A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

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After reading The Book Thief, I was taken aback by the power of books and language. To my extreme gratification, A Northern Light was equally invested in the incredible potential of the written and spoken word. Donnelly’s book is beautifully written and important. Her playfulness with language, her ability to switch from past to present smoothly, in addition to her feminist twinge made this book an awesome, enlightening read.

To be honest, I have never been one for historical fiction mainly because I cannot stand the ways in which people (particularly women and people of color) have been historically marginalized. This is not to say that this has been resolved, but it is just more evident and shocking in early twentieth century texts. This book was a great experience for me personally because it showed me the injustices I feared, but fought against them. The fact that Mattie is the first in her family to get her high school diploma, her best friend is not only male, but African-American, and that she has a job outside of the home to support her family are all elements of a story from 1906 that I did not expect.

I loved seeing 16-year-old Mattie go through all of the typical teenage trials and tribulations, but in an entirely different setting. She argues with her siblings, fights with her father, hates her name, falls in love, experiences the tug of sexual desire and doesn’t know what to do with it (who does?), and plays made up games and a secret language with her best friend. Like any teenage female, Mattie compares herself to other girls: “Belinda is a pretty name. It feels like meringue in your mouth or a curl of sugar on snow. Not like Matt. Matt is the sound of knots in a dog’s coat or something you wipe your feet on” (51). She becomes giddy with emotion when Royal kisses her, but fears she will lose her independence or intelligence: “Can a girl be unmanned? I wondered. By a boy? Can she be unbrained? (78). One element of the story that I felt was incredibly different from most teenagers experiences in modern day, was the compulsion Mattie felt to support her family’s dreams, rather than her own. This pull between family and independence was incredibly powerful and really made me think about what I would do in the same situation. For Mattie, is a matter of love versus language, love being marriage and family—her expected role, and language being following her dreams of going to Barnard to study and write literature. “I wondered if all those things were the best things to have or if it was better to have words and stories…Nobody I knew had both” (96-97).

The way the book is structured with alternating chapters focusing on Mattie’s story and Grace’s, we can see the way in which the latter affects the former. While she is falling in love with books and boys, she is also reading the story of a woman who gives her entire self to her man, only to be left completely alone and eventually killed. This affects the way Mattie views relationships and allows her to see that things are not always as they seem: sometimes people will use and abuse you for their own benefit, without caring at all. Understanding this allows her the courage to break off the engagement to Royal, whom she has realized is using her to gain land on her father’s property.

Both of these plot lines allow Mattie to continually develop her love of reading and her passion for the story: “There were lives in those books, and deaths. Families and friends and lovers and enemies. Joy and despair, jealousy, envy, madness, and rage…I could almost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out” (200). The words in the letters and the books are what allow her to escape the life she doesn’t want and free her from a destiny that is inopportune. One again, the power of texts prevails, what English teacher can argue with that? Happy reading!

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

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“Where’s the fight? He wondered. Where’s the will to hold on? Of course, at thirteen, he was a little excessive in his harshness. He had not looked something like me in the face. Not yet” (189).

This quote sticks in my mind because it is so symbolic of the text as a whole. This book is constantly asking: What is worth surviving for? Everyone is the story chooses survival over resignation for one reason, each individually unique: for Liesel it is books and her papa, for Rudy it is a kiss from Liesel, for Hans it is his family and accordion, for Ilsa Hermann—the mayor’s wife—it is the opportunity to provide for Liesel what no one else can, etc. Written from the voice of “Death” personified, the stories embedded in the novel give the reader an opportunity to see how each character interprets life and what he or she deems indispensible. This is an incredibly powerful structure for a book and I have no doubt that other readers were as affected as I. The style of the narrative took away the complexity and boiled life down to its most simplistic elements. What is needed to live a life worth living? At some points in the novel, survival become literal—with bread and coffee grounds, but in others survival is grounded in the human soul. Liesel does not differentiate between books and food—they are equally vital: “‘You hungry?’ Rudy asked. Liesel replied. ‘Starving.’ For a book” (287). This book allows the reader to see the true power of various art forms like music, writing, drawing, and reading. These are not just extracurriculars! They are essential to life.

Liesel’s adoration and thievery of books is such an interesting and effective way to show the Holocaust through a child’s eyes. She not only sees injustice in the physical mistreatment of Jews, but she is able to see the ways that language has been taken away and limited for them. She is able to understand the power dynamic in a whole new way based on her understanding of language. It was so refreshing to meet a young person who truly perceived the power of words. She sees the complexity of language and the ways it can be used to both free the mind AND manipulate it. This power through the manipulation of words culminated beautifully when Max took Mein Kampf and physically covered its pages in white paint in order to write over them—the ultimate subversion. Not only was Max taking away the power of Hitler’s words by deleting them, he was literally replacing them with his own language. This was so incredible: it gives me chills to recall.

After Max has been walked to Dachau and her papa has gone to war, Liesel takes her anger out on words: “Soon there was nothing but scraps of words littered between her legs and all around her. The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn’t be any of this. Without words, the Fuhrer has nothing” (521). What an insight for a young child!

There was so much to this book, it is challenging to discuss all of the elements I found to be interesting, important or perception-altering, but I think the role of the narrator in the text was extremely pivotal to my understanding of the novel. I can honestly say I’ve never read (or cared to read) in which “death” plays a primary role but I was pleasantly surprised, by the outcome of this “character” in the text. “Death” has been personified in movies, books and on television as an evil, malicious being, with strong dislike for happiness or life-giving energy. This book completely flipped this idea on its head, and made me think about dying in an entirely different way. Death does not relish in taking life, death wants to understand people better, death wants to be fought and not freely accepted. With so much more to it than I can express adequately, this book is a must read for everyone, take the time to step into Liesel’s world and be forever changed. Happy reading!

The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales by Virginia Hamilton

This book was a wonderful departure from the previous texts we have read. It was whimsical and mythical. I enjoyed being able to step into a notably fictitious world and allow myself to be mesmerized by the stories. I can’t honestly say I have had very much experience with folktales other than those recreated by Walt Disney and I was pleasantly surprised. As a person who favors contemporary realistic fiction above all else, I found myself more intrigued and interested in the stories than I thought I would be!

The combination of the stories, illustrations and genealogy of the tales made this book a very interesting collection. I really enjoyed the way Hamilton focused on the language of the characters and allowed the dialect to come through to accurately represent the culture from which the story originated, for example: “Don’t know some animal tells. Hear um but forget um” (31). Hamilton later comments that this story is “A version of a dialect plantation tale from the Georgia Sea Isles” (34). Her research and succinct explanations make this book even more enjoyable because the reader can be aware of the historical context: she frames the text for us! I enjoyed imagining these stories being told orally or read aloud while simultaneously showing the illustrations. There is so much that reading aloud can express that one cannot merely get by reading text on a page.

Throughout my reading I thinking that I was becoming privy to a secret language, a code of characters and plots created to inspire hope in slaves through the passing of tales of hope through generations. Hamilton has opened my eyes to a new understanding and appreciation of the story. The creativity and adaptation utilized by Hamilton is incredible. While most of the characters fit an archetype popular in many folktales throughout the world—Bruh Rabbit, Tar Baby and a variety of Johns—Hamilton manages to give them a flair that is all her own and makes the story that much more memorable. For example, in “Doc Rabbit, Bruh Fox and Tar Baby,” Hamilton says “the Tar Baby wasn’t gone speak to a stranger”: a comment most likely added to appeal to a contemporary audience who learned the concept of “stranger danger” as children (15).

I find this set of stories particularly appealing because they can be read at the surface level or beyond. The stories have so much aesthetic appeal (particularly with the added grayscale illustrations!) on their own, it is tempting to read them purely for their beauty and readability, but we all know this is an impossible task for literature students. I also enjoyed the “trickery” tales. However I don’t particularly agree with the phrase “trickery” because that implies that the “bruh” character is doing something wrong when he is doing something to protect himself. He is in fact outsmarting his opponent, rather than tricking him. In the story, “Manuel Had a Riddle” for example, Manuel is trying to outsmart the king in order to earn a fortune to take care of his widowed mother. I found myself cheering for Manuel as he “tricked” the king. I will always appreciate a story in which intelligence defeats power and the latter respects the former’s wishes. “He got his fortune and he took it to his mother. He and his mother then had a lot of everything and ever after they lived happily” (75). In the case of “John and the Devil’s Daughter,” we see both John and the Devil’s daughter working together to outsmart the Devil so that they can live happily ever after. In this case not only does intelligence conquer power but love triumphs over evil.

The story “Little Eight John,” was one of the only tales in the book that dealt with trickery within the family unit (with the exception of “John and the Devil’s Daughter” in which the Devil’s occupation supersedes his family role). In most of the stories, the families are working together to defeat an outside antagonist—symbolic of the dynamic between slave families and plantation owners. In this story, I didn’t much care for the protagonist, Little John who enjoyed at his (somewhat) indirect causal of his family’s misery. However, I still found myself shocked at the severity of his punishment and haunted by the story. But I will remember it, and that is the beauty of these tales. These stories are meant to be remembered, passed on, adopted and adapted for the storyteller and audience alike. Happy reading!

Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman

This book is quite aptly named. What a wonderful use of onomatopoeia to create the sounds of the insects about which the poems are written! This book is written not just in two parts but for two people to read aloud. And read aloud I did. Fleischman does an excellent job of using rhyme schemes, imagery, metaphor, and spoken round (like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat...") to paint a beautiful scene for the reader. To be honest I've never really thought about bugs much, but I felt like I was back in the world of White’s Charlotte's Web where insects and animals can communicate and it was pretty great.

The use of metaphor and lyrical alliteration in the poems give the reader an appreciation and respect for the poet’s diction and the poems’ aesthetic appeal. For example in “Fireflies,” Fleischman writes, “Light/is the ink we use/Night/is our parchment…Insect calligraphers/practicing penmanship/six-legged scribblers” (11-13). Each of the poems is written from the perspective of a different insect or insects and it is a great exercise in switching perspectives. Fleischman's poems are not only aesthetically pleasing, but they also focus on common literary themes like growth, death and rebirth. And he is funny! One poem is a moth's serenade to a porch light and anyone who has enjoyed a sweltering summer night can relate to this and laugh: “Porch/light,/hear my plight!/I drink your light/like nectar/Dream of you/by day/Gaze in your eyes/all night/Porch light!” The moth’s language and feelings towards the light are comically reminiscent of the forbidden love of Romeo and Juliet: “ ‘Keep back,’ they say/I cant!/‘Don’t touch,’ they say/I must!” (19).

I also appreciated the poem about bees from the point of view of the worker and the queen at the same time-what an eye opener. (Part A is underlined, Part B is italicized, joint parts are left plain) For example: “Being a bee/is a joy/is a pain./ I’m a queen/I’m a worker…I’m bathed/then I take out/the hive’s morning trash/then I’m groomed” (30).

I would love to write a poem that describes a school day from my point of view and the point of view of my students and see what it looks like—or even my perspective as a student and a professor’s as a teacher. Book and insect lovers alike will appreciate "Book Lice," that follows a pair of wedded lice living and chewing their way through great works of literature by famous literary figures such as Conan Doyle, Keats, Horace, and Shakespeare.

I also really enjoyed Eric Beddows’ illustrations. They add a great deal to the text of the poems-he is an extremely talented artist. They really help to give Fleischman’s characters even more personality. As I was reading, I kept thinking that the poems sounded like song lyrics of some kind, and I actually discovered that some of them have been made into songs! This is a great interpretation of Moth's Serendade

--> set to music and performed by Shirley Hoffman Warren. What a great example of the many ways one can interpret poetry. After stumbling upon these songs, I looked into other work Fleischman has done, and I was really impressed! There are a number of his works that have been adapted for the stage and re-written as song lyrics. Visit Paul's Website for more information! I would recommend this book in pieces, these poems are meant to be savored one by one and definitely read it aloud! Happy reading!

19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye

What an incredibly powerful collection! I have never been one to read a book of poetry from cover to cover, but this book kept me engaged throughout each poem like a set of short stories. I was constantly in awe of how much Nye could include in so few words. I felt as if every single poem, practically every single line told a different story.
I think the most pivotal aspect of the poetry was its metacognitive nature: she writes about writing and the power that comes with language. The way she talks about language and communication is incredibly powerful and really made me think about the importance of being able to communicate in one’s native language. This book combines elements of immigration, family, loss, war, peace and the struggle of being torn between two worlds: being an adult vs. being a child, being an American vs. being Arab, speaking English vs. speaking Arabic, living in war vs. living in peace and on and on. She talks about language as a way to express the pain and suffering of living between these two worlds. “The bombs break everyone’s/sentences in half,” she writes, emphasizing the power and violence of cultural destruction (61).
One of the other elements of Nye’s writing that I so enjoyed was her use of personification to emphasize the effect violence has on not only people, but places, things, and relationships. In the poem, “For the 500th Dead Palestinian, Ibtisam Bozieh” she writes about a girl who was killed at an extremely young age: “Dead at 13, for staring through/the window into a gun barrel/which did not know you wanted to be/a doctor” (53). She is treating violence as its own separate entity, a powerful being that can have feelings and emotions, but just chooses not to emit them. In another poem she talks about books and personifies them, but this time gives them emotions: “in Iraq a book never had one owner—it had ten./lucky books, to be held often/and gently, by so many hands/later in American libraries she felt sad/for books no one ever checked out” (110). This is another time in which she emphasizes the power of language and the importance of gaining and sharing knowledge. Following war, she says “certain words, feel impossible in the mouth./Casualty: too casual, it must be changed.” (35)
I really appreciated her focus on children and schools because I feel as though so many adults have written about the Middle East and their experiences, but their writing is not tangible for younger audiences. Nye writes about the experiences in such a way that they become so much more accessible for younger people. She talks about things like school, family and friends with which younger people are more familiar than say, Israeli-Palestinian conflict or strategies of war. For example in one poem she says, “I mighta have been dead too,/for something simple like staring/or shouting what was true/and getting kicked out of school” (53). She really made me think about how much I take my own schooling for granted. I can—and am encouraged!—to say what I think and believe in my classes and I feel safe in my school. Whereas in Nye’s world, “when students gather quietly/inside their own classroom/to celebrate the last day of school,/the door to the building/gets blasted off” (60).
Overall, I felt Nye’s collection was extremely well-written and eye-opening. I don’t know if I would say “enjoyable,” because so many of the poems were so sad, but they were important and that is why I liked this book. In post 9/11 society I think these poems would be a great way to start discussions about the relationship between the U.S. and the Middle East as well as the experience of immigrants in the U.S. Read these poems, but savor them individually, not all at once. Happy reading!