New Abe Lincoln Award Nominees for 2011

Lincoln Award 2011 (royal background)

View more presentations from Naomi Mellendorf.

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.

Worthwhile Nonfiction Read for Students

Linchpin is Seth Godin's new book. A review on amazon describes it this way: ""Everyone’s an artist now."

"By Seth’s definition, an artist is not just some person who messes around with paint and brushes, an artist is somebody who does (and I LOVE this term) 'emotional work'.”

"Work that you put your heart and soul into. Work that matters. Work that you gladly sacrifice all other alternatives for. As a working artist and cartoonist myself, I know exactly what he means. It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it.

The only people who have a hope of becoming linchpins in any organization, who have any hope of changing anything for the better in real terms, are those who have the capacity to do “emotional work” at a high level—to be true artists at whatever they set their minds on doing. The guys who just plod around the office corridors, just turning up for their paycheck.... Well, those guys don’t have a prayer, poor things. The world is just too interesting and competitive now.

And Seth then challenges us, the readers, to become linchpins ourselves. To make the leap. To become artists. To do emotional work, whatever the sacrifice may be. It’s our choice, and it’s our burden."
Listen to and/ or read an interview with Seth Godin.

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

For the time being, Mudbound is my new favorite book. Actually, it's in a tie with The Help by Kathryn Stockett.
The Help has a spirit of realism that engages the reader to think, to question, to understand, and to wonder. This realism threads the reader into the story quickly and easily, as if you are sitting in the living rooms or kitchen tables of these individuals who could be neighbors, friends, or family members. I soon forgot I was reading a piece of fiction; it read more like chapter from one's life; a primary source, of sorts - a piece of historical and cultural sentiment unearthed by accident.

Mudbound intertwines a collective history and culture with individuality - a narrative of expectations, experience, and perspective. Each character is deeply indebted to one or another, yet wanting to gain freedom from that which they are beholden. A history lesson taught not through facts and figures, but through words, emotions, and actions.

The age-old saying of "actions speak louder than words" resonates within this story of individual needs versus family duty, race and class, and personal identity. Laura, Jamie, Henry, Ronsel, Hap, and Florence are all individuals or personalities one could meet today. The voices are loud, yet controlled; their actions controlled, yet meaningful, and their silence says more than any words.

Moments of laughter, reflection, and learning exist in the mud, the racism, the patriotism, and the culture of the land which owns the people. Dare I say that it even made me cry.

Ms. Brennan