Requirements

The Color of Static
By Charles Allen Watson

Chapter One: Red

Tap-tap. Chip-chip.

Brisk out there, like the onset of January, but just October the thirty-first. Where was that coming from? Which window was it at? To the east, the south, or to the west, there were eight possibilities. No windows to the north, at least not visible, just the walls in between, walls that protect him from the winter’s wind.

T-t-tap.

Jefrey Cosmo listened again through the banter of the college radio jocks rapping on about college football before they segued to news form the NBA. Yes, he could have changed the station to a different ambience. So much abrasive cacophony, so much distraction. Jefrey only wanted to read that novel and write that short piece.

“Tonight the Bucks are up against the ’Sixers. Who cares!” they jokingly agreed. It was, after all, just week two of the season and so little to talk about.

Wisdom.

He was shooting for the W but there was still that tapping and rapping for his attention.  Which window … the dining room? No. An enclosed porch with storm windows beyond a sliding glass door would contain such flutter.

Tt-Tt-Tt tap.

It reminded him of that time a few years back when something with screechy claws was caught above the chimney flu of that fireplace with the calico Midwestern river rock, cemented with black mortar. Was it a bat that time? Jefrey’s imagination ran and what was going to come out of that blackness when Mr. Cosmo pulled the release to set it free with its scratching and scuffling claws against steel. Bam bam bam! That impressionable fluttering and rustling about. Little Jefrey was the first of the Cosmos to view with fascination this unfolding drama of a choking swallow caught in a chimney that flew about the living room in frightened excitement. Free! Free! But not really free, as the black bird dusted the white plastered ceiling with ash prints like angel wings. It still had to find its way to the open glass door.

Jefrey Cosmo thought to himself and remembered that the reading room had a giant picture window. But who or what would rap at a picture window when there are many doors and panes. Maybe someone was waiting at the front door? Maybe a messenger from UPS, FedEx, or trick or treat for UNICEF…

High wind means high pressure, it felt like January coming on. He refused to go outside with so much reading ahead. To open the door and let the Canadian blast inside would have been cruel.

Like an ice pick on glass, tap, tap, tapping, the rap beckoned an investigation.

The mid-day shone low without a living creature apparent through the panes of glass. Just the green grass and the last of the yellow leaves with the towering red pin oak that invited the kiss of the sun in an autumn intonation like the skin of an anjou pear.

From the back yard to the west that separated house from hollow, the rap assuredly came from the door’s windowpane. Jefrey could not leave this to mystery. He would have to look out the door to the west to the place where the finches and the hummingbirds met in the glow of May. Will the answer be there, he thought.

Something about that frigid October day… what was tapping—a tree branch, the cold razor-sharp fingernail of a smiling demon?  It was waiting to startle him in deep breath.  Who is it? What does it want?

Chipchip. Tt-Tt-tap.

Crazy events had occurred in the yard in past months. Two black dogs had appeared on a couple different nights, side by side in the still of a dense fog or the chill of a February night, when the snow crunches with petrified moisture, like bookends to mark the change of winter season, like the mice who leave the fields and the spilt yield for garages, woodpiles, or the protective laughter of gathered leaves.

Thaw. Freeze. Thaw. Freeze. Breathe.

Those were not black labs. Maybe coyotes or a couple of wolves for his imagination. They were, Jefrey Cosmo was sure, wild beasts capable of ripping apart the downspout extension in pursuit of a frightened mouse or rabbit. And that’s all they wanted—to catch, to gnash, to toss in frenzy in a nocturnal celebration or ritual. And they would surely need bigger kill so they would come back; but not in Halloween’s daylight. They would prefer to be unseen. Besides, Jefrey was sure that this was just imagination, though, for even wild dogs are just as scared of humans as humans are to them.

A couple of years back, Jefrey’s father had passed away with and a stone remains in his honor: Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.

Back in June, a mysterious shape had soaked into the stone almost overnight, resembling a figure that reminded Jefrey of his father. It remained like a stain until the next rain, only to wash away and return as a light September moss.

The back hollow had grown into a sanctuary of sorts, groomed and accentuated with other stones and overgrown rose arbor.

Tap-tap-tap.

Today. Now. Daylight. Halloween. He heard it again, always the same. At the back window to the place where the wild black dogs pass and the ghost of his father lives Like a breath in the fog sometimes. That day the sun shone. Would it be a raven? There was no one around, just the jabbering voices on the radio, talking, begging for his attention.

Mr. Cosmo had an lifelong interest in the St. Louis Cardinals, particularly on the AM radio. Hours spent listening to the Red Birds seemed to keep many car trips close to home. He liked any game really, back in those days. And so did Jefrey Cosmo at one point after his Dodgers phase. They were his favorite team for many years. They didn’t have to be, they just were. So many teams to follow with idolatry, if you believe in that sort of thing … idolatry.

Jefrey Cosmo remembered when his father had passed, how he imagined a thousand cardinals flying somewhere with names like Musial, Brock, Pujols, Ozzie Smith, Hrabosky, or Dizzy Dean.  His father knew them all. His father also reminded him, though, about radio sports commentators. Sometimes they make things up.

Even as a ghost, his father would always have Jefrey’s back, as given as trigonometry. He will always be there for me. In fact. In spirit. Like the trust in the passing seasons. His father was playful and innocently bright, the kind of fellow that didn’t need to smother others for his own power. Father, the one who raised children.

It was broad Halloween daylight. Chilled green and brown textured on the exterior of the pane, this other world calling him bound by his reading books and spiral notebook paper.

In carpeted silence, Jefrey Cosmo tiptoed down the steps to the landing that led down to the lower level. Silently, in his brown comfy socks like a cat, he peered to either side of the back door window. Just on the other side of the doorknob, sparkling his imagination, this exterior entity going the distance with nature’s percussion clamoring for his attention.

Tap tap. Through the window on the door, and using his preparedness learned from basketball, Jefrey first looked out of his left peripheral, then to his right, knowing that if whatever it is should see him, the results will certainly be…

The talking face of that animal with its furrowed brow through the glass pane. So angry and so cold and he had stopped to tell Jefrey Cosmo so. He wanted in, but by God that was just not an option, especially on All Hallow’s Eve. With quick glance and playful sneer, against the wind it held on to the weathered and stained deck rail.

Their eyes met and they shared that moment, that irony, and that playful defeat. And off that red bird flew to yonder fir.

Further reflection for the course

Who is me as a reader?

While his father was busy in the evenings with his own post-graduate studies, it was Charlie’s mother, brothers, and sisters who coached me into reading fluency at an early age with the P.D. Eastman, Dr. Seuss, and I Can Read series books. He still owns some of them. By kindergarten, he partly remembers this, he read to his class on occasion. He remembers it in a dreamy sort of way, but it happened, just like the time his classmate Stephanie barfed from too much from too much drinking fountain, or so the class was told.

His morning half-day kindergarten teacher lived two doors down from him and it surely had its perks. As a teacher, Mrs. Smith reminded him of Alice from the Brady Bunch with her caring attitude, generosity, and articulation. There may have been another student or even a few of them that read. That part is also unclear and dreamy, like clapping the chalk dust from the erasers against an old oak or maple at Grant Elementary.

In first grade, he had a separate two-person advanced reading group with a girl named Kathy would become Kathleen because there so many Kathys back then. Somehow their teacher directed the whole class with differentiated instruction solo—without an associate—for she had proven tried and true methods. Gentle and authoritative; that was first grade.

In fourth grade, he was introduced to what IS talented and gifted. The things they created—the logic puzzles, the story telling; a bound publication of legends, tall tales, and paranormal research for each of the few dozen kids as a keepsake; the Amtrak trip to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. They met every Wednesday afternoon for most of the school year, or so it seemed, ages ten through twelve and part of a productive subculture at McKinley Elementary and the district’s elementary level. This association gave him interested access to afterschool chess club and other wonderment of what to do with his post-school time.

…

Extra curricular activities—what do they mean to us? They must be holistic. Within the school day: basketball, band, newspaper! Those three ideals that I still love have supplied me with a lifetime of leadership opportunities. The rudiments, self-discipline, rules, fair play… What is libel and slander? How would I even have known or cared?

This interest naturally led to being editor of the high school newspaper in a new town in a different state as I moved into junior year. It also taught me the value of mentorship to skill building. One regret that I have from high school is that I opted out of upper level literature courses for more intensive study in journalism and composition. I was saving that experience for my B.A. and higher education when I can enjoy it daily and passionately and read the valuable sources and tomes in a new brighter light, a beacon to guide young people for all of my todays and tomorrows to come; to share my past and see it as annotation for the course, that my knowledge is a useful paraphrase and relevant to aid in common understanding and articulation. What I see is not exactly what you see and I want to hear more about what you see because I know what I have seen but not what I will see. What do you read; what do you see?

Always a copyeditor for style and content, my love of newspapers began with my father and from being the third newspaper carrier of as many boys in the family. My appreciation for journalism that is public relations derived versus the original reporter driven content is purely refined.

During a period in the mid 1990s when I was a magazine reader and dreamer with an attachment to WIRED for its design and innovative profiles, I was also working for a busy advertisement agency with intense creative energy—different from a classroom—and sought literature that supported my work habits.

Just after the turn of the Century, I was working in Duluth, Minnesota, as a production manager for a few years while my oldest child was just a baby. The printed page, the weekly challenge of putting the paper together, bonded to the job, I loved it, lived it, and worked with some amazing people for a measly little wage! It just might have been the best job I ever had, the dream had come true. That and the dot com had busted, and being so far off the grid, I didn’t realize the effect this would have on print as we know it, reading the daily newspaper as we know it—magazines, inserts—the whole bit. Print media was sinking. Although I don’t have time for magazines lately, I still digest regular newspaper stories whether local school related or just the facts from the New York Times online. And I have an eye for the free alternative weekly. I seek out music publications from time to time to embrace a connection to jazz and other musical forms and their connection to historical American non-fiction.   Lately, it is a struggle to find time for all of this.

Many are the classes I have taken on the road to teaching accreditation. Children’s Literature with its picture books and lively typesetting; to journalism and British authors, during which I had a good reading of Dickens’ Canterbury Tales and pastoral poetry transcendentalist thought; works from Edgar Allen Poe are always welcome, and any reinforcement through practicum hours served in the schools.

In 2013 I took American Literature through the Civil War and it reminded me of the legacy of Benjamin Franklin and other journalists and editors who added so much to the literary landscape in early print. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman produced with integrity and introduced transcendentalism to a country experiencing its westward expansion and suffrage movements. What does this experience mean to me as a life student of literature? Just fine, anytime.   Mankind ponder this exploding thought on us as creative people or reflect on the dawn of photography as recited via Whitman’s imagination.

Four years ago, I read the “A Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka in a required writing course towards my teaching accreditation. At that time my vocabulary for favorite authors was limited. But I liked the “A Hunger Artist” for its character suffering through rebirth well enough that I was willing to pursue more study of Kafka adventures during a semester in which my father passed away and finished his suffering. Kafka suffered too. The timing was actually pretty good. I hated Metamorphosis about that stupid cockroach and its grotesque adventures. It really made me sick. I addressed that, “Hunger Artist”, “The Great Wall of China”, and “Report for an Academy” for senior thesis. In finishing this study, I wished I had studied James Joyce or Samuel Beckett and the start of post-modern.

In the spring of 2014 I took a few credits of independent study of James Joyce’s Ulysses with expert guidance from Kevin Farrell, PhD. Unlike the study of Kafka during which there was less academic help but more peer review and openness to interpretation, Joyce’s language and style begs a critical analysis. I look forward to reading that book again, simply for the enjoyment. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is another piece, and having vicariously met this literary character Stephen Dedalus a few times in life, I would recommend this novel with glee to the right young person.

A day spent reading philosophical works is a day very well spent. Consider aesthetic ideals; consider them without graphic images; consider them as reflections of your existence! Do you see you? Do you know what this means?

One year before I student teach and to prepare in earnest the methods of the schoolmaster, I have read some excellent pieces through a course in adolescent literature (YA). Some of the best books in contemporary literature I have ever read was for this course. Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, John Green and The Fault in Our Stars, plus parables from John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and Gary Paulsen. My list of read novels at the end of the course looked very little like the list going into the course. The challenge of a secondary English education student, I found, is keeping a brief and formulaic balance for the reflection papers but I wanting the experience and joy of reading that novel to be memorable.

One of my favorite contemporary authors is Graham Joyce. I had read The Silent Land as a new release two primary characters in simplicity and recommended it to a few different people thinking it was the greatest story I had ever read. He also wrote the Tooth Fairy, and Indigo about some dark and believable elements of the human psyche. One of the greatest modern memoirs of short stories that I have read is Freight by Mel Bosworth and its vignettes that resonate with my life experience.

When I began college for the first time, I struggled with reading and finding meaning in courses such as Western Civilization and the introduction to philosophy. I hadn’t taken in depth American and world literature courses in high school and then I was thrust into readings about old places in Europe. I was still hung up on editing. The American authors of the romantic period in our nation’s history, the stuff I need to brush up on for the Praxis exam, is because I didn’t take those lit courses in high school when I was hell bent on an idealistic working life as a writer and editor, not seeing the value in reading literature as writing! At that time in my life I was uncertain about how I most wanted to use my reading and writing experience. I envisioned myself as a professor more than a journalist, or an essayist over an English teacher. Thus, I did not go to a school for journalism but worked for the university’s media as a production assistant and minored in advertising. In this way, I built my skills in print media and I can credit my undergraduate advisor from twenty-five years ago with giving me the proper guidance in seeking a first career.

To read is to write. We connect the symbols of eloquence and reflect so we can believe what we see, prove it as truth, or usher it as fiction and possibilities. We are science. We are knowledge. We are humans with a boundless group intellect for discussion that we can’t take it with us but can only pass on. Just yesterday, my youngest child asked me, philosophically of course, Why do we have words? My basic answer will always be so we can record our thoughts and ideas for heritage as a record of our existence. I doubt that I would ever have considered becoming a teacher if at first I weren’t a father.

If not from reading literature and opening our minds to new experience no matter how vicarious, then where does poetry come from?

With more than a little help

Friends over fantasy

What you have to offer
and what I can declare.
There is something greater
around the next turn–
something that we built
something that we share.
We shall never start over for
this foundation sits on care.

her : OS / Y

Futuristic, diagnostic, Scarlettistic
and genuinely altruistic.

It reads and listens,
an unsightly beauty, exquisitely unseen.
A virtual stay-puff creature–
who knew, but what’s with the high pants?

Submission to fashion
and cool sets
dans un quasi feng shui?

Wearing that ear device
for the high maintenance OS
to honor its emotions, its impatience,
an investment like coin-operated symposium.

Don your glasses, your mustache
for the program
and its random
silly spectacles.

Date that OS,
conquer those real emotions,
ITs emotions,
Her emotions.

Sell thy soul
in a feast with thy system.
Duped or dumped,
she loved the philosopher anyway.

31 A 2014 best seller

Reading Log 31: All The Light We Cannot See
by Anthony Doerr

Author Doerr spends a great deal describing the meticulous nature of the girl’s father, M. Daniel LeBlanc, the locksmith for the history museum in Paris in the 1930s. He creates townscapes, scaled reconstructions of their neighborhood so his sight-impaired daughter, Marie-Laure can see and know where she is going if she were to be alone. As locksmith, the father knows the value of all the pieces in the museum, including the fist-sized opal in the secure collection from around the world. The Nazis want this jewel.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Werner Pfennig lives like an orphan with his sister at their aunt’s. They lost their father to the coalmines of Essen. The boy has a gift for electricity and radio frequency and is faced with the option of going to Nazi training camp, disguised as a German military school, or pursue a working life in the heat and hell of the coal mine. To use his gifts or not to? Either way, he will be supporting the war effort.

As Germany invades France, M. and Mlle. LeBlanc must get out of Paris as quickly as possible and knowing how many fake opals there are, he leaves with the real one. Of course, the Nazi’s will be looking for this missing jewel once they sort out its significance and phony replacement.

As the school, the boy trains with a master to transmit at longer range, knowing that he can’t join the brigade without sacrificing his virtues, he begins to fake it after witnessing his friend’s near death from hazing, because he was smart, weak, and a little Jewish looking.

This novel gives us first hand realistic story with many perspectives of people of all ages in the historical context of World War II, with an updated an accessible American narrative.

Parts of this account of a personal story of escape and counter-intelligence could be used as supplemental reading in units with a world history context. Teenagers from opposite sides during World War II see beyond conflict to find common ground. The novel also reminds us through fresh perspective of the total costs associated with war.

Doerr, Anthony. All The Light We Cannot See. 2014. Scribner. New York, New York. 531 pages.

30 Timely YA novel

Reading Log 30: Dirt Bikes, Drones, And Other Ways To Fly
by Conrad Wesselhoeft

I don’t play video games. I do like dirt bikes. I don’t philosophically agree with surreal video games like Drone Pilot and what they imply. But I do know that for some, the armed services are a way to complete an education and gain further training at what a young person might be good at. This book gives a young man that opportunity to work for the government in a drone program; to manage something that he is good at no matter what risks he might encounter.   For dirt bike dare devil Arlo Santiago who lost his mother, has a hard drinking father, an ill sister, and a childhood friend who holds him back, this tale is his opportunity to escape the cycle of mediocrity in New Mexico.

I was talking with an English teacher the other day and she was saying that it is hard to find YA literature for boys. And I agreed because this book is why. Too often for myriad reasons, boys are seriously drawn to video games of action and shooting, stunts and driving. And it’s a part of the war culture.

The boy has his life burdens stacked on his shoulders. Miraculously, mastering video games and dirt biking allows him to establish free will.

Wesselhoeft, Conrad. Dirt Bikes, Drones, And Other Ways To Fly. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing. 2014. 341 pages.

29 The subculture of cutters

Reading Log 29: Kiss Of Broken Glass
by Madeleine Kuderick

A journal format starts the book Tuesday 3:22 p.m. Kenna Keagan is age 15 and has been Baker Acted and must spend time at the psyche ward at Adler Boyce Pediatric Stabilization Facility for 72 hours. The ward is like a kindergarten classroom, not a jail with bars. Avery is her older sister and her doctorly type father is deceased. Sean is little brother. Dad is clueless. Guidance counselor is phony. Donya with purple Mohawk is her roommate at the ward in this novel of the anxiety of a cutter. I’m not embarrassed to talk about it, because everybody’s cutting at my school (22). She has checkerboard ankles (a delicate crosshatch) Girls share their methods and best lies, Sisters of the Broken Glass (23)

The allure, the risk of cutting, and being Baker Aced.

The click, click, click; slash, slash, slash; tick, tick, tick

Skylar is the robin’s chick (27) metaphor, the one who gets away from her for cutting herself at the ward and the two can’t be friends. But little robin shows her something—a Sharpied butterly.

First person complete sentences in a poetic stanza format. Little jags, like a series of cuts. Kenna hides a blade in the battery compartment of her cell phone that she has lost access to. (They take the blade out of the compartment and give it back when she is released so there are no secrets).

Then Kenna meets Jaggernaut Mancuzzi, the older boy with scar above his lip. They aren’t allowed within a hulahoops distance of each other if they were to be sitting together at the psych ward. But he does kiss her tiny ankle wounds. Chase Grayson (the boy she likes on the outside).

Skylar writes a poem for Kenna about how once you lose your dreams, forget how to fly (51) Donya wears a bracelet with suicide watch underneath.) Kenna resorts to drawing. Like the paper is holding something bigger than itself. The same way an acorn holds a full grown oak tree inside its tiny shell. (58)

My cuts are so much prettier, thin as spider silk. Laced around my wrists like bracelets. Heal and fade from rubies, to ripples, to smooth opal skin (59)

Rennie, her friend from sixth grade and leader of the sisters of the Broken Glass

Sensation lasts for ten minutes, then guilt

Circles versus triangles, the strongest shapes, honest versus ready to shatter

Tap tap tap

A copycatter, rebel without a cause, did it to fit in

Slice slice slice

The auful truth of having more scars than friends. Lying, sometimes feels more natural than the truth.

937 things to do instead of cutting.

Overcoming obsessive activities

Finding something else to do, like

A place even more chicken wire in the window glass than here. (164)

It hurts to hug

Prayer: but I don’t feel like a temple. I feel like a shack (173).

Dreams, the horse

She learns to draw hands: what would an art teacher say?  The ritual: She carves “Sean” next to the butterfly and feels calm, without the guilt.

Resources in back about people with struggling with self-harm.

Vocabulary:

The can’t cradle fizzled like a spent candlewick

bandulus

Atolla jellyfish, light in the darkest places (her little brother)

Coleus plant

ginormous

Ekphrastic (poem) sounds like a hairball that the cat coughed up

So we can faff around all day

Kickflips

Ollies

caspers

Kuderick, Madeleine. Kiss of Broken Glass. 2014. HarperTeen, HarperCollins Publishers. 201 pages.

28 This book was very Russian

Reading Log 28: Once Upon A Time In The North
by Philip Pullman

Lee Scorseby is a ballooning aeronaut for hire. He lands in Novy Odese, a Arctic circle place smelling of various oils place and feels turn of the Twentieth Century. The weapon of choice is a revolver.

Larsen Manganese is the big rich mining company that also has political power.

Lee spends time with the customs officer and Oscar Sigurdsson (poet and journalist).

The ivory colored Bears are part of the workforce talented in metalworking, yet ostracized by this company’s leader.

Except for the bears, I wasn’t crazy about this book labeled Fantasy. This might be why I don’t read about Harry Potter. “… the fact is that nowadays they’re merely parasites, the dogs of a dying race… “ (11) O.S.

Van Breda is the red-haired bastard, a Dutchman. Hester is a bartender, I think, who goes with Scorseby in balloon gondola at the epic finish of this short novel.

Book contains wood cut illustrations, artwork of Cognac labels, procedure for landing a balloon (ripped from aerial navigation tome). This book is for the little engineer, with interest in classic literature and allegory, far away places, and ethnicity. The old world set in a new fiction with polar bears. Business. Economics.

The are daemons of all types, little Russian symbols that people wear on their attire like some little emblem describing their inner spirit.

Miss Lund

Election, town politics

Mikhail Vasiliev is an economist who represents the security arm of Larsen Manganese

Customs officers

Butterfly daemon

Poliakov with a hawk daemon

Politician, speech on no friendship with the bears.

*Is this an allegory?

The poet leads Mr. Scoresby about, introducing him to

Scorseby is from Texas

Rattlesnake daemon

Mr. Morton-McConville

Lee carries a revolver (35)

Pierrre McConville, is hired killer more than twenty murders to his name

Lee had won his balloon in a poker game. Honor, doing the right thing

He turned up into the town. The blue sky of morning had gone, and a bitter wind was brining gray clouds scudding across from the north. (18)

It was a blustery morning, with little dashes of rain in between sunshine, an big white clouds hurrying across a brilliant blue sky. (43)

van Breda, who is he?

Bear one = York Burningson

Mr. Aagaard

Harbor Master has a cat daemon

Gun fight—The manganese company has armed workers

This is what the election was about: “On one hand there are the properly constitutional civil institutions such as the Customs and Revenue Board, and on the other the uncontrolled power of the large private companies such as Larsen Manganese, which are dominating public life, though they are not subject to any form of democratic sanction.” (87–88) Lt. Haugland from the Customs and Revenue Board

“There’s a good east wind.” (88) Where are we?

Iorek (York) Byrnisom is like a medic, brings in some healing grasses (blood moss) for Lee’s wounds.

Personification: the bear, and the balloon (shivering with impatience to be free of its tether and take to the sky) (93)

Lee’s daemon is an Arctic hare

Lee thought that the bear’s high regard would be a thing worth having (95).

Lee, Hester, and Iorek coast away in the balloon’s gondola. Delightful book without chapters, a tale.

 

Vocabulary:

binnacle of the gondola

Daemon

glum looking oratory

various effluvia from all of them (refineries)

placating

quay

Arbaric cranes

A picture of high-minded young woman of unyielding rectitude and severity

gendarmes

retired to Chicagoa

drawn into the maelstrom of politics

bollard

apoplexy

bill of flading (48)

lazaret

derrick

A fusillade of shots rang out

serpent daemon

and sullenly followed him away

Pullman, Philip. Once Upon A Time In The North. 2008. Random House Children’s Books. New York, New York. 96 pages.

27 Ninja training

Reading Log 27: The Way
by Joseph Bruchac

Cody thinks he’s a ninja. He bleeds from his pectorals wanting the attention of a girl. He saves his classmates and they renamed the school Cody LeBeau High. Of course this is fantasy, or is it?

Mom works at the Koacook tribe casino, the fourth most profitable Indian casino in North America. Dad is a longhaul truck driver for a lettuce company. He pulls a trailer around for a living. People still die young in his family, since before people ate all of this sugar and white bread. (12) Mom’s wisdom form working at the casino echoes with As soon as you stop feeding the machine, it’ll pay off for someone else. (13) The school has new buses because of the casino revenue. That is progress.

Cody is only 5 foot 4 with size eleven shoes. Hey, kid, I gotta take a trip. Can I borrow one of your canoes? (16) In his mind, Cody is master of the ancient arts and probably has been since the seventh grade, 3TPA. (three trailer parks ago). His teacher Ms. Taker says Cody has a beautiful voice to get him to speak up. Stump is the object of severe bullying in this story and some of it revolves around Jeff Chahna, the jock who knows martial arts and will compete with Cody, who only feels at home in the library even though it has no books on martial arts. Mrs. Masters, the librarian, helps him out, and directs him to eastern world thought.

Li Po becomes Cody’s favorite writer. Mr. Li ran a sword through quite a number of people. Wei Hao, Cody’s best friend. Mrs. Masters reminds him that each story seems to start in one of two ways: someone goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town and changes everything. Mom’s half-brother Uncle John visits: John Awassos means bear in Koacook. He’s tall and makes their trailer seem even smaller. But, as an Indian, warrior, and martial artist, he will keep to his tent outside the trailer for the next 10 months while he trains for the $120,000 “War by the Shore”. Uncle John cooks with a wok; brings the brown rice. He also had served in Afghanistan, and author Bruchac reminds the reader that many Native Americans serve the country through battle.

Cody doesn’t know how to fill his too-big shoes. Like I said, the perfect recipe for me messing up is for me to really want to succeed. This book is about the value of positive male role models. Uncle John will teach Cody the way, the circle, the integral part of their heritage and blood through the connected circle. (64) But more importantly, Uncle John will show Cody how to teach himself, starting with building a birdhouse from split karate boards and having the right running shoes: New Balance Cross Trainers… just breathe (68).

Seventh direction = eye of the heart. Everything goes back to the earth. Where can anger take you? Don’t just see what you expect to see. See what is really there.

Grey Cook is a tormentor in the book, but also an ally to Stump (Jackson Teeter). They are messaging one day and Cody sees “RTK” and wonders what that means. In suspense, Cody finds himself in the broom closet and spies a bag of weapons. The boys try to open the door, but Cody has it blocked. Eureka!

Officer Hal, works at Long River High School

Terrorist, preparedness, what to do when the gun man comes

Legend of the Master Bear (140) a boy fighting to defend his people

Painting their cheeks red

… leads up to why Grey Cook and Jackson Tecter painted their faces, with war paint

Stump shoots his father

Somewhat happy ending

Gruesome scene in which Stump is left with the grenade after surrendering the pistol

Bravery: “TEENAGER AVERTS SCHOOL MASSACRE” on the News ticker

Stump’s grenade was a dud. Mr. Teeter’s souvenir from his tour of duty was disarmed.

Grey cook to juvie center

Jackson Teeter went to the psychiatric treatment center.

Book for ages 12 and up. Joseph Bruchac has more than 120 books to hi credit.

Vocabulary:

tsunami

sensai

Pendleton blanket

Gold crescent of Kisos, the sun

Abenaki tribe

Sensei

Sifu

pendetta

Papulkweezultozik / clock thing makes much noise, no real use

Capo(u)eira

Northern shaolin

Pencak silout

Judo

Ju-jitsu

Greek myth of Sisyphus

Bruchac, Joseph. 2007. The Way. Darby Creek Publishing, Plain City, OH. 154 pages.

26 Native urban legends

Reading Log 26: Skeleton Man
by Joseph Bruchac

This scary tale is in the first person and centers around sixth grade Molly Brant’s requirement that she live with her-so-called-uncle after her parents mysteriously go missing one Saturday night.

Her Dad had to the best stories, especially the one about the “Skeleton Monster”, a lazy greedy uncle who cooked and ate the skin from his finger. He ate himself to skeleton bones. And then he wanted more.

The bright light to this story is her teacher, Ms. Shabbas, who sings everyday no matter what. Some call her, Ms. Showbiz.

She listens for his footsteps.

The central terror to this story is where are my parents? to a child and what will she do on her own to save them and herself.

Her parents really did disappear after a Saturday night out. She is terrified without the routine of parental noise during their morning habits. On a scary gray day, she sets the afternoon table for the three of them in her life as an only child.

On Monday morning, they’ll be back. Social services rep visits and the woman informs Molly of her Dad’s tragic past. Ms. Shabbas said Molly could stay with her, but Molly meets the uncle with whom she is required by law to live. Molly spends a week of suspense listening to the 36 stairs that he climbed eleven times per day. There are no pictures of any kind in the house. He doesn’t show his face and his bony hands are pale and white. The only night Molly ate the prepared dinner he would offer then leave came through a flashback to the first night. She was afraid of being poisoned. Great Uncle has small TV monitors for surveillance above his computer in his study.   Why does Old Uncle have surveillance?

Kruchac is descriptive with sound: bones, footsteps, the whack-whack! of his bony knuckles. Will this book be nightmare or reality? I guess I’m locked in and safe (20). Why is she locked in? And, is this better than being locked out of home? What will happen?

The narrative speaks in a gentle language, even though terror is mounting. Through dreams, Bruchac introduces the rabbit as hero; one night Molly awakens in a cave and Rabbit calls her “Little Sister” (28). This sets the tone that for Molly in finding school as a place of refuge. In one dream,

Molly whispers “Help me” to her dreams before drifting off. Suspense rising action through the dream and diffuses the terror. Skeleton Man is coming for his niece and Rabbit protects her. Molly is brave. In her dream there is a chase with Rabbit. Is this a dream or not?   Heavy suspense leads to the climax when she crawls under a fence, just like a rabbit. Skeleton Man falls away down the cliff like a bad dream and Dad is there to save her.

Molly goes with father, the old Mohawk way… Trust the little voice that speaks to you. Your heart is speaking. Her dad had taught her about the chess match and called her “Warrior Girl” or “Keeps Herself Awake”.

Counselor Mrs. Rudder starts an intervention with Mr. Wintergreen at child welfare who is stuck in the system and halts investigation. “He locks me in my room at night” (54). Old Uncle says “She’s a very imaginative child.” Shows that there’s no lock on her door, but at night, there is.

When the school day ends, I hang back form the crowd…. To come up with… (89). The letters of the words, all look like strange insects crawling all over the page. (91)

Ingeniously borrowed (took) an electric screwdriver from the school maintenance people when they weren’t looking at the end of the day. She used it to unfasten her bedroom door to find Mom and Dad being held grotesquely captive by Old Uncle in the shed where he goes to work during the day.

This is magnificent story telling, but might be better for ages fifteen and up since this is terror for someone who is twelve. These themes contain heavy devices and elements.

  

Vocabulary

nettles and burdock

fiber optics

Bruchac, Joseph. Skeleton Man. 2001. HarperCollins Children’s Books. New York, New York. 114 pages.

25 The freak show

Reading Log 25: Cirque Du Freak: A Living Nightmare
by Darren Shan

Cirque thrives on foreshadowing like the Goosebumps series. I feel like adult characters we meet will resurface at the freak show, and Darren Shan can boast a couple of dozen titles at this point with a motion picture due. Darren is our storyteller and goes to the Freak Show with his friend Steve Leopard.

My oldest daughter read this from the fantasy genre when she was eleven. With supernatural occurrences, frightening characterization, transformations, poisoning, and chaos in an auditorium, this novel might be scary for young people.

We learn a lot about vampire code: a child cannot become a vampire; Steve has rough home life, a father who is not around, and a mother doesn’t love him. This is his weakness. Luckily, Steve has evil blood. What sort of lunatic actually wants to be a vampire? (108)

Story introduces horror devices: garlic, silver bullets, knives to the heart, a beheading; the old vaudeville circus era shows. Why is it so frequently that the English or social studies teacher—the librarian—is often a subject in the YA novel?

Mr. Dalton, who appears to hold the wisdom in this one, becomes the fill-in teacher for history and even math! Surely, he will be a vampire at the Cirque Du Freak? He calls the freak shows just a cruel hoax (16) and cesspits of evil. Mr. Tall, owner of Cirque Du Freak, takes their tickets and eats them. What’s going to happen, this is real suspense.

The show has been touring for 500 years. What is a circus freak? Alexander Ribs, Rhamus Twobellies, Truska, beautiful in her red robes, grows a long blond and straight beard, Hans Hands, a second generation freak, Gertha Teeth, Snake-Rou, Sive and Seersa, the Twisting Twins.

This book teaches how to react after seeing something frightening. Before I could change my mind, I opened the door, slipped through, shut it quickly behind me, and stood in the dark, my heart beating as fast as a mouse’s (97).

Mr. Crepsley is Vur Hurston, a vampire with a fat green purple and red spider named Madame Octa that responds to a flute. The two represent the terror, rising action, and thickening plot. Even with his evil blood, Steve is scared out of wits, then entranced. Darren steals Mr. Crepsley’s spider and trains the spider but of course everything will come crashing down until Steve overcomes his evil streak. The risk arises when letting Steve plays with the spider. Annie breaks his concentration, and Madame Octa bites Steve’s neck leading to paralysis.

Steve is in the hospital in critical condition on life support. Mr. Crepsley returns to rescue the spider, Madam Octa. I knew he was omniscient! He was hiding out for the past few weeks as a vampire would never leave his spider behind. Darren offers to pay for the serum that will save Steven. But vampires are honest: “Pay for it?” he asked slyly. “But you are only a boy. You cannot possibly have enough money to buy the cure” (97).

The ultimatum is that Mr. Crepsley chooses Darren to be his assistant or Steve Leopard dies. Vampires age at 1/10 the rate of humans and half-vampires age at 1/5 the rate of humans. Unlike Steven, Darren has good blood for this exchange. They save Steve with a serum. Darren tries to outwit Mr. C. at the hospital. All that remained of him was his laughter, which echoed through my brain like a witch’s cackling curse. (203)

Darren gains the vigor of a half-vampire. Strength, new talents: hearing, hypnosis. What was Steve’s hospital bill for that extended, life-saving stay? Darren sells his soul to save his friend. And maybe that is the essential question after we are given the parameters by which vampires and half vampires exist. Would you sell your soul for your best friend—any friend? Two people sharing one body: a normal human boy and a savage animal of the night. (219)

Vocabulary:

malformed

academic (obvious)

ventriloquist

telepathy

Shan, Darren. Cirque Du Freak: A Living Nightmare. 2000. Little, Brown and Company. Hachette Book Group. New York, New York. 257 Pages.