Kelly Barnhill's Blog, page 33

The Books That Should (and Must) be Taught

There are no better months to be living in Minnesota than October. The leaves turn brilliant colors before swirling around you, the apples are tart and crisp and abundant, the days are warm, the nights are cold, and your neighbors are plying you with food and conversation as we prepare ourselves to go into hibernation once our temperatures dip into the 30 below zero range.

 

But what I really love about October is school. Now, I know all of you know a thing or two about school: September a month of transition, a month of getting into the swing of things and feeling your way. But October! Now that's the month when the real work begins. Back when I was a teacher, October was the absolute best month of the year. The students were primed, tuned and ready. They were at the top of their game. They produced fantastic work, asked fantastic questions and pushed themselves with wild abandon.

 

It's in October that I miss being a teacher.

 

But my thoughts on teaching invariably lead me to thoughts of books, particularly the books that were taught -the ones taught to me when I was in school, and the ones I taught. And it makes me start to wonder:

 

If I was teaching this year, what books would I choose?

Now, when I was a bright-eyed sophomore in high school, I had the great pleasure of reading the books that still call out to me to this day. We read The Grapes of Wrath and The Jungle which, combined with my own natural inclinations, helped to build my political Self. We read Jane Eyre which fostered my sense of independence, a lifelong refusal to live my life by anyone else's terms. We read The Scarlet Letter which taught me how to be really, really pissed off.

 

Later, when I was organizing my own curriculum, I tried to choose books that my students would enjoy, but that would also resonate with their experience. My kids read Monster, by Walter Dean Myers, and Holes, by Louis Sachar, both of which explore issues of justice, guilt and redemption, of the holes in the judicial system and in the inherent power of the individual. They read Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry and Because of Winn-Dixie and The Things They Carried and  The Invisible Man. These books were tough, affecting and meaty, and the discussions they engendered will ring in my ears forever.

 

Now, this October, I've been thinking about the books that I'd like to teach, if I happened to be teaching this year. Firstly, I would be the happiest little teacher on earth if I had the chance to teach a new novel that's just about to debut called The Mockingbirds, a deeply affecting novel that tells the story of a group of teenagers who seek justice after one of them is the victim of a date-rape. What I love about this book is not its lovely, wounded, and ultimately very tough narrator, but its exploration of the nature of justice – and how true justice is built by particular communities as a way of tempering the inclinations and behaviors that could ultimately divide us. How just the fact of people seeking justice makes our communities better, stronger and more fair. I'm sure that some lucky teacher somewhere is getting ready to teach this book right now, and I'm insanely jealous.

 

Another is Swati Avasthi's debut novel Split, a novel that beautifully, tenderly, achingly describes the aftermath of terrible domestic violence and abuse, and the necessary pull towards healing, reconciliation and making amends. I friggin' loved this book, and if I was Queen of Everything would make it required reading for….I don't know. The world.

 

And lastly, a book that I've often used in excerpts when I've taught my workshops in schools, I would love, love, LOVE to teach Sherman Alexie's book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, one of the few books in YA that I've read to so explicitly and gracefully deal with issues of poverty – particularly poverty in opposition to those who have everything they need and want, as well as the unspoken (unspeakable?) shame of racism. This book changed how I read YA, and more importantly, it changed what I expect from YA. A gorgeous, tender, and heartbreaking read, (and hysterical, and bawdy, and unflinchingly true) and I would LOVE to teach it.

 

So here's my question for you people: What were the books that were foisted on you as high school students? Did any of them change your thinking, your attitude or your life? And what, if you were writing up the curriculum lists in your school districts, are the books that you think ABSOLUTELY MUST BE TAUGHT? What books would you like to see in the classroom?

(this is cross posted on my other blog The YA-5. Feel free to comment here or there)

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Been AWOL

Dear Blog,

I have been ignoring you.

You deserve better.

I will post more regularly from now on, I promise.

In the meantime, I put a new post up on the YA-5, so why don't you go read it already.

Hugs and kisses,

Kelly

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In Which Kelly Barnhill Admits to Lying. Again.

Thanks to the lovely and talented Laurel Snyder and the equally lovely and talented Ellen Potter, who have both stared unflinchingly into the great, pimply, lying face of the ubiquitous falsehood known as the Author's Bio and dared to spit in its eye, I've decided to take a long, hard look at my own.

It ain't pretty, folks.

Here's the truth: My author's bio makes me look a helluva lot cooler than I actually am (*brief side note* – I think it's hysterical that wordpress's spell checker thinks that "helluva" is a real word.). Let me be clear: I am not, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be cool. I am the anti-cool. If Cool came to a barbeque at my house, it would stand uncomfortably in the side yard for a few minutes before answering a fake cell phone call with a fake emergency. And then it would leave.

So here's my real bio. Read it and weep.

Kelly Barnhill took a bunch of creative writing classes in college with dreams of the writer's life: cigarettes for breakfast, martinis for lunch, drafty attic apartments in NYC, brooding and volatile boyfriends in Paris, a tragic death narrowly averted, followed by wild sales of a volume of poetry. And perhaps it would have turned out that way had she not: a.) quit smoking; b.) hated martinis; c.) settled down with a nice boy from Virginia and instantly started producing cute children; d.) quit writing. And she quit writing for a good long while.

During the Quit-Writing phase, she waited on tables, worked as a park ranger and a janitor and a bar tender and a secretary and a coffee jerk, and later became a teacher. She's been fired from jobs for being too chatty. She's been fired from jobs for telling people off. She's been laid off from jobs when the tax revenue situation totally sucked. She's had more jobs than most graduating classes – mostly because she is easily distracted and given to moodiness.

Now, she raises children. She tries and fails to keep her house clean. She cooks meals and wipes noses and calls teachers and schedules well-child appointments. Being a mom means dealing with the dregs – overflowing toilets and soaked bedsheets and projectile vomit. She wipes up what can be wiped and fixes what can be fixed and throws away more than she'd like to admit.

She loves her kids, and is exasperated by her kids, and is amazed by her kids. She thinks her kids might one day rule the world. She writes when she can. She is still easily distracted and given to moodiness, but her husband and children are infinitely giving and forgiving. She is luckier than she ever thought possible.  She's managed to sell some books and some short stories – though her rejections outnumber her sales.

Actually, that was misleading. Her rejections are infinite in the way that time and space are infinite. But we all must carry on, and so must she. One step, one breath, one story at a time.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Author Schenanigans, Biography, Ellen Potter, fiction is my job, Laurel Snyder

Today, at Outer Space Camp…. (Or, How my Middle Child Revealed Herself To Be Made of 100% WIN)

A mere week after I returned from Launch Pad, my eight-year-old daughter and five-year-old son have headed out to a week of outer-spacey goodness of their own. For this week at the rec center at Lake Hiawatha Park they are learning about outer space, playing dodgeball, doing art projects about outer space, hurling water balloons and eating cheese puffs (which, incidentally, look as though they're from outer space).

Today, they came home with their very own planets of their very own design. Deedee's planet is carefully painted green with a large red circle in its lower hemisphere and a small blue circle in its upper hemisphere. It has two moons – attached with skewer sticks – hovering just over the equator.

"This is the planet Boone," Deedee explained carefully. "It's seventy million light years away. It has a humanoid population. They are green, though their lips are purple. They have a language that sounds good to them, but to us it just sounds like jibberish. They love poetry and art. They use hot lava to cook and eat and bathe. This right here," she points at the large red circle, "is their most famous lake of lava. Everyone goes there to visit. Only rich ones can live there though. They spend all day in their lake of lava until they are tired and then they go to bed. This here," she points at the small blue circle," is their volcano. It is always erupting. They write poems about their volcano and they believe that the universe was born in their volcano."

I listened, mouth open, heart pounding in my throat. I love you, I thought. I love you, I love you, I love you.

"It's wonderful," I choked. Love in my eyes. Love in my hands. Love in my pounding heart.

Then, Leo chimed in.

"This is my planet," he said, proudly pointing to his planet covered in scribbles with pipe cleaners erupting in crazy curves from point to point.

"It's lovely," I said.

"It's called the Planet Fart. It's called that because people go there. And then they fart."

Yes, my darling,I thought. I love you too.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: My Kids Totally Rule, Outer Space, Space Camp

Dream

This morning – somewhere between the moment when my son scrambled into my bed and sandwiched himself between Ted and I and the moment when I stumbled out, slid into shorts and shoes and went for a run – I had a dream that I hiked to Antarctica. It didn't take long – the hiking, I mean, not the dream. It was a well-marked trail that cut across the backside of a farm, wound through a river valley and a forest, skirted a mountain and hooked over a ridge.

The ice was bright, the water blue, and someone had set up a line of chaise lounges so that people could watch the penguins splash in the surf.

I walked over, sat down and pulled off my shoes, laying my bare feet on the ice and spreading my toes wide, the ice softening to water, then steam. The penguins cackled, then screamed, then sighed.

Morgan Freeman sat in the lounge next to mine and smiled at me as he handed me a Virgin Mary with a radish rose bobbing prettily in its center. "I never much cared for penguins," he said as he leaned into his lounge chair and closed his eyes against the glare of the setting sun. "Nasty animals. You know they eat their own vomit?"

"Isn't that a bird thing?" I asked.

"Never much cared for birds either, now that you mention it," he said.

The sun sank under the water and the penguins waddled out of the surf and disappeared over the ridge. I sipped at my Virgin Mary, trying, then failing to catch the radish rose on my tongue. Instead, I tilted my face towards the sky and listened as Morgan Freeman named the stars.

"Look," he said, "there's Sirius, Antares and Rigel. There's the Southern Cross. Eridanus. Phoenix." The sky darkened, glittered, glowed, and if I had stayed asleep, I have no doubt that every star would have been hailed, categorized and identified, but instead I found myself lifting from my lounger and hurdling skyward, the voice of Morgan Freeman fading behind me, as I landed in a heap of blankets smelling sweetly of sleep, a boy and his dad in a tangle of limbs, their mouths open to dreaming.

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