Teachers who don't teach book club...manipulative man edition

At book club last night, we discussed the problem of perspective. While reading YAL it is often difficult to take myself out of my shoes and put myself into my future students' shoes because I'm busy being all why-doesn't-she-dump-him-he-just-told-her-to-shut-up-man-she-is-spoiled-and precocious-in-a-bad-way-and-it-must-be-nice-to-be-so-rich.

At many points during Nancy Werlin's Extraordinary I rolled my eyes and maybe also proclaimed disbelief of shenanigans. However, I realize that while I may have been almost as sassy as a teen as I am now, not everyone intrinsically realizes their own extraordinary-ness.

I say that with trepidation because this book beat the idea of ordinary vs. extraordinary over the reader's head about a gazillion times. That's a rough estimate.

Like any Lifetime movie, it obviously takes almost all of the book for us to come to the conclusion that everyone has the potential to be extraordinary.

Puke.

But I get it. I needed to hear that when I was a teen. And I did. The madre told me all the time.

But maybe not everyone has someone to tell them. And maybe if they read this book that couches real (if exaggerated) life situations in terms of faeries and metaphors then they could see their own special-ness.

And that's not a bad thing.

Favorite part of the book: Good parents. So much of literature deals with working out daddy or mommy issues. I know the madre will be relieved to hear that at least this book depicted supportive, unconditional loving, strong parental figures.

We then decided our book club is definitely skewing towards all things fantastical and perhaps our trajectory needs to be altered. One more dystopic novel and then we'll move on to nonfiction!

We are also toying with revisiting favorites from our own teen years. So reader, what did YOU read in high school that you loved?

"Nothing that happened in the past could be taken away."
Nancy Werlin