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Beautiful Music for Ugly Children, Unknown

by Cronn-Mills, Kirstin
Unknown, 2012. 1st ed
Added Nov 03, 2014

My Forbidden Face, UnknownGrowing up Under the Taliban : A Young Woman's Story

by Latifa
Unknown, 2001. 1st ed
Added May 20, 2013

Comment:

Read by: Kevin/Copley Teen Room Intern My Forbidden Face is the story of sixteen year old Latifa who is from Kabul, Afghanistan. Latifa’s story focuses mostly on how the Taliban’s occupation of Kabul resulted in the loss of women’s freedom and the atrocious degradation women and men received from the Taliban. Yet when she describes her journey to Paris for an interview with Elle magazine, Latifa becomes representative of the fact that the Taliban were outmaneuvered by the women they thought so little of in the first place. Terrorism in America is usually portrayed by the media as an act of meditated violence that results in the victim’s lost sense of safety, security and sometimes results in death. However, Latifa’s story provided me a much clearer understanding of how terrorism affects a person’s psychological well-being, more than any form of media I had seen or read before. Throughout the book, Latifa refers to herself as a prisoner in her own home. The only way she could think of rebelling at the time was to not go outside, which is essentially what the Taliban wanted. With this picture in mind, Latifa showed me that terrorism can do much more than make one lose their sense of security. It can lead to self-imprisonment. Another thing I found interesting about Latifa’s story is that she hardly mentions Osama Bin-Laden in her story at all. In the media here in America, we tended to view Bin-Laden as the symbol that stood for terrorism. Yet, as seen in Latifa’s story, he is merely an after-thought, just some rich guy who gives the Taliban money. And with that in mind, Latifa shows what the daily life of being occupied by a terrorist group is like. I have not read a single newspaper article or seen a news broadcast that brings this reality to life as well as Latifa’s story. You should really read this book. Your perspectives on what terrorism really is all about may change the way you think about it.

The Realm of Possibility, Unknown

by Levithan, David
Unknown, 2004
Added May 20, 2013

Comment:

Read by: Anna/Copley Teen Room Librarian for the TBOM group meeting on May 8th, 2013. This is the stories of multiple teens struggling to find themselves and figure out who they are in the world. It’s told from their multiple points of view in poem and song lyric formats. This was an interesting read for me because I wasn’t expecting it to be in poetry format. I was expecting a novel. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the way these stories were told. Each poem and song interwove themselves seemlessly with each of the others. Some responded to what had happened in other poems, some wrote their poems to another person who had a poem in the book. It was a unique take on writing a book in verse. Obviously, each person who “wrote” a poem was a character that came from David Levithan’s head, but he did a really great job with the characterizations and making each one as unique as the next. The first poem and the last poem are connected, which was a nice circle back to the beginning once you got to the end. I really felt that the emotions of the teens he was writing about were clearly stated, or were just as confusing for the reader sometimes as they can be for teens in real life. It was realistically done, and a book I would highly recommend to anyone who enjoys stories told in this fashion or thinks they would like to try one for the first time. The fact that some of the characters are gay is not stated in such a way as to hit the reader over the head with it, and there are some who appear straight. Some are lesbian. There is a good mix of characters and experiences to round out the story over all.

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