by Monique Storie, University of Guam, Latte Heights, GU
Colorful covers,
Worlds of words yet unseen brings
the chance for new friends
On a small island, the prospect for finding new books is limited to the local small bookstore chain (about the size of the average Circle K), online, and sometimes the local Kmart. This summer, we had the luxury of going to the mainland. Going stateside brings the excitement of visiting family, playing tourist, and shopping. In our family, shopping means looking for clothes, technological gadgets, gizmos, AND BOOKS! One of the best things about getting to walk through aisles and aisles of books at a bookstore or a library is the thrill of chance discoveries.
Although I was looking for books that I could recommend for powerful reading experiences, my browsing uncovered an array of fun reads. On one end of the spectrum, I found Gloria Whelan’s Mackinac Bridge: the Story of the Five Mile Poem about the construction of Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge. Even though I have regularly visited the bridge and stood looking at the vast span of water at its base, I can’t say that I had really given its construction much thought aside from it must have taken a LONG time to build the five mile long suspension bridge. On the other end of that spectrum, I found Veronica Roth’s Divergent where I was intrigued by and completely invested in the transformation of Beatrice Prior, a member of Abnegation, to the Dauntless Tris, the person she believed herself to be. It was the first book this summer that kept me up until the wee hours of the morning. My plane ride reading campanion was Empty (Weyn, 2012), a short story about how drastically our lives would change when fossil fuels run out. Empty made me pause to think about just how much am I dependent upon fossil fuels and to wonder how we would survive given just how far we are from the countries we rely upon for our foods and livelihoods. Another chance find was Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer. The storyline intrigued me because it was an answer to a question I had regularly pondered when I was growing up “what happens to the characters when we close a book?” My version was that I thought characters went on with their lives and we just happened to see snippets when we open the book. Picoult and Van Leer’s approach is much more amusing because their characters are actors on a literary stage that compels them to repeat their performance regardless of what they really want to do.
As summer came to a close, I did not find many titles that I would recommend for use in classrooms. But I was happy, satisfied and bursting with energy… wanting to tell others about the books I read. What I realized was that this summer I just read for myself and for fun. Lately, I have been compelling myself to look for those next great discussion books but forgetting about the power of reading for fun. This year, our local chapter of the International Reading Association’s theme is “I love Reading.” My challenge this year is to keep this theme in mind as I look for books and try to find the balance the intense books with fun ones. I hope others do too.
References
Picoult, Jodi and Van Leer, Samantha. (2012). Between the Lines. New York: Emily Bestler Books/Atria/Simon Pulse.
Roth, Veronica. (2011). Divergent. New York: Katherine Tegen Books (Harper Collins).
Weyn, Suzanne. (2012). Empty. New York: Scholastic.
Whelan, Gloria (2006). Mackinac Bridge: the Story of the Five Mile Poem. Illustrated by Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen. Mankato, MN: Sleeping Bear Press.
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- Themes: Monique Storie
- Descriptors: Debates & Trends, WOW Currents