YA Book Council discussion

A real-life Heartland War moment:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090517/a...

From the article:

"So let's work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term."

{Obama} said he favored "a sensible conscience clause" that would give anti-abortion health care providers the right to refuse to perform the procedure.

(sorry, can't use straight brackets b/c GR starts coding them)

Very good article. I agree with Obama. The only thing I would be worried about is if every single health care provider was anti-abortion, there'll be no one left to perform abortions when needed... but what are the chances of that, huh?

Why don't we have *this* cover:
?

Waaah!

FYI, The Eyes of Kid Midas comes out in a new paperback edition on Nov 10.

I just joined this group because your discussion of this book interested me. We are considering it for our English III summer reading. Our area isn't overly conservative and we have great administrators but we do need to be able to justify and defend our choice if a parent complains. That being said, do you think this book is worth our consideration? I have ten books to sift through and need adult input! We made our list of books to consider based on the suggestions of current 11th graders. TIA!!

Hmm.. I think the least spoilery opinion I can make on that is that the book doesn't really tell you if abortion is good, or if it's bad, so a parent who has a strong opinion on either side can't have that much to argue against. The book manages to stay pretty neutral overall, so unless parents just don't want the topic to exist in classrooms at all, then I can't see much of a fight against it.

I obviously don't know what other books were suggested to you, but this book is one of my favorites and it is fantastic for reading while others are reading, because I'm sure it'll inspire a lot of discussion. Hope that helps. :)

Amyp wrote: "That being said, do you think this book is worth our consideration?"

Definitely. I'm sure *some* parent somewhere will have a problem with it--only because inevitably someone will find something wrong with anything (some CA school district had to pull the Merriam Webster dictionary out of its schools because it defined "dirty words"--seriously? seriously. California?!!!) but like Roxy said, it doesn't TELL you what to think. I thought it was interesting that in our group we had both staunch Pro-Life and Pro-Choice people and we ALL liked the book immensely.

I agree with Rox and Alethea; this book will definitely be a great choice for an English class. My mentee is an 11th grader, and she LOVED this book. And she certainly didn't think Shusterman was trying to lead the reader into believing anything. But it sure gets you to think.