Jellicoe Road

Title: Jellicoe Road (Australian title: On Jellicoe Road)
Author: Melina Marchetta
Publication date: 2006
Number of pages: 419
Genre: Young Adult fiction
Geographical Setting: Australia
Time Period: present (early 2000s)
Series: N/A

Taylor Markham is visited many nights by a young boy in her dreams. She tells him her stories, stories about the children at her school and the manuscript Hannah has written about five friends. Hannah found Taylor when she was eleven and abandoned by her drug-addicted mother on Jellicoe Road. At seventeen, Taylor has been chosen as the leader of her boarding school dorm and their leader in the territory wars with the Cadets and the Townies. Soon Taylor’s memories and questions about her past begin to overtake her duties and she finds herself relying on some of her sworn enemies for the answers.

Subject Headings: identity issues, abandonment, orphans, boarding schools, drug addiction, death of a parent, first love, coming of age

Appeal: 2009 Michael L. Printz Award; war game of the Territory Wars at first gives the story a sinister almost dystopian feel but as the story progresses, the reader begins to understand how the “game” began; story of first love rings very true and the pains of separation; nontraditional families.

If you liked Jellicoe Road, then you might enjoy: John Marsden’s So Much to Tell You, John Green’ s Paper Towns

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

The Disreputable History of Frankie-Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart (2008), 342 pages, 2008 National Book Award Finalist

my review:

Elite boarding schools often provide a popular backdrop for young adult novels. They also provide the young adult novelist numerous opportunities to create situations where parental involvement and adult supervision is lacking; money and resources may abound for the characters. Many times, these characters live in a world that most young readers have never experienced--that of a life of privilege and status. All of these elements are a part of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks but the title character of Frankie is such an odd (in a smarty, funny way) girl that she is more realistic and relatable for many readers than the usual prep or boarding school characters.

Frankie becomes obsessed with her plans to infiltrate and be a part of the all male secret society (the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds) at Alabaster Prep. At the same time, she is experiencing her first love and a relationship where she struggles to not lose her own identity. More than just a pretty girl, Frankie fights for her place in the academic institution and in the world where the “Old Boys Club” rules.

The Disreputable History… is filled with clever wordplay and even more boarding school and college pranks, ideas of interventionist art, subverting the institutions of power and notions of gender roles and breaking the rules (whether written or just understood). Written in the third person, the narration is a welcome change from the usual first person narratives of many young adult novels. This is a coming of age book that defies many of the conventions of this genre.

2009 Michael L. Printz Honor Book

Little Brother

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (2008), 384 pages
a book review also available on my LibraryThing profile

From technology activist, Creative Commons proponent and self-proclaimed geeky guy Cory Doctorow is Little Brother. This is a realistic sci-fi novel for young adults that is packed with action, techno-speak and a scary but optimistic look at a possible near future for American citizens.

Marcus Yallow, our narrator, and his friends are able to sneak out of school by tricking the gait-recognition system and other surveillance tools the schools and city officials have implemented-- including a frighteningly invasive public that uses their phones and the Internet to snitch on possible truant students.

Skipping school to participate in an ARG (alternate reality game), they are caught at the site of a terrorist attack in San Francisco. Marcus and his friends are held by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at a secret prison. They are interrogated, terrified and treated like they are guilty. After this attack, paranoia, surveillance and distrust are amplified. California has become a police state. Marcus finds himself making choices that may endanger him, his friends and other citizens in his pursuit to take back the civil liberties and freedoms promised by the U.S. Constitution that the DHS has taken away.

This is a dystopian future, but not a future too far from now. It is easy to believe that all of these surveillance technologies are available today to those in power--and maybe they already are. Many of us- as Marcus points out- are guilty of not understanding the technologies all around us. We do not have them working for us.

At first I questioned how realistic this narrator is. Would a 17 year old boy be this advanced in computers, computer code writing and programming? And then I realized how old I am and more importantly, how dated my own experience with technology must be. Marcus is not so far-fetched. There are so many teens and young adults with these capabilities, experience and drive to tweak and hack and crack so many of the tools used on us and by us every day.

This book will be great for high school age and young adult readers and technology-literate and illiterate adults will enjoy it also. The book is jammed full of interesting ideas, questions and history. It could be very useful for discussions about privacy, terrorism and technology and surveillance and the role of a citizen in our democratic society.