On hiatus

Life has gotten extremely crazy lately. I'll return in a few weeks!

Cutting school spending is not responsible

NYTimes.com has a write-up of budget deal in New York:

Dashing the hopes of many Democratic lawmakers, including the bulk of the New York City delegation, the budget did not include an extension of a temporary income tax surcharge on wealthy New Yorkers, a measure that has drawn support among Democrats and even some Senate Republicans as a way to further offset Mr. Cuomo’s proposed cuts in money for schools and other programs.

Mr. Cuomo persuaded legislative leaders to agree to a year-to-year cut of more than $2 billion in spending on health care and education, historically the two largest drivers of New York’s budget. Over all, officials said, the budget deal would reduce year-to-year spending by about 2 percent.

Mr. Cuomo and the legislative leaders said they hoped the agreement would signal a new day of responsible budgeting and effective government in a Capitol long criticized for its gridlock and dysfunction.

Refusing to increase taxes for the rich and cutting state budgets for schools that serve some of the poorest and disadvantaged/needy students in the country is responsible? Pardon me while I go light a tree on fire to preserve the beauty of the city.

Teachers unions are mounting a "last-ditch" effort to save something. That's code for rolling over on their backs while laughing at the dues members pay them.

Review: R-T, Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH

You may remember watching an animated version of NIMH when you were younger (or watching your kids watch it). The story was fantastic and the characters always interesting and complex (from what I remember).

When I saw R-T, Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH on our shelf, during a reading slump, I knew I needed to read it right away. I'm glad I did, though it made me want to visit other books and rewatch the film.

The story is simply. Two children are lost after going on a camping trip, and they are found by young rats who are similarly inclined to doing things children do - not the right things, the things they should be doing.

Margaret is a chubby young girl who didn't want to go camping, and she's often mean to people, especially her brother, Arthur, who is strangely silent and seemingly (to Margaret) selfish. Rasco is a rat who's been in the city before and has an eye for adventure, while Christopher, his rat friend, is mostly likable and along for the ride. When Christopher stumbles upon the pair of children and befriends Arthur, the plot picks up with a series of twists and (sometimes predictable) turns.

Though I loved the journey, I did feel the writer a bit much throughout. The obvious jabs at modern-day technology and health ripped through the plots and characters and destroyed a sense of natural development of both. There's far too much of an authoritarian parental presence in novels that I find somehow disheartening.

Still, there are some good lessons and believable plotlines and dialouge, and a real sense of humor. The characters evolve, from every side, and these make it a worthwhile read.

Recommended by: Serendipity
Book source: Personal copy

More authentic student-centered learning

A school lets students create the curriculum with teachers there to guide:

The students in the Independent Project are remarkable but not because they are exceptionally motivated or unusually talented. They are remarkable because they demonstrate the kinds of learning and personal growth that are possible when teenagers feel ownership of their high school experience, when they learn things that matter to them and when they learn together. In such a setting, school capitalizes on rather than thwarts the intensity and engagement that teenagers usually reserve for sports, protest or friendship.

Some schools pride themselves on allowing students to take part in “transformative, student-centered” projects like service-learning, but this model places students as real guides of their own learning, promoting ownership that most people never encounter in school. Without real risks, can we expect real learning to take place?

Because we didn't think the kids could succeed

The Times has another story on schools in NYC, this time explaining the Bloomberg administration's decision to work on "turnaround" efforts rather than shutting down schools and reopening them as smaller charter schools. While it seems like a better choice, one thing struck me in a not-so-pleasant way.

“This notion that some kids can make it and some kids can’t, I don’t buy that,” Steve Barr, who founded the network, said in an interview. “I’m of the belief that all kids can be college-ready if you give them a chance.”

While there are definitely teachers and administrators who don't care about students or think there's no way to combat the many problems that schools like the ones in the Bronx face, I doubt you could find one person in the building who would say, "Oh, yeah, well, we pretend to teach them and everything but there's really no point. They're poor and stuff and they'll probably always be dumb and eventually work at McDonald's."

You know who works in schools like that? Usually new teachers without much experience who weren't given a shot at teaching in schools with fewer problems because they...didn't have experience. They're people like me, who are somewhere at the end or finished with programs, who want to do well (and sometimes, maybe we do extremely well) but are faced with the pressure of dealing with the horrible climate the media and people who watch "Waiting for 'Superman'" and think we're a bunch of cynical, gravy-train dipping folks who don't want to work for our benefits and pensions. We're also worried about at least seeming to do well so that we can earn tenure within three years because that's what we're told we need to do, otherwise we'll keep getting pushed back in the system and will start from scratch.

The teachers and administrators who are fired from these schools will still be in the system. They'll just be somewhere else. Somewhere else, hopefully, includes schools that support their teachers and are able to pinpoint problems in pedagogy and curricula and lead the way to increasing teacher effectiveness. Rather than spend money on restructuring schools, why not pour that money into supporting the current staff and getting more parents involved in the education of their children? Turnaround efforts, wildly popular and taking prominence in the Obama administration's Race to the Top, have no evidence of being helpful. It's just as likely that five years from now the district will look at these schools and wonder why the hell they turned it around and will scratch their heads wondering what new reform measure will work.

Sunday Salon: Discussion

I have not reviewed anything this last week for a few reasons. For one, I read a good portion of George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones before deciding there were too many characters, and none that I cared about. With thousands more pages in the series, plus more to be released, I couldn't see the sense in reading more. Second, I read another book I loved but couldn't review because I didn't have it in me. I'd rather think about it a while. Third, I started The Finkler Question, which so far has had me laughing in between long periods of wanting to stab myself (or any one or thing) with a fork or other sharp object. Still, I want to finish the Man Booker winner.

(On a side note, one reviewer started his review with this line: People never exposed to Jewish life and culture couldn't possibly understand this book. I was married Jewish for 21 years and am not Jewish myself. How inane.)

Which leads me to one of the difficulties I've had lately in general: Reading and discussing reading alone. Last month, I participated in Jen's (Devourer Of Books) Book Club, which was just freaking great. It reminded me of one of the reasons I love books: They can give you a lot to think about, and usually discussing them forces you to think about them in a totally different way, with insight you don't get just sitting in your empty apartment alone.

While reading alone is definitely valuable and is the bulk of the reading experience, probably, for most people, I miss incredibly the act of making meaning of a book with other people. Yes, I read other reviews and comment, and yes I read criticism (sometimes, usually for classics), but it's different than actually talking about them. So though I think sitting down and reviewing (in a more than "this is what it's about, this is what I liked" kind of way, maybe?  or maybe that doesn't matter?) adds a lot to the act of reading in terms of evolving understandings, it's just not the same as talking. (Talking here being talking in real life or in an online discussion.) Most of the comments I leave are for books I want to read or have read, but I'm never able to do much as far as understanding a novel better. I loved the whole Hunger Games release and Internet buzz for that reason - so many people reading and writing and arguing and creating understanding!

I will try to review more of the books I read because I find it valuable for myself, but I may do more question-generating and writing about the experience rather than a straight review. I'm not quite sure. I have just been so far removed from discussing literature that writing a review somewhat frustrates me.

I also have thought about joining a real life book club, in addition to online book clubs, if I can find one that I like. Surely that won't be a problem in New York City?

More importantly, I'm eagerly awaiting teaching. Because kids are damn smart and reading and talking about reading with them is the shit. It's the reason those "we don't do any whole-class books or literature circles" teachers make me want to cut someone. As if I were reading The Finkler Question.

(Seriously, if you've read The Finkler Question, please explain to me how I'm reading it wrong.)

Review: New York: The Novel, by Edward Rutherfurd

Edward Rutherfurd has a knack for writing voluminous historical novels. New York: The Novel is a long read, but the pacing makes it feel much shorter. Rutherfurd writes about people and historical events with such ease that I never felt as if I were being given a history lesson, though I certainly learned so much. That's what I enjoyed most about the novel - the little bits of information about a place I've moved to, told through several families who are all connected in various ways.

The novel begins in the 1600s and goes through September 11th, 2001. The van Dyke and Master families primarily move the story, though several other families are important at times, and all of them take part in momentous occasions of history; early dealings with Native Americans, the American Revolution, the Civil War and several financial crises. The most well-written portions focuses on characters who slowly changed, especially during the revolution. Watching a father torn between his son, friends and those who keep him in business was often moving and, more importantly, believable. Finding out how the British were treating prisoners (one even saying he'd just keep the American revolutionaries locked up if there were a fire, leaving them to burn to death) didn't completely sway this father, but it did make a mark on his conscience and lead to some surprising turns of events.

If there were one criticism of the novel, it's that the focus was too much on rich white folks, mainly the Master family, and they were sometimes simply boring to follow. An Italian family of immigrants interested me so much, as did a Jewish family who faced excruciating prejudice, yet I didn't get to stay with them very long. Maybe the novel simply mirrored history, but I pined for a white family to be devastated in any real way. Even the financial crises didn't do much more than make the white folks a little less rich. Yet every few decades, another family of color saw its fortunes go up in flames or its family members die. The novel also should have ended well before September 11th. There's just no way to write about it that isn't saccharine. (SPOILER: killing off a white person we grew to love might have been a start here. Seriously, no white people died in the attack; if it mirrored history throughout, this would have been a great place to spare a Jew.)

I'm glad I read the novel; I learned a ton. If you don't like historical novels, please stay away. 800 pages is too many to endure.

Some clippings from my highlighted sections that I enjoyed:

On the smell of New York:

But above all, for anyone in the streets, the wretchedness came from the fetid air. Horse droppings, cowpats, slops from the houses, and garbage and grime, dead cats and birds, excrement of every kind, lay strewn on the ground, waiting for the rain to wash it all away, or the sun to bake it to powder. And on a hot and steamy day, from this putrid mess, a soupy stench arose, fermented by the sun, creeping up wooden walls and fences, impregnating brick and mortar, choking every ventricle, stinging the eyes, rising to the roof gables.
This was the smell of summer in New York.

On country estates:

It was a fine old tradition: rich gentlemen had set up these parks in the Renaissance, the Middle Ages and in the Roman Empire. Now it was New York's turn. Some were on Manhattan; there was the Watts house at Rose Hill; and Murray Hill of course; and others with names taken from London, like Greenwich and Chelsea. Some were a little further north, like the van Cortlandts' estate in the Bronx.

On race and war:

Down in Virginia, the British governor had offered freedom to any slaves who cared to run away to join the British Army-which had made the Southern planters furious.

The crowd wanted to kill the [black] children [at the orphanage], because they were colored black. It wanted to destroy the building, because it was a temple of the rich Protestant abolitionists. The rich white Protestants who were sending honest Catholic boys to die so that four million freed slaves could come up north and steal their jobs. For the crowd was mostly Irish Catholic.

"People don't want to be reminded of those horrors...They wanted to forget them the moment the war was done." In the South, he'd heard, the agony of defeat was so terrible that quite a few photographers had even destroyed their own work.

It had been one of the greatest scandals of the war. Profiteers, not a few of them from New York, had got contracts to supply the army and sent them shoddy goods-uniforms that fell apart and, worst of all, boots that seemed to be made of leather, but whose soles were actually compressed cardboard. At the first shower of rain they disintegrated.

Recommended by: Nobody in particular
Book source: Personal copy

Book Club - Discussion

There's a great discussion of The Last Brother over at Devourer of Books. I reviewed that here a bit ago.

If you haven't read the book, there's not much to spoil, so feel free to take a look. Also, think about joining along next month with another book from Graywolf Press. I'll be doing so! I'm also ruminating on book blogging in general, but maybe that post will form up in time for a Sunday Salon.

Check out these bloggers, who have also reviewed The Last Brother:

Caribousmom
Indie Reader Houston
That's What She Read

Also, in the next few days I'll be (hopefully) working on changing a few things. For one, I'd like to link to places other than Amazon (it's just so convenient - I make nothing on it).

Thanks again to Jen and Graywolf for sending me a copy of this book!

Abandoned Book: Sightseeing, by Rattawut Lapcharoensnap

I enjoy translated books because they're often interesting for their cultural insight and just have a particular flavor that I savor. So when I saw someone's praise for Sightseeing, by Rattawut Lapcharoensap, I added it to my list and waited for a chance to pick it up and begin.

In this short story collection, Thai author Lapcharoensap delivers views of life on various sides - that of the tourist, the poor native, the small family - but it never seemed to get past the ordinary or unoriginal, even if the striking language and scandalous scenes somewhat piqued interest. There's just not much here that I haven't seen before, and it's sadly, boringly about the white, dumb tourists and the poor, worldly Thais.

In one story, two brothers are enduring their mother's insanity after their father has died. The older brother, Anek, takes care of his kid brother but only as well as a 15-year-old can. A 15-year-old who's sometimes high and seems to visit prostitutes often. These two characters were as authentic as any of the stories that I read get (I stopped halfway through the book), but it's never clear to me whether I'm supposed to be learning something about myself, Western views on Thailand, Thai culture, beliefs that Westerners have of Thailand, or whether I'm supposed to be entertained. In the end, I got nothing but frustration out of it because the prose is so terrible, the stories are indifferent and the characters so unbelievable and unlikable.

Take this bit. The two brothers are out to eat for a birthday celebration, having hamburgers, and the youngest gets sick on the food that he very rarely gets to eat.

I took a few apprehensive bites at the bun. I bit into the brittle meat. I chewed and I chewed and I chewed and I finally swallowed, the thick mass inching slowly down my throat. I took another bite. Then I felt my stomach shoot up to my throat like one of those bottle rockets Anek and I used to set off in front of Apae's convenience store just to p iss him off. I remember thinking, Oh fuck, oh fuck, please no, but before I could take a deep breath to settle things, it all came rushing out of me I threw up all over that shiny American linoleum floor.

He is then called a fucking pussy several times, etc. Then there's a scene with huffing of paint. Then we hear about how wonderful it was when Anek, just turning fifteen, was taken to a prostitute by his father to turn into a man; we get to hear about how he shoved his fingers, soiled by the woman's parts, into his brother's face. The entire story is a string of nonsense that did nothing but annoy me.

In another story, a rich guy pays off officials to avoid the draft and watches as his friend, who isn't so wealthy, is picked ("The Lottery"). Though that in itself is interesting, at Lapcharoensap's hand I felt as if I'd seen it all before, move along, this is a story about inequality and some heartache and really, do I need to try? What could have been deeply tender and heartfelt ended up being blah, which is an awful thing to type when you assume that the young man's friend is going to die and you know it will haunt him forever. But, blah.

"Sightseeing" is the last story I read completely. Publisher's Weekly says this about it: "In the title tale—an exquisite meditation on human dependency—a son and his ailing mother must accept the dismal reality of her encroaching blindness and what it means for his plans to attend college away from home." Actually, no. It's a choppy story about a silly, dumb old woman who's going blind and goes on a trip to see things - sunsets, sights of the ocean she never spent the money to go see - with her son, no less, who she somewhat abuses without any clear reason. Of course she's going blind, and that sucks, and she doesn't have a strong relationship with her son, but the characters are so undeveloped that it makes absolutely no sense, and I felt myself grasping to my own imagination to fill in the blanks.

The train comes to a stop in Trang. I try to take my mother's arm when we get up.
"I'm not blind yet, luk."
"Sorry, I just thought-"
"You just thought nothing, luk. I'm fine."

I wish the bitch had her tongue rot off, too.

And now I'm cranky just thinking about it. But I enjoyed writing about the book, so that's something.

Recommended by: Someone somewhere
Book source: Personal copy

Edit: This is not a translated work. I was wrong.

Review: The Last Brother, by Nathacha Appanah

This book came to me from the publisher, Graywolf Press, through the blog Devourer of Books, which had copies to give away for its book club. I was excited to get it and eager to read it, and I'm not disappointed.

We've probably all read dozens of stories about World War II and the struggles that the Nazis put people through, in particular Jewish people and those who opposed what was happening to them. It doesn't exactly get old, but it does feel at some point a bit much to take similar stories (in novel form, particularly, where you spend so much time in that horror). It's not a bad thing. Still, I felt a great deal of gratitude when reading Appanah's fictionalized account of an island, Mauritius, where about a thousand Jewish people were held. The mystery of how and why they were there is a part of the mystery of the book, which follows Raj, a nine-year-old who knows nothing of the war in 1944. In fact, he doesn't find out until the end of his life what led up to so many Jewish people being held at a prison near where he lived.

This book is poetry. The translation really is as beautiful as the blurb on the back states. The novel, briefly, is a reflection by the narrator on his childhood memories, and he recounts the tragedy that took his blood brothers away from him and the joy and pain of finding a new brother, David, who was a Jewish prisoner. David, we find out early on, dies, too, leaving Raj another painful memory of loss and a great deal of guilt.

I'd like to excerpt a couple exquisite passages and then discuss my thoughts on the book, especially the style and choices the author made.

Raj is weaker than his brothers. His body can't take much hard work, but his spirit is strong. Maybe because of this, he is the one chosen to go to school while his brothers labor. He loves to share with them the things he learns, and excitedly tells what his lessons teach him. But it's not the same as having them there, and he feels a certain guilt about this. He also feels a certain pain about other worlds he learns about in school, about houses and families so much unlike his own poor, terror-filled house with a drunken, abusive father.

Sometimes, for as long as this walk laster, a good half hours, I would imagine that all three of us were on our way to school and that soon the cards on which the world was explained to us in pictures and words would be displayed before all our eyes. On one of them there was a man dressed in pants and a short-sleeved shirt, he had wavy black hair, a gentle face, and a smile. At the bottom of the card the word PAPA. Then Anil and Vinod would have been able to believe what I told them: not all fathers in the world were like the ones at the camp, like our own....
At such moments there was only one thing I wanted to do: bury my head in my hands and weep. I compared [our houses] to the card for HOUSE, a lovely, clean, white thing, with a blue roof, proof against rain; it was solid, truly solid, with proper walls. It was clear that in houses like this the dust did not swirl around people's faces like a cloud of flies, the mud did not slither viciously, like snakes, into every nook and cranny. It was clear that in houses like this there was not a bamboo can, all ribs and knots, with a very fine tip, propped up against the wall, motionless, innocent, harmless but daring you to look at it.

An adult Raj meditates on David's life, and it's both painful and poetic.

Not for an instant did it occur to me that he had quite simply never learned to think about himself and that he had been shaken by so many deaths, by such misfortune, that his body, his heart, his head, no longer existed. He moved through life as if he knew that what had happened to his family would catch up with him, he sang his songs, learned who knows where, I like to think it was his mother who put those words into his mouth, he sometimes talked very fast and now I understand that he was holding on to Yiddish, his mother tongue, because this was all that was left to him. 

It's a short read but a good one. Appanah has convincing characters and an important story to tell. The family issues - the abusive and the poverty - add an engaging bit of plot that'd make it an important book in yet another capacity for all readers but especially for students. Watching Raj deal with this aspect of his life as an adult makes the switch between past and present - when Raj has his own son - a more natural part of the storytelling.

Still, I found the shifts in time somewhat startling. I felt yanked a few times. The importance of the past is crucial, though, and I understand why it needed to be told in this way. At one point, the narrator directly says that David needs to be the center of the story, that it needs to be his, that it's imperative to get every detail right, but there's no way to do that without seeing the ripples of David's life and death on the narrator. No story can be just one person's, and David's misfortunes become Raj's, Raj's son's, Raj's mothers. I loved the first half of the story the most, because of how intact the timeline was, but I still felt every page meaningful and important throughout the rest of the book.

Head over to see the discussion of the book on the 22nd of February. You can see Jen's posting about the book here. Leave a link in the comments if you've read/reviewed book. I'll check it out and comment!

Sunday Salon: I can't go a week without posting

This is what happened.

I had no job in the summer last year, so I started to blog, partly as a way to get myself reading, to keep up with news. Then I started student teaching, which was fun but never really amounted to much blog-wise because I was afraid of saying what I really wanted to say because of the chance of losing a job. And then I was jobless and had a lot of free time, and honestly I've gone a little crazy with it all. Most of my days are spent reading books and looking for jobs and walking aimlessly from one Starbuck's to the next.

As for what I've been reading and/or not reviewing: I'm mainly reading teaching books. I'm currently reading about differentiation and reading comprehension. I finished two insanely long novels: The Count of Monte Cristo and New York: The Novel. Both enjoyable, but I can't seem to make myself sit down and review them. I'm also reading The Last Brother, which I'm fairly certain will make me cry and/or want to kill myself. It's beautifully written and part of Jen's book club, which is awesome and enjoyable for me to be a part of (at least this month).

Mostly, I'll be lurking in the coming weeks, posting reviews sporadically. I'll probably round up some of my favorite posts from the web and share them here. Those Sunday Salons are awesome and I am enjoying them very much.

So, how's your reading, blogging and overall related habits? Have you seen a post lately that made you think? Made you excited about something? Made you think you probably don't have it in you to be a good blogger?

Happy Sunday!

The "cautious 60 percent"

They should grow a pair and stop allowing room for ignorance. Schools need to stop pretending that creationism and abstinence-only aren't harmful. Neither, by the evidence, are worth the time to teach, and intellectually, they make absolutely no sense. If you want your children to believe in either, take the time out of your day for the charade.

From The New York Times, reporting on a national survey found in January's Science:

Researchers found that only 28 percent of biology teachers consistently follow the recommendations of the National Research Council to describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology. At the other extreme, 13 percent explicitly advocate creationism, and spend at least an hour of class time presenting it in a positive light. 

That leaves what the authors call “the cautious 60 percent,” who avoid controversy by endorsing neither evolution nor its unscientific alternatives. In various ways, they compromise. 

The survey, published in the Jan. 28 issue of Science, found that some avoid intellectual commitment by explaining that they teach evolution only because state examinations require it, and that students do not need to “believe” in it. Others treat evolution as if it applied only on a molecular level, avoiding any discussion of the evolution of species. And a large number claim that students are free to choose evolution or creationism based on their own beliefs.

That's like telling students that Hitler attempting to wipe out an entire race of people is only being taught because the tests necessitate it, and that it's just a bunch of stuff history books and people have talked about only because they have some kind of factual bias that nobody really needs to choose to believe because, hey, you have to trust your gut on stuff like scientific evidence and hard facts and years of experts figuring stuff out.

I, for one, believe that Prohibition never happened and women always had the right to vote. Also, only Puerto Ricans get abortions and angels fought in the American Revolutionary War. For the British.

Disclaimer: I'm aware I'm being silly. It's more complicated than that. But not really.

Superintendent pay

I like that Cuomo said something about school superintendent pay. It's super silly.

More than 40 percent of New York State’s superintendents earn at least $200,000 each year in salary and benefits, Mr. Cuomo said.

The budget proposal, of course, includes a cut of $2.85 billion, which seems steep. But then you think about the hundreds of thousands that superintendents and principals make, not to mention some of the teachers, and it begins to seem a little more palatable. Still appalling, but less so.

Where's the movie about bad administration? We're always talking about bad, old teachers sucking up all the funds but don't ever hear about awful administrators who don't know squat about the job of educating even as they're paid the most.

Review: The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman

Great book.

There's really not much that I can say about the book concerning the plot, but I'll try to give some sense of what's going on.

If you've read Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (one of my all-time favorite books), then you've got an idea of the flavor and somewhat even the structure of Rachman's book. In Winesburg, you read about several people in one town, and what are basically a bunch of short stories are tied together by the narrator, who's a reporter. In each story, as I remember it, the focus is on a character who has some type of major flaw - someone who's almost able to break out of the pattern of their life and do something different, or surprisingly great, or something that'd just make them happy - but their flaw overcomes them, or others' flaws overcomes them, and they just don't make it past these things.

The Imperfectionists pivots around a newspaper, and after every short story, we find out a little more about the paper and the people who helped found it (and eventually who "run" it). We read about the would-be reporter, the accountant, the editor, etc. Every chapter interested me, and each character came alive in such a short amount of time that I came away impressed. Rachman knows how to slowly unravel a plot, and each chapter moves from one character to another in just the way I wanted; everyone is connected to one another in some way, and sometimes we bounce around predictably and at others we find ourselves surprisingly reading about a character who had intrigued us earlier and who we now get to find out about, gladly.

The book reminds me of Winesburg so much because it's just depressingly realistic and doesn't trick us with fairy-tales. I wanted, sometimes, to see a character, like the would-be reporter, break out of himself and become the person he wanted to be; it just doesn't happen that way, and I felt it'd have been wrong if it were. So often, there's a story that makes us feel good seemingly for the sake of us feeling good. This doesn't do that.

There are great moments, though, and there's a tenderness in the writing. Because the characters are so authentic, and because we get to know them so well in short period of time, I felt glad to have read it and hoping for the stories that happen when the pages have run out. It's not the bleakest book I've read - it just shows imperfect people trying hard to surmount life and failing, as people so often do, to succeed. But I had confidence, unlike after reading Winesburg, that there's some joy to be had for them all, eventually. I highly recommend it to people who don't mind a little tragedy and the short-story novel.

You can listen to the book discussion on NPR.org and also find a free excerpt.

Recommended by: Nobody
Book source: Personal copy

"Scrubbing" tests in NYC

The Wall Street Journal writes about the odd numbers of students barely passing the state exams required for high school graduation. Some teachers have offered information about test "scrubbing" - bumping tests up a bit so that the student with a score of under 65 gets a few more points and passes.

This comes out at a time when scores play such an important part in determining how teachers and schools are doing. It's also an additional headache for New York City, whose entire scoring system and proficiency bars have been called into question in recent years.

What's really scandalous is that the bar is so low, which I've complained about before. 65% is passing on a Regents test. Um, that's failing, people.

The state says it is working to change proficiency bars and to devise an electronic, anonymous system to make scores less likely to be fudged with.

School support and closures in NYC

Something about cutting the budget here. Not much to say about education cuts, though more than $1B seems to be a lot. Then again, money isn't magic.

More interesting to me are the school closures that this article summarizes fairly well, including the special struggles the schools on the closing list have and what closings mean for the schools that those students go to.

Many other schools on the closing list could echo that claim. A report issued last week by the Independent Budget Office compared the schools on the closing list with city schools as whole and found, for example, that the high schools slated for closing had a far greater percentage of special ed students -- 18 percent compared with a citywide average of 12 percent -- and slightly more English language learners. While 52 percent of high school students citywide are considered low income, 63 percent of those in the endangered schools are. More than twice as high a percentage came in over age at the schools on the closing list, and they had lower scores on their eighth grade tests.

The differences for elementary schools were far less pronounced.

The article goes on to describe how many of the better students at these closing schools find places in smaller, themed charters or simply better schools (my guess is it's a wake-up call to them and to their parents, and they want to move to somewhere that'll serve them). But the challenging students, the ones who aren't performing well, may just flock to the nearest poor-performing school that will accept anyone.

(And while I get the feeling that sometimes the smaller schools and charters are seen as better than large high schools, that's just not the case. I was at several of those places and they are sometimes plain horrid.)

Speaking of small schools, there's lots of information about plans that have already been made to open charters in place of those closing schools. We'll see what happens.

Sunday Salon: Book choices

I am sure that with a little browsing, I could find myself talking about this at some other point in the blog, but I've been thinking a lot lately about my book choices and realized how ridiculously they are influenced by three forces: Economics, convenience and availability.

The other day, I'm browsing through books on my Kindle and realize that The Imperfectionists is super cheap, and that I wouldn't mind not owning a physical copy of it (though now I wish I did - c'est la vie). So, for $5, I get a book right away that I can easily read on my Kindle. A few days later, I see that there's a copy of Mr. Peanut for a good price online, so I go ahead and order it, since spending money on books will last only as long as the gift certificates do. Then, I get an e-mail from the library saying that they have a copy of a Nobel-winning book on hold for me at the library. Since I'm in the middle of New York: The Novel, a book that's nearly 1,000 pages, I wait a few days to go check out the other books and wonder how fast I can read through it. Meanwhile, I'm hoping that someone on KindleLendingClub.com soon sends Skippy Dies my way so I can read it because it's $14.99 for the electronic edition which is just stupid (sorry, but it is). I still have 50 classics waiting to be read, too - the free ones. And my husband often brings home ARCs.

Many of the books are ones that I've obviously had my eye on and are really something I find interesting or are attuned to my tastes, but an increasing number aren't. And I know that I've groaned about disliking library books because you're forced to read them right then, regardless of the mood you're in, and I'm often deciding what to read next but then find myself reading books not because of taste or passion or for the art or some similar notion but because it's simply there, or not as heavy, or...

Which kind of makes me uncomfortable because I feel like I'm just being impulsive and random and a little indiscriminate and cheap and are reading books of this genre when I should be reading classics, or I'm reading something that's not really my thing and that shouldn't take precedence over the really great-looking, important literature I need to read before I die.

Of course, then I read books like New York: The Novel and love every second of it and am so thankful that I choose books because of the economics, convenience and availability. It doesn't always turn out that way, but it's insanely gratifying when it does.

Review: Sam: The Boy Behind The Mask, by Tom Hallman

This book is simply wonderful, and I can't recommend it enough.

Tom Hallman wrote a Pulitzer-Prize winning series on a boy, Sam Lightner, who has a growth on his face that not only disfigures him but also threatens his life, mystifying doctors and worrying family and friends. The story expands on his series of articles in The Oregonian,  and it's structure is engaging and the stories heart-wrenching.

We see Sam as he is younger, when he doesn't seem to notice too much how much he doesn't fit in. His family treats him like their other children, and he enjoys life. Then he becomes a teenager, and he realizes he doesn't fit in. He worries about girls, being cool and blending in. High school makes him afraid, but he's seemingly unphased by the outside world. That doesn't mean it isn't difficult for him - he's just got a great spirit and great parents.

When he was born, the doctors tried operating on the growth, but he almost bled to death. The scar that forms after this operation averts doctors from trying, later on in his life, to operate on the young man. It makes it difficult to see vessels that they might cut through.

The second section provides a detailed account of a group of doctors - and one in particular - at a children's hospital renowned for it's research and operations on children like Sam. Even they spend countless meetings discussing how dangerous the procedure would be for him; eventually, though, one of the surgeons agrees, and Sam eagerly anticipates the surgery that might reduce medical problems and also remove some of the mass to make the growth just a bit less prominent.

Though the surgery is successful, he later slips into a coma. The neurosurgeon who takes his case is interesting and skilled, though this is where I have to say I felt the book start to slow down. The author describes this doctor as having taught him where "faith and science intersect." I got bored with it and felt her inner dialogue and the discussions of how many people felt she was wrong started to drone on and on. I can't put my finger on why this section seemed to drag, or why her "intuition" bothered me - it just did. Still, I admired her persistence.

The story is a lesson on the goodness of the human spirit when faced with something like this - not just the disfigurement but also the subsequent threat to Sam's life. The people who sent letters and offered assistance, though it drained the parents, warmed my heart. The reaction of the students at the school made me tear up more than once. It's easy to feel like the world is full of people who are selfish and just plain awful, especially when living in New York, but this book reminded me that people can be kind and loving. It also gives a portrait of teenage anxiety; Sam just wants to fit in, and what is normally an inward struggle is not one for him. He yearns for people to get past his face and to see who he is. By the end, I felt sad by the life he had to lead but glad for having known something of it.

I recommend this to everyone. Students might enjoy it, and get something meaningful from it, but it can be somewhat difficult when procedures and the medical issues are discussed. Hallman does a good job of making it make sense, and obviously spent hours to understand and relate what he learned to the reader.

Recommended by: Husband
Book source: Personal copy

Review: Tears of a Tiger, by Sharon M. Draper

Students in New York City are constantly preparing the the Regents, tests they must pass to graduate from high school. One of the ways my cooperating teacher helped prepare them was by giving them a quote each day - about a wide range of topics and by a wide range of authors - that they would then use to examine a piece of literature that they've read. This is the Critical Lens essay, and it stresses students out a lot. Aside from the repetitiveness of the activity (even I hated it after a couple of weeks), I enjoyed the conversations. One of my favorite parts was listening to one student continuously refer to Tears of a Tiger; she loved that book, and said it'd relate to almost any quote.

She's probably right about the last part. While I didn't love Tears of a Tiger, there were many things about it that I thought were good, and I'm glad that I've read it. I may even recommend it to some of my students.

Tears of a Tiger is about what happens to an entire school after four boys are in a car accident, a car accident that ends up killing (burning to death) one of the boys. The driver, Andrew Jackson, had been drinking, along with two of the other boys in the car, and he has some understandable difficulty dealing with the fact that he's responsible for the accident. And he is responsible, though I'll explain later why I think that bears some repeating.

The novel has almost no descriptive passages. Though the book creatively uses newspaper articles, diary entries and morning announcements as a way to deliver the story, much of it is dialogue. This confused me at points because there were no "he said, she said" bits. I may gripe about that, loving writing as much as I do, but I'm sure it's actually a positive, especially for younger readers. They don't have to wade through exposition.

Andrew, who goes by Andy, deals with the horrors of the accident in a different way from his friends and the entire school, and his family support isn't exactly wonderful. They want him to get past it - just about everyone does - but they don't see how or why that might be difficult. This bothered me. It also bothered me that so many people tried to pretend it wasn't his fault; maybe he isn't a killer in the sense of being a plotting murdered, but come on - he drank while driving and his friend died. He's responsible. So are the others, but he was behind the wheel. He even had one friend in the car who refused to drink (who didn't offer to drive).

The story focused too much on Andy. I understand why, given what happens later in the novel, but I'd like to have seen more of a struggle with the others involved. The discussions Andy had with the therapist were also rather silly at times. Because of the lack of anything but dialogue, we are never inside of his head, and we never see things; we always, always hear what's happening, and the talking is sometimes really hollow or wooden to me. I just can't believe he'd say what he said, or that the therapist would react the way he did. It sometimes sounds like the author just researched a lot and hurriedly wrote a novel about it. I also didn't believe Andy's rapid decline. I didn't feel the tension built up enough.

Despite these things, I enjoyed the book in one sitting and think it has a lot to offer young people. It's not just drunk driving and racial tension that gets time in this book - I can't reveal what else without spoiling - and they are important things to think about. Readers who struggle may enjoy this for its simplicity in writing, depth of feeling and also the bits of basketball scenes that even had me interested.

Overall, nice book.

Recommended by: Former student
Book source: Personal copy

Review: Lonely Werewolf Girl, by Martin Millar

I've been wanting to read this for months and months but had so much to get through. Finally, I just ignored my incredibly large stack of books to be read and dove into this one. So glad that I did.

Summary, provided by a human, Daniel, on page 84:

Just to clarify matters in my own mind" ... "We are attempting to help a crazy young Scottish werewolf with a long history of anti-social behavior. The other werewolves can't help us right now because they have to elect a new leader. But a fire spirit - or elemental, whatever that is - who's queen of a different dimension but just pops over to the Earth to get her clothes made by one of these werewolves, is on her way back to her own dimension to find a new mystic pendant and then she's going to help us find the young werewolf who is presumably roaming the streets at this moment."

Kalix, the lonely werewolf girl, is not just anti-social but also addicted to an old drug and sometimes cuts herself. She is prone to massacring people who threaten her life, and at one point long ago attacked and nearly killed her father, the Thane of the werewolf clan who's now passed away and must be replaced. The family and their friends have split them all into two camps when the vote on a replacement in unexpectedly interrupted by a werewolf who nominates the youngest brother, Markus, rather than the next-in-line, eldest brother, Sarapen. Because neither of the brothers has enough votes to claim the Thaneship, in one month another session will be held, leaving the two sides time to sway the council members to vote for their side.

It's not very complex as stories go, but at almost 600 pages, it's long enough for some interesting banter and great characterization. Which is exactly why I loved this book so much; the pages are populated with characters that are believable, sometimes hilarious and always changing. Kalix is the focus, since so much hinges on her safety, but most of the novel is devoted to the people who surround her.

The fire queen and her niece were unquestioningly my favorite characters. The queen stays around mostly for entertainment, she says, but it's apparent that she has strong feelings for the werewolves and humans she comes in contact with, especially the werewolf, Thrix, who designs her clothing, which is of the utmost importance at the moment, seeing how she's dominated her enemies and now just wants to look fabulous at gatherings in her dimension. The first time we meet her, she's threatening to kill Thrix because of a fashion mishap. Throughout the novel, she and her niece continue to enter the human world and interfere, for good and bad, with the lives of those in their dimension. The best parts are their devotion to fashion magazines and their misunderstanding of human and werewolf cultures.

Markus, though as vile as his brother, Sarapen,also ranks up there with notable characters because he's described as feminine, though not gay, and enjoys wearing women's clothing. In one scene, he tries on his sister's (Thrix's) clothing which the humans, Daniel and Moonglow, witness when they plead for Thrix's help in assisting with Kalix.

Dominil, another werewolf in the clan, wants to see Sarapen (her ex-lover) lose the Thaneship, and helps her mother, who she hates, in working a pair of cousins with their dreams of becoming famous musicians. She's cold, calculating and has a secret of her own, but she knows exactly how to do what she must. I found her and Thrix to be the most intriguing characters because their personalities were just as solidly imagined and portrayed as the others, yet they had such integrity and warmth in certain moments that I couldn't help but feel extremely fond of them.

Which brings me to my main thoughts on why this novel worked: It was long and carefully written to allow the characters to come to life. I never felt that anyone acted out of character, even when they did things that might be uncharacteristic. That happens a lot in life, and seeing a cold-hearted werewolf show a moment of slight tenderness toward another gave the novel additional authenticity. Even though we're talking about werewolves and fire elementals here. The same can be said of the whole cast of characters: none of them magically changed from good to bad or did things just to make the plot work the way the author wanted. They simply unfolded as the story was told.

It's hard to do the novel justice in a review because I enjoyed it so much and am already wondering when to start the next book, Curse of the Werewolf Girl. I just don't want to the story to end, so I may wait a while.

I do have a huge gripe with the publisher that reflects in no way on the author: Soft Skull Press should be ashamed and feel a great deal of remorse for how it presented the author's work. Do they not have editors? A proofreader? You couldn't have paid a college student, or gotten an unpaid intern, to look over the manuscript before going to print? There is probably at least one error per page on average, if not more, and some of them are not just minor things like, oh, punctuation, but serious things like completely wrong words and misspellings of all types. Wait, I take that back; punctuation, especially commas and quotation marks, are serious things. It slowed my reading and forced me to work insanely hard at some points just to fix things in my head. If you are a reader who is bothered by these things (especially comma usage - cripes, it's awful!), you may not want to read this. If you are Soft Skull Press and thinking about printing some more of these, please send it my way for a quick check. I would do it for nothing more than a signed copy.

Suggested by: @jennIRL
Book source: Personal copy