2. Hurricane Song - Paul Volponi

A Novel of New Orleans
For: Middle School/YA (Language in a few places)
Published: June, 2008
136 pgs.
Rating: 4
Finished: Jan. 3, 2009

This is, I think, a very important book. Miles has just gone to live with his dad in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina strikes. The highways are clogged, the car breaks down, and they are forced to go to the Superdome to take shelter. What happened inside the Superdome was a nightmare - and reading this story takes you there. The filth, the smells, the lack of food, water, toilet facililties, the death and sickness, the heat, the violence - all from a 14-year-old's point of view.

Miles' father is a jazz musician, his trumpet is his life. Miles' life is all about football. They've never been close. But this book takes us through the changing of their relationship as well as watching what happened instide the Superdome during the raging of Katrina. Wow.

43. The Amazing Life of Birds - Gary Paulsen

The Twenty-Day Puberty Journal of Duane Homer Leech
For: Middle School
Pub: 2006
96 pgs.
Rating: 3.5/5
Finished Aug. 31, 2008

I laughed, snickered, and guffawed my way through this book.

Ah, so humiliating to be twelve. Zits (appearing, disappearing, moving from one place to another on your face) - cowlikcks (when you try to cut it off, the resulting bald spot starts a rumor that you have ringworm and the whole school is tested before a ringworm epidemic can break out) - falling over - tripping over shoelaces...many times, and usually in the lunch line (and involving getting covered with various horrible lunch items) - knocking over library shelves (!!) which results in urine testing for drug use - jamming fingers in yoru locker - getting knocked into, knocked flat, and knocked senseless playing volleyball in gym class - need I go on? Even his name, Duane Homer Leech, christened DooDoo by friends early in life, is a thorn in his side.

Throughout it all, through his bedroom window, Duane watches a newborn bird being fed and nurtured, starting out helpless and ugly, slowly getting feathers and fuzz, then learning to fly, more or less coinciding with his own journey through the beginning of puberty. Thus the title of the book. Wish they'd chosen another title, however. I don't think this one works...at least not for me. (I also noticed that the paperback version is subtitled his 19-day puberty journal instead of 20-days. Wonder what gives?)

Dedication: "To my son James, in gratitude. Having missed my own puberty, because I lived through it, watching you go through yours provided a wealth of research material. Thank you."

I loved it. But would kids? I'm going to have to nab a copy for the classroom and try it out on some of the middle school boys.

39. A Bottle in the Gaza Sea - Valerie Zenatti

For: Young Adults
Pub: 2005
Translated from French: 2008
149 pgs.
Rating: 5/5
Finished: Aug. 16, 2008

"My name is Tal Levine. I was born in TelAviv on the first day of July 1986, but I live here in Jerusalem. I know that everyone on the planet knows the name Jerusalem, and if there are extraterrestrials they've probably heard about it too; it's a city that creates quite a sitr."

This wasn't the "perfect" book (which one is?), but I still had to give it a 5. And what do I discuss first, the plot...with its timely tough-to-understand setting, the characters, or the writing? I guess it was the title and setting that caught my attention and prompted me tor read the book, but it was the writing that struck me most when I first started reading. Perhaps because it was written in French and translated into English? The language and word choices are lovely. Because there are places where it's not written in the way most teenagers I know would speak, it made me realize that some of them surely THINK this way. For example:

"I sat up. Immediately. Something had jabbed me viciously in the back. I can remember it now: I felt as if some huge injustice had been done to me, that I'd been cruelly attacked just as I was trying to forget myself in the sand - reducing myself to a body, its imprint on the ground, leaving the nausea and indigestion to hover overhead and be carried away on the wind."

Need I say more about the writing?

Contemporary Israel. Contemporary Palestine. Two teenagers from different worlds who live in places where we, as lucky Americans, can't even imagine. This book gives you a viewfinder, eyes to see what's really going on in this tiny strip of the world. Both protagonists have been raised by parents that yearn for peace. In Israel, the Levines have attended any and all peace rallies for many years. In Palestine, Naim's family has taught him to read Hebrew so that in the years to come, when they are hopeful for peace, he will be able to speak and read the language properly. Looking at the bombings, the terrorism, LIFE, from their point-of-view, is eye-opening.

Tal pours her heart out into a letter that she puts into a bottle destined for the the Gaza Sea. She pictures a 17-year old girl like herself finding the letter and responding. When a sarcastic, private young Palestinian man answers, a roller coaster relationship begins. Using the internet (and we even see how difficult and dangerous this is for the Palestinian) the story unfolds. And we get to see so much. Differences. Similarities. Hopes, desires, wishes. The view from each side.

My writing is as jumbled as my thoughts. Perhaps in a few days I'll come back and organize, add, make this more coherent. This was a very powerful book. I'm looking forward to sharing it with my Jewish middle schoolers and getting their take.