Got a lot of work done yesterday in the hotel room. Even managed to grab lunch with the ever lovely Victoria Stapleton and dinner with Lois and Marjie. In between stuffing my face I began work on my summer classes on Blackboard, put together a presentation for Lewisville ISD, and cleaned out my Inbox. Last night I watched the fog gather and enshroud the buildings out there. Now the sun is up, and I have one more day to work quietly without interruptions. Life is good.




I finished reading GENERATION DEAD (Hyperion, May 2008) this morning. The cover certainly garnered the attention of my two resident teens when I brought it back from TLA. I managed to hang onto the ARC for this trip with the promise they could have it when I returned from IRA.

Differently biotic teens are showing up in significant numbers in Oakvale. They attend classes with Phoebe and her friends though there is a great deal of biotism against them. Among the DB is one of Phoebe's childhood friends. However, neither she nor Marji, her best friend, quite know how to approach Collette. Is it possible to be friends with a DB? Phoebe and her friends join in a school sponsored program that will bring together the living and the not living teens. But there are those residents of Oakvale High that want nothing to do with the "zombies" and would rather see them all truly dead once and for all.

Sharply funny, this novel will attract readers because of the terrific cover. However, it will be the humor, irony, sarcasm that will keep readers moving from one cover to the other. Add to this the everyday slings and arrows of teen life in and out of school, and readers will delight in a book that both reflects the realities of peer pressure and cliques and also manages to poke fun at these things at the same time. There is a bit of a mystery here that, IMHO, is not resolved. Perhaps there will be more books???

I AM SCOUT (Holt, April 2008)




I will readily admit that I picked up this book because I was tickled with the title. Our lovely Bengal, Scout, is named in honor of that wonderful character from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. My pal Suzanne has a Bengal named Atticus and this seemed a perfect way to go even though Scout is a boy (now neutered so perhaps that works after all).

All this is prelude to the book itself which is a MUST read for any self respecting English teacher, particularly one who uses TKAM as a core text in her or his classroom (and according to research, this is still one of the most often used books in secondary classrooms). It has been a while since I have read TKAM or even seen the movie starring Gregory Peck. None of that made a bit of difference in my interest in the book and the enjoyment it provided me this afternoon.

Harper Lee's work remains a staple of literature. She remains an enigma. She is in good company when you think of Salinger and others whose one book was never joined by another title. Actually, it seems to me to be sort of wrongheaded. I mean, you write one of the great American novels and all folks can ask is, "so what's next?"

Charles Shields adapted his adult biography for this one aimed at teens. I think the true audience will be English teachers who will use it, I hope, at least in part to demonstrate to students how books come to be, how life affects and influences art, how much truth and fiction dance cheek to cheek.