. Just two months after his father passed away under suspicious circumstances, Hamilton’s Uncle Claude has married Hamilton’s mother. Claude now controls the Elsinore Paper Plant, a multibillion dollar company blatantly polluting the Copenhagen River. Horatio, with a knack for investigating, is determined to expose Claude’s corruption while Hamilton, dismayed by what he believes is his mother’s betrayal, drowns himself in alcohol. Ultimately, Horatio relies on environmentalist protester Olivia to reveal secrets about Elsinore. The many parallels to Hamlet are interesting, but Gratz wisely avoids producing a carbon copy of the tragedy. Horatio admirably plays the loyal friend but has a cocky voice that is too self-assured and as a teen rings unauthentic. However, this well-crafted mystery has appeal for readers familiar with both Raymond Chandler’s novels and Shakespeare’s masterpiece. (Fiction. YA)

(2007). [Review of the book Something Rotten by Alan Gratz]. Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/alan-gratz/something-rotten/

Idea for use in the library

This book could go into a display of books that are based on or inspired by classic literature.

Module 7: Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade

Module 7

Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade by Melissa Sweet

Summary:

This is an informational book about Tony Sarg, a puppeteer who created the first giant balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade. It details his early innovation in childhood, and his initial career in puppetry in Europe and New York. Then he is hired to create automated puppetry displays for the windows at Macy’s department store. When Macy’s decides to have a Thanksgiving parade Sarg has to figure out how to create puppets large enough that people on the street can see them and how he can have puppeteers control them from below. His innovative design led to the development of the balloons that have been an anticipated part of the Macy’s parade ever since.

Citation

Sweet, M. (2011). Balloons over Broadway: The True story of the puppeteer of Macy’s Parade. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.

My impressions
This is a great informational picture book on an unusual topic. The illustrations are whimsical and detailed. There is a lot of information that kids can discover in the illustrations that will be engaging. There is some advanced vocabulary that would be difficult for young readers to read on their own, but this would be a great read aloud. I read this to my 5 year old twins who love balloons and they really enjoyed it.

Review from Kirkus Reviews

This bright, brimming picture biography commemorates Tony Sarg, a brilliant, self-taught artist whose innovative helium balloons delighted legions of Macy’s parade watchers from 1928 on.

Sweet sketches Sarg’s career as a puppeteer and marionette-maker. Moving from London to New York City, where his marionettes performed on Broadway, Sarg engineered mechanical storybook characters for Macy’s “Wondertown” holiday windows. In 1924, he created floats and costumes for the first Macy’s parade, which celebrated both immigrant and American holiday traditions. When the annual parade’s lions and tigers (borrowed from the Central Park Zoo) frightened children, Macy’s commissioned Sarg to replace them. Ever innovative, Sarg eventually utilized rubberized silk and helium to create larger, lighter balloons that could be controlled from below. Sweet’s charming mixed-media layouts form a playful bridge between her creative process and Sarg’s. She fashioned whimsical toys from painted blocks, buttons and fabric, combining them in photo-collages with old books, cut paper, imagined sketches for Sarg’s projects, watercolor images of parade scenes and much more. Endpapers inform and delight, too, with excerpts from a 1929 book about Sarg's marionettes and a front-page parade invitation in the 1933 New York Times. Backmatter is also a collage of treats, with an author’s note appending further biographical details and comments about the art. 

This clever marriage of information and illustration soars high. (bibliography of adult sources, quote sources, acknowledgements, period photo) (Picture book/biography. 4-8)

(2011). [Review of the book Balloons over Broadway: The True story of the puppeteer of Macy’s Parade, by Melissa Sweet]. Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/melissa-sweet/balloons-over-broadway/

Idea for use in a library

This book would be a good addition to a display about Thanksgiving. It would be good to include this since it is related to Thanksgiving, but different from the typical historical books that would be part of a Thanksgiving collection.