Tyrant's Daughter by J. C. Carleson

J. C. Carleson, a former CIA agent and author of newly released The Tyrant’s Daughter, describes this book as "the story of a girl grappling with questions about guilt, choice, blame, and identity under circumstances both extraordinary and mundane." I love the voice of that girl, Laila, who moves with her royal family to the United States after a coup. She refers to her younger brother as the "King of Nowhere" and her family as "people who Used to Be."  In trying to adjust to life in America and in a new school she says: "I want an interpreter. Not for language. For life. Someone who can help me understand … lunch lines and …posters in the hallway telling students to wear their pajamas to school for spirit day."

Laila is smarter than her years and yet also naïve at moments… what a great combination to which teens can readily relate. She struggles with choices about friends and boyfriends and her relationship with her mother. At the same time, Laila has to adjust to giving up a privileged lifestyle which included motorcades (in which "the position of Father’s car changed every time so that no one ever knew which car to attack') and instead, she must try to settle into a world where nothing seems familiar, including news reports and comments which describe her father from a totally different perspective.  

I have been talking with teachers (especially from our Senior English "Good and Evil" class) because there is SO much to talk about in this book …

• the ways it mirrors world events (book image and this week's (March 8) Economist cover shown here);
• about assimilation and acceptance in American teenage culture;
• and about our reaction OR indifference to both far away international and very close high school happenings.

Laila’s effort to understand the various communities to which she belongs and to define her identity is a journey worth sharing.

A Well-Tempered Heart by Jan-Philipp Sendker

I was deeply moved when I read the beautiful love story contained in the international best-seller by Jan-Philipp Sendker called The Art of Hearing Heartbeats which I have recommended as a possible title for our staff book club. In A Well-Tempered Heart, Sendker picks up the story after a hiatus of 10 years. Once again, he combines two stories in one, having Julia Win fly to Burma in an attempt to deal with troubled spirits, both her own and that of a woman’s voice she keeps hearing.  Together with her half-brother, U Ba, Julia travels and learns about the life of Nu Nu and two brothers (Ko Gyi and Thar Thar) and their struggles for survival in Burma.

I enjoy Sendker’s writing and his almost mystical comments, like

• "Our life’s work is to solve ourselves."
• "Why do we so often put off the things that matter most to us?"
• "Not all truths are explicable, and not all explicable things are true."
• "How thin is the wall between us and madness?"
• Or, acknowledging Buddha, "No sorrow can befall those who never try to possess people and things as their own." 
• "People who love are dangerous.  They know no fear. They obey other laws."
• "It is our own flaws that we are least ready to forgive in others."

A Well-Tempered Heart is a book to read in a reflective mode, one to savor, ignoring time, soothing one's own spirit, and opening up to the messages for "the world is full of signs. One needed only to know how to see and interpret them." 

Illegal by Jose Angel N.

University of Illinois recently published Illegalby Jose Angel N. and I am glad to see that it is available to K-12 schools through Follett’s Titlewave and other vendors.  However, I think this book is so important that the publisher and author should work to create an abridged version for high school students (much like Three Cups of Tea prior to the controversy it faced). 

When I teach about Civic Engagement, students are asked to write to their representatives about an issue of concern and many choose to write in support of the Dream Act and “dreamers,” undocumented youth living in the United States. High school students have a high interest in this topic and this book is even more relevant since the author lives and works locally, in Chicago.  Jose Angel N. tells a compelling story as someone who came here illegally, completed a bachelor’s and master’s degree, is working as a translator, but cannot accept a promotion because it involves travel on an airplane.  In fact, he has chosen to not even sign his full name to this book. His academic studies centered on philosophy and his work focuses on linguistics so he shares much of his own musings, and while that promotes empathy from the reader, it will be difficult content for high school students.  They will likely prefer the fictional, more adventure-some aspects of Jaramillo’s La Linnea, for example.  

As a country, we could be doing more to encourage immigration and to provide green cards to students in our universities, whether they are here on a student visa or entered the country illegally as minors. Creating an abridged version of this book would help raise awareness further.

The Martian by Andy Weir

I had been intrigued enough by early reviews of this book to pick up a copy at the public library and suggest that my husband read it. When he realized that The Wall Street Journal’s review described The Martin by Andy Weir as “the best pure sci-fi novel in years,” he agreed to give it a try. I knew the book was exceptional when he was reading it for several hours straight in the middle of the night. Since then, three generations of our family have read the book and are eagerly waiting for the movie (recently optioned by Twentieth Century Fox).

Don’t believe us? There are close to 1,500 5-star reviews on amazon and here’s what the pros say: Booklist: Riveting; Library Journal: a snarky and wise-cracking nerdy hero; Kirkus Reviews: Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery. [New Trier Librarians, remind you of anyone?]

I’d like to share more, but I do not want to give away any of the problems (and there are plenty!) with surviving on Mars (low temperature: -225^o F; average distance from Earth: 140 million miles).  You will be surprised and impressed with many of the solutions and with the main character’s efforts to survive.  Whether or not Gravity wins best picture this year, give yourself a treat: grab The Martian by Andy Weir and travel to Mars with stranded astronaut Mark Watney.

The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea Nesbit

Told in first person plural, TaraShea Nesbit’s The Wives of Los Alamos is an unusual book about an unusual time in American history, the development of the atomic bomb during WWII. This book needs an unusual reader, too.  Basically, it should be someone who is willing to embrace the novel’s collective voice – and that does take some getting used to since it describes the individual experiences as if they were all shared.  Booklist’s starred review says that what this novel achieves “with no real plot and no real main character is astounding.” Here is an excerpt:

“Some of our husbands left first. We watched them disappear into train terminals, through the doors of unmarked black sedans, down airport runways, and we were left behind, overwhelmed. We called our friends from the phone booth and they met us at the train station or at our house with a loaf of bread, or a chicken casserole and a flask….We wanted to tell them everything we knew and everything we worried about – how scared we were and how excited.  We wanted to ask their advice about what to bring to the Southwest – dresses, shoes, lotions – but we could not.”

The author, a professor of creative writing and literature, said that one of her goals in writing this book was to encourage her readers to learn more about the research efforts for the atomic bomb.  She succeeded with me!  I explored several articles and books, including the award winning Bomb by Steve Sheinkin. And while it helped to have some perspective on the scientific work, I was totally intrigued by TaraShea Nesbit’s insights into the difficulties faced by these young, generally well-educated wives who were sent to the desert and kept from fully sharing in their husbands’ work. Ever since I read a preview copy of The Wives of Los Alamos, I have been recommending the book to faculty –someone even ordered it for her own mother-in-law who had been at Oak Ridge, Tennessee during the 1940s.

I have also asked students to consider The Wives of Los Alamos for Junior Theme.  As Nesbit says,“It would be great if readers notice parallels between these women and that time and the present day” and that is exactly one of our essential questions.

I have mentioned elsewhere suggestions for students that focus on war and the 20^th century.  The images of the isolated “town” in The Wives of Los Alamos had me recalling When the Emperor was Divine, by Julie Otsuka.  In addition, students could easily choose from (or pair with) recent publications like War Brides by Helen Bryan (2012) and A Star for Mrs. Blake by April Smith (2014).  These last two books, while written in a more conventional voice, also tell the story of groups of women reacting to war-time issues (surviving on the WWII home front in Britain and WWI Gold Star mothers travelling back to France in the 1930s, respectively). Overall, I would highly recommend Nesbit’s book, both for book groups (its amazon page has some discussion questions) and literature circles. It is sure to spark conversation about moral issues, including privacy and secrecy, about women’s roles, about forming community at wartime, and about its own literary style.