PRHS Library: November 2010

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

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!

Monday, November 22, 2010

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.

Friday, November 19, 2010

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."