Rereads

While at Poly school I reread some books I had really liked as a young adult. Homecoming and Dicey's Song by Cynthia Voigt were just as good as an adult. The story of a family of four, abandonned by their mother in a parking lot, on the way to their grandmothers, a journey they complete by walking over a summer was not popular with my students - they got points for reading AR books, but for all that it was worth tons of points, it was just too long for them.

Eva by Peter Dickinson is an awesome book - a young girl is in an accident and to save her life they somehow transfer her consciuosness into an chimpanzee. She tries to readjust to life in her new body and discovers that she possesses some of the memories of Kelly, the chimp. The entire book is set in a future where there are almost no wild spaces or wild animals left. At the end of the book, Eva is leading a group of chimps into the wild and humans are committing mass suicide. It's a fascinating look into what wilderness means to humanity.

I also read a new book, Toning The Sweep by Angela Johnson. The main character goes on one last trip to visit her grandmother and help her pack up her house, so she can move in with her family in the city.

"I can't imagine Ola knitting me anything. She does send me pamphlets on world hunger and the environment. And she sent me a T-shirt from Jamaica when she went there to a reggae festival. Ola has sent me beads from Africa and incense from India, even a case of olives from Greece 'case she remembered that I hadn't tried them. "You have to try everything if you want to live in this world" is what she always says.'

The story examines the effect on the grandmother and mother of the death of the grandfather, in Alabama in 1964. It's a really good book.