Alice Hoffman, _Incantation_

Alice Hoffman weaves an elegant, poetic tale of love, betrayal, and secret identity, set during the Spanish Inquisition.  Sixteen year old Estrella deMadrigal believes the bond between herself and best friend, Catalina, can never be severed--that is, until she kisses Andres, Catalina's betrothed, and falls in love.  Their covert romance ignites a series of harrowing events which unearth the shadowy history of Estrella's family.   A novella--only 166 pages long--this is a captivating story, one well-suited for teens: simple and a quick read, yet alluring: rich in passion, emotional intensity, and authorial craft.

H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights

Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream, by H.G. Bissinger, is a title often mentioned by students when lauding must-read books.  Not being much of a football fan--horrors! that's a heretical confession for a teacher at a college-prep school famous for its academics, but also for its pin-up status in the pages of Sports Illustrated--I never did get around to reading it.  But, I finally did, and thus far, my students, as usual, are batting a thousand when it comes to good recommendations.

Mixed sports metaphors aside, Bissinger offers up a reflective, documentary journalism-style examination of one fateful season in the history of the Permian Panthers, a small-town Texan high-school football team.  Bissinger lovingly documents the obsessiveness surrounding the sport  and highlights the dramas on the athletic field and in the locker room.  Yet Friday Night Lights is so much more than a non-fiction book about football and the adolescents who play it; rather, Bissinger reveals the integral role that the sport plays in the life of Odessa, Texas, and how it is inextricably interwoven with the town's socioeconomics, race relations, and educational context.  

Libba Bray, _Going Bovine_

What do you get when you cross Cervantes with The Catcher in the Rye, and toss in the deadly Creutzfeldt-Jakob pathogen, a pink-haired angel in combat boots, a talking yard gnome, physics, a time-traveling Inuit rock band, and kitschy snow globes? In her latest novel, Going Bovine, winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for young adult literature, Libba Bray delivers a hallucinogenic mix of social satire peppered with allusions from literature, mythology, and pop culture. This dark, brilliantly crafted page-turner is, by turns, laugh-out-loud hysterical, sublimely surreal, and poignantly philosophic.

The basic premise:
When alienated 16 year old slacker, Cameron Smith, is diagnosed with mad-cow disease, he and his "Sancho Panza", a hypochondriac, video-gaming dwarf, Gonzo, embark on a wild road trip to find a cure, with stops in Mardi Gras New Orleans, the Church of Everlasting Satisfaction and Snack-n-Bowl, the Ya! Party House in Daytona, and Disney World.  Yet their long, strange journey is a metaphoric one, as well: one of self-examination, discovery, and love.

Don't hurt your happiness.  Borrow this addictive book now.

Sue Monk Kidd, _The Secret Life of Bees_

Several students of mine recommended Sue Monk Kidd's acclaimed first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, to me over the past few years, and as usual, I am glad I took them up on it, for it is truly a taste of honey: a compelling, lovely narrative which marries gorgeous, lyrical language, authorial crafting, symbolism, and substance. In fact, I liked this novel so well that I successfully convinced the Hogwarts English I subdepartment to adopt it as one of our required novels.

Without revealing any spoilers, here's the premise. It is the summer of 1964, South Carolina. Resilient 14 year old loner, Lily Melissa Owens, lives with her abusive father, T. Ray; she is haunted by a traumatic childhood incident which has left her motherless. Shortly after the Civil Rights Act is passed, Lily's nanny, Rosaleen, goes to town to register to vote, taking Lily with her. When Rosaleen spits snuff juice on the shoes of a notorious town racist, however, it sets in motion a dramatic chain of events, which get both in trouble with the law. The two fugitives seek refuge in Tiburon, South Carolina, where Lily hopes to unlock her dead mother's mysterious past. A trio of African-American women take Lily and Rosaleen in, and as the novel unfolds, Lily confronts civil rights issues, discovers love, and comes to terms with her troubled past.

John Ratey, _Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain_

As a student at Hogwarts Academy, I used to kvetch about mandatory K-12 PE and the way that undesirable sports activities inevitably eroded my hard-earned GPA. A klutz in comparison to my Varsity-letter decorated classmates, I was the girl who lobbed tennis balls over the court walls, not because I was deliberately evading P.E.--that would've entailed way too much hand-eye coordination on my part--but because of simple misfires. Yet, I grudgingly admit that over the years, I began loving physical exertion, especially when I was allowed to elect my own exercise regimen, whether it was cartwheeling across a balance beam, striking the "Warrior Dancer" asana in yoga, or mastering Shotokan karate kata. At Hogwarts, I also discovered early that I had a talent for long-distance running and relished the easy fluid meditation of running through the streets of Manoa and Makiki and St. Louis Heights in the early morning hours. Ironically, I, the high school klutz, discovered my inner athlete in college and graduate school. My earlier struggles with coordination, as if by magic, ceased, and I found that that a steady daily diet of running, swimming, dance, and yoga provided a welcome respite from daily stress and academic pressures; if anything, I felt more grounded and sharper, simply by making time to exercise. Turns out that my alma mater's staunch conviction, echoing the Greek classical principle of "sound mind, sound body," was absolutely founded in truth: research that's borne out by John Ratey's excellent book.

Ratey's Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, is the most fascinating and inspiring text I've perused in a long spell: a must-read for educators and anyone who's interested in optimizing their holistic health and cognitive resources, decreasing stress, and staving off mental, as well as overall physical degeneration (that's everyone, right?). An associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Ratey examines the myriad benefits that exercise has on cognition, summarized here. Exercise

1. Strengthens the cardiovascular system, creating less strain on the body's and brain's blood vessels. It helps neurogenesis, as well as counteracts vascular damage.
2. Regulates fuel. Insulin levels drop with aging, creating waste products in cells that damage blood vessels, which then increase stroke risk. Exercise helps the body's efficiency.
3. Reduces obesity.
4. Elevates stress threshold: while some cortisol, a neurotransmitter released during stress, is good, chronic overload is deleterious and triggers cell death.
5. Lifts mood. Neurotransmitters, neurotrophins, and connectivity shore up the hippocampus against atrophy associated with depression and anxiety. Elevated mood also reduces one's chances of developing dementia.
6. Boosts immune system by rallying immune systems antibodies and T cells. Lack of activity poses the greatest risk factor for cancer.
7. Fortifies bones, reducing osteoporosis risk.
8. Boosts motivation by counteracting the natural decline of dopamine.
9. Fosters neuroplasticity. Building a strong brain guards agains neurodegenerative disease. Moving the body also elevates the supply of neurotrophic factors necessary for neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, as well. Furthermore, aerobic exercise further strengthens connections between brain cells, creating more synapses, causing stem cell division, and forming more functional neurons in the hippocampus.
10. If combined with cognitive challenge, helps to build neural networks. In moderation, the stress created by aerobic physical exertion, followed by mental/intellectual stimulation, is beneficial. Hence, one could reasonably expect students' classroom performance and mental acuity to increase, if P.E. was a regular part of their daily school curriculum; it'd be particularly optimal if P.E. was scheduled first thing in the morning.

I strongly recommend Ratey's book. Provocative, it may well transform the way you teach, view exercise and overall health, and change your--and others'--lives.

Taylor Clark, _Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture_

Long ago, in a verdant valley not so far away, dwelt a small coffeehouse located in a small suburban strip mall. Though its daily brew was admittedly acrid, Coffee Manoa nevertheless created a haven. Kathy, the owner/head barista, knew everyone by name, greeting customers with warm aloha, and the locale was perpetually blessed by double rainbows arcing above the tangle of aerial cables, the then-KC Drive Inn, and the slick, inky, oil-slicked concrete expanse of the Manoa Marketplace parking lot. There, eccentric poets, artists, professors, poor students, up-and-coming folk musicians, counter-culture holdovers, and caffeine junkies alike held court, recited Proust, debated philosophical issues, played endless games of chess, and lingered at the outdoor tables for hours, long after the last orts of scone had been fed to the ravenous doves and the espresso drained to the lees, without fear of expulsion from Eden. And then, one day, Starbucks moved in on the corner of East Manoa and Huapala, a site haunted by businesses past: Bank of America, and before that, Manoa Chop Suey. Coffee Manoa shuttered its windows, and the neighborhood was never quite the same after that...

Despite its decidedly mixed critical reviews, I found Taylor Clark's Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture an addictive, fun, and fast read. Clark chronicles the rise of legendary corporate giant Starbucks: how it built its expansive, international empire of clean, well-lighted coffeehouses and became those popular, yet simultaneously despised purveyors of tasteful music, pandering to high-maintenance no-dairy, double-venti caramel frappucino drinkers. He also documents the social history of coffee and America's consumption of the glorious bean, as well as ponders the ethical quagmire surrounding the economics of coffee (if you buy Fair Trade, can you drink your morning brew, sans guilt?) Clark also offers some provocative tidbits: contrary to popular conspiracy notions that Starbucks single-handedly deals death-blows to small, mom-and-pop cafes like Coffee Manoa, the caffeine mogul's ubiquitous presence actually increases sales at competitor coffeehouses, something you might've already surmised, taking a gander at the brisk action happening at the Manoa branch of Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, just a stone's throw from the aforementioned Starbucks. So grab a cuppa joe, and start reading.

Push Yourself Up

For the past 2 years, every semester the English Department has published an in-house chapbook called Banter. Since I'm a notoriously undisciplined writer when left to my own devices, I've found that the social pressure to submit pieces to said publication provides nice incentive to write.

This fall, Paul, our department head, provided 9 different college essay prompts to choose from, and asked us to write an essay of not more than 450 words. For the record, this is 448. I've been tossing this piece around in my mind for a while and suspect this incarnation could still use additional tweaking. But here goes...

If you were to look back on your high school years, what advice would you give to someone beginning their high school career? (Simmons College, Essay Prompt 2009)


PUSH YOURSELF UP

At first, she lies prostrate, face down, unmoving. Then she writhes and strains, grimacing in pain, an accusing eye searing into us: stone-hearted sadists, Stasi, tormentors. Pitiful mews crescendo to banshee wails, but she pleads in vain. We are impassive. Her leaden skull lifts fractionally for a split-second, then crashes, face first, to the ground. Torture? No: tummy time.

During tummy time, parents place infants on their stomachs, preventing them from staying in one position. The daily exercise promotes neck and shoulder development, priming the muscles that enable children to roll, sit, and eventually crawl. Constant repositioning, pediatricians opine, promotes infant development, preventing skull-flattening and muscle atrophy. But what doctors don’t divulge is that for many babies, ours included, tummy time is a daily dose of unadulterated hell—initially.

Then, in month 2, we have a breakthrough. One day, we deposit our resentful spitfire onto her quilt for her requisite 15 minutes of tummy torture, chanting, “Go, little girl! You can do it!” But our choleric daughter will have none of it. Her toes claw viciously at the unyielding floor, while her face, a hostile, wrinkled, red walnut, sounds the alarm: “WAAAAHHHHHH--” Suddenly, screeching ceases: arrested, mid-shriek, by silence. Mystified, she looks down to find she’s attained naga-asana, propped on her elbows, chest raised, head erect as a flag. She glances at us, face blossoming with laughter as she savors her newfound equilibrium. In the days that follow, our baby continues to push herself up. And we find her exploring new frontiers, raising a hand off the mat, then shifting to the other, or gleefully rolling, a miniature firkin, barreling from belly to back to belly again.

In yoga, it is said that the faithful practice of naga-asana, the cobra pose, awakens kundalini: a creative, spiritual energy, coiled at the base of the spine, that expands consciousness. In life too, we open new vistas and strengthen ourselves through motion--through struggle, not stasis. Yet we too often gravitate to security, retreating to the comfort of what is easy or familiar, even when it’s detrimental. Sometimes, when we seem to be making no headway, despite our best efforts, we’re tempted to quit or seek refuge in what we do well, imprisoning ourselves by distrusting our power within. Progress and personal growth, however, are never automatic, nor do they spring from luck or talent. Rather, they demand commitment and sustained effort through tribulation. So, when things are tough and obstacles insurmountable, dare. Persevere. Have faith. You’ll never know what you can truly accomplish until you test your boundaries. Brave those challenges, step by step, moment by moment, trial by trial. You were meant to do this. Push yourself up.