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Barzak, author of the Shirley Jackson Award-winning Before and Afterlives and the Stonewall Award Honor Young Adult novel, Wonders of the Invisible World has crafted a most perceptive and inventive collection of stories in Monstrous Alterations. Barzak takes ten classic tales and, as he calls it in the introduction, creates the art of alteration. The retellings in these stories are not just to make them accessible today; they are reimagined, transformed, and remixed for readers in a world not focused on the straight, cis-white, male. ​

​All the stories resonated with me on a literary level. Through the representation lens, I gravitated to a number of the stories in the collection after re-reading the original texts. Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me is Barzak’s take on Chistina Rosetti’s Goblin Market, a staple in high school British Literature courses. In this creative retelling, the goblins at the market are treated with a freedom not offered in the original text. While the original sees the market, the goblins and their fruits as temptations of sinful desires, the goblins here offer something different to Laura. They offer her acceptance of her sexuality. After dancing and a kiss with a female goblin, Laura wonders aloud about love and is told by the female goblin, that “love comes in many shapes, my dear. Why approve of only one? Particularly when no one else would approve of the shape of your love anyway?” Indeed, for this Queer reader, I would have loved to have read those words in my teens to feel that acceptance and freedom regarding my love. The female goblin’s words in this story are the type of freedom young readers are seeking in their world today.

​Another story that truly tugs the heart with regard to characters who live in the margins but truly deserve their own story is The Trampling. It is a retelling of Stevenson’s Gothic novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In The Trampling, Barzak tells the story of the young girl who is trampled early on in the story. The girl, nameless here, lives in poverty with abuse. She has learned early on to keep her wits about her and her head down. Sent running for the doctor after one of her parents’ physical fights, she is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mowed down by a man running late at night, she hits her head against a stone, and breaks her arm. The arm is set and put in a sling, and the man pays the father a hundred pounds hush money. They move to better digs for a short period of time until the money runs out while her father drinks most of it away. Her life, however, is forever changed. Her arm was poorly set and healed improperly. She is limited in movement for the rest of her life thus preventing any reasonable source of income. With limited mobility her job prospects are bare, and she works sixteen-hour days in a matchstick factory dipping the sticks into phosphorus causing more serious health issues. The author though does not let the reader off with a nod to 19th century classism. He moves the needle further forcing us to confront the classism we participate in today. The story mentions the parts of our cell phones that are indeed manufactured in unsafe factories by children like this nameless girl forcing us here in the west to confront our participation in an unhealthy global class system.

​While it would be easy to say that the collection is a clever, writerly take on classic tales, what Barzak presents here in this collection is far more than that. Young readers today have concerns about socio-economic class structures as well as gender and sexuality equality. Many of the stories are strong discussion starters on both progress and stalls in our society past and present regarding these issues. The author has young readers confront injustices that existed in the past and are still alive today. He gives a front and center voice to the characters often pushed to the margins of society. Young readers will gravitate to the literary value of the writing, as it is exciting to read such stories from marginalized characters in classics. However, it is more than that. By inserting modern day issues young readers relate to, the collection is well suited to use as discussion points on social themes as well. It gives us reason to revisit classic texts, confront our societal issues today, and see the literary challenge of rewriting, remixing and reimagining. I’m excited to use this collection with my high school creative writing students over the summer as both a discussion starter to themes, as well as for the amazing craft offered in the idea of reimagining stories from those characters on the margins.

Enjoy the weekend and books!

Looking for something to read? 
​Check out our weekly suggestions!
Are your students looking for book recommendations?
Send them to browse through the picks for this or past years.
 
For the picks from 2022 click here
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For the picks from 2020 click here.
For older picks click from 2019 click here.
For the even older picks click here.
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During my tenure as a school librarian, I was tasked with weeding the materials closet. It was a treasure chest of beautiful items. I loved the giant pull down maps and old globes and would display them in my library. They were fantastic conversation starters and direction pointers to books in my library as students discovered names on those old maps and globes that are not on current ones. Places named Yugoslavia, USSR, and Prussia. It would lead students to examine a location and its history. How Prussia became Germany, then East and West Germany and a reunification. We’d discuss places that weren’t on old maps but are there today. Places named Kosovo, Latvia or Ukraine. 
I loved those teaching in the moment lessons and steering students to books. Novels like Michelle Barker’s The House of One Thousand Eyes, about life in East Germany. Carrie Arcos’ We Are All That’s Left centered around surviving the 1990s Yugoslav wars. I could speak with authority. These were places I’d been to and read a great deal about.

However, there is an area of the world I found myself with limited words and knowledge when kids would find places no longer on our current maps. I was not well-informed on the land, the names of the countries, and the people and cultures there. I also didn’t have multiple representations of different voices from that area in my school library.
I’m speaking of Israel and Palestine. While I have my basic Wikipedia type facts on the region, I found I didn’t have a well-versed language to speak with confidence on this area, nor did I have any books about the Palestinian experience there.

In light of recent events, knowing that kids will have questions about the region of the world and the people there, it is perhaps a good time to consider books as a resource of understanding for kids. Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Where the Streets Had a Name is a powerful book about the experiences of a young teen in the early 2000s in the region. It is important to note that Where the Streets Had a Name is told through the Palestinian point of view. It is a sensitive story and often painful throughout. It neither condemns nor endorses a movement on either side of the political and cultural groups in the region, it simply tells a story of a young girl.

While this is the story of a Palestinian protagonist, it may be painful for those with connections to Israel and Israeli culture who may have different perspectives regarding the land and the rights to it. And that is precisely why it’s important to have a wide array of viewpoints from different cultures in the area readily available in our school classrooms and libraries. To build peaceful futures, we must learn and embrace cultural differences and voices.
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Spend some time with Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Where the Streets Had a Name. I gained some understanding of the region and its history. I moved my knowledge beyond what the names on the map are, and once were. I gathered deeper understanding from a book about what it’s like in an area during conflict and geographical border and boundary changes. A lovely book about a young teen, who like me, is just trying to understand it better. It is a book well suited to discuss the quest novel. More importantly, it is a book to examine because it is a fair and nuanced portrait of a young teen living in complicated circumstances. It is a novel that drives to the heart in a number of classroom themed lessons that when coupled with books from other points of view give us a better situated understanding of the individuals living though conflict in a region. 

Overall, it’s impossible to resist being drawn into Sophie’s world due to Jones’ masterful storytelling on this wild ride of a read! Check out more books by D. W. Jones at http://www.dianawynnejones.com/​.