Josie
Bloss
ISBN: 978-0738727578
Flux,
2011
Plot
Summary: Dylan
Mahoney made a big mistake. Not paying attention to the advice of her two best
friends, she went out with a jerk of a guy, lost her virginity to him, and went
and kicked the crap out of his sports car when he cheated on her. Angered, he
gets revenge by sending naked photos of her to everyone in school. Dylan winds
up taking all the blame and gets suspended. She gets labeled as the social
pariah of her class and gets called a whole host of things with “slut” being
the nicest. She barely escapes charges of child pornography and as a result
spends the rest of her school year being schooled from home. She spends all her
time doing homework and being holed up in her room. With very limited access to
the Internet, she stumbles among the blogs of homeschooled fundamentalist
Christian girls and discovers a world full of things she could never
understand, such as hope chests and the ultimate goal of a woman’s
life—submission to her husband. She is soon entranced and fascinated by the
world that is so different from her own. Wanting to be a writer and having
nothing else to do, Dylan creates a blog of her own under the name “Faith” in
hope of reaching these girls and finding a way out of her loneliness. Soon
Dylan takes the charade a little too far when she concocts a scheme to get one
of the girls—Abigail, the Queen Bee of the blog realm—to invite her to her home
for two weeks. Can she hide who she really is, especially when she sees the
darker side to Abigail’s life.
Critical
Evaluation:
The story starts with a typical sexting incident which gets the girl in trouble
and taking all the blame because she’s in the pictures. It is a little shocking
how bad Dylan’s life goes after she gets in trouble—no one speaks to her at
school and her parents barely treat her any better. Yet, her ex-boyfriend gets
off with no punishment (for distributing the photos in the first place). Dylan
is a likeable character. She gets drawn into a world so different from her own
and uses her persona as a way to have an outlet toward possible friendship. Of
course, she is eventually exposed but there are some good questions asked about
religion and different cultural views that would make for a compelling
discussion.
Reader's
Annotation: Dylan gets in trouble for sexting and is
shunned by her friends. Turning to the Internet she discovers a whole new world
in the blogs of homeschooled fundamentalist Christian girls. But how long can
she hide who she really is when she gets a chance to visit one of the girls at
her home?
Author
Information:
Josie Bloss grew up in East Lansing,
Michigan. She attended the University of Michigan, where she was a member of the
best college marching band in the country and a staff reporter for the Michigan Daily. After obtaining a degree
in Political Science, she tried to decide if she wanted to be a lawyer while
wrangling paper in several large Chicago
law firms that are attempting to take over the world. Finding herself
uninspired by global domination, she decided to relocate to somewhere more
quiet and write instead. When not mining her high school journals for material
and wishing there were marching band options for adults, Josie enjoys obsessing
over various TV shows, karaoke and all things theater. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana (Bloss, 2010).
Genre: Realistic
Curriculum
Ties: Different views of life, homeschooling, religion,
consequences of sexting
Booktalking
Ideas: Read scenes about the life of the
fundamentalist Christian girls. It will show how different their lives are from
other teens.
Reading
Level/Interest Age: 13+
Challenge
Issues: Lots
of open discussion on sexual topics and the sexting issue
Challenge
Defense: If this book were challenged, I would make
sure the library has a Challenge Defense File ready for such a situation.
Inside the Challenge Defense File, librarians and the public could find:
·
A
copy of the American Library Association’s Library
Bill of Rights. (Can be found and printed from ALA’s website at http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill)
·
A
copy of the American Library Association’s Freedom to Read Statement (Can be
found and printed from ALA’s
website at http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/statementspols/ftrstatement/freedomreadstatement)
·
A
copy of the library’s own selection policy (my library, the La Vista Public
Library, has a policy but it is not online so I can’t link to it as an
example).
·
A
copy of the library’s citizen’s complaint/reconsideration form (my library, the
La Vista Public Library’s, form is called the City of La Vista Service Request form).
·
Copies
of reviews—both good and bad—from reputable library and publishing services to
justify why a book was selected for inclusion in the collection. These include
not only reviews from such journals as School
Library Journal, VOYA, Horn Book, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist, but also any mention of books
on YALSA lists and other copies of articles about any awards or nominations
such books may have received.
·
Include
a short rationale file for other coworkers so if the librarian in charge of
selecting materials is not available when a challenge occurs the other staff
members have some information to go by (the rational would include such
information as a short summary, what could be challenged, reviews, awards and
nominations, etc.)
·
Include
for staff members a copy of “Strategies and Tips for Dealing with Challenges to
Library Materials,” a document written by the American Library Association.
Make sure that staff reviews this document periodically so they are prepared
and know how to face such situations. (Can be found and printed from ALA’s website at http://www.ala.org/advocacy/banned/challengeslibrarymaterials/copingwithchallenges/strategiestips)
Reason
for Inclusion: Great realistic story with a lot of real life
applicability.
References:
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