_Dust & Decay_ Book Review

Dust & Decay is the second book in what will be at least a three-book series by Jonathan Maberry.  The novel takes place in zombie-filled, post-apocalyptic America, and follows the adventures Benny Imura, his brother Tom, his girlfriend Nix and their friends.  The group has decided to leave Mountainside, their small community that refuses to look past their meager surroundings towards a better future. Benny’s group wants to build a better future, and so they need to move on.  Their goal is to travel east through the Ruin to find the origin of the jet plane they saw at the end of Rot & Ruin.  Of course, not all goes as planned, and on their journey, they run into some dangerous and disturbing obstacles: zombies who are stronger and faster than any seen before, dead men who did not reanimate as zombies, and the mysterious Preacher Jack.  While going east is a way for all of them to escape their past, Benny and his friends discover that there is still some unfinished business for them close to home.

What I liked most about this novel was Benny.  My only complaint about Rot & Ruin (which I loved!) was that Benny’s attitude towards Tom changed too slowly.  In this novel, there is none of that.  While Benny is still clearly a teenager (his banter with his friend Choang and his relationship drama is testament to that), he has grown more mature and understanding, and was easier for me to read and relate to.  He even challenges Tom’s decision to abandon his post as unofficial sheriff of the Ruin, which is a sign that he really has grown out of his self-absorption.  I enjoyed following him in this novel, and I look forward to seeing how he grows in the future.

The other characters have developed as well.  Lilah, who had been severely isolated for years, comes out of her shell a bit and I would argue that Choang has the strongest character arc in the novel.  Maberry does a wonderful job of creating rich, full characters that endear you to them and make you cheer them on.  The more I get to know these kids, the more I want to know.

If I had to name any gripe I had about the novel, it would be that it clearly is set up to have a sequel.  There are several unanswered questions, and clearly some unaccomplished goals at the end of Dust & Decay.  But really, I’m only complaining because the book left me wanting more – I can’t wait for Flesh & Bone!

Dust & Decay is another captivating novel by Jonathan Maberry. It was published in 2011 by Simon & Schuster (ISBN 978-1-4424-0235-0). It is available through their website for $17.99.

_Rot & Ruin_ Book Review

Fifteen-year-old Benny Imura has to find a job.  He lives in Morningside, a small community somewhere in what used to be California, and when residents turn 15, they must find a job or have their food rations cut.  Benny finds that he doesn’t find any job in town to be worth the time or money, so he reluctantly joins his brother Tom’s business.  Tom is a respected zombie hunter in town, though Benny is much more impressed with two other local hunters, Charlie and Hammer.  He thinks of his brother as a coward, and believes that Charlie and Hammer are tough and strong and, well, cool.  Morningside is, in some ways, a fortress, designed to keep zombies outside in what is called the Big Rot and Ruin.  In Benny’s world, all the dead “reanimate” into zombies and become mindless beings only incited to eat when they are alerted to someone living.  Benny’s first trip out to the Ruin with his brother begins to change his ideas about the world, and that change continues throughout the novel.   Benny learns that the real villains aren’t the mindless zombies (they used to be people, after all, and they have no intent to harm), but rather still-living people who choose to prey on other survivors.

Author Jonathan Maberry uses a few common young adult (YA) literature elements in Rot & Ruin. Benny is facing the challenges of growing up and finding his place in the world.  He has changing ideas about his family.  He is in a complicated romantic situation(because really, what romantic situation at age 15 isn’t complicated?). All of these things together make the book relevant for young adults, while other common motifs in current YA literature – zombies, apocalyptic events, action/adventure – provide an accessible format.

The book opens with a crisis: Benny must find a job or lose some of his food rations.  While most young adults today can’t imagine such a perilous position, Benny’s reaction to the jobs he tries out is a common feeling for young adults: boredom.  Beginning the novel this way lets Maberry show that, while Benny isn’t necessarily in a situation that young adults can relate to, at least Benny himself is relatable.

And Benny’s relationship with Tom is also relatable; while Tom is Benny’s brother, and there is clearly some brotherly tension in their relationship, Tom also functions as Benny’s parent, and Benny fights against his authority like most young adults rebel in some way against their parents.  In Tom, young adults can see both siblings and parents, and through Tom, young adults may begin to see that, while parents may come across as obstinate and strict, there are often reason guiding their words and actions.  My biggest (well, only, really) problem with the novel is actually that Benny is so hesitant to change his opinion of Tom.  Even when he sees proof that the zombies are not the evil beings he believed, he doesn’t completely change his opinion of his brother; he even still speaks of hating him.  It is not until he believes his brother to be dead that a full change is complete.  Maybe it is because I have more than a decade on Benny and now identify more with Tom, but this change in Benny was too slow for me.

Benny’s complicated romantic situation involves his childhood friend, Nix, and a girl whom he has never met, Lilah.  Benny is determined not to like Nix, as he feels that this would complicate their relationship, and his friendships with their other close friends.   These are common young adult situations; as children grow into young adults, they begin to look at the other gender (and in some cases, those of the same gender) in different ways.  Suddenly, they aren’t just playmates – they’re potential partners.  And Lilah is Benny’s version of a celebrity – and we all know how young men are with celebrity women.

Through all these common young-adult situations, Maberry creates a powerful tale that most young readers should be able to relate to on some level.  Rot & Ruin (ISBN 978-1-4424-0233-1) was published by Simon & Schuster in 2010, and is available through their website for $17.99.  It can also be found through most other common booksellers.

_Feed_ Response: my rant against people who think our language is failing

In Feed, Anderson throws you into a dystopian American – where cars fly, everyone lives under a dome, and steak is grown in a field (and not on a cow).  Titus narrates the novel, and this world is normal to him, so it takes a while to realize that things are not alright.  People are getting skin lesions.   There is political unrest aimed towards America.  Nothing can live in the oceans anymore.  And then there is the Feed.  All Americans who can afford it have a computer chip implanted in their brains at birth; not only does this feed take over control of bodily functions, but it also has begun to take the place of communication, entertainment and advertising.  People with the feed can watch shows, chat with each other and play back automatically recorded memories, all inside their heads.

I have to admit, through the entire first half of the novel, I was annoyed.  I was annoyed with Titus, who is self-centered and immature, but more than that, I was annoyed with all the characters’ use of language – all the characters struggle to speak, and when they do, they do so only in fragments, laden with slang and profanity and pauses and “like”s.  But it wasn’t that the language was bad that annoyed me – actually, I was annoyed with the author, M.T. Anderson.  He seemed to be writing the novel based on the assumption that language decays over time, if we let it.  In fact, one of the characters is quoted as saying this: Violet (she’s the love interest of Titus, and the main source of conflict in the book) says her father thinks the language is “being debased” and “is dying” (Anderson, 2002:137).

The thing is, this isn’t how language works.  Language is as innate in humans as blinking or breathing.  It’s a natural process, and it doesn’t need protected or guarded or taught.  It changes and adapts to new situations (in fact, every language is always changing).  Dialects – and everyone speaks one – are varieties of language.  All dialects are governed by rules; rules that are ingrained in us and are logical and complete.  Everyone speaks a dialect, and everyone’s dialect works just like it’s supposed to.

This isn’t just a liberal hippie rant.  It’s supported by facts, by evidence.

I can prove it.

I will show you a well-known language feature from some rural American dialects, one commonly mocked and considered “bad English.”  And I will show you that it is governed by very specific rules, some of which we know are rooted in the history of the language.

A-Prefixing^[1]

In several American dialects, most of which are located in the Appalachian Mountains, there is a dialect feature called a-prefixing, as in He went a-hunting yesterday.  While the feature is fading (as speakers who have it are getting older, and it hasn’t been passed to younger generations), it is still a commonly recognized (and stereotyped) feature.

While this dialect feature is often ridiculed as “bad” or “stupid” English, in fact, it follows three specific grammatical rules.  Unless all these criteria are met, the a-prefix doesn’t appear.  What’s cool about this feature is that it seems to have roots in all English varieties, and as such, it is easy for native English speakers to recognize when the a-prefix should be applied and when it should not.  This makes it an ideal activity for showing that all features of all dialects have rules, even ones we consider bad or wrong.

I’m going to give three lists.  For each number, only one of the a-prefixed words are correct.  Read them aloud and decide which of each sentence pairs sounds better.  When you are done, highlight the line that says “ANSWERS”, and you will see the correct answers.  After each list, I’ll explain the rule.

LIST A: Sentence Pairs for a- Prefixing

1.  a.  A-building is hard work
   b. She was a-building a house
2.  a.  He kept a-running to the store
   b.  The store was a-shocking
3.  a.  They thought a-fishing was easy
   b.  They were a-fishing this morning

Answers: 1)B  2)A  3)B

Did you get them right?  Can you tell what the rule is?  If not, think about parts of speech.  For each of the correct answers, the a-prefix attaches to a verb.

LIST B

1.  a.  They make money by a-building houses
   b.  They make money a-building houses
2.   a.  People destroy the beauty of the mountains through a-littering
   b. People destroy the beauty of the mountains a-littering
3.   a.  People can’t make enough money a-fishing
   b. People can’t make enough money from a-fishing

Answers: 1)B  2)B  3)A

How did you do this time?  Can you name the rule?  Again, this has to do with parts of speech.  The a-prefix cannot attach next to a preposition.  For this rule, we actually know the reason why: at some point in its past, the a-prefix functioned as a preposition, and in English, you can’t have two prepositions next to each other.

LIST C

1.    a.  She was a-discovering a trail
   b. She was a-following a trail
2.    a.  She was a-repeating the chant
   b. She was a-hollering the chant
3.    a.  They were a-figuring the change
   b. They were a-forgetting the change

Answers: 1)B  2)A  3)A
This one is the toughest.  Did you get it?  It has to do with syllables: the a-prefix only attaches to words that have the stress on the first syllable.

So there are three rules for a-prefixing, all of which are embedded deep in the grammar of speakers who have this feature.  While many consider this to be wrong or bad English,  it is actually perfectly grammatical.

Which brings me to this: all language is grammatical.  While prescriptivist grammarians may claim that we need to govern language rules and keep a close eye on our language, lest it decline into incomprehensible babble, that’s simply not how language works.  It will go on, complete and full and grammatical, whether or not we prescribe rules and monitor our speech. Anderson’s admonitions, given through the disjointed speech of his characters, are unfounded, and really, knowing that lessens the blows of the other, more solid critiques on our culture.

Works Cited

Anderson, M.T. (2002). Feed. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.

1 This exercise taken and adapted from the dialect curriculum create by Jeff Reaser and Walt Wolfram of the North Carolina Language and Life Project, here at North Carolina State University’s linguistics program. I had the privilege of working with the NCLLP and both Jeff and Walt as an MA student here at State, and I taught this curriculum at several elementary and middle schools across the state.
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On interconnectivity (and my compartmentalization tendencies)

I first started keeping a personal blog a little more than a year ago.  Well, it’s not a personal blog, really, more of a family blog.  Both my family and my husband’s family live out of state, and when we got married and bought a house here in Raleigh, we wanted our families to be able to keep up with what was going on.  So I started a blog, mainly to share house decorating changes.

I was surprised when I started how different writing for a blog was than any other writing I had done before.  To be honest, it took a while to get used to!  At that point, I already had a pretty substantial collection of blogs I read regularly … and, you know, I teach writing for a living … so it took me a while to figure out why I was so stymied.

When I was little, I never liked to mix my toys (this is related, I promise!).  My Little Mermaid figures could never play with my stuffed animals; Strawberry Shortcake never had Rainbow Brite over for a tea party.  In my head, they were from different worlds – different dimensions, even – and they couldn’t mix.  Call me a toy bigot.  But in my head, it just didn’t work.

My compartmentalization continued into my school years.  I had to have a separate folder for each subject; by the time I got to high school, I was carrying around eight different binders.  When I got my first computer in college, one of the first things I did was create and label folders for each of my classes, and embed them in folders labeled for each semester.  And there was a complete separation of personal and professional; I had two email accounts, and at that point, I was working, and so I divided my closet in two: clothes I wore to work and other clothes.  I even had a separate pair of shoes I only wore to work.

I could go on and on with examples.  It must be genetic, because my brother is worse than I am.  It’s so ingrained that I didn’t realize until months of blogging that that was why I didn’t like the format: everything is so interconnected.  Pictures go with texts, links can go outside my own website, the text is out there and public to be read – even to be found by my coworkers or students.  Yikes!  It’s everything I have avoided for my whole life!

Once I realized my block, though, I actively worked to adapt.  I always teach my students that they need to mold their writing to the expectations of the discipline or genre.  That is a part of writing.  So I took my own advice and tried.  Turns out, I love it!  This is a good example of how far I’ve come.  I created a diagram to show what I was explaining, I inserted a picture from an outside website (with attribution!  I don’t know if it is fair use or not, but I know of quite a few professional bloggers who link from Pinterest, and I know that the Pinterest site tries to keep up with those things and take down the pictures that are copyrighted), and I link to two exterior sites (three if you count the link to the picture).  I also use strikethrough text and all caps for effect, something that is new to blogger me.

A year ago, all of those exterior and visual elements would have bothered me.  As would linking to my personal blog from my professional (err, student) one.  Ok, so that one still bothers me a little, but I think that’s healthy.  Some separation is healthy (I would never, say, friend my current students on Facebook).  I can’t say I’m a savvy blogger (let’s face it, my personal blog only has 20 posts), but I think I’m getting used to the format.

All that to say (and I know I’ve said a lot!), reading about the Radical Change theory (Dresand, 2008)immediately scared me.  Are these the types of texts I’m going to have to teach?! Eek!  But after I took a step back, I realized how beneficial this would be for students.  Having a text that is web-based, non-linear or interactive would not only engage students, it would broaden their technology boundaries.

An aside, and I think I’ve harped on this before – Though we assume today’s students are really tech savvy, that is not what I have found in my classes – students are comfortable with certain types of technology or tech-based communication (Facebook, Twitter, texting), that doesn’t necessarily translate to other types of technology (many of my students come into my classroom not knowing how to double-space a Word document or send a formally worded email to a professor).

And I think graphic novels are a great way to take a step towards more interactive texts while the technology is catching up with the theory (isn’t it usually the other way around?  or is that how technology goes in the world of education?).  I loved Trythall’s story about Hector, the student who had never been interested in English class until she gave him a graphic novel.  If graphic novels get young adults reading – if it gets them engaged with the material – then they are absolutely useful in the classroom.  Especially since graphic novels have come a long way from only superhero comics (though I think there is value in those too!); the Change Project‘s wiki entries for graphic novels with social justice components prove that.

I’ll end on this note (which I’ve ended on before; maybe it’s becoming my blog’s theme?): The book that serves your students the best is the one they should read.

Works Cited

Dresang, E. T. (2008). Radical change revisited: Dynamic digital age books for youth. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 8(3).

Trythall, A. Manuscript.

The Stepchild

Nonfiction has always been my least favorite (step above) genre.  It’s not just reading it, either; I started out as a creative writing concentration in my English major in undergrad (I was a bit misguided: I am certainly no creative writer, no matter how hard I want to be!), and even though it was in my nonfiction class that I met my future husband, that course was my least favorite creative writing class.

I always believed that I didn’t like nonfiction because I usually read as an escape; why would I want to read a “real” story when I could run off into a whole new world?  But after reading Aronson (2003a)’s chapter on biographies, I realized why this might be: I have never read a good biography and not nearly enough good nonfiction more generally.  The conflict between portraying the time and portraying life is a big one (and wouldn’t the conflict be the same for memoirs or autobiographies?), and I think this is what has kept me and, I would imagine, many, many others, from truly loving the (step above) genre.

But I don’t want to pass on my upturned nose to my future students, as I believe that nonfiction is a natural place for students to learn the connectedness of history.  While biographies and memoirs can fall in to the fracturing-of-history trap that Aronson (2003b) talks about in his history chapter, I also think students are more likely to get a holistic view of a time better from creative nonfiction than from a history textbook.   It’s also a natural link between disciplines; linking English and history classes at the middle- and high-school level could be as easy(ish) as giving a nonfiction reading in English that is tied to the period in history they are learning.

And while I’m not sure I buy Aronson (2003c)’s implied demasculinization of society–not knowing how to teach your son to fix a car doesn’t mean that you are less of a man–I do buy that there are different needs for boy readers (and girl readers too, though that’s not the focus here) than what is being published for them.  Nonfiction seems a natural fit.  Writing stories about men, and, if we are to buy Aronson’s physical argument, perhaps men who have achieved physical mastery in some way, would both stand in for the dads who can “no longer [fix a car]” (102) as well as give boys something to read that they actually want to read about.

Speaking of actually wanting to read, the very reason that nonfiction has become the neglected stepchild of YA literature (Aronson, 2003d)–because it is hard to write, because there is so much at stake–is the very reason we should strive to include it in our classrooms.  These types of books give the challenging, human (and, as I said above, hopefully holistic) look at history in a way that our texts and classes right now are now.  The pendulum has swung too far away from a strong, complete (and honest) view of history, and nonfiction would be a good way to get back on track.

Works Cited

Aronson, M. (2003a). “Biography and its perils.”  Beyond the Pale: New essays for a new era (69-72). Maryland & Oxford: The Scarecrow Press.

–. (2003b). “The pursuit of happiness: Does American history matter?”  Beyond the Pale: New essays for a new era (75-83). Maryland & Oxford: The Scarecrow Press.

–. (2003c). “Why adults can’t read boy readers.”  Beyond the Pale: New essays for a new era (99-103). Maryland & Oxford: The Scarecrow Press.

–. (2003d). “‘Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head’: Is the past knowable?”  Beyond the Pale: New essays for a new era (105-115). Maryland & Oxford: The Scarecrow Press.

Promise & Peril

In the world of composition instruction, there have always been ongoing conversations about what our courses are supposed to accomplish.  Is our job simply to teach writing?  What does that mean?  Do we teach the kinds of writing our students will encounter in the university?  Or do we teach business writing, something that will be more useful to them later?

A question that is more applicable to me today, though, is the question of social responsibility; is our course an appropriate place to (try to) craft responsible citizens?  There are many instructors who believe that the composition classroom is a good place to teach civic lessons along with writing.

Personally, I am of two minds when it comes to the civics/literalist divide in composition.  Part of me believes that it is my job to teach students how to write; my current department values academic writing in the composition class, so I focus on the kinds of writing my students will have to do in college.  But the other part sees the opportunity to teach other valuable lessons.  My course is, quite literally, the only universal requirement for all students (as is the case in most universities), so why waste an opportunity to instill good citizenship in our students?

But really, who am I to have that responsibility?  I consider myself a fairly good citizen: I vote in every major election, I contribute to good causes when I can, I recycle more than I throw away.  But those are things that I consider a part of being good citizen.  If people only did what I do, our government and way of life would grind to a halt.  We would have no military, no Congress, no one to pick up my recycling.  If people only believed in my version of civic mindedness (which NCSU students don’t; by and large, my students are quite conservative), I’ll be honest, taxes would be too high because there would be no one to argue with me about the importance of public services.  While the two-party system is problematic, what would be more problematic would be a country full of me.

All this to say, even at the college level, where students are adults and already have their own ideas about how the world works and their place in it, we have conflicts about whether or not we should teach just the content, or use that content as a springboard for grander aspirations.  When talking about the role of literature in the young adult classroom, the stakes are even higher.  The students are not, of course, adults, and are in a lot of ways, they are more vulnerable and impressionable (and it is our job as teachers to make some of those impressions).

And teaching lessons through literature is a lot more indirect than telling my college students they should vote.  Like Aronson (2004) explains, it’s impossible to know how any individual will respond to any piece of literature, let alone a group as diverse as “all young adults.”  That’s not to say that I think teaching social justice through literature is impossible.  But I think it has to be done purposefully and carefully, and that we as teachers should understand that not every student will come to the same conclusions about a work, and, more importantly, that that’s ok.  Good, even.  Each student can contribute to the conversation, and as I have learned so clearly from this class so far, it’s that often a symphony of voices that is valuable, not just the solos.  Through collaborative learning, students can essentially teach themselves the life lessons we want them to reap from literature.

This, of course, assumes the moralist argument, not the literalist one.  But of what use is literalist teaching of literature?  Is it really helpful for students?   I’m not sure I see the point in teaching metaphor and allusion and Shakespeare’s sonnets to a bunch of disinterested youngsters (future English majors, sure.  Let them take electives on literary analysis).  Where is the benefit?  I don’t know if the “to make them more well rounded” liberal-arts-education argument flies if you can’t articulate how it rounds them.

So I think I tend to fall on the moralist side, or, as Aronson (2003) calls it, in the “morals, role models, life choices crowd” (94).  Given that, I think YA literature is a perfect fit in a classroom that is designed for collaborative meaning-making, since defining and reinforcing the traditional high-literature canon isn’t at the top of the to-do list.  YA literature is generally more concerned with message than excellent prose (though the best examples of course have both).

Even if I agree that YA lit deserves a place in the young adult classroom because it teaches good morals – and, with the above reservations excepted, I do – what then exactly is a YA novel?  As Aronson (2003) points out, a range of materials can reach teenagers, from books written for children through adult novels, and that our goal should be to expose them to as wide a range of experiences in art and literature as possible.  And I think that is actually a good way to look at YA lit more specifically: as a range.  While, as Roxburgh (2004) says, it is the only genre we define by the audience, I don’t know that it’s possible to always point to where YA lit ends and adult lit begins (much like it is hard to point to a moment where a young adult becomes an adult).  But, aside from the issue of where to shelve them in libraries and bookstores, I’m not sure that’s really a problem.  While we should be concerned with matching the text’s difficulty with our students’ reading level(s) (and that’s a problem I can’t begin to wrap my head around right now), I don’t know that we should limit ourselves – or our students – to just YA lit or adult lit.  The book that serves your students the best is the one they should read.

Works Cited

Aronson, M. (2003). “What is a YA book, anyway?” Beyond the Pale: New essays for a new era (93-96). Maryland & Oxford: The Scarecrow Press.

Aronson, M. (2004). “How are children affected by the books in their lives? (Children’s literature).” World Literature Today, 78(2), 14(3).

Roxburgh, S. (2004). “The art of the young adult novel.” The ALAN Review, 32(2), 4-10.