5. Historical Fiction or Fact: Moon Over Manifest

            Citation:

            Vanderpool, Clare. Moon Over Manifest. New York: Random House, 2010. eBook.

Annotation:

12 year old Abilene Tucker is sent to live in Manifest, Kansas with pastor Shady after injuring her leg, while dangling it out of a boxcar.  Deprived of her hobo traveling life style, she spends the summer discovering what happened in Manifest in the year 1918.

Justification for Nomination:

Abilene is exploring who she is and where she belongs.  She has never had a place to call home and has lived a nomadic lifestyle.  This town is the place her father used to call home and she wants to explore the foot prints he left behind.  After hearing the story about the mysterious Jinx and his friend Ned she learns more about the town and begins to feel like it is home. 

In the writing style of the author was very descriptive about the details of the setting and the characters.  One very vivid description that was given was about Miss Sadie’s badly welded fence with the word “perdition” on the gate.  Shady was a character that was described very well and more description was probably put into him because he is very strange, running a church and an illegal bar out of his home.

The narrative in this particular story is interesting because it had two different styles.  The first style is the first person narrative from Abilene’s point of view.  The second narrative style happens when Miss Sadie is telling the story about Jinx.  This second narrative style is third person omniscient.  It felt like a very interesting way to tell this story.

Abilene grows as a character because she tries to distance herself from relationships with people and at the end of the book she has learned about the people of town and embraced it as her home.  She also discovers and accepts the reason why her father left her alone in Manifest.  The plot for the story is solving a mystery in 1936 about what happened to the town in 1918.  The most thrilling parts of the story take place in the telling of what happened in 1918. 

Genre: 

Historical Fiction / Mystery            

4. Biography, Autobiography, or Memoir: Warriors Don't Cry

Citation:

            Beals, Melba P. Warriors Don't Cry. Old Saybrook: Tantor eBooks, 2011. eBook.

Annotation:

This book is a memoir by Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the nine black students sent to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.  She spent her entire junior year in high school facing insults and brutal physical attacks simply because of her race.

Justification for Nomination:  

This book is organized in the order in which it happens.  The author starts out by describing some of the racist things that happened to her as a child to set the tone for the book.  After Melba discusses her childhood she talks about how and why she signed up to be an integrator at Central High School.  The book ends by discussing how they ended up not being able to attend school the next year because the governor had all schools in Little Rock closed down to prevent the black students from attending another year.

The author claims that this book is very accurate.  She mentioned that she changed some people’s names to protect their identities and conversations have been re-created.  The information from the book comes from the diary entries that she wrote at the time, her and her family’s memories, and news clippings.  So it appears that the author has to the best of her ability made this book as accurate as possible for first being published thirty six years after the event. 

Melba does a really nice job backing up the events of the book with relevant news paper headlines.  With the headlines she gives the paper it was from and the date of the headline.  Another primary source that she uses are direct passages of her diary, that was written at the time of the events. 

This story has a lot of depth to it, because of the intricate details of events in the book.  The narrator’s voice in the book worked very well and was especially good at expressing the feelings and emotions that the events created.  Readability was very easy for this book, especially because Melba tried to write the book from the perspective of her 15 year old self. 

This book has a high appeal for young adult readers because it can inspire them to make it through very difficult social situations.  Melba was so mistreated by her classmates that for most of the school year she had an armed guard from the military following her to keep her from being killed by other students.  These situations can inspire students to get through their awkward social situations.  Another way this book can be appealing to the young adult readers is that it can help create empathy toward people from minority groups. 

Genre:

Memoir / Civil Rights  

      

      

3. Realistic/"Edgy"/Problem Novel: Hate List

Citation:

            Brown, Jennifer. Hate List. New York: Little, Brown Books, 2009. eBook.

Annotation:

Last May Valarie’s boyfriend Nick went on a shooting rampage at school.  Now a new school year is starting and Valerie has to deal with the suspicion of her fellow classmates as she tries to rebuild her life. 

Justification for Nomination:

This book explores coming of age as Valarie discovers who she really is.  Difficult parents, peers, and personal issues are some of the many things she has to work through.  This book is written from Valarie’s point of view.  It is in the first person and that works really well for the book because it lets the reader know all her personal thoughts.  The book is about Valarie’s personal journey to healing from the trauma of the shooting and the subsequent blame placed on her by survivors, because of that her personal thoughts are very important to the story.

Valarie grows as a person because of her experience.  At first everything is about her and her narrow view of the world.  She thought that she hated the popular kids, but realizes there is more to them than she thought.  Valarie also learns to accept the break-up of her parents’ marriage.

Valarie engages in an interesting dialogue with Jessica the girl that tries to befriend her.  Interesting and open dialogue is also experienced with her therapist.  This book seems to have much more of an internal monologue than actual dialogue for the most part. 

The plot of the story follows Valarie’s reflections on the shooting and her time with her boyfriend Nick.  There is a lot of shifting between the present and the past in the first half of the book.  As Valarie starts to make progress the book starts to focus more on the present events in the book.  When the book focuses on the present events Valarie is making some progress toward healing. 

 Genre:  

Problem Novel/ Edgy Novel/ Coming of Age   

2. Verse Novel: Make Lemonade

Citation:

Wolff, Virginia E. Make Lemonade. New York: Scholastic, 1993. Book.

Annotation:

LaVaughn is a 14 year old girl.  She is growing up in a bad neighborhood and her number one goal is to attend college to better her life.  When she takes a babysitting job she ends up meeting Jolly, the 17 year old mother of two with a messed up life.    

Justification for Nomination:

This book is written in first person and the interior monologue of the main character is interesting.  The writing is also organized into open verses.  LaVaughn’s point of view does a really good job of capturing the way a 14 year old thinks and feels.  Words that were used in the book such as ain’t demonstrate a realistic way that someone from a low income neighborhood could speak.

In the beginning of the book LaVaughn is solely focused on her goal of college, by the end of the book she has changed from her experiences helping Jolly.  At the beginning Jolly is not managing her life very well and she always expects other people to tell her things so she did not have to think for herself.  By the end of the book thanks to LaVaughn’s help she has sorted her life out and is on the path to success. 

The dialogue in this book is kind of different.  Instead of including the whole conversation many of LaVaughn’s parts in the dialogue is relayed to the reader through her internal monologue and what she says is summarized. 

The plot of the story how LaVaughn helps Jolly through her struggles is meaningful to teenagers, because it shows how both of these teenager mature and become more responsible.  This verse novel style makes the book really short and has many blank spaces.  Teenagers that are not interested in reading may find this book a very easy potential read.

Genre:

Verse Novel / Urban Fiction