Book Review - Unwind

Shusterman, Neal. Unwind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007.

ISBN: 978-141692040  335 pages  Reading Level: 5.0 Lexile: 740L

Interest Level: 7-12    Recommended Grade Level: 9-12

“There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.”   Henri David Thoreau

Unwind – in financial terms: to cancel out an earlier transaction with a new transaction.

                                                                                    (www.investorswords.com)

Image living in a world, where your parents or guardians can give the order to have you “unwound” anytime between the ages of 13 and 18 years of age - not terminated in the sense of death but transformed into a “massive organ donor” for the benefit of others.  Technically you are not dead – that’s not allowed – you live on in whoever receives each part of you – theoretically at least.  The process of unwinding” is the outcome of the Bill of Life amendments marking the end of the second civil war. The second civil war was a bloody conflict waged between pro-lifers and pro-choice proponents. 

            In the story, Connor - a troublesome young man, Risa – a ward of the state which is making tight budget choices, and Levi – a religious young man raised to meet his destiny are thrown together by circumstance when Connor chooses to try and save himself from being “unwound”. Thrown together by accident, they form an uneasy alliance as they come to terms with what their futures will look like.

            Mr. Shusterman presents us with a future world where anyone can receive a heart transplant, liver transplant, skin graft because there is no shortage of viable, healthy body parts.  Within the story, we learn about “storking” where unwanted babies are left on doorsteps to come under the care, or not, of the person opening the door. If the baby’s lucky, he/she receives a good home – if not, sad things transpire.

            We are given a glimpse of a world where life has a different meaning and value, and depending on how your family/guardian perceives your place in the “family” structure, a signature on a legal document seals your fate with a trip to the Harvest Farms. According to the Parents’ Unwinding Handbook:

            “For your ease and peace of mind, there are a variety of harvest camps to

            choose from. Each facility is privately owned, state licensed, and federally

funded by your tax dollars. Regardless of the site you choose, you can feel

confident that your Unwind will receive the finest possible care from our board-

certified staff as they make their transition to a divided state.” (p263)

Needless to say, Connor does not plan on letting his “unwinding” happen.  Does he stand a chance in stopping it? What happens to Risa?…to Levi?  Read the book and find out.

            Futuristic novels, where the main character/characters try to maintain their lives when challenged or in some cases alter it to conform to a standardized image or feeling have become an exciting entry in young adult literature.  The following novels all explore different forms of these ideas:

            The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

            The Maze Runner by James Dashner

            Uglies  by Scott Westerfeld

            Delirium by Lauren Conrad

               

Realistic Fiction

                                                                     

                                                                          Thirteen Reasons Why

                                                                                    By Jay Asher

Asher, Jay. Thirteen Reasons Why. New York: Penguin Group, 2007.

ISBN: 9781595141712   304 Pages, Reading Level: 3.9 Lexile: 550L Interest Level: 9-12

There are places in the heart that do not yet exist; suffering has to enter in for them to come to be.”

(Leon Bloy)

                Image hearing from someone from beyond the grave!  That is exactly what happens to Clay Jensen when he receives a box of audio-cassette tapes delivered to him by mail with no return address.  It seems that he is not the first to receive the package nor will he be the last. Contained within the package are 7 audio cassette tapes, 6 of which are double sided with the 7^th having only one side.  The surprise comes when Clay discovers the tapes are from Hannah Baker, a girl who committed suicide two weeks previously. Not only was Hannah a classmate, but it turns out that Clay secretly had a crush on her.

            As Clay makes the decision to comply with Hannah’s instructions on the tapes, we find Clay moving through an emotional state of being as he listens to the tapes in order and follows Hannah’s instructions to visit different places of importance to her slowly revealing story.  As the story unfolds, we read the back and forth dialogue of Hannah’s recorded story/comments and Clay’s overlapping ones.  Hannah is providing Clay with a telling of the 13 reasons why she ultimately decided to take her own life.

            From the moment I started reading this book, I found myself riveted to the story.  How did Clay fit into the picture? Why was Hannah giving him so much detail about other people? What is she trying to relay to Clay? The back and forth voices of the characters of Hannah and Clay provide the reader with a sense of both individuals – their reactions to different situations, different people, their individual personalities, and what high school life for them resembles.  Throughout the story, we are reminded how carelessly people can treat other people either deliberately or through short sightedness or simply by not paying attention.  I was amazed by the control the author had over his story and the way he presented it.  It flowed beautifully from beginning to end.  I thought the tapes were a terrific device to allow Hannah to have a voice after her death.  Having only Clay’s reactions to the tapes made for a “tight” story line that still managed to fill in all the details.

            I must admit that I probably would not have read this book had it not been required for our class. I did not find the cover particularly appealing nor was I attracted by the particular premise of the story until I started reading. What a terrific book – not light and cheerful - but so worth reading.

            There are untold numbers of young adult realistic fiction books, but I must admit that I am having a great deal of trouble cross referencing this particular book to another title.  Perhaps with some distance from the actual reading, I will be able to recommend other titles that strike a similar cord.  As of now, I find this particular book to new and unique to take that step.
        Having written the above and now had the distant from the story, I have looked at any number of fiction titles concerning suicide and have found a number of books that are wrapped around the subject. In some books the act of suicide is final, in one, Trigger,  it fails and the story tells the aftermath. In yet another, blame is assigned for causing a person to commit suicide and the issue of revenge upon that person is the story line (What Happened to Cass McBride).  All of the books in this list have well reviewed entries and are current time wise - published since 2005.  I have read two out of the list and don't know why I didn't originally make connections. The others are on my ever expanding need to read list.  I would recommend these titles for high school students, grades 9 through 12.   

By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead
by Julie Anne Peters

Impulse
by Ellen Hopkins

Stay with Me
by Garrett Feymann-Weyr

Trigger
by Susan Vaught

Walking on Glass
by Alma Fullerton

What Happened to Cass McBride
by Gail Giles

Death of Jayson Porter
by Jaimie Adoff

           

           

               

Author Pathfinder: Sharon M. Draper

Out of My Mind

 Latest Release

About the Author:  Sharon M. Draper      

(picture from Library of Congress – National Book Festival site)

Have you ever read a book and found yourself wondering about the author – who is he/she really, how and why do they write, what other books/stories have they written?

Here is your chance to enter the world of Sharon M. Draper. And -what an interesting world it is!  Sharon Draper is not only an award winning author of young adult and children books, she has also written professional books for teachers. She was a teacher for 25 years and was honored in 1997, by then President Clinton, with the title of “U.S. Teacher of the Year”.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Let’s start our journey by looking at what the on-line Encyclopedia of World Biography has to say about Sharon Draper.

http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ca-Ge/Draper-Sharon.html

ProQuest Biographies

http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_id=xri:pqllit-US&rft_dat=xri:pqllit:reference:bio16645

Now let’s visit Mrs. Draper at her own official website.

          http://sharondraper.com

As you can see from her website, Sharon Draper provides a great deal of information about herself and her books, but she also remains very much the educator. 

BOOKS BY SHARON M. DRAPER

Just some of the books written by Sharon Draper:

Fire from the Rock

Double Dutch

Darkness Before Dawn

Romiette and Julio

Copper Sun

November Blues

On her website, Mrs. Draper provides details about the books she has written.
http://sharondraper.com/books.asp

Amazon maintains a Sharon Draper page at the following web address:

          http://www.amazon.com/Sharon-M.-Draper/e/B001IGNR7I

APPEARANCES, BOOK TALKS AND MORE

Through her publisher, the following webpage is maintained:

http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Sharon-M-Draper/706340

Mrs. Draper’s appearances at the Library of Congress – National Book Festival - are discussed at:

http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/kids-teachers/authors/sharon_draper.html

JOURNAL ARTICLES, REVIEWS ABOUT SHARON M. DRAPER

Sharon Draper named Teacher of the Year at White House ceremony

Anonymous. Jet. Chicago: May 12, 1997. Vol. 91, Iss. 25; pg. 25, 1 pgs

Contest-winner scores in education and art

Kelly Starling. Ebony. Chicago: May 1998. Vol. 53, Iss. 7; pg. 126, 3 pgs

A conversation with Sharon Draper, winner of the 1998 Coretta Scott King Award

Judy Hendershot, Jackie Peck. The Reading Teacher. Newark: Apr 1999. Vol. 52, Iss. 7; pg. 748, 3 pgs

Out of My Mind

Robin L Smith, The Horn Book Magazine(Boston) , Mar/Apr 2010, Vol. 86, Iss. 2, pg. 53 (Accessed ProQuest Literature database)

http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_id=xri:pqllit-US&rft_dat=xri:pqllit:criticism:1974337641

Romiette and Julio

Joy Freichs, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy(Newark) , Nov 2001, Vol. 45, Iss. 3, pg. 196 (Accessed ProQuest Literature database)

http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_id=xri:pqllit-US&rft_dat=xri:pqllit:criticism:89303100

CONTACT INFORMATION

          Information for contacting the author is listed on her website,

                   http://sharondraper.com

SOURCES:

Judy Hendershot, & Jackie Peck. (1999). A conversation with Sharon Draper, winner of the 1998 Coretta Scott King Award. The Reading Teacher, 52(7), 748-750.  Retrieved April 5, 2011, from Platinum Full Text Periodicals. (Document ID: 40453527).

Kelly Starling.  (1998, May). Contest-winner scores in education and art. Ebony, 53(7), 126-130.  Retrieved April 5, 2011, from Platinum Full Text Periodicals. (Document ID: 29062162).

Sharon Draper named Teacher of the Year at White House ceremony. (1997, May). Jet, 91(25), 25.  Retrieved April 5, 2011, from Platinum Full Text Periodicals. (Document ID: 11681512).



Tears of a Tiger



Non-Fiction Book Review

Non- Fiction Book Review

                        Guinea Pig Scientists: Bold Self-Experimenters in Science and Medicine

Dendy, Leslie and Mel Boring. Guinea Pig Scientists: Bold Self-Experimenters in Science            and Medicine. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005.

ISBN: 978-0-8050-7316-4

213 p.

Reading Level: 8.2

Interest Level: 5-9

Lexile: 1100L

What seems like crazy to one person seems like commonsense to another.  In the book, Guinea Pig Scientists, the author details ten cases of medical/scientific experimentation that an individual or individuals pursued in their quest for answers to scientific inquiry. What makes these stories so extraordinary is that the named scientists experimented on themselves to obtain answers to their questions.  Information was always gained but the experiments did not always end happily for the scientist/doctor. The book chronicles just a few of the following tales:

Dr. Jesse Lazear dies after deliberately infecting himself with yellow fever from the bite of a mosquito.  He has shown that mosquitoes carried this deadly fever.

Thousands of lives are saved because of this connection being made.

 Madame Marie Curie while becoming the “mother of modern radiation therapy” suffers radiation burns all over her hands and dies from leukemia.

Lazzaro Spallanzani wants to find out how digestion works. Is our food ground up in our stomachs?  By swallowing a variety of objects in different states, he figures out how digestion takes place.

            The author cautions the reader in his introduction that experimentation on one’s self is not taken lightly. Most times, the experimenter is a trained professional with an understanding of the risks they are taking.  It is almost always done under strict guidelines and procedures.  There is risk however anytime self-experimentation is done.  It is not

something to be played out or treated as a whim. It is a regulated scientific study.

            This book was quite unusual in its content in that some of the people chronicled lived hundreds of years ago. Each chapter in the book ends with a section titled “Now We Know” which tells what we now know about the area of experimentation. The documentation in the book in relating the facts is amazing. There literally is an entire section devoted to resources used in writing the book.  The author also includes a timeline telling about other self-experimenters. Each chapter in the book ends with a section titled “Now We Know” which tells what we now know about the area of experimentation.

            In drawing comparisons to other books that approach how we gain practical scientific knowledge, I would list the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach which deals with the knowledge gained by using human cadavers in various scenarios. Another book, Forty Years of Medical Racism: The Tuskeegee Experiments by Michael V. Uschan tells the opposite story of unethical medical studies/experiments when people being used are totally unaware of their participation.