VVMBookBlog

14-year-old Arnold “Junior” Spirit is a Spokane Indian who has lived on the “rez” all his life.  He has an older sister whom he admires very much and a mother and father who love him, even though his father is a chronic alcoholic. Arnold has several disabilities due to his hydrocephaly or water on the brain, and has some physical conditions that make him a target for bullying.  And he has a talent for cartooning.

Arnold has always attended the school on the reservation but a classroom incident in the first days of his 9th grade year prompts one of his teachers to recommend that he leave the rez school for a better school–the nearest public school 22 miles away.  Now branded as a traitor to his reservation family, Arnold faces the many challenges to being a reservation Indian in a very white school.  He doesn’t back down from any challenge and doors open for him in every situation.

In spite of some tough social and living conditions in Arnold’s life, this book is funny, fun to read and hopeful.  It’s definitely for more mature readers who can read beyond just the words to the amazingly courageous person that is Arnold.

Two Minute Drill by Mike Lupica

Although Mike Lupica is one of ESPN’s featured sports reporters, he also has a career writing sports novels for young adults. His novel Two Minute Drill is about football. Actually it is about more than football. It is a book about friendship and popularity. Scott Parry is the new kid at school and is having problems with a bully until Chris Conlan, the school’s quarterback befriends him. Even though Scott is known as “the brain” and Chris doesn’t do well academically, the two have more in common than it would appear.

Students who like football will enjoy this book, but students who are not football fans will also find something entertaining about this book.

Every once in a while I read a book with a story that I know will stay in my head for a long time.  This is one of those books.

Clay comes home from school one day to find on his doorstep a shoebox wrapped in brown paper, addressed to him, and containing 7 cassette tapes labeled by number and side A or B.  He pops the first tape in a cassette player and realizes they are from a classmate, Hannah Baker, who recently committed suicide.  He realizes that Hannah is using these tapes to tell the events leading up to her suicide.  Each side of a tape describes, in order, what each person did that contributed to her decision.  The box of tapes MUST be sent to ALL of the thirteen people or a second set of tapes will be released to the general public for all to hear. Since the tapes discuss events that lead to actual crimes, such as rape, it’s important to the thirteen people to keep the tapes a secret among themselves.

Hannah’s words spoken on the tapes are written in italics and her words are interspersed with Clay’s thoughts and actions as he spends the next several hours listening to the tapes and going to the locations she mentions.  Clay really liked Hannah and is heartbroken to hear her story and what happened to her, realizing he could have stepped in many times to help.

The power of this book is realizing how “little” things done among students in our classrooms, hallways, at parties, etc., can contribute to situations that, over time, make people desperate enough where suicide might seem to be the only way out.  Bullying, harassment, and students just being mean to each other have real consequences and we need to be aware of those affected. And we need to be aware of the people we interact with every day because we never know what else might be going on in their lives.