Book Talk Outline
“In the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time”
Introduction:
Good morning! My name is Ms. Daniels and I would like to take a few minutes
to share some books with you. I have always loved to read and I have over 9 shelves
packed full of children’s books, chapter books, and novels in my library at home. I am
currently a student at East Carolina University to get a Master’s Degree in Library
Science. For one of my courses I am taking, I am required to present a Book Talk
session. I am very thankful that your librarian, Mrs. Thornton, agreed for me to come
present to you. I am going to pass out a sheet with the titles of the books listed so you
can write on it and take notes if you would like to. I have also listed some additional
books that you may want to read on this topic.
When we finish the Book Talk, I am going to give you a Student Evaluation
Form, which will list each of the books we have discussed and ask you to provide some
feedback about my presentation. The books I have chosen to share with you are about
criminal elements. Abuse comes in many forms, and in other words, if one is treated in
any way other than with kindness, love and respect, it is abuse. Drive-by shootings and
physical abuse leave wounds and can even lead to death. Emotional and verbal abuse
leave harmful wounds that is often difficult to heal. For instance, if you hear “That
shows you how stupid you are,” you eventually get angry, and might stay angry. You are
hurt, you begin to believe that you are stupid and you loose self-esteem and confidence.
It is not healthy for you to feel insignificant and unimportant. All of these books I have
chosen to share are about teens that find themselves in opposition to or on the wrong side
of the law. For example, the teens are involved in legal systems, gangs, law enforcement,
and even prison. My topic for this presentation is “In the Wrong Place at the Wrong
Time.” Have you ever heard the saying, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Think about the saying as I share some books with you.
Touching Spirit Bear
Mikaelsen, Ben.
Touching Spirit Bear. New York, NY: Scholastic, Inc., 2001.
Genre: Contemporary Realistic Fiction
Style of Booktalk: Discussion
Have you ever tried to survive on your own in the woods? Touching Spirit Bear
by Ben Mikaelsen is a story of adventure and survival. (Teacher will hold up book so
students can see the cover of the book.). A young boy named Cole Matthews is a mean,
bad-tempered bully. He is used to getting his own way by lying, cheating, and pushing
other people around. For years he has been hauled into drug counseling, anger therapy
sessions, and police stations, and every time he got into trouble he was warned to “shape
up because this was his last chance.” Cole has learned he can always count on having
one more “last” chance. Cole has been stealing and fighting for years. This time he
caught Alex Driscal in the parking lot and smashed his head against the sidewalk. Now,
Alex may have permanent brain damage and Cole is in the biggest trouble of his life.
Cole is offered Circle Justice, which is a system based on Native American
traditions that attempts to provide healing for the criminal offender, the victim, and the
community. With prison as his only alternative, Cole plays along. He says he wants to
repent, but in his heart Cole blames his alcoholic mom, his abusive dad, wimpy Alex,
everyone but himself, for his situation. Cole receives a one-year banishment to a remote
Alaskan island. There, he is mauled by a mysterious white bear of Native American
legend. Hideously injured, Cole waits for his death. His thoughts shift from anger to
humility. To survive, he must stop blaming others and take responsibility for his life.
Rescuers arrive to save Cole’s but it is the attack of the Spirit Bear that may save his soul.
Touching Spirit Bear has won several awards such as:
Book Sense 76 Pick
ALA Best Book for Young Adults
Flicker Tale Children’s Book Award (North Dakota)
Nevada Young Readers’ Award
California Young Reader Medal
Beehive Award (Utah)
Evergreen Young Adult Book Award
The Nautilus Award
Transition:
The lessons to be learned from Touching Spirit Bear are valuable to all people:
take responsibility for your own actions, forgiveness is necessary for healing, and helping
others is the best way to help yourself. It could serve as an inspiration for those of you
who are struggling with the anger and resentment that nearly consumed Cole Matthews.
Hole in my Life
Gantos, Jack
Gantos, Jack. Hole in my Life. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.
Genre: Nonfiction
Style of Booktalk: Excerpt
(Teacher will hold up Hole in my Life so students can see the cover of the book.)
“The prisoner in the photograph is me. The ID number is mine. The photo was taken in
1972 at the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution in Ashland, Kentucky. I
was twenty-one years old and had been locked up for a year already, the bleakest year of
my life, and I had more time ahead of me.” (p. 3)
“Like most kids, I was aware that the world was filled with dangerous people, yet I
wasn't certain I could always spot them coming.” (p. 5)
“At the time this picture was taken I weighed 125 pounds. When I look at my face in the
photo I see nothing but the pocked mask I was hiding behind. I parted my hair down the
middle and grew a mustache in order to look older and tougher, and with the greasy
prison diet (salted chicken gizzards in a larded gravy, chicken wings with oily cheese
sauce, deep-fried chicken necks), and the stress, and the troubled dreams of capture and
release, there was no controlling the acne. I was overmatched.” (p. 3)
“I wasn’t raised around this level of violence. I wasn’t prepared for it, and I’ve never
forgotten it. Even now, when walking some of Boston’s meaner streets, I find myself
moving like a knife, carving my way around people, cutting myself out of their picture
and leaving nothing of myself behind but a hole.” (p. 5)
“All I heard was the number-ten thousand dollars, cash. This was the jackpot. The
answer I was looking for. My exit from St. Croix and my entrance to whatever good
school would have me. I didn't think of the danger involved with breaking the law. I
didn't even consider that I had no idea how to sail a large boat, or that Hamilton might
kill me and dump my body off the coast of New Jersey, that anything bad could happen.
I just saw my exit from the island and entrance to my future, and it was glorious and good
and calling me and there was no way I was going to get a better offer . . . ‘Count me in,’ I
said, smiling. ‘I'll go home and start packing.’ (p. 69)
“I didn't keep up my old habit of writing down my ideas for novels because it seemed
unnecessary. I felt as if all the fictional ideas I cooked up were nothing compared to what
was going on around me in real life.” (p. 159)
“Nobody would believe it. I couldn't. That's why I had to write it down.” (p. 161)
Hole in my Life has received many awards and honors such as:
ALA Best Books for Young Adults
ALA Notable Children’s Books
Booklist Editors’ Choice
Books for the Teen Age, New York Public Library
Bulletin Blue Ribbon
Horn Book Magazine Fanfare List
Massachusetts Children’s Book Award
Parents’ Choice Award
Robert F. Sibert Award
School Library Journal Best Books of the Year
Transition:
Have you ever been “talked into” doing something that you knew just wasn’t
right? That is how Jack felt in Hole in my Life. All he heard was “ten thousand dollars
cash.” Next, let’s look at a book about the motto, “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
(Teacher will hold up Nothing to Lose so students can see the cover of the book.).
Nothing to Lose
Flinn, Alex
Flinn, Alex. Nothing to Lose. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2004.
Genre: Fiction
Style of Booktalk: First Person
Last year I was a rising junior in high school. I loved football and my mom was
so proud of me. She came to all of my games and cheered me on. We lived in a small
trailer outside of town. We were happy.
Then my mom married a local attorney, Walker James Monroe and we moved
into his mansion. My life changed dramatically and my world was violently out of
control. Walker dominated my mom. She couldn’t come to my football games because
Walker didn’t want her out of the house. He beat her often. I would come home and find
her bruised and beaten.
To be home more to protect my mom I quit football. I felt if I stayed home more
that Walker would not beat her. He never beat her when I was home.
This year my mom is in jail and will soon be on trial, accused of murdering
Walker. I ran away and I’m working and traveling with a carnival. I find their motto of
“don't ask, don't tell” as a welcome refuge from the unbearable situation I was in at home.
I have taken a new identity as Robert Frost and I run the Whack-a-Mole booth and I try to
forget. I try to forget what my life was like a year ago. Before I ran away. But now the
carnival is back in Miami and the memories are flooding back in. Memories of my
abusive stepfather. Of my helpless mother. Of the times I had tried to get her to leave.
But there is nowhere to escape now. I’m back in Miami and my mother’s trial is set to
begin in a few days. Her trial for the murder of the man who beat her on a regular basis.
As the day of her trial draws closer, I just wonder how much longer I can hide from my
past . . . and my future.
Should I go back and try to testify about Walker and how he hurt my mom so
many times? Would my testimony help set her free? Does mom want me to come back?
She is the one who told me to run away. What should I do?
Nothing to Lose has won numerous awards such as:
Booklist Top-10 Youth Mysteries
International Reading Association, Young Adult Choices, 2006
ALA Best Books for Young Adults, 2005
ALA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, 2005
New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age
Georgia Peach Award Master List, 2006
Kentucky Bluegrass Award Master List, 2006
Michigan Reading Association Thumbs up! List, 2005
Missouri Gateway Award Master List, 2006-2007
Rhode Island Teen Book Award Master List, 2006
South Carolina Young Adult Book Award, 2006-2007
YASIG (Missouri) Best of the Best list
Tayshas (Texas) list
ALA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults, 2006
Transition:
Have you ever felt like you just didn’t belong to particular group of friends or that
life just didn’t seem fair at the moment or during that circumstance? Many of the
characters in the next novel feel like “outsiders” and believe that life isn’t fair to them.
The Outsiders
Hinton, S. E.
Hinton, S. E. The Outsiders. New York, NY: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1965; copyright
renewed, 1995.
Genre: contemporary fiction
Style of Booktalk: Discussion
(Teacher will hold up The Outsiders so students can see the cover of the book.).
The author, S.E. Hinton, was only 16 years old when she wrote this novel. The
story takes place in Oklahoma during the 1960s. Ponyboy (age 14), Soda (age 16), and
Darrel (Darry) (age 20) are brothers struggling to cope with the loss of both of their
parents in a fatal car accident. Pony and Soda are allowed to stay under Darry’s
guardianship as long as they all “behave” themselves. At the age of 20, Darry must work
two jobs to provide for his brothers and try to keep the family together. Easy-going
“Sodapop” has dropped out of high school at sixteen and is working at a gas station.
Though there is tension between fourteen-year-old Ponyboy Curtis and Darry, Pony is the
hope of the family. He’s an intelligent student who may have the opportunity to attend
college if he can earn a scholarship. Ponyboy struggles with right and wrong in a society
in which he believes that he is an outsider. Even though Pony's intelligence and love of
books and movies somewhat sets him apart from his brothers and the rest of their gang,
Pony is devoted to them all. A vicious rivalry pits their gang of “greasers,” who live on
the outside and have to watch their back, versus the “socs” (or socials), the wealthy kids
from the west side of town who have money and van get away with almost anything. The
brothers consider their gang members—Steve Randle, Two-Bit Mathews, Dallas
Winston, and Johnny Cade—to be family. All of the members come from dysfunctional
homes and need the gang relationship as a substitute for what is missing in their own
families. When Pony and his friend Johnny befriend two “soc” girls at the movies, things
become more complicated than ever. Tension mounts when Pony and Cherry (a popular
cheerleader) are seen together; deadly violence erupts, changing their lives forever. The
murder gets under Ponyboy’s skin, causing his world to crumble and teaching him that
pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser.
Many of the characters in the novel feel like outsiders and believe that life isn’t
fair to them, but the novel shows that the reality is a matter of perspective. Whether
someone defines himself or herself as an outsider or insider depends on his or her
personal perspective or viewpoint. Life from an outsider’s perspective is the one for
which the novel is named. This “life isn’t fair” theme is prevalent throughout the book
and concerns the issue of inclusion versus exclusion, of fitting in. The idea that life is not
fair is a matter of perspective.
The Outsiders has won several awards such as:
New York Herald Tribune Best Teenage Books List, 1967
Chicago Tribune Book World Spring Book Festival Honor Book, 1967
Media and Methods Maxi Award, 1975
ALA Best Young Adult Books, 1975
Massachusetts Children’s Book Award, 1979
Transition:
The final novel I would like to share with you is titled Monster. Don’t worry!
This book is not about monsters hiding in the closet or under the bed! It is about a young
boy who is on trial and is called a “monster” by the opposing lawyer during one of the
court sessions of the trial.
(Teacher would hold up Monster so students can see the cover of the book.).
Monster
Myers, Walter Dean
Myers, Walter Dean. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Style of Booktalk: Excerpt
The theme of this novel is the question of guilt or innocence: Do we think
sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon is guilty or innocent? We have been given pretty much
all of the evidence that the jury is considering (plus a little more conveyed by his journal
writing) – so if we were on the jury, how would we judge? The book is written as a
screenplay.
Steve seems to accept the prosecutor’s characterization when he names his film,
“Monster,” and again when he writes the word over and over on his scratch pad, until his
lawyer makes him stop and tells him, “You have to believe in yourself if we’re going to
convince a jury that you’re innocent.” (p. 24)
“The best time to cry is at night, when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up
and screaming for help. That way even if you sniffle a little they won’t hear you. If
anybody knows that you are crying, they’ll start talking about it and soon it’ll be your
turn to get beat up when the lights go out.” (p. 1)
“If your life outside was real, then everything in here is just the opposite. We sleep with
strangers, wake up with strangers, and go to the bathroom in front of strangers. They're
strangers but they still find reasons to hurt each other.” (p. 3)
In his journal, Steve writes: “I want to look like a good person. I want to feel like I’m a
good person because I believe I am. But being in here with these guys makes it hard to
think about yourself as being different. We look about the same, and even though I’m
younger than they are, it’s hard not to notice that we are all pretty young.” (p. 62)
“I knew she (my mother) felt that I didn’t do anything wrong. It was me who wasn’t sure.
It was me who lay on the cot wondering if I was fooling myself.” (p. 148)
“I am so scared. My heart is beating like crazy and I am having trouble breathing. The
trouble I’m in keeps looking bigger and bigger. I’m overwhelmed by it. It’s crushing
me.” (p. 202)
“Last night I was afraid to go to sleep. It was as if closing my eyes was going to cause
me to die. There is nothing more to do. There are no more arguments to make. Now I
understand why so many of the guys who have been through it before, who have been
away at prison, keep talking about appeals. They want to continue the argument, and the
system has said that it is over.” (p. 269)
Monster has also won several awards and acclaims such as:
2000-Michael L. Printz Award
2000-Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book
1999-National Book Award Finalist
1999-Boston Globe-Horn Book Fiction Honor Book
2000-Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
2000-Edgar Allan Poe Award Nominee
2000-ALA Best Book for Young Adults
2000-ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers
1999-Books for the Teen Age (New York Public Library)
1999-Notable Children’s Book, The New York Times
Conculsion:
I hope you have enjoyed the booktalk session today. All of the books we learned
about today are available here in your library. I have also given Mrs. Thornton a copy of
some other books that deal with the theme of criminal elements. Before we finish, I am
going to give you a copy of the Student Evaluation Form I mentioned at the beginning of
the presentation. Once everyone receives a form, I will explain to you how to fill it out.
You actually get to give me grade, like your teacher gives you a grade in your class at
school. (I will explain how to fill out the forms.) Are there any questions before you
begin? Once you are finished, please place the forms on the counter at the circulation
desk. Thank you again for being such an excellent group today. I hope you enjoy
reading the books we discussed today and even check out the additional books on the list
I left with Mrs. Thornton. Have a great day!
Additional Books on this topic:
Brooks, Kevin. Martyn Pig. 2003. Scholastic, paper, $6.99. (0-439-50752-9).
Cormier, Robert. Rag and Bone Shop. 2003. Laurel Leaf, paper, $6.50. (0-440-22971-5).
Ewing, Lynne. Drive-By. 1998. HarperCollins, paper, $4.95. (0-06-440649-0).
Foon, Dennis. Skud. 2004. Groundwood, paper, $6.95. (0-88899-549-0).
Jacobs, Thomas A. They Broke the Law, You Be the Judge: true cases of teen crime. 2003. Free Spirit,
paper, $15.95. (1-57542-134-8).
Kyi, Tanya Lloyd. Truth. 2003. Orca Soundings, paper, $7.95. (1-55143-265-X).
McClintock, Norah. Snitch. 2005. Orca Books, paper, $7.95. (1-55143-484-9).
Picoult, Jodi. The Pact: A Love Story. 1998. Harper Trade, paper, $14.00. (0-688-17052-8).
Sachar, Louis. Holes. 2003. Random House, paper, $6.50. (0-440-41946-8).
Shakur, Sanyika. Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member. 2004. Grove Press, paper,
$14.00. (0-8021-4144-7).
Shepard, Jim. Project X: A Novel. 2005. Vintage, paper, $12.00. (1-4000-3348-9).
Sikes, Gini. 8 Ball Chicks: A Year in the Violent World of Girl Gangsters. 1998. Anchor, paper,
$14.95. (0-385-47432-6).
Strasser, Todd. Give A Boy A Gun. 2000. Simon & Schuster, paper, $5.99. (0-689-84893-5).