sleeping freshmen

I can always tell how tired (or how alert) I am by monitoring what I'm willing and able to read in my free time. Of course, on very busy days I read nothing at all. On good days, I'll read part of Anna Karenina (which I'm still reading and enjoying - I'm almost done), and tackle any new novels or nonfiction I have in my to-read pile. When I'm a little tired, I tend to re-read books or read easy new ones ("easy new ones" = Meg Cabot, EJO, A-List or Gossip Girl). When I'm really tired, I re-read easy books. I know I'm exhausted and burned out when I reach for Betty Neels. Once, I was sick for a long time, and I read about 100 Baby-Sitters Club books, because they were what I could manage. By the way, this is true for e-mail too; if I owe you one, it's because I've been too tired to write sensible e-mails (or blog entries, some might say).
I'm literally doing the work of two people in my job right now, and it's a busy time of year there. So earlier this week I was re-reading very easy books. But today, I read two new ones: a Marilyn Sachs book, and Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar. Seriously, if you like teen fiction at all, you should be reading him. Even if you don't, but were a certain kind of quirky teen boy, you'd like it. It's well-constructed, and the characters and dislogue are believable. The narrator is unusually aware for his age, but everyone keeps pointing this out. I mean, Scott is unusual for his age, and people realize it. My favorite bit was at the beginning of chapter 26; the changes in viewpoint were well done and the well-placed page break before 'I'm hungry, Kelly thought' was outstanding.
Lubar provides a primer for any high school English teacher who wants to make his/her class more enjoyable. I don't agree that honors English students (or any other English students, but especially honors students) should spend the year on contemporary fiction, but if one were going to do so, at least Lubar made good choices (The Outsiders is probably too easy for most honors classes, but Ender's Game and To Kill a Mockingbird would be good choices for freshmen). I love the approach to poetry here: not asking what it means, but asking the kids to read and enjoy it. If they're really enjoying it, they'll figure out the meaning.

"...it looks like all my dreams"

Another favorite picture book is The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater. I love The Big Orange Splot and have a certain affection for Lizard Music, but in general, in life, Pinkwater irritates me. It's all that deliberate quirkiness, like in Hoboken Chicken Emergency. Ugh. He's not quite in that unreadable category - you know, the writers who give their characters "funny" names (like Horace Quillbottom McSprackle, which I just made up) to get cheap laughs. But he's close.
So I can't really account for my deep and abiding affection for Big Orange Splot, which I have read so many times that I can recite the first few pages verbatim (from "Mr. Plumbean lived on a street where all the houses were the same. He liked it that way..." up until the neighbor asks Mr. Plumbean to paint his house). Because when I thought, "hey, today I'll write about Big Orange Splot, I started by thinking, "hey, this book doesn't have any women". Well, I think there's a woman or two in the first picture, but they never get speaking parts. And yes, the book was written when single women didn't usually own their own houses, and yes, the absence of women doesn't necessarily mean anything negative, but still - I'd like to see my gender represented.
It's such a idealistic book! I'm glad that there aren't any local housing boards coming in and mandating that Mr. Plumbean's house stay the same color ("a neat street" would indicate one with a high property value, if the book were written by homeowners today). No one comes and mocks anyone else's dream - but everyone's dream is for a brightly painted, interestingly constructed house. My dream house is dark green or grey, and I fear Mr. Plumbean and his neighbors would turn me away for being too drab. (Then again, my SO and I think that the neighborhood in the Monkees' "Pleasant Valley Sunday" sounds, well, pleasant. We're not bothered, the way Micky and Co. were).
I think I'm just cranky today. My local library is celebrating "the heroes of 9/11" today. By "heroes", they really mean "victims" or "martyrs". They're explicit about remembering everyone who died in 9/11. There are certainlysome heroes among those who died, but dying in an act of terrorism doesn't automatically make one a hero. Calling victims heroes like that lessens the heroism of the real heroes out there. I heard children singing tonight, well-trained voices singing in to commemorate an event that (the current educational system, and current Administation being what it is) they may never understand properly.
Sigh. For what it's worth, some kids are shocked (and not in a good way) by the renovated houses on Mr. Plumbean's street.