Week of April 14

Fiction Book of the Week:

El Deafo by Cece Bell

Lexile- 925-1185

About this book: 

In general it is hard to make friends but imagine having a giant hearing aid strapped to your chest?  Her one desire is to have a friend but she feels this will never happen with her hearing aid.  Then she realizes her Phonic Ear is like having a super power!  She can hear things she is not supposed to like what the teachers are saying in the teacher's lounge! She becomes a superhero at the school- El Deafo-Listerner fo All but will this new power get her a true good friend? Read and find out!

Why read this book?

This is a graphic novel memoir of Cece Bell's hearing loss when she was young and shows how she took a perceived weakness and turned it into a strength.  As the book teaches us- maybe our differences are our super powers.  

Non-Fiction Book of the Week

Above the Dreamless Dead: World War I Poetry and Comics

edited by Chris Duffy

Lexile 925-1185

Summary:  World War I was the first modern war and terrible.  Three million English men were killed - along all class lines- alone.  From this terrible war came the Trench Poets that wrote about the horrors and fear and loss of this war.  Various graphic artists put the famous poets (Wilfred Own, Robert Graves, Thomas Hardy) to stark black and white graphics.  

Why you should read this book?  The hundred anniversary of the Great War is upon us.  It was the war also known as "The war to end all wars" and "the war to make the world safe for democracy" and in hind sight we know this not to be true, sadly.  What feels like an endless state of war, these Trench Poets and the graphic artists strip away any romantic or noble idea of war.  They remind us of the terrible human cost of war and the nightmarish effects on the young men (and now women and men) that come home and live with the memories of death and suffering.