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Content Badge: Substance Use

The Power and the Glory – A Review

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Have you ever read a book that inspired in you a soul-crushing desire to eat fried chicken, shed undefinable tears through a mouthful of Sprite, and slap someone in the face with a tortilla? My students and I found ourselves in this conflicted state after taking the long hard journey through the jungle of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory.  The story starts in a hot dusty village where a lethargic dentist meets an alcoholic priest who is on the run from the deadly zeal of a hostile lieutenant….

Melancholy, Minnesotan Medicine

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In a post-progress Midwest, beside that omnipotent and mercurial god, Lake Superior, Rainy and his wife Lark have the closest thing to happiness that money can’t buy. Roads and bridges are falling to rot, fanaticism and drug use are uncomfortably common, and towns and cities are forced to scrape by in the shadow of a handful of ultra-wealthy “astronauts” who live apart while exploiting those left in America’s ruins. Yet none of these evils need deprive Rainy and Lark of their quiet joy. Rainy, a simple but soulful bassist who…

Everything Sad Is Untrue (A True Story)

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As Roald Dahl did in his childhood memoir, Boy, Nayeri takes painful, embarrassing, and sometimes violent moments, and reframes them. Nayeri’s ultimate theme is the self-consciously Tolkien-ish idea that dark things are only apparent, are passing away, and are therefore, fundamentally untrue.

Readers Wanted: A Great Adventure Awaits

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M.L. Forman’s 5-book series, Adventurers Wanted, is a wonderful and fantastical journey, in the true sense of those words. What at first seems like a simple, perhaps even naïve, tale of a boy discovering a new life surprises the reader as it gradually delves deeper into the nuances of honor and responsibility, courage and cowardice, and many other aspects of human nature.  Slathbog’s Gold We enter the story, Slathbog’s Gold, as Alex Taylor, a fairly typical teenage boy, finds himself applying for a position as “adventurer” in a book shop…

A Lonely Trip Through the Southern Reach

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My very first impression, from the first page of Annihilation, book one of The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer, was not far from my last thoughts on the series. What insanity have I just stumbled into? Every reveal seems to bring along numerous other mind-bending doubts or questions about the world Vandermeer has created. The story opens with a group of nameless female explorers beginning their expedition into “Area X”, a mysterious portion of the ordinary world that has somehow, inexplicably become subject to laws all its own. Its…

Inside the Outsiders

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The Outsiders is a great opportunity for parents and teachers to begin discussions on a myriad of moral questions, from prejudice to friendship.

The Bad and the Ugly of YA Lit

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“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” has a little bit of the good of contemporary young adult fiction, but way more of the bad and the flat out ugly.

Not Worth a Look

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I would seriously caution any parents to read through the book first before allowing their son or daughter to do so. Within are scenes involving graphic descriptions of sex.

Not Just About Zombies

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What makes this book different is that it gets to the heart of who we are more thoughtfully than the movies and television programs that have paved this over-tread path.