Module 15 - Go Ask Alice

Module 15 - Go Ask Alice

Summary

Alice, a pseudonymous 15 year old girl, is struggling with puberty and sexuality, a new school after a family move, and finding romance with a boy she likes.  She starts taking the wrong path when she does drugs at a party.  She begins experimenting with drugs and sex, and loses her virginity to the wrong boy while high.  when she is sober, she is gripped with regret and shame over what her family and Roger, her crush, would think if they knew.  Her family begins to notice changes in her as well, as she is not associating with former friends but with new, less savory ones.  Despite her repeated vows to kick the drugs, she continues to use drugs and to sell them.  She and her new friend Chris run away to California, where they get jobs and meet new people.  They are invited to party with the new people and soon realize that they are being abused while high.  They move away, but their new apartment is raided and they are caught with drugs.  She continues traveling all over, visiting various drug hot spots, meeting other addicts, and resorting to prostitution to obtain drugs.  She meets a priest who helps runaways, and he tries to reunite her with her worried family.  She goes back home and vows again to quit the drugs.  This is more difficult than she expects, as the other kids at school try to draw her back into bad habits.  They even lace her food with LSD, which lands her in a psychiatric hospital.  After she gets out of the hospital, she begins to make better friends and build a new life.  She ends the diary on a positive note, but then a note is written in that she was found dead of an overdose three weeks after the diary ends.  It is not clear if she died of suicide or by accident.

My impressions

While I doubt that the speaker or writer really is a 15 year old girl, this book showed believable consequences for drug use.  It wasn't necessarily an enjoyable read though.  It is something of an emotional roller coaster.  I felt bad for Alice and I kept wishing for her to be a better and stronger person.  I was happy toward the end when it looked like she was going to be able to kick her bad habit, but then she ends up dead.  I can see where this would be a good read for a young person struggling to fit in or thinking about drugs, but I didn't think it was fun to read.

Reviews

Because of the age on this one, there were no reviews from academic sources like Booklist or Kirkus.  Librarian blogs on the School Library Journal website felt that it was "lame," "crappy", and outdated, but noted that readers still check it out (Leila, 2010, Bird, 2010, & Norwood, 2010).  School Library Journal blogger Elizabeth Bird even opines that "Go Ask Alice is just awful" (Bird, 2010).  

Use in a library

I think an interesting way to use this one in a library would be to have readers compare this book to contemporary books of the same genre, such as Ellen Hopkins' books.  It would be interesting to get them to discuss why this one does or does not work, and to look at the way modern books handle similar topics. I think this one would also be a good way to lead in to a discussion about readers' rights and the Library Bill of Rights.  The more people know about their rights, the more they can work to protect them.  It is also a good way to start a conversation on respecting things you don't agree with.  With politics and the media as polarized as they are right now, it would be great to instill lessons of intellectual tolerance now rather than try to teach it retroactively later.

References

Anonymous. (1971). Go ask Alice.  New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

Bird, E. (2010).  Fusenews: And that's not even counting the kids named Renesmee.  Retrieved from http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/afuse8production/2010/05/13/fusenews-and-thats-not-even-counting-the-kids-named-renesmee/.


Leila. (2010). Go Ask Alice challenged in New York.  Retrieved from http://bookshelvesofdoom.blogs.com/bookshelves_of_doom/2010/05/go-ask-alice-challenged-in-new-york.html.

Norwood, S. (2010). Susan writes about getting black boys to read.  Retrieved from http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/practicallyparadise/2010/10/31/susan-writes-about-getting-black-boys-to-read/.

Module 14 - The Monsterologist

Module 14 - The Monsterologist

Summary

This is a poetry collection written by a monsterologist, one who studies monsters. He has collected letters and interviews from different scary creatures like Dracula, Bluebeard, Grendel, trolls, ogres, witches, etc.  It also includes some silly, not-so-scary monsters like the Verbivore that eats verbs from books, and the sock eating monster from the laundry.  It portrays each monster's piece in verse, and uses various action elements like flaps to keep the audience interested.

My impressions

This book is wonderful.  If we are judging by its cover, it is just a beautiful book.  The cover is a heavy red embossed leather.  The end pages are vintage-looking stamps, and each interior page has amazing style and illustrations.  The poems for each of the monsters are delightfully funny and a re a great way to introduce young readers to verse forms in an entertaining way.  It avoided being too scary by leaving things to the imagination.  One example was Bluebeard's ad.  This entry is short and the reader would have to know the Bluebeard story already to understand it, so it is age-appropriate for even younger children. 

Reviews

Reviewers had mixed feelings about this one.  Booklist's Ian Chipman found "the quality of the poems is wildly inconsistent, sometimes even from line to line" but generally liked the book's "bursts of devilish humor and winking creepiness" as well as its "well-designed pages" (Chipman, 2009). Horn Book's Beth Meister noted the "varied mixed-media illustrations accompany the entertaining tongue-in-cheek snapshots of popular monsters" (Meister, 2010). 

Use in a library

Since this book is so fun, it could be a great way to get young readers writing and reading poetry, while removing the homework connotation that poetry often has.  It is intended to be "a memoir in rhyme."  I think it would to fun to have readers follow suit and make their own memoirs in verse.  They could write about their own lives, or they could study something and create a volume to be extend the "Ology" line.  Students could have a great time writing and sharing their own works, while learning to manipulate poetic forms. 

References

Chipman, I. (2009). The monsterologist: A memoir in rhyme. Booklist 106(2): p. 6. Retrieved from Literature Resource Center.

Katz, B. (2009).  The monsterologist: a memoir in rhyme.  New York: Sterling Pub. Co.

Meister, B. L. (2010). Katz, Bobbi: The monsterologist: A memoir in rhyme. The Horn Book Guide,  21(1): p. 166. Retrieved from Literature Resource Center.