Mister Pip–by Lloyd Jones

Jones, Lloyd.  Mister Pip.  New York: The Dial Press, 2007.

“Everyone called him Pop Eye.  Even in those days, when I was a skinny thirteen-year-old, I thought he probably knew about his nickname but didn’t care.  His eyes were too interested in what lay up ahead to notice us barefoot kids.  He looked like someone who had seen or known great suffering and hadn’t been able to forget it.  His large eyes in his large head stuck out further than anyone else’s–like they wanted to leave the surface of his face.  They made you think of someone who can’t get out of the house quickly enough.  Pop Eye wore the same white linen suit every day.  His trousers snagged on his bony knees in the sloppy heat.  Some days he wore a clown’s nose.  His nose was already big.  He didn’t need that red lightbulb.  But for reasons we couldn’t think of he wore the red nose on certain days–which may have meant something to him.  We never saw him smile.  And on those days he wore the clown’s nose you found yourself looking away because you never saw such sadness.” (p. 1)

When the village freak–the only white man left on the island–becomes the kids’ teacher, life turns upside down.  And when war and rebellion hit the island, it all goes downhill from there.  Who do you trust?

A Wreath for Emmett Till–by Marilyn Nelson

Nelson, Marilyn.  A Wreath for Emmett Till. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005.

Emmett Till was only fourteen in 1955, a friendly kid from Chicago on a trip down south to meet his relatives.  He was probably like you in many ways.  You may even have committed his crime yourself: whistling at a pretty girl.  But where you might have gotten a cross look or a joking slap for your trouble, Emmett became the victim of one of the most notorious lynchings in American history.

“Pierced by the screams of a shortened childhood,
my heartwood has been scarred for fifty years
by what I heard, with hundreds of green ears.
That jackal laughter.  Two hundred years I stood
listening to small struggles to find food,
to the songs of creature life, which disappears
and comes again, to the music of the spheres.
Two hundred years of deaths I understood.
Then slaughter axed one quiet summer night,
shivering the deep silence of the stars.
A running boy, five men in close pursuit.
One dark, five pale faces in the moonlight.
Noise, silence, back-slaps.  One match, five cigars.
Emmett Till’s name still catches in the throat.”

The Wall–by Peter Sis

Sis, Peter.  The Wall.  New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

Peter is a regular guy.  He’s into rock music, forms a band with his friends, and gets a job as a DJ on a radio show.

(excerpts from Peter’s journal)

February 1967: I form a rock group with my friends, but we have no instrument and we haven’t settled on a name yet.  My father makes me get a haircut.  I paint people with long hair.
May 1967: We start making instruments.  It’s hard to make an electric guitar.  You plug it into the radio and it blows a fuse.
August 1967: Hop-picking time again—a good way to meet girls.  After working all day, we get together and sing Beatles songs.

Everything’s great, except for the wrench in the works: he lives in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War.

(more excerpts)

January-February 1969: Jan Palach and Jan Zajic, students, set themselves on fire to “wake up the nation from lethargy.”
1970: Vetvicka, a fun guy and bass player, died of head injuries after the police beat him in the melee following the Beach Boys concert.
1976: The Plastic People of the Universe rock band are in prison.  I used to argue with them, and do not care for their music—but prison?

Peter is a regular guy, but he lives in a world full of lies and brutality.  For his story of resistance, you’ll need to read on…