Make ROOM for this Book

Emma Donoghue’s novel Room seems to be everywhere, and—though I wasn’t initially sure that it was my kind of book—I decided that I better give it a try.  Good call!

The book is narrated by Jack, a five-year-old boy held captive with his mother in a very small (11′ x 11′) room.  Jack has spent his entire life within the walls of this room, which holds only a bed, a wardrobe, a table, a stove, a sink, and a toilet.  When Jack’s mother (who is known to the reader only as “Ma”)  was a nineteen-year-old college student, she was abducted by the man Jack calls ”Old Nick,” the man who fathered him.  Shortly after Jack turns five, Ma decides that she can no longer shield her son from the reality of their existence—and that she can no longer endure that existence.  (I’ll stop there.  I don’t want to reveal too much about the plot!)

When I first started the novel, I wasn’t sure how the author could sustain her premise.  An entire novel set in one room?  Told by a five-year-old narrator?  Told by a narrator with extremely limited knowledge of his past and his world?  But she definitely succeeds!  Room is by turns an interesting character study, a riveting suspense story, and an intensely emotional journey. 

 

Looking for a Way Out

When I first got to Progress, it freaked me out to be locked in a room and unable to get out.  But after a while, when you got to thinking about it, you knew nobody could get in, either.

Reese’s father is dead, his mother is a drug addict, and his older brother is running the streets.  And he is serving his second year in Progress, a juvenile detention center.  For ten days each month, Reese is allowed to leave the center to participate in a work-release program.  He sweeps floors and empties trash cans at a nursing home, where he meets Mr. Hooft, an elderly man who is able to offer some insight and advice.

The latest novel by Walter Dean Myers offers hope for its protagonist, but it recognizes that there are no easy answers.  If you liked Myers’s award-winning Monster, this is a good follow-up.

 

What is a Super School?

Waiting for Superman is the companion book to the much-ballyhooed documentary about public education in the United States.  (I haven’t seen it yet; I’ll probably catch it when it comes out on DVD.)  The book is really a collection of 12 essays by various players in the field of education:  public school superintendents, charter school founders, union leaders, parent group advocates, creators of educational foundations and think-tanks.  Each author addresses problems in the current educational system and presents some very general (and not, therefore, especially useful) solutions.

I wouldn’t say that this book is particularly “super,” but I’ll still check out the movie.

 

YA Titles Worth your Time

A friend recently recommended Nikki Grimes’s Bronx Masquerade—and now it’s a novel that I heartily recommend to many of my freshman readers.

When Mr. Ward, an English teacher in the Bronx, invites his students to share original poetry in a weekly “open mic” class, his students begin to understand that preconceived notions about their peers are not always true.  As students stand in front of the class to read their poems, they discover that they have more in common than they ever suspected.

Angela Johnson’s Sweet, Hereafter is the final book in the Heaven trilogy (which includes the novels Heaven and The First Part Last).  The main character, Sweet, moves out of her family home and practically drops out of school, but she finds comfort in her relationship with Curtis, a neighbor from her childhood who has recently returned from the war in Iraq.

Sweet, Hereafter isn’t as moving as The First Part Last, but I think that it will still appeal to fans of the Heaven series.