Summer Book Clubs

Part the First. Or Part the Only. We'll see how strong my blogging muscle is this summer and how many thoughts I want to record about the books I am reading / have read for my two (!) summer book clubs.

I'll include the lists for these book clubs at the end; the overlap between them is due entirely to my involvement in the curation of both lists. As always, my goal is to read everything.

Let's begin with Hanna Alkaf's The Weight of Our Sky, because it's the book I just finished. Unsurprisingly, I was unfamiliar with the riots of May 13, 1969 and the tensions between the Malay and Chinese people in Malaysia. This is not a topic that was covered in any of my history classes. This is true of many of the books we've read over the last few years, and what I really want to talk about is how you sell historical fiction to kids (or adults, for that matter) when it's about history that is wholly unfamiliar to them. This book does a great job of giving you the right amount of information - it isn't didactic, but I never felt lost - so I think kids could follow and would get into the story if they started it, but how do you clear that first and highest hurdle?

Another thing we have to talk about is the trigger warning that opens the book. It is an intense book, and an intense portrait of mental illness. I was reminded particularly of reading John Green's Turtles All the Way Down - not my favorite of his books, but the obsessive and intrusive thought spirals there and in Weight are suffocating in a way that gives you a peek at what it would be like to live with that constantly. And if you're someone who struggles with intrusive thoughts anyway, it's nice to have a heads up about what you're walking into. But I'm curious to know what others think about trigger warnings. Turtles doesn't have one, this book does - how does that shape the experience of reading?

Finally, of course, the mental illness itself. Melati (which means "jasmine," according to Vincent) struggles with OCD, triggered by the death of her father and centered around her fear of losing her mother and trying to prevent that through obsessive rituals. I trust that Alkaf is providing a period- and place-appropriate picture of OCD - that it would be viewed as a sort of demonic possession and that spiritual healers would be consulted and preferred to actual doctors, for fear of institutionalization. It seems incredibly important to understand this history, given the stigmatization that still surrounds mental health care, despite the normalization (in parts of the US, at least) of therapy and medication like anti-depressants.

In the interest of keeping this post a reasonable length, I'll close out here with the lists (I'll bold the ones I've finished so far) and return another time (probably) with some smaller blurbs about those already-finished titles.

Moorhead Secondary Summer Book Camp

• Merci Suarez Changes Gears by Meg Medina
• New Kid by Jerry Craft
• Nikki on the Line by Barbara Carroll Roberts
• The Size of the Truth by Andrew Smith
• The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge by M.T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin
• Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier
• It's Trevor Noah: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
• Internment by Samira Ahmed
• (Don't) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Conversation about Mental Health
• The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler by John Hendrix
• Rayne and Delilah's Midnite Matinee by Jeff Zentner
• The Unwanted: Stories of Syrian Refugees by Don Brown
• Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
• I Am Still Alive by Kate Alice Marshall
• Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson
• The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf
• We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
• Opposite of Always by Justin A. Reynolds
• On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden
• Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc by David Elliott
• The Past and Other Things that Should Stay Buried by Shaun David Hutchinson

Hopkins Royal Readers

• Internment by Samira Ahmed
• Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
• New Kid by Jerry Craft
• Speak: The Graphic Novel by Laurie Halse Anderson
• What the Night Sings by Vesper Stamper
• It's Trevor Noah: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
• Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany Jackson
• A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi
• With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
• Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
• Odd One Out by Nic Stone
• Opposite of Always by Justin A. Reynolds
• Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
• Ink and Ashes by Valynne E. Maetani
• Rebel Seoul by Axie Oh
• The House You Pass on the Way by Jacqueline Woodson
• #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women
• Just Mercy: A True Story of the Fight for Justice by Bryan Stevenson
• You're Welcome, Universe by Whitney Gardner
• The Other Boy by M.G. Hennessey