The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
The Poet X is a young adult book by Elizabeth Acevedo. I was first alerted to this book by our wonderful local author Laurie Halse Anderson who, before the book was even published, told us: keep an eye out for this book, it’s a big one and important! The book was published in 2018 and has won many awards, including a National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and, from the American Library Association (ALA), the 2019 Youth Media Awards/Pura Belpré Award, for a Latina writer who best portrays the Latino experience for children, and the Michael Printz Award for best young adult literature. It came out in paperback in April of this year. By way of a quick plot description: A young girl in Harlem discovers slam poetry as a way to understand her mother’s religion and her own relationship to the world. It is the debut novel of renowned slam poet Elizabeth Acevedo. (Read more on the author’s website HERE.) It took me a long time to get to the book, but I just finished it, and wow! Actually, I didn’t read the book. I listened to it. I got the audio version of the book from Libro.fm, an audiobook provider that serves independent bookstores (you know that Audible is owned by Amazon, right?). The audiobook also won an award from the ALA. It is read by the author, and I am so glad I got to hear the poetry of the book in her vibrant voice – it added so much to the experience for me, especially the parts in Spanish. It didn’t matter a bit that I didn’t understand those parts – they sound so beautiful in her voice! The whole book is a story about poetry told in poetic form, and it’s one of those examples of young adult books that are equally enjoyable to adults. To be given a look inside this Dominican-American family, and to experience what the main character Xiomara is feeling as she struggles with her mother, who wants her to be more involved with and more loyal to the Catholic Church, and meanwhile Xiomara is burning up inside with her passion for poetry (and an emerging love interest as well). I’m in a writers group with eleven people, and some of the members are poets. For years we’ve been reading their work and those of us who feel less comfortable with poetry have been learning to read it and to understand it, and to appreciate its nuance and its flexibility as a form. Reading this book taught me why and how poetry is so powerful, and how some people...
The Book of V by Anna Solomon
The Book of Esther is part of the Hebrew Bible. If you are familiar with the tale, then you know all about beautiful Queen Esther, who is chosen by the King in a contest after he banishes his first queen, Vashti. Vashti’s offense was that she refused to appear when the king commanded her to parade before him and his drunken revelers wearing her crown (one presumes he meant only her crown). Esther goes on to save the Jewish people and vanquish the bad guys. It’s a partly-goofy and partly-brutal story that is reenacted every year in the Jewish holiday of Purim, when little girls love to dress up as Queen Esther. If you know this story before you read The Book of V by Anna Solomon, then you have a leg up on Esther’s story as it is retold here in multiple ways and eras, and if you have a feminist slant, then you will already know that generations of feminist readers, going back to Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the 1890s, have asked: what happened to Vashti? Many have lamented the quick disappearance of this queen who stood up for herself. Anna Solomon is out to remedy that. Solomon’s story is in three interwoven parts. She goes back to the time of the original biblical tale for her own retelling and re-envisioning of the story of the Jews in Persia, introduces us to Vivian (Vee) Kent, a senator’s wife in the 1970s, and we also follow Lily Rubenstein, a stay-at-home mom in contemporary Brooklyn. Solomon moves back and forth between the stories masterfully, and the way she weaves in details that tie each piece to the other is just terrific. It’s a beautifully written book and a compelling story, with much fodder for discussion. And that’s all I’m going to give away! (Interested in reading this book? Purchase a copy from my online bookshop...
Hot Off the Press Summer 2020
Join a special three-class summer session of Hot Off the Press! In this lively monthly book discussion class led by Lynn Rosen, participants read and discuss new literary fiction. Class conversations include a thorough and thoughtful analysis of the book as well as background information provided by Lynn about the author and the book’s path to publication. We talk serious book talk, but have a lot of laughs too! CLASS DATES/TIME:Class meets virtually on Wednesday evenings from 7pm EST to 8:30pm EST on:July 15August 12September 9 LOCATION: via Zoom Sign up HERE. CLASS READING SCHEDULE: July 15Red At The Bone by Jacqueline WoodsonA spectacular novel that only this legend can pull off.” -Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST, in The Atlantic“An exquisite tale of family legacy….The power and poetry of Woodson’s writing conjures up Toni Morrison.” – People An unexpected teenage pregnancy pulls together two families from different social classes, and exposes the private hopes, disappointments, and longings that can bind or divide us from each other, from the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming. Moving forward and backward in time, Jacqueline Woodson’s taut and powerful new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of the new child. Note: Hot Off the Press typically features brand new fiction. Our original selection was The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (an author whose earlier work, The Mothers, we read in this class when it first came out). However, the publisher is out of stock of the book, so I made a last minute change. Although Woodson’s book is no longer brand-new, it’s a powerful read from an important writer. August 12Some Go Home by Odie Lindsey Norton“… incandescent debut novel… This is a consummate portrait of human fragility and grim determination.” — Publishers WeeklyAn Iraq war veteran turned small town homemaker, Colleen works hard to keep her deployment behind her—until pregnancy brings her buried trauma to the surface. She hides her mounting anxiety from her husband, Derby, who is in turn preoccupied with the media frenzy surrounding the long-overdue retrial of his father, Hare Hobbs, for a civil rights–era murder. September 9Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkle“McCorkle weaves a powerful narrative web, with empathy for her characters and keen insight on their motivations. This is a gem. ” — Publishers WeeklyLil and Frank married young, launched into courtship when they bonded over how they both—suddenly, tragically— lost a parent when they were children. Over time, their marriage grew and strengthened, with each still wishing for so much more understanding of the parents they’d...
Author Camp
From Open Book Productions & Children’s Book World A week-long session for middle schoolers where kids read books and meet the authors! Begins August 3rd! Discover great new books! Meet and interact with the authors! Participate in creative writing exercises! Author Camp will introduce your child to five new books and their authors! The week-long session meets daily and features five new middle school books. Classes are led by Lynn Rosen, owner of Open Book Productions and English, writing, and publishing instructor. (For more about Lynn see HERE.) All sessions include virtual visits from the authors! Here’s how Author Camp works: We meet once a day for an hour and a half via Zoom.The cost of the class includes a copy of each of the five books that are part of the camp. (When you sign up, we will be in touch to arrange how you will get the books.)The session begins with some ice breakers and get-to-know-you warm-up activities led by Lynn.Campers then take out the book of the day and Lynn leads them in a reading. The reading is interactive, pausing along the way to point out notable parts of the story and underlining what is happening in the story. (Note: we will read the first chapter together, and participants will be free to read the rest of the book on their own.)Lynn then leads a group discussion about the book: what’s important about the book, the plot, what we liked about it, what it makes us wonder about. Lynn will share background about the book and the author with the campers.We’ll do some activities and writing exercises related to the themes of the book.Then we prepare to meet the author. The children are guided to think of questions they would like to ask the author about the book and to write these questions down in preparation. Next, we meet the author! The author joins us on Zoom to answer the children’s questions and for a reading from their book.Lynn will close the class by summing up what we’ve done and then prepping them for the next day’s book, showing it to them, giving them some clues on what to look for and encouraging them to spend some time with the book before we meet again the next day to read and discuss it. Sign up HERE With any questions, email lynn@lynnrosen.com Author Camp: Middle Grade Books Session 1: Week of August 3rd, meeting daily from 2pm to 3:30pm (Additional sessions for subsequent weeks in July will be added.) This class is for children who are comfortably and independently reading middle grade books. Generally this is grades 3-6...
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
I just reread Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth for the fourth or fifth time in preparation for a book discussion class about the book in my “Women’s Words” series. As I said to my son before I began reading the book again, each time I start this book I hope that it will turn out to have a different ending. But, as you already guessed, it did not. The beautiful Lily Bart still wends her way through the perils of high society in turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York, still wavers between what she has been trained to do – find a rich husband – and what her heart tells her, and still follows a downward trajectory. Poor Lily! Or maybe not. My class participants didn’t feel a great deal of sympathy for her as they watched her make one after another bad decisions. Did our dear Lily ever have a chance? As she says of herself, she has been trained since birth to be an ornament. What hope does a woman like that have alone in the world if she does not marry? It seems that Lily had no marketable skills. And that, while her instinct told her she didn’t really want to be married to any of these dull wealthy men, she continued to pursue them – when the book begins Lily is at the ripe old nearly spinster age of 29, and has been pursuing this goal since her coming out in society at age 18 – and yet she isn’t able to bring herself to marry the man she loves, because his income won’t keep her in the style to which she is accustomed. She might become what she and her mother believe to be the worst of sins: dingy. Edith Wharton herself was brought up in the New York society about which she writes. She wrote later that her mother was cold, and not supportive of young Edith’s bookish inclinations. She moved her daughter’s coming out up to have it earlier, hoping Edith would then have less time to read and write. Wharton’s mother even deprived her daughter of a regular supply of writing paper, hoping that would discourage her. There seems to be quite a strong tendency in the late 19th century, both in fiction and in real life, to keep women from writing by taking away their implements! Wharton did marry, but she and her husband did not get along very well and never had children, which left the well-off Wharton to launch a writing career, and to befriend other writers, including Henry James, who spoke very favorably of her work. She won the...