Weekend Pick for March 29, 2024

Weekend Pick for March 29, 2024

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Meet Emily Vero, our guest contributor to the final March Weekend Pick:
Hi there! My name is Emily Vero, and I am a senior Integrated Language Arts Education major at Youngstown State University. I am currently student teaching at Boardman High School in Boardman, Ohio. I work with Senior English, Mythology, and English Language Learner (ELL) classes under the guidance of a wonderful Cooperating Teacher. I also work as a School Age Teacher with students aged 5-10 after school. In my free time, I enjoy reading as much as I can, spending time with my friends, and writing poetry (that will never see the light of day).

​The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner

I first read The Serpent King when I was a senior in high school for a local reading competition in my county. Of all the books I read for the competition, this was the one I kept going back to; I felt so connected to all of the characters, and I just couldn’t put it down.
The Serpent King follows the story of three high schoolers who don’t fit into the landscape of their rural Tennessee high school. Dill, Lydia, and Travis are all faced with navigating the normal difficulties of senior year (drama, graduation, college, etc.) while being faced with their own deep personal issues. Dill is forced to reckon with the social and emotional impact of his father being sent to prison for child pornography and tends to cope in depressing and nihilistic statements (like many other teenagers). Lydia, a stylish teen with a popular fashion blog headed to NYU, resents her hometown, worries what moving onto the next chapter of her life will truly mean for her and if she will find more acceptance from her peers in the next chapter of her life. Travis, the son of an alcoholic, copes through a “Dungeons and Dragons”-like game and is an incredibly sweet character despite his horrific circumstances.

Jeff Zentner

This story resonated with me so deeply in that it reminded me of my own high school experience. I went to high school in a deeply religious, yet economically diverse area where students faced many of the same issues that Dill, Lydia, and Travis face. As I read their characters, I felt as if they could have been real people that I encountered in high school. Additionally, this novel handles incredibly sensitive issues (poverty, religious trauma, bullying, absent/abusive parents, etc.) in such a gentle yet realistic way. Zentner brought light to so many issues, which students in rural America face through such dimensional characters with many layers.

On my second read-through, The Serpent King did not disappoint. It was incredibly “full-circle” for me to read this as a student teacher working with seniors currently. This time, I saw Dill, Lydia, and Travis not as my peers, but my students. This new perspective only deepened the richness of this story for me – I have no doubts that I’ll read it a third time.

Overall, Zentner’s ability to balance sensitive issues with the complex emotional roadmap of senior year is what makes The Serpent King so stunning. The melancholy is perfectly balanced with moments of joy and absorbing what it feels like to be a kid for the last time. The nostalgia I got from reading this book again was so intense that it made me tear up upon finishing it. For both high school seniors and others, I highly recommend that you take the time to read The Serpent King.

To check out other titles by Jeff Zentner, visit his author page: https://www.jeffzentnerbooks.com/