Zero Tolerance

by Claudia Mills

Genre: Realistic fiction
Age: 11+

Sierra Shepherd is in 7th grade, and is probably the best model student ever. She's in Leadership Club, helped to sew the banner displaying Longwood Middle School's four values (Rules, Respect, Responsibility and Reliability), always gets straight A's and always - ALWAYS! - follows the rules. So when she opens her lunchbox at school one day and finds she accidentally brought her mother's identical one rather than her own and finds that it contains a paring knife, she - naturally - turns it in to the lunch lady, expecting to hear a "Thank you for being responsible. We'll contact your mother immediately." But Sierra's school has a Zero Tolerance policy - absolutely NO drugs and NO weapons, with NO exceptions and NO excuses. Even if it was just an accident and Sierra just wanted to hand it in. Now she's facing an expulsion, and is spending her days in in-school suspension... with the "bad" kids. But soon she starts to realize that they aren't juvenile delinquents... nor is she the most perfect student in the school.

The author of this book brought up an issue that actually happens today and crafted a totally real story about it. My dad actually read an article in The Economist about the same thing Zero Tolerance talks about - zero tolerance policies in schools. There were some pretty strange things in the article that qualified for expulsion or suspension. For example, according to the article, The Perils of Peanut-Tossing, a school with a dress code of black shoes decided the situation was major enough to bring in the police when a five-year-old boy who didn't have black shoes wore red shoes colored in with black Sharpie, and red splotches were still visible. And talking about firing a Hello Kitty soap bubble gun earned a suspension. Is it really OK to suspend young children for such minor reasons as this? Is it worth it? Besides all that, Zero Tolerance is written is a really engaging way, and I also enjoyed seeing how Sierra and her view of herself and others changed throughout the course of the book. This is a novel where that is very, very true.

Saints

by Gene Luen Yang

Genre: Historical fiction graphic novel
Age: 12+
This book is actually part of a long novel, Boxers & Saints, in two parts, Boxers and Saints. They are from different sides of the story in the Boxer Rebellion. This one is supposed to come second, but if you read it first it also makes sense.

Four-girl was born in China as the fourth daughter to her mother on the fourth day of the fourth month. In Chinese, "four" is a homonym of "death," so her family treats her not-so-nicely. They didn't even bother to give her a name! Her grandfather especially. He thinks she's a devil. So she tries to become a devil. She "freezes" her face in a "devil face" and is taken to a doctor who helps her stop. But then she causes a tragedy. One day she finds a person in the woods - a person who is a girl but looks like a boy and is wearing armor. She tells the doctor about it, and he takes her to the priest. Four-girl becomes a Christian, and finally she gets a proper name... Vibiana.
But China during the Boxer Rebellion is not a safe place for Christians like Vibiana. Will she stay true to her new faith, or will she abandon it to be safe?

This book had a really unusual ending to me. It was definitely out of the ordinary. But it fit the story very well, so I'm not complaining or anything. I think my favorite part of Saints was the epilogue. It felt so strong and... it was a great epilogue for this book. I think the theme of religion was also really strong, and I liked how Vibiana traveled through her faith... I thought it was very true-to-life. Overall this book stayed with me for a long time after I read it. It gave me a lot to think about.