Paper Towns by John Green

John Green is one of those authors. He has a following. His fans are. . . persistent. Just before The Fault In Our Stars was released as a movie, various of my students and friends started pestering me to read the book. They even gave me copies of it. I have five copies of the thing. Now, anyone who knows me, knows that insisting that I read or watch something too persistently tends to backfire. It's a weird perverse impulse, and I get stubborn about it.  However, I really try to read the books that my students recommend so I fought through it and read the book. It was good; it even made me cry.

So, now I'm gradually working through all of Green's books.

At its core Paper Towns is a mystery. It starts with the introduction of Quentin Jacobsen and the enigmatic Margo Roth Spiegelman. When they are 9, they stumble across the dead body of a suicide in a park. The two kids respond to this in very different ways.

Fast forward eight or nine years. Quentin and Margo are both seniors getting ready to graduate. They are not friends. In fact, they haven't really interacted since that fateful discovery in the park, but Quentin is still hopelessly in love with the idea of Margo. So, is anyone really surprised that when she shows up one night with a crazy plan  for a prank rampage that Quentin lets himself get sucked in. I'm not. Sounds like the beginning to a high school romance except that after that crazy night of pranks, Margo disappears.

No one knows where she is, but she left Quentin clues. He becomes obsessed with following those clues

A couple things about this. First, Green has actually made me want to read  Walt Whitman. I do not have fond memories of that man from American Lit, but a substantial section of Paper Towns revolves around "Song of Myself" from Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The sections described were interesting. It's possible that 20 years ago when I had to read it for class, I just wasn't ready for it. Second, for something calling itself YA, Paper Towns is terrifically philosophic.

In the search for Margo, Quentin spends a lot of time thinking about how he never really saw her as a person and that his obsession was with the idea of her. This ties directly into Whitman's "Song of Myself." It comes back again and again this idea of being perceptually trapped behind our own masks and limited in our ability to recognize the reality of others. Perfect idea for teens who are naturally struggling with identity but still. . .heavy stuff.

Bullyville by Francine Prose

Bullying is one of those hot topic issues right now. Every year we have to do a program with the students about the effects of bullying and the tendency of people to be silent bystanders. It's a good idea and probably a good approach but I'm not sure of the effectiveness of it all. The idea is that successful bullying relies on people not wanting to get involved. So if bystanders speak up for the victims then the bullies are defeated. Huzzah! Except as far as I can tell, it just makes the bullies sneakier or favor things like internet trolling.

When I was a teen/pre-teen I was bullied. Not horribly, but it happened. It's a part of growing up. I dealt with it mostly by ignoring them and getting even in small subtle ways. Mostly, I just holed up in the school library and made it difficult for them to find me. It worked, but it worked because I grew up in an age where they mostly had to physically find me in order to bully me. With the internet and social media, that is no longer the case. No matter how bad it was on a given day, it ended when I got home. That's not true any more.

So, I don't know what the answer is for these kids. My current tactic is to stock my classroom library with stories dealing with bullying as a theme on some level. Bullyville is one of the books I picked up for that. I'd never heard of it or its author, Francine Prose. I am, however, always game for something new.

The main character, Bart Rangely, is a pretty inherently tragic figure. His estranged father dies in the North Tower during 911. As a result, Bart is offered a free ride at a local exclusive prep school. He goes, of course, despite the schools well known reputation for producing bullies. Our boy Bart ends up under the care of the worst bully at the school. Thus begins the absolute worst year of Bart's life.

Bart doesn't just turn into a pile of mush though. He does fight back, and as a result, ends up finding out more about his tormentor and probable motivations.

What I like about this book is that Prose didn't feel the need to tie it all up in the end with a nice bow and a fairy tale ending. It's messy and she lets it be messy. While the situation resolves for Bart, there's no sudden character flips or kumbaya moments. The bully is a bully and he is not redeemed.

This is a good treatment of the themes and a readable book. It's a good addition to my classroom library.