I've been working on this since I posted, and have come up with the following list- culled from award winners, books approved for other high schools, etc (I've read almost all of these- and they are all fantastic books):
1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
By: Mark Haddon. Publisher: Doubleday, 221 pages, $22.95. Review: Haddon delivers a startling and fresh debut told from the perspective of a 15-year-old autistic savant in England who tries to solve a mystery about the death of a neighborhood dog.
Reviewed by Andrea Hoag
Special to the Star Tribune
Christopher cannot lie. He cannot tell jokes. Metaphors float over his head. The 15-year-old protagonist of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" is an autistic savant whose literal-minded understanding of the world causes him no end of heartbreak and confusion.
The stark originality of a novel with such a narrator is a challenge most writers would shy away from, but not British author Mark Haddon, who gained his unique understanding of the autistic mind by working with such individuals early in his career.
The unusual book opens when Christopher finds Wellington, a beloved neighborhood pet, impaled with a garden fork.
"I had been hugging the dog for 4 minutes when I heard screaming. I looked up and saw Mrs. Shears running toward me from the patio. . . . She was shouting. . . I do not like people shouting at me. It makes me scared that they are going to hit me or touch me and I do not know what is going to happen. . . . I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes and rolled forward till I was hunched up with my forehead pressed on the grass. The grass was wet and cold. It was nice."
Unable to provide satisfactory answers about what he has witnessed, Christopher becomes a suspect. After his father bails him out of jail, Christopher begins writing a Sherlock Holmes-style detective novel to help solve the crime. The question at the heart of this absorbing novel is this: What will happen if Christopher's discoveries are too disturbing for him to handle?
The boy decides to go door-to-door questioning neighbors for clues to the murder.
"I asked if she had seen anything suspicious on Thursday evening which might be a clue. . . . And then I decided to do what is called Trying a Different Tack, and I asked her whether she knew of anyone who might want to make Mrs. Shears sad."
The amateur sleuth has his own set of rules that govern his existence, and he gets an unexpected break in the case because "I saw 5 red cars in a row, which made it a Super Good Day, and I knew that something special was going to happen."
Unexpected discoveries spur Christopher's first solo journey. Unable to filter all the stimuli that bombard him, he nonetheless embarks upon a dangerous cross-country quest with his pet rat in tow. This ill-fated adventure culminates in a harrowing experience in the London underground.
A confrontation with some confusing facts about the world's dangers and the break-up of his parents' marriage tests Christopher's comprehension and makes for a story that is impossible to break away from. Haddon's genius is in how he subtly builds characters and his ability to sustain brilliant scenes the reader connects with instantly. Not only is this one of the best novels of the summer, it is a safe bet that it will be short-listed for the prestigious Booker Prize.
Andrea Hoag is a freelance writer based in Lawrence, Kan..
2. Icy Sparks
By: Gwyn Hyman Rubio
"The influence of Harper Lee and Carson McCullers is evident in Gwyn Hyman Rubio's remarkable debut novel.... A lesson of tolerance and respect is learned by all who meet Icy, and her enchanting spirit will touch even the hardest of hearts."
n Barnes & Noble, Discover Great New Writers
Publisher's Weekly
The diagnosis of Tourette's Syndrome isn't mentioned until the last pages of Rubio's sensitive portrayal of a young girl with the disease. Instead, Rubio lets Icy Sparks tell her own story of growing up during the 1950s in a small Kentucky town where her uncontrollable outbursts make her an object of fright and scorn. "The Saturday after my [10th] birthday, the eye blinking and poppings began.... I could feel little invisible rubber bands fastened to my eyelids, pulled tight through my brain and attached to the back of my head," says Icy, who thinks of herself as the "frog child from Icy Creek." Orphaned and cared for by her loving grandparents, Icy weathers the taunts of a mean schoolteacher and, later, a crush on a boy that ends in disappointment. But she also finds real friendship with the enormously fat Miss Emily, who offers kindness and camaraderie. Rubio captures Icy's feelings of isolation and brings poignancy and drama to Icy's childhood experiences, to her temporary confinement in a mental institution and to her reluctant introduction--thanks to Miss Emily and Icy's grandmother--to the Pentecostal church through which she discovers her singing talent. If Rubio sometimes loses track of Icy's voice, indulges in unconvincing magical realism and takes unearned poetic license with the speech of her Appalachian grandparents ("Your skin was as cold as fresh springwater, slippery and strangely soothing to touch"), her first novel is remarkable for its often funny portrayal of a child's fears, loves and struggles with an affliction she doesn't know isn't her fault.
Library Journal
This enthralling story takes us into the heart and mind of little Icy Sparks, where we learn firsthand what it is like to grow up with a serious disability. Raised in backwoods Kentucky by her maternal grandparents, Matanni and Patanni, Icy would have had a hard enough life even without the onset of Tourette's syndrome at the age of ten. The violent spasms, croaks, and popping eyes earn her the nickname "frog child," and we see how her childhood is marred by the humiliation of the illness. After an extremely bad episode, Icy is committed to a state hospital, where an attempt at diagnosis fails and a period of overmedication renders her senseless. It is not until college that the correct diagnosis is made, and Icy can reach true understanding. Her journey from childhood to adulthood, with all of its obstacles, is inspiring and truly touches the heart. This tale, read by Kate Miller, engenders love and empathy for the disabled, as it illustrates that while outwardly they may appear to be different, inside they are the same as everyone else. Highly recommended for all school and public libraries. Marjorie Lemon, SRCF-Mercer, PA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
wwwshs1.bham.wednet.edu
The National Book Award
3. 1997: Charles Frazier Cold Mountain
Amazon.com
The hero of Charles Frazier's beautifully written and deeply-imagined first novel is Inman, a disillusioned Confederate soldier who has failed to die as expected after being seriously wounded in battle during the last days of the Civil War. Rather than waiting to be redeployed to the front, the soul-sick Inman deserts, and embarks on a dangerous and lonely odyssey through the devastated South, heading home to North Carolina, and seeking only to be reunited with his beloved, Ada, who has herself been struggling to maintain the family farm she inherited. Cold Mountain is an unforgettable addition to the literature of one of the most important and transformational periods in American history.
4. 1996: Andrea Barrett Ship Fever and Other Stories
Amazon.com
In 1764, two Englishwomen set out to prove that swallows--contrary to the great Linnaeus's belief--do not hibernate underwater. But they must be patient and experiment in secret, such actions being inappropriate for the female of the species. In 1862, a hopeless naturalist heads off for yet another journey, though he can't seem to rid his conscience of the thousands of animals that have already died in his service. In 1971, a pregnant young woman, ill at ease with her socially superior husband and his stepchildren, hears of a Tierra del Fuegan taken hostage by the commander of the Beagle in 1835. This unwilling specimen was, we read, "captured, exiled, re-educated; then returned, abused by his family, finally re-accepted. Was he happy? Or was he saying that as a way to spite his captors? Darwin never knew."
Many of the characters who populate Andrea Barrett's National Book Award-winning collection, Ship Fever, feel similarly displaced in the world. They long to prove themselves in both science and love, but are often thwarted by gender, social position, or the prevailing order. In "The Behavior of the Hawkweeds," the wife of a genetics professor has learned that each narrative of discovery is matched by one, if not more, "in which science is not just unappreciated, but bent by loneliness and longing." Barrett's astonishing tales of ambition and isolation convey the meaning and feeling behind the patterns--scientific and emotional--but slip free of easy closure. The two women in "Rare Bird," like the swallows, depart England for more conducive climes, or so the brother of one believes. The reader is left to hope, and imagine. Much has been made of Andrea Barrett's interlacing of history, knowledge, and fact--and rightly so. But equal attention should be paid to the brilliant serenity and exactitude of her style. --Kerry Fried
5. 1992: Cormac McCarthy All the Pretty Horses
Amazon.com
Part bildungsroman, part horse opera, part meditation on courage and loyalty, this beautifully crafted novel won the National Book Award in 1992. The plot is simple enough. John Grady Cole, a 16-year-old dispossessed Texan, crosses the Rio Grande into Mexico in 1949, accompanied by his pal Lacey Rawlins. The two precocious horsemen pick up a sidekick--a laughable but deadly marksman named Jimmy Blevins--encounter various adventures on their way south and finally arrive at a paradisiacal hacienda where Cole falls into an ill-fated romance. Readers familiar with McCarthy's Faulknerian prose will find the writing more restrained than in Suttree and Blood Meridian. Newcomers will be mesmerized by the tragic tale of John Grady Cole's coming of age.
From Publishers Weekly
This is a novel so exuberant in its prose, so offbeat in its setting and so mordant and profound in its deliberations that one searches in vain for comparisons in American literature. None of McCarthy's previous works, not even the award-winning The Orchard Keeper (1965) or the much-admired Blood Meridian (1985), quite prepares the reader for the singular achievement of this first installment in the projected Border Trilogy. |
