Sara Holbrook

It's 1950s Detroit and Marjorie Campbell must share her classroom desk with new girl, Inga Scholtz. With "Commies" under every bed and Nazis loose after WWII, paranoia runs high. In addition, Inga's presence threatens to undermine Marjorie's friendship with "queen bee" Bernadette. Holbrook paints a realistic view of post-war Detroit (actually, the northern suburb of Berkley) and presents a vivid look at mean girl behavior (the girls start a Slam Book against Inga and Marjorie must decide show more where her loyalties lie.) The book suffers from a lack of plot, some uneven shifts in tone (it tries to be funny at times but the subject itself is no laughing matter) and some dropped subplots (Who is the roomer Frank? Who was Inga's father, really? Why did Marjorie's mother have a breakdown?) It's also a pity that the lack of substance given to Inga's character prevents the book from portraying the immigrant experience. Nothing objectionable and a "B" for tackling a setting (the midwest) and time (the 1950s) now often found in YA literature. show less

I've been reading a lot of books about the Cold War lately and this is one to read if you have an interest. It describes the anti-German sentiment that permeated American culture in the 50s and 60s. There was much less tolerance for cultural differences back then and Detroit was one of the melting pot cities. This book is based loosely on the author's own experiences growing up in Detroit.

Marjorie is very aware of the anti-Nazi/anti-Communist atmosphere around her. Communists are called show more Commies and immigrants are called DPs for displaced persons. WW2 is still fresh in people's minds and they have no tolerance for Germans. When a new German girl named Inga joins her class and she is instructed to share her desk since there are no others, Marjorie is faced with a moral dilemma. She wants to be nice to Inga and help her learn to read English, but she knows it will jeopardize her friendship with the popular, but intolerant, Bernadette.

Her father, a retired military man, who works for a company with ties to the military, is socially aware of the importance to not appear to be a Communist sympathizer. So it's interesting that at the end of the book he invites Inga's father over to their house to talk about the war. In the end, Marjorie stands up to Bernadette. Her father's message is that war is bad, not people, so you must forgive and forget. show less

Reviewed by Sarah Bean the Green Bean Teen Queen for TeensReadToo.com

Boy and girl meet. Boy and girl become friends. Boy and girl start to wonder if there's something more. Whether or not we've had a more-than-friends relationship, I'm sure most of us have felt like we'd like to be more than friends with someone we know.

What happens when we finally become something more? How do you balance new love and old friendships? Will your love last? If it doesn't, how do you go back to being just show more friends?

Poets Sarah Holbrook and Allan Wolf decide to try and answer some of these questions through poetry. They each take turns writing poems, first one from him and then one from her. They explore the beginnings of a relationship, crushes, and all the ups and downs that come from falling in love.

The poems are all written in various formats, from free verse to couplet, sonnet, and tanka. Some of the poetry forms were new to me, so I was happy to see that the authors included a glossary in the back explaining how each form worked and then encouraging readers to write their own.

This is a short, quick read, and these beautiful poems are worth checking out. show less

Sara Holbrook’s book, “Wham! It’s a Poetry Jam: Discovering Performance Poetry” is a fun, silly new take on introducing poetry performance to the classroom. She provides suggestions and outlines for developing a poetry jam from beginning to end and includes dozens of poems students can utilize to start to get used to the idea of performing different words in different ways until they’re ready to start writing their own. She starts out with a few poems that encourage performers to show more get loud, get moving, and get over themselves. She recognizes that, at first, things may seem a little uncomfortable for students and so suggests that jammers begin with group poems, call and response, or trying to memorize a poem to make them feel more secure about performing it. Suggestions for conversations, questions, and exercises are provided in color boxes at the end of most poems. Some poems encourage performance to experiment with emotion contrast and different perspectives, lending excitement and versatility to the poetry jam. Towards the end of the book, Holbrook outlines the rules and regulations that will help create a successful performance and comes up with solutions to problems like, “What do you do when someone is talking too loud and hogging all the attention during a group poem?” and “What happens when someone goes over the time limit?” Holbrook is obviously very passionate about her work, but her language in the book can come across as childish and over-the-top (in her poems AND her professional voice) – maybe that's what makes for a great poetry jammer. Recommended for professionals looking to create poetry lesson plans for ages 9-11. show less