Tag: writer's notebook

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Book Snap #127

Title: All My Rage

Author: Sabaa Tahir

Date Read: March 6, 2023

Two snaps.

Snapshot of the book

All My Rage takes us from Lahore, Pakistan (then) to recount the story of Misbah and Toufiq (who are Salahudin’s parents) to (now) in Juniper, California to join the stories of Salahudin and his best-friend, Noor.

Noor is a Pakistani orphan who comes to live with her uncle in America, and she plans to make good on her second chance at life. Noor becomes lovingly entwined in Sal’s family, supported and cared for when she feels like an outsider everywhere else. But life is messy and complicated. Noor unwittingly falls in love with Sal; Sal makes a series of poor decisions to try and keep his family afloat; Noor tries to navigate attending college when her uncle forbids it; Sal tries to hide his father’s alcoholism and grieves for his mother– and they face it all while both intensely hating and tenderly loving each other.

It is a fantastic YA novel told in three points of view– tackling issues of Islamophobia, alcoholism, and domestic violence; while also exploring the pressures of highschool, the heartbreak of family, the beauty of friendship and the gift of forgiveness and compassion. Heartbreaking and tender, well worth the read.

Trigger warnings: drug and alcohol addiction, physical abuse, Islamophobia, sexual assault, tense exchange with law enforcement and death.

Snapshot of the book in my classroom

There are some craft study moves worth noticing in our Writer’s Notebook. Tahir makes some writerly craft choices worth exploring: using repetition, italics, and single word sentences that follow the rule of three. The first repetition is the italicized “Bang. Bang. Bang” taken from her reference to a song which is punctuated with the actual sound of gunshots. (Many young readers will likely get this reference.) Her next paragraph employs the rule of three: the names of the three Universities that she has been rejected from in single word sentences, one after another– just like the gunshots. And, followed by yet another magic three: the repetition of the word rejection. Each letter, each rejection, are like gunshots to her hopes.

“The letters come in hard and fast. Like the gunshots in M.I.A’s “Paper Planes.” Bang. Bang. Bang.

Yale. Columbia. Cornell.

Rejected. Rejected. Rejected.”

The book itself is divided into six parts. Each part opens with a stanza from Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art.” Noor selects the poem for her English analysis essay because she liked the first sentence. Or, she amends: “Well. Sort of. Mostly I picked it because it’s short. But it’s also weird. It’s about misplacing stuff, like keys and houses. How the hell do you misplace a house?”

But it is really about accepting loss as inevitable. And so is this novel.

Tahir gives us Noor’s inner thoughts as she reveals the veneer of Noor’s college admission essays, juxtapossing the truth next to what she actually submits.

“A problem I solved. (Truth: heartbreak. What I wrote: a poor English grade.)

A life-altering experience. (Truth: my entire family dying and the smell of their bodies rotting around me. What I wrote: working at Juniper Hospital.)

My biggest life challenge. (Truth: they don’t want to know. What I wrote: bullying in highschool.)” (p.110)

Noor struggles to understand the poem, to get at the heart of it, to make sense of what Bishop is saying. She reworks the paper over time– and her final draft is excellent, because she knows what loss really is.

“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Snapshot of the book in my life

Throughout the novel Noor is plugged into music or at the very least referring to it. Here is (a mostly complete) Noor’s Playlist. It already has some songs I do love, wonder what else I may discover? Check it out here.

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Book Snap #120

Title: What We Both Know

Author: Fawn Parker

Date Read: January 6, 2023

One and half snaps.

Snapshot of the book

Books as gifts are always delightful, providing a sort of innocuous blind-date excitement. Took this gem along as a roadtrip companion and I really enjoyed it. I was delighted to discover that Fawn Parker is a Canadian writer who splits her time in homes in both Toronto and my city, Fredericton.

Parker tells the story of Hillary Greene : a thirty-something urbanite who leaves her apartment in Toronto and her job at the university (a job she admits to acquiring through nepotism: they rather wanted her famous father to stay on, but upon his retirement the job dutifully became hers)– to live instead in her childhood home, caring for her father as his dementia requires. Besides boiling eggs to his liking, taking him to the market, or to his childhood home for a peculiar visit; she must also write his memoir. A tell-all he’s promised his publisher but cannot write himself. Hillary must sift through his scrambled notes; revisit her own experiences of her parent’s marriage and divorce; and unravel her sister’s suicide to decode how to tell his story– and whose version of it.

The author begins with the following note to readers: this book includes depections of animal death, child abuse (emotional and sexual), self-harm and suicide.

Snapshot of the book in my classroom

I might offer the first paragraph as a Writer’s Notebook passage study, it is such an odd opening, but the explicit detail about how exacting her father is in the tasks she must complete for him is also part of her character building.

The egg is boiled until firm. Rubbery outside and chalky in the middle, a moment before it might form a dark silvery ring around the yolk. The yolk will be removed, a soft almost-sphere, the white disgarded. The egg is boiled on high heat for ten minutes, removed, placed on a paper towel, cooled. A crack is made against the counter, the shell chipped away into the damp paper towel which is bunched then placed in the trash. (p.1)

The passage not only creates a keen sense of sight imagery around the egg; but also is a type of process-writing: a description of steps to follow that could easily be played with in our writer’s notebook. Steps are described, the writer doesn’t offer a numbered list as we are used to, but instead makes clear in prose the order and precise actions of each step. Even the most mundane task can be written about playfully and with skill.

Snapshot of the book in my life

When Hillary has to take a meeting with her father’s publisher to update on his progress on his memoir (which she is in fact writing, not him), she tells him:

“I only worry I will regret what I write,” I say.

“When a person does something they regret it’s because they don’t know who they are,” he says. (p.163).

As I age, I am getting more sure of who I am, what’s truly important to me, and what I value. It is a wonderful gift. Knowing who you are will hugely improve your life.

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Book Snap #110

Title: A Nearly Normal Family

Author: M. T. Edvardsson

Dtae Read: July 19, 2021

Two snaps.

A great recommendation from my friend and former colleague, Janet Sloan. Eighteeen year-old Stella Sandell is accused of murder, and that changes everything.

The story is divided into three parts: the first told by the father, a pastor, who believes his daughter can only be innocent. The second part reveals the story from her mother’s view, a defense attorney, who believes no one is telling the truth. And finally from the perspective of Stella herself. Each shift in perspective is jarring–just when you think you understand these characters, the way others view them opens up new understandings of their skewed sense of reality. What lies will they tell (or believe?) to just be a normal, ordinary family again? Two snaps. 

I believe this is deeply human. There's no understanding it if you've never experienced a direct and serious threat to yourself and your loved ones. You make irrational decisions and overstep boundaries as you never would otherwise. A person who can no longer flee must fight.
(Edvardsson, A Nearly Normal Family)
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Book Snap #108

Title: The House in the Cerulean Sea

Author: TJ Klune

Date Read: July 8, 2021

Two (loud) snaps.

I loved this book! The quote on the cover reads: “It’s like being wrapped up in a big gay blanket. Simply perfect.”

Reccommended to me by my colleague, Gabrielle Maillet, she said it gave her Schitt’s Creek vibes— and I ran with that! (Love me some Rose Motel feel goodery.) It did not disappoint.

Linus Baker is rule-following case worker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He’s tasked with determining whether six dangerous magical children are likely to bring about the end of the world. Arthur Parnassus is the master of the orphanage. He would do anything to keep the children safe, even if it means the world will burn.

The House in the Cerulean Sea is a beautiful story with fantastical characters (a sort of blobby slug want-to-be-hotel porter; a bearded female gardening gnome; a fairy sprite; a wyvern; a werewolf crossed Pomeranian and the purported son of Satan, nicknamed Lucy.) They live on a beautiful, secluded island where the inhabitants outwardly hate them, make up stories and rumours about them, and hang signs that say: “If you see something, say something.” Arthur arrives determined to do his job and report back on the intricacies of the orphanage, the children and Arthur– but he is taken up by the magic of the island and the love of a family. A saccharine-sweet cotton-candy-novel. Love wins. 

Humanity is so weird. If we're not laughing, we're  crying or running for our lives because monsters are trying to eat us. And they don't even have to be real monsters. They could be the ones we make up in our heads. Don't you think that's weird?
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Book Snap #103

Title: Concrete Rose

Author: Angie Thomas

Date Read: May 2021

Two snaps.

Angie Thomas takes us back seventeen years, to the Garden, where she first introduced us to Maverick Carter, unravelling the back story of Starr Carter’s dad (from Thomas’ previous novel, The Hate U Give) and his struggles with black mandhood: gangs, drugs, and parenthood.

Another clear YA win for exposing the heart of our humanity, examining race and priviledge with honesty, and telling a compelling story readers can invest in. 

“Son, one of the biggest lies ever told is that Black men don’t feel emotions. Guess it’s easier to not see us as human when you think we’re heartless. Fact of the matter is, we feel things. Hurt, pain, sadness, all of it. We got a right to show them feelings as much as anybody else.”(Thomas, Concrete Rose).