Luna

Peters, J. A. (2004). Luna. New York: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN-10: 0-316-01127-4

Why read this book

You’ve probably heard the word “transgender.” Do you know what it means? Can you imagine what life is like in our mostly heterosexual world if you are a transgender student in high school? Luna will expand your horizons.

Plot summary

Liam is a senior in high school, and he’s doing very well by many traditional benchmarks. He gets good grades and he drives a nice sports car that he bought with money he earns writing computer software and selling computer hardware to other students at school. But he’s torn between this world and his internal life, where he has always known he is female rather than male. He sees himself as a girl – whom he names Luna – who is trapped in a boy’s body, and it’s getting harder and harder to deal with the contradictions.

One of the bright spots in Liam’s life is his sister Regan, who is two years younger. They have bedrooms and a rec room in the basement of their parents’ suburban home, and that’s the only place where Liam can be Luna, dressing as she chooses and talking about the things that really matter to her. Liam’s best friend since they were kids, other than Regan, is Alyson, and that presents a problem. Regan thinks Alyson wants Liam to become her boyfriend, making it all the harder for Luna to be honest with Alyson.

But Luna has no choice. She has to come out to Alyson, and to her parents, and to the world, if she is to find happiness. How much pain will this cost, both to Luna and to Regan, whose life revolves around supporting Liam and Luna?

Critical evaluation

By creating this intimate portrait of transgender reality, Julie Anne Peters does a great service to transgender people as well as those of us whose understanding and acceptance is essential for their well being in this world. Positioning Liam as a successful young man diminishes the push factors in his need to become Luna (he’s not running away from anything) and focuses his transformation on the pull factor, the desire to achieve Luna’s potential as a person rather than to bury it. Telling the story through Regan’s first-person narration adds an important dimension, the role of allies in the journey to actualization. Regan is important not only for the support she gives Liam and Luna, but also because her acceptance of her role and her awareness of the price she pays for it give non-transgender readers a lot to think about. We see clearly that Luna’s liberation turns out to be liberating for Regan as well.

About the author

Julie Anne Peters was born in New York in 1952 and grew up in Colorado. She still lives there, now with her partner Sheri, whom she met in college, “and we’ve been together ever since” (Peters, n.d.). She worked as a teacher and then as a computer software person before turning to writing in the late 1980s. She has published 15 books for tweens and young adults, many of them with LGBTQ themes, including her most recent novel, Rage: A Love Story. To be published in January 2010 is By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead, which explores teen suicide. Peters maintains a Web site and a blog.

Genre: LGBTQ, Life is hard

Curriculum ties

Because Liam’s identity issues are so dramatic, the novel would be good material for any lesson or unit that helps students explore their identities. Obviously it would be most useful to transgender youth, but many others could find a provocative model in Liam’s struggle. Regan’s identity as an ally also provides a lot of food for thought.

Book-talking ideas

• Chapter 1 is short, conveys the nature of the story quickly, and ends dramatically. Reading it during a book talk should be effective.

• Reading the early scene of Liam and Alyson playing computer games in Liam and Regan’s basement rec room (p. 34-5) would show potential readers that the book is not about someone exotic but about someone they could know.

Reading level/interest age

Although I think the novel was written with older teens in mind, many middle school students would find the reading level accessible. Three middle school libraries in the San Francisco Unified School District own copies of Luna, along with seven high schools.

Challenge issues

Although the book does not include sexual scenes, many people mistakenly associate transgender issues with taboo sex topics. I imagine Luna would provoke challenges in many school and even public libraries.

Responses

• Remind the challenger of the policy (in the case of the San Francisco Public Library) to present “all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”

• Remind the challenger how important it is for all readers to find materials in the library that tell their own stories.

• Remind the challenger that Luna is about gender, not about sex. Assure the reader that it is unlikely any young person would choose a life as difficult as being transgender simply because he or she read a book about someone else being transgender.

• Inform the reader that Luna was a 2004 National Book Award Finalist, a high honor in the world of young adult literature, and won many other awards.

Why I chose to read this book

The book was required reading for my library science course, but I hope that I would have found it even if it hadn’t been.

References

Peters, J. A. (n.d.) Young Adult and Children’s Author Julie Anne Peters. Retrieved November 27, 2009, from http://julieannepeters.com/

Annie on My Mind

Garden, N. (1982). Annie on My Mind. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-30366-5

Why read this book

How do two young people sustain their love when many of their classmates and the adults around them oppose it? Liza and Annie find out in this romance set in New York City.

Plot summary

One day in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Liza, a 17-year-old senior at a small private school in Brooklyn, is drawn to a gallery where she hears someone singing quietly. The singer turns out to be Annie, a senior at a public high school on the north side of Manhattan. Liza and Annie quickly become the best of friends. Through the fall and winter they hang out together in museums, cafes, and their families’ apartments whenever their school schedules allow. Before long they know that their love is more than friendship. Annie has already realized that she is a lesbian, but Liza hasn’t really thought about it before. By spring their exploration of their relationship brings them into confrontation with unaccepting classmates and adults, threatening Liza’s ability to finish high school and testing the strength of the love between Liza and Annie.

Critical evaluation

The dramatic arc of the novel is nicely structured around three spirals of tension. First there is the suspense over whether Liza and Annie will become lovers, then the suspense over what consequences they might face, and then the suspense over whether their relationship can endure the challenges. Liza’s first-person narration is written from the perspective of her first year in college, a year after she and Annie met, and we know from the beginning that Liza has not responded to Annie’s letters for some months. Will this be a story of a love succumbing to external opposition or a story of love prevailing?

Garden’s careful dramatization of the deepening love between Liza and Annie, which was on the cutting edge in the early 1980s when the book was published, holds up well now, nearly 30 years later, when popular culture and the public struggles of the LGBTQ community and their allies have moved the public further along on these issues. Garden does not deny the oppression within which Liza and Annie must define their relationship, but she centralizes their resistance to the hostility around them, and that, hopefully, is the lesson that young readers are most likely to take from the story. Garden also positions this same-sex drama partially within a more universal context. Heterosexual readers are likely to identify with many aspects of the romance, such as the pleasure that Liza takes in describing the townhouse that becomes a physical haven for her and Annie in the spring of their senior year.

About the author

Nancy Garden was born in 1938 in Boston and grew up in New England and New York. She worked in the theater and in publishing before becoming a full-time writer. She published her first books in 1971, and has since written some three dozen, mostly fiction for children and young adults but also non-fiction and one adult novel (Garden, 2009).

Garden decided to write a book like Annie on My Mind as a teenager after reading Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, a lesbian novel from the 1920s:

That made me vow, at around 16, to write a book for my people that ended happily. The result of that vow, after a few false starts, was Annie, which was published in 1982 when there was still very little written or published for kids about homosexuality, and even less that had a gay or lesbian main character and a happy ending (Interview with Nancy Garden, n.d.).

Nancy Garden currently lives with her wife Sandy Scott in Massachusetts and Maine (Interview with Nancy Garden, n.d.). She maintains a web site at www.nancygarden.com.

Genre: LGBTQ, Romance

Curriculum ties

Annie on My Mind provides great opportunities for students to explore three ways that oppression can function in our lives: internalized (Liza’s difficulty in accepting herself as lesbian), intrapersonal (the hostility that classmates express to Liza), and institutional (the school’s persecution of Liza and the two lesbian teachers who are unwittingly swept into the drama). The novel also provides rich materials for discussing the role of truth in resisting oppression. At several key points Liza lies as she tries to fend off the hostility closing in on her; do her lies help or hurt her in the short run and the long run?

Book-talking ideas

• Reading the lovely scene where Liza first encounters Annie singing in a gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is likely to grab the attention of potential readers who are romantics and/or cosmopolitans.

• Although reading very much of the scene where Liza and Annie are busted in their teachers’ townhouse would reveal too much too early, perhaps some paragraphs could be read to capture the drama of that scene without revealing the outcome.

Reading level/interest age

Except for the end of the novel, when tension builds around the secret time in the townhouse, readers of Annie on My Mind must be inclined to enjoy a slowly developing romance, taking their pleasures in the New York City setting and the narrator’s thoughtful reflections on her experience rather than dramatic plot developments. Within those parameters, I think both middle school and high school students could access and appreciate most aspects of the story. Seven middle school libraries and 11 high school libraries in the San Francisco Unified School District own copies of Annie on My Mind.

Challenge issues

The lesbian theme is a lightning rod for some, of course, and Annie on My Mind was the center of a well-publicized censorship struggle in Kansas in the early 1990s (Nancy Garden, 2007). But the lack of explicit sex in the novel (as well as the lack of violence and profanity) might make it less of a target than some more recent works in this genre.

Responses

• Remind the challenger of the policy (in the case of the San Francisco Public Library) to present “all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”

• Remind the challenger of how important it is for everyone, and especially young people, to have access to stories that help them understand their own identity and the identity of the people around them.

Why I chose to read this book

Having read several stories about gay teenage boys, I wanted to read about lesbian experiences; several articles that survey this genre list Annie on My Mind as an early landmark.

References

Garden, N. (2009) Nancy Garden: Author, teacher, speaker. Retrieved November 27, 2009, from http://www.nancygarden.com/

Interview with Nancy Garden. (n.d.). TeensReadToo.com. Retrieved November 27, 2009, from http://www.teensreadtoo.com/InterviewGarden.html

Nancy Garden. (2007, October 2). authors4teens. Retrieved November 27, 2009, from http://www.authors4teens.com/introduction.jsp?authorid=ngarden

Name Me Nobody

Yamanaka, L. (1999). Name me nobody. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 078680452-1

Why read this book

The Hawaiian teenagers in this book will show you what life is like in a part of the country that most of us don’t know much about. Although the issues around friendship and love, including girls falling in love with girls, occur in all communities, the way that Yvonne and Emi-lou’s families and friends support them and complicate matters has a distinctly Hawaiian spirit.

Plot summary

Emi-lou Kaya is 14 years old and in 9th grade in a school in rural Hawaii. Her friends call her Lou or Louie, but she doesn’t have many. Her best friend is Yvonne, whom Louie calls Von. They are the same age and they’ve been raised together like sisters. They’re really tight. Louie’s a little fat, and she gets teased a lot. Von always stands up for her. Von knows Louie’s tough on the inside, and Louie helps Von through her tough times, too.

Von’s a good athlete, and when she joins the local girls’ softball team, Louie joins, too. Louie’s an awful ball player, but she’s there for Von. She knows Von has a chance for an athletic scholarship, and she knows Von needs her close by to make sure Von makes the most of her opportunities. Things get complicated when Von takes an interest in another ballplayer, Babes. Louie is worried Babes is going to displace her in Von’s affections, especially as Louie gradually realizes that Von and Babes have feelings for each other that are different from what Louie and Von have ever had. Meanwhile, Louie’s got a crush on Kyle, Babes’ cousin, and another guy named Spencer is kind of interested in Louie. They and all their friends and families are hanging out together all the time in their small community, and things are complicated as these high school students try to figure out how to negotiate love and friendship.

Critical evaluation

Three factors set Name Me Nobody apart within the young-adult novel crowd. First, it deals with lesbian relationships and how they are both similar and different from non-sexual relationships among teenage girls. Louie knows that she’s isn’t a lesbian – she’s very attracted to Kyle, despite the fact that he treats her badly – but her friendship with Von is as intense as any lover’s could be. Plus she has to deal with everyone assuming that she might be a lesbian because she and Von are so close. This creates confusion on her part that drives much of the narrative of the novel.

Second, all the dialogue in Name Me Nobody is traditional Hawaiian pidgin (Hawaiian Creole American). The authentic dialogue adds character to the narrative, helping non-pidgin readers understand the unique setting of the story and helping pidgin speakers see themselves in the story. However, the non-dialogue narrative is standard American English, which presents a bit of a problem. Since the narration is in the first-person, from Louie’s perspective, we are presented with a situation where her dialogue is in pidgin while her background narration is in another language. Since the background narration presents Louie’s unspoken thoughts, it is awkward to adjust to the concept that she thinks in standard English while she speak in pidgin.

The third factor that distinguishes Name Me Nobody is the role that community plays in the story. Unlike many young-adult novels, where the parents, teachers, and other adults are distant figures or absent altogether, Louie’s story plays out in a traditional Hawaiian community where the generations interact extensively and where everyone knows everyone else’s past and present. Louie’s grandmother has raised her, since her own mother was only 16 when Louie was born and has moved to the mainland. Von’s father was Louie’s grandfather’s best friend (Louie’s grandfather has died some years before the story), and the two families are together constantly, sharing meals, watching movies, playing cards, etc. Spencer’s grandmother coaches the girl’s softball team, Babe and Kyle are cousins, and everyone’s family is everyone else’s auntie, uncle, or cousin. This complex web of relationships complicates the narrative, as can be seen in this passage:

They all think I don’t know what’s going on. I know Von wanted to distract Viva when she gave her all of those extra duties outside of the bus. I know Viva wants to make me jealous by asking Kyle to sit by her. I know why I’m sitting in front of Von and Babes, too. That must’ve been part of the deal. So I can’t see. So I can’t interfere. So I’m not the third wheel. And does Sterling really want to sit with me or is that just a part of this game? (p. 113)

As with Matt de la Peña’s Mexican WhiteBoy, the community becomes a force in the narrative, a dynamic that I am beginning to see characterizes the best of ethnic young-adult literature.

About the author

Lois-Ann Yamanaka was born in Hawaii in 1961 into a working class family that had emigrated from Japan several generations earlier. Hawaiian Creole English (Hawaiian pidgin) was her first language. When she decided to become a writer after teaching school in Hawaii for several years, she began using pidgin in her poetry and fiction, which generated unexpected opposition to her work. The Hawaiian school system banned her first publication, a collection of short stories titled Saturday Night at the Palaha Theatre (1993), although the book won several awards. Persevering despite the controversy, Yamanaka produced a trilogy of coming of age novels set in working-class Japanese-Hawaiian families (Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers, 1996; Blue’s Hanging, 1997; and Heads by Harry, 1999). As with Name Me Nobody, Yamanaka integrates gay and lesbian characters into the families and communities she writes about in these adult novels (Lois-Ann Yamanaka biography, n.d.). Since publishing Name Me Nobody in 1999, Yamanaka has written two more adult novels (Father of the Four Passages, 2001, and Behold the Many, 2006), and a children’s book (The Heart’s Language, 2005) (Lois-Ann Yamanaka, 2009).

Genre: Asian American, LGBTQ

Curriculum ties

If the novel were to be used in a literature class, I think one of the most interesting points of discussion would be whether students think Louie was right or wrong to confide in your grandmother after her return from the volleyball championships in Honolulu. This issue brings into question the concept of a hero or heroine in a novel. Readers are generally presumed to identify with the narrator of a novel; is Louie a flawed heroine, and, if so, is that okay?

Book-talking ideas

• Read Chapter 1 (two pages), where Louie introduces herself by talking about her names. This surfaces her estrangement from her mother, who was 16 when Louie was born.

• Ask students whether they think writers should write in dialects like Black American English, with which they are probably already familiar, and discuss the controversy that Yamanaka encountered when she wrote in Hawaiian pidgin. Briefly explain the history of Hawaiian pidgin and read a passage with interesting pidgin dialog amount the teen characters, such as Chapter 10, where Von talks to Louie about losing weight.

Reading level/interest age

The story is accessible and appropriate for both middle school and high school students (five middle school libraries and five high school libraries in the San Francisco Unified School District own copies of Name Me Nobody), but I am afraid that some will find the use of pidgin for the dialogue difficult to get into.

Challenge issues

There is no sex, violence, or profanity (in English, at least; I can’t tell about the pidgin) in Name me Nobody. Yamanaka’s work has been challenged in Hawaii for her use of pidgin, which some readers feel stereotypes and denigrates the image they would like others to have of Hawaii. The usual crowd might challenge the lesbian themes.

Responses

• Remind the challenger of the policy (in the case of the San Francisco Public Library) to present “all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”

• Cite the author’s defense of her use of pidgin in her writing: “… I came to terms that pidgin was not an ignorant language, that I was speaking a dialect and that my feelings and thoughts were so connected to the language that in order for me to write truthfully, I needed to connect to that voice. But it was hard. Very, very hard” (Takahama, 1996).

Why I chose to read this book

I was reviewing the list of books about lesbians in Herald’s guide to young-adult materials and was glad to find something set in Hawaii, about which I know very little.

References

Lois-Ann Yamanaka. (2009, November 17). Wikipedia. Retrieved November 25, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois-Ann_Yamanaka

Lois-Ann Yamanaka biography. (n.d.). biography.jrank.org. Retrieved November 25, 2009, http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4852/Yamanaka-Lois-Ann.html

Takahama, V. (1996, February 15). Controversial adventures in ‘paradise’: Bully burgers and pidgin. The Orange County Register. Retrieved November 25, 2009, from http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/pschmid1/engl52a/engl52a.1999/yamanaka.html

What a Song Can Do

Armstrong, J. (Ed.) (2004). What a song can do: 12 riffs on the power of music. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-82499-5

Why read this book

Like listening to your favorite music, reading these stories will make you feel hopeful about life.

Summary

This collection features twelve short stories, all with teen-age protagonists, whose themes involve the power of music. The range of settings and times is impressive, from the battlefields of the Civil War (“The Song of Stones River,” by Jennifer Armstrong) to a gypsy camp in Europe during World War II (“The Gypsy’s Violin,” by Gail Giles) to contemporary urban and rural communities. The music that enriches the protagonists’ lives is also diverse, from traditional American Indian music (“A Warrior Song,” by Joseph Bruchac) to classical European music (“The Audition,” by J. Allison James) to Cuban music (“New Town,” by Alexandra Sly). Two of the stories are written in verse (“Ballad of a Prodigy,” by Jude Mandell, and “What a Song Can Do,” by David Levithan). Most of the protagonists are musicians (such as the nine members of a band whose individual reflections form “Variations on a Theme,” by Ken Koertge), but some are not (such as Cora, in “Tangled Notes in Watermelon,” by Dian Curtis Regan, whose ability to see colors and shapes when she listens to music has made it impossible for her to learn to play the piano, even though her grandmother is a piano teacher). Music helps one young man in Los Angeles establish his own identity in the face of his family’s legacy as Holocaust survivors (“Riffs,” by Ann Manheimer) and helps a young Palestinian girl in a long-term refuge camp find beauty in a life surrounded by violence (“Piano Obsession,” by Ibtisam S. Barakat). In the final story, a teenage girl learns to love her piano lessons while the adults around her are tensely following the news of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis (“A Third Kind of Funny,” by Sarah Ellis).

Critical evaluation

All twelve stories are well-crafted and clearly inspired by the authors’ love of music. The collection is probably especially interesting to young adults who play music themselves, but anyone who listens to music (which, as the introduction points out, is all of us) is bound to be engaged by the revelations of the various ways in which music enriches our lives.

About the editor

Jennifer Armstrong was born in 1961. She grew up in New Salem, New York, and currently lives in Saratoga Springs, New York. Since the 1980s she has published dozens of fiction and non-fiction works for readers of all ages under her own name and other names. She ghost-wrote over 50 titles in the Sweet Valley High and Sweet Valley Kids series and wrote five titles in other series using the pseudonym Julia Winfield. Much of her writing under her own name has focused on historical topics, both fiction, such as The Dreams of Mairhe Mehan (1996) and Mary Mehan Awake (1996), about an young Irish immigrant during the Civil War, and non-fiction, such as two books on the 1914 Shackleton expedition to the Arctic, one for young adults and one picture book for younger readers. She maintains a Web site at www.jennifer-armstrong.com.

Genre: Music, Short stories

Curriculum ties

If I were a high school music teacher, I would consider asking students in the band or orchestra to read some of these stories and then write about how music has affected their lives.

Book-talking ideas

• Read “Ballad of a Prodigy” by Jude Mandell. It’s a short story written in verse and the theme of identity is one that teenagers can probably relate to easily.

• Read two or three of the first-person narratives that comprise “Variations on a Theme” by Ron Koertge. They are short but give a feel of what students will find in the collection.

Reading level/interest age

Most middle school and high school students would find the reading level accessible, and the topic of music interests some students of all ages.

Challenge issues

There’s no sex, violence, or profanity in any of the stories. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would challenge any of them, although one involves a same-sex couple.

Responses

• Remind the challenger of the policy (in the case of the San Francisco Public Library) to present “all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”

Why I chose to read this book

My group covered music for the genre reports, and I ran across this collection when I was looking for young adult books about music.

References

Armstrong, J. (n.d.). Jennifer Armstrong, Author and Historyteller. Retrieved November 22, 2009, from http://www.jennifer-armstrong.com

Jennifer Armstrong (1961 – ) biography. (n.d.). biography.jrank.org. Retrieved November 22, 2009, from http://biography.jrank.org/pages/1907/Armstrong-Jennifer-1961.html

Hush, Hush

Fitzpatrick, B. (2009). Hush, Hush. New York: Simon & Schuster BFYF. ISBN 978-1-4169-8941-7

Why read this book

Why is that bad guy so attractive? Should you be in control so you don’t get in trouble or should you follow your feelings to see what you discover? That’s Nora’s dilemma when the cool new but kind of sinister senior takes an interest in her.

Plot summary

Nora Grey is a 16-year-old sophomore who lives in a farmhouse outside a small town near the Maine coast. Her mother has a job that keeps her out of town quite a bit, and her father was murdered a year earlier in robbery, so Nora is pretty independent. She handles her independence well, focusing on her school work, until she gets a new biology partner, a guy name Patch. Patch is new to school, he’s cute, he’s a bit sinister, and from their first encounter he beams his attention straight on Nora in ways that excite her and make her nervous.

Threatening events start complicating Nora’s life shortly after she meets Patch. Nora starts hearing voices as if someone has invaded her mind. She thinks she sees a peeping Tom outside her bedroom window. Someone seems to be following her when she is out about town. She thinks she hits someone while driving home in the fog but then there’s no evidence that it ever happened. On a dark night, her best friend Vee is mugged while she is wearing Nora’s jacket. Is Nora imagining these things? Is there some connection to her father’s murder? Is there some connection to Patch?

Despite the warnings, the more time Nora spends with Patch the more she falls for him. She knows he has secrets – like those two long scars on his back – and she wants to dig them out, even though she knows he’s manipulating her every step of the way.

Critical evaluation

My first foray into the angel genre of young-adult literature was a fun read. As with vampire stories, the sexual tension between danger and desire makes for a page-turner. There’s plenty of action to keep the plot running through the book’s nearly 400 pages, and the characters are as lively as the plot. Nora is a pretty sophisticated 16-year-old, with a lot of spunk, and Patch is convincing as a maybe-kind-of-bad guy who you want to think is good inside.

Hush, Hush engaged me because of the possibility through most of the book that it wasn’t really an angel fantasy but a psychological thriller. Although the prologue, which relates some kind of deal between a fallen angel and a young nobleman in the medieval French countryside, defines the territory clearly from the beginning, the fact that Nora lost her father only a year earlier to a violent assault keeps alive the possibility that she is experiencing some kind of psychological trauma from that event. Is Nora an unreliable first-person narrator who will come to see that her mind has invented the threats she seems to experience? If Fitzpatrick had developed that angle, or at least let the ambivalence of the situation prevail to the end, she might have a piece of literature as well as an entertaining, good-read of a book.

About the author

Becca Fitzpatrick was born in 1979 and currently lives in Colorado. She spent five years writing Hush, Hush, which is her first novel. She is currently working on a sequel, Crescendo, which she plans to publish in fall 2010. She maintains a Web site and a blog.

Genre: Romance, Supernatural powers

Curriculum ties

This is an entertaining read that is appropriate for an independent reading list for middle school and high school students, but it’s not likely to be used in literature or history classes.

Book-talking ideas

• Play the audio presentation of the first chapter of Hush, Hush, available on Fitzpatrick’s Web site.

• Show the Fallen Archangels Web site, which presents a YouTube video of Becca Fitzpatrick talking about how she wrote the book and a print interview with the hot model featured on the hot cover of Hush, Hush.

Reading level/interest age

Most middle school and high school students with an interest in angels would find Hush, Hush to be accessible reading.

Challenge issues

Although sexual tension permeates the novel, there is no explicit sex. The threat of violence hangs in the air throughout, but there isn’t much actual violence and what's there is handled in a PG kind of way. Religious groups who oppose the popular fascination with angels are likely to find this book objectionable.

Responses

• Remind the challenger of the policy (in the case of the San Francisco Public Library) to present “all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”

Why I chose to read this book

One of the groups in our course that reported on young-adult genres featured Hush, Hush, and since I hadn’t read any young-adult suspense or fantasy novels I thought it might be a good place to start.

References

Becca Fitzpatrick. (n.d.). Retrieved November 22, 2009, from http://beccafitzpatrick.com

Hush, Hush cover week. (2009, November 9-13). Fallenarchangel.com. Retrieved November 22, 2009, from http://www.fallenarchangel.com