I Kissed Shara Wheeler - by Casey McQuiston

 

Being out and queer at Willowgrove Christian Academy is hard enough for Chloe Green without also having Shara Wheeler, the Principal's "perfect" daughter as her rival for class valedictorian. To complicate matters further, Shara disappears after she steals a kiss from Chole. That Shara had previously been presumed to be straight (the girlfriend of a star football player, no less) confounds everyone. Chole, Smith (Shara's boyfriend), and their friend Rory begin a search for Shara based on some rather complicated clues. 

No YA novel would be complete without some action taking place in the school library. Rory and Chloe sneak into the Principal's office after hours via the library air duct. They are able to get a key to the library from Chloe's friend Georgia who works as a library aide, although Georgia is unaware of what they were planning. While the ruse of traveling through air ducts is comically common in fiction, I don't know anyone IRL who has ever done it, although apparently it has been used with some success. Read about one case here.

Chloe and Shara have a unique library connection but only Chloe knows about it until close to the end of the book. Chloe witnesses Shara throwing away her bejeweled cross necklace in the library trashcan, which Chloe retrieves and then keeps. There are other mentions of studying and meeting in the library sprinkled throughout, but my favorite use of the library was this metaphor, written by Chloe's friend Georgia for a creative writing assignment

There's a girl with brown eyes who reminds me of the first book I ever loved. When I look at her, I feel like there might be another universe in her. I imagine her on a shelf too high for me to reach, or peeking out of someone else's backpack, or at the end of a long wait at the library. I know there are other books that are easier to get my hands on, but none are half as good as her. Every part of her seems to have a purpose, a specific meaning, an exact reason for being...

Another fun romp from the author of Red, White, and Royal Blue.

 

Just Mercy - by Bryan Stevenson

The 2015-16 Common Read for the Unitarian Universalist Association I will be participating in a book discussion with members of my church this month, and again with members of Messiah Baptist Church in Brockton, Massachusetts in March. This is the true story of Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative a "private, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system." (from the website).

This is a powerful work that tells the story of rampant corruption throughout the criminal justice system - lawyers, politicians, judges and law enforcement officials who are more concerned with appearances than in assuring that justice is served, even when there is incontrovertible evidence that the wrong person has been jailed. Sometimes Stevenson was able to have wronged convictions overturned, but sadly, too often, he watched as innocent people were executed. It is a good companion book to read with Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

I got almost to the end of this book believing it wouldn't find its way to this blog, but the final chapter "The Stonecatchers' Song of Sorrow" came through. The bar for inclusion on my blog is at least one mention of a library or librarian, and this book met that standard. In discussing the Supreme Court's decisions to ban life-imprisonment for juvenile offenders (in 2010 for non-homicide crimes and 2012 for homicide) Stevenson tells of

...several former juvenile lifers [who] had developed outstanding institutional histories with very few disciplinaries, even though they did their time with no hope of ever being released or having their institutional history reviewed. Some became trustees, mentors and advocates against violence among inmates. Others had become law librarians (emphasis mine), journalists, and gardeners.

Banned Books Week

As I do every year, I will be blogging all this week about banned books and censorship in honor of the American Library Association's annual recognition of Banned Books Week. Banned Books Week is "an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information" (from the American Library Association website).

Recent news stories of challenges to books include Randolph County (North Carolina's) removal of The Invisible Man from school libraries; a call by an Alabama state legislator to ban Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye from public schools; a grandparent's request that children's book Mommy Laid an Egg be moved "out of the reach of children" in the Lodi (California) public library to "an education or reference section"; and removal of Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban from the high school curriculum in Sierra Vista, Arizona.

See my Banned Books Week website and MaxGuide for more information about censorship and banned books.

Looking for Alaska - by John Green

Last week the American Library Association released its list of the ten most challenged books of 2012. I immediately recognized one of them, Looking for Alaska, as the one my daughter accidently left behind when she went back to her boarding school after a weekend visit. I really had no choice but to start reading it myself. And, I stand by what I wrote in my post about the book Testimony - parents of kids in boarding school shouldn't read books about boarding schools (Harry Potter of course not withstanding). Knowing what I do about book challenges, it is not hard to figure out why this one made the list: underage drinking, suicide, questioning of authority, and teen sex all figure prominently, including an unforgettable passage in which one teen, Alaska, gives instruction on how to perform fellatio to two of her classmates using a tooth-paste tube. With such busy social lives pulling pranks and giving blow job lessons it is no wonder these kids don't seem to have time to use the school's library. The only three times it is mentioned is as the location  of one of the many pranks (a Volkswagen Beetle was placed inside), the place where the "Weekday Warriors" (the rich kids who went home on the weekends) sat outside of, and a place where Miles "Pudge" Halter sometimes spots young Lara (from whose lesson in the performance of oral sex he was the direct beneficiary). Although we have no direct knowledge of Alaska using the library, she does keep a personal Life's Library which "filled her bookshelves and then overflowed into waist-high stacks of books...piled haphazardly against walls". However, she explains to her new friend Miles that she'll have "more time to read them when [she's] old and boring." Right now "there is so much to do: cigarettes to smoke, sex to have, swings to swing on." Alaska's Life's Library also becomes the object of a prank, and sadly many of the books are destroyed.

Based on the marker my daughter placed in this book, she has not yet gotten to the tooth-paste tube episode. I imagine she will die a thousand deaths when she realizes I not only read it, but blogged about it as well.