Gary Schmidt at Bright Ideas

A little while ago I posted information on the upcoming Bright Ideas Conference at MSU. The featured author this year is Gary Schmidt. This alone is enough to make it worth attending!

Schmidt has written several young adult novels that you might want to check out. Among my favorites:

• Trouble--a coming-of-age story in which a young man struggles to make sense of his brother's accident and the social context in which it occurred (I don't want to give too much away here...)
• Straw into Gold--a retelling and reimagining of the Rumpelstiltskin story
• Mara's Stories--a collection of Jewish folklore that is framed as a series of stories that the character of Mara tells children under her care in a concentration camp

I'll make sure to use at least one or two as read alouds in the upcoming weeks.

One of the comments I heard today in class was that some people valued the edginess of American Born Chinese. (I liked it too!) I think of Gary Schmidt's work as offering a completely different type of "edginess" that is about honesty and the potential for reconcilliation. I wonder if some who found Does My Head Look Big in This to be forced might find Trouble, for example, to be more "real".

Anyone else read his books?

(I win the "How many labels can you attach to a post" contest.)