Module 3: Dairy Queen

Murdock, Catherine Gilbert. 2006. DAIRY QUEEN. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN: 978-0-618-86335-8.

Darlene Joyce Schwenk, known simply as D.J., narrates this contemporary coming-of-age romance novel. Her summer in the small town of Red Bend, Wisconsin looks to be complicated, to say the least, and she is not happy. The oldest child on the family dairy farm, she took over all of the chores after her father’s hip replacement surgery the previous January. Due to her new responsibilities, D.J. quit the school basketball team and failed her sophomore English class. She then learns that her father and a family friend, the longtime football coach at Red Bend’s archrival, Hawley, want her to spend her summer training Brian Nelson until training camp begins in early August. Handsome, spoiled Brian, the popular quarterback, is everything she is not. She resents the responsibilities given to her but lacks confidence to speak out about her situation.

The rural Wisconsin setting, typified by the Schwenk family dairy farm, plays a major role in D.J.’s story. She must awaken at five in the morning to milk the cows and run the farm. If it is her home, it is also her prison. Through all of the chores, there runs a lack of family communication. Her father cooks (but no one tells him how terrible his burnt meals are), her older brothers are estranged from her father due to some undiscussed event from last Christmas, her younger brother Curtis does not say much, and her mother is rarely around the house. Throughout the early part of the novel, D.J. is alone with her thoughts and her endless work, and neither is positive.

Football is the other important aspect of setting in this story. The Schwenks are a football family. The father played for the Minnesota Vikings when the team began, and her brothers were both legends in high school. Raised in this environment with that set of genes, D.J. is the natural choice to train Brian. Due to D.J.’s resentment and lack of confidence, and Brian’s unwillingness to do farm chores, their relationship begins poorly. However, after training and doing chores together, they become closer and even create their own football field on an isolated part of the farm. This is their secret, a symbol of their budding friendship.

Is it a relationship? D.J. hopes so but still lacks confidence, as shown in her “tongue-tied nature and self-deprecating inner monologues” (Pickett). She and Brian play together, talk, and warm up to each other in what seems to verge on a relationship. In one critical scene, D.J.’s best friend Amber interrupts them and reminds D.J. that “Guys like that don’t go out with girls like you” (158). D.J. understands that, but it is still a blow to her. She does not stand up for herself and understands what Brian means when he refers to her as a cow. Others lead life; she follows.

When D.J. decides to try out for the Red Bend football team, she begins taking control of her life and moving beyond the setting confining her. Fittingly, she leaves the farm for Madison, the state capital and more liberal university town, to have her hair cut so that it will fit inside her football helmet. When she arrives there, she sees herself as a “farm hick” (187) in the city and is afraid to tell the woman at the salon about football. The response she gets heartens her and bolsters her confidence to return to Red Bend and begin changing her life.

The football scenes are mainly serious, as D.J. tries to be accepted by her coach, teammates and opponents, and as she keeps her participation secret from her family. Lighter moments arise with the complications of locker rooms and cheerleaders. The main complication, though, is with Brian, who tells her, “When you don’t talk, you know, there’s a lot of stuff that ends up getting not said” (225).

By learning to like herself and speak honestly and openly (referred to as “Oprah moments” throughout the book), D.J. comes to understand that her lack of self-confidence stifled her, not Red Bend or the rest of the Schwenks. With her newfound understanding and confidence, she can empathize with and relate more equally to her family, her best friend Amber, and Brian. In D.J., Murdock has created a powerful character capable of reaching a wide range of readers able to understand her shortcomings and smile as she comments on them.

Reference List:
Pickett, Amy. 2006. Review of Dairy Queen, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. School Library Journal 52(4): 145. Library, Information Science & Technology (LISTA) database, TWU Library. Accessed 3 October 2011.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED (Grade 8 and up)

Review Excerpts:
At the end, though, it is the protagonist's heart that will win readers over. (School Library Journal, April 1, 2006)

A painfully funny novel takes readers into the head of D.J. Schwenk, frustrated dairy farmer-cum-football trainer-cum-star linebacker…A fresh teen voice, great football action and cows—this novel rocks. (Kirkus Reviews)

This humorous, romantic romp excels at revealing a situation seldom explored in YA novels, and it will quickly find its place alongside equally well-written stories set in rural areas, such as Weaver's Full Service (2005), Richard Peck's The Teacher's Funeral (2004), and Kimberly Fusco's Tending to Grace (2004). (Booklist, April 1, 2006)

D.J.'s voice is funny, frank, and intelligent, and her story is not easily pigeonholed. Readers will learn a lot about sports and farming but more about taking charge of oneself. (Voice of Youth Advocates, June 1, 2006)

Awards & Recognition:
Great Lakes Book Awards, 2007
Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Award, 2007-2008
School Library Journal Best Books of the Year, 2006

Module 3: I'd Tell You I Love You, but Then I'd Have to Kill You

Carter, Ally. 2006. I’D TELL YOU I LOVE YOU, BUT THEN I’D HAVE TO KILL YOU. New York: Hyperion Press. ISBN: 978-14231-0004-1.

The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women looks like any other prep school for elite girls, but looks are deceiving. Though its students are all high schoolers, their school is a CIA training facility, and they are the most gifted of its recruits in training. “Gallagher Girls” have a long pedigree dating from Gillian Gallagher, who killed “the guy who was going to kill Abraham Lincoln—the first guy, that is. The one you never hear about” (3). She used a sword that the school still proudly displays, even if it is booby-trapped.

Cameron (Cammie) Morgan, the narrator of this romantic, adventure (sort of) novel, is a normal 15-year-old. “Normal” at Gallagher is a relative term, however. As part of their school curriculum, Gallagher Girls learn and use 14 different languages, study martial arts, engage in covert operations, and know enough chemistry to receive a Ph D. Even though they live in a privileged world, with a five-star chef, secret passageways, and an overall sense of uniqueness, Cammie realizes that Gallagher Girls—herself included—lack knowledge about the one topic most important to a 15-year-old girl: boys. This is a (highly) comic novel where appearances and reality collide. Though the girls learn how to be great spies in school, living in the real world means they must also be girls.

Two events signal that this school year at Gallagher will be different. First, a “hot” new Covert Operations (CoveOps) teacher, Joe Solomon, arrives. He knew Cammie’s father and is one of the few who knows of the exact circumstances of his death. To Cammie, this knowledge reveals her vulnerability and contrasts her ignorance with her desire to know what happened to her father. She never learns the truth, but her questions about his fate serve to make her a more rounded character able to empathize with her mother and her friend, Bex, whose own father misses a “call-in” while on an operation. Solomon, an operative just out of the field, understands what awaits the Gallagher Girls in the real world and tells them to “notice things” after they fail a class exercise. They have been living in a bubble, and he attempts to help them break out of it.

The second event to jolt the complacency of Cammie, Liz and Bex (best friends and roommates) occurs when the campus goes into “Code Red” (unannounced visitor) and the McHenry family visits. Macey McHenry is rich and spoiled and has been expelled from other schools. Gallagher is her last chance. The girls do not see her as Gallagher material, but they are overruled by the headmistress (Cammie’s mother) who has seen her test scores and knows that the McHenry family is related to Gillian Gallagher. Macey is disliked, but she is an expert on boys and fashion. If Joe Solomon introduces the girls to the hard realities of espionage for their future careers, Macey ensures that they get being teenage girls right first.

Appearance and reality also drive the setting and plot development. With its gadgetry and resources, Gallagher is truly “exceptional” to readers, while to the townspeople of Rossville, Virginia, it is just another snooty private school for wealthy girls. (If only they knew!) When Cammie meets Josh during a CoveOps field exercise, she must create a believable “legend” for her identity to hide who she is and where she studies. Their secret meetings in town involve espionage techniques and become part of Cammie’s “surveillance report,” wherein she documents how she and her roommates tail Josh, tap into his computer, sift through his family’s garbage, and break into his house. Is he a honeypot (appearance for her roommates) or a regular guy interested in Cammie (reality)?

The complications of the plot are never that serious, not even in the climactic scene. Carter splashes laugh-out-loud humor onto nearly every page of this enjoyable novel, if not in the action, then at least in Cammie’s view of it. Things turn “serious” only when Cammie thinks about fathers (her own and Bex’s) and when Josh believes he has learned the truth about her after only having heard her legend. (He hasn’t.) Carter captures the voice of a teenage girl, even if she overuses “totally” a bit. Her sarcastic and very teenaged italicized and capitalized mini-commentaries allow Cammie to explain Gallagher’s history, the finer points of being a spy, and her own confusion as she falls deeper and deeper for Josh. Even if “the stakes never seem very high since there are no real villains” (Doyle), Cammie still learns important lessons about love, friendship and truth.

Reference List:
Doyle, Miranda. 2006. Review of I’d Tell You I Love You, but Then I’d Have to Kill You, by Ally Carter. School Library Journal 52(7): 98. Library, Information Science & Technology (LISTA) database, TWU Library. Accessed 3 October 2011.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED (Grade 7 and up)

Review Excerpts:
Though the plot takes a while to unfold, fun details and characters will keep readers engaged. Publishers Weekly, May 15, 2006)

The teen's double life leads to some amusing one-liners, and the invented history of the Gallagher Girls is also entertaining, but the story is short on suspense. (School Library Journal, July 1, 2006)

The characters and their relationships, including Cammie's mother—Headmistress of the Gallagher Academy—propel this story beyond just being an action-packed novel into something special. (Voice of Youth Advocates, October 1, 2006)

Reviews retrieved from Bowker’s Books in Print database, October 3, 2011.

Awards & Recognition:
Black-Eyed Susan Book Award, 2008-2009 (Maryland Association of School Librarians)
Maud Hart Lovelace Book Award, 2009-2010 (Minnesota Youth Reading Awards)

Module 3: Sunrise over Fallujah

Myers, Walter Dean. 2008. SUNRISE OVER FALLUJAH. New York: Scholastic Press. ISBN: 978-0-439-91624-0.

A contemporary realistic novel, Sunrise over Fallujah tells the story of Robin Perry, an 18-year-old African American from Harlem in New York City, who has enlisted in the army and been deployed to Iraq. His father had hoped Robin would go to college, but, like many young men and women his age, he joined the military after the events of September 11, 2001 because he wanted to serve his country. The complexities of war, the clash between ideals and reality, and the theme of lost innocence all feature in this novel.

The novel begins with Robin and the members of his Civil Affairs unit on the ground in Kuwait prior to entering Iraq. Their job is to build relationships with Iraqi civilians while others fight the Iraqi military as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Robin’s unit enters Iraq after receiving unclear and often contradictory orders from their superiors. Their experiences with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), sniper fire, weapons searches, and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) will probably be familiar to readers who have followed the news about the war. The setting for these events, Iraq, is not depicted in graphic detail nor is it a place of many colors. It is brown, the color of the desert, a bland backdrop to the daily, almost “matter-of-fact” violence.

Most of the plot revolves around the growing confusion Robin and the members of his unit are experiencing. The Rules of Engagement (RoEs) change daily, and the novel is filled with questions about the purpose of the war and fighting an enemy that can melt into the civilian population. In his own words, Robin says, “I didn’t know which of the figures in robes down to their ankles were praying for peace and which were planting bombs on the side of the road” (144). To underscore the uncertainty, Myers includes an allusion to the anti-war novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. One of the characters in this story receives a stuffed monkey (nicknamed “Sergeant Yossarian”) that becomes the unit’s mascot. Their bitter humor clearly demonstrates their growing loss of naivete and their awareness of the incompetence and even insanity that exists in wartime.

Myers uses Robin and the two main female characters, Marla and Captain Mills, to humanize the soldiers involved in the war. Marla is there after bouncing around foster homes and having unspeakable experiences, while Captain Mills wants to empathize with and truly help Iraqis. Mills is bound to fail (and does), while Marla joins the guys in joking about and questioning the war until the climactic scene in the tribal lands. Then, she crumbles. Even though she is tough and tries to be a good soldier to escape from her earlier experiences, Marla seems to symbolize a recurring idea that escaping from injustice is impossible. War is neither for idealists (Mills) nor those wishing to escape (Marla). However, it is an Iraqi woman, Halima who reinforces the basic message of the novel. When she says, “Treat our lives as if they are as precious as your own” (148), Myers is reminding his readers of the complex, multi-tiered nature of war. Fighting for a cause is noble but unrealistic.

Robin’s letters to his mother and uncle are interspersed throughout the novel. In the letters to his parents, he tries to calm his mother and make amends with his father. When he writes to his uncle, a veteran of the war in Vietnam, readers gradually realize how difficult this conflict is for Robin and also how he develops an understanding of his uncle’s unwillingness to discuss his own wartime experiences. Robin’s early letters question why his uncle is incapable of discussing Vietnam and seem almost defiant in tone. Throughout his final letter, his tone suggests that he has become his uncle and will be unable to discuss what he has seen in Iraq. If understanding is part of maturing, Robin has matured by the end of this story. “Robin is only eighteen, and it is difficult to watch his innocence erased as war leaves its mark on him, but it is the reality for many young men and women” (Petruso 2008).

Reference List:
Petruso, Stephanie. 2008. Review of Sunrise over Fallujah, by Walter Dean Myers. Voice of Youth Advocates 31(1). Library Literature database, TWU Library. Accessed October 16, 2011.

Highly Recommended (Grade 8 and up)

Review Excerpts:
Through precise, believable dialogue as the catalyst, tame compared to that warranted in Fallen Angels, Myers's expert portrayal of a soldier's feelings and perspectives at the onset of this controversial war allows the circumstances to speak for themselves. (School Library Journal, April 1, 2008)

Given the paucity of works on this war, this is an important volume, covering much ground and offering much insight. (Kirkus Reviews)

Readers will get a sense of the complexities of the war, and of the ways the rank-and-file, as represented by Robin, are slowly drawn into covert or morally dubious engagement. (Publishers Weekly, April 21, 2008)

Reviews retrieved from Bowker’s Books in Print database, October 3, 2011.

Awards & Recognition:
Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year, 2008
School Library Journal Best Books of the Year, 2008