Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

A Newbery Honor Book
A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
A Printz Honor Book
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award
An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction
Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner
An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017
A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017
A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017

An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestseller Jason Reynolds’s fiercely stunning novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother.

A cannon. A strap.
A piece. A biscuit.
A burner. A heater.
A chopper. A gat.
A hammer
A tool
for RULE

Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES.

And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if WILL gets off that elevator.

Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.

Why you should read this book:

• This book is out of my "comfort zone."  I normally am not drawn to books in verse. Push yourself out of your comfort zone
• It's on the YALSA Teen Top Ten List for this year.
• I wonder what this life would be like?
• A quote that stuck with me:

but if the blood

inside you is  on the inside

of someone else,

you never want to 

see it on the outside of 

them.

Find Long Way Down in our library at: REALISTIC F REY

Mitali Perkins Visit

Grades 4-8 attended a wonderful presentation with Mitali Perkins this morning.  We are thankful to the PTA for sponsoring a visit to the school.  Her presentation entitled Stories on the Fire Escape  was about growing up and writing "between cultures" and the power of stories to keep us balanced.  It was very relevant for our diverse student population.  Thank you Ms. Perkins for taking the time to visit us!
If you missed seeing Mitali Perkins today or want to learn more, see her again tomorrow at the Dhaka Lit Fest!

Being in Grade 7 was hard!

The first books...11 years apart!

Rickshaw Girl is becoming a movie and was published in Bangla today!

Thank you PTA for sponsoring the visit!

YALSA Teens' Top Ten List

Find the titles in our library!

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green                                    Call Number: REALISTIC F GRE
One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus                                   Call Number: MYSTERY F MCM
Warcross by Marie Lu. G. P.                                                          Call Number: SCI-FI F GRE
Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo                           ON ORDER
Caraval by Stephanie Garber                                                         Call Number: FANTASY F GAR
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds                                             Call Number: REALISTIC F REY
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez  Call Number: REALISTIC F SAN

Paper Hearts by Ali Novak                                                             ON ORDER
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor                                             Call Number: FANTASY F TAY
Once and For All by Sarah Dessen                                               Call Number: ROMANCE F DES

Saints and Misfits by S.K. Ali

There are three kinds of people in my world: 

1. Saints, those special people moving the world forward. Sometimes you glaze over them. Or, at least, I do. They're in your face so much, you can't see them, like how you can't see your nose.

2. Misfits, people who don't belong. Like me--the way I don't fit into Dad's brand-new family or in the leftover one composed of Mom and my older brother, Mama's-Boy-Muhammad.
Also, there's Jeremy and me. Misfits. Because although, alliteratively speaking, Janna and Jeremy sound good together, we don't go together. Same planet, different worlds.
But sometimes worlds collide and beautiful things happen, right? 

3. Monsters. Well, monsters wearing saint masks, like in Flannery O'Connor's stories. 

Like the monster at my mosque. People think he's holy, untouchable, but nobody has seen under the mask. 

Except me.

Why you should read this book:

• It may put you outside your comfort range.
• Saints and Misfits reinforces that though we are all different, we are also alike in many ways
• I wonder if all Muslim communities are like the one in the book.  Do Muslim communities in the US function differently from the Muslim countries I've lived in? I wonder what the differences and similarities are.
• It's full of "real-world" issues like bullying, friendship, growing up, racism and religion.

Find Saints and Misfits in our library at: REALISTIC F ALI

Banned Books Week- it's here!

Middle School had many discussions this week about why books may be challenged.  Checkouts and holds of challenged materials soared, which always happens during Banned Books Week!

Our most requested hold this week...Thirteen Reasons Why.  Students were surprised to hear that the book is over 10 years old and the "movie factor" increased challenges of this book.

Find all the books below (and many more) in our libraries!

(ALA.org)

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. 

But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

Why you should read this book:

• Starr is a strong female lead character.
• It was an interesting look into race and racism in the United States.
• It made me wonder what it would be like to be of a different race in the United States.  Is this book is an accurate account?  I wonder not because I disbelieve it, but because I have never experienced it.
• I thought about protests and why they work, or don't work.  What makes an effective protest?

Find The Hate U Give in our library at: REALISTIC F THO