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Louisiana, a supporting character from DiCamillo’s well loved Raymie Nightingale, tells her stand-alone story from a first person account of the days after she is taken from her Florida home by her granny, losing contact with friends and pets, and discovering that her entire life’s story is a giant lie.She writes in a blend of […]
Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes has 8 nominations from Heavy Medal readers and is described by reviewers as powerful, gripping, important, and timely. It is definitely all that, and then some: disturbing, harsh, emotionally challenging, and improbable (?). From the first page when readers see through Jerome’s eyes his small, dead, blood stained body, with all the details (eyes wide […]
Has a short story collection contributed by more than a dozen authors ever appeared on the Newbery roster? I don’t believe so. There have been some gold and silver stickers affixed to the covers of folk story collections. For example, 1925 winner Tales from Silver Lands by Charles Finger (of South American folk tales,) 1948 honor The Cow-Tail Switch, and […]
In November, we are asking our readers to Nominate TWO more titles (and two in December as well) following the actual Newbery Committee schedule and procedure. If you already nominated three titles in October, nominate two now — Do not duplicate your own titles but you are free to nominate titles already put in by others. If you did not […]
As verse novel goes — The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo is near perfection. So many high caliber poems one after another with surprising, haunting, beautiful, raw, and revealing lines. If I were to present it at a Newbery Committee meeting, I would definitely recite some of the following: p. 24 Maybe because I can’t keep the […]
The moment I opened this book and started reading, I knew it would be a book that divides readers’ reactions. The southern dialect spelled as spoken could throw some readers off, even though I appreciate it quite a bit: being able to “hear” Little Charlie’s and other characters’ voices more vividly due to spellings such as “seent,” […]
Scott McCloud, a well respected expert about Comics and Graphic Novels, declares, “Pictures ARE text” and “Pictures ARE meaning” in an interview (17:45) and that they are not just illustrations in a novel of words. I already cited these words in a comment about Shannon Hale’s Real Friends in January and urged Heavy Medal readers to expand the meaning […]
First off, we’d like to thank all of you who have nominated titles for our future discussion. The number of comments is robust! That leads us to express our puzzlement: why so few of you have joined the book discussion? Too busy? Not inspired? Book discussion seems trivial compared to what’s transpiring on the national […]
It’s almost like we deliberately tried to start our book discussion this year on the darkest notes. Two novels Steven discussed both feature dead mothers/parents. The two titles I’m going to present in this post also have dead mothers — not only that, both mothers died giving birth to our protagonists. Even more, both books […]
A few days ago, the long listed titles for this year’s National Book Award Young People’s Literature category were unveiled. How does our monthly suggestions list compare? What are some common threads that you see? Here’s a quick recap and description: Out of the ten titles, Heavy Medal readers have strongly supported Boots on the Ground (nonfiction), Truth as Told by […]
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