Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

Oppel’s Airborn brings together an interesting collection of elements from class differences and unconventional plans to pirates and naturalists. The majority of this story occurs aboard an airship which is supposedly flying the skies of the future, however, the storyline also involves an extremely old world set of naturalists talking about making a name through bones and collecting. The pirates are still robbing the rich and establishment to make money and maintain a dark reputation. Oppel’s characters and setting allow the storyline to progress in a believable fashion even if the time period seems to be somewhat in doubt at times. There is both a male, Matt Cruse, and female, Kate De Vries, lead in this story so that it should appeal to either group and the romance is still in the early stages so that it should be readable by younger teens as well as older ones. Another pleasant discovery is that this is the first in a short series that can be read separately or together. The other two are Skybreaker and Starclimber. Skybreaker has Matt and Kate off to find a lost airship and potential treasure. Starclimber has them as part of the first astralnaut team off to face adventure.

  For fantasy, adventure, pirates, airships, and a battle to maintain balance a good choice would be Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky. The leads are a princess and a mechanic’s apprentice who are being chased by both pirates and a private military. Earth is in much worse shape due to technology and a lack of nonrenewable resources, but people come together to deal with the challenges presented. This story is available both as a graphic novel and as a film. As with all Miyazaki’s films the animation and the story are worthwhile and happy.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island: a graphic novel

Tim Hamilton adapts the original story and brings it to life in a new format. Hopefully the story that might not have been read in a text only format will be enjoyed in this format. This story like Airborn is told from the prospective of a cabin boy, Jim Hawkins, who is supporting his captain in a hunt for treasure. Hamilton’s illustrations look like they could accentuate the darkness of the story and the pirates’ images. 

Pirates! by Celia Rees is about a group of two eighteenth century women who choose the sea and the life of pirates over the tradition options they are facing. Minerva Sharpe leaves a life of slavery and Nancy Kingston leaves a lousy potential marriage. The hijack a trading ship and ply the ocean around Jamaica flying the black sails of piracy.

The Pirate’s Son by Geraldine McCaughrean is about three young people who head to Madagascar to deal with  Tamo’s past. Nathan Gull and his sister Maud are left penniless so their choice to follow Tamo makes sense particularly as they are living in the eighteenth century. They  chose a sea journey in this dangerous time instead of life on the streets or as domestic servants in England if they could get jobs without references.

 

 

Girls’ night in DVD choices!

  

A california girl is facing the arrival of her new stepmother onto her own turf. Her father deals with her immature behaviour by sending her to an all girls private boarding school in the English countryside. Her response to this punishment is figure out a ways to get herself expelled from the school. About the time she has succeeded she realizes that the school is more  home to her than her home in California and that she has made better friends at the school than she had left back in the United States. Her friends at the school include the principal and her son who has the position of the only boy living at the school part-time. For older movies about people going to schools where they do not fit right away are Legally Blonde as an obvious choice with Reese Witherspoon as a young, beautiful blonde California girl turned Harvard Law student. Footloose with Kevin Spacey as the young man who brings dance back to a conservative community that has been hurt by tragedy.

 

An English teacher with a past in dance meets a deaf swing dancer when he comes to her school to speak on people with disabilities. She has forgotten how to live thanks to burnout in the classroom and a mediocre relationship with a workalcoholic financee addicted to his cell phone. He has given up dance because he has defined himself by his disability and disconnected from people and life by working in his safe little world of the school of dance. Their lives are revived with a spark the minute they meet and get to know each other a little bit by dancing together. For older dance movies Dirty Dancing with the late Patrick Swayze as the hunky dance instructor at a family summer camp and a misfit younger daughter, Baby, played by Jennifer Grey. Strictly Ballroom is a less conventional Australian choice about group of people coming back to life through ballroom dancing particularly Scott who chooses a new partner to teach and take to the championship. It is compared to My Fair Lady.

 

Astroboy

Astroboy has recently come to theatres here in London and after having a lively presentation on Anime and Manga by one of my colleagues I decided to go and see it. I had dim memories of a set of comics or cartoons with this character when I was growing up so that when I came back I did some research. Astroboy online is a site that includes the history of the comic and the character with links to fan sites and other cool stuff.

http://www.astroboy-online.com/history.php 

If you want to go past the basic information the Absolute Anime website is your ticket to an indepth look at Astroboy facts. http://www.absoluteanime.com/astro_boy/

The latest Astroboy movie is present via this youtube clip.

Astro is a robot built to replace the son of the head of the science computer with a special core that makes him honest and good-by nature. When he is not what the grieving father expects he goes off to find a new niche  and end up back on earth with a group of misfits. While some people might say this is a simple movie about good and evil, I am tempted to say that it is about the realities of human society using exaggeration to make us think. Issues such as the fact that science is funded by government grants and often directly by the military so that weapons may be the end result of initially be nine research and that an electronic age creates a large amount of needless waste. 

I am a fan of Hayao Miyazaki’s films and animated movies in the larger context as well since I would not turn down the occasional Disney film either. At the end of last semester I went to see Miyazaki’s last movie Ponyo about a goldfish princess who meets a sailor’s son one day. Following one of Miyazaki’s major themes of human waste and greed pitted against natural balance along with a little magic and a big decision for two young people. A seaside community and a community under the ocean must find their own connection. I thought the animation of the various sea creatures and the old people was well done. The princess had contradictory water needs as she lived in both salt water and freshwater without any adverse affects and her species as goldfish would make her a fresh water fish, but she looked slight clown fish like. The bottom line is that she was a magical cartoon a character so I shouldn’t really care. I guess I just felt that after the exactitude of his other animation this little bit confusion stood out, but overall I enjoyed the film and it will not stop me from adding it to my collection eventually. 

What If?:Canada’s Creative Magazine for Teens

http://www.whatifmagazine.com/ Published in Guelph, Ontario by What If? Publications, What If? is an avenue for Canadian teens and pre-teens to share their writing and art with their peers and others interested in young adult creativity. The magazine has little paragraph long biographies of the writers near their short stories, poetry, and reviews. The biographies for the artists are at the back under contributors though the art itself is paired with the various written offerings. The art ranges from paintings to sketches to photography. The magazine hosts and mentions a variety of contests for both writing and art. The advertising is kept to a minimum and is directly linked to businesses that would support young writers and artists directly such as publishers, and other literary journals. A coffee shop chain that provides an ideal spot to write with food, drink, and wifi is the only other advertiser. I found one of the ads from the yearbook company interesting as it had partnered with What If? to provide a contest with the opportunity for a school to win the publication of a literature and art book to the tune of 500 copies. What If? has a web presense through both Facebook and Twitter.

What If ? caught my attention because I grew up with Cricket(ages 9-14) and enjoyed the opportunity to read short fiction at that stage and I remembered that there were competitions in that literary magazine. I discovered in my online research today that the same company that puts out Cricket has a magazine for young adults called Cicada. To order this magazine see the following link:http://www.cricketmag.com

It is nice that there are literary magazines published in both Canada and the United States so that young adults who wish to can read a variety of writing by their peers and have the opportunity to publish before they reach university. These magazines provide one of the first steps for young writers who wish to discover if they have what it  takes.

Cicada also has a web publishing presense in the form of SLAM!http://www.cicadamag.com/theslam This website has advice on writing, other writing resources online, links to other places to submit work and the rules for submitting work to be posted on the SLAM site. There is also links to all the work posted on the site so that visitors can read other peoples work from poetry to short stories to creative nonfiction. Each entry has the name of the author or poet, along with geographic location of the people sometimes and the date posted.

Strays by Ron Koertge

 

Koertage caught my attention right away with a collection strong characters, particularly, the main character Ted or Teddy who deals with life by communicating with animals instead of people as a result of being raised by parents who owned a pet shop. You meet Ted just as he is being transfered to a foster home after the death of said parents. He is hoping that he will have the opportunity for the fresh start that he had been asking his parents to give him in the form of transfering schools. He meets C.W., the wannabe gangsta, who offers friendship since they are both stuck settling into a new foster home and school. Teddy ends up rooming with Astin, a gearhead with an endless eye for ladies, who provides him with the cool older brother type role model and friendship. The description of people and settings as well as the ongoing thoughts and dialogue in this little novel make for a fast paced read.

For those that have a passion for animals you maybe interested in the works of Gerald Durrell, who was an animal catcher and naturalist with a serious sense of humour about the world around him and a passion for his friends, family and the natural world.  Some of his books include My Family and Other Animals and A Zoo in My Luggage.

The above graphic was borrowed from The Wild Ones, The Children’s Education Program of Wildlife Trust website, http://www.thewildones.org/gerald.html.

Another choice would be Cleveland Amory who had a passion for animal rescue and rehabilitation and had animal retreat in U.S.A. known as the Black Beauty Ranch which is now run by the Humane Society of the United States.http://www.blackbeautyranch.org/ Amory’s books have titles like The Cat Who Came for Christmas and Man Kind? Our Incredible War on Wildlife.

School Librarians’ Journal options

Knowledge Quest: Journal of the American Association of School Librarians. Chicago, Ill.: American Library Association, c.1997-

The four most recent issues of this journal were the base for the comparsion so if there are more reviews in earlier issues I am not aware of them. There were short reviews for new educational software and advertising for a couple of upcoming books. The fact that this journal can provide informative and thought provoking articles with bibliographies and accessible language that is not specific to academia makes this an easy choice to recommend. The majority of this journal is dedicated to practical discussion combined with research based articles on topics that would be equally relevant to discuss with students and parents as they would be to discuss with fellow school librarians. 

Academic honesty with an exercise that can be used to prompt independent and creative thought early in life both in school and at home. The fact that technology is now making it more tempting for students to take the easy route to complete essays when they are feeling short of time makes this an important and timely topic for discussion. The use of web 2.0 technology both inside and outside the classroom has been a topic that has come up frequently in the last couple of terms here at the University of Western Ontario’s Faculty of Information and Media Studies so seeing the topic under discussion in a journal is not surprising. Though there a number of new ideas being discussed that were exciting to read about. Last, but not least there was discussion of the importance of libraries to young adults in detention centre and what sorts of services and materials should be available in these libraries.

School Library Journal. [New York]: Bowker Magazine Group, 1967-

School Library Journal is also directed at school librarians, but while Knowledge Quest has mostly articles School Library Journal is made up of mainly reviews. The result is that the few articles stand out, but are based on practice and have no bibliographies of sources attached. This journal is fun to read to catch up with the latest dvds, educational computer software, audiobooks, fiction and nonfiction books that will be available for school aged children and young adults. It is slightly frusterating in that grade 5 and up is the range that fits young adults and the section is not organized by grade so finding a selection of materials for older student means scanning this section carefully or just reading it in its’ entirety.

While Knowledge Quest will likely prompt discussion between students and librarians School Library Journal will provide all groups with a consistent source for reader’s advisory and selection.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

 Junior chooses to transfer to a high school off reservation with the hope that it will provide him with hope for the future. He leaves his best friend and his family behind to attend this high school at least for the hours he spends at school. He thought he would leave his problems behind him with this change of school, but he discovers that everyone has problems, but the difference is that the white world expects to have a future. He discovers he has more skills and abilities then he had previously believed he had from basketball to the classroom. The power of this book is not the portrayal of native life, but the fact that Junior’s life highlights the similarities between his life and the lives of his classmates. Poverty, alcoholism, and family are not held at extremes, but the fact that love is not lost to any of them. Family love and honour are seem to be stronger with the native culture more than they are in the white world at least in the novel.

Ellen Forney’s caricatures which in the course of the story are Junior’s explanation of his world from images of his family and himself. He felt that through his artwork he could open the eyes of world to what it means to be a part of the Native American world. This novel has some of Sherman Alexie’s past as inspiration for this work.

Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King

King’s work is a really long series of literary and political allusions that support a circular narrative. A more political work with the majority of the allusions to The American Indian Movement, popular music and movie characters. Thanks to the circularity of native writing there are multiple sets of characters and some are undefined in their origins either as people or spirits or tricksters namely the four elders. Some of the connections between the character various narratives are not clear until the very end of the tale.

Both books have a certain humour to their tales to allow their stories to be told and the sadness of the lives of the main and minor characters. The feel of native literature is unique in tone and texture compared to anything else I have read.

For a white writer’s trip into native culture one can read The Indian in the Cupboard series by Lynn Reid Banks. The connection is through the lives of secondary characters with a strong connection to literature and history as well as reality versus toys. The impact of humans on those around them and the difference between friendship and responsibility.

 

Teen Dads- a short list

Unwed Father (1997)

A television movie starring Brian Austin Green of 90210. He plays the role of a musician, who takes a groupie to bed and discovers later that he has become a father. A young man grows up and learns that he can make a difference in someone else’s life.

Too soon for Jeff  a novel by Marilyn Reynolds (1994)

Jeff Browning is a high school senior determined not planning to let his girlfriend’s pregnancy get in the way of his plans for college. Meeting his baby will change his priorities.

Slam, a novel by Nick Hornby (2007)

A fifteen year old young man has a passion for skateboarding and daydreaming. Then his girl friend tells him she is pregnant and he will add parenthood to his other passions.

Hanging on to Max, a novel by Margaret Bechard (2003)

It’s Sam Pettigrew’s last year of high school. And he’s spending it figuring out how, at age seventeen, he is supposed to care for his baby son, Max. Max wasn’t part of the plan. He wasn’t even part of the backup plan. But he’s here now, and Sam is attending an alternative high school with other teen parents like himself. Talk about a wake-up call. But Sam is determined to make it work, to show everyone — his dad, his new girlfriend, himself — that he has what it takes to be a good dad.Trading footballs for diaper bags and college brochures for feeding schedules, Sam gives fatherhood his best shot. Only no one told him it would be this hard. What if his best isn’t good enough? (note borrowed from LPL catalogue)

I know it’s over, a novel by C.K. Kelly Martin (2008)

Pure. Unplanned. Perfect. Those were Nick’s summer plans before Sasha stepped into the picture. With the collateral damage from his parents’ divorce still settling and Dani (his girl of the moment) up for nearly anything, complications are the last thing he needs. All that changes, though, when Nick runs into Sasha at the beach in July. Suddenly he’s neck-deep in a relationship and surprised to find he doesn’t mind in the least. But Nick’s world shifts again when Sasha breaks up with him. Then weeks later, while Nick’s still reeling from the breakup, she turns up at his doorstep and tells him she’s pregnant, and Nick finds himself struggling once more to understand the girl he can’t stop caring for, the girl who insists that it’s still over. (note borrow from LPL catalogue)

Teen Dads: rights, responsibilities, and joys / Jeanne Warren Lindsay (2008)

A guide for teen fathers planning to build parenting skills. It concentrates on children between birth and three years old.

Reality check: teenage fathers speak out /Margi Trapani (1997)

A little book of case studies of teen dads which has been prepared in the hopes preventing teenage pregnancy.

Gemini Summer

Gemini Summer by Iain Lawrence

A historical novel that was disappointing to this historian. The setting while accurate lacked much detail and could have been any small town. Life involved brotherhood, bullies, and the wish for a puppy, but not a particularly happy home. Why was Dad busy digging a fallout shelter in the yard, but not covering it up to prevent accidental injury of the his own children or those in the neighbourhood? Why make the action about relationships, but make the characters feel flat and uninteresting so that events like the space race that were part of the history portrayed feel third hand? A younger brother follows his older brother’s dream, but without the passion of the true space addict so much of the detail gets left out.

Once upon a summer by Janette Oke

Another historical novel about a young man wishing for a dog. I prefer Josh and I am familiar with the farm setting and his imagination is entertaining. One turn off for some readers may be the language which is a regional dialect of English which gives a regional feel to this book. Josh is trying to come to terms with the reality of the changes in his life and family and his changing responsibilities. This is a Christian fiction title so the idea of elders choosing a husband for his aunt who is only few years older.

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Niffenegger tells the story of Henry and Claire a star-crossed couple whose lives are linked by Henry’s unique genetic make-up and two strong personalities. Some would say that this novel is about the science of time travel and its’ effect on the human condition. An equally valid description is that this novel is about a couple growing up together and the many people who come into their lives and how each person deals with their own part in Henry and Claire’s story. Because Niffenegger recognized that this is both Henry and Claire’s story she has both Henry and Claire share that story from their own perspectives which allows the reader to have more information about what each person thinks and feels providing an immediacy to the tale that would being missing otherwise. The reality of this choice is that if Claire and Henry are not together then you only have the knowledge of what is going on with the person who is narrating at the time and no information on what is going on with the person who is not present.

This novel is more appropriate for a mature young adult or adult due to questionable morality on the part of one or more characters. Drugs, theft, and adultery all in the cause of an odd storyline and less than perfect characters.

For another book with genetically linked time-travel go with the Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. This will be a significantly longer read and involves twentieth century medicine in the eighteenth century along with Scottish raiders and British redcoats and romance. Another strongly character based novel this time in the Highlands of Scotland.

For more of an adventure in genetics if the science is what appeals to you in The Time Traveler’s Wife then try James Patterson’s When the Wind Blows. This is the tale of a veternarian and an FBI agent dealing with children with wings. Romance, family and a rescue operation against the lengths to which science will go to push the limits of what can be.