A Separate Peace by John Knowles

I haven’t read this small novel since I was in the 10th grade, so it was interesting to reread it now, with oh so many more years of experience behind me, much like the narrator, Gene Forrester.

Gene has returned to his private prep school, The Devon School, 15 years after graduation and begins to recall his friendship with his roommate, Finny, beginning in the summer of 1942. On the surface, they present a facade of being best friends, getting along so well, no one would suspect anything could ever be wrong. Yet, they couldn’t have been more different. Gene is quiet, serious, intellectual, and not terribly athletic. Finny is boisterous, impulsive, not a good student, but a great athlete. Finny believes that people are innately good; Gene believes people have ulterior motives. That summer, their differences cause cracks in their facade of friendship.

At school for an unprecedented summer term, due to the war, all school rules seem to fall by the wayside. One afternoon, after jumping out of a tree into the Devon River, Finny pushes the unwilling Gene into doing it also. The jumping becomes a ritual of the summer for Finny, Gene and a few other friends. But when Finny forms the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session with nightly mandatory meetings, Gene begins to suspect that Finny’s motives are to take him away from his studies and he begins to resent his roommate.

Gene and Finny continue in this pattern behavior, with Finny proving his athletic ability and pulling Gene away from his studies, and Gene always giving in to Finny's demands and resenting it. Even after Gene explains that he is aiming to be the best student of their year, Finny still manages to persuade him to come to the river for the ritual jump. This time, though, Finny wants them to jump together. Out on the tree limb, Gene bounces it ever so slightly, but enough to cause Finny to fall and shatter his leg on the river bank.

Gene’s feelings of guilt cause him to confess to Finny that the fall was his fault, but Finny refuses to believe him. It is only later that Finny does become convinced of Gene’s culpability and the idea that this is so proves to be too much for him.

The underlying theme of war is present throughout this novel, but the main theme is the idea of a separate peace, a peace that is made separate and apart from the world at large. Devon provides it by keeping the war at bay, out of the lives of the students, despite on campus training of senior for combat. Finny’s separate peace is the state of denial he lives in, refusing to admit that the world can be full of hostility. Gene’s is more complicated, but he too makes a separate peace. The question is with whom- Finny or himself?

Knowles wrote A Separate Peace in 1959 and it didn’t take long for it to find its way on to high school and college reading lists. It is, after all, a classic coming of age story that stills stands up in today’s world.  But it is also a challenged novel. In 1980, the Vernon-Verona-Sherill, NY School District deemed it a "filthy, trashy sex novel." In 1985, the Fannett-Metal High School in Shippensburg, PA challenged it because of its allegedly offensive language. In 1989, the Shelby County, TN school system thought it was inappropriate for high school reading lists because the novel contains "offensive language." In 1991, A Separate Peace was challenged, but retained in the Champaign, IL high school English classes despite claims that “unsuitable language” makes it inappropriate. That year it was also challenged by the parent of a high school student in Troy, IL citing profanity and negative attitudes. Students were offered alternative assignments while the school board took the matter under advisement, but no further action was taken on the complaint. And in 1996, it was challenged at the McDowell County, NC schools because of "graphic language.

Oh dear! I forgot to notice this stuff when I reread A Separate Peace, especially the filthy, trashy sex parts. But I did notice Knowles’ lovely writing style, the way he structured the story to create a wonderful unreliable narrators in Gene. After all, he is presenting only his version of the story, which is the nature of first-person narration and should always be suspect. (Oskar Matzerath from Gunter Grass’s The Tin Drum still remains my favorite unreliable narrator.)

Apparently the people who awarded John Knowles these well deserved honors also forgot to notice what an unsuitable book it is:
1961 The Rosenthal Award
         The William Faulkner Award
1961 National Book Award nominee

If you liked Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye, it is a pretty safe bet you will also enjoy A Separate Peace.

This book is recommend for readers 14 and up.
This book was purchased for my personal library.

The Glencoe Literature Library has an excellent online study guide for A Separate Peace

A Separate Peace
John Knowles
Scribner
1959, 2003
208 Pages

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

It is Banned Books Week and I thought I would start things off with a look at The Book Thief. This is not because it is a banned book, quite the contrary, it has been on the New York Times Best Seller Children’s Paperback List for 209 weeks now, often bouncing in and out of 1st place(See Below.)  I begin with The Book Thief because it is about a young girl who loves books but living in a country and at a time when books were not only banned but they were also burned.

In this story narrated by Death, 9 year old Liesel Meminger is traveling to Molching, a fictional town near Munich, with her mother and 8 year old brother. The children are going to live with foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann. On the way, Liesel’s brother dies and at his graveside, she steals her first book, The Grave Digger’s Handbook.

Liesel doesn’t adjust to her new home very quickly, and she is haunted by nightmares about her brother. Hans Hubermann, a kind painter/accordion player, sits up with her after the nightmares and eventually begins to teach Liesel how to read. She also makes friends with the neighborhood kids, especially Rudy Steiner, who is quite in love with her.

Liesel eventually adjusts to life in Moching, attending school, and helping Rosa Hubermann pick up and deliver the washing she does for wealthy customers. Unfortunately, she continues to experience nightmares, but her reading also improves with the help of Hans.

At a fire fueled mainly by books to honor the Hitler’s birthday, Liesel realizes for the first time that she is in foster care because her parents were communists. And it is from the bonfire that Liesel steals her second book, The Shoulder Shrug. But this time she is recognized by the mayor’s wife, Ilsa Hermann, one of Rosa Hubermann’s customers. The theft results in an invitation come over to the mayor’s home and read in his vast collection of books. This library is the scene of Liesel’s third act of book thievery, carried out in anger after the mayor claims they should no long have their washing and ironing done by Rosa when so many other people are suffering.

As Jews are being sent to concentration camps in greater and greater numbers, Hans agrees to hide 24 year old Max Vandenburg, son of an old Jewish Army friend from World War I, who saved his life. Max and Liesel become good friends, but when Hans offers a piece of bread to a Jew being marched to Dachau, Max is forced to leave because of fear the Gestapo with come search the Hubermann house. Much later, Liesel sees Max being marched with other Jews to Dachau. Liesel is whipped by a Nazi guard for approaching Max in the crowd of Jews.

In despair, Liesel breaks into the mayor’s library and destroys a book: Soon, there is nothing but scraps of words littered all around her. Words, she realizes, have been used so wrongly to empower the Führer:

The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn’t be any of this. Without words, the Führer was nothing. There would be no limping prisoners, no need for consolation or wordly tricks to make up feel better. What good were the words? (pg 521)

Ironically, it is the mayor’s depressed wife who convinces Liesel to begin writing, to change the words and make them right again. In the basement where she learned to read, Liesel begins to write a story called The Book Thief.

The novel follows Liesel from a 9 year old who can’t read a single word to a 14 year old who realizes the true power of words. It is a cleverly constructed book in so many ways. For example, in the beginning, Death introduces the reader to Liesel Meminger through the use of color – representing the three times he saw her “in the flesh.” White for the snow on the ground the day her brother was buried. Then, black for the smoke from an allied plane that has crashed near Molching, and the death of the pilot witnessed by Rudy and Liesel. Lastly, red for the burning sky resulting from the bombing of Munich and surrounding areas, including Molching. Association through color - White, Black and Red – the colors of the Nazi flag place her squarely in Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

The Book Thief is a well-written book with well-developed characters. Death as the narrator is neither omniscient nor grim, and though he can often be both cynical and compassionate, he sums up mankind’s contradictory behavior quite simply: "So much good, so much evil," Death says of human nature. "Just add water." (pg 160)

I liked that the novel ultimately became its own irony. It is divided into 10 chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue. Each chapter is named after a book that Liesel owned. When Liesel wrote her own version of The Book Thief, it was given the same form. Incidentally, the content of each of the chapter is also listed under its title. I think this is done so that we focus on why things are happening, not on what is happening. 

This book is recommended for readers 12 and up.
This book was purchased for my personal library.

The Book Thief has been given the following well deserved honors:
2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (South East Asia & South Pacific)
2006 Horn Book Fanfare
2006 Kirkus Reviews Editor Choice Award
2006 School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
2006 Daniel Elliott Peace Award
2006 Publishers Weekly Best Children Book of the Year
2006 Booklist ChildrenEditors' Choice
2006 Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book
2007 Boeke Prize
2007 ALA Best Books for Young Adults
2007 Michael L. Printz Honor Book]
2007 Book Sense Book of the Year
2009 Pacific Northwest Young Readers Choice Master List

The Australian publisher Picador offers a very useful note for reading groups for The Book Thief
Scholastic also offers a teacher resource for The Book Thief

The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
Alfred A. Knopf
2007
552 Pages

NYT Children's Best Seller Sunday, September 25, 2011

Banned Books 2011

Saturday begins Banned Books Week 2011, a subject that is near and dear to my heart. It is a good time to think about censorship and the implications that has on our reading lives.  To help folks along, I have listed the 110 most frequently banned or challenged books of all time.  It has been circulating around the internet for a while and no one seems to know where it came from.  I traced the list back to the OCLC website in 2005.  Somewhere along the line, someone came up with the idea to 1- Bold the ones you’ve read. 2- Italicize the ones you’ve read part of. 3- Color the ones you specifically want to read.   

1- The Bible

2- Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
3- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
4- The Koran
5- Arabian Nights
6- Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
7- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
8- Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
9- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
10- Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
11- The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
12- Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
13- Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
14- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
15- Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
16- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
17- Dracula by Bram Stoker
18- Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
19- Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
20- Essays by Michel de Montaigne
21- Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
22- History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
23- Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
24- Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
25- Ulysses by James Joyce
26- Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
27- Animal Farm by George Orwell
28- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
29- Candide by Voltaire
30- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
31- Analects by Confucius
32- Dubliners by James Joyce
33- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
34- Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
35- Red and the Black by Stendhal
36- Das Capital by Karl Marx
37- Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
38- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
39- Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
40- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
41- Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
42- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
43- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
44- All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
45- Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
46- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
47- The Diary of Samuel Pepys by Samuel Pepys
48- Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
49- Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
50- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
51- Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
52- Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
53- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
54- Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
55- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
56- Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
57- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
59- Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
60- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
61- Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
62- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
63- East of Eden by John Steinbeck
64- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
65- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
66- Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
67- Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
68- Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
69- The Talmud
70- Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
71- Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
72- Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
73- American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
74- Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
75- A Separate Peace by John Knowles
76- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
77- The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
78- Popol Vuh
79- Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
80- Satyricon by Petronius
81- James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
82- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
83- Black Boy by Richard Wright
84- Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
85- Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
86- Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
87- Metaphysics by Aristotle
88- Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
89- Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
90- Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
91- The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
92- Sanctuary by William Faulkner
93- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
94- Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
95- Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
96- Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
97- General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
98- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
99- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
100- Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
101- Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
102- Emile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
103- Nana by Emile Zola
104- The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
105- Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
106- Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
107- Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
108- The Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
109- Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
110- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

This is an interesting list, but the fact is that a lot of these books are the kinds that are assigned in school. I know I would never have read #52 The Critique of Pure Reason otherwise. So here is a more up to date video from Thomas University for Banned Books Week 2011

Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance and Rescue by Kathryn J. Atwood

In Women Heroes of World War II, Kathryn Atwood has written a very moving account of 26 strong, courageous women who stood up to the Nazi scourge at great risk to their own lives. Some joined underground resistance movements in Nazi-occupied countries, others rescued Jews and Allied soldiers caught behind enemy lines or worked as spies, mingling with the enemy to gather useful information. And all of their stories are amazing.


In Poland, 19-year-old Irene Gut worked for a high ranking German officer in his villa. She was able to hide 12 Jews in the basement of the house, right under his nose. When he found out, he offered to keep quiet, but at a high price. Irene realized that the fate of 12 human beings rested on whether or not she would accept the offer.

Sophie Scholl, a college student in Munich, Germany wasn’t much older than Irene when she began her Resistance activities. Along with 10 others including her brother Hans, Sophie belonged to the White Rose (die Weiße Rose.) The group wrote and distributed six extensive anti-Nazi leaflets urging people to denounce Hitler’s government in word and deed. Anti-Nazi behavior was considered treason, punishable by death. Sophie and the other members of the White Rose knew the consequences of their actions, but continued their activities.

Other women in Women Heroes of World War II were surprises to me, for example, Josephine Baker and Marlene Dietrich. Josephine Baker, an African-American, had lived in Paris for many years after leaving the US in part because of the racism she encountered here. As an entertainer, Josephine had the perfect cover for a spying. Before France fell to the Nazis, Josephine did some espionage working for the Deuxième Bureau, a French intelligence agency. Her celebrity status allowed her to mingle at parties where she would listen in on conversations and acquire much need information

Marlene Dietrich, though German born, was an American citizen who worked against the Nazis and volunteered to entertain troops for the USO, often at great risk to herself. Sometimes, she was so close to the front lines, she could hear gunfire and bombs going off. When she started to use her signature song, Lilie Marlene, in English for the troops, the Nazis were livid, that had been their World War I song.

These are just a few examples of the lives of the extraordinary women who risked everything to help others in very dangerous situations that are included in this book. Though every story is different, the women were motivated by the same thing: when the time came, they did what they felt was right.

Women Heroes of World War II is a well written, well researched book. Ms. Atwood profiles the resistance activities of women from eight countries: Germany, Poland, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Great Britain and the United States. There is also a brief summary of the way in which each country entered World War II. This information really helps the reader appreciate the dangers and obstacles these woman faced. Each woman’s story is also supplemented with additional material, for example, passages from the leaflets written by Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, or the edict issued when Denmark was forced to surrender to the Germans. At the end of every woman’s story is a list of resources where the reader can go to find more information about her. The beauty of the organization of this book is that it can be read from cover to cover, as I did, or in parts. Each narrative stands on it own. This makes it ideal as a teaching tool and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Women Heroes of World War II is recommended for readers age 12 and up.
This book was purchased for my personal library.

Women Heroes of World War II
Kathryn J. Atwood
Chicago Review Press, 2011
266 pages

See Goodreads for an interesting story about how Kathryn Atwood touched history while writing Women Heroes of World War II.

A longer version of this review can be found at Kidlit Celebrates Women's History Month 2011

Non-Fiction Monday is hosted this week by Tales from the Rushmore Kid

BBAW Day 5: Blogging

Today is the last day of Book Blogger Appreciate Week 2011 and congratulations to all the winners.  You should be very proud of your accomplishment.  And congratulations to all the wonderful blogs that were nominated. 
I could participate much this week due to work commitments (though I did participate as a judge,) but I have enjoyed reading everyone contributions to the daily blogging topics. 

So, on to the last daily blogging topic:

The world of blogging is continually changing. Share 3 things you think are essential tried and true practices for every blogger and 1-3 new trends or tools you’ve adapted recently or would like to in the future.


On the practical side of things, I would suggest

1- Learn a little HTML – it can go a long way when Blogger or Wordpress or whatever blog service you use is being temperamental. I use Quackit HTML Tags

2- Maintain a separate email account for all things bloggy, using something that access from any computer. This has been a god-send.

3- Visit and comment other blogs – kindly and courtesy. My mother always told me that if you can’t find something nice to say, say nothing at all. That is my personal policy.

4- Keep it fun and keep it genuine. When blogging ceases to be fun, it is time to walk away. Write what you feel and feel what you write. And don’t use your blog as an ego trip, collecting followers to make yourself feel popular.

Trends:

1- I am not a very trending kind of person but I do use Google reader for blogs I follow and am interested in. And I use Twitter and Facebook for getting the word out about my posts.

2- Try some memes and/or reading challenges. My blog is about kidlit set in WW II, so sometimes participate in Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads with food related posts about that time. Because of rationing, food was always on the minds of people and I think it adds a little spice to my blog.

3- Try out any ideas you have for making your blog interesting, even if no one else is doing it. I enjoy things like Timeslip Tuesday at Charlotte’s Library or Guy Friday at Ms. Yingling Reads, even though they aren’t official memes. I also have a few of my own features like That’s The Way It Was Wednesday, where I post about kid’s books actually written during WW II, and Sunday Funnies, which covers comics, jokes, cartoons from that time period. So be creative with your blog!

Have a great year blogging, everyone, and see you at the next Book Blogger Appreciation Week in 2011!