Lives, Past and Future
Judy Freeman, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 4/7/2009
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At some point in their young lives most children look at their families and try to figure out their place in them. They ask, “Are these really my parents?” They feel like they don’t quite belong, as if they are aliens in their own lives. Exploring the elasticity of time and how our actions affect our lives and the world around us, two provocative novels take us into the past and the future and introduce kids who are not who they think they are.
As Jessica Sternhagen's own mother notes in Walter Sorrells’s Erratum (Dutton, 2008, Gr 4-8), “There's something different about Jessica.” In Alsberg, Minnesota, outspoken nonconformist Jessica stands out, so tall and thin, with white-blond hair, a lack of interest in competitive sports, but a passion for reading. Walking down Main Street, the seventh grader spies a new bookstore, A. Queeg & Son, that sells rare and previously owned books, and gets the strongest feeling, as if her head will explode if she doesn't go in. The creepy proprietor, Mr. Queeg, hands her a book he claims she's ordered over the Internet.
Bound in worn, cracked leather, Her Lif is 621 pages long and tells Jessica’s story in great detail. “Oh, God,” she thinks as she plods through the pages, “This is my life? It’s such dull slop.” She flips to the last page. “Sometimes you had to see how a story worked out to know whether it was worth reading all the way through.” (That’s a meaty quote to discuss with your students.) There she reads a horrifying description of how Mr. Queeg plunged an Arabian dagger into her heart. "Dead at twelve. Jessica's lif had been an utter and complete waste. THE END." When she looks up, there's Mr. Queeg, holding the knife. "Holy crap," she cries, hits him in the face with the book, and turns to flee. Wow. That's just the first chapter, and it only gets wilder. Librarians take note: much of the action takes place in Alsberg’s enigmatic public library, the largest one in the world. Jessica and her best friend Dale are about to uncover an error, an erratum, that could destroy the universe as we know it, and Her Lif seems to be a vital part of it.
This original and entertaining dystopian novel will get your students thinking about the power of words and language and how every action they take could affect the rest of their lives and maybe even the world. Readers can write the story of their lif, with a final chapter on what their futures might be.
Margaret Peterson Haddix has hooked plenty of readers with her “Shadow Children” series, starting with Among the Hidden (1998). Her latest title, Found (The Missing: Book 1) (2008; both S & S; Gr. 4 Up), is a smart time-travel thriller. First, there’s the mysterious prologue, where Angela DuPre, on her first day on the job at the airport, witnesses a strange plane materialize out of thin air and roll up to the gate. Heading down the jetway to investigate, she hears a whimper. The cockpit is dark and empty, so she turns around. "Thirty-six seats on this plane, and every single one of them was full. Each seat contained a baby."
Chapter One starts off, 13 years later, with two seventh-grade friends, Chip and Jonah, playing basketball. Jonah is adopted, which has never made much difference to him. His sixth-grade sister hands him a letter from the mailbox, addressed to him, that will change all three lives. The single sheet of paper says, simply, “YOU ARE ONE OF THE MISSING.” Is it just a prank from a schoolmate? That night, Chip comes over. He's received one of those letters, too, but, in showing it to his father, has found out something he's never been told. Chip is adopted, too. Then the second letter comes: “BEWARE. THEY'RE COMING BACK TO GET YOU.” And now an FBI agent wants to talk with Jonah.
SPOILER ALERT: These boys are indeed from that mysterious plane, and are, it seems, famous missing children of history, rescued from the past and brought to the future. You'll want to have your students research these figures, who include Virginia Dare, Anastasia Romanov, and Charles Lindbergh III, to find out who they were and how and why they died young.
Unpredictable, fast-moving, and gripping as read-alouds, both books will pair brilliantly as booktalk material with all those other ripping kids-save-the-universe science fiction/fantasies that started with Madeleine L’Engle’s groundbreaking A Wrinkle in Time (Farrar, 1962). Unforgettable recent examples, also stellar read-alouds, read-alones, and book discussion group contenders for this age group include:
The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud (Hyperion, 2003)
City of Dogs by Livi Michael (Putnam, 2007)
The Glitch in Sleep by John Hulme and Michael Wexler (Bloomsbury, 2007)
Journey to the Blue Moon by Rebecca Rupp (Candlewick, 2006)
Larklight by Philip Reeve (Bloomsbury, 2006)
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart (Little, Brown, 2007)
Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy (HarperCollins, 2007)
Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos by R. L. LaFevers (Houghton, 2007)
The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex (Hyperion, 2007)
The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins, 2003)
Judy Freeman (www.JudyReadsBooks.com) is the author of Books Kids Will Sit Still For 3 (Libraries Unlimited, 2006) and Once Upon a Time: Using Storytelling, Creative Drama, and Reader's Theater with Children in Grades PreK-6 (Libraries Unlimited, 2007). Her latest and most exciting project is writing the children’s book reviews and other content for author James Patterson’s Web site for parents, www.ReadKiddoRead.com.
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