Hurricane Song: A Novel of New Orleans by Paul Volponi

Volponi, P. (2008). Hurricane Song: a novel about New Orleans. New York: Viking.

ISBN-13: 978-0-670-06160-0

Plot Summary

Miles has been living with his jazz-playing father, Doc, in New Orleans for two months. The only thing Doc cares about is playing jazz in clubs, but Miles is looking forward to having a father figure in his life. School is about to start, and Miles is excited playing football. However, it is the end of August 2005, and Hurricane Katrina is barreling toward New Orleans. Miles, Doc, and Uncle Roy get in the car to stay in a motel inland, but they are directed to stay in the Superdome instead. Miles had hoped the first time he saw its grass would be when he played on it, not running from a storm. Miles, Doc, and Uncle Roy must survive the hurricane, the impatient and angry crowds, and the oppressive National Guard soldiers. When the rain finally passes, this small family realizes what is truly important to them.

Critical Evaluation

The setting of Hurricane Song is the backdrop and the catalyst for everything that occurs within the plot. Each chapter opens with a stanza of the song “When the Saints Come Marching In,” which cleverly sets the stage and foreshadows the events of the chapter. Of course, the significance of this song must not be overlooked: it is the Saints football team that calls the Superdome home. Now, though, it is home to the thousands of people seeking refuge from the storm. Also, each chapter begins with the date and time; tension builds as the hurricane approaches. The language of this first-person narration told with the voice of Miles is full of Southern dialect, which adds to the realism of the place and the characters. For example, Miles says, “Mom would bust on me whenever I complained about it” (4). Furthermore, the dialogue is rich with expletives and while some might be offended, it would be unrealistic to have anything other than that. Explicit language and derogatory terms bring to the forefront the racism and terrible experience endured by the people trapped in the Superdome. Through it all is Doc and Uncle Roy’s love of jazz, which exemplifies the strong culture of music that lives in New Orleans. Readers will be able to relate to the complicated father-son relationship. At the end, the theme of hope and perseverance will inspire readers.

Reader’s Annotation

 

When Miles chooses to live with his jazz musician father permanently, his relationship is put to the test when Hurricane Katrina threatens New Orleans. Struggling to survive in the Superdome, he realizes what is important and what people need to get through the storms of life.

 

Author Information

 

Paul Volponi is a teacher, a writer, and a journalist who lives in New York City. Between the years of 1992 and 1998, he was a teacher to incarcerated adolescents on Riker’s Island, New York City’s main jail facility. There, he taught teens how to read and write. During another six year period of time, Volponi taught teens in drug day-treatment centers. His work with teens influenced much of his writing, and his particular experience working on Riker’s Island inspired his first young adult novel, Black and White, which won the 2006 IRA Young Adult Book Award and an ALA Best Book Young Adult. Volponi holds a BA in English from Baruch and an MA in American Literature from the City College of New York.

 

Paul Volponi is available for contact through his website. He also enjoys visiting schools and libraries, and he offers to chat with students in classrooms via a video or speakerphone conference.

 

For more information or to contact Paul Volponi, please visit his website:

http://www.paulvolponibooks.com/index.htm

 

Genre

Young adult

Historical Fiction

Survival

Curriculum Ties

Hurricanes, weather, flooding, jazz music

Book Talking Ideas

What do you remember about Hurricane Katrina? How did it affect people’s lives?

Reading Level/ Interest Age

Appropriate for ages 14 and up

Challenge Issues

Language, racism

Challenge Defense

If it were challenged, I would consult ALA's Strategies and Tips for Dealing with Challenges to Library  Materials.

I would also cite these reviews:

Booklist 05/01/08

School Library Journal 08/01/08

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 05/01/08

Voice of Youth Advocates (V.O.Y.A.) 06/01/08

Horn Book 10/01/08

Wilson's Junior High School 01/09/10

Kirkus Review 05/01/08

Wilson's Senior High School 06/01/10

Why did I include this title?

This is the first historical fiction novel I have seen about Hurricane Katrina. The story is incredibly moving and often frightening. It sheds light on something I only saw from the safety of my couch watching television and while I knew it was bad in the Superdome, this novel shows me how horrible it really was. Hopefully, once people read this book, they will think twice about how they treat people during difficult times like natural disasters as well as on a daily basis.

The Truth or Something: A Novel by Jeanne Willis

Willis, J. (2002). The truth or something: a novel. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-7079-8

Plot Summary

World War II is over, but scrappy, nine-year-old Mick is fighting his own fight in working-class England. His mother is taking them to live by the sea with Harry, who Mick is made to believe is his father come back from the war. Mick frequently has nightmares, which often result in his wetting himself. Through a series of events as Mick grows up, he is forced to live alone, with friends, or with different relatives including Nan, his maternal grandmother. He begins to learn the unsettling truths about his family and the little sister he remembers and whom he once believed his mother sold to the “rag-and-bone man.” Then Mick goes to live with his biological father who is kind at first but then does the unspeakable to Mick. Mick’s bloody revenge on his father forces him to run away from home, which is where the novel actually begins with this gripping first line: “I don’t know if I’ve killed my dad or not.”

Critical Evaluation

This novel, which is based on true events, takes place in working class post-war England. It is depressing and gray, and the bleakness of the land and times creates a melancholy mood, which is mirrored in the mood of the adult characters. In the beginning, Mick seems to be a carefree boy as shown through the child-like first person narration. However, as he grows older and is more aware of circumstances, the narration’s tone changes accordingly, even with humor, to represent his adolescent maturity and understanding. Characterization and setting are further enhanced through the dialect: “I realize my feet are cold but my arse is steaming. Wet myself again” (12). Readers unused to British dialect will quickly become acquainted with words like bloke and wellingtons. Readers will be able to connect with Mick’s changing from a young boy to an adolescent and trying to make a world for himself despite an insecure family, constant change and moving, and damaging events. Mick is determined to not be beaten in life, no matter what. The inconclusive ending is a dose of reality to readers; not everything in life is neatly tied up at the end.

Reader’s Annotation

 

Mick does not know where he fits in in the world. When tragic events happen to him, he is determined to make his place in the world.

 

Author Information

 

Jeanne Willis is most known for her award winning children’s books in the UK. Born in St. Albans, Hertz, United Kingdom, on Bonfire Night in 1959 (that’s November 5^th for those of us on this side of the pond), Willis always had an active imagination. In fact, her teachers and mother were so worried about her that her mother took her to see a doctor. Her creativity helped her with a career in advertising, which ended with her short stay in a psychiatric ward due to stress. It was a very stressful time in the 1980s. The Truth or Something is based on a friend’s triumphant childhood despite his growing up in a very troubled family.

Jeanne Willis currently lives in London, England, with her husband, son, and daughter. She is happy to give speeches, author talks, and workshops in schools, libraries, and bookstores.

For more information about Jeanne Willis, please visit her website. She has an entertaining biography made up of a picture collage:

http://jeannewillis.com/index.html

Genre

Young Adult

Historical Fiction

Coming of Age

Curriculum Ties

1940’s Post WWII Great Britain

Book Talking Ideas

How do you define family? How does a person’s environment affect him? How did WWII affect England?

Reading Level/ Interest Age

Appropriate for ages 15 and up.

Challenge Issues

Sexual Abuse

Challenge Defense

In defense of a challenge, I would cite these reviews as well as ALA's Strategies and Tips for Dealing with Challenges to Library Materials.

Booklist 06/01/02

Publishers Weekly starred 05/20/02

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 06/01/02

Why did I include this title?

This coming of age story grabbed my attention when I first saw the cover (again, judging a book by its cover?). The little boy looks so downtrodden, yet still hopeful. The time period also grabbed my attention. So much of what I have read during this time period has to do with the Holocaust and survival, but this story was about a different kind of survival. So many children are sexually abused, and this story presented it in a very real way. You can’t just get over it. I also appreciated that it has a phone number and website for a helpline for children offering free, confidential counseling service for any child with any problems at any time of the day: www.childhelpusa.org

The Compound by S.A. Bodeen

Bodeen, S.A. (2008). The compound. New York: Feiwel & Friends.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-57860-2

Plot Summary

Fifteen-year-old Eli and his family have been living underground for six years in a sprawling, luxurious shelter built by his brilliant billionaire father, Rex Yanakis, to keep them safe. Rex, Eli, his mother, and his two sisters are the lone survivors of a nuclear war, or so they believe. Rex had the foresight to build the compound years earlier, and it is able to keep his family alive for fifteen years; that is how long they must wait for it to be safe to emerge. Unfortunately, it seems his grandmother and twin brother, Eddy, didn’t make it to safety. Their lives are routine and dull, and after six years of this carefully planned existence, Eli begins to make discoveries that cause doubt and make Eli wonder and suspect his father’s sanity. Furthermore, Eli learns that his twin still lives. Questioning the safety of the compound and his father’s bizarre experiments, and with the help of who he hopes is Eddy, Eli tries to save his family from Rex and the compound.

Critical Evaluation

Before the novel begins, before even the Prologue, we read perhaps the most quoted stanza of all of T.S. Eliot’s poetry, the final stanza of “The Hollow Men:”

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Without analyzing “The Hollow Men,” and assuming these lines allude to war and the H-bomb, the mood is set to dismal, cheerless, and unhopeful. They are underground, after all. In fact, while Eli, the narrator whose point of view becomes ours (Eli, Eliot?...just thinking…) says “T.S. Eliot was wrong. My world ended with a bang the minute we entered the Compound and that silver door closed behind us,” we continue reading expecting the eventual whimper. And it does not take long. The stage is set for a character obsessed with nuclear war, Rex, and the experiment his compound houses.

The allusions throughout the novel create a very real world. Eli and Eddy were born on July 16, which is the anniversary of the first successful nuclear bomb test in New Mexico, 1945. Rex has made sure his wife has enough Tully’s coffee to last fifteen years. Eli chooses a DVD, The Matrix, to watch from his father’s extensive catalogue. As Eli drinks his powdered milk, he imagines, “it is an icy gallon jug of Land O’ Lakes 2 percent” (92). Details such as these help create believable characters and situations and enable us to connect with them. Furthermore, the extensive descriptions of the compound itself emerge us within this world, just as Eli and his family are. The plot is full of twists and surprises as we, through Eli’s eyes and narration, learn more about the compound, Rex, and what exactly he is doing there.

Rex’s experiment is a mad scientist attempt to prove his point: “People will do anything to survive” (89). This theme becomes even more apparent by Eli’s actions. His escape is a way to survive. Readers might ask these questions: what things in life make a person truly happy, what does it mean to survive, and how far are you willing to go to survive?

 

Reader’s Annotation

 

Eli and his family have been living in a luxurious underground compound for six years and have nine more to go before it is safe enough to breathe air above ground again; their father has made sure they have everything they want. When Eli begins to question his father’s motives, he begins to want the only thing his father is determined not to give him: escape.

 

Author Information

 

Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen (S.A. Bodeen), born in 1965, was raised on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and even though she always enjoyed writing, it was not until her children were born that she decided to take up writing as a career. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin at River Falls, she joined the Peace Corps and moved to Tanzania as a volunteer. Her experience in Africa was the inspiration for her first book, Elizabeti’s School, a picture book.

 

After her time as a Peace Corps volunteer, she became a teacher and has taught junior and senior high school. She has lived in seven states and on a remote Pacific island. Bodeen enjoys spending time with teachers and students when she visits schools for speaking engagements. She currently lives in Oregon, and in her biographies, she states she is a big fan of cheese. Oregon is a great place for cheese.

 

S.A. Bodeen has won many awards for her children’s books, Elizabeti’s Doll (1998), Mama Elizabeti (2000), Elizabeti’s School (2002), and Babu’s Song (2003).

 

Her website can be found here:

http://www.rockforadoll.com/index.html

 

S.A. Bodeen keeps a blog:

http://latteya.livejournal.com/

 

For more information and lists of awards, please visit:

http://www.answers.com/topic/stephanie-stuve-bodeen

 

Genre

Young Adult Fiction

Science fiction

Post-apocalyptic

Suspense; psychological thriller

Survival

Father-son conflict

Curriculum Ties

Significance of "The Hollow Men" poem

Book Talking Ideas

Nuclear war, bomb shelters, World War II, scientific experimentation

Reading Level/ Interest Age

Appropriate for ages 14 and up. The protagonist is 15.

Challenge Issues

N/A

Why did I include this title?

At about the same time that I did the Hunger Games project for LIBR 265 (If you liked The Hunger Games, then you’ll love these books…) an eighth grade student in my 7^th period had this book on her desk. I recognized its cover as one I was looking for to be part of my Hunger Games project, and I couldn’t find it in any of the libraries. And there it was on her desk! I asked her if I could borrow it and she happily handed it to me, saying it was a really good book. She was right. Thank you, Emily!