National Book Award | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Musings: A Ghost Story That Isn’t A Ghost Story: Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

Atheneum, 2017

ISBN-13: 978-1481438254

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Fifteen-year-old Will’s brother Shawn has just been shot and killed by a member of a local gang. Will knows the rules: don’t cry, don’t snitch, and if someone you love gets killed, find the person who killed them and kill that person. Grieving and angry, he pries open a stuck drawer in his brother’s dresser and takes the loaded gun hidden inside so he can take his revenge. Will lives on the top floor of his apartment building, though, and he has to take the elevator down… and it’s a long way down, because on every floor, Will is forced to face the consequences of living with the rules, and of shooting to kill.

There is absolutely nothing about this book’s front, back, or inside cover that suggests that it is a ghost story. It is dedicated to teens in detention centers. I didn’t have a clue what it was about when I initially picked it up, I just had read good things about Jason Reynolds and knew the book had won a number of awards, including the Newbery Honor (not sure how I feel about that– the audience for the Newbery is children up to age 14, and Will is 15– this is really YA). But in describing it to my mom, who has an interest in teens and gun violence, I had to explain to her that Will is confronted by ghosts while he is trapped in the elevator(ghosts are a turnoff for her). Will’s “ghosts” aren’t very ghostly, though, which is one of the things that makes them so disorienting– Will is never quite sure whether they are alive or dead at first.

Long Way Down is a verse novel. There are frequent line breaks and plenty of white space on the page. The language is spare and powerful. Reynolds strips down feelings like grief, shame, anger, and sadness to the essentials by limiting how he puts words down on each page. Despite the pared-down text, Reynolds manages to draw the characters of Will’s ghosts with enough detail and emotional impact that readers will invest in discovering their relationships. Reynolds hasn’t written a horror story here, but it is a gripping and horrific story illustrating how this vicious cycle repeats, and the ambiguous ending is dread-inducing and heart-stopping. Highly recommended for middle, high school, and public libraries, and for readers 14-adult.

Note: Long Way Down has won a Newbery Honor Award, Coretta Scott King Honor Award, a Printz Honor Award, and is a National Book Award finalist.

North Carolina School District Bans Literary Classic “Invisible Man”

No, not that Invisible Man.

Yes, we write about the horror genre here, but the book under question is this one:

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953 and is counted among the top 100 novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library, was just banned in Randolph County, North Carolina.

It’s a different kind of horrifying than what we usually talk about here, although the confusion is understandable, I guess– even Google Books makes mistakes (link here). Invisible Man addresses many of the social issues African-Americans faced during the middle of the 20th century, especially in the South. Rather than physical invisibility, Ellison’s narrator describes himself as socially invisible, and is a part of the “underground”. This is the book that the school board in Randolph County, North Carolina, voted 5-2 to remove from school libraries and reading lists (link here).

Banned Books week starts September 22. That’s Monday. This incident will, I’m sure, give Invisible Man some new visibility.

It’s been interesting following the news regarding banned and challenged books since last year’s Banned Books Week. Alan Moore’s graphic novel Neonomicon was removed from the library of Greenville, South Carolina in December of 2012; The Diary of Anne Frank was challenged in Michigan (it stayed); Marjane Satrapi’s incredible graphic novel Persepolis was removed from the Chicago Public Schools to public outrage (and restored); the anti-war manga classic Barefoot Gen was banned and then restored to libraries in a school district in Japan; and emails revealed that the former governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, had attempted to influence the textbook adoption process to prevent A People’s History of the United States from being taught in Indiana schools (not that that ever would have happened here anyway) and teacher education classes; and an Alabama senator attempted to remove Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye from state reading lists. With this week’s removal of The Invisible Man from North Carolina schools, that makes seven times I’ve seen banned and challenged books make the news, and there are so many more cases out there that I’ve never heard of, or that haven’t been reported to anyone at all. And none of that includes the many other cases of censorship around the world.

To learn more about Banned Books Week, visit the website for Project Censored here and the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week here. And to discover more about banned books and media visit our Pinterest board on Banned Books here. Trust me, I worked hard on it and it is awesome. As for the kids of Randolph County, I’ll quote them Stephen King:

Don’t get mad, get even… Run, don’t walk, to the nearest nonschool library or to the local bookstore and get whatever it is they banned. Read whatever they’re trying to keep out of your eyes and your brain, because that’s exactly what you need to know.

Well said, Mr. King.

Not everyone, everywhere, has that choice. This week is a great time to celebrate that in this country, you can, in fact, do exactly that.