1) "Flipped" by Wendelin Van Draanen
Proof that the course of pubescent love never runs smooth. When Bryce and Julianna (Juli) meet, they are both seven and Bryce has just moved in across the street. For Juli, it is love at first sight: “The day I first met Bryce Loski, I flipped. Honestly, one look at him and I became a lunatic. It’s his eyes.” As far as Bryce is concerned, the feeling is definitely not mutual: “All I’ve ever wanted is for Juli Baker to leave me alone. For her to back off—you know, just give me some space.” Six years after their meeting, Bryce is something of a judgmental priss (just like his father), and Juli is full of passion and enthusiasm for life. But in their eighth-grade year, Juli’s fight to save an old tree from being cut down causes Bryce to look at Juli with growing admiration—just at the same time that Juli finally realizes that Bryce’s character does not measure up to his eyes. The story is told in both voices, in alternating chapters that develop from a sort of “he said, she said” dialogue into an exploration of perception, misapprehension, and context. Van Draanen (Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy Mystery, 2000, etc.) deftly manages the difficult task of establishing and maintaining the reader’s sympathy with both characters. The text stretches credibility in a couple of ways, especially with the premise that a seven-year-old is capable of a long-lasting romantic infatuation. It is, nevertheless, a highly agreeable romantic comedy tempered with the pointed lesson (demonstrated by the straining of Bryce’s parents’ marriage) that the “choices you make now will affect you for the rest of your life.” (Fiction. 10-14)
2) "The Amulet of Samarkand" by Jonathan Stroud
Book One of Three
3) "Among the Hidden" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
In a chilling and intelligent novel, Haddix (Leaving Fishers, 1997, etc.) envisions a near future where a totalitarian US limits families to only two children. Luke, 12, the third boy in his farming family, has been hidden since birth, mostly in the attic, safe for the time being from the Population Police, who eradicate such ""shadow children."" Although he is protected, Luke is unhappy in his radical isolation, rereading a few books for entertainment and eating in a stairwell so he won't be seen through the windows. When Luke spies a child's face in the window of a newly constructed home, he realizes that he's found a comrade. Risking discovery, Luke sneaks over to the house and meets Jen, a spirited girl devoted to bringing the shadow children's plight center-stage, through a march on the White House. Luke is afraid to join her and later learns from Jen's father, a mole within the Population Police, that Jen and her compatriots were shot and killed, and that their murder was covered up. Jen's father also gets a fake identity card and a new life for Luke, who finally believes himself capable of acting to change the world. Haddix offers much for discussion here, by presenting a world not too different from America right now. The seizing of farmlands, untenable food regulations, and other scenarios that have come to fruition in these pages will give readers a new appreciation for their own world after a visit to Luke's.
Book One of Seven
4) "Rumble Fish" by S.E. Hinton
The greaser gangs are no longer where it's at, but S. E, Hinton still can't get over them. At least she has the insight to build this around another kid who can't either--Rusty James, a born down-and-outer Whose self-description ("I ain't never been a particularly smart person") is an understatement. Here Rusty-James, now just "bumming around," is describing events of five or six years back. Even then the gangs had been broken up by dope, but he couldn't help trying to live up to the rep of his older brother, Motorcycle Boy, a kid who engineers his own destruction with such detachment that his sanity can only be debated in metaphysical terms. Rusty-James himself is a lot easier to figure. Sliced up the side in a knife fight, smashed over the head by two muggers, barely ambulatory throughout and always headed for the next confrontation, he is far realer than he has arty right to be. Hinton knows how to plunge us right into his dead-end mentality--his inability to verbalize much of anything, to come to grips with his anger about his alcoholic father and the mother who deserted him, even his distance from his own feelings. Even the luridly symbolic climax--when Motorcycle Boy is shot by a vengeful cop after burglarizing a pet store to liberate the Siamese fighting fish (rumble-fish, to him)--works better than you would suppose. Hinton, on her own turf, is still unbeatable, although she seems to have no more of a future, or even a present, than Rusty-James has. Not to be confused with a nostalgia piece. . . this is a remarkably preserved specimen of rebel-without-a-cause nihilism.
5) "Forgotten Fire" by Adam Bagdasarian
6) "The Sledding Hill" by Chris Crutcher
Eddie’s “high-speed randomness” and habit of blurting outlandish questions at school and church are unappreciated. Within three months, Eddie discovers the bodies of the two most reassuring people in his life: his dad and his best friend Billie. Traumatized, lonely and scared, Eddie elects the safety of mutism. In death, Billie continues to watch over Eddie. Unnerved by this haunting, Eddie turns to the refuge of conservative religion. When his fundamentalist minister tries to enlist Eddie in a crusade to ban a novel from the school, Eddie emails the author requesting a letter to be read at the school board hearing. Enter Crutcher as the author of the banned book . . . a character in his own story. This sly conceit works for Crutcher who disarmingly pokes fun at himself. Weaving together Eddie’s personal survival and his losing battle against censorship, this succeeds by limning its polemics with artful humor. This oft-censored author entertains, inspires, invites intellectual inquiry and concedes well-meaning motives to both sides . . . a lot to pack into a novel, but when did Crutcher ever pack light? (Fiction. 12-16)
7) "Running Loose" by Chris Crutcher
The turbulent, literally trying senior year of Louie Banks of Trout, Idaho, who has worked out vigorously over the summer and is rewarded with a starting place on the eight-man football team and a cheerleader girlfriend, smart and pretty newcomer Becky, who could have any guy in school but walks tight up and asks Louie for a date. Then, with the Trout team aiming for its third straight state championship season, nearby Salmon Lake gets a transfer from California, a black kid named Washington who's a super athlete. Trout's coach lets his team know that ""I want that Washington kid out of the garner Early!""--and that ""the only way you can stop. . . those blacks. . . is to hurt 'em."" So when the two teams meet, Trout's vicious Boomer slams Washington into a bench. Loule protests; the ref and the coach play dumb; and Louie quits the team. There's some fallout at school but his parents and Becky back him up and life goes on . . . until Becky is killed in a car accident and Louie, beside himself, makes another scene by lashing out at the sanctimonious imported preacher at her funeral. Loule never does surrender to the forces of hypocrisy, but his next act of resistance is better calculated, and his last impetuous outburst, embracing his father who is handing out diplomas at graduation, is a more positive one. Meanwhile he achieves some victories in a therapeutic track season: just getting him on the team takes courage and commitment from the young assistant coach, who admired Louie's earlier stand; and Louie goes on to an all-out, prodigious victory over Washington, an all-round winner who is running Louie's event, the two-mile, more-or-less on the side. Loule tells his story with' strong feeling and no crap, as he might say. Perhaps the weakest element in the novel is Becky, a young man's dream of love and sweet reason. But as a dramatic, head-first confrontation with mendacity, fate's punches, and learning to cope, it's a zinger.
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