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My Summer Reading Plan
To be honest, the last things that I think about in the summer is keeping up reading my books. I tend to be drawn outside with all the lake time, yard work, playing with the kids, and any other excuse to be out in the sun. But as I have learned in this course is that it is essential to keep up reading whether it would be for self education or just to pass the time by. Reading the blog by Miller, I think I can do both: enjoy the sun and read a few books in the summer months.
For myself, I love reading books that pertain to my current career in leading a church. There are so many books on improving my communication skills, leading others, theology and doctrine, and so on. My bad habit is that I will start a book and then get about 3/4 of the way into and then pick up another book. So there are still a lot of “left overs” to read. But, I have alway been told to just keep moving forward in reading and try not play the game of catch up.
For my summer reading plant, I will try to do 2 books per month in the months of May, June, July, August – which totals 8 books for the summer. Most of the books that I read are no more than a 100 pages and very practical, so there may be few times where I can add another book to this summer reading plan. Also, I want to make a plan to read one children’s book to my two toddlers each nights, that way I can add more books to my summer reading plan, but more importantly being able to spend some good quality time with my children.
My summer is busy, but maybe by keeping with this reading plan, it may increase my books on my book case!
Evolution of Young Adult Literature
Young adult literature has evolved since I was in elementary school. My reading consisted of graphic novels and books about teenager super heros that evolved to animals…and yes I read Animorphs. The books that I read inspired me to imagine and it spurred on my creativity. I loved to read as a kid, but now I look at the various books available to young adults and things have definitely changed!
This caused me to wonder, did the books that I enjoyed as a kid, were they much different from what my parents read? And the answer is yes, young adult literature evolves with the times. A research paper looked at young adult literature and listed the evolution by each decade.
- 1940’s – 50’s: Young Adult Literature focused on romance, adventure, and sports.
- 1960’s – 70’s: Young Adult Literature focused in personal insight and art.
- 1980’s – 90’s: Young Adult Literature focused social realism (death, suicide, alcoholism, drug use)
- 1990’s – 00’s: Young Adult Literature focused middle school literature (chapter books with complex characters)
- 2000’s – present: Young Adult Literature focused on social realism
As you can see, young adult literature is evolving, but a patter is beginning to show. The themes of todays novels focus around social realism that touch the hard subjects of death, suicide, racism, police brutality, gender identification, teen pregnancy, and I can keep on going. It makes me wonder why we went back to the literature trends of the 70’s and did not go through the the trends of the 50’s and 60’s. Could it be that we have evolved our taste for literature beyond these elements due to what we experience in life today? And if young adult literature keeps evolving, what would be next?
I have spent most of this course reading books that fit the trends of social realism, mainly to stretch the comfort zone of my readings. But even though we are creatures that follow trends, let us not forget those books that inspired the many individuals from the 50’s, 60’s, and the 70’s!
If you would like to read more the research, you can do so by clicking here.
Its Monday! (I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter)
I have been on the kick of finding books that clearly do not attract my eye. For some reason, I am drawn to books that have an adventurous cover (think Hatchet) and have some clear title that a guy like me would like it. I know that sounds very stereotypical, but that is how I have been picking out books…until I enrolled in this class. It was in this class that I was taught of reading outside of my comfort zone and just read for my pleasure, but to read to expand my mind. I have read plenty of books that I would have never picked up and the results have been interesting.
One interesting book that I picked up is titled “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter”. The title was so ambiguous, that the author could have written a story in a million different ways – but this is not why I picked up this book. I picked up this book because the title told me that this story was going to be from a perspective from a young Mexican teen girl – a perspective that I had yet to read from. The book was about a young teen girl who lost her sister that had a reputation of being perfect, but after the death and wrestling with losing her sister, she discovers her sister may not be as perfect as she thought she was.
This book was a great book to expand my reading. It was a National Book Award finalist and the author herself is an Mexican-American that has two undocumented daughters. With all immigration politics aside, it is great thing that an author with that story can write a story like this. This book will give a reader an insider glimpse on a different culture and what it means to be a “Mexican girl”. I encourage you all to read this!
Its Monday! “The Warrior’s Heart: Becoming a Man of Compassion and Courage.”
I just finished up a book that I definitely enjoyed and will put on my bookshelf for others to read. The book is called “The Warrior’s Heart: Becoming a Man of Compassion and Courage” by Eric Greitins. This book is targeted to teen readers and is asking the reader to put themselves in the shoes of himself and others.
In this adaptation of his best-selling book, The Heart and the Fist, Eric speaks directly to teen readers, interweaving memoir and intimate second-person narratives that ask the reader to put themselves in the shoes of himself and others. Readers will share in Eric’s evolution from average kid to globe-traveling humanitarian to warrior, training and serving with the most elite military outfit in the world: the Navy SEALs. Along the way, they’ll be asked to consider the power of choices, of making the decision each and every day to act with courage and compassion so that they grow to be tomorrow’s heroes. Sure to inspire and motivate anyone to read this book.
Coming from a military family, I appreciate his intimate details of his service and the various concepts he shares. This book is sure to have every reader to empathize outside of themselves and come to the conclusion that there are choices that need to be made in our lives in order for us to grow. It allows the reader to critically think about their choices that they have made and how to approach future choices so that it grows them into “tomorrows heroes”. Every reader wants to be the hero in the story, but in this book -it shows the reader that it is the choices that we make, not the armor that we wear – that makes us heroes. This book , even though it is non-fiction, will make sure the reader finishes every word on each page!
A Reading Revolution
It seems that actual reading, meaning taking time to sit down and pick up a paper-bound book and it’s words from the page, is becoming less and less. With all of our busy schedules, we opt for audio books and for many of us – we chose to ditch reading all together and sit in front of the television for hours. This is not only happening with adults, but many young people in pubic school system. Educators are becoming more worried about test results than instilling motivation in them to want to pick up a book and read it. As Phyllis Hunter states, “No reading program is complete if it doesn’t include motivation.”, to which I completely agree with.
Students are lacking motivation, or better said yet they are lacking someone to give them motivation – the reasoning and wanting to do something. If a classroom is just focused on on getting them to read on a college level and put their noses in a book that they have no desire to read – they may just learn the reading to past the test, but as soon as the test is done, they might as well forget what they learned. And according to A Case for Choice Reading, they most likely will. Unless the educator also gives them the “why” as to why they should read. But even then they have to allow them to develop motivation for them to read on their own.
My hope is that in my own life that I would create an atmosphere of wanting to read. Even though I am not an educator, I can still give motivation to my children by opening opportunities for them wanting to read. Right now, in-spite that my children are still young, we shut off the television an hour before bedtime and we read them books and then give them a book on their own and allow them to look through it and my wife and I read our own literature. By doing this, I believe we are creating lifelong readers in own house.
Its Monday! Midnight at the Electric
Thanks to YALSA, I have found a plethora of books that I immerse myself in as we finish out this semester. YALSA contains some great lists, of which I chose a few books to put on my goodreads list. One of the books is Midnight at the Electric. The title itself sounds like a great book and it is vague enough that it doesn’t give the story away. The book is written by Jodi Lynn Anderson and has a great rating of 4 out of 5 stars on goodreads.
The book is about and young woman who was lucky enough to be picked out of a drawing to be one of the first colonists to inhabit the planet mars in an effort to save their human kind. However, just weeks before the launch, this young woman finds a journal dated hundreds of years ago and soon becomes enthralled in the life of the journal’s author. As she is drawn into the journal’s mystery – she soon becomes aware that the story she is reading maybe tied to her own fate.
This books has been one of my favorites due to the fact it takes place in the a dystopian future, the books is not centered around that theme. The journal is dated in 1942 and is centered around a woman who was promised immortality by a professor and goes to a traveling circus called the Electric. The reader will bounce back and forth the present tense and past tense – which I enjoy as it adds to the depths of the plot. The mystery of the book is great and it is really easy to get lost in the pages and lose track of time.
I may have to by the hardcover version and keep it on my shelves and maybe buy a couple for a few of my nieces to read!
YALSA: Not only a cool-looking acronym, but a great resource too:)
So I thought Goodreads was a great resource of all things books. From Goodreads, it felt like a mobile Barns and Nobles book store where I can see all the latest books and the discussions going on about the books. This was one of my favorite resources…until I found YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association). Just from my first impression, I saw a Twitter feed about people and the books they are reading, a news feed about the latest books along with blogs that you further read in, and then the countless book lists that you can participate in.
I was looking at the various lists and I gravitated to the 2018 Best Fiction for Young Adults and found a compelling pile of books that I have not stumbled across in Goodreads. One of the first books that I saw was Midnight at Electric, which is about a human that leaves earth and becomes the first inhabitant on Mars, but as she leaves – she finds a stack of journals that connects her with generations of people before her. Another book that I found on the list was called Crossing Ebenezer Creek. Its a story about a group of slaves who were freed and then joined the Union Army to fight for a better future – but not with a few tragedies on the way. Lastly, another book titles Marrow Thieves caught my eye. This book is about a future where people have lost the ability to dream and the only ones that can are the indigenous people who are hunted down to extract this ability that is found in their bone marrow.
These were just two books that I will probably add to my list, and have bookmarked this site for future book readings. There are so many books out there for young adults, and it would be a shame to miss some fo the best readings. YALSA gives us another avenue in searching for these great books.
It’s Monday! “Looking for Alaska”
Its Monday again (cue the sad violin music) and once again the week has started. If you have ever heard of the Monday blues, this is not it. What I am feeling right now is the stage of my two toddlers where they love to stay up late and wake up early. For whatever reason, they have a broken internal alarm clock where sleep is merely a nap. But enough complaining – because in the midst of all of this, it has allowed me to keep up on my reading as my kiddos are playing the late night away!
I just finished up a very interesting book titled “Looking for Alaska” and I can tell you that it has nothing to do with the actual state and wilderness of the last frontier. This book is written by John Green has won many awards including the Inky Writer Award and the Lincoln Award Nominee. Upon looking at the various covers of this book, I probably would not have read it because the other covers gave off a “Fault in Our Stars” vibe, but the book I picked up actually was just a black cover with smoking candle and simply stated the title, so I thought to myself “I can work with that…”, and began reading.
The book is a young adults romance with a twist ending that I saw coming from a mile away, but it was still a great novel. It about a boy named Pudge and decided to walk away from the safe zone he has established in his life and heads to a boarding school where he meets a girl named Alaska. Alaska is the very opposite of Pudge, but yet everything that he needs. She is adventurous, daring, never looking back, and sometimes insanely impulsive. The book tells about their meeting and life with one another and comes to a climatic ending (I really don’t want to give a spoiler alert)
Personally, it was a great book – but not without it’s mature elements that can be walking the line in a few chapters. It addresses some real issue of life and does not shy away from bringing them into light. I would recommend this book to older young adult readers.
From Paper to Screen
I remember my first social media account – a secret MySpace account because at 15 years old, the internet was still scary to my parents and anything that shared your information and brought you into contact with hundreds of thousands of different people just seemed insane. However that all changed when my parents moved my senior year in high school and I stayed back to graduate and they realized that social media could actually be a good thing – that it could allow us to to connect from a distance.
And this is one thing that social media has allowed us all to do – is to connect with one another over our interests, hobbies, and passions. One thing that is has allowed me to do is to share those things that I love doing such as hunting, spending time with family, or that late night post of me doing homework. Another thing that I just added was sharing about the various literature I read. I did some exploring through the top three social media accounts, Facebook – Instagram – Twitter, and found out that there are so many different hashtags where you can follow literature. I will admit, the ones that I was not fan of was that #______porn, such as #carporn, #gunporn, #bookporn, as it just feeds your media account with other things that I wish to not have. But the other hashtags such as #BookAddict and #BookShelf have been my favorites as we can see and even discuss what others are reading.
Gone are the days where we need to meet in a cold room for a book club, not we can meet over social media and leave a post for total interaction 24/7. Not only can we do that, but we can also share with the whole world on what we are discussing. For this class, I was thinking about doing a book club on social media, but I do a lot traveling and don’t have the internet with me all the time, but for the times where I have my leadership teams read a book – I think a social media platform would be great!
Its Monday! Holes by Louis Sachar
After going on a bit of a break of some familiar books in my life, I decided to pick up another classic called Holes. Now this book is one of the few that I remember that was a hit among my friends before it ever became a movie. This book came out when I was in 6th grade, and it was one of those books that I thought the cover just looked wierd and that I would never read it. But it was not until all my friends read the book that I finally caved in and read it’s pages.
Holes is a novel about a young boy named Stanley Yelnat that lived with a odd family called the Yelnats family. The Yelnat family has been under a curse due to that their great great grandfather stole a pig from a witch and this curse has been following them for generations. Stanley Yelnat got into some trouble with the cops and is now at a detention center that has uniqe set of rules: every single day you dig holes that are five feet wide and five feet deep. At first what seems like a weird activity to do, Stanley learn that there is a secret of the warden looking for something that is buried and Stanely takes upon himself to find out what it is.
This book not only brought back some memories of being a teenager, but also some of the dark humor that made me smile. Holes is a great book that takes on a twist of crime and punishment and finally some redemption. The one thing that I did forget about this books is the idea of eating onions to survive – yuck! Still, this book is great and I will probably try to find the movie here in a bit to watch as well!
Vaughn Fahrenbruck 