Blog Reset

Now that we're used to writing blogs, we're going to add in some new elements and shift gears a little. First of all, instead of reflecting on your goal, update your progress in each blog by telling what you've finished, what you've started, and/or how far you've progressed in your book.  Comment briefly on the genre/difficulty of the books you're reading. Also discuss how many pages you've read in the previous week(s), and account for how much time you've managed to fit in for outside of class reading. Like this:

In the weeks since I last blogged, I finished The Girl's Guide to Homelessness, a nonfiction memoir about...you guessed it...a homeless girl, and Reality Boy, a young adult realistic fiction book by A.S. King, an author whose books I immediately started purchasing after hearing her speak at a conference for English teachers. (She was hardcore honest, which I enjoyed as a change from usual rosy pictures of how to make education PERRRRRFECT with iPads and games and glitter.) Those books totaled 704 pages over the course of 3 weeks, but admittedly, both were quick reads.   This week, I also finished 200 pages of The Martian, a book I received courtesy of our very own Hebron nurse, Cissy Khan.  I love book sharers; they are my favorite people. Next to cookie sharers.  As for time I spent outside of class reading, I read approximately 20 minutes per day - 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening, but I read more on weekends, at least an hour, and I was motivated to finish The Girl's Guide to Homelessness since it was the final book in my set of new nonfiction. In total, that's about 160 minutes per week outside of class spent reading. (And that doesn't include grading essays; I deserve a superhero cape!)

Alright, so there's the first part of every blog - update your progress. For second part, I'd still like you to comment on your book with multiple cited text references, but I want to pull in more of the Internet world by asking you to link your book to something related online: a review, a related article, a song, a movie clip, another blog, background info about author, etc.  I've included a few samples below:

Sample 1: Background into about author
After finishing The Girl's Guide to Homelessness, I wanted to know what happened to the author.  As a survivor of childhood abuse and a young woman enduring homelessness, Karp leaves a reader feeling concerned about what direction her life will take next. Her book ends with the collapse of her relationship with another homeless blogger, and though her epilogue mentions a job that she accepts, she is still homeless and looking toward her future.  While her first conclusion (pre-epilogue) struck me as trite with statements such as "People in general are not so bad after all," and "As they say, what a long, strange ride it's been...," statements that made her seem like someone trying to profit from her own misery by writing the stereotypical self-help book, her epilogue revealed an evolution to her writing style (330).  When she reflects that "Americans have now collectively watched the fabled American Dream crumble around our ears," she expands her book beyond her own suffering and shares the larger concerns we should all have about the state of our economy, a theme that has resonated with plenty of politically-minded citizens looking to Bernie or Trump for answers (333). Fortunately, Karp is not a nihilist suggesting the downfall of our comfortable lives, but she focuses her energies on "advocating for causes...and making some kind of difference in the world," another sentiment that I recognize as a cliche, but it is one that I can embrace, and I wanted to see if she had succeeded in her advocacy efforts.  Sadly, when I searched for her blog, I discovered that her last post was in 2012, so I dug a little deeper, but again, I hit a dead end with 2012 when I found this article reporting that she did get an apartment and claiming that she co-founded World Homeless Day, which led me down ANOTHER path, ending in this website.

While she is not mentioned on the World Homeless Day website, the event continues, so I wonder if she is no longer involved or if she simply doesn't take personal credit for the event.  Either way, as a girl who endured many difficult twists of fate, she viewed herself as someone whose difficult path led her to "[find her] passion and a calling to help give others a voice" (334). Given that World Homeless Day still happens annually, it seems she succeeded in providing that voice, and hopefully, she has also found a true home, not just the building or the place, but as she put it, a place to "feel a sense of harmony and belonging"(334).

Sample 2: Related article
Reality Boy rattled me.  Young adult books often have that effect.  They remind me that the kids I'm teaching have much more going on than what happens in my classroom, and some of their "baggage" (why do we call it that?) is completely counter-productive to what they need to succeed in school.  I know that concept isn't novel, but what IS novel is this novel's representation of how even the "toughest" of kids may be so damaged inside that the last thing they need is what we often give - more discipline, more scolding, more belittling. Gerald, the "Reality Boy" himself is known as "Crapper," a name that won't let him escape his image as an angry five-year-old on a reality nanny show that featured him "crapping" on things (the floor, furniture, shoes) to get the attention of his distracted mother.  His mother calls in the help of the TV "nanny," an actress with a fake British accent, to figure out her troubled son, and as Gerald shares his memories of those days, we discover that his mother's concern should be more focused on his even angrier older sister.  His mom, however, focuses on him, which gradually fuels his anger, and by the time the book takes place, Gerald is a teen in special education classes, attending anger management sessions, and trying to escape his "Crapper" identity.  He also escapes to a magical land where Snow White talks to him and he has endless peach ice cream, so the play on "Reality" as whatever we perceive it to be has layers that extend to Gerald's fantasy world, the false visions created by television, and even his parents' artificial perception of their household. The adults in Gerald's lives do little to better his life; his anger management coach, for example, tells him that "Should is a dirty word. No one should do anything for you. You deserve nothing more than what you earn," a statement that Gerald knows is utterly untrue, but for him to demand what he deserves only heightens OTHER people's idea that he is angry (152). That, my friends, is a cruel Catch 22.  Fortunately, Gerald builds his esteem and begins to seek people who will acknowledge his needs and his pain, and he begins to take some drastic action to physically and emotionally detach from his stagnant life, declaring, "I demand not to do this alone" (262). And that brings me back to my concern.  How many kids do we leave high and dry in schools, left to handle things on their own?  I know, we have a counseling staff, and as teachers, we try to reach out, but if those kids are unhappy or angry or detached, how many times do we try? And how might our efforts be counter-productive, like the anger management guy's stupid advice? I followed up with a little research into "treating" anger issues and found this website, which is particularly focused on schools and features this picture:

Am I the only person who finds this picture just mildly offensive? The girl looks like some little prissy kid having a tantrum, not like someone who needs our sympathy and concern.  OK, to be fair, maybe that's the idea - to show that even kids with lovely upbringings and nice clothes can have anger issues.  But then there's the detached wording in the article, which suggests things like a "behavior modification mechanism." Again, I'll concede that this language represents academic, psychological theories, which are tested and validated and intended to sound formal and scientific, but the term also seems to reduce humans to robots that can be "modified" with the proper tool, or "mechanism." The rest of the article offers reasonable solutions, but like all things related to human behavior, its ultimate conclusion is: each one of us is different, our reasons for our behavior are different, and therefore, treatments vary to address those differences. Yep, people are complicated, but their complications make for some interesting books.

Sample 3: Movie connection
I'm only about halfway through The Martian, but it's a quick read, chock full of dialogue and short chapters, which lets me read in small snippets more frequently, so I expect to finish by the beginning of next week.  I like the book, but not quite as much as I had expected - maybe because I saw the movie first, I have a hard time feeling any suspense, and ultimately, the book reads so much like the movie that getting to watch Matt Damon play the part offers as much (maybe more) entertainment than reading the same dialogue on the page. Matt Damon captured the main character's persona perfectly, a driven, highly intelligent scientist with a glib, occasionally sardonic sense of humor.  After being accidentally stranded on Mars, Mark Watney relies as much on his sense of humor as he does on his training to survive the lonely and arduous work of life on Mars.  Early on, when NASA first discovers that Watney is actually alive, they wonder what horrible thoughts must be haunting him as he ponders his likely death; flip to Watney's perspective, and he's thinking, "How come Aquaman can control whales?" They're mammals! Makes no sense" (64). If Watney had been dwelling on dark thoughts of impending doom, no doubt he might have simply given up. But by pondering the vital issue of Aquaman's super powers, he maintains some sanity, certainly a crucial quality when calculating how to cultivate potatoes in Martian soil. Later, when he establishes contact with NASA and tries to use a laptop to transcribe a message, he discovers that the liquid (the L in an LCD) display freezes, and he considers posting a review: "Brought product to surface of Mars. It stopped working. 0/10" (127). Best. Review. Ever. This guy is not one to dwell on his hardships.  He rolls along, cracking a joke, which lets him focus on the next solution.  He's so cool.  The guy who wrote the book began working as a programmer for a national laboratory when he was fifteen, so I suppose he has some personal stake in proving that nerd guys can be funny... because humor wins the ladies.  Watney is a survivor because he keeps his humor and FINDS a way no matter what happens, which reminds me of another classic survival story, the stranded-on-an-island story as told in Cast Away with Tom Hanks as the most-likely-to-die guy who keeps it together with humor.  Couldn't find a clip of him talking to Wilson, his volleyball, but here he is making fire and staying alive:

If you haven't seen the movie, I am allowed to recommend it since it's only PG-13, and you're all over 13.  Fair warning - creepy, painful stuff involving teeth happens too, but who doesn't love Tom Hanks?  He probably could have played Mark Watney well, but he's too old, so good for Matt Damon...and for the ladies who like Matt Damon.