Winter Girls

Laurie Halse Anderson has a tendency to write about "issues" that are real, heart-breaking and emotional. She digs underneath the skin. She puts us there and helps us feel the characters pain. Their pain can be related to many teens everywhere.

Winter Girls deals with anorexia and death of best friend and also pulls us into the perspective of divorced parents and over controlling parents.

Lia is a senior and had been in and out of treatment centers for her eating disorder. Her and her best friend, Cassie, made a pack, bet per say that they will be the skinniest girls ever. They were very depressed and living in a state of mind where they weren't dead, but weren't alive either. They were Winter Girls.

Lia lives with her professor father and her evil step-mother, Jennifer and her step-sister. Her mother is a doctor and very overbearing, always asking about her weight and eating habits.

Cassie died one night and tore Lia apart. Lia saw Cassie in her dreams and had 33 messages from her the night she died. Could she have saved her? Should she die to?

Anderson writes to bring her audience in. She wanted us to scream at Lia and cry for Cassie dying alone. She wanted us to feel the pain and struggle of the family memebers close by.She uses many techniques to help writing convey emotions. She had two blank pages and repetitive words and phrases giving the reader a chance to think about the emotional pull and bring the important facts up over and over again.

Later, Lia cuts herself to be with Cassie. She is fortunately saved. Winter Girls can be saved. And if you are a winter girl, you are not alone!

Anderson's novels help teens feel "normal" and help them struggle through the tough times they may face, but are not meant for everyone to read because they coul cause depresion. This book was hard to read because of all the descriptions in cutting and the dier need to be thin and perfect. We all have to sit back and realize what is perfect for one will not always be perfect for everyone!

song that goes with book talk

book talk

Alicia Kenison
EDU 330
Clarissa Thompson
10-18-10

You Remind Me of You
By: Eireann Corrigan

Close your eyes

Imagine a girl who weights 80 lbs. She’s a sophomore in high school. She eats and eats and eats. And then, she runs and runs and runs. She forces herself to hit that 80 lb mark again. Her father follows her in the station wagon, in case, she faints on her run. She showers when she gets home and sometimes her father has to come and pick up her naked body from the wet tub. He has to listen for the tumble and quickly switch the water from hot to cold.

Do you see her?

Do you feel her pain?

Now, imagine a boy. This girl was in love with him. They were going to go to prom together, but one of his friends’s called her and told her the rumor. Daniel thought she was fat. That word stabbed her like the kitchen knife she was washing.

How would you feel if you had to force feed the girl you loved?

How would you feel if your second home was a chair next to her bedside?

Would you get sick of holding her hair back as she puked up everything she just ate?

After awhile wouldn’t you feel guilty? Daniel did. He started doing drugs. He got so depressed, he attempted suicide while his sister was upstairs and she was chatting on the phone to their mother, who was on a business trip.

Eireann and Daniel were going to be seniors in high school and now they were in two different hospitals. This love brought them closer. They visited each other all the time hospital to hospital. They kept each other alive.

This is a coming of age story with love, harm and recovery. This is a poetry memoir of real life and is incredibly more emotional than other issue book because it is real. Her poetry flows from happy to sad or sad to happy. She has a way of keeping the audience focused and brings raw emotion into our lives.

I don’t feel this is a book for everyone and I would definitely not teach it unless I feel my students could handle it.

You Remind Me of You

I am a big fan of "issue" books, but Eireann Corrigan actually lived this life, so it hit home harder. I feel like most middle and high school students would not be ready to read something as real and raw as this poetry memoir of her battle with anorexia. For three years, she was in and out of treatment centers and by the time she graduated, her doctors were convinced that she was going to die.

This "issue" book doesn't only touch upon eating disorders, but coming of age, loss, love and attempted suicide. All of Corrigan's poems revolve around herself not being able to reach defection. Who is perfect? Even though I won't encourage my students to read this, Corrigan has a way of keeping her audience engaged and humor through the hurt. She accounts her struggle with anorexia and her boyfriend Daniel's struggle with attempted suicide. Within minutes, she's lost the man who spoon-fed her to another hospital down the road. Over their years of recovery they went from hospital to hospital trying to bring about this sense of life and being. Daniel couldn't bear the hurt Eireann was facing, so he relied on weed to carry him on. "Your problems don't only hurt you!" When things got so bad, he tried to end his life in his basement while his sister was upstairs talking to their mother on the phone.

This is the story of love, harm and recovery. The poems begin happy and fade to depressing and visa verse. They keep you hooked and at times make you cry and actually feel for her. This is not what I considered an "issue" book is some body's lifestyle and feel it was Corrigan's form of therapy.

In a classroom, I might read a poem or two and have a discussion, but I would not force my students to read this. Although, I think they should be introduced because these topics are so real and happen to many teens daily.

Christina Aguilera's song, "Beautiful" reminds me of the face that people don't see in the mirror when they have eating disorders. They don't realize that they are beautiful. They don't realize that they are fine and do not need to lose weight. Anorexia is a hard disorder in which many teens face and have nobody who will listen.
This book is a great reminder that you are beautiful and have a purpose.

The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold novel was a #1 national bestseller in 2002 and was recently turned into a movie. It is a first person narrative about Susie Salmon who was raped and murdered on December 6Th, 1973. Susie is the person telling us the story about her neighbor murdering her and her family's healing process and search to find the killing. Her sister and father take big risks to assure that nothing like this will happen again in the neighborhood.

It scares me to think that most rapes and murders occur by people that the child knows and happens close to home. I definitely won't teach this to middle school students or Freshman. It has too many raw details and made me emotional and kept asking "why" so I think it would depress my students.

For my teaching around a text project, I'm thinking about using this novel to teach foreshadowing, flashbacks and voice. Sebold does an excellent job taking us from "heaven" with Susie back to the exact moment of the rape. She also does an outstanding job of adding humor en though it is a very depressing novel.

Rape is something a lot of people do not want to discuss and Sebold establishes that if you give it time you can always find answers even if they are right in front of your eyes the whole time. It is a novel of courage, hope, forgiveness and love. Susie was truly loved.

Inside the snow globe on my father's desk,
there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white
striped scarf. When I was little my father
would pull me into his lap and reach for the
snow globe. He would turn it over,letting all
the snow collect on the top, then quickly
invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall
gently around the penguin. The penguin was alone
in there, I thought, and I was worried for him.
When I told my father this, he said, "Don't worry,
Susie; he has a nice life. He's trapped in a
perfect world." -The Lovely Bones

No matter how many times I read this I feel like I could help Susie if I were there. I feel she was too naive to say no and run. I feel helpless. This novel will bring up a ton of discussion, what could we do? How do you feel?

Summer's End

Audrey Couloumbis writes this historical fiction novel about the Vietnam War, draft cards, coming of age and running from troubles. This novel is set in the time of the Vietnam War and right before Grace's planned 13Th birthday party. This is the year she invited all her classmates. This was the birthday Grace was waiting for her whole life until her world was turned into turmoil because of her idiotic older brother.

Grace and Collin never really got along. He was the hippie of the family and attended sit-ins and had a dog and a long-time girlfriend. He was 18 and just got his draft card. This card meant that he WOULD be drafted. Before he even made it home for dinner, he did the unthinkable. He burnt the draft card. This mistake tore the family apart and caused Grace to have to cancel her party. Collin only did it as taking a stance in freedom, but it led o a long journey to Canada with Caboose, his dog.

Almost a full year later, Grace finds the present Collin got her for her 13Th birthday. She than discovers he really loved her and he is forever closer in her heart.

This book may be intriguing for everyone, because it has war parts and love parts and also touches on freedom and finding yourself. Grace is able to find that she i loved and a birthday party is just a birthday party. It becomes no big deal that her special day was ruined because of her brother's stupidity.

Maybe burning the draft card was the best thing Collin could do for his family, just maybe...

Speak

Unlike "Inexcusable", Laurie Halse Anderson takes "Speak" in a different light and analyzes the victims pint of view. Why can't see talk about it? Why is she now an outcast at school? Why won't anybody listen? "Speak" was named a 2000 Printz prize honor book and was transformed into a film in 2004.

The main character, Melinda, has become an outcast because she called the cops at a party. The party got busted and everyone was in trouble for being underage. What nobod knows is that she called because she was being sexually abused by the novels antagonist, a hot, soon-to-be senior, Andy Evans. Heather, the new kid, becomes her only best friend and art is her escape. Melinda is a very depressed student because she wants to talk, utnobody will listen. When she finally speaks,will it be too late? Heather dithes her for her old best friend who starts having a crush on Andy. Melinda tries to warn her, ut she is not believed. All she has to do is speak. Will it be too late when she finally finds the words?

Read the book to discover if Melinda takes a stand.

Anderson does a great job to illiterate the feelings and mood that sink deep inside Melinda. Melinda never wanted to loose her friends, but they would refuse to trust her. After all, she ruined their summer party. How would you feel if you couldn't escape 'it'? How would you feel if 'it' stared you in the eye everyday and you couldn't say one word?

She can't stay silent forever, can she?