{"id":819,"date":"2010-12-10T10:08:57","date_gmt":"2010-12-10T14:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/?p=819"},"modified":"2010-12-10T10:11:39","modified_gmt":"2010-12-10T14:11:39","slug":"the-alcatraz-conversations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/the-alcatraz-conversations\/","title":{"rendered":"The Alcatraz Conversations"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m afraid I’ve waited a bit too long to write about the discussions that the 5th and 6th grade book groups had about Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians <\/em>by Brandon Sanderson, and the details of the discussions have been lost in the haze of a couple of weeks of other book groups and lots of storytimes.\u00a0 But I do want to mention in general that, surprisingly, the kids agreed with me.<\/p>\n

In my previous post<\/a> about this book, I confessed that I pretty much hate this book.\u00a0 To quote myself, “It\u2019s all a little too cute, too self-conscious, too adult <\/em>– it\u2019s impossible to get lost in the story, because the narrator keeps butting in with comments about the book or himself.\u00a0 And the narrator, Alcatraz, is supposed to be a thirteen year old boy, but his rants and complaints sound more like a forty year old cranky grownup.”\u00a0 There’s a sense that Sanderson is glorying in his own wit, celebrating how much smarter and funnier he is than his readers, and that really rubbed me the wrong way.<\/p>\n

The 5th graders discussed the book first, and except for an initial whispered agreement with one girl who started off the discussion by saying that she hated the book, other than that\u00a0I kept my mouth shut for twenty minutes or so and listened to them half-heartedly talk about the characters and the plot.\u00a0 Finally, though, I mentioned that I hated the intrusiveness of the narrator, and the whole book group, in unison, said, “I HATED that!!!!”\u00a0 Turns out the kids were as put off by the wise-aleck narrator as I was, and they spent the rest of the book group talking about how annoying the writing style was to them.\u00a0 And in the next week’s book group discussion, the 6th graders didn’t wait for me to bring up the topic of the narrator, nor did they find much at all to love about the book.\u00a0 One 6th grader had read several of the sequels, but she didn’t want to commit to being a “fan” of the series.<\/p>\n

So it’s true – sometimes the kids and I do have the same opinion about a book.\u00a0 Many times I’m far harsher on a book than the kids are, but in this case I think the kids were actually harsher than I.\u00a0 I respect that the author was trying something new, edgy, and different,\u00a0because there is too much “safe” children’s literature these days.\u00a0 But I’m glad that the kids in the book groups could clearly articulate their thoughts and criticisms of this book, and I think they gained a new perspective on literature as a whole through their discussions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m afraid I’ve waited a bit too long to write about the discussions that the 5th and 6th grade book groups had about Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson, and the details of the discussions have been lost in the haze of a couple of weeks of other book groups and lots of … Continue reading The Alcatraz Conversations<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-groups","category-childrens-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":822,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}