This month’s book: Back Home by Julia Keller

Back Home is the story of what happens to one girl’s life when her dad returns from the war in Iraq with sever injuries: he’s lost an arm and a leg and suffered a traumatic brain injury.  Rachel is 13, her sister Marcy is 8 and their little brother Rob is 4.  Their mom is the kind of parent who doesn’t keep secrets from her kids, even though she tends to give speeches, “My mother…is one of those people who believes she can get out ahead of things –bad things, I mean –by preparing everybody in advance, by speaking slowly and carefully about the sadness or confusion or frustration you’re about to feel.”  Rachel feels that she can’t ask silly questions like her little sister, but she wonders how much of a person needs to be intact to make you still the same person as before.  At first, her dad doesn’t seem to really be there at all. Not only does he not communicate, but he doesn’t respond to things going on around him.  The hospital said he should be able to do things for himself (like take care of his “personal needs”), but he doesn’t seem to want to.  Then Rachel realizes: “It’s not that Dad didn’t want to do things. It’s that the part of his brain that told him to do things was one of the parts that was injured. So what looked like laziness wasn’t laziness at all. When it looked like he just didn’t care, it wasn’t that he didn’t care. Caring, it turns out, comes from your brain. I know that’s a strange way to think about it, but it’s true: caring comes from your brain. The part of my father that wanted to do things wasn’t there anymore.”  This is a beautifully told story, and even though the ending might not be what you hope it will be, it is certainly realistic. 

Back Home will be available for pickup in the YA Dept. Monday, Feb. 1

Reviews of Bog Child

Interested in reading some other reviews of Bog Child?  Here are some links to a couple of reviews that I enjoyed.

Guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/mar/08/featuresreviews.guardianreview28

Teenreads.com http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/9780385751698.asp

The Troubles

If you’re like me, you don’t know a whole lot about the political situation in Northern Ireland.  Here are some books to take a look at if you’re interested in learning more:

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A History of Northern Ireland, 1920 – 1996 by Thomas Hennessey

The Committee: Political Assassination in Northern Ireland by Jack Holland

The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict between the IRA and British Intelligence by Tony Geraghty

The Troubles: Ireland’s Ordeal 1966 – 1996 and the Search for Peace by Tim Pat Coogan

The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence, 1967 – 1992 by J. Bowyer Bell

Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair by Padraig O’Malley

From an interview with Siobhan Dowd

Born of Irish parents, the youngest of four girls, I was raised in a South London suburb. Despite the red buses and red post boxes, Ireland was bred in the bone. We were brought up as Irish-Catholic, went to Catholic schools with other Irish-Catholics, and spent our magical childhood summers playing with our Irish cousins in Ireland’s County Waterford. While there, we lived in a remote cottage with no water or electricity. We washed in water collected in rain barrels and read by gaslight.

The four of us used to liken ourselves to the girls in Little Women, which meant I was the spoilt one, Amy–the short straw.

From the age of seven, I scribbled down poems, ghost stories, and mystery stories and completed my first novel at the age of nine. It was about Anne, the daughter of a harried innkeeper in Bethlehem, and very, very holey (yes, that is how I spelt the word). But it fixed my aim to write for a living when I grew up.

By a long and circuitous route, I’ve finally attained this goal. In between going to Oxford University and studying Classics, working to promote human rights for the writers’ association PEN, doing a Master’s degree in the social sciences, and living on both sides of the Atlantic (I worked for PEN American Centre in New York City between 1990 and 1997), I was always writing something. I wrote diaries, letters, entertainments for my nieces’ and nephews’ birthdays, as well as hundreds of nonfiction articles and reviews for newspapers and magazines. In a secret drawer, I kept a gargantuan adult manuscript-in-progress: I rewrote it four times before putting it aside.

Then I submitted a short story about a young Irish Traveller boy for Skin Deep, an anthology about racism aimed at young adults (Puffin, 2003). What joy when it was accepted! Encouraged, I wrote A Swift Pure Cry in three intensive months in the autumn of 2004.

The story was inspired by two shocking events that occurred in Ireland in 1984. The first was the tragic death of Anne Lovett, aged 15. Unable to seek help when she fell pregnant, she died of exposure and haemorrhaging while trying to give birth on her own in a grotto to the Virgin Mary in the village of Granard, County Longford. Her child also died. Members of her community pleaded in their own defence that they had been unaware of her predicament.

The second case was that of ‘the Kerry Babies.’ A baby boy was found with multiple stab wounds, abandoned on a beach out on County Kerry’s Dingle Peninsula. The Gardai accused Joanne Hayes, a woman in her 20s who was known to have been pregnant out of wedlock, of having murdered him. She said she had buried her own baby boy, who had died, in a local field. I won’t describe here the bizarre train of events that unfolded, but the result was an independent tribunal and a nationwide furore. To date, the murderer of the stabbed baby boy and his parentage remain a mystery.

Perhaps it was a haunting sense of something unresolved in these tragedies that impelled me to write A Swift Pure Cry. Certainly, the story seemed to write itself. Shell Talent and her (completely fictional) story of loss and discovery must have been germinating in the back of my brain for 20 years.

Today, every day I don’t write feels like a lost day. I never believe that a story will be finished until I’ve typed the last period. And it is always a miracle if I get it down before being run over by a juggernaut.

The calm beauty of Oxford, where I live, and a kind, witty husband prevent me from being so doom-laden that I can’t write at all. I’m currently halfway through my fourth novel . . . and I’m being very careful crossing the road.

From Random House: Teachers @ Random “Spotlight On Siobhan Dowd”

Liz’s Review of Before I Die by Jenny Downham

Before I Die by Jenny Downham is a story about Tessa, a 16-year-old girl with only months left before she is killed by her cancer.  It is about a list Tessa made of things she wanted to do before she died.  The problem for Tessa, is that she has only a short period of time and her list involves as much time as she has.  Also, her list is kind of crazy (involving saying “Yes” to everything for a day, and committing a crime --shoplifting)  At first, when Tessa makes the list, she is eager to do it, but then, after her world gets torn apart, between her best friend hating her, the neighbor she fell in love with saying, “If anything happened between us, it would be like, what’s the point?” meaning, if they fell in love or hated each other or never met, why would that matter because she’s dying.  Tessa finds out she is even shorter on time than she thought, and that she is definitely going to die.  No miracle can save her now.  The problem takes a new turn when Tessa goes on vacation with her best friend Zoey, and find out that she is PREGNANT!  Tessa decides to cross off one of the things on her list so she can have the baby named after her.  Will she fall in love with the neighbor again??  Will she live to finish her list?? Review by Liz C.

Liz’s Review of Maximum Ride by James Patterson

Maximum Ride by James Patterson is a story about Max, a young girl, who is genetically modified to have wings (they’re 98% human, 2% bird).  It is about Max trying to keep her family, or “Flock” together. The problem for Max is that scientists, like the ones who created Max & her flock, want to get rid of them, because they have “Souls,” or ethics.  The scientists want to create a world where only the strong and genetically altered live.  At first, when Max lives with their creator she believes she is “Normal,” but she soon discovers the harsh reality of betrayal.  Then, Max moves with her flock, and then, Max's old childhood friend, Ari, now an Eraser (70% human, 30% wolf) leader, tracks them down, kidnaps Angel, and transports her back to the School to live like a lab rat again. The problem takes a new turn when Max and her flock find out that they didn’t spend their whole life at the lab, they have parents!!  They want to learn about their pasts and their destinies. They spend the rest of the series looking for their past.  Max finds out who Ari really is, and she find out who her FATHER is!!  The brother, and 2nd oldest, Fang,  starts to fight with Max. Max learns that even the “Bad guys” have families, feelings, and ethics.  Review by Liz C.