Two more excellent novels...

I finished reading two novels over the last few days.  Both of them are keepers for different reasons.

 

Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea is the 2013 choice for If All of Rochester Reads One Book.  The premise grabbed me immediately; however, it took me about 50 pages to get into it.  I love the epic qualities of this novel.  Into the Beautiful North offers all the aspects and traits of a classic epic.  I would consider teaching this novel with my college classes or in a high school. 

From the book jacket, “…at a showing of the movie The Magnificent Seven at the village’s decrepit theater, Nayeli has a vision:  she will go north and recruit a group of men to return to the village.  She will bring back her own “Siete Magnificos” to protect—and repopulate—her home.” 

And with this goal, Nayeli begins her epic quest.  Along the way she encounters examples of the temptations and assistance found in epics dating back to The Odyssey.  But as Nayeli travels north and across the United States, she also experiences the realities of life for illegal immigrants.

This darkly comic epic is an accessible example of classic literature for the 21^st century.

Urrea, Luis Alberto. Into the Beautiful North. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009. Print.

As I finished reading Into the Beautiful North, I was thinking about all the possibilities for this novel:  both how and where it could be taught and the possibilities for Nayeli and her village.  I did not want to dive into another novel requiring serious reading and concentration and looked to my collection of YA novels.  What jumped into my line of vision?  The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan – it is a quicker read; however, it deserves and received, concentration from the reader.

This novel tells the stories of 20 students in one high school in their own words.  Twenty narrators, using free verse and/or prose, speak of their lives and the lives of the people they know.  The narrators are presented in groups of four, but sometimes the lives overlap the groupings.  These are coming of age stories, coming into awareness stories, stories that represent pain, love, and all the other possibilities of life.  Many stories with many words but as one character says, “The words that matter always stay” (143). 

This entire novel pulled me into the lives of these students.  Charlotte finds words exploding from her head onto the pages of her notebooks, the desks, the walls.  She wonders what others think when they find these messages.  Another student will find these messages threatening and take them personally.  But there are also shared love stories, and the clever style of writing is amazing.  I will read this book again because once is not enough.

Levithan, David. The Realm of Possibility. New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 2004. Print