After the Wreck, I picked myself up, spread my wings, and flew away. By Joyce Oates

After the Wreck, I picked myself up, spread my wings, and flew away. By Joyce Oates

    While reading this book (which i which I'll refer to as atw) it made me feel kind of bored. I felt as the though the writing was very repetitive and didn't expand on many important issues. Throughout the entire story, its just keeps coming back to this idea that "I can be a messed up kid because no one loves me!" Which i thought was so untrue and very annoying. I feel like the author wanted to leer you into that idea so she made it all the main character would think about. The book left out the perspective of the ones who actually loved the main character, Jenna. In the book Jenna would have fights with adults who loved her and she seemed to keep telling them you don't care about me, you don't love me, leaving out their perspective about the adults emotion. The author pretty much never let the adults speak.
     Another example of this is when the father tries to reach out to Jenna after the accident but shes shutting him down, not letting him explain why he left. As a reader, i did want to know why he left and how he felt when Jenna refused to live with him. While i find these writing techniques a little boring and discouraging, i can see why an author may add them. They give a little bit of  to the main characters mind a reason to why Jenna may feel the need to do these drugs and party and drink alcohol instead of the real reason which is because her mom has past. She feels the need to blame it on others as many do it an upsetting situation and if someone explains shes wrong to blame those people she'll have to find the real reason and open up the sadness and despair she felt after her mom died that she locked away. I think that's also a reason she didn't want to see a therapist. Because she was afraid of what she might find.

Synthesis Page November 8th

Arguement Essay by Maeve Woollen

     After reading multiple arguments to answer the question, "Should dark young adult fiction be banned?", the answer i've found is challenged books should be decided by the students and teachers. The books should only be banned if the students can't come up with a good enough reason for the book to be kept in the class library. This would only apply to 7-12th graders. This gives little power ti the parents, while most power to the teens and teacher. But why trust them? Why put so much trust on their teacher to decide what you child can or cannot read. This a difficult question i intend to add on to.
    In a classroom, its nice to know you have a variety of books to choose from at any moment. But knowing your not allowed to read a book about a certain topic may make you want to know more. You don't want to be deprived about this subject. In Mary Elizabeth William's "Has young adult fiction become too dark?" Williams agrees information is important. "Darkness isn't the enemy. But ignorance always is." In this simple quote, Williams explains how parents shouldn't fear the darkness of a book, but embrace it for their child. They shouldn't be running from the darkness, yet see what it has to offer. Parents seem to be too quick to ban or challenge a book without seeing what it can give the teen. Some parents believe their child will go crazy with this information, but as Sherman Alexie puts it in his article "Why the Best Kids Books are written in blood", "I wrote my YA novel as a way of speaking to my younger, irredeemable self." Alexie believes these kids need dark YA as a way to get past issues they face while not feeling so alone, yet parents don't seem to see it that way.
    But why should Parents have no say in this? As i was saying in the paragraph above, parents refuse to give the books a chance and see how they will be able to help their teens. Teachers seem to spend more time with the teens and work with them on things about their readings, such as essays or book book reports. They seem to be more interested in what the students are getting out of the book than whats in the book. While I'm not saying Teachers and smarter than parents or teachers are more important than parents, I think teachers would have a deeper look into what the students are reading. For instance, while parents would only read the quote from Jackie Morse Kessler's "Rage", "She had sliced her arms into ribbons, but the badness remained, staining her insides like cancer. She gouged her belly until it was a mess of meat and blood, but she still couldn't breath." and write off the book as being to dark for their teen, teachers would look further and investigate why the author might have put this into the book and what she wanted to readers (the students) to get out of it.
   In conclusion, I believe teachers and students should be given most power in the discussion of banning books. They would look further in the ideas of the book and author and meaning. Parents ban books too easily without discussing it too often and teens need a chance to speak up. If it was a city council meeting, no one would listen to a thirteen year old student. They need some power over what they choose to read.

Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley

Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley

           SPOLIERS!! (sort of)

      In "Graffiti Moon" by Cath Crowley, Ed and Lucy hate each other after a disastaurous date in 10th grade. Lucy never thought much of Ed but agreed to go on a date cause she thought he was cute enough. She had no idea she meant so much to him. He was shadow, a spray painter who hides behind his name and his work. Lucy fell in love with shadow, never knowing it was ed. She fell in love with his paintings and the way he expressed himself. Not happily, Lucy ends up on a journey to find shadow after Ed says he knows him.  Something i really enjoyed about this book was the way different things symbolised the characters.
     Lucy was represented by her mind. That was something that carried her off and made her an interesting character. For example, there was one seen in which Lucy is dancing and Ed is watching her. Ed explains it as Lucy seems to be dancing to her own melody. Lucy danced differently. She didn't go with the music everyone else her. It all seemed to be in her mind. Another example of this is when Lucy is examining a piece of shadows. Because Ed painted it, of course he knew what he was thinking and what it was. But Lucy thought about it differently. The book explains Lucy stared at the picture for a long time, seeming to really bath is its ideas. The thoughts she had about this painting were very different from Shadows/Ed's, but Ed believed them. He believed that was actually what Shadow was trying to say.
   Ed is represented by his spray can. Its his identity, his emotions, his personality. Its everything he needs to hid behind. Anything he feels is expressed through his  spray painting. It isn't just an art to him. One example of this is shown when after he starts to develop feelings for Lucy, he feels the need to paint her. During any crush, their all you can think about. So he can't completely enjoy that feeling. He need to paint her. So he does. He expresses all those emotions through his paint. He doesn't need to be smart or good or emotional. He needs to paint.

Has Young Adult fiction become too dark? by Mary Elizabeth Williams

   In the Article "Has young adult fiction become too dark?" By Mary Elizabeth Williams, Williams responds to Meghan Cox Gurdon's take on young adult fiction these days. Gurdon argues that young adult fiction has become too dark for tweens and teens to be reading. While Williams may agree on a few things, overall Williams finds many flaws with Gurdon's piece and still finds a way to add on to the idea.
    Gurdon seems to want to get the idea of how horrible young adult fiction has become and says Parents should censor it. In other words, the book should be banned so kids can't read it. Williams argues this is the direction young adults emotions are heading and they need to learn how to deal with it. These books do that while making the reader feel less alone with her/his problems. Also, while parents may not like it very much, this is going to be the great literature of our generation. 
   I believe that Williams takes Gurdon's topics and ideas, but puts them in a better light. One idea that was brought up multiple times was this idea that this generation's young adult fiction is much. much worse that "great literature" from the 1900's. While i don't totally agree with this thought because i think that our generation's "great literature" could be just as good, only a little darker, I wonder is the story lines will ever change again. Will the next generation's "great literature" be even darker, will it be sillier, or will it go back to our parent's sense of "normal"?
    "Darkness isn't the enemy, but ignorance always is." This quote interested me. It's basically says, Teens may need to read this to understand these issues that they'll face in real life. This is why i disagreed with Gurdon's idea that YA has become too dark. I very much like the way Williams states this. This darkness is the way many teens/tweens cope with things. Like not feeling their the only ones that feel the need to cut themselves. Its the way they need to deal, and isn't that what books are for? To get away from our troubles?

Faithful Elephants by Yukio Tshuchiya

   In the story, "Faithful Elephants" by Yukio Tshuchiya, A young boy (or girl, the story makes it unclear) notices something not many stop to notice anymore. "Not far from the cheerful square, there stands a tombstone". The child seems to take interest in this monument and all of its beauty the zoo keeper, who is polishing it, seems to Cherish. The zoo keeper tells the child a story of three elephants who, by command of the army, needed to be starved to death to keep the people of Tokyo safe. 
   This story speaks of little setting, yet the cherry blossom tree that hangs over the tomb stone is an important factor that is brought up twice throughout the story. I believe the cherry blossom tree symbolises the life of the elephants. These elephants needed to be killed, but who could kill these magestic creatures with the "loving eyes". Like the cherry blossoms, once the elephants were trained, or "blossomed", everyone enjoyed seeing the elephants perform their banzai trick and sharing their beauty.
   The army and the war i believe represents Winter, when the cherry blossoms die. The cherry blossoms begin to wilt in the winter. This is also what happened to the elephants. They stopped being fed. Although it was very hard for the zoo keepers, they weren't allowed to feed the elephants anything. In the text, it says "everyone was hoping that if the elephants could survive only one more day, the war might be over and the elephants would be saved". I think this also represents how they were wishing if the cherry blossoms could hold their beauty for a few more days, spring would come, bring all its hope to the people.
  But spring didn't come. The Elephants died from starvation. Like cherry blossoms, they floated gracefully down. But when blossoms fall, they aren't forgotten. They spread out new seeds and decompose to become new life. Tonky, Wanly and John were never forgotten. They lie peacefully under their cherry blossom tree.

-
Maeve

As Cool As I Am by Pete Fromm

A summary of As Cool as I Am by Pete Fromm

   This book, i recommend for most. It is a little inappropriate (in a few parts, but not much) but excellent. I couldn't put it down. In short (to not spoil too much), A young girl named Lucy comes from a broken home. Her dad is away 3/4 of the year and her mother spends most nights at the job that Lucy's dad doesn't know about. Lucy often spends dinner alone or with her "sorta boyfriend" Kenny (a.k.a her best friend). But Lucy soon gets in over her head, accusing her mother of cheating, pregnancy scares, and parties. 
    I'd like to point out a couple of things i noticed in this book:
 1.) i found signs of symbolism when Lucy shaves her head again  like her dad used to do to her. I thought this symbolized Lucy's want to go back to her childhood and missing her dad. 
 2.) In the book, Kenny starts to really develop feelings for Lucy. But whenever Kenny speaks his feelings in the form of "I love you" Lucy never seems to reciprocate those feels. In the book, it seemed disregarded, but I believe the author was hinting back at her distrust of love after seeing her parents together, her father always trying to get away and her mother always at "work". 
   One last thing is if you do choose to read this book, DO NOT WATCH THE MOVIE AFTER. If your like me, you will just get mad at the movie makers and at the movie and at everything because the stupid movie people left out SO MANY IMPORTANT PARTS. 
   
-Maeve