Dark Dude by Oscar Hijuelos

Hijuelos, O. (2008). Dark dude. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

ISBN-13: 978-1-41694-804-9

Plot Summary

Fifteen-year-old Rico is the “palest Cubano who ever existed on the planet.” He loves comic books and dreams of being a writer. However, his New York City neighborhood increasingly makes life difficult. His family is struggling to survive, and Rico must attend a dismal Harlem public high school. When his “big brother” Gilberto miraculously strikes it rich playing the lottery, he makes a huge impression on Rico by showing him the peaceful landscape picture of the college he enrolls in as a way of getting out of the neighborhood without going to Vietnam. On the other hand, Rico’s other good friend Jimmy, an artist, turns to drugs as a different means of escape. Deciding to leave the inner city and a hopeless life behind, Rico and Jimmy hitchhike their way from Harlem to the promising pastures of Wisconsin, the land of milk and honey. Rico compares his new life to his life in New York and wonders if he made the right decision.

Critical Evaluation

The setting of Dark Dude is important to the story. Rico lives in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. New York City itself is rich with many ethnicities that historically are in constant conflict with each other: Peurto Rican, Cuban, African-American, Jewish, and Irish. When Rico’s best friend displays the Wisconsin college brochure, the stark contrast between the dirty inner city New York and the rolling green hills of Eden-esque Wisconsin are obvious. The book’s division into Rico’s first person narration of his life is dotted with humor throughout Dark Dude. One example is when he decides to stay away from his Harlem school, which they referred to as Jo Mama’s (demonstrating total lack of respect), as much as possible: “I just couldn’t go back to Jo Mama’s on a regular basis. It was like an antimagnetic thing, and I was a piece of metal” (115). This kind of humor balances out the conflicts he faces with stride. Many of the conflicts are a result of his skin color. He is Cuban, but instead of having dark skin and eyes, he is pale with freckles and hazel eyes. As a result, he does not fit in with any group. Readers will connect with Rico’s desire to be accepted as part of a group and his conflict of identity. Readers will also appreciate Rico’s desire to get out of the problems that plague his life through whatever means it takes. Readers will also understand the theme that it doesn’t matter who you are or where you are, everyone has problems; it’s how you deal with them that counts.

 

Reader’s Annotation

 

Fifteen-year-old Rico feels out of place in his Harlem neighborhood because of his light skin and his aspirations to be a writer. Hoping to find a better life, he runs away and finds his life’s purpose.

 

Author Information

 

Oscar Hijuelos was born August 24, 1951 in New York City. He is the son of Cuban immigrants and his experiences influence his writing; his books explore life as a Hispanic in America. His first novel, Our House in the Last World (1983), is about a Cuban family living in 1940s America and received much critical praise. However, it was The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989) that earned him international recognition. In 1990, Hijuelos received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Mambo Kings.

Hijuelos has been a National Book Award nominee, has received the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rome Fellowship and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation as well as the National Endowment for the arts. He currently lives in New York City but spends part of his time in Durham, North Carolina, where he is a visiting professor at Duke. Dark Dude is his first young adult novel. Of it, Hijuelos says, “This is the kind of book I wish I’d read when I was a teen.”

More information about Oscar Hijuelos can be found where I found this information at Biography.com:

http://www.biography.com/people/oscar-hijuelos-188849

Genre

Young adult

Coming of Age

Historical Fiction

Curriculum Ties

Vietnam War, Cuban immigration to the United States

Book Talking Ideas

What are your goals for the future? What do you want to be?

Reading Level/ Interest Age

Characters are in high school; appropriate for ages 15 and up

Challenge Issues

Drug use, language

Challenge Defense

If this book were challenged, I would refer to these reviews and consult ALA's Strategies and Tips for Dealing with Challenges to Library  Materials.

Booklist starred 11/01/08

Publishers Weekly starred 09/01/08

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 10/01/08

School Library Journal 11/01/08

Horn Book 04/01/09

Voice of Youth Advocates (V.O.Y.A.) 10/01/08

Kirkus Review 09/01/08

Wilson's Senior High School 06/01/10

Why did I include this title?

I enjoy reading anything about New York City. Having lived there for a short time myself, I can appreciate the tension between the ethnic groups. I enjoyed reading about the Harlem neighborhood with the street numbers and bodegas. This novel paints a vivid picture of Harlem life, yet it does so in an endearing way. Anyone reading this novel will be able to connect with Rico’s struggle to find his way in life.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Foer, J. (2005). Extremely loud and incredibly close. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

ISBN-13: 978-0-618-32970-0

Plot Summary

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an amateur inventor, tambourine player, and Shakespearean actor who is playing “Yorick” in a school presentation of Hamlet. His father, whom Oskar worshipped, tragically died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. A year later, Oskar has found a key inside of a vase in his father’s closet. The vase is labeled “Black.” The key does not open anything in the apartment, so, determined to find the lock that the key will open and the answers to his questions, Oskar sets out on a quest to ask every person in the New York phone book with the last name of Black about the key. In doing so, he meets colorful characters who each have their own story to tell and who have a lasting impression on Oskar. Oskar has a mute grandfather, who survived the bombing of Dresden, and in the end, the two stories weave together. When Oskar finally finds the answer, he finds the meaning of life.

Critical Evaluation

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is told in the first person narration of Oskar; he is nine, but he does not always sound like he is nine, which is reasonable given that Oskar himself is quite a unique child. The narration is often beautifully poetic and more than often quite humorous. Foer enhances the narrative with frequent surprises for the reader. For example, there are graphic illustrations, over-written text, and photographs. Booklist (February 2005) refers to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as “the most beautiful and heartbreaking flip book in all of literature.” The humor balances the tragedy in a healing way. The setting of post-9/11 New York City significantly shows the emotional aftermath of the terrorist attacks that affected the entire country. The gaping holes at Ground Zero are nothing compared to the gaping holes in the lives of those who lost loved ones that day. Foer’s account of a boy searching for clues about his father will appeal to anyone who has lost a loved one. The theme that “in the end, everyone loses everyone” is a reminder to all readers about the meaning of life.

 

Example of Oskar’s vivid, imaginative narration:

 

“What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.”

 

Reader’s Annotation

 

Nine-year-old Oskar has found a key in his father’s closet. His father died in 9/11, and the key does not open up anything in the apartment, so Oskar sets out on a quest to find the lock and, as a result, unlocks the truth of life.

 

Author Information

 

Jewish-American Jonathan Safran Foer was born in 1977 in Washington D.C., and earned his degree from Princeton University where he won awards for creative writing all four years. Under the guidance of Joyce Carol Oates, who was teaching a creative writing course there, he finished a manuscript for Everything is Illuminated before graduating with a degree in psychology in 1999. Oates was also his senior thesis advisor; Foer wrote about the life of his maternal grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. He later went to expand on his thesis in the Ukraine. Everything Illuminated was published in 2002.

Foer refers to himself as an occasional vegetarian as he has dabbled in vegetarianism most of his life, yet still eats meet. These notions led him to write his first nonfiction book, Eating Animals (2009). He has taught writing as a visiting professor at Yale University and is currently a professor in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University. Foer lives with his wife, Nicole Krauss, and two children in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.

His very interesting website is somewhat difficult to navigate:

http://www.theprojectmuseum.com/

Genre

Cross-over

Mystery

Curriculum Ties

Holocaust, 9/11 

Book Talking Ideas

9/11, grief

Reading Level/ Interest Age

High School, adults

Challenge Issues

N/A

Challenge Defense

I cannot think of why this book would be challenged, and I did not find any challenges to date. If it were challenged, I would consult ALA's Strategies and Tips for Dealing with Challenges to Library  Materials.

I would also include that it is listed in ALA’s Outstanding Books for the College Bound Literature and Language Arts 2009

http://www.ala.org/yalsa/booklistsawards/booklists/outstandingbooks/2009/literature

Why did I include this title?

This book made me cry. At first, I couldn’t put it down. I was tearing through pages, reading as fast as I could. Then I realized that if I kept up that pace, I would finish it quickly. And I didn’t want it to end. So I slowed down. I feel guilty enjoying such a book that would not have existed had 9/11 not happened.

“I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.” (one of my favorite quotes from this novel)

The Cupcake Queen by Heather Hepler

Hepler, H. (2009). The cupcake queen. New York: Dutton Children’s Books.

ISBN-13: 978-0-525-42157-3

Plot Summary

When her parents separate, Penny Lane (daughter of Beatles lovers), is forced to leave her beloved New York City behind and create a new life in the rustic, beach town of Hogs Hollow. She reluctantly works in her mother’s cupcake shop, Cupcake Queen, which has become the new popular bakery in town. However, instead of trying to make new friends, she would rather IM the friends she left back in the Village, which seems worlds away. Gram, her grandmother, not only helps out at the bakery, but also helps Penny adjust to her new home. Life gets easier when Penny makes new friends and they work together to save the local animal shelter, and Penny begins having romantic feelings for Marcus, who seems to reciprocate them. When the time comes for Penny to decide where to live, with her mom in Hogs Hollow or her dad in the City, Penny must weigh in the many factors that affect her life.

Critical Evaluation

Penny’s voice shines through in first-person narration with humor and wit: “In my case, ‘fine’ is an acronym for Freakin’ Irrational Nightmare Experience” (21). Through her sophisticated narration, we learn how it feels to be the new girl in high school, we create impressions of people in her town and compare them with people in the big city, and we experience the hesitant moments of a budding romance. The plot, though, is somewhat predictable and the characters are your standard chick lit fare: the popular mean girl, the quirky outsider, the clueless teachers, the wise grandparent, and the mysterious handsome boy.

 

Readers will connect with Penny’s fear of her parents’ divorce and her inability to effectively communicate with them. Penny is an artist, and readers might enjoy the descriptions of her creations, especially those of the cupcake variety. Through the strongest component of the novel, Penny’s voice, readers are taken to a world where simple joys like having a boy like you are as sweet as frosting. Themes such as you can find happiness where you least expect it and the popular girls don’t always win will resonate with young adult female readers.

 

Reader’s Annotation

 

High school freshman Penny Lane is new in town and has culture shock coming from New York City. Right when she is beginning to feel comfortable, her parents ask her to make a difficult decision; despite these complications, Penny learns that life can be sweet indeed.

 

Author Information

 

Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Heather Hepler attended high school in Texas, and attended her first years of college in Alaska. After experiencing the beauty of the Northern Lights, she began writing what she calls her bad poetry phase. Before becoming a professional writer (of fiction, not poetry), she worked as an ice cream scooper, a lifeguard, a swim coach, and a pastry chef. Living in different places and working different jobs influenced her writing. She went to grad school twice. The first time, she earned a degree in library science (YAY!) and the second time she studied creative writing. Her studies enabled her to combine her love of books with her creativity, and hence, we now get to read her novels. The Cupcake Queen is her first solo book.

Hepler currently resides in Tyler, Texas with her son and a variety of pets including two Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches. Hepler enjoys visiting classrooms, libraries, book stores, and book clubs. Her website offers a pdf of instructions how to host a “Cupcake Day” with or without her being there. She also keeps a blog as a way of sharing her culinary creativity.

Heather Hepler’s website:

http://www.heatherhepler.com/

Heather Hepler’s Blog, In the Crazy Kitchen:

http://inthecrazykitchen.blogspot.com/

For more information about Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches (I know I needed to look them up), please visit this National Geographic site:

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/madagascar-hissing-cockroach/

Genre

Young Adult Fiction

Chick Lit

Moving
Family problems
High School

Romance

Curriculum Ties
N/A

Book Talking Ideas

How would you feel if you were forced to move from a place you loved to a place you hated? How do you make new friends? What makes cupcakes so popular?

Reading Level/ Interest Age

Protagonist is 14 and in high school; appropriate for ages 13 and up

Challenge Issues

N/A

Why did I include this title?

I judged a book by its cover. I’ll admit it. Who can resist a leaning tower of pink-frosted cupcakes? I put it on my Wish List when the Scholastic Book Fair arrived in our MPR, and a sweet student named Kristi gave it to me. This book combines two of my favorite things: cupcakes and New York City. It’s an entertaining read.