Ms. Jackson's Art Students: Book Art in the New Trier Library

What We're Reading...

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks by E. Lockhart a National Book Award Finalist and recently named to the 2010-2011 Abraham Lincoln Book Award List is the story of 15-year-old Frankie Landau-Banks, who attends the elite Alabaster Preparatory Academy on the East Coast. The summer between her freshman and sophomore year, Frankie develops into a beautiful young woman. So much that when she returns to school in the fall, many of her peers don't even recognize her. After earning the attention of Matthew Livingston, an attractive, highly-sought after senior on campus, Frankie begins competing with Matthew's friends for his attention. Frankie takes matters into her own hands when she uncovers secrets and begins anonymously assigning orders to the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds, an exclusive group that Matthew and his friends belong to.

Beautiful Frankie wants nothing more than for others to see beyond her looks at who she really is. This story will resonate with girls trying find their place amongst a sea of others.

To see another side of reality, read True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall by Mark Salzman. Salzman is a writer whose arm is twisted by a volunteer coordinator to whom he just can't say no. Well, he does say no, at first. However, the coordinator persists, and he obliges. He has no idea what will come of facilitiating a writing group for boys/young men at a junvenile hall.
What he agrees to do impacts his life, the lives of the young men, and the employees at the facility. What comes from this writing group permeates throughout the facility in the most positive way.

This story is not just about his life-changing experience. The young boys and young men who participate in the writing group Salzman facilitates influence their own lives and each others. Their writing is bruttal, scary, sad, and true. It's a reality that is too common for so many young people in the United States. Their stories are means of survival, wrong people, places, and times, of adults who never were allowed a childhood of adolescence.

The story of Salzman and the writings of these "students" may make you laugh, maybe cry, or, if nothing else, make you think about the influence of race, class, socio-economic levels, equity and equality, and the lost potential of these innocent souls.