I chose these books because I know they will contribute to my classroom instruction, as well as to make great pieces for the speech team I plan to have. I've picked these with my students in mind, because the importance of using books in the classroom and for different types of pieces for the speech team are evident. A very popular type of competitive speech is prose, and using these selections will help students more easily find something to work with, cut, memorize, and be able to perform and compete with. These books will not only teach them how to be great speakers, but also how to present with confidence. They are all about topics that the students can easily relate to, or find a common ground to level with to understand the book.
The first book that I picked is because sex is very casual in our society today, and with teenagers and raging hormones, reading this book might put it all into perspective. The second book that I picked is because it is an inspiring story, and could also be an eye opener at problems that women face everyday in pregnancies. The third book that I picked is because it deals with coping of loss, especially one who served as a mentor. The fourth book that I picked is because it is a personal favorite that I read when I was in high school, and I loved the religion and hopefulness message throughout the book. The fifth book that I picked is because it has recently surfaced again as a popular book (and movie), but it deals with the everyday life and pressures of a high school student, which I know many students could relate to and understand.
1. Title: Tricks
2. Author/illustrator: Ellen Hopkins
3. Publisher & Copyright: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2009
4. ISBN number: 9781416950073
5. Genre: Young Adult Fiction
6. Current library location of book: Amarillo Public Library
7. Brief summary: Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two guys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best they can, but all searching...for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don’t expect, though, is all that can happen when those powerful little words, “I love you,” are said for all the wrong reasons. These are five moving stories that remain separate at first, then weave together to tell a larger, more powerful story–a story about making choices, taking leaps of faith, falling down, and growing up. And figuring out what sex and love are all about.
8. In-depth personal response: This book is all about teen prostitution. The only thing missing was a play by play of the events, although it was graphic enough that you really didn't need it. Once I understood the meaning behind it, this book is one of the best books on this subject I've ever read. I've read about prostitution and other sex-related issues because it's still a rampant issue in our world, but I've never read anything that really shows how graphic and hard and terrible and just plain wrong it is. So often we have the media telling us how sleeping around as much as possible is a good thing. There are some forms of media that are portrayed otherwise, but for the most part the main sources portray it as a wonderful, good thing. It isn't that way.
9. Suggested use of the book in classroom setting: I would recommend this book to any teen who may be struggling with this. I don't think you can read this book and think that getting into this life would be a good idea afterwards. I would not recommend it to anyone who gets easily disturbed by this sort of thing. Trust me, if you're that way and you read this book, you will be scarred for life. It would be a great prose piece for a competitive student.
1. Title: Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic
2. Author/illustrator: Martha Beck
3. Publisher & Copyright: Berkley Trade, 2000
4. ISBN number: 9780425174487
5. Genre: Young Adult
6. Current library location of book: Amarillo Public Library
7. Brief summary: John and Martha Beck had two Harvard degrees apiece when they conceived their second child. Further graduate studies, budding careers, and a growing family meant major stress--not that they'd have admitted it to anyone. As the pregnancy progressed, Martha battled constant nausea and dehydration. And when she learned her unborn son had Down syndrome, she battled nearly everyone over her decision to continue the pregnancy. It's a tale about mothering a Down syndrome child that opts for sass over sap, and it's a book of heavenly visions and inexplicable phenomena that's as down-to-earth as anyone could ask for. This small masterpiece is Martha Beck's own story--of leaving behind the life of a stressed-out superachiever, opening herself to things she'd never dared consider, meeting her son for the first time, and unlearning virtually everything Harvard taught her about what is precious and what is garbage.
8. In-depth personal response: An amazing story of how John and Martha Beck prepare themselves for their son's birth (keeping him is never a question) and of the strange, supernatural events occurring during Martha's pregnancy. (For example, prior to Adam's birth, both parents independently somehow know that their child will be a boy and decide also independently of each other his name should be Adam). Martha (who later leaves academia to become a life coach) is a very spiritual person, although not necessarily Christian. You would think this would be a very sad book, but it isn't. Martha has a wonderful sense of humor that is very evident as she tells her story. This is a book that makes you reflect on what is really important in life. Doctors and Harvard peers put pressure on them both to end the pregnancy. It was a decision, they found they could not make. Martha tells her story by moving back and forth between current events at the time she first wrote the book, and events that happen through her pregnancy. Both Martha's and John's scientific minds are tested further as they simultaneously experience explainable spiritual insights that are both challenging and eventually strengthening to their relationship, and their abilities to make the decisions they do.
9. Suggested use of the book in classroom setting: I would use this book as another prose piece for a student competing on my speech team. The story is so inspiring, not to mention after reading the horrors Martha goes through with her pregnancy, could be used as some form of word of truth to encourage teens to be abstinent.
1. Title: Tuesdays With Morrie
2. Author/illustrator: Mitch Albom
3. Publisher & Copyright: Warner, 2000
4. ISBN number: 9780751529814
5. Genre: Young Adult
6. Current library location of book: Randall High School Library
7. Brief summary: Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, and gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago. Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you? Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final 'class': lessons in how to live. It is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie's lasting gift with the world.
8. In-depth personal response: Morrie helps you look at life from a different angle or with a different lens. He makes you realize how good life really is, despite his condition, and how we should value our time on Earth. He speaks on death not being a bad thing, but a good thing especially if you have lived the life that you wanted to. When Morrie was dying he explained that everyone should do what they dream of doing, don't let life get in the way of things...money, power, etc. All that stuff is a cultural blinder, and that we should make sure we get a chance to do all of the things that we want to before we die. I loved how he used foreshadowing to make the reader knew what he meant. This book had many themes for all the thematic statements (loss, physical affection, greed, compassion, and modesty). For example, you get stronger from every loss. Mitch lost his friend Morrie and he went on to write a book about him.
9. Suggested use of the book in classroom setting: I would recommend this to any one who is going through loss. This book is another that could be used as a prose piece, particularly for students with a significant role model in their life, or one that has had a role model pass away. It is inspiring and overall a great book.
1. Title: A Prayer for Owen Meany
2. Author/illustrator: John Irving
3. Publisher & Copyright: Corgi Adult, 1990
4. ISBN number: 9780552135399
5. Genre: Young Adult
6. Current library location of book: Randall High School Library
7. Brief summary: John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany is the inspiring modern classic that introduced two of the author’s most unforgettable characters, boys bonded forever in childhood: the stunted Owen Meany, whose life is touched by God, and the orphaned Johnny Wheelwright, whose life is touched by Owen. From the accident that links them to the mystery that follows them–and the martyrdom that parts them–the events of their lives form a tapestry of fate and faith in a novel that is Irving at his irresistible best. In the summer of 1953, during a Little League baseball game, 11-year-old Owen Meany hits a foul ball that kills his best friend's mother. What happens to him after that fateful day makes A Prayer for Owen Meany extraordinary, terrifying, and unforgettable.
8. In-depth personal response: A Prayer for Owen Meany is a complex but well-crafted novel. It has a slow-paced, meditative story that reflects the tension and conflicting emotions in the American zeitgeist during the Vietnam War. Irving touches on life and loss, fear and faith—all the good stuff you need for a truly deep, memorable experience. It is an impressive and intense performance disguised as a novel. Irving uses Owen Meany to analyze faith, not only as in a single religion sense, spirituality as a whole. Despite everything that he endures, Owen Meany never loses his faith, his knowledge that he is an instrument of God, as he reminds Johnny on many occasions. It is this faith, through the threat of expulsion, through the lean and hard teen years, and into his enlistment into the army, that keeps Owen going, knowing that he has a mission that he has to fulfill, and not much time to do it. Along the way, he changes Johnny, filling him with confidence and self-reliance and even religion, infusing all of those characteristics that Owen has an abundance of and is loathe to leave behind. Irving's narrative is uniquely captivating, as is the way that he chooses to depict characters, to breath life into them. Owen touches everyone in some small way, leading up to his grand fulfillment. A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of my favorite books, Owen grabs you the way he grabs the other characters in the novel. There is something so strong, so compelling about him that you have to find out what is going to happen.
9. Suggested use of the book in classroom setting: To anybody who has ever been physically maimed, or has lost a beloved parent while still a child, or has felt emotionally abandoned by another parent, or has been hurt by clergy, or has lost their dearest in an act of sudden doom, or if you have ever felt that you were disturbingly unique (both a blessing and burden)--this book might speak to you with humor, grace, and insight. It could be used as a prose piece with the underlying meaning of strong faith and friendship.
1. Title: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
2. Author/illustrator: Steven Chbosky
3. Publisher & Copyright: Pocket Books, 1999
4. ISBN number: 9780671027346
5. Genre: Young Adult
6. Current library location of book: Randall High School Library
7. Brief summary: Charlie is a freshman. And while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it. Charlie is attempting to navigate his way through uncharted territory: the world of first dates and mix tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. But he can't stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.
8. In-depth personal response: Charlie is lovable from the first sentence out of his mouth. There are endless quotable quotes in this book that had me folding the page over so I could write them down later. Charlie has an honest innocence to him yet such an intense depth and intelligent mind that he is quite the multifaceted character. While the story has its ups and downs, there isn't a very intense plot, but the reader is somehow sucked into Charlies head sharing his first kiss, his feelings toward his new friends, his feelings towards literature and music. He is naive about so many things, and his bluntness made me laugh out loud on numerous occasions. He not only deals with issues like love, but also having a gay friend, dealing with death, and sexual assault, but also sharing his love of music and literature, which I think are two things that are being lost on youth today.
9. Suggested use of the book in classroom setting: I would recommend this book to every teenage boy and girl I knew. While Charlie isn't exactly a excellent role model, he does show that being different is okay, that friends come in all kinds of packages, and to stay true to yourself. While this book could be used as another prose piece as well, it also can be very inspiring and touching to a teen. It is no secret that teens often feel like the outcast, and this book helps show that no matter who you are, being different and being yourself is okay.
