Holidays and Finals

Due to the Holidays and Finals at school we will take a break until after December 25th.  Thanks for your understanding.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

"Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. Here everyone consumes daily grams of soma, to fight depression, babies are born in laboratories, and the most popular form of entertainment is a "Feelie," a movie that stimulates the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Though there is no violence and everyone is provided for, Bernard Marx feels something is missing and senses his relationship with a young women has the potential to be much more than the confines of their existence allow. Huxley foreshadowed many of the practices and gadgets we take for granted today--let's hope the sterility and absence of individuality he predicted aren't yet to come.

ALA Reasons:

• Swearing:
• Damn: 5
• God: 19
• Genital Related: 8
• Sexuality
• Suicide
• Drugs/Alcohol/Smoking

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

ALA Reasons:

• Swearing:
• Hell: 82
• Damn: 12
• Shit: 3
• Ass: 14
• Bitch: 25
• Bastard: 38
• FU: 1
• Genital Related: 50
• Nigger/Negro: 2
• God: 50
• Christ: 15

The Dark Tower Book One: The Gunslinger by Stephen King

In 1978 Stephen King introduced the world to the last Gunslinger, Roland of Gilead.  Nothing has been the same since. Over twenty years later the quest for the Dark Tower continues to take readers on a wildly epic ride. Through parallel worlds and across time, Roland must brave desolate wastelands and endless deserts, drifting into the unimaginable and the familiar as the road to the Dark Tower extends beyond its own pages. A classic tale of colossal scope—crossing over terrain from The Stand, The Eyes of the Dragon, Insomnia, The Talisman, Black House, Hearts in Atlantis, ‘Salem’s Lot and other familiar King haunts—the adventure takes hold with the turn of each page.

And the tower awaits…

Stichley's Rating:
Intriguing idea, I didn't care for it myself.

Experiment 429's Rating: How many thumbs ups can I give?

Instances of Swearing:

• Hell: 15
• Ass: 5
• Damn: 9
• Shit: 5
• Bitch: 3
• Bastard: 1
• Fuck: 6
• Genital Related: 11
• God: 34

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression

They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation.

Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations of a flirtatious woman, nor predict the consequences of Lennie's unswerving obedience to the things George taught him.

ALA Reasons:

• Swearing:
• Hell: 47
• Damn: 34
• God: 26
• Christ: 30
• Bastard: 17
• Bitch: 13
• Negro/Nigger: 12
• Morbid and depressing themes
• Racial Slurs

Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King

Stephen King, whose first novel, Carrie, was published in 1974, the year before the last U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, is the first hugely popular writer of the TV generation. Images from that war -- and the protests against it -- had flooded America's living rooms for a decade. Hearts In Atlantis is composed of five interconnected, sequential narratives set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is deeply rooted in the sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War.

In "Low Men in Yellow Coats," eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield discovers a world of predatory malice in his own neighborhood and that adults are sometimes not rescuers but at the heart of the terror.

In the title story, a bunch of college kids get hooked on a card game, discover the possibility of protest...and confront their own collective heart of darkness, where laughter may be no more than the thinly disguised cry of the beast.

In "Blind Willie" and "Why We're in Vietnam," two men who grew up with Bobby in suburban Connecticut try to fill the emptiness of the post-Vietnam era in an America which sometimes seems as hollow and haunted as their own lives.

And in "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling," Bobby returns to his hometown where one final secret, and his heart's desire may await him.

Full of danger, suspense, and full of heart, Hearts In Atlantis takes some listeners to a place they have never been...and others to a place they have never been able to completely leave.

Stichley's Rating:
Not a bad book, but a little slow.  I read it because the movie was coming out, so I read it a long time ago, and it neither encouraged me or discouraged me from seeing the movie.  It just didn't inspire me.

Instances of Swearing:

• Hell: 43
• Ass: 29
• Shit: 47
• Damn: 9
• Fuck: 52
• Bitch: 41
• Bastard: 15
• Christ: 24
• God: 64
• Genital Related: 14

Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov

Awe and exhiliration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love--love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

ALA Reasons:

• Swearing:
• Hell: 12
• Ass: 1
• Damn: 4
• Bitch/Bastard: 4
• God: 33
• Christ: 2
• Genital Related: 18
• Themes of pedophilia and incest

Eragon, Book One: Inheritance by Christopher Paolini

Perfect for fans of Lord of the Rings, the New York Times bestselling Inheritance Cycle about the dragon rider Eragon has sold over 35 million copies and is an international fantasy sensation.


Fifteen-year-old Eragon believes that he is merely a poor farm boy—until his destiny as a Dragon Rider is revealed. Gifted with only an ancient sword, a loyal dragon, and sage advice from an old storyteller, Eragon is soon swept into a dangerous tapestry of magic, glory, and power. Now his choices could save—or destroy—the Empire.

Stichley's Rating:
I enjoyed the first book in-spite of some parts being a little immature in the writing style.  If you can overlook that it is a great book.  Nothing like the movie.  I also read the second and third book, but was so disappointed with the last book that I never finished it.  So to me it is an unfinished series.  That being said the first book is enjoyable and while it does have similarities to many other stories (Star Wars being just one), it is a decent book.

Instances of Swearing:

• Ass: 1

1984 by George Orwell

Written in 1948, 1984 was George Orwell’s chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, Orwell’s narrative is timelier than ever. 1984 presents a startling and haunting vision of the world, so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of multiple generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions—a legacy that seems only to grow with the passage of time.

ALA Reason:

• Damn: 3
• Hell: 1
• "Pro-communist and contained explicit sexual matter."

Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowlings

I wasn't going to do it because I figured EVERYONE had read the Harry Potter series, but my cousin pointed out that he had only seen the movies and his brother hasn't done that even.  So rather than go about it by doing just one I will do all of them.

Harry Potter has no idea how famous he is. That's because he's being raised by his miserable aunt and uncle who are terrified Harry will learn that he's really a wizard, just as his parents were. But everything changes when Harry is summoned to attend an infamous school for wizards, and he begins to discover some clues about his illustrious birthright. From the surprising way he is greeted by a lovable giant, to the unique curriculum and colorful faculty at his unusual school, Harry finds himself drawn deep inside a mystical world he never knew existed and closer to his own noble destiny.

Instances of Swearing: 

• Damn: 1

The Dursleys were so mean that hideous that summer that all Harry Potter wanted was to get back to the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. But just as he's packing his bags, Harry receives a warning from a strange, impish creature named Dobby who says that if Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts, disaster will strike.

And strike it does. For in Harry's second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor, Gilderoy Lockheart, a spirit named Moaning Myrtle who haunts the girls' bathroom, and the unwanted attentions of Ron Weasley's younger sister, Ginny.

But each of these seem minor annoyances when the real trouble begins, and someone--or something--starts turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects...Harry Potter himself?

Instances of Swearing:

• None we could detect

For twelve long years, the dread fortress of Azkaban held an infamous prisoner named Sirius Black. Convicted of killing thirteen people with a single curse, he was said to be the heir apparent to the Dark Lord, Voldemort.

Now he has escaped, leaving only two clues as to where he might be headed: Harry Potter's defeat of You-Know-Who was Black's downfall as well. And the Azkban guards heard Black muttering in his sleep, "He's at Hogwarts...he's at Hogwarts."

Harry Potter isn't safe, not even within the walls of his magical school, surrounded by his friends. Because on top of it all, there may well be a traitor in their midst.

Instances of Swearing:

• Damn: 2

Harry Potter is midway through his training as a wizard and his coming of age. Harry wants to get away from the pernicious Dursleys and go to the International Quidditch Cup. He wants to find out about the mysterious event that's supposed to take place at Hogwarts this year, an event involving two other rival schools of magic, and a competition that hasn't happened for a hundred years. He wants to be a normal, fourteen-year-old wizard. But unfortunately for Harry Potter, he's not normal - even by wizarding standards. And in his case, different can be deadly.

Instances of Swearing:

• Hell: 2

In his fifth year at Hogwart's, Harry faces challenges at every turn, from the dark threat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and the unreliability of the government of the magical world to the rise of Ron Weasley as the keeper of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team. Along the way he learns about the strength of his friends, the fierceness of his enemies, and the meaning of sacrifice.

Instances of Swearing:

• Damn: 3

The war against Voldemort is not going well; even the Muggles have been affected. Dumbledore is absent from Hogwarts for long stretches of time, and the Order of the Phoenix has already suffered losses. 

And yet . . . as with all wars, life goes on. Sixth-year students learn to Apparate. Teenagers flirt and fight and fall in love. Harry receives some extraordinary help in Potions from the mysterious Half-Blood Prince. And with Dumbledore's guidance, he seeks out the full, complex story of the boy who became Lord Voldemort -- and thus finds what may be his only vulnerability.

Instances of Swearing:

• Damn: 3

Readers beware. The brilliant, breathtaking conclusion to J.K. Rowling's spellbinding series is not for the faint of heart--such revelations, battles, and betrayals await in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that no fan will make it to the end unscathed. Luckily, Rowling has prepped loyal readers for the end of her series by doling out increasingly dark and dangerous tales of magic and mystery, shot through with lessons about honor and contempt, love and loss, and right and wrong. Fear not, you will find no spoilers in our review--to tell the plot would ruin the journey, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is an odyssey the likes of which Rowling's fans have not yet seen, and are not likely to forget. But we would be remiss if we did not offer one small suggestion before you embark on your final adventure with Harry--bring plenty of tissues.

The heart of Book 7 is a hero's mission--not just in Harry's quest for the Horcruxes, but in his journey from boy to man--and Harry faces more danger than that found in all six books combined, from the direct threat of the Death Eaters and you-know-who, to the subtle perils of losing faith in himself. Attentive readers would do well to remember Dumbledore's warning about making the choice between "what is right and what is easy," and know that Rowling applies the same difficult principle to the conclusion of her series. While fans will find the answers to hotly speculated questions about Dumbledore, Snape, and you-know-who, it is a testament to Rowling's skill as a storyteller that even the most astute and careful reader will be taken by surprise.

A spectacular finish to a phenomenal series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a bittersweet read for fans. The journey is hard, filled with events both tragic and triumphant, the battlefield littered with the bodies of the dearest and despised, but the final chapter is as brilliant and blinding as a phoenix's flame, and fans and skeptics alike will emerge from the confines of the story with full but heavy hearts, giddy and grateful for the experience. --Daphne Durham

Instances of Swearing:

• Damn: 5
• Hell: 11

Stichley's Rating:

Overall there really  is not much swearing in the Harry Potter Series.  It becomes darker and more suspenseful as you go through the series, and so we aren't going to give it a Movie rating tag.  The books have lots more information in them then the movies did, and much of the humor that exists in the books was completely cut out of the movies.  They are worth reading, but as some people hate the movies because of the books you may find yourself in the same crowd.  Myself I love them both but have to view them almost as separate stories that end the same.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

William Golding's classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published in 1954. At first, the stranded boys cooperate, attempting to gather food, make shelters, and maintain signal fires. Overseeing their efforts are Ralph, "the boy with fair hair," and Piggy, Ralph's chubby, wisdom-dispensing sidekick whose thick spectacles come in handy for lighting fires. Although Ralph tries to impose order and delegate responsibility, there are many in their number who would rather swim, play, or hunt the island's wild pig population. Soon Ralph's rules are being ignored or challenged outright. His fiercest antagonist is Jack, the redheaded leader of the pig hunters, who manages to lure away many of the boys to join his band of painted savages. The situation deteriorates as the trappings of civilization continue to fall away, until Ralph discovers that instead of being hunters, he and Piggy have become the hunted: "He forgot his words, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear on flying feet." Golding's gripping novel explores the boundary between human reason and animal instinct, all on the brutal playing field of adolescent competition.

ALA Reason:

• Swearing:
• Hell: 3
• Ass: 7
• Damn: 1
• Racism
• Excessive Violence
• Discussions of Sex

The Lord of the Rings, Book One: The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, as told in The Hobbit. In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.

Stichley's Rating:
My copy of the LOTR series are all extremely beat up, one even has lost it's cover.  They were my Dad's before I read them and I read them long before they became a movie series.  This is a great fantasy series for those who like fantasy.  If you have only seen the movies, and liked them, you are missing out.  I suggest you consider picking up the books because there is some details that can't be fit or must be slightly altered for movies, though they did better at keeping as much in as they could than most movie adaptions have done.  Also for the book we have gone with PG, vs the PG-13 of the movie, due to the fact that books aren't as intense as movies and that the violence is not 'shown.'

Instances of Swearing:

• Ass: 1
• Damn: 5

Beloved by Tony Morrison

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.

ALA Reason:

• Swearing:
• Shit: 2
• Ass: 1
• Damn: 10
• Hell: 11
• Bitch: 6
• Nigger/Negro: 41
• Genital related: 20
• Racism
• Sexual Scenes

Charlie's Monument by Blaine M. Yorgason

Adults scorned him, school children jeered him, yet Charlie was determined that his life would amount to something, that he would have not lived in vain. Born with only one arm, a twisted back, and badly deformed legs, and orphaned while still a boy, Charlie also carried with him the legacy of his resolute mother: 'You can do anything you want if you want it badly enough.'

Charlie's will to live--and to live largely--will eventually win him the respect of his peers, the gratitude of his town, and even the love of a very special woman who is able to look beyond his deformities into his noble heart.

Published originally in 1976, Charlie's Monument is a much-loved story that has endured to be embraced by succeeding generations of new readers.

Stichley's Rating:
I found this book again after years had passed from my original reading.  It is a book that inspires and touches the heart.  It doesn't have anything in it that would prevent children from reading it, but it is probably more the age group of teens and adults.  It isn't a very long book and you can easily read it in one day.  Well worth the read.

Instances of Swearing:

• God is used but it is always in a non-swearing context.

Ulysses by James Joyce

Ulysses takes place in a single day, 16 June 1904, also known as Bloomsday, it sets the characters and incidents of the Odyssey of Homer in modern Dublin and represents Odysseus (Ulysses), Penelope and Telemachus in the characters of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, and contrasts them with their lofty models. The book explores various areas of Dublin life, dwelling on its squalor and monotony. Nevertheless, the book is also an affectionately detailed study of the city. In Ulysses, Joyce employs stream of consciousness, parody, jokes, and virtually every other literary technique to present his characters. Many consider it the best novel of the twentieth century. It is powerfully written, a book for the ages.

ALA Reason:

• Swearing:
• Ass: 9
• Hell: 44
• Damn: 36
• Bitch: 10
• Bastard: 10
• Shit: 4
• FU: 2
• God: 147, though not all are used in the context of a swear word.
• Christ: 18
• Nigger/Negro: 7
• "dirty, blasphemous, and unreadable"

The Lost Years, Book One: The Lost Years of Merlin by T. A. Barron

Though the character Merlin is world famous as an ancient wizard, this story of his lost youth is original to the author.

Stichley's Rating:
Now this series of books has eleven in it, but when I first received my autographed ones that were in hardback there was only five.  This first book in the series is the beginning of Merlin discovering who he is and his past that he doesn't remember.  It is a great book for kids, teens, and adults.  

Instances of Swearing:

• Hell: 3
• Ass: 1
• God: 18
• Bastard: 2

Shades of Gray by Carolyn Reeder

The Civil War may be over, but for twelve-year-old Will Page, the pain and bitterness haven't ended. How could they have, when the Yankees were responsible for the deaths of everyone in his entire immediate family?
And now Will has to leave his comfortable home in the Shenandoah Valley and live with relatives he has never met, people struggling to eke out a living on their farm in the war-torn Virginia Piedmont. But the worst of it is that Will's uncle Jed had refused to fight for the Confederacy.
At first, Will regards his uncle as a traitor -- or at least a coward. But as they work side by side, Will begins to respect the man. And when he sees his uncle stand up for what he believes in, Will realizes that he must rethink his definition of honor and courage.

Stichley's Rating:
If your whole family was killed by the enemy you lost to would you be able to handle living with those who had refused to fight?  That is what this book is about.  Learning to forgive, and change the way that you see the world.

Instances of Swearing:

• None that we can remember

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.

ALA Reason:

• Swearing:
• Hell: 7
• Ass: 4
• Damn: 3
• Bitch: 3
• FU: 6
• Nigger/Negro: 8
• Shit: 7
• Sexual Scenes
• Smoking/Alcohol/Drugs
• Racism

The Orphan Train Adventures, Book One: A Family Apart by Jean Lowery Nixon

When their mother can no longer support them, six siblings are sent by the Children's Aid Society of New York City to live with farm families in Missouri in 1860.

Stichley's Rating:
This first book tells the story of Francis and Petey in the family.  This was a book that my sister and I both enjoyed having read to us by are parents before bed every night.  As the children are forced to separate from their mother and each other they have to learn how to have new lives where not all are loved as they once were.

Instances of Swearing:

• None that we remembered

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads-driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.

A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America.

The Grapes of Wrath summed up its era in the way that Uncle Tom’s Cabin summed up the years of slavery before the Civil War. Sensitive to fascist and communist criticism, Steinbeck insisted that “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” be printed in its entirety in the first edition of the book—which takes its title from the first verse: “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.

ALA Reason:

• Swearing:
• Hell: 125
• Ass: 16
• Damn: 43
• God: 108
• Christ: 49
• Negro/Nigger: 3
• Bastard: 16
• Bitch: 37
• "Vain and profane matter"
• Sexual References

Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt

This beautifully written novel offers valuable insights into the difficulties faced by families and communities caught up in the political, economic, and personal upheavals of war. The events of the Civil War unfold Across Five Aprils in this moving story by Newbery Award winner, Irene Hunt. It is set in southern Illinois where Jethro Creighton, an intelligent, hardworking boy, is growing into manhood as his brothers and a beloved teacher leave to fight in the Union and Confederate armies. Hunt presents a balanced look at both sides of the conflict, and includes interesting information on lesser-known leaders and battles. Of course, Abraham Lincoln is a frequent topic of conversation, and Jethro even receives a letter from his fellow Illinoian.

Stichley's Rating:
This is a great story about a family and the times of the Civil War. It also shows how hard it was on people trying to decided which side was right and whether to fight for one side or the other.

Instances of Swearing:

• Hell: 1

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.

The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.

ALA Reason:

• Swearing:
• Damn: 3
• Bitch: 3 
• Bastard: 1
• Sexual Reference

Little Britches by Ralph Moody

Ralph Moody was eight years old in 1906 when his family moved from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Through his eyes we experience the pleasures and perils of ranching there early in the twentieth century. Auctions and roundups, family picnics, irrigation wars, tornadoes and wind storms give authentic color to Little Britches. So do adventures, wonderfully told, that equip Ralph to take his father's place when it becomes necessary.

Stichley's Rating:
I don't even know where I got this old beat-up book.  My version didn't have a cover anymore it was so "loved" before I got it. This is a great story about young Ralph Moody growing up that is filled with adventure, excitement, and at time sadness.  I think that anyone who dreams of having lived in the old west would love this book.

Instances of Swearing:

• Damn: 7
• Hell: 10

Bone by Jeff Smith

After being run out of Boneville, the three Bone cousins, Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone are separated and lost in a vast uncharted desert. One by one they find their way into a deep forested valley filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures. It will be the longest - but funniest - year of their lives.

ALA Reason:

• Political viewpoint
• Violence
• Rasicm

The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope

In 1558, while exiled by Queen Mary Tudor to a remote castle known as Perilous Gard, young Kate Sutton becomes involved in a series of mysterious events that lead her to an underground world peopled by Fairy Folk—whose customs are even older than the Druids’ and include human sacrifice.

Stichley's Rating:
I had a younger cousin loan me this book and even though I wasn't sure at first that it would be something I would like I decided to give it a try.  This book combines history with an element of fantasy that is not only believable but could be possible.  The Fairy Folk aren't some mystical creatures that we have never seen but made into a believable possibility.

Instances of Swearing:

• Hell: 5

Bless me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya

Exquisite prose and wondrous storytelling have helped make Rudolfo Anaya the father of Chicano literature in English. Indeed, Anaya's tales fairly shimmer with the haunting beauty and richness of his culture. The winner of the Pen Center West Award for Fiction for his unforgettable novel Alburquerque, Anaya is perhaps best loved for his classic bestseller, Bless Me, Ultima... Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima comes to stay with his family in New Mexico. She is a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic. Under her wise wing, Tony will probe the family ties that bind and rend him, and he will discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past-a mythic legacy as palpable as the Catholicism of Latin America. And at each life turn there is Ultima, who delivered Tony into the world...and will nurture the birth of his soul.

ALA Reason:

• Swearing: We have been unable to search this book yet for specifics
• Occult/Satanism
• Religious Viewpoint
• Sexually Explicit Scenes

Pit Dragon Trilogy (Chronicles): Dragon's Blood by Jane Yolen

Training a dragon to be a fighting champion is the only way to freedom for fifteen-year-old Jakkin.

Stichley's Raing:
This series of books by Jane Yolen were originally a Trilogy, but recently another book was released in the series and the title has been changed to Chronicles. I have not read the newest book, but the original three are excellent.  A very talented young boy who has worked with Dragon's his whole life takes a risk to earn his own freedom... He steals a Dragon Egg.  To get an egg with a real dragon in it is nearly impossible, but he takes the risk anyway.  I enjoyed this rather unorthodox view of Dragons and their interaction with humans.

Instances of Swearing:

• We haven't been able to search this book for specifics, however the author has her own invented swear words in the book.

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . .

ALA Reason:

• Swearing: 
• Ass: 16
• Shit: 38
• Damn: 15
• Bitch: 10
• Bastard: 7
• God: 60
• FU: 9
• Genital Related: 10
• Drugs/Alcohol/Smoking
• Sexually Explicit Scenes

Young Adult Fiction: Let Teens Choose

Chris Crutcher

It's hard to know how to respond to Meghan Cox Gurdon's June 4, 2011 article chronicling the "darkness" of modern day YA fiction in the Wall Street Journal [and Ru Freeman's Huffington Post support for it, on June 21]. I purposely waited a couple of weeks to let the early responders poke holes in her reasoning the way good educators and the writers of tough Young Adult fiction always have to respond to this kind of ill-thought-out and self-serving "reporting."

My one happy thought is that anyone serious about discovering good stories for teenagers probably won't go to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to find them, so the damage is already minimized.

Gurdon opens her piece telling us how Amy Freeman, 46-year-old mother of three, stands before the Teen section in Barnes and Noble, despondent because there are no books she can buy as a welcome-home gift for her 13-year-old daughter. They're all just too dark.

I think Gurdon is pulling our collective leg. As a member of the purveyors of dark young adult fiction, I can't tell you how many times I've read or heard the tired urban legend of a wonderfully protective parent standing in the YA section of Borders/Barnes and Noble/Hastings, fearing for the future of our young people, unable to find one book that won't taint purity of his or her child's coming of age. They always leave empty-handed and disappointed. I'm guessing "Amy Freeman, 46-year-old mother of three," is either a figment of Gurdon's imagination or a close friend who shared a double-shot grande vanilla latte and a similar conservative philosophy in Starbucks one morning, concluding that Gurdon could and should sound the call to those who would go to the Wall Street Journal for guidance in selecting Young Adult literature.

Then I did what Gurdon obviously didn't do; I went to my local Barnes and Noble and stood in the teen section, as purportedly did Amy Freeman, 46-year-old mother of three. And guess what? I saw a lot of the same "dark" literature Amy saw. And I saw a boatload of literature that was not dark, and a boatload more for which it was impossible to tell standing there staring. She would have had to open some books. I'm guessing Amy Freeman, 46-year-old mother of three, wasn't as interested in finding her daughter a book as she was in making a statement that fit her philosophy.

It seems to me if you don't know anything about child development you shouldn't intimate in your "reporting" that you do. And it seems as if any reporter who got through Journalism her junior year of high school with at least a C- would know that using incendiary words like "depravity," "brutal(ity)," "horrendous," and "ugliness," to highlight a few, are not the tools of an honest journalist. By Gurdon's standards, To Kill a Mockingbird could easily be described as a horrendous or depraved or ugly or brutal novel about interracial rape.

So let's just say at the outset that, in my opinion, Meghan Cox Gurdon has an agenda. And to be fair let's also say that, in my opinion, so do I.

Gurdon says the intellectual freedom side of the argument is that kids who have gone through truly tough times relate to these stories and feel less alone. She's right. That is an argument. She also says, without any back-up, that these stories may cause kids who haven't had those experiences to respond negatively to the doom and gloom and that those who have, may wallow in them. A few may -- and I'd have no problem with that -- but it's not my experience. Laurie Halse Anderson, Sherman Alexie, Lauren Myracle, Lois Lowry, Robert Cormier (were he still alive), Judy Blume and even I could paper Ms. Gurdon's cubicle with letters and emails saying things from, "Until I read your book I didn't even know what happened to me was rape," "When I read your book I realized somebody knew what my life was like and I felt less alone," "Thank you for giving me a voice," to "Your book made me see that my life isn't so bad after all," "I think I'm one of those people who treat hurt people bad(ly)," "I didn't know what some of the people in my class had gone through until I read your book."

You can't bury under the horrendous-depravity-brutal-ugliness blanket, the true face of bigotry painted by Sherman Alexie in The Absolutely True Diary, or the helplessness Melinda feels in Speak before she learns that what was done to her wasn't her fault, and wasn't right. And "bad" language? Bad language gets kids to read books. Know why? It's real. It is the expression of adolescence. Bad language doesn't hurt anybody. It might make a few -- mostly adults -- uneasy, but it doesn't hurt anybody. Words can hurt. Name calling hurts. Oral bullying hurts. Humiliation hurts. But bad language doesn't do shit.

I have a solution for Amy Freeman, 46-year-old mother of three. Next time you want to get a book for your thirteen-year-old, send her to Barnes and Noble with a few bucks to buy what she wants. Take a look at it. Read it with her. Talk about what you like and don't like, and learn what she likes and doesn't like. Don't make her read it; the freedom to read includes the freedom not to read. Put yourself into that enviable spot of being someone to turn to when your daughter's life, from her point of view, matches up with some book, because as much as you think -- or hope -- it won't, trust me, it will. When it does, if she thinks she will be diminished in your eyes, she'll go elsewhere for help.

Original Post

Darkness Too Visible

By Meghan Cox Gurdon
Amy Freeman, a 46-year-old mother of three, stood recently in the young-adult section of her local Barnes & Noble, in Bethesda, Md., feeling thwarted and disheartened.

She had popped into the bookstore to pick up a welcome-home gift for her 13-year-old, who had been away. Hundreds of lurid and dramatic covers stood on the racks before her, and there was, she felt, "nothing, not a thing, that I could imagine giving my daughter. It was all vampires and suicide and self-mutilation, this dark, dark stuff." She left the store empty-handed.

How dark is contemporary fiction for teens? Darker than when you were a child, my dear: So dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things in novels directed, broadly speaking, at children from the ages of 12 to 18.

Pathologies that went undescribed in print 40 years ago, that were still only sparingly outlined a generation ago, are now spelled out in stomach-clenching detail. Profanity that would get a song or movie branded with a parental warning is, in young-adult novels, so commonplace that most reviewers do not even remark upon it.

If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds.

Now, whether you care if adolescents spend their time immersed in ugliness probably depends on your philosophical outlook. Reading about homicide doesn't turn a man into a murderer; reading about cheating on exams won't make a kid break the honor code. But the calculus that many parents make is less crude than that: It has to do with a child's happiness, moral development and tenderness of heart. Entertainment does not merely gratify taste, after all, but creates it.

If you think it matters what is inside a young person's mind, surely it is of consequence what he reads. This is an old dialectic—purity vs. despoliation, virtue vs. smut—but for families with teenagers, it is also everlastingly new. Adolescence is brief; it comes to each of us only once, so whether the debate has raged for eons doesn't, on a personal level, really signify.

As it happens, 40 years ago, no one had to contend with young-adult literature because there was no such thing. There was simply literature, some of it accessible to young readers and some not. As elsewhere in American life, the 1960s changed everything. In 1967, S.E. Hinton published "The Outsiders," a raw and striking novel that dealt directly with class tensions, family dysfunction and violent, disaffected youth. It launched an industry.

Mirroring the tumultuous times, dark topics began surging on to children's bookshelves. A purported diary published anonymously in 1971, "Go Ask Alice," recounts a girl's spiral into drug addiction, rape, prostitution and a fatal overdose. A generation watched Linda Blair playing the lead in the 1975 made-for-TV movie "Sarah T: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic" and went straight for Robin S. Wagner's original book. The writer Robert Cormier is generally credited with having introduced utter hopelessness to teen narratives. His 1977 novel, "I Am the Cheese," relates the delirium of a traumatized youth who witnessed his parents' murder, and it does not (to say the least) have a happy ending.

Grim though these novels are, they seem positively tame in comparison with what's on shelves now. In Andrew Smith's 2010 novel, "The Marbury Lens," for example, young Jack is drugged, abducted and nearly raped by a male captor. After escaping, he encounters a curious pair of glasses that transport him into an alternate world of almost unimaginable gore and cruelty. Moments after arriving he finds himself facing a wall of horrors, "covered with impaled heads and other dripping, black-rot body parts: hands, hearts, feet, ears, penises. Where the f— was this?" No happy ending to this one, either.

In Jackie Morse Kessler's gruesome but inventive 2011 take on a girl's struggle with self-injury, "Rage," teenage Missy's secret cutting turns nightmarish after she is the victim of a sadistic sexual prank. "She had sliced her arms to ribbons, but the badness remained, staining her insides like cancer. She had gouged her belly until it was a mess of meat and blood, but she still couldn't breathe." Missy survives, but only after a stint as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The argument in favor of such novels is that they validate the teen experience, giving voice to tortured adolescents who would otherwise be voiceless. If a teen has been abused, the logic follows, reading about another teen in the same straits will be comforting. If a girl cuts her flesh with a razor to relieve surging feelings of self-loathing, she will find succor in reading about another girl who cuts, mops up the blood with towels and eventually learns to manage her emotional turbulence without a knife.

Yet it is also possible—indeed, likely—that books focusing on pathologies help normalize them and, in the case of self-harm, may even spread their plausibility and likelihood to young people who might otherwise never have imagined such extreme measures. Self-destructive adolescent behaviors are observably infectious and have periods of vogue. That is not to discount the real suffering that some young people endure; it is an argument for taking care.

The novel "Scars," a dreadfully clunky 2010 exercise by Cheryl Rainfield that School Library Journal inexplicably called "one heck of a good book," ran into difficulties earlier this year at the Boone County Library in Kentucky, but not because of its contents. A patron complained that the book's depiction of cutting—the cover shows a horribly scarred forearm—might trigger a sufferer's relapse. That the protagonist's father has been raping her since she was a toddler and is trying to engineer her suicide was not the issue for the team of librarians re-evaluating the book.

"Books like 'Scars,' or with questionable material, those provide teachable moments for the family," says Amanda Hopper, the library's youth-services coordinator, adding: "We like to have the adult perspective, but we do try to target the teens because that's who's reading it." The book stayed on the shelves.
Perhaps the quickest way to grasp how much more lurid teen books have become is to compare two authors: the original Judy Blume and a younger writer recently hailed by Publishers Weekly as "this generation's Judy Blume."

The real Judy Blume won millions of readers (and the disapprobation of many adults) with then-daring novels such as 1970's "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret," which deals with female puberty, 1971's "Then Again, Maybe I Won't," which addresses puberty from a boy's perspective, and 1975's "Forever," in which teenagers lose their virginity in scenes of earnest practicality. Objectionable the material may be for some parents, but it's not grotesque.

By contrast, the latest novel by "this generation's Judy Blume," otherwise known as Lauren Myracle, takes place in a small Southern town in the aftermath of an assault on a gay teenager. The boy has been savagely beaten and left tied up with a gas pump nozzle shoved down his throat, and he may not live. The protagonist of "Shine," a 16-year-old girl and once a close friend of the victim, is herself yet to recover from a sexual assault in eighth grade; assorted locals, meanwhile, reveal themselves to be in the grip of homophobia, booze and crystal meth. Determined in the face of police indifference to investigate the attack on her friend, the girl relives her own assault (thus taking readers through it, too) and acquaints us with the concept of "bag fags," heterosexuals who engage in gay sex for drugs. The author makes free with language that can't be reprinted in a newspaper.

In the book business, none of this is controversial, and, to be fair, Ms. Myracle's work is not unusually profane. Foul language is widely regarded among librarians, reviewers and booksellers as perfectly OK, provided that it emerges organically from the characters and the setting rather than being tacked on for sensation. In Ms. Myracle's case, with her depiction of redneck bigots with meth-addled sensibilities, the language is probably apt.

But whether it's language that parents want their children reading is another question. Alas, literary culture is not sympathetic to adults who object either to the words or storylines in young-adult books. In a letter excerpted by the industry magazine, the Horn Book, several years ago, an editor bemoaned the need, in order to get the book into schools, to strip expletives from Chris Lynch's 2005 novel, "Inexcusable," which revolves around a thuggish jock and the rape he commits. "I don't, as a rule, like to do this on young adult books," the editor grumbled, "I don't want to compromise on how kids really talk. I don't want to acknowledge those f—ing gatekeepers."

By f—ing gatekeepers (the letter-writing editor spelled it out), she meant those who think it's appropriate to guide what young people read. In the book trade, this is known as "banning." In the parenting trade, however, we call this "judgment" or "taste." It is a dereliction of duty not to make distinctions in every other aspect of a young person's life between more and less desirable options. Yet let a gatekeeper object to a book and the industry pulls up its petticoats and shrieks "censorship!"

It is of course understood to be an act of literary heroism to stand against any constraints, no matter the age of one's readers; Ms. Myracle's editor told Publishers Weekly that the author "has been on the front lines in the fight for freedom of expression."

Every year the American Library Association delights in releasing a list of the most frequently challenged books. A number of young-adult books made the Top 10 in 2010, including Suzanne Collins's hyper-violent, best-selling "Hunger Games" trilogy and Sherman Alexie's prize-winning novel, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." "It almost makes me happy to hear books still have that kind of power," Mr. Alexie was quoted saying; "There's nothing in my book that even compares to what kids can find on the Internet."
Oh, well, that's all right then. Except that it isn't. It is no comment on Mr. Alexie's work to say that one depravity does not justify another. If young people are encountering ghastly things on the Internet, that's a failure of the adults around them, not an excuse for more envelope-pushing.

Veteran children's bookseller Jewell Stoddard traces part of the problem to aesthetic coarseness in some younger publishers, editors and writers who, she says, "are used to video games and TV and really violent movies and they love that stuff. So they think that every 12-year-old is going to love that stuff and not be affected by it. And I don't think that's possible."

In an effort to keep the most grueling material out of the hands of younger readers, Ms. Stoddard and her colleagues at Politics & Prose, an independent Washington, D.C., bookstore, created a special "PG-15" nook for older teens. With some unease, she admits that creating a separate section may inadvertently lure the attention of younger children keen to seem older than they are.

At the same time, she notes that many teenagers do not read young-adult books at all. Near the end of the school year, when she and a colleague entertained students from a nearby private school, only three of the visiting 18 juniors said that they read YA books

So it may be that the book industry's ever-more-appalling offerings for adolescent readers spring from a desperate desire to keep books relevant for the young. Still, everyone does not share the same objectives. The book business exists to sell books; parents exist to rear children, and oughtn't be daunted by cries of censorship. No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children's lives.

Original Post

Beyonders, Book One: A World Without Heroes by Brandon Mull

Jason Walker has often wished his life could be a bit less predictable—until a routine day at the zoo ends with Jason suddenly transporting from the hippo tank to a place unlike anything he’s ever seen. In the past, the people of Lyrian welcomed visitors from the Beyond, but attitudes have changed since the wizard emperor Maldor rose to power. The brave resistors who opposed the emperor have been bought off or broken, leaving a realm where fear and suspicion prevail.

In his search for a way home, Jason meets Rachel, who was also mysteriously drawn to Lyrian from our world. With the help of a few scattered rebels, Jason and Rachel become entangled in a quest to piece together the word of power that can destroy the emperor and learn that their best hope to find a way home will be to save this world without heroes.

Stichley's Rating:
Another wonderful series from Brandon Mull.  I just finished this book and think that it is a good one.  Imagine a world where all people willing to fight for the right thing have already been crushed.  When something bad happens nobody does anything to stop it or help those in need because they are simply indifferent to the suffering of others.  Yet in this world there are still good people who try to help each other in small unnoticed ways.  While most of Brandon Mull's books are meant for children and teens I found it enjoyable as an adult as well.

Instances of Swearing:

• No swearing that we could detect.

The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey

George and Harold have created the greatest superhero in the history of their elementary school--and now they're going to bring him to life! Meet Captain Underpants! His true identity is so secret, even HE doesn't know who he is!
Acclaimed author and Caldecott Honor illustrator Dav Pilkey provides young readers with the adventure of a lifetime in this outrageously funny, action-packed, easy-to-read chapter book. With hilarious pictures on every page, THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS is great for both beginning and chapter-book readers. And like Dav's other best-selling books of humor, it is sure to provide even the most reluctant readers with hours of fun.

ALA Reasons:

• Offensive Language: We found no swearing in this book
• Violence: We found cheesey comic-book violence similar to what you would find in SpongeBob

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

On the Midwinter Day that is his eleventh birthday, Will Stanton discovers a special gift -- that he is the last of the Old Ones, immortals dedicated to keeping the world from domination by the forces of evil, the Dark. At once, he is plunged into a quest for the six magical Signs that will one day aid the Old Ones in the final battle between the Dark and the Light. And for the twelve days of Christmas, while the Dark is rising, life for Will is full of wonder, terror, and delight.

Stichley's Rating:
While The Dark is Rising is technically the second book in the series by Susan Cooper I personally would recommend reading this book first.  This series was one of my all time favorites.  I have read it several times, but have met quite a few people who were put off from the series because they had a hard time getting into the first book.  When they read this book and then went back they found that it was much easier to get into the first book in the series.  This series mixes old English, King Arthurian Myths, and the battle between Light and Darkness making for an enjoyable and award winning series.

The sequence as published: Over Sea, Under Stone (Book One), The Dark is Rising (Book Two), Greenwitch (Book Three), The Grey King (Book Four), Silver on the Tree (Book Five)

Instances of Swearing:

• Ass: 1