November links

Help Tim Burton write a story!

Tim Burton, darkly creative film writer/director/producer known for films such as The nightmare before Christmas and the version of Charlie and the chocolate factory that starred Johnny Depp, is writing a short story between November 22nd and December 6th using Tweets submitted by Twitter members. This type of story creation is called Exquisite Corpse, or Cadavre Exquis, and is written line by line: one contributor writes a sentence, then passes it on to another writer who adds another sentence, and so on.

Burton's Cadavre Exquis begins as follows: "Stainboy, using his obvious expertise, was called in to investigate mysterious glowing goo on the gallery floor." As of this morning, there are 19 sentences contributed by members of the Twitter community, and there is still over a week to join in. Have a go!

Review: A Mango-shaped space

A Mango-shaped space by Wendy Mass

For her entire life, 13-year-old Mia has seen colours and shapes that nobody else can. For Mia, every noise, letter, and number has a specific colour and shape. In fact, she didn't name her cat Mango because of his orange eyes, but because his purr is the same orange colour as the flesh of a mango. It sounds like magic, but ever since the day in third grade when she wrote numbers on the blackboard in their correct colours and was called a freak by classmates, she has kept this a secret and tried her best to be "normal."

When she starts failing her algebra and Spanish classes because the colours she sees make it difficult for her to understand, Mia tells her family. After seeing a doctor and a psychotherapist, Mia finally meets someone who can tell her what she needs to know: that she has something called synesthesia and she's not the only one. This opens a whole new world to Mia, but unfortunately there are prices to pay.

My initial impression of A Mango-shaped space was that Mia's voice was too old for someone who is 13. While I felt that Wendy Mass's descriptions of the colours and shapes Mia sees were very effective and put me inside her head, the occasional phrase in the first couple of chapters would take me out of the story. I just couldn't imagine Mia actually saying of her older sister "[she] dropped me like a bag of piping-hot microwave popcorn" (p. 7). Fortunately, this impression only applied to the early, more descriptive chapters and soon I was swept up in Mia's experience.

This is essentially a coming-of-age book that addresses friendship, a first kiss, family relationships, and grief. However, it is framed within Mia's discovery of synesthesia and figuring out how to deal with it and people's reactions to it and the fact that she kept it a secret for so long. It was remarkable how Wendy Mass described Mia's experience of synesthesia throughout the book, and it certainly increased my understanding of a rare and almost unheard-of human condition.

4.5 stars out of 5 for A Mango-shaped space.

Read a letter that a 16-year-old boy wrote to Wendy Mass about how reading this book made him realize that he had synesthesia, too.

GSA Awareness Week, November 22-26

Over the past 3 years, I have made a concerted effort to expand the library's collection of resources with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning material and characters. The collection now includes 30 novels (with more on the way) and 3 nonfiction books, and these will be displayed in the school lobby during GSA Awareness Week. Below is a small selection with the entire list displayed at the bottom of this post.

Freak show by James St. James is about Billy Bloom, who moves in with his father in Florida and the people at his new high school don't know how to respond to him, from his fabulous outfits to the fact that his "sexuality is still largely theoretical" (p.11). Unfortunately, their responses include incessant and increasingly brutal bullying, and while Billy's experiences are unfortunately commonplace his perseverance is truly inspiring.

Down to the bone by Mayra Lazara Dole tells the story of Laura, also living in Florida, who gets kicked out of Catholic high school and her home after one of her teachers reads a love note from Laura's girlfriend of 2 years in front of the class. Over the course of the next year, Laura finds comfort and support from friends old and new while she discovers her sexuality.

For a novel that shows the flip side of the homophobic-high-school coin, try Boy meets boy by David Levithan wherein Paul deals with his break-up with Noah and the school's star quarterback is a drag queen.

The full spectrum is a collection of nonfiction essays and poems written by queer young adults, all aged 13-23.

Online resources: I have over a dozen websites collected on the library's Delicious account, including the following:

I'm from Driftwood - Every day, new true stories are posted from lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered individuals about their experiences.

ItGetsBetterProject.com "is a place where young people who are gay, lesbian, bi, or trans can see with their own eyes how love and happiness can be a reality in their future. It's a place where LGBT adults can share the stories of their lives, and straight allies can add their names in solidarity and help spread our message of hope."

PRHS's glbtq book montage

PRHS's favorite books »

Brand new books

A load of books arrived today, and several have been borrowed in the 3 hours since I put them on the new book display shelf.

Fiction

The demon's lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan

The crossbones (Skeleton Creek #3) by Patrick Carman

Beautiful creatures by Kami Garcia

Paper towns by John Green

The enemy by Charlie Higson

Dairy queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Before I fall by Lauren Oliver

Marcelo in the real world by Francisco X. Stork

Cracked up to be by Courtney Summers
Lips touch: three times by Laini Taylor

The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey

Nonfiction

A visual dictionary of architecture by Francis D. K. Ching

Why dogs eat poop: & other useless or gross information about the animal kingdom by Francesca Gould

Photojojo!: insanely great photo projects and DIY ideas by Amit Gupta

Lights on Broadway: a treasury of theatre from A to Z by Harriet Ziefert

Winterdance: the fine madness of running the Iditarod by Gary Paulsen

Iraqigirl: diary of a teenage girl in Iraq edited by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field

October links

Most frequently borrowed books, part 2

Almost two years ago I did a post on the most frequently borrowed books at the PRHS library and according to the blog statistics, it is the page that gets the most hits. So I thought I'd do another and, lo and behold, the most borrowed book is the same.

The books below have all been borrowed since the beginning of this school year, and the bold number is how many times the book has been borrowed, and any book with a star is an Orca Soundings book.

1. *Saving Grace by Darlene Ryan - 33.

2. *Dead-end job by Vicki Grant - 25.

3. Trials of death by Darren Shan - 22.

4. Exit point by Laura Langston - 19.

5. Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy - 18.

6. Tie: *Home invasion by Monique Polak, *Tough trails by Irene Morck, and Lord Loss by Darren Shan - 17.

9. *Thunderbowl by Lesley Choyce - 16.

10. *Zee's way by Kristin Butcher - 15.


As a comparison the top 15 all-time, doesn't-matter-when-they-were-last-borrowed Most Borrowed Books are below:

1. *Saving Grace by Darlene Ryan - 33.

2. New moon by Stephenie Meyer - 29.

3. Guinness World Records 2006 - 26.

4. *Dead-end job by Vicki Grant - 25.

5. Tie: *The trouble with Liberty by Kristin Butcher and Trials of death by Darren Shan - 22.

7. *Snitch by Norah McClintock - 21.

8. Tie: *Bang by Norah McClintock and Uglies by Scott Westerfeld - 20.

10. Tie: *I.D. by Vicki Grant and *Exit point by Laura Langston - 19.

12. Tie: Tithe by Holly Black, Cirque du Freak: the saga of Darren Shan by Darren Shan, Ninth key (Mediator series) by Meg Cabot, and Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy - 18.


Orca Soundings are still far and away the most popular books in the library, but I find it interesting that all the non-Orca books on the list (except Guinness World Records) are fantasies or paranormal romances.

The true size of Africa

This image made the rounds online last week and since I love my maps (especially map games), I printed off a full colour copy with data to put on the library door. It really puts into perspective how large a landmass Africa really is!

The original post I saw was on Stephen's Lighthouse, and here is the full version of the image (with supporting data) by Kai Krause.

Intense books

A couple of students were in the library recently looking for "intense books," which they defined as being edge-of-your-seat emotional reading but not particularly scary in the usual horror sense. I found a few books for them right off the bat (The rules of survival, Such a pretty girl), but after they left more and more books kept coming to mind. The list I have thus far is below, with book cover images linking to the PRHS library catalogue.

New links in September

New links

The value of school libraries

Stephen Abram has written a brief post on his blog about the value of school libraries, with links to several studies that provide data on this topic. A brief quote:

...students, who attend schools with well-funded, properly-stocked libraries managed by qualified teacher-librarians, have higher achievement, improved literacy and greater success at the post-secondary level.

The post and studies are well worth a read for librarians, teachers and administrators.

New links

Booklist: Dystopian novels

Dystopian fiction addresses possible futures of human society and the planet earth, and it's usually pretty grim. One example that many students are familiar with is The Giver by Lois Lowry, and PRHS has a number of other dystopian novels available as well.

**April 9, 2010: updated to include new books and websites.

Feed by M. T. Anderson

The handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The Hunger Games (read my review) and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

The city of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

Gone by Michael Grant

Green angel by Alice Hoffman (read my review)

Devil on my back by Monica Hughes

Brave new world by Aldous Huxley

The giver by Lois Lowry

The declaration by Gemma Malley

The secret under my skin by Janet McNaughton

The knife of never letting go by Patrick Ness (read my review)

Life as we knew it by Susan Beth Pfeffer (read my review)

How I live now by Meg Rosoff

The forest of hands and teeth by Carrie Ryan

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Skinned by Robin Wasserman

Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld (read my review)

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

Clicking on the linked title will take you to the PRHS library catalogue so you can see if the book is checked in.

More dystopian booklists:

Best dystopian novels for teens
Dystopian fiction
Dystopian fiction for youth
Dystopias booklist (includes adult novels)
Top 10 dystopian novels list