YA Lit Review: 'Matched' by Ally Condie

In my effort to be in the habit of posting more regularly, I'm going to start sharing my reviews on the various young adult books that I've been reading as a part of the classroom-library/book-reading-culture-building that I'm working on with my 11th graders. We always had Silent Sustained Reading time at my last school, but here I am really trying to commit to make the SSR time sacred--no grading or email-checking for me, and in general I'm trying to make sure the kids see me reading books that they would be interested in reading (though once in a while I slip in a book just for me into the rotation!). If you're already my friend on Goodreads, then these reviews might be a re-read for you, but otherwise, hope you enjoy my humble thoughts!

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[Review embedded from Goodreads.com] 

  Matched by Ally Condie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Matched is the first in a trilogy (trilogies are THE way to go in YA lit, apparently) set in a futuristic society where The Society (with ominous capitalization) makes decisions for all its citizens based on science and probability to maximize happiness and healthiness: what to eat, where to work, where to live, whom to marry, when to have children. If you were any sort of reader at all as a child, you'll recognize--this is basically the world from Lois Lowry's The Giver.

Add a teen love triangle and intriguing cover art, and you've got a book that appeals pretty well to YA readers (likely girls). You can tell Condie loves literature and poetry and language, which I can appreciate. The romance was a little... melodramatic for me. I probably would have appreciated it more when I was a teen. As it was, it felt a little overwrought to me (at the ripe old age of 26). Mostly this book makes me want to read The Giver again. Perhaps I should now that the series is complete.

With all that said, I wrote this in my journal midway through reading this book. Perhaps it is enough of a recommendation:

Whatever else I feel about the strengths and weaknesses of this book, I will love it forever for giving teenage girls (and me) this line: "Then, the question I asked myself was: Do I look pretty? Now the question I ask is: Do I look strong?"

View all my reviews

Books, books, books!

One of my favorite new things that I've implemented this year is my classroom library. I always had a small one before, mostly old library discards and miscellaneous books from home, yard sales, etc., but this year I invested some money at the end of year Scholastic Book Sale and have been hitting up Goodwill on the 50% off weekends to find newer, popular books that kids actually want to read. 

 (Please excuse the embarrassing, cluttered mess that is my classroom...)

It hasn't been cheap, but I've seen it pay off in students who willingly, excitedly, and regularly READ. We take 10-15 minutes at the beginning of class two days a week (on a block schedule, we meet 3 days a week) just for reading, any book they want. One of the things I love about this school is that there seems to be a reading culture. Aside from some minor (and very rare) grumbling, all the students seem to take SSR as a matter of fact. It's just something we do. They even ask for it on the rare occasion that I have to push it from the schedule for a special event.

Now that we've established SSR time as a regular routine, my goal is to push students to read books that are a little more challenging, books that will stretch their minds a little, whether classic literary fiction or modern popular nonfiction and memoir. I'm calling this the College Bound Reading Project. Students have to self-select a book that will in some way "prepare them for college and college-level reading," complete three easy tasks related to the book, and finish by December. No time for too many details now, but if it goes well, I might post about it here.

 

POEM: Things I Learned Last Quarter

At the end of the quarter, I asked my students to write a poem modeled off William Stafford's "Things I Learned Last Week" as a sort of review/sharing activity. (I previously wrote one modeled on this poem over the summer during CAWP. You can read it here. Even though I probably should come to expect it by now, whenever I give these kids a chance to write creatively, I am astounded by their thoughtfulness and honesty. Their words belong to them, but here's the poem I wrote with them as a model.

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Things I Learned Last Quarter - A Poem Written on September 30th, 2013.

My dog Oliver really likes
to pull the stuffing out of things--
his new toys, my new couches.

In football, the "red zone"
is the part of the field
20 yards or less from the goal line.

Walking up and down
stairs in high heels
is
terrifying.
And no--
you don't get used to it from practice.

Phoenix freeway traffic
at 7:30 AM on a weekday
is wildly unpredictable.
It is best to leave a few minutes
earlier than you need.

There is a restaurant in Scottsdale
where they bring you
plates of filet mignon and lobster
using skateboards as serving trays.
The food is good,
but I still don't get it.

The Benefits of Role Reversal

These last few weeks at school have been pretty busy and stressful. With quarter grades due on Sunday, parent conferences next week, and Fall Break so close but oh-so-far, it was difficult to convince myself to go to the Arizona English Teachers Association conference this weekend, even though it was free (paid for by CAWP! Yay!). On Friday afternoon, I had to stay late at school and was so exhausted that I couldn't make it to any of the sessions and decided just to go home and rest. But I managed to talk myself (guilt myself?) into making the drive this morning, and I'm really glad I went. Funnily enough for a person who loves being in school as much as I do, it was a good reminder that sometimes I need to take a break from being a teacher and just be a student for a while.

Learned lots, had time to catch up with some CAWP people, and picked up the names of some cool resources and ideas I can take back with me.

Also, I made this:

and scored some teacher swag (i.e., books):

Not bad for six hours on a Saturday. Yay conferences!

They Come To Me

THEY COME TO ME: A BACK-TO-SCHOOL POEM

They come to me at the sweaty, red-hot tail end of summer

     with curious, sunburned faces

     and back-to-school haircuts just a little too short.

They come to me sporting backpacks in clean, bright rainbow hues (no Sharpie graffiti yet),

     glossy shoes that squeak down linoleum-tiled hallways,

     and uniforms with the newness still creased into them.

They come to me with new packs of lined paper

     --the crinkle of clear plastic wrapping, the scent of fresh stationery--

     with mechanical pencils, five to a package,

     and 3-ring notebooks, see-through covers waiting to be cluttered

     with photos and ticket stubs and illicit notes passed quietly during boring lectures.

They come to me with forms--

     forms for the nurse

     forms for the office

     forms for the cafeteria

     forms for the bus.

     (School is all about forms.)

They come to me with test scores, with GPAs, with transcripts, with all sorts of records--official and not.

They come to me with expectations, with goals, with preconceptions, with dreams.

They come to me with questions--

     "When is lunch?"

     "Can we listen to music in here?"

     "Do we have assigned seats?"

     "How do I try out for football?"

     "Is high school as hard as they say  it is?"

They come to me with ideas--lots of ideas.

     Ideas to start a club

     Or rebuild their community

     Or spark a revolution.

     Ideas to change the world.

They come to me and I watch.

They come to me and I listen.

They come to me and I marvel.

POEM: Fear

I love writing group! That is all. 

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FEAR

As a child, I had a reoccurring nightmare—

Trapped in a darkened warehouse

Huddling in a corner

Sinister voices echoing against concrete walls—

“What do we do with her?”

“She knows too much.”—

I watch

Doll parts pass by on conveyor belts—

An arm, a leg, a tiny dress-covered torso—

Before I realize

Not doll parts—human.

Another nightmare—

Running through the long corridors of

Sky Harbor Airport

Brown geometric carpet shapes blurring under my feet

Fleeing—or Chasing—

I run up an impossibly tall flight of stairs only to realize

There is no second floor.

Finally—

Black-clothed men with automatic weapons—

A torrent of bullets in a tiny grocery store—

Shattered jars of pickles littering white tiled floors—

I huddle behind the glass-fronted display counter

With a terrified checkout boy and neatly-stacked bags of rice.

My heart pounds.

Even now, these nightmares stay with me.

But fears change with age and experience

As the world both expands and contracts—

Terrorist attack, global pandemic,

The death of my parents, losing my house,

Early morning car accident on a crowded freeway—

Possibilities too real to entertain in dreams.

Of the two kinds of fears, I know this:

The fantastic visit only at night;

The prosaic show no similar discretion.

FOUND POEM: "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros

This is old, but I haven't posted anything in a while, so I thought I should produce SOMETHING.

I'm starting my new job on Monday, and I'm feeling a little bit of what Cisneros' narrator Rachel describes, that feeling of being out of place or not quite what everyone says you are or what you're supposed to be. I think all of us at times can empathize with what it feels like to be eleven.

You can find the full text of Sandra Cisneros' story here.

My "found poem" version of the story is below.

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Found Poem from "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros

What they don't understand
what they never tell you
is
when you're eleven
you're also
ten
nine
eightsevensixfivefourthreetwoone.

You expect to feel eleven
but you don't
you're still ten
and you are--
underneath.

You grow old like
an onion
the rings inside a tree trunk
little wooden dolls that fit
one inside the other
each year inside the next.

You don't feel eleven.
Not right away.
It takes days,
weeks,
months,
before you say 
"Eleven"
when they ask you.

Today I'm
eleventtennineeightsevensixfivefourthreetwoone.
I wish I was one hundred and two.
I wish I was anything but
(eleven)
because I want
today to be far away
far away like a runaway balloon
like a tiny 

O 

in the sky.
You have to close your eyes to see it.