Jordan Sonnenblick Hits the Big Time!

It's that time of year.

High schools and middle schools will be back in session soon. So of course this means the procrastinators (you know who you are) are scrambling to purchase their required summer reading books.

And then read them in a week or less...


What's different about this year's summer reading rack at the bookstore where I work?

Two words: Jordan Sonnenblick.

You know an author has really succeeded when one of his books is now required reading, cozying up to the likes of Jerry Spinelli, J.D. Salinger, John Steinbeck, Erich Maria Remarque, and Upton Sinclair. Let's take a closer look at that, eh?


So congrats to Jordan for making it big. It's well-deserved. Notes From the Midnight Driver is funny and touching, with a depth rarely found in contemporary YA fiction. Nobody else (with the exception of Jerry Spinelli) writes teen boy voices as authentically as Jordan Sonnenblick. I've read all of his books (and reviewed Zen and the Art of Faking it for Booksense in 2007). I laughed and cried through them all.


What's YOUR favorite Jordan Sonnenblick novel? (What?!? What do you mean you haven't read any? Get busy!)

And what contemporary author do YOU think deserves to be required summer reading?

Should kids read what they want in school?

I was going to write about something else entirely today, but then a co-worker (thanks, Julia) alerted me to this article in the New York Times. This is just too important to let pass.

It seems that some teachers are now experimenting with letting their students choose what they want to read for class, instead of the entire class reading and discussing, say, To Kill A Mockingbird. While you may have dreadful memories of boring classics thrust upon you by teachers who taught the same lesson plan year after year after year, there is something to be said for having a common culture. If kids aren't exposed to these classics before they graduate, they may never read them. And if they never read Harper Lee or Mark Twain or Charles Dickens or John Steinbeck, then references we used to think were understood by all will no longer mean anything.

This hit home when I finished reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird this morning. In a chapter about capturing ideas on index cards and then starting to think like a writer, she says that thoughts or images "will step out of the shadows like Boo Radley and make you catch your breath..."

Now, if I had never read To Kill A Mockingbird I would have no idea what she's talking about there on page 136.

What do you think? Should kids get to choose what they want to read in middle school or high school, even if it's Captain Underpants or Twilight? Is it better to let students read what they want, just to get them reading? Or should they all be required to read certain books?