Finding Yourself
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
Jin Wang starts at a new school where he’s the only Chinese-American student. When a boy from Taiwan joins his class, Jin doesn’t want to be associated with an FOB like him. Jin just wants to be an all-American boy, because he’s in love with an all-American girl. Danny is an all-American boy: great at basketball, popular with the girls. But his obnoxious Chinese cousin Chin-Kee’s annual visit is such a disaster that it ruins Danny’s reputation at school, leaving him with no choice but to transfer somewhere he can start all over again. The Monkey King has lived for thousands of years and mastered the arts of kung fu and the heavenly disciplines. He’s ready to join the ranks of the immortal gods in heaven. But there’s no place in heaven for a monkey. Each of these characters cannot help himself alone, but how can they possibly help each other? They’re going to have to find a way—if they want fix the disasters their lives have become.
Close Reading Responses
|
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
In this groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel charts her fraught relationship with her late father. In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.
Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the "Fun Home." It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve. Close Reading Responses
|
I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly
Tells the story of Barbara Thorson, an acerbic fifth-grader so consumed with fantasy that she doesn't just tell people that she kills giants with an ancient Norse warhammer - she starts to believe it herself. This book reveals the reasons for Barbara's troubled behavior, as she learns to reconcile her fantasy life with the real world.
Close Reading Responses
|
Related Text
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
|
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
|
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
|