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LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE ARTS

(2004 LIST)

Abelove, Joan Go and Come Back (2002)

Allison, Dorothy Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)                                This fiercely moving, unforgettable first novel tells the story of Ruth Anne Boatwright -- called Bone by her family -- a South Carolina bastard with an annotated birth certificate to tell the tale. Bone's story is inseparable from that of her family, the notorious Boatwright clan.

Alvarez, Julia In the Time of Butterflies (1994)

Set during the waning days of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republica in 1960, this extraordinary novel tells the story the Mirabal sisters, three young wives and mothers who are assassinated after visiting their jailed husbands.

Anderson, Laurie Halse Speak (1999) (YA And)

When Melinda Sordino's friends discover she called the police to quiet a party, they ostracize her, turning her into an outcast -- even among kids she barely knows. But even worse than the harsh conformity of high-school cliques is a secret that you have to hide.

Anderson, M.T. Feed (2002) (YA And)

Spending time partying on the moon and riding around in his "upcar," Titus is an average teen of the future, complete with a computer chip implant -- the "Feed" -- that lets corporate marketers and government agencies broadcast directly into his brain. Then Titus meets Violet, and an anti-Feed hacker shuts down their Feeds for a short time; but when Violet's Feed is seriously damaged, she begins spouting some radical ideas.

 

Bagdasarian, Adam Forgotten Fire (2000) (YA Bag)

In 1915 Vahan Kenderian is living a life of privilege as the youngest son of a wealthy Armenian family in Turkey. This secure world is shattered when some family members are whisked away while others are murdered before his eyes.

Chambers, Aidan Postcards From No Man's Land (2002)

Alternates between two stories--comtemporarily, seventeen-year-old Jacob visits a daunting Amsterdam at the request of his English grandmother--and historically, nineteen-year-old Geertrui relates her experience of British soldiers's attempts to liberate Holland from its German occupation.

Cisneros, Sandra Caramelo (2002) (F Cis) Lala Reyes’ grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl, makers. The striped caramelo rebozo is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala’s possession. The novel opens with the Reyes’ annual car trip–a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels–from Chicago to “the other side”: Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family’s stories, separating the truth from the “healthy lies” that have ricocheted from one generation to the next. We travel from the Mexico City that was the “Paris of the New World” to the music-filled streets of Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties–and, finally, to Lala’s own difficult adolescence in the not-quite-promised land of San Antonio, Texas. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Frank, E.R. Life is Funny (2000)

The lives of a number of young people of different races, economic backgrounds, and family situations living in Brooklyn, New York, become intertwined over a seven year period.

Freymann-Weyr, Garret My Heartbeat (2002)

Foster, Thomas How to Read Literature Like a Professor (2003)

What does it mean when a fictional hero takes a journey?. Shares a meal? Gets drenched in a sudden rain shower? Often, there is much more going on in a novel or poem than is readily visible on the surface — a symbol, maybe, that remains elusive, or an unexpected twist on a character — and there's that sneaking suspicion that the deeper meaning of a literary text keeps escaping you.

Kaplow, Robert Me and Orson Welles (2003)

"This is the story of one week in my life. I was seventeen. It was the week I slept in Orson Welles's pajamas. It was the week I fell in love. And it was the week I changed my middle name - twice."

So begins Me and Orson Welles, a comic coming-of-age novel set against the background of the twenty-two-year-old Orson Welles's debut production at the Mercury Theatre on Broadway. Richard Samuels is the stage struck seventeen-year-old from New Jersey who wanders onto the set one day and gets a small role in Welles's Julius Caesar. His life will never be the same.

 

Kingsolver, Barbara The Bean Trees (1998)Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity for putting down roots. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in apparently empty places.

 

Lamott, Anne Bird by Bird (1995)

Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird is an inspiring and humorous look at the spirituality and sometimes dull reality of writing and the writing life. Lamott offers practical and honest suggestions on how to beat writer's block, find inspiration, or tackle a project that seems overwhelming, all of it wrapped in her warm and often hilarious viewpoint. With lessons in craft, art, and even life, having Bird by Bird on the shelf is like having a fellow writer and friend on hand for whenever you need motivation, inspiration, or even just a chuckle or two.

Mah, Adeline Chinese Cinderella: the True Story of an Unwanted Daughter (1999)(B Mah) A Chinese proverb says, "Falling leaves return to their roots." In Chinese Cinderella, Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph and courage in the face of despair. Adeline's affluent, powerful family considers her bad luck after her mother dies giving birth to her. Life does not get any easier when her father remarries. She and her siblings are subjected to the disdain of her stepmother, while her stepbrother and stepsister are spoiled. Although Adeline wins prizes at school, they are not enough to compensate for what she really yearns for — the love and understanding of her family.

Myers, Walter Dean Monster (1999) (YA Mye)

Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me.

MONSTER

Nye, Naomi Shihab 19 Varieties of Gazelle (2002)

Award-winning poet Naomi Shihab Nye has brought together a collection of her poems about the Middle East, shedding powerful, tender light on a region filled with rich history and much turmoil. Nye, who is of Middle Eastern descent herself, speaks from the heart, capturing an entire culture in strong images -- especially in "Biography of an Armenian Schoolgirl," "Rock," and the poem that gives the anthology its title. Both remarkable and enlightening, this collection of poetry will help foster understanding in young and old alike for an area of the world most of us know only through nightly news broadcasts.

O'Connor, Patricia Woe is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English (1996)Unlike, say, Latin, English is a living language -- and, like all living things, it grows, it changes, it can be messy and confusing. Now the modern grammar classic Woe Is I has grown and changed too. America's beloved grammar guru Patricia T. O'Conner has revisited her indispensable survival guide to the English language, offering fresh insights into our daily struggles with which and that, who and whom, colons and semicolons, and more.

Pullman, Philip The Golden Compass (1996)(SFF Pul)

Reynolds, Sheri A Gracious Plenty (1997)

In the lush and isolated cemetery of a small Southern town, Finch Nobles, the narrator of this inventive novel, tends to the flowers and shrubs that surround the monuments of people who were not known to her while they lived but who in death have become her lifeline. Badly burned in a household accident when she was just four, Finch grows into a courageous and feisty loner. She eschews the pity and awkward stares of the people of her hometown and discovers that if she listens closely enough, she can hear the voices of those who have gone before. Finally, when she speaks, they answer back, telling their stories in a remarkable chorus of regrets, explanations, and insights. But the infant Marcus, son of the town's mayor, died before he learned to speak and can only wail away the hours. The roots of his anguish are revealed in a crescendo of lasting resonance that ties together the outcast Finch, her dead friends, and the living community outside the cemetery's gates.

Sapphire, Ramona Push (1996)

Satrapi, Marjane Persepolis (2002)Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's wise, funny, and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran's last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country.

Sebold, Alice Lucky (1999) (364.15 Seb) One night near the end of her freshman year at Syracuse University, Alice Sebold was raped while walking home through a park. From that experience comes Lucky, an account of the rape and the year that followed it, 12 months during which Sebold tried to readjust to college and family life. Six months after the rape, she spotted her attacker on the street in Syracuse, and thus began the long, arduous task of prosecuting him.

Shakur, Tupac A Rose That Grew From Concrete (1999)

Here now, newly discovered, are Tupac's most honest and intimate thoughts conveyed through the pure art of poetry -- a mirror into his enigmatic life and its many contradictions.

Written in his own hand at the age of nineteen, they embrace his spirit, his energy...and his ultimate message of hope.

 

Smith, AnnaDeveare Fires in the Mirror (1999)

Derived from interviews with a wide range of people who experienced or observed New York's 1991 Crown Heights racial riots, Fires In The Mirror is as distinguished a work of commentary on current Black-White tensions as it is a work of drama.

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