Bread Givers

Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers. New York, NY: Persea Books, 2003. Print. ISBN: 0892552905. PBK. $8.00.

Awards:N/A

Reviews:

Included in Jesse Larsen's 500 Great Books by Women

Annotation: The first quarter of the 20th Century proved to be a groundbreaking period for women across the United States. In this novel the struggle for one young Jewish woman of the New World is to find her place while her father desperately tries to keep her living in the Old World's ways.

Booktalk:

Why cannot my father leave me be? I want to experience the world. I want to have a taste of everything and then decide for myself if it is good or bad. I am tired of being told how a nice young Jewish maiden must only busy herself with becoming ready for her pending marriage to a nice young Jewish man. But here in America, "where girls pick out for themselves the men they want for husbands, how grand would it be if the children could also pick out their fathers and mothers" (76).

Image courtesy of: www.tower.com

The Outsiders

Hinton, S.E. (1967). The Outsiders. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc. 

Classification: classics

Genre: fiction

Age level: 13+

Subjects: coming of age, survival, family and friends

Awards: New York Herald Tribune Best Teenage Books List, 1967, Chicago Tribune World Spring Book Festival Honor Book, 1967, Media and Methods Maxi Award, 1975, ALA Best Young Adult Books, 1975 and Massachusetts Children's Book Award, 1979. 

Reader's Annotation: A coming of age story told in the first person by the protagonist about his life as a Greaser in a story reminiscent of West Side Story. 

Summary: Ponyboy shares his life with the rest of the world as a member of the lower class Greasers who are constantly at odds with the upper class Socs. Ponyboy's people are the "outsiders" who are always blamed by authority for all the trouble, while the Socs can essentially get away with anything due to their societal connections. Ponyboy and his best friend Johnny are harassed and attacked by the Socs one night after bonding with two fo the girls who belong to the Socs crowd. When Johnny murders one of the Socs, the two boys find themselves on a journey that will literally change their lives forever. 

Image Credit: http://www.eastchester.k12.ny.us/schools/Ms/teachers/burke/images/outsiders_000.jpg

Go Ask Alice

Anonymous. (1971). Go Ask Alice. (p. 185). Aladdin Paperback.

ISBN: 0-689-81785-1

Classification: classics

Genre: non-fiction

Age Level: 12+

Subjects: coming of age, drug addiction, sexuality, death, friends and family

Awards: N/A

Reader's Annotation: An anonymous journal of a teenage female in the late 1960's during her experiences with drug addiction.

Summary: The anonymous author of this journal was just fourteen when she experiened her first acid trip and began her foray into drug abuse and addiction. The author nicknamed "Alice," takes the reader on a trip of emotional highs and lows as she lives her life in between drug trips, periods of sobriety and reconciliations with her parents after running away from home twice. By the time "Alice" is sixteen, she had begun working on her sobriety but the drug crowd she used to be friends with attempts to make it difficult for her to maintain her commitment of staying clean with their constant harrassment. What results is a compelling, often terrifying and heartbreaking caution tale of drug use and abuse. 

Image credit: http://www.scls.lib.wi.us/sunpraise/images/GoAskAlice.jpg