15. Wake by Lisa McMann

McMann, Lisa. (2008). Wake. New York: Simon Press. ISBN-13:978-1-4169-5357-9. p. 209

Genre: Fiction
Interest Age: 15+
Curriculum: NA

Reader’s Annotation

Janie Hannagan has a power she cannot control; she can enter people’s dreams, their fantasies, and their nightmares.

Plot Summary

Janie Hannagan is an average high school student; she works at a nursing home; she is saving money for college; she copes with her alcoholic mother. She also must live with a secret. She has the power to enter people’s dreams. It has been happening ever since she was a little girl. She’ll be sitting in a room, someone with drift off to sleep, and Janie will be uncontrollably pulled into the dream. She sees everyone’s inner most thoughts, desires, dreams, and fears. It lets her see the horrible nightmares of Cabel, the boy with a mysterious past. She sees more than he tells her. Is he a liar? Drug dealer? Monster? She must find a way to control her power if she is to understand what she sees and possible help those around her.

Critical Review

Lisa McMann mixes elements of the supernatural, suspense and drama to create a fast paced narrative filled with creepy and surreal imagery. McMann does a fantastic job at creating the character of Janie, who has been haunted by the dreams of others since she was little. Janie also deals with an alcoholic mother who spends most of the book stone drunk/past out or completely absent altogether. Despite having a drunk as a mother and never really knowing her father, Janie is a determined individual who works hard to maintain her grades at school in order to get into college. She also works long hours in order to pay for school. Cabel, Janie’s love interest, is also a well rounded character. On the surface, McMann paints Cabel as the stereotypical bad boy or “rebel without a cause”, but as the story progresses, he becomes a fairly complex individual who challenges Janie and showed that although she may be able to see into people’s dreams, she might not know as much as she thinks she knows.

The most effective parts of the story are the dream sequences. The reader is introduced to Janie’s power immediately and the experiences can be scary and disorienting. Janie doesn’t control her power and for most of the book, is a mere spectator in these dream states. She experiences everything from the surreal sexual fantasies for her classmates, to the nursing home resident’s memories of war and death. McMann builds scenes of significant tension as Janie is unexpectedly wrenched in and out of the dream world.

Even though the drama and mystery dissipates towards the end of the novel and the conclusion is somewhat lackluster and unfulfilling, Lisa McMann builds on a fascinating premise and creates an exciting story which should entice young, reluctant readers. Wake feels like a prelude to a much larger more intricate story.

Author Info

Lisa McMann is the author of the Wake Trilogy which includes Wake (2008), Fade (2009), and Gone (2010). McMann was born in 1968 in Holland, MI. She graduated from Calvin College in 1990 and has worked as a writer, blueberry picker, bindery worker, bookseller and realtor. She won the Templeton short story award and Wake was nominated by the ALA as a Best Book for Young Adults.

McMann was inspired to write Wake after she dreamt about being in her husband’s dream. McMann currently lives in Arizona.
“Lisa McMann.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 May 2010.

Book Talking Ideas

1. What are dreams and how do they reflect the actual lives of the characters in Wake?
2. How does being able to see into people’s dreams affect Janie’s relationships in the book?

Challenges

I have not found any current challenges to Wake but the novel does contain a significant amount of profanity which is one of the most cited reasons for a challenge or banning.

Why I choose this title

It made the YALSA Top 10 YA Books list in 2008.

1. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Sebold, Alice. (2002). The lovely bones. New York: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN#: 978-0-316-04440. p. 372

Genre: Fiction
Interest Age: 15+
Curriculum Ties: NA

Reader's Annotation
When Susie Salmon was murdered it was only the beginning of her journey. As she watches from her own personal Heaven, her friends and family cope with her death and search for her murder who lives right around the corner.

Plot Summary
In 1973, Susie Salmon, age 14, is brutally raped and murdered by a neighbor. Susie awakes, not in Heaven, but in the In-Between, an ethereal midway point where she creates and controls her new reality. From this vantage point she is able to observe her friends and family yet is unable to directly interact. She watches as her family and friends cope with her death and search for her killer, whose identity is known to Susie but a mystery to everyone else. She watches as her friends grow older, her family slowly unravels, and her killer goes undiscovered. Susie realizes that although she is no longer alive, she is still very much a part of the lives of her family and friends. Even though Susie is eternally 14, she continues maturing psychotically and emotionally. She also becomes more in control of her new reality, the In-Between. Later she even finds that she can influence and make contact with the real world and her still living friends and family. She might just be strong enough to guide them to her killer.

Critical Review

Sebold weaves together a fantastic story which is effective as a “who done it?” mystery, a study of how loss and grief effect a family, as well as a story about a young girl coping with life, death, and love. Although the reader knows the identity of the killer from the very beginning, since the story is told from Susie’s point of view, no one else does. Watching Susie’s father Jack Salmon, her younger sister Lindsey, and the detective in charge of the case, Fenerman, try and point the pieces together would have been captivating enough on its own. The drama surrounding the Salmon family is heartbreaking at times. Susie’s father becomes obsessed with finding her killer. Her mother struggles to move on yet is unable do to her husband’s obsession and the growing distance between them. Susie’s younger sister must deal with the being “the sister of the girl who was murdered” while her family is falling apart. This is the most effective part of the novel. The drama is rarely melodramatic and the characters, even the murdering Mr. Harvey, are never one dimensional stereotypes. The elements of the fantastic are wonderful. Sebold creates a unique vision of the afterlife where one’s reality is made up of memories, feels, and experiences from one’s life. There are no overt religious messages. Only the idea that the afterlife is what we create, what we take with us.

The Lovely Bones wonderfully shows how there can be love, joy and ultimately healing even after an event as horrible as having a friend, daughter, or sister violently taken from you. Be warned, Sebold gives us neither an easy path nor the easy ending. What she gives us is a very real and cathartic experience.

Author Info

Alice Sebold was born in Antigo, Wisconsin in 1963. To date she has written three novels: Lucky (1999), The Lovely Bones (2002), and The Almost Moon (2007). Her first book, Lucky, is personal memoir recounting her brutal rape while attending Syracuse University. She later identified and testified against her assailant in court where he was eventually convicted. Sebold then returned to school and finished her degree. Later, she fell into hard drug use while living in New York. Sebold recounts, “I did a lot of things that I’m not particularly proud of and that I can’t believe I did”. (Cue, 2001)

After kicking her drug habit she moved to California and became the caretaker of an arts colony and lived in a cabin with no electricity and wrote using propane lantern. Later she enrolled in the University of California , Irvine (UCI) MFA program where she met her future husband, writer Glen David Gold. In a 2002 interview, Sebold stated, “I have always felt extremely weird….but I am very happy with my weirdness and I want people to be very happy with theirs”.

Clarson, Jenifer. (July/August 2002). [Interview with Alice Sebold]. Book. Retrieved March 15, 2010, from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/writers/writerdetails.asp?cid=996944#bio

Cue, Ehzra. (2001). Award winning UCI author Alice Sebold discusses works. New University. Irvine, CA: University of California, Irvine. Retrieved March 15, 2010, from http://web.archive.org/web/20050411022901/http://www.newu.uci.edu/archive/2000- 2001/spring/010430/f-010430-alice.html

Book Talking

1. How does the Salmon family with Susie’s rape/murder? How do their reactions affect the family?

2. What is Susie’s “afterlife”, or In-Between, like? How is it created? What is the author’s perception of the afterlife?

Challenges

There have been challenges to this book in some middle school libraries due to its “graphic content”. The book does deal with the rape and murder of a 14 year old girl. There is a fairly graphic (although nowhere near pornographic) sexual scene. There have also been concerns about the religious content since the main character, Susie, is in a Heaven-like place yet there is no God.

· Be familiar with the parts of the book which involve violence and sexuality

· Be aware of the religious climate of your community

· Precedents: Several middle school libraries have retained this book on the shelves after challenges.

o See: http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2007/january2007/ALA_print_layout_1_333808_333808.cfm

o http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/ideasandresources/free_downloads/2008banned.pdf

Why I choose this book

Originally I picked up this book because the movie looked good and I wanted to read the book first. I could not put it down once I started reading; I finished it in one day. It has numerous themes, grief, loss, revenge, coming of age, what comes after life, etc…, and all of them are handled beautifully.