Greetings from Nowhere by Barbara O'Connor

This year's list of Rebecca Caudill nominees was deep and varied, and it appealed to readers.  One book I was afraid would go unnoticed was Barbara O'Connor's Greetings from Nowhere.  Why might it have gone unnoticed, or even avoided?  The cover.  Middle school students can be all about image.  The cover was a bit juvenile for some.  I'm glad, though, the nature of the story outweighed the cover. 

Aggie, Willow, Kirby, and Loretta, four wandering souls, all come together at the Sleepy Time Motel, a rundown shell of its former self, in the midst of various life-altering circumstances.  Aggie, the elderly, widowed owner of the motel decides to sell because she can't maintain the property since the death of her beloved husband.  Willow, a thoughtful and sensitive girl, is uprooted by her father, Clyde, after her mother abruptly leaves the family.  For Clyde, purchase of the Sleepy Time Motel is a new lease on life.  Kirby, a juvenile miscreant, is being carted off to military school by his insensitive mother when their car breaks down.  They barely make it on foot to the Sleepy Time.  Loretta, the adopted daughter of loving parents, arrives at the Sleepy Time Motel as she and her parents tour potential tourist sites her recently-deceased birth mother may have visited. 

Each character searches for relief and clarity.  Addie second guesses her decision to sell.  Willow worries that her mother will never find her if she and her father move.  Kirby just wants to be noticed by his parents, who spend more time arguing than parenting.  Loretta, although very happy and quite content with her adoptive parents, wants to know her past, so discovering her deceased mother's identity is paramount.  Their coming together at the Sleepy Time is handled both realistically by O'Connor, the author.  All four don't magically change just because they come into each others' lives.  Kirby continues his moody and sullen ways.  Addie can't quite break the haze that has fallen over her life since her husband's death.  Willow makes her way around the motel indignantly.  Loretta is happy-go-lucky in the face of the others' troubles.  But all four manage to help each other, either directly or indirectly, come to grips.

Greetings from Nowhere is a not about any one particular place; nowhere, for these characters, was a state of flux.  No matter where they were, they felt lost.  Coming together at the Sleepy Time Motel helped them gain their bearings and locate themselves. 

Far North by Will Hobbs

Over the last few months, I've become a fan of Will Hobbs.  When you read his books, you are transferred, through his writing, to the various settings in which his stories occur.  Take Me to the River made me feel like I was white water rafting down the Rio Grande.  Leaving Protection gave me the same feel I get while watching Deadliest Catch.  My most recent Will Hobbs reading experience, Far North, took me to the Northwest Territory, rekindled the feelings I experienced while reading Gary Paulson's Hatchet, and provided a roller coaster ride of emotions from cover to cover.  If you are a fan of action-adventure and vicarious trips to isolated locales, Will Hobbs is the author you've been looking for.

Hobbs' protagonist, Gabe, is 15 years old, and he's new to the Northwest Territory. His father works in a diamond digging operation, but Gabe would like to be closer to him.  Originally from Texas, Gabe's mother's death and his father's work location in the NWT caused him to live with his grandparents.  This was not a bad thing, although Gabe yearned more and more to be near his father.  An agreement is worked out, and Gabe enrolls at a boarding school within striking range of his father.  Aside from some acclimation issues, he's fine.

Then, the bush pilot who flew him to the NTW offers a site seeing trip while piloting passengers to a remote village.  Gabe accepts.  While landing on the Nahanni River, the pontoon plane stalls and the passengers are forced to feverishly paddle to shore before the plane goes over Elizabeth Falls.  They're trapped in the middle of nowhere with few supplies, no radio, and few prospects for rescue.  Although a mayday call went out, the radio had been acting up during their flight, so they are not sure.  They set a rescue fire, but deep down, you can tell they hold out very little hope that help will come.

The bulk of the story is about Gabe and his roommate, Raymond, learning from Raymond's great uncle, Johnny Raven, how to survive in the bush.  Raymond and Johnny were passengers on the bush plane for different reasons.  Johnny had just undergone a medical procedure that could not have occurred in his home village.  Raymond had quit school, to Gabe's surprise, and was heading back to his home village.  These three characters represent generational differences, even though two generations really stand between them.  Johnny represents those who were raised with physical struggles just to stay alive; he's a member of the subsistence generation of the NWT.  Raymond and Gabe represent our generation, one of technology, quick results, and little perseverance. 

At first, Raymond and Gabe don't listen to Johnny.  He's frail, old, deliberate, and quiet.  Gabe can't understand how Johnny can move so methodically as temperatures plummet and the warmth of a fire stands between them and survival.  But Johnny gets the fire going.  His calm demeanor and patience during trying times is a lesson to Gabe and Raymond.  Slowly, both begin to see the wisdom Johnny holds.  At the same time, you get the sense that Johnny, although aged and in poor health, revels in his new role as mentor to the younger generation; this is his opportunity to reconnect and teach them the values he was raised to follow. 

Far North will remind you of Hatchet, although for the protagonist stranded in the middle of nowhere, Gabe and Raymond find comfort in Johnny's guidance.  Brian, the protagonist of Hatchet, could have used his own Johnny.

Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey

Jasper Jones is just a teenager, but he's already the town outcast.  If something goes wrong in his small Australian town, his name pops up first, whether he did it or not.  One night, he appears at Charlie Bucktin's window and asks for help.  Prior to this, the two never crossed paths.  Charlie, a skinny, glasses-wearing, book-reading geek, decides to assist Jasper.  Little does he know that Jasper is about to show him the hanging corpse of a girl with whom Jasper was involved.  As is the case with all wrong-doing in town, Jasper is sure to be blamed.  He would rather take his chances hiding the corpse and find the killer himself.  Charlie agrees to help, but his conscience hammers at him every moment afterward.

Charlie is an interesting character.  The son of an English teacher and stay-at-home mother, he reads voraciously and yearns to be the graceful and rugged hero he reads about so often.  He is most taken with taken with Atticus Finch in His father shuts himself up in his study, where, Charlie believes, he is writing a novel.  His mother, disenchanted and hard-edged, never seems to find her stride as a housewife. 

Complicating matters, Charlie is charmed by the dead girl's younger sister, so the burden he carries weighs quite heavily upon him. Should he go to the authorities, he betrays Jasper.  Should he keep the secret to himself, he betrays the girl's family and the law.  He's paralyzed by the tension of these extremes.

Silvey has written sharp dialogue that might contain a few too many F-bombs for your comfort, but I found his use of language realistic.  Many boys talk this way; many boys are also just like Charlie - sensitive on the inside but reticent to act on those sensitive sensibilities when pressed.  Therefore, Charlie is a passive observer to his parents dysfunctional marriage, Charlie's outcast status, and his own feelings toward Eliza, the dead girl's younger sister. 

The story is almost stolen though, by a secondary character, Jeffrey Lu, whose Vietnamese ancestry makes him an even bigger outcast than Jasper.  Jeffrey, a cricket fanatic, puts up with such palpable grief, you have no other choice than to root for him, particularly as he fights to play for the town's youth cricket team.  At times, Jeffrey and Charlie's dialogue is so engaging, revealing, and hilarious, you're compelled to reread it. 

Like his favorite novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, Charlie continually looks for the Atticus Finch character to reveal himself as the drama within his town unfolds.  Through the Laura Wishart disappearance, his parents conflict, his feelings for Eliza, and racial bigotry toward Jeffrey and his family, Charlie seeks the bold, adult presence that will lead the way.  At times, he feels as though it might be his father.  He just wants some guidance, but he like all young adult protagonists, he is often left to his own devices. 

Most reviews place the reading level as 12 and up.  The story is wonderful, the dialogue is snappy, but there is a fair amount of swearing done by the characters.  Although I found the dialogue to be quite realistic, some might be offended.  I hope not.  It would be a shame for someone to avoid a story because of some realistically-placed dialogue from the mouths of teens.

Fracture by Megan Miranda

If you had only one day to live, what would you do?  That's the question Megan Miranda asks in her wonderful young adult novel Fracture.  After falling through the ice, spending 11 minutes below the surface, passing away, and then being brought back to life, doctors believe Delaney Maxwell will live  unresponsively, in a vegetative states, for the remainder of her days.  CT scans confirm the widespread death of her brain tissue.  There's no hope.  Then she wakes up.  It's a miracle her doctors can't explain, and it's an event her parents see as a blessing, although they are more protective, repeatedly saying they've lost her once and they don't want to lose her again.

As Delaney's doctor continues running tests to pinpoint the medical reasons behind her recovery, she begins having strange sensations that draw her (like a Geiger counter to radiation) to those nearing the end of life.  Initially, her doctor chalks these episodes up to seizures, but he continues testing Delaney until fatigue sets in and her parents insist on taking her home.  But the "seizures" don't stop once she gets home.  They continue and lead her to someone else, Troy, who is saddled with the same supernatural power, or sixth sense.  But their similarities end there.  Delaney sees her sixth sense as a means to save people, while Troy sees his six sense as a call to help people bring closure to their lives.  Symbolically, Delaney represents the half-full glass, while Troy represents the half-empty glass. 

Once home, Delaney's mother wants things to go back to normal, but that's out of the question.  Delaney used to be the dutiful daughter, but this experience has changed her forever.  Beyond her internal conflict with these new powers and her external conflict with Troy, this smoldering sub conflict allows us to understand Delaney much more thoroughly.  Delaney's conflict with her mother repeatedly propels her toward Troy, forcing her to confront how she will handle the powers that don't seem to be diminishing.  It doesn't help that Delaney is at a loss attempting to explain her erratic behavior.  After all, who would believe she is attracted to people knocking on death's door. 

This book will remind you a lot of Kimberly Derting's The Body Finder, although Fracture has a different moral implication - the way in which we live our lives.  Repeatedly, Delaney asks peripheral characters what they would do if they had only one day to live.  At one point, her best friend, Decker, says, "I don't play those games," to which she responds, "It's not a game."  All too often, we preach Carpe Diem, but then we lose sight of living in the moment by worrying about things out of our control.  Megan Miranda, I believe, is pointing us beyond that trite expression.  Delaney nearly lost her life, and she now appears to cherish what she has, although her newly-acquired sixth sense is a constant source of conflict.  However, conflicts and all, she must come to realize that you can't run away from what makes you special.

Quantifying the Unquantifiable

Not too many years ago, I found myself in a conversation about writing with my wife and father-in-law.  Dinner had been consumed and the dishes were being cleared.  My wife, through her profession as a Public Policy Analyst and Research Director, writes constantly.  My father-in-law, a well-respected Old Testament scholar and seminary professor, has written books, articles, and position papers for publication for approximately 50 years.  He has not slowed down one bit in retirement.  When I asked them how they would teach writing, they both stopped talking.  You could see the wheels turning, but they weren't saying anything.  Eventually, both began talking and agreed that writing is nurtured and personally constructed. 

Writing is personal; it really can't be quantified, which brings me to the constant internal conflict I battle all too often.  We, in the teaching profession, attempt to quantify writing.  Rather than continue working on a piece until it's polished to a proud shine, ready for a fluent read, and filled with just the right details and pacing for an audience, we set a deadline, attach a rubric, and try to fit a huge square peg in to a narrow round hole.  The more I attempt to create a useful rubric, the more I feel this way.  I can't be the only one.  Can I?

Over the last several years, I've gravitated to the philosophies of Jeff Anderson, Kelly Gallagher, and Penny Kittle.  All three believe in authentic writing opportunities, student topic choice, in-class writing time, and access to peer and teacher conferences.  In essence, they see writing as a mentorship or apprenticeship.  Anderson does a marvelous job of focusing writing instruction at the sentence level, using model sentence structures from high-interest young adult and middle reading novels. Gallagher's expertise lies in his willingness to model writing, good or bad, in front of students.  He urges teachers to do the same, remarking that we need to consider themselves the best writers in the room and it's our duty to foster a writing apprenticeship.  Penny Kittle believes much the same as Gallagher.  While Gallagher and Kittle are high school teachers, many of their practices can be adapted to fit the middle school language arts classroom.  Anderson, a middle school teacher, makes his position very clear - writing, at the middle school level, is about tethering varied and thoughtfully-written sentences together to form meaning on larger, more complex ideas.  Gallagher and Kittle focus on longer pieces.

As I've read their work, I've been struck by on thing - the lack of time they devote to writing about assessment .  Don't get me wrong - I don't believe they ignore assessment; they simply place more emphasis on continuous feedback and revision, the elements upon which good writers rely for success.  I envy the writing workshops they facilitate, and I hope, someday, to reach the same level of expertise.  But something keeps getting in the way - grades.  Rather than read constructive comments, students have been programmed from a very early age to cut to the chase, to isolate the grade, and to move on.  Writing instruction, as it is currently constructed, encourages students to jump through hoops (rubrics) and narrowly focus their sights on one thing (the grade), rather than view the process as a long-term endeavor.  This is frustrating because it means I have to break students of their grade-focused habits.  It's not their fault.  It's the system's fault.  And it needs to change.  We're all culpable. 

Anyone who knows me knows that I like to keep things simple.  I tend to believe that readers get better by reading and writers get better by writing.  It's the coach in me.  So, if you don't mind, I would like to take the focus off of the writing grade and place the emphasis on the craft of writing.  So far, I believe this has worked in reading.  Many of my students have come to enjoy reading because they are provided choice, in-class reading time, and access to the books they most enjoy.  They are also expected to write a great deal about what they read.  Some of my colleagues, I believe, see this as wasteful and irresponsible.  I disagree.  If some of my students didn't read in class, they would rarely, if ever, read at home.  There are either too many distractions, or reading models are not present.  Students are very clear and truthful about this, so I do what I can do while they are in my presence.  I model the habits of a thoughtful, engaged reader.  I feel like students appreciate this, and they appreciate the time to read in class; they also, I believe, appreciate the individual conferences we have at the conclusion of mini-lessons, when I roll my chair around the room, stopping at desks to discuss the latest book, whey they picked it up, what the protagonist might be after, or the author's purpose for writing.  Running a reader's workshop affords me this; my conversations with students are useful, productive, and help me to differentiate and reteach all at once. 

I propose that we cease attempting to quantify the unquantifiable.  As soon as I publish this post, I'll continue to think about it.  I might revise or edit it, then repost it.  Writers become attached to their writing and never really let it go.  At least that's what authors have told me during their visits to my school.  I want my students to have that same feeling of ownership and revisit their writing.  I'm going to do my best to not let grades or the current system spoil that. 

A Misnomer

In the book Tuesdays with Morrie, a yearly read-aloud in my language arts classes, Mitch Albom, the author, admits that Morrie, his former profession struggling with ALS, enjoys naming things.  When I read Tuesdays with Morrie, I often feel like I'm wasting class time until we debrief our classroom efforts at the end of the year.  Only then d I realize this read-aloud is a favorite of many because it teaches life lessons.  Albom's story also allows for many introspective writing opportunities.

At the conclusion of the book, I typically ask students to isolate one individual in their lives, someone who has taught them valuable lessons for which they will forever be grateful.  I make it clear that this individual does not have to be a teacher.  In fact, we broaden the definition of "teacher" to include anyone who has maintained a sustained, positive impact on our lives.  These "teachers" can be parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, or siblings.  Once these "teachers" have been isolated, we write letters, essays, or poems discussing their impact.  The truly brave drop them in the mail. :)  This year, we've taken this writing activity one step further by nominating these "teachers" for the Barnes and Nobel "My Favorite Teacher" writing contest.  In 500 words or fewer, students must make a case for their "teacher."

After I modeled the introduction to my own piece of writing (you don't know who you are), I wheeled myself around the classroom for writing conferences.  These writing conferences, which occur to infrequently, allow me to discuss a piece of writing with a student.  There's no better way to teach writing than in a one-on-one writing conference.  However, these conferences reversed our roles and reinforced a valuable lesson I learned long ago. 

Kids identify with and respect models of good behavior and their altruistic actions more than they identify with and respect classroom teachers who hand them worksheets, focus on "the grade," and fail to cultivate a personal relationship.  In other words, each student I conferenced with communicated the importance of the positive, consistent adult models in their lives.  Of the 15 writing conferences I held yesterday, 13 students wrote about someone other than a classroom teacher.  The majority of those being written to were parents.  I appreciated their perspectives and commended them on writing about the important adults in their, rather than the teachers who occupy their classrooms.  Even though not a single student wrote about me (I often joke that I'm an acquired taste who generally receives delayed gratification in this area), I found this refreshing because the theme of their efforts confronts us with our greatest challenge.

So the question remains: Are we teachers, or are we models?  According to students, models win.  Each student, in a matter of speaking, told me that these important "teachers" in their lives showed them how do approach tasks with the correct attitude, encouraged them to succeed, and didn't accept half-hearted efforts.  As we conferenced, students supported and fortified the work many teachers carry out when they act as classroom models and fellow learners.  

Yesterday's writing conferences bolstered the volumes of current research and best practices urging teachers to read and write with our students.  Don't tell them to write and check your e-mail or grade assignments.  Show them how you draft an introduction, book-talk young adult novels you've enjoyed, and write journal entries or literary letters with them and to them.  Avoid the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do practices that sour so many on our profession.

Accomplice by Eireann Corrigan

Chloe and Finn have been best friends since Chloe’s family moved to a small New Jersey farming town where Finn and her family have lived for generations.  Anxious they haven’t done enough to earn a spot in a prestigious college, they hatch a plan to fake Chloe’s disappearance.  Finn must stay behind and observe the toll it takes on Chloe’s parents, her classmates, and the town.  As the drama drags on, Finn begins to have second thoughts, while Chloe moves forward, unaffected.  

First and foremost, this is a story about unintended consequences.  While they planned, Chloe and Finn thought of nothing but themselves.  Coming in a close second is Corrigan's commentary, without much subtlety, regarding the ridiculous hoops college applicants must jump through in order to make their higher education dreams come to fruition. 

As the story progresses and Finn shares her first-person narrative perspective, you  begin to see cracks in her friendship with Chloe, but you can never quite tell if these cracks are the result of stress, Chloe's isolated view of her disappearance, or Finn finally seeing Chloe in a different light.  As Finn's guilt builds and she wants to go to the authorities and end the entire hoax, Chloe becomes even more determined to follow through with her heroic reappearance and leverage her public status during the college application process.  At one point, Finn even becomes agitated just thinking about Chloe parlaying this ruse into a college essay about overcoming adversity that would surely grab an admissions officer's attention.

Corrigan's central concept - unintended consequences - makes perfect sense.  Our rash behavior, fueled by our incessant quest for our 15 minutes of fame, leads us down many paths that we often can't counteract.  Through Finn's interactions with her own family, Chloe's family, her classmates, Chloe's boyfriend, the police, and a missingt persons television show, she adeptly delivers the lesson, one you hope Chloe will also learn.  The decisions we make affect more individual lives, in the short and long-term, than we can truly comprehend.

Eireann Corrigan has done a masterful job constructing this story, one which could have been littered with potholes.  Her attention to detail, however, left me empty-handed as I looked for them.  Prior to reading Accomplice, I wasn't at all familiar with Corrigan's work.  That's about to change.