Category: author of the month

author of the month, YA lit

Paul Volponi

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by Jerrell M.


“I’m satisfied that I can channel what I’ve experienced and what I feel into books for young adults.” – Paul Volponi“I hear constantly kids and teachers saying, ‘So-and-so doesn’t read. He picked up your book. He read it from cover to cover. Now he’s reading your other books and he’s thinking about writing something himself that he’s seeing.” – Paul Volponi

 

Paul Volponi is writer, teacher, and journalist living in New York City. He have taught in Rikers Island which is located in Queens, New York with incarcerated teens from 1992-1998. However when he left Rikers he taught teens in a drug treatment program. That’s where he got his explicit ability to write about urban teens in tough times. Volponi is a writer that will catch teen’s attention who don’t like to read because the story that he tells is relatable and they will make connections. I say that readers will make connections because in his books there were a lot of text-to-self in Rikers High and also text-to-world in Hurricane Song. Rikers High will get kids attention because it’s about a 17 year old kid named Martin who went to jail for telling someone where to get drugs from and while was he in jail he got slashed on his face trying to help a friend. Hurricane Song is about a kid named Miles who moved to New Orleans with his father that he didn’t like and Hurricane Katrina came and destroyed everything. Then it started to gang beef and a lot of shootings because they wanted to take over the little bit of land that was left after the hurricane. I personally like Volponi because I connect myself to the book Rikers High and I have never even been to jail before but the story sounds so real I feel like I have been. I will tell all teens to read Rikers High because that’s one of the best book I read and was actually interested in.

Work Cited:

“Paul Volponi: Teen Novels.” Paul Volponi: Teen Novels, http://www.paulvolponibooks.com/biography.htm.

 

author of the month, YA lit

“Locomotion” by Jacqueline Woodson

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This is a window into one of JW’s most magical short novels, a novel in verse, written as a series of poems, but poems that tell the story of Lonnie:

Lonnie’s mom and dad died in a fire. His little sister now lives with a rich family far away. Lonnie is with Miss Edna. Still living in Brooklyn, still going to school, writing poetry in Ms. Marcus’s class, trying to make sense of what has happened.  This excerpt is Lonnie remembering his mother–her voice and her story about him being born premature and nearly not making it, as she is cooking up a chicken:

“Mama cut the wing off the chicken, rinsed

it under the faucet, patted it dry–real gentle

like she was deep remembering.

So I  hoped and prayed and sat by that tiny 

baby every hour of every day for weeks

and more weeks. Doctors said it’s his lungs,

they’re just not ready for the world yet. Can’t

take a breath in. Can’t let one out. So I breathed

for you, trying to show you how, I

prayed to those lungs, Mama said. Grow!

The chicken was cut up, spiced up, dipped

in flour and ready to fry. mama touched each piece

still real gentle before she slipped it into the hot

oil. Then you were four pounds, five pounds, six pounds

bigger than this chicken. My big little baby boy

not even two months old and already

a survivor.” (p. 74)

 

author of the month

Jacqueline Woodson – Author of the Month

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Jacqueline Woodson lives in Brooklyn and grew up in the South and then in Bushwick. She is a writer of books for all ages, and her touch is very profound. She is a writer that makes you cry for others, for yourself, for the world. She says on her website that she once wrote a book in two weeks; the next one took four years. My favorite book of hers is I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You. It reminded me of growing up in a place where there wasn’t much protection and friendship was the only stability there was. Here is a summary:

Marie and Lena are both motherless. Marie is black and well off. Lena is white and poor. And in the small town of Chauncey, Ohio blacks and whites don’t mix. But Lena and Marie become friends anyway. One of them has a terrible secret and the other must decide—Is it best to keep it? Or should she tell someone fast?

WHERE IT TAKES PLACE: In the small town of Chauncey, Ohio
WHERE I WROTE IT: Provincetown, Massachusetts and Brooklyn, New York.
WHY I WROTE IT: I wanted to write a novel about friendship and in it, I wanted to show how destructive racism and classism can be. I also wanted to write about the “secret” in the book—to say to young readers—”Don’t be afraid. You are not alone.”
AWARDS: Coretta Scott King

What is your favorite Jacqueline Woodson book? If you haven’t read her, I recommend I Hadn’t Meant to tell you This, Brown Girl Dreaming, Locomotion, and Beneath a Meth Moon.