Fifth Book Review: Necessary Roughness

Lee, Marie G. Necessary Roughness. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996.

Annotation:

Chan Kim has just traveled cross country with his parents and twin sister Young to a former mining town in northern Minnesota to start their new life.  Chan quickly realizes that if he is going to fit in, he is going to have to learn to embrace the town’s undeniable passion, high school football.  Before long, Chan is a member of the varsity football team and he is going to parties with his teammates, sneaking around with his new girlfriend Rainey, and is even gaining respect from his traditional Korean father.  But just as Chan begins to find happiness, tragedies begin to fall around Chan like the first winters snow. 

Nomination:

Necessary Roughness shows the world through the eyes of an Asian teen who has been taken away from everything he has ever known, and dropped into a world that can be cold and bitter, both figuratively and literally.  The author masterfully creates characters that are believable and truly captures their quirky nuances.  Chan’s family and friends are portrayed as completely ordinary people who either get along with each other famously, or simply rub each other the wrong way.  And while Chan’s enemies are not really bad people, they are either ignorant or have had life experiences that explains, but doesn’t justify, why they think and act the way they do.

Necessary Roughness does address bigotry and intolerance, and the reader may find themselves getting frustrated with Chan since he often takes the high road, and rather than show his anger, he attempts to make light of their ignorance and even taunts them for using the wrong racial epithets.  It is instances like this that show the degree of verbal torture that people of different ethnicities are at times forced to endure.  But what is even more alarming is how many people turn a blind eye to these verbal attacks, and most disturbing of all is that most of Chan’s friends are biggest culprits.  You could say that their silence is deafening.   

But ultimately, the reader will be able to identify with Chan as he is forced to live two separate lives.  One of an average everyday American teen who wants to have fun, hang out with his friends, and experience the camaraderie of football, while at the same time being a teen of Korean descent whose father wants him to honor and respect Korean customs and to focus on education at the expense of his decadent American pastimes.  But while Chan may think that his father’s ways are backward and at times contradictory, he soon realizes that his father’s insights have prepared him for many of the trials and tribulations that he cannot avoid.

Genre Category: Multicultural Fiction

Fourth Book Review: Spies of Mississippi

Bowers, Rick. Spies of Mississippi. Washington D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2010.

Annotation:

Newly elected Governor J.P. Coleman declares that he has but one goal, to preserve segregation in the State of Mississippi in order to maintain peace and quiet.  His first act as governor was to establish The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission that had the power to force witnesses to testify in court, maintain secret files on private citizens, and to arrest those who openly opposed segregation.  The year is 1956 in Jackson Mississippi, and there is one word to describe a politician like Governor J.P. Coleman, moderate. 

Rejection:

Let’s examine why Spies of Mississippi probably could have been nominated for the mock Printz Award for Excellence.  First off, Spies of Mississippi provides the young reader with a wealth of knowledge regarding one of the most turbulent eras in American history, the civil rights movement.  They are shown a world where racial hatred hid behind the misguided belief that the only way to achieve racial harmony was by creating two Americas, one black and one white.  The reader also has the opportunity to meet lesser known heroes of the civil rights movement who gave everything they had in order to achieve the dream of racial integration; some even gave their lives before seeing the fruits of their labor.   Young adults will also be able to see firsthand that their generation can be a catalyst for change, even against such a relentless system that had not been challenged for a hundred years.

Unfortunately, there are also several reasons that prevent Spies of Mississippi from being nominated.  The most glaring reason is the literary quality of the book.  While many nonfiction novels have a chronological flow to them, Spies of Mississippi tends to jump around from timeline to timeline after about the fifth chapter.  The result is a confusing order of events in which people who are discussed early in the book, are brought back after the reader was led to believe that there was closure to their story.  And while many of the people in the book were young college students who participated in the Freedom Ride (a coordinated attempt to overflow Mississippi jails with people who refused to abide by state laws that segregated blacks from whites in public venues), there is really no young people singled out that a teen reader can relate to in the story.  Most of the organizers who are fighting the segregationists are at least twice the age of the young adult reader, and many of them already have spouses and children of their own.  

And while the photos used in Spies of Mississippi add an effective element to the book, there are not nearly enough photos to truly grasp the magnitude of what was being accomplished in Jackson Mississippi in the late 1950’s.  However, there is one picture in which Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett is waving in front of a crowd of 46,000 Ole Miss Football fans who are cheering him on and waving confederate flags.  One cannot help but see a close similarity between this extremely powerful picture and one of the many historic photos of Adolph Hitler speaking to the German people who are cheering and waving Nazi flags.  Gerald Blessy who was present at the game even recalled, “I looked back at the crowd and saw anger in the faces of the people right next to me and it sort of flashed through my mind that those rebel flags looked like swastikas. These were just ordinary school kids who were being whipped into a fever pitch of emotion by their own leaders. It was just like the Nazis had done.” Spies of Mississippi could have really benefited from more photos like this in order to truly pull together the attitude and emotion of this dark and historic time in American history.

Genre Category: Historical Nonfiction

Third Book Review: Son of the Mob

Korman, Gordon. Son of the Mob. New York: Hyperion, 2002.

Annotation:

Being the son of the notorious mob boss Honest Abe Luca has it perks, however getting a girlfriend hasn’t been one of them.  But I think I just met the perfect girl.  She is smart, funny, and is one of the best karaoke singers I have ever heard.  Oh, and did I mention that her father is an FBI agent who has been trying to send my father to prison for the last nine years?

Premise:

Vince Luca is an unmotivated high school junior whose father, Anthony Luca (a.k.a. Honest Abe Luca), just happens to be the top mob boss of New York State.  But even though Vince was born into a crime family, he is constantly trying to distance himself from their crooked dealings.  This is far easier said than done; especially when his older brother Tommy’s criminal activities always have a way of pulling Vince into the family business, albeit unintentionally.  Enter Vince's best friend Alex who doesn’t care much for Vince’s father and brother, but is as loyal a friend to Vince as you would ever find.  Alex loves to spend every waking hour thinking of one thing, girls.  He believes that hanging out with Vince is his best shot for finally getting a girlfriend since he gets extremely nervous around the opposite sex while Vince always manages to be cool under pressure, which helps to calm Alex down.  

While at a college dorm party, Vince encounters a girl (Kendra) from his school that he had just recently began to notice.  To his surprise, she has also harbored a bit of a crush on him as well.  After some small talk, she nonchalantly informs him that her father is an FBI agent, and Vince starts to realize that her father is the agent that has been shadowing his father for the last nine years. Regardless, Vince’s attraction to Kendra is too strong to overcome and he decides that he can date Kendra while at the same time keep her father’s profession a secret from his family.  Unfortunately, it is much harder to keep his family's business a secret from Kendra whose inquisitive nature and analytical mind constantly keeps Vince on his toes.  To make matters worse, Alex is starting to resent Vince and his new-found girlfriend and decides to go out of his way to sabotage their relationship every chance he gets. 

Rejection:

There are several reasons why Son of the Mob could be considered for nomination.  One of the main reasons is that Vince is faced with many hard choices throughout the book and the reader finds themselves watching in desperation as he continually builds a proverbial house of cards that is in danger of falling at any moment.  This creates an emotional experience that many young adults may ultimately find themselves in at some point in their life as they continue to push the boundaries of their abilities.  Son of the Mob also presents the teen experience in an unusual way.  Whereas many coming of age type novels portray teens as rebels who are trying to differentiate themselves from their parents or from the accepted social norms, Vince is going in the opposite direction.  He is trying to be as ordinary as possible so that he can easily blend into society as just an average Joe.

However, I still must reject this book for the following reasons.  First off, some of the characters fall outside of the realm of believability.  The reader is going to have a hard time believing that the head of the New York State mob is going to be as straight laced and ethical as Honest Abe Luca.  While the story does try to show that Honest Abe came into power due to the other mob bosses having “accidents”, it still requires a giant leap of faith in order to buy what the author is selling.  Also, the reader is trying to sympathize with a rich kid who can have just about anything he wants, but is choosing to take the high road and turning his back on all of his family’s opulence as his form of rebellion.  Readers may find themselves struggling to connect with this type of champion.  And finally, it seems that one of the underlying messages of Son of the Mob is that if you fail at something, somebody will usually be there to clean up your mess for you.  Not quite the real world message that a young adult reader will actually gain insight from. 

Genre Category: Coming of Age/Search for Identity

Second Book Review: A Study in Scarlet

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Author), Ian Edginton (Adapter), I.N.J. Culbard (Illustrator). A Study in Scarlet. New York: Sterling Publishing, 2010.

Annotation: 

The police find a dead man’s body holding a wedding ring in a bloodstained room, but the man has no visible injuries.  Even more chilling is the word “Rache” written in blood on the wall next to the man.  Detective Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are summoned to try and unravel this bizarre mystery, hopefully before the killer can strike again.

A Study in Scarlet is a graphic novel that is based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first story to feature Sherlock Holmes, one of literatures most famous detectives.  The novel is narrated by Sherlock Holmes faithful companion Dr. Watson who is first introduced to the eccentric detective early on in the story.  Dr. Watson is fascinated with Sherlock’s quirks and his amazing ability to deduce facts with seemingly minimal information.  It is this gift of intuition and attention to detail that allows Sherlock to carve out a living, on his own terms, as a consulting detective.  Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are quickly drawn into a case involving a dead man found in an apartment with blood splattered everywhere, but the blood is not from the victim.  Sherlock investigates the dead man’s room, and discovers the word “Rache” written in blood on a shadowed part of the wall, and a woman’s wedding ring in the victim’s hand.  After collecting several more clues at the scene, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson begin to do some independent fact finding, away from the prying eyes of Scotland Yard.  

As the story unfolds, Sherlock begins to reveal some of his famous tricks of the trade, such as hiring young street kids to be his eyes and ears around London, since they are easily overlooked and are hardly ever viewed as a threat.  Then as Sherlock and Dr. Watson quickly begin to narrow down the list of suspects, another man is killed.  And just like the first murder, the word “Rache” is written in blood on the wall of the second victim’s room.  With Sherlock now convinced of the murderer’s identity, he uses a clever tactic to persuade the killer to come to Sherlock's apartment, completely unaware that his guilt has been discovered.  It is from that point that all the clues are put together; however, the killer’s motive remains a mystery.  Fortunately, unexpected circumstances involving the killer health allow the reader to finally know why he resorted to murder.

Nomination:

A Study in Scarlet is a wonderfully composed and easy to follow graphic novel that introduces the young adult reader to a literary icon that has been fascinating readers young and old for over a century.  And since this was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first story based on the character Sherlock Holmes, you are familiarized with all of the main characters right from the beginning.  However, as the story unfolds, you begin to realize that you are being denied certain facts (due to behind the scenes events) which make solving the mystery before the end of the story practically impossible.  But at the same time, the reader is given enough information to keep them yearning to know more.  The graphics also do a fantastic job of keeping the reader’s attention. For example, Sherlock Holmes will often give a knowing glance to the reader when explaining something complicated to the less astute characters in the story.  This seems to create a bond between Sherlock and the reader, as if Sherlock is telling the reader, “I know you are smart enough to understand this, but let’s explain it to these people who are far less intelligent than we are”.   It is this cerebral bond with the young adult that helps it overcome the lack of wild action and gritty animation that is so commonly found in popular graphic novels being produced today.  Therefore, A Study in Scarlet graphic novel is the perfect format for indoctrinating young readers into the eccentric world of Detective Sherlock Holmes.

Genre Category: Graphic Novel / Mystery Fiction