Category Archives: 7-8

Mock CaldeNott Results!

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This time of year we enjoy handicapping the big children’s and young adult book awards as much as the next literature center. But rather than trying to anticipate the 2014 committees, we decided to go a different way in our own engagement with the process. We used the Caldecott lens to examine some outstanding examples of picture book making from around the world. Yesterday evening a hale and inquisitive group of 22 gathered in the Butler Center to consider extraordinary picture books ineligible for the actual Caldecott Medal due to their international provenance. We pulled out the official Caldecott terms and criteria (leaving behind the bits about the illustrator being American and the book being first published in America) and focused them on a butler’s dozen (that’s 13) of terrific ineligible picture books. It was stimulating and edifying, and, as is always the case with Butler Center book discussions, a real blast. In the end we chose one winner and one honor book. Look at us!

jane the fox and meFor our winner we selected Jane, the Fox & Me by Fanny Britt, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault (Groundwood Books). A young girl, bullied and friendless, finds strength and comfort in the pages of a favorite novel, buoyed by its familiar message and strengthened enough, eventually, to trust someone and take a chance. We were especially taken with Arsenault’s sophisticated use of color to paint an emotional landscape; the distinct styles she used to differentiate the adolescent world of the protagonist and the imaginary world of Jane Eyre into which she retreats; and the illustrations’ almost childlike essence that really enhanced the raw vulnerability of the first-person voice.

my father's arms are a boatOur honor book is My Father’s Arms Are a Boat by Stein Erik Lunde, illustrated by Øyvind Torseter (Enchanted Lion Books). A boy who recently lost his mother steps into the night with his father to process grief, look for comfort, and reconnect with the world that still holds possibility. Here we appreciated the untethered compositions, expressing the amorphous, rudderless nature of grief; the gradual relief that comes with the return of regular boundaries; and the expression of life’s fragility in the delicate three-dimensional paper-work dioramas.

But this was no easy choice. The debate was spirited, intense, and full of insight. And just look at the other distinguished titles we had on the table!:

The Line by Paula Bossio (Kids Can Press)

The Bear’s Song by Benjamin Chaud (Chronicle Books)

A Little Book of Sloth by Lucy Cooke (Margaret K. McElderry Books)

Herman and Rosie by Gus Gordon (Roaring Brook Press)

Opposites by Xavier Deneux (Chronicle Books)

Here I Am by Patti Kim, illustrated by Sonya Sanchez (Capstone)

The Big Wet Balloon by Liniers (Toon Books)

The Tiny King by Taro Miura (Candlewick Press)

Maps by Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski (Big Picture Press)

The Voyage by Veronica Salinas, illustrated by Camilla Engman (Groundwood Books)

Nasreddine by Odile Weulersse, illustrated by Rbecca Dautremer (Eerdmans Books for Young Readers)

It was a lot of fun. You should try it.

Commonalities, Not Competition: Newbery 2014

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It gets to be this time of the year in the children’s publishing world and my anxiety starts to bubble to the surface of my being. Blogs are buzzing with reviews of novels, analysis of illustrations, and comparison of genres. Librarians ask each other, “What are your favorites this year?” Patrons ask, “So who do you think is going to win?” And while I love love love the ALSC awards, I want to take a step back and reflect upon what a few of these buzzing books have in common, rather than the spirit of competition that my air bubble is currently filled with. This perfectly fits with The Butler Center’s mission to encourage imagination and wonder through literature.

I generated the following list of books randomly from several sources. This is simply for observation’s sake, so if a book isn’t included, there is no intention or reason behind it (and I have had a chance to READ THESE!) Let’s check out some of the books:

  • Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan
  • One Came Home by Amy Timberlake
  • The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata
  • Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo
  • The Center of Everything by Linda Urban
  •  A Tangle of Knots by Lisa Graff
  • Far Far Away by Tom McNeal

Okay, so let’s the get obvious ones out of the way– most of these authors are women and they are all fiction choices. But this says more about me as a reader than about the Newbery contenders this year.

But let’s look at what’s underneath. When I take a close look, this is what I see:

1) They all ask important questions. Why are we here? How do I discover my own voice? What is the best way to make decisions? Where do I fit in? Can I change my own destiny, or is it just up to luck? Whether it is Georgie who is trying to navigate her own world amidst feelings of loss and coming-of-age discoveries or Flora going on adventures with a magic squirrel, these characters search, seek, and only sometimes find the answer. In other words, they make us think.

2) They are filled with important relationships. I think we know that humans instinctually want to connect with others, but each of these books explores friendship and family relationships with distinguished and dynamic depth. Cady searches for her long-lost parent. Willow loses everything she has and then finds family in a patchwork quilt of interesting human beings. The ghost of Jacob Grimm protects young Jacob Johnson Johnson, forming a kind of intimate bond between male characters. This level of authenticity is, in my opinion, rare in middle grade/YA novels.

3) They leave us with more questions, rather than answers. These books don’t tell us the way to live. There is no black and white, right or wrong. They explore questions along the way, but they leave the answers up to the reader. And isn’t that what great books are all about? Some of the best books I’ve read, I’ve finished the last page and thought, “Hmmm,” or “….huh….?” But then I think. I talk to other readers. I wait for it to sink in. And all of these books have sunk in because they don’t “fix” or “solve” anything. They explore, ignite, and wonder.

What Newbery buzz books are you excited about this year? What do they have in common with each other? How do the books inform each other when you compare them in the aggregate rather than in direct competition with each other?

Girls gone wild

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I lived with my sister, now a science education specialist, while she was completing her master’s degree. Her thesis considered students’ perceptions and assumptions of scientists: their work, appearance, and setting. We had a ball examining the teenaged participants’ drawings, through which an overwhelmingly popular archetype emerged: Einsteinian hair, glasses, bow ties, lab coats, Erlenmeyer flasks, boiling liquids, explosive gases. When asked “What does a scientist look like?”, students’ answer is almost unanimously male and inside a laboratory.

The Tapir ScientistI am so pleased to see books for the young adult reader challenging the stereotype. Houghton Mifflin’s excellent Scientists in the Field series solidifies an altogether different image. Take The Tapir Scientist, by children’s nonfiction juggernauts Sy Montgomery and Nic Bishop. While the cover photograph shows the captivating and rarely seen face of a tapir – trunk-like snout, curious eye and nearly smiling mouth – the first title page’s photograph reveals the book’s namesake and star: a woman wearing dirty cargo pants, t-shirt and baseball cap wades through ankle-deep wetlands, holding an instrument in the air and peering towards the horizon. Her name is Patricia Medici, a Brazilian scientist whose work may more closely resemble extreme camping than the conventional image of “doing science.” For days, she and her team (which includes Sy and Nic) make trips around the vast Pantanal Wetlands of Brazil attempting to collar and track the elusive tapirs, whose behavior is largely a mystery. She has to beware pumas, venomous snakes, and the relentless bite of ticks, but the more troublesome battles are that with faulty equipment or inconsistent results. Although the subject of The Tapir Scientist and other books within this series is an animal, the text’s content is all process from the scientist’s point of view. Montgomery and Bishop record Patricia’s frustrations and triumphs as they happen and present their work as a narrative full of suspense, empathy and joy. Yes, the reader learns the traditional creature facts – anatomy, behavior, ecosystem – but all that report fodder is discovered only through the journey the reader makes with the scientist.

PrimatesSimilarly, Jim Ottaviani and Maris Wicks’ graphic novel Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas places its readers right in the boots (or bare feet) of the title’s three scientists. Through brilliantly distinct and sometimes overlapping narration, we grow to understand the individuals: Jane’s endless curiosity, Dian’s brusque fierceness, Biruté’s patient hunger. But all are united by their commitment to primate study, more so, to study primates in the wild. Each is recruited by famed anthropologist Louis Leakey, whose targeting of women feels ambiguously both progressive and sexist: he seems to respect these women for their observational intelligence, but Primates also references his womanizing with the young researchers he employs. Nevertheless, for these three women, chimps, gorillas and orangutans are the subject of all attention. The reader, too, is given a front seat to the observations; Wicks devotes pages of panels, with minimal text, just to the sequential movements and expressions of the primates: the chimps’ mysterious rain dance, gorillas’ unique noses “like big fingerprints,” an orangutan’s leisurely journey through the trees. Wicks’ style is not naturalistic; on the contrary, her brightly painted drawings are stylistically playful and simply rendered. Coupled with the type sets used for the texts, which mirror the style of each scientist’s documentation – handwritten script or typed Courier – the reader can imagine these illustrations appearing in these women’s scientific logs, a patient and enthusiastic recording of what they see in the field.

Into That ForestLastly, Louis Nowra’s fictional novel Into That Forest portrays not a willing scientist per se, but a child lost in the woods. Incredibly, young Hannah and her friend Becky survive a storm in the Tasmanian wild, only to be rescued and adopted by two Tasmanian tigers. Initially they are terrified, but as the creatures prove themselves trustworthy guardians – bringing them caught fish, leading them to their den – the girls adapt to their bizarre new family structure. Over four years in the wild, they slowly lose the things that define them as human – their manners, clothes, and eventually, language – but they gain just as much in their careful observations of their new companions. Theiri senses sharpen, words are replaced by growls and eye expressions, and affection for their new foster parents grows:

The tigers stopped being animals to me. They were Corinna and Dave… Corinna showed she liked us by licking us and curling up with us whenever we slept. Though I have to say, if she didn’t like something you did, she’d nip you to let you know.

Nowra’s story, as dense and rich as the Tasmanian forests, not only stands as an imaginative memorial to the thylacine, officially declared extinct in 1936, but as a testament to Piaget’s classic theory of development: that the child is a scientist, learning and constructing her world of knowledge through constant observation and application without any extrinsic motivation, like candy bribes or A+ grades. It is that childlike passion and curiosity that should identify grownup scientists more than the lab coats. Indeed, the women so masterfully presented in these varied stories all possess that drive for understanding the world that seems to exist outside of and above the status quo of our everyday work culture. And perhaps outside is the key: it is hard not to feel awed, inspired and motivated when you’re surrounded by the wonder of the wild.

God got a dog

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godgotadogGod got a dog

by Cynthia Rylant, illlustrated by Marla Frazee

Beach Lane Books, 2013

Cynthia Rylant is a visionary, the sort of author who seems compelled to challenge literary constructs, and herself, ever in pursuit of some deeper truth that she needs to express. At least she has always seemed like a visionary to me, judging by her extraordinarily varied, generally innovative and uniformly personal body of work. Whether it is the Newbery-winning Missing May, with its put-your-head-on-the-desk heartbreak, the bold sweetness of her self-illustrated picture books like Cat Heaven and Dog Heaven, or the inspired, uncommon poetry of Boris or Something Permanent, her work transcends the expected in order to achieve the basic. In 2003 she published God Went to Beauty School, a collection of page-long poetic essays, each about God undertaking some commonplace activity, from opening His own nail salon to cooking spaghetti. These episodes, in their essential combination of the mundane and the sublime, express a rainbow of grace. In this year’s God got a dog a number of these poems is recollected and illustrated by Caldecott-honor illustrator Marla Frazee, who brings her own generous accessibility to the project. Frazee adds to the flavor of the book. Hand-lettering contributes a sense of innocence. Light permeates each tableau. But most striking is her casting of God in each episode. Rylant’s work already used both female and male pronouns to refer to God, but Frazee takes the plurality a step further, diversifying the personifications of God as much as possible: old and young, big and small, country and city, race after race. None of these updates represents a huge departure from the tone and intention of the original work. This new books, like its predecessor, is a soft, welcoming meditation on the sanctity of our daily lives and the reflection of the divine in simple things (even if those reflections are upside-down). But there is whimsy in this new package, a luminous, bubbly sort of warmth that unifies the different experiences and personifications, softening the edges and opening the doors. Rylant’s God is us, and Frazee’s us is God, and there you have it.

Adrenaline Fix

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gravityI’m really not much of an adrenaline junky. Sure, I like a roller coaster as much as the next person (though I am now, sadly, too tall to ride most of them) and I’d follow Jason Bourne anywhere. But friends will tell you that all I catch of a screen thriller is what I can see between the fingers pressed firmly over my eyes. I hear even less (my thumbs are blocking my ears). And it takes a good nine hours to watch one from the comfort of my couch, what with all the pausing and walking around the living room shaking out my hands. And yet I find myself strangely addicted to the trailer for the new Alfonso Cuarón film Gravity. The first time I saw it in a theater the hair on my arms was standing up for a good five minutes, and I have worn out the various views on the YouTube (like this one and this one).

And it all has me wondering about a corollary interest in take-your-breath-away books. What are the reads that have left me gasping?

the white darkness The first thing that came to my mind is Geraldine McCaughrean’s Printz-winning The White Darkness which, quite frankly, scared the bejeezus out of me. This story of a shy girl with a hearing impairment and an historically accurate imaginary friend who accompanies her uncle on a mysterious trip to Antarctica compounds the menace of an unhinged villain with all of the terror mother nature can muster. Good night that book is scary.

the scorpio racesThe Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater raises hairs in an entirely different way. This is the story of the deadly races that happen every autumn along the shores of a Celtic Island where men capture and train capaill uisce, fierce, carnivorous horses that rise from the sea. And this time, for the first time, young Puck will be the first woman in the race. Much hangs in the balance in this taut drama, but it is Stiefvater’s evocation of the fearsome horses themselves, all teeth and muscle and blood and bone, that is so spine-chilling.

The_Great_Wide_SeaAnd then we’ve got something like The Great Wide Sea by M.H. Herlong that delivers its fright straight through the realm of possibility. Three boys set out on a year-long sail around the world with their father, broken by the recent death of their mother and clearly spinning outside the reach of responsibility. Tensions on the little craft are bad enough, but when the boys awake one morning to find the deck empty and their father gone, fear sets in. Slowly the boys’ resilience weakens as life becomes increasingly precarious and survival starts to slip from their grasp.

And what about you? What are your favorite tales of terror? Hit us up!

Kinship Project

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voice from afarThe Butler Center opened in its permanent space two years ago today on September 11th, 2011, the tenth anniversary of that infamous day in world history. To commemorate that occasion we curated an exhibit called the Kinship Project, a collection of books for children and teens that speak to our human kinship. We created a catalog with notes that speak to each of the 29 books connection to the idea of kinship. I link here to the online version. We have some print copies as well (beautiful, actually) and I’d be happy to send some along to you, too. Just fill out the form below with your name and address and I’ll get them in the mail.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

How about you? What do you remember of that day? What do your memories have to say to your work with books and young people? Where do you see kinship among the collections we keep?

“The President Has Been Shot!” vs. Kennedy’s Last Days

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When I discovered that two different accounts of Kennedy’s assassination had arrived at the Butler Center, I immediately grabbed them and started reading. Like so many people, I have a fascination with the Kennedys. I can’t pinpoint why exactly, but I’m guessing it’s a combination of my enchantment with mystery, glamour, politics, unexplainable tragedy, and story. Kennedy’s life—and death—are captivating stories, and two versions of Kennedy’s story are newly published for young adults in 2013: “The President Has Been Shot!”: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by James L. Swanson, and Kennedy’s Last Days: The Assassination that Defined a Generation by Bill O’Reilly. Before I compare and contrast, I want to make a note about audience. Scholastic suggests that the Swanson book be for ages 12 and up, noted on the book jacket. O’Reilly’s book cover does not indicate an intended age, but after further research I discovered that Henry Holt and Co. notes on their website that the book “will captivate adults and young readers alike” (http://us.macmillan.com/kennedyslastdays/BillOReilly). Of course, librarians can choose where to shelve this book, on what bibliographies to include this book, and what ages to steer this book to in reader’s advisory conversations. Finding out the publisher’s intended age was important to me though, for one reason: As I was reading, I wondered, Why is there no mention of Kennedy’s affairs? Both of these titles are not picturebooks or nonfiction titles intended for early elementary children. They are written for older kids—tweens and teens. Of course, many might argue that Kennedy’s philandering might not be appropriate for tweens, but then I beg the inevitable question. Why are we okay with telling them about extreme violence? Both books have large pictures of rifles and handguns. Of the assassination, Swanson’s book states, “[The third bullet] cut a neat hole through [the president’s] scalp and perforated his skull. The velocity, the pressure, and the physics of death did the rest. The right rear side of the president’s skull blew out—exploded really—tearing open his scalp, and spewing skull fragments, blood, and brains several feet into the air where it hung for a few seconds, suspended in a pink cloud” (113). Similarly, O’Reilly states, “The next bullet explodes his skull…it slices through the tender gray brain matter before exploding out the front of his head” (207). It is bothersome to me that both authors consciously eliminated sexual content for a young adult audience, but were perfectly fine with descriptive violence. I understand the importance of preserving JFK’s legendary status and historical importance, but this is a book of nonfiction, and kids deserve to know the whole story. The intended elimination reminds me of Ingri & Edgar Parin d’Aulaire’s Caldecott winning book Abraham Lincoln, in which there is no mention of Lincoln’s assassination. Do we think we are protecting young adults by eliminating facts? Do we think they won’t find out? What is it that is so much more terrifying about sex than exploding brains, spewing skull fragments, and revolvers?

president bookSwanson’s book establishes a strong narrative flow immediately. His writing is detailed, jargon-free, and action-packed. He is always able to put his reader right inside the story while using a third-person point of view. Swanson knows how to paint a picture, and emphasizes significant things that are not just arbitrary. I’ve read so much about the Kennedys and I never had read this: When Jackie got off the plane in Dallas, she was given red roses EVEN THOUGH the state flower was the yellow rose. Apparently, “so many of them had been ordered for the various events the Kennedys would attend in Texas that local florists had run out of them” (87-8). Pretty eerie that Jackie would be given red roses in the city that her husband would be assassinated in only minutes later. Never-before seen photographs are released in this book, and Swason’s charts and graphs are descriptive and compelling. Swanson details Oswald’s every move through text and picture, even recreating his view of Elm Street from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Several photographs of the seconds after the violent shots are shown from varied angles, displaying Clint Hill covering the president and Jackie with his own body. Swanson’s biggest accomplishment is his ability to keep the tension high while keeping facts straight; I didn’t want to put the book down.

kennedy bookWhile I’m not normally a fan of O’Reilly’s politics, I went into this book with a distinct conviction to be unbiased. O’Reilly starts his book off with a personal touch, describing where he was and how he felt on November 22, 1963. He outlines his book into four parts—The Making of a Hero, The Making of a Leader, Dallas, Texas—November 1963, and The Making of a Legend. The chapters alternate perspectives, recounting the parallel time frames of the lives of Kennedy and Oswald. It is an interesting approach the illuminates personality traits of both men. Using present tense, O’Reilly attempts to place his reader directly into the narrative, as if it is happening right now. The thing is, Swanson does that with past tense and it makes much more sense. One does not need to write in present tense in order to make a story come alive. In fact, because the book often needs to use past tense for historical background and context, it is strange to jump back and forth between tenses. Yet, O’Reilly writes with respect towards JFK and loyalty to his country. I was bothered by some of the assumptions made, specifically about people feeling certain things. For example, O’Reilly states , “Jackie Kennedy likes to think of herself as a traditional wife, focusing most of her attention on her husband and children” (55-6). First of all, how do we know what Jackie Kennedy felt about her role as a wife? Secondly, I have read the contrary. Rather than focusing on her family and children, Jackie took several trips abroad without her children, and very rarely had to do the things that many “traditional mothers” have to do—change dirty diapers, cook breakfast, do the dishes, clean the laundry. While I’m not doubting Jackie’s loyalty to her family, I do doubt O’Reilly’s statement that she was a traditional wife. In the memoir Mrs. Kennedy and Me, by Clint Hill (Jackie’s personal secret service agent), Hill describes Mrs. Kennedy in a way you’ve never known her before. It’s definitely a book to read if you like all things Kennedy.

It is difficult to be an author that follows up a fabulous year of narrative nonfiction, and let’s face it—2012 rocked. These two authors do a good job with building and maintaining a tense, politically-charged, mysterious story about a piece of contemporary history. When I grew up, history was just history to me. It all seemed the same, and numbers never had much significance for me, because I just had to MEMORIZE them. I probably became fascinated with the Kennedys because my parents constantly told me about that time period—it’s when they grew up. I remember the realization of “Woah. Civil Rights wasn’t long ago. This assassination (and Bobby Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King’s) was one lifetime away from me.” Kids in middle school and high school now don’t have as many parents that remember this time. It’s up to great nonfiction writers to preserve the past and keep the story alive. Swanson’s book available in October; O’Reilly’s in stores now.

Tommysaurus Rex

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Tommysaurus RexTommysaurus Rex
by Doug TenNapel
Graphix, 2013

Opening the pages of one of Doug TenNapel’s book is a bit like pressing play for a David Lynch film: you feel the certainty in your gut that it’s going to be a surprising and unique experience, an hour or two of bizarre, sometimes even disturbing images you’ll never forget seeing. The difference is, with Lynch’s work, I’d usually prefer to look away; with TenNapel, I can’t tear my eyes from the page.

Before the warped worlds of Bad Island and Ghostopolis, before the philosophical minefield of Cardboard, Doug TenNapel wrote Tommysaurus Rex, now beautifully republished in full color (contributed by Katherine Garner). In this middle grade graphic novel, a boy named Ely loses a pet dog and gains a pet dinosaur. Ely knows in his heart that the tyrannosaurus – playful, good-natured, and in need of training – is some manifestation of his old dog Tommy, despite its also having memories of Cretaceous life (and death). The mechanisms for the dinosaur’s rebirth and reincarnation are largely unstated, and blissfully so; TenNapel’s masterful storytelling presents a confident, fantastical logic that shrugs off the dull necessities of reality. The reader is happy to shrug them off, too.

In Tommysaurus Rex, TenNapel nods to fellow monster creators: Ray Harryhausen, visual effects artist who innovated new stop-motion animation techniques in the 1950s and ‘60s, makes a cameo appearance in Ely’s story. Bill Watterson was a clear influence on the artist; like Calvin and Hobbes, Ely and his fellow humans are drawn with occasionally zany stylistic expressions, while Tommysaurus is almost frighteningly realistic. Yet despite its allusions and tributes, the style and story stand alone. Calvin and Hobbes cuts with wit and cynicism, but through its perfectly messy imagery and fantastical conceit, Tommysaurus Rex rings loudly and truly with heart. One moment you might recoil from the image of a tyrannosaurus digging into a bloody feast of a cow carcass; the next, you’re holding back tears as a bully expresses regret or a friend says good-bye forever. TenNapel always surprises me somehow, except I always know I need to hold on for dear life (and keep the tissues within reach).

Openly Straight

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Openly StraightOpenly Straight

by Bill Konigsberg

Arthur A. Levine Books, 2013.

In the hilarious comedy Anger Management, Jack Nicholson’s character (a therapist) asks Adam Sandler’s character (an average Joe businessman) who he is (see video below). Adam Sandler answers with thoughts about his job, his personality, and his “likes.” Jack Nicholson pushes, and says “No, those are things ABOUT you. I want to know WHO YOU ARE.” An entertaining dialogue pursues, and the movie goes on.

Who are you?

Quite the question, huh? Often times, when I get asked this question when meeting someone new, my stomach feels like someone forced Robitussin cough syrup down my throat (the worst thing I can remember tasting in my life). Who am I? A graduate student. A dog lover. A dancer. A musician. A writer. I work at a library and I’m a middle child and in my spare time I do aerial acrobatics and play piano. My favorite candy is Laffy Taffy.

All of this is true. But is it really who I am? WHAT DOES THAT QUESTION MEAN?

Part of the problem is that we aren’t defined just by our own labels. Other people have labeled me, and in ways I don’t always like. Blonde. Overly Sensitive. A Pushover. Sometimes, I believe or become those things because someone else labeled me that way. Labeling is a scary, slippery slope, and it happens every day to everyone.

In Bill Konigsberg’s new YA novel, Openly Straight, seventeen-year-old Rafe is sick of his label. He’s been “the gay boy” since he came out in eighth grade, and it has become exhausting. He knows he’s got it lucky—he lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he isn’t bullied in school, his parents fully accept his sexuality, and he has good friends. But he’s been defined by this one label for so long that he feels like his other parts have disappeared. So he takes a risk and transfers to an all-boys’ boarding school in New England to try out a new method of self-expression—being “openly straight.”

For a while, life is fabulous. Rafe discovers his love of sports, hones his gift of creative writing, and fulfills his desire to be seen as Rafe, not Gay Rafe. But of course, there is another boy in this book—a boy that Rafe falls for, and complication ensues. Konignsberg writes his first-person narrative with a quirky grace and his dialogue with honesty and intelligence. His ability to build relationships between characters and willingness to ask thought-provoking, challenging questions to his reader is exceptional.

There’s still more to this book that I’m not including; something that is very hard to put into words. Alas, I will try.

We all want to be taken for the entire, deeply layered, multi-dimensional person that we are. I know I don’t want one of my labels to define me, but I do want the sum of my PARTS to define me. There is a type of psychotherapy called “Parts therapy,” which is based on the concept that we are complex human beings that have many different parts within us. I have a sensitive Part, but I also have a bold Part. I am a creative artist, but I am also a researcher and scholar. I don’t want to get stuck in one Part, and I don’t want to get hidden beneath a Part so no one sees any of the other Parts. Is my sexuality important? Of course. Does it define WHO I AM? No, it’s a Part. There is no Me without every Part that exists within me, and if I deny a Part of me, I’m not really Me either. Parts are fluid. They are not static; they change as we change. Openly Straight is poignant and powerful because it both asks and challenges the question: WHO ARE YOU?

Rafe would have to answer that question for himself, but I’m guessing he would say that he’s many, many things, but most of all he’s human. I would tell him that I’m the same, and that I’m a system of Parts that all work together to create the one—and only—me.

Just like you.

One for the Murphys

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One for the Murphys

One for the Murphys
by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
Nancy Paulsen Books, 2012

For a dog owner, it’s always a fascinating exercise to see what your pet notices. You pick up the house keys and she’s at the door; simply raise your eyebrows and her ears are pricked up in anticipation. A dog’s job is above all observing her humans, and we’re amazed by what she notices.

Yet nothing tops our own species as the reigning champions of observation. When we’re paying attention, we see everything: the slight tightness in a boss’s face, or the averted eyes of a suspicious stranger. The key is the paying attention part. In psychology experiments, a subject might be “primed” for a test by viewing significant words or images. In life, our past experiences teach us what to look out for.

One for the Murphys is a story about seeing. Twelve-year-old Carley Connors keeps much to herself, but the reader sees she’s a pro at observation, especially of her foster family:

“Michael Eric comes in with his hand tucked into his armpit. His mother drops to the floor like someone has kicked her behind the knees, but she lands gently, holding out her arms, and he melts into them.”

From smiling photos, neatly arranged pantry supplies, and especially the warm gestures and touches exchanged between the Murphys, Carley sees she doesn’t belong. She sees other things, too: moments of tension, worry, and anger. To another’s eyes, these might be normal moments of stress for a family, especially a new foster family. But to Carley, every frown is evidence that she is unwanted. Every hand reaching out is a potential slap, and she reflexively flinches. Although she has a keen eye for observation, her perception is skewed.

Through fragments of memory, the reader starts to see why: the last thing Carley saw before she woke up in the hospital was her stepfather raising his fists to beat her, and her mother holding her down. Carley, believing strength and emotion are mutually exclusive, doesn’t share this information readily with the people she encounters. Without all the facts, these other characters make their own judgments: a police officer sees her as an instigator; a classmate, seeing only the new clothes Mrs. Murphy has purchase for Carley, thinks she’s a mindless clone of any other kid. But the reader is granted the most accurate view. In seeing each person’s mistakes in perception, including Carley’s, we start to wonder about the people we see and the judgments we make. There’s almost always more to the story – in One for the Murphys and in life – and it isn’t always something that we great observers can clearly see.