Building Strong Writers

Building Strong Writers in Middle School by authors Deb and Jim Delisle is a self-examination of the adolescent. It contains twenty-four lesson plans that support core standards. In the introduction the writers say, "Self-examination is an important part of growing up, and it is the heart of this book." This book strongly urges the student to express themselves. 

For example, lesson ten - It Gives Me... ask the students what gives them hope, joy, pride and last pause in their lives. Some students responded deeply saying it gives me pause to think about the universe and my place in it. Others said it gives me pause when I lose my homework. One of the hope ones really touched me, the student said it gives me hope when my mom says "see you later." 

A second example is lesson eight: A Pyramid of Personal Qualities. Students here had to examine their self and translate that to what they want to later become. The authors say in their notes: "This activity is not meant to focus on any specific goal or goals of students, but rather on their goals in general - the person they want to become.

A third example is lesson twenty-two, I Got the English Class Blues. Hooking the students with a blues song remade by Beyonce' the web is set. Students then paired up to look up music like John Lee Hooker, Jelly Roll, and Robert Johnson and figure out what the songs mean. The next day students are reading poetry from Langston Hughes like The Weary Blues. Afterwards students are to write their own blues poem serious or whimsical. They are giving titles they can choose from like The Intolerance Blues, or The No Allowance this Week Blues. One of the student examples I really liked was Best Friend Blues starts out "My Best Friend has replaced me with someone I know." Last, I liked the extended lesson for this that invited kids to record and add music to their poem.

Basically all of the twenty-four lessons in this book invite students to self-examine, some less, and some more. I tried to include the ones that really probed at the heart of what this book was about - self-examination with core standards. 

Building Strong Writers in Middle School is loaded with creative, self-examining lessons to get the student to write better, grander, and more precisely. One of my favorite lessons, lesson eleven happened to be lesson eleven's extension. First lesson eleven invited students to tell their story of someone who was only in their life for a short time but impacted them greatly. This lesson provides a great example of a young boy named Roger who gets a big brother named Jim for about six months. Jim gives Roger the encouragement he needs at a time he really needs it. This lesson is a lot of writing, so the extension exercise pulls only parts of the student essays that are written well and post them under a topic titled: Yes, Middle School Students Write Well. 

Some of these pulled-out sentences were beautifully, and thoughtfully written, and together made a huge impact.

These were some of them:

• I never told anyone the following story, except God in my good-night prayers.

• The turn, the evil turn i had been anticipating, had arrived.

And last, my favorite:

• I will never return to my old, gray, lethargic lifestyle because I have gained so much by living a life filled with color.

First, that last one is so not J. Alfred Prufrock, and second, a middle school student knowing the word lethargic, and using it correctly. And last, the beautiful contrast in a perfect parallel of adjectives. This is amazing! This book made me want to listen to the words and voices of students. Reading student examples was my favorite part of reading this book. 

Another student example that amazed me wasn't because it was fabulously well-written, but because of the distinct beat of a heart-felt response. It was from lesson thirteen: Help, Hope, Hurray. This student was one of hope where he wrote to someone with Asperger's.

"Dear Nick,

We'd like to thank you very much for speaking to our class last Wednesday. For that 30-minute period, you brought us into your life and taught us about Asperger's Syndrome in a way no textbook or teacher could ever do. You brought upon us a new wave of understanding, and we thank you."

In short, there were other great student examples, but these were some of my favorites.

4 Stars for The Prettiest One by James Hankins

Summary:

When Caitlin Sommers finds herself alone in a deserted parking lot with blood on her clothes and no memory of the past few months, it seems like one of the nightmares that have tormented her for years…but it’s all too real. Desperate to learn the truth about where she’s been and what has happened to her but terrified of what she may find, Caitlin embarks on a search for answers. Her journey takes her from the safe suburban world she knows to a seedy town she’s never heard of, where a terrible truth from her past lies hidden—a truth she can’t quite remember yet can’t completely forget.

Review:

Note: Spoiler Alert, hidden plot material is hinted upon.

The Prettiest One is a gracious gift given to me FREE, by James Hankins for an honest review. Honestly, I’m a huge fan of Hankins. His writing is smooth, editing is well-done, and maybe the most important factor is that he doesn’t try and impress the reader with crude language, unnecessary sex, and brutal violence. Out of the books I’ve read by him, Shady Cross is still my favorite. In it an ex-con named Stokes finds a lot of money and has to decide whether to keep it, or let a young girl die. The book’s psychology showed an inner good in humanity, a direct contrast to A Simple Plan by Scott Smith. Smith probes at the darkness in us with a lot of unexpected, exciting twists leading the good man down a black hole inside his own soul. I very much liked that book.

But, at my core I’m an optimist and leaving the good in humanity is another reason why I like Hankins. Caitlin, his main character in his new novel, The Prettiest One has to struggle with the idea she may have taken a life. Note the premise: Caitlin doesn’t remember, but what she does remember is who she is inside and that person doesn’t want to be a killer. This was the main reason I liked Caitlin. I also liked her strength, despite the horrible ordeal she went through as a young girl, then as a woman. She never fell apart and she kept looking for answers, even if they challenged everything she’d thought herself to be.

Still, in looking, she often made foolish choices, choices that put her and the men that loved her at risk. If she could have remembered even a speck of her past, perhaps she wouldn’t have made them.

Helping Caitlin find her memory was a boyfriend (Bix) and husband (Josh). The soap opera dilemma between these two and their love for Caitlin was the reason I didn’t give this book a five star rating. Their incessant bickering became large tea scenes that dragged the plot. Donald Mass talks about tea scenes in his book Writing the Breakout Novel. Tea scenes scream Low Tension Alert.

But even with the Low Tension Alert noted, Hankins pulled off another terrific novel that I highly recommend. He did his homework on memory loss and weaved that into a fine plot that had no loose ends. There were some things I would have liked to know more about, but none of these affected a well done ending. For example, I would have liked to seen Caitlin meet at least one of the girls from her childhood, and I hoped desperately to see the missing one - alive. I was hoping the perspective of the detective, Charlotte Hunnsaker would add insight to this, otherwise Hunnsaker didn’t really add anything useful for me, maybe if she’d had her own interesting inner conflict driving her to find Caitlin’s answers, but she didn’t.

Even though Hunnsaker’s character didn’t add to the plot, the bad guys in this novel well made up for it. The Bookerman’s were truly Boogy Men as in Caitlin’s nightmares from her childhood. Again, I would highly recommend this novel, if only to take down the bad guys and shed some light into the heart of darkness.

New FREE contest for writers of thriller and mystery

 New FREE contest for writers of thriller / mystery / 
suspense http://tinyurl.com/nk2pk9e Judged by agent @michrichter1, via @chucksambuchino

4 Stars for Swimming Home Ruth Mancini

Summary:

Lizzie’s life hasn’t exactly gone to plan. Eighteen years ago, she made the difficult decision to leave London for Paris to escape her best friend’s fiancé, the man who’d attacked her and turned her world upside down. Secure in the belief that she and her daughter, Helena, are now safe from harm, Lizzie contemplates her future. But is the nightmare really over?

When the captivating Sky Donoghue comes along, pulling Helena into dangerous waters, Lizzie’s strength and judgment are put to the test. Just how far should she go to save her daughter? How far will she go to save hers?

Review:

Usually I pick a book because the concept is unusual, or for shallow reasoning like the cover speaks to me, and the title is clever. Swimming Home by Ruth Mancini did none of this. I chose Mancini’s book because I’m a protective mother to my own daughter. In the story, Lizzie and her daughter, Helena, which by the way is my daughter’s name, have lived a happy life together with Lizzie as a single mom struggling to give Helena the things she needs and desires. Lizzie, is a strong character that is easily admired from the very beginning. The story spends a lot of time in Lizzie’s head which is often repetitive and drawn-out. This is the only reason I gave it a four star rating. Everything else worked.

            The plot twists and turns felt like ‘Winter’ in Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and ending in his ‘Spring’. The foreshadowing in the beginning of this story paralleled an icy rain outside a house constructed in glass, that feeling is how I feel when I listen to Winter by Vivaldi. It traps me, keeping me inside my own fear and unable to act. This was Lizzie, so afraid the horror that happened to her would also happen to her Helena. Mancini did a fantastic job of filling the reader with this ominous tone. It’s why I kept reading, rooting for Lizzie.

As I said, she was a great character, well-developed with other characters that highlighted her through love and friendship in a real way I found enriching. Lizzie’s friends were flawed like herself, accepting and understanding her through their own narrow flawed view points. Lizzie’s romantic interest(s) felt the same way, but geared itself towards larger trepidation and guilt. All of these, plot, characters, lastly the intense literary device of foreshadowing worked splendidly for me. I read it in two days. I highly recommend this book, a thrilling romance.

 I 

The novel, not the movie, A Simple Plan is an excellent debut novel by Scott Smith. I read his later book, The Ruins, and it paled in comparison to this one. A Simple Plan is ambitious in its plot making inspired by what I can only compare to Shakespeare's Macbeth. And with that being said, I can easily see how some folks might see this book suffering from a certain moral didacticism which is shallow and unwieldy. Scott Smith is not Shakespeare and I don't think he pretends to be. His writing is aggressively active using simple sentences, compound complex ones, and never fails to use ones with too much punctuation. 

He doesn't try the pretenses of writing you see in books. For example, Gone Girl is a book I've never been able to finish. It has the unnecessary details that scream look at me I'm writing and I'm trying to be great. Just write, and tell your story. It's one of the things I appreciate from Smith. Again, he's not Shakespeare, nor does he pretend to be. 

 If I hadn't read his book, The Ruins before this I wouldn't understand his honesty. He creates characters operate from a moral didacticism just like Macbeth, except Smith doesn't drag this out, probably because today's audience wouldn't read it. Further, these are characters we can relate to from the time we live in and the situation is one we can all see: What would we do if we found four million in cash? verses What would you do to be king? How many people would you kill to keep your money? 

The protagonist, in this story starts out with a simple plan: keep the money and then everything spirals out of control from there, his choices and those of the two men in the agreement with him do as well. Smith pounds you with plot twist keeping you guessing until the surprising end. He does a great job of developing his characters to the extend to gain my sympathy, and then makes me hate them. This is a skill to twist a reader's feelings to such an extreme. One particular character found his way into my heart, because he was the only one who dreamed small, loved and trusted despite the betrayal. I'll reveal one of the plot twists should I say more, so I'll stop here. Please read this book, it was published years ago, but it still wakes up the bad in us all makes us question our own moral dilemmas and definitely makes me trade in my coffee for veggie juice.

5 Stars for Wayward Pines 

The Wayward Pines Trilogy Book 1

Blake Crouch

Summary:

Secret service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a clear mission: locate and recover two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase. The medical staff seems friendly enough, but something feels…off. As the days pass, Ethan’s investigation into the disappearance of his colleagues turns up more questions than answers. Why can’t he get any phone calls through to his wife and son in the outside world? Why doesn’t anyone believe he is who he says he is? And what is the purpose of the electrified fences surrounding the town? Are they meant to keep the residents in? Or something else out? Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan further from the world he thought he knew, from the man he thought he was, until he must face a horrifying fact—he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.

Read Books 2 and 3 in the Trilogy, WAYWARD and THE LAST TOWN,

The international runaway bestseller is now a Major Television Event from executive producer M. Night Shyamalan, starring Matt Dillon and premiering on FOX May 14th.

Review:

Pines is a mystery E.M. Forster would appreciate. It begins with Ethan Burke’s existence in a strange town where he questions his sanity, because no one seems to know him. It ends by not just addressing Ethan, but civilization as we think we know it. The strangeness dragging the reader from beginning to end is much like the Twin Peaks series, and Pines will become a series beginning May fourteenth. After reading the first book in the Wayward Pines series; the TV series will not be disappointing.

First, Ethan Burke, the main character,  is well-drawn often pulling from his bloody tortured past making him stronger to fight against those trying to make him feel insane. He’s also a man who loves his wife and son, but is terribly flawed in being there for them. This plays an ace at the end when he makes his choice about Wayward Pines. The second plus to this book is the ability of the author to the one key question I had: What is Wayward Pines? Where is Wayward Pines? Is it really a town, or a place in Ethan Burke’s mind? If it is a town, are the people living in it human or something else?

The question about Wayward Pines was answered, but that answer followed more questions like the brutality and violence shown from the townspeople, especially when they were chosen for the better good. For me this was a good question to lead into the second book leading me back to thinking Wayward Pines is an evil place where only bad things grow. Obviously, Ethan Burke was not getting the entire truth at the end of book one.

As far as the questions surrounding the agents missing and the lack of concern about this didn’t bother me, because I think the secret service could have been overwhelmed with the greater human race, and I’ll stop there, else I’ll give too much of the plot away. My other theory is that the agents missing were assumed dead.

If you’re inclined to a psychological mystery to psych you out - Pines is your book. Don’t miss it!

Pines can be found at Amazon.com.

5 Stars for The Ruins by Scott Smith

This may have been one of the best suspense horror books I've ever read, and this is after reading folks like Laymon, Ketchum, Keene, Hill, and King. Horror. Good horror should be suspenseful! The suspense never stops in this book. It's on every page. The character development while not as enriching as say, Dolores Claiborne, was still a big thumbs up, because these characters fit this book like a glove. Yes, they are outlines of people we know, or may be, this is the point, so that some part of us is them, or at least knows them on a very personal level.

Smith even makes fun of this fact. At one point in the book the characters make fun of each other stating that soon they would be out of their predicament and onward to the red carpet of movie making, one of them being the boy-scout, one being the slut, one being the good girl, the jock, the outcast, and then the poor guy who always seems to die first.

Their reactions to their nightmare situation are more than believable, and each character reacts exactly as they have been drawn by Smith. This author knows what he's doing to pull you in, and keep you there, and while I love a good King book, I always have to wait a while for this kind of suspense. You don't have to wait with Scott Smith. I only wish he had more out there to read.