CLIC@JDHL Blog - Jim Dan Hill Library at University of Wisconsin

Thanks to Natasha Schumacher for contributing today’s post!

Fall and winter holidays are coming, and you know what that means…FOOD! I’ll be enjoying comfort food, fancy food, Friendsgiving food, and simmer-all-day-while-you-try-to-fit-cooking-into-your-hectic-holiday-schedule food. I love it all.

This seasonal turn towards cooler weather also encourages us to spend more time cuddled up in cozy spots with our favorite books. This week I’m combining my love for books with my appreciation of food.

Have you ever read a book which described a meal so deliciously that it made your mouth water and your taste-buds tingle? There are many cookbooks and recipes out there now that are based on our literary loves, such as The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook, or The Unofficial Game of Thrones Cookbook. Some authors go the extra mile and list recipes for their narrative vittles at the end of each book (like Diane Mott Davidson and Ellie Alexander).

Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series focuses on a female assassin with a passion for chocolate cake. The description of this decadent, rich, chocolatey goodness reminds me of my mom’s seven-layer chocolate cake. This cake is infamous among our family and friends because my mom only makes it for our Christmas Eve open house (also repurposed for Christmas breakfast). The cake itself is just made from a boxed devil’s food cake mix (putting plastic wrap over it after it has slightly cooled helps keep the cake moist), but the frosting is a secret family recipe. I will say that the original recipe used quite a bit of Parkay, but that brand of margarine no longer exists, so it has been modified over the years. Either way, Celaena Sardothien would definitely approve of this cake after a hard day of assassin’s work.

What is a literary food item or book-inspired recipe you’d like to try?

Chocolate Cake

About the Author:

Natasha is word nerd, bibliophile, and connoisseur of cheesy dad jokes. She likes to pair her trivia with a good local cider.

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Spooky Stories From JDHL

This October, the Jim Dan Hill Library invited students to share their original spooky stories to celebrate the season, with a chance to be featured on our blog. Turn down the lights, grab a blanket, and enjoy this eerie submission from one of our talented Yellowjackets, Hannah Hutton, … It’s a dark and stormy night... Perfect for the first day at the new school.Hauntling High, an elitist school that only accepts the best.Oh, and did I mention that it’s a monster school? The bell tolls. Our character groans and grunts as he rises out of his gravestone bed. His bones rattled; his eye opens. His other is an empty socket.His name is Jason Flametooth. A skeleton. Or partly a skeleton. He still has flesh, his right torso is mostly flesh, though his arm is nothing but bones under his elbow. His feet are nothing but bones, and his legs have sections of exposed bone. His head is flesh except for his right eye and jaw. His jaw can detach.His bones feel cold against the cement. He’s stiff. They grind together.His door opens. Candle light pours in, and a looming shadow stretches along the floor. The shadow was tall, round, and triangularly juts out symmetrically on the sides. Wings. Wings too small to fly.Jason yawns:“Morning mom,”His mom, four feet tall, steps inside. She has grey stoney skin, always cold to the touch. Sharp features. A long mouth full of sharp fangs, a large, centered nose. Short horns and animal-like ears top her head. A gargoyle.His mom hisses. Whipping her snake like tongue at her sleepy son:“Hurry up, you’re late for your first day of school!”The bell tolls.Jason scrambles to get dressed. Limps his way to the bathroom. Stiff. He is always stiff in the morning. His bones grind.His bones were finally loose. Allow him to walk normally. The grinding gone.He runs towards Hauntling High.At Hauntling High. Jason walks into class. Ava, a vampire and Rebecca, a werewolf are there. He’s watched as he takes his seat. Eyes on him. Class goes well. Ava and Rebecca, as intimidating as they are, scare the rest of the class. No one mentioned his tardiness. With words. Their looks were enough.Second class. Owen and Levi, twin mummies, are there. Potions. The last potion he tried failed charred his hair off. That was three years ago.Levi laughs:“Remember when you charred your hair off?”Jason shoots him his best be quiet look. He speaks with contempt:“I remember.”They both laugh. He’s happy when they stop. Being mummies, their laughter is dry. Probably not good for their throats.Owen gasps:“No don’t add that in!”Too late. Jason pours the liquid in. Boom! Flames burst from the cauldron. His clothes ignite. Burn. They burn his clothes to his underwear. The class laughs. Monphones are out. Fingers pointing. Laughter. Owen, Levi, everyone. Everyone. The bell tolls.Jason shoots upright. Gasping as if he’s rising from the dead. He’s in his gravestone bed.It was a nightmare.Jason groans and grunts as he rises. His bones rattle.He checks the clock.His jaw clatters against the floor.He’s late! Come to the Ghost Story Open Mic Night to hear more spooky stories!...

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Student Banned Book Review: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews By Hailie Evans If I were to describe the plot of a book with these three words—boy, girl, and cancer—most everyone would have a general idea of where that story was going. We see this story repeatedly in literature and media, and we know how this tale ends: the boy and the girl fall in love before the cancer inevitably claims one of their lives, leaving the other to process their grief but grow from the experience, having formed a new and improved outlook on what it means to live and to love. Yet, what if this was not the way the story unfolded? In Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Jesse Andrews takes this well-known tale and remolds it to create a story more relatable to his readers. Andrew’s book opens with Greg Gaines beginning his senior year of high school, and he is on top of the world. He has everything figured out: who belongs in what social group, what that means, and where he fits into all of it. He and his co-worker Earl Jackson (who is also his best friend) are well on their way to surviving the K-12 system, making multiple half-way-decent to good films along the way; that is, until Greg’s mom forces him to become friends with Rachel Kushner, a girl in his grade recently diagnosed with leukemia. In a platonic narrative of their senior year, Greg shares his journey of surviving the stressors of high school while navigating the challenging concepts of mortality, grief, and the fears of an uncertain future. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is not the typical tragic love story; rather, it is an exploration of growing up and facing life—both the good and the bad, through the medium of a crudely comedic, low-esteemed high school boy. Despite these relatable themes and experiences, Andrews’s book has been challenged repeatedly, recently ranking as the seventh most-challenged book of 2021. According to the American Library Association, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl has been “banned and challenged because it was considered sexually explicit and degrading to women” (“National”). In addition to these two reasons, the book has been placed under fire due to being “obscene,” containing “vulgar and coarse language,” and “constituting pornography” (Andrews, “i wrote”; Collier). Admittedly, this book contains strong language use by the main characters, and there is crude humor revolving around sexual references; despite this, the characters in the book are virgins, and there are no sex scenes within the book. On multiple occasions, Andrews has defended his book and addressed the elements that people have used to challenge it. In one interview with USA Today, he describes how “cherry picked passages misrepresent the book and its intentions. ‘It’s about teenage boys talking about sex. They’re not having it, they barely know what it is. They’re joking about it, the way teenagers often do…There’s a kind of an innocent naivete to it that gets totally lost when you’re selecting a couple of sentences and reading it out loud in this aggrieved tone to the school board’” (VanDenburgh). In a letter Andrews tweeted to the Elizabethtown School District, he addresses the accusation that his book “constitutes pornography:” I keep encountering the claim that the book constitutes pornography. To that I say: Yikes. Anyone making that claim has either never read the book, or never seen pornography. The purpose of pornography is to arouse. No one, and I cannot believe anyone is claiming otherwise, has ever been sexually aroused by Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. (Andrews, “i wrote”) There is no denying that the book contains crude sexual references often intended for comedic purposes, profuse swearing, and offensive comments by high school boys about the physical appearances of their female classmates. However, to challenge or ban a book that addresses important and relatable messages because the content too accurately represents the common culture among teenagers is hard to accept. Sean Collier says it best in his article discussing the challenging of Andrews’s book: “These books are targeted because they might impart knowledge of the world, as it actually is, to young people; this is an attempt not to shield young minds from obscenity but to blind young eyes against reality.” Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a story detached from the fairytale feel of other similar stories; Andrews addresses that life can be hard, life can suck, and teenagers can be somewhat crude as they find the best route to individually face their reality. For Greg—like many other kids his age—this form of “dealing with it” is through crude gallows humor. While some may view the book’s crude humor, vulgar language, and sexual references as unnecessary and excessive, there is a purpose behind Andrews’s choices as an author. Neither Greg nor Earl have learned a way to express their struggles and challenges with their relationships, family life, impending graduation, or their friendship with Rachel, the dying girl. Mortality, grief, poverty, neglect, low self-esteem, feeling detached from one’s peers, facing the frightening moment of choosing a future with no idea of what comes next, and the uncertainty of life—these are all concepts that the main characters of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl face, and they do not always know how to handle it. Banning and removing this book from shelves removes the voice of the human experience. Everyone deals with conflict—both internal and external—in different ways. Saying that Greg and Earl’s response to life’s struggles is wrong implies to people who respond in similar ways to grief and fear that their expression and feelings are wrong. Some people laugh when others cry; some people make jokes and lash out when they are afraid or hurt; others avoid hard topics, choosing instead to address easy topics that require no emotional turmoil; and some people do not know how to process extreme emotions on their own. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl should not be banned because it is relatable; it is the—sometimes ugly—truth of processing hard things in life, whether that be one’s social life in school, the uncertainty of a looming future, or the death of a friend—lost before one realized that they never even knew who that person was. How do we deal with the death of a young person, a classmate, a stranger, or a friend? How do we manage multiple stressors, juggling all parts of our life at once? How do we find hope for our futures in a life that does not nourish, support, or prepare us? How do we face our fears of the unknown, find confidence in ourselves and our abilities, and step out of the shadows to claim our lives? The answer: there is no one answer, and there is no right answer, but banning Me and Earl and the Dying Girl eliminates one more person’s ability to say, that is me. Those are my struggles, and those are my fears. I do not have it figured out, but that’s okay because I am not the only one. I am not weird, I do not ‘have a fungus eating my brain,’ and I am not wrong for having the feelings and responses I do (Andrews, Me and Earl 1). I am human, and this is life. It is sometimes frightening and hard to understand, but it is real. Works Cited Andrews, Jesse. Cover Image. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, by Chad Beckerman, Amulet Books, 2012. Andrews, Jesse. [@_jesse_andrews_]. “i wrote a letter to the elizabethtown (pa) school district, who is considering a request to remove my book.” Twitter, 28 April 2022, 6:07 p.m., https://twitter.com/_jesse_andrews_/status/1519815484329193473 Andrews, Jesse. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Amulet Books, 2012. Collier, Sean. “Collier’s Weekly: Book Bans Are Back, and as Backwards as Ever.” Pittsburgh, 11 April 2022, https://www.pittsburghmagazine.com/colliers-weekly-book-bans-are-back-and-as-backwards-as-ever/ “National Library Week kicks off with State of America’s Libraries Report, annual ‘Top 10 Most Challenged Books’ list and a new campaign to fight book bans.” American Library Association, 4 April 2022, https://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2022/04/national-library-week-kicks-state-america-s-libraries-report-annual-top-10 VanDenburgh, Barbara, and Mary Cadden. “Authors of most banned books in the U.S. speak up: ‘We can’t take these freedoms for granted.’” USA Today, 25 September 2022, 9:26 a.m., https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2022/09/16/banned-books-authors-talk-about-controversy/7963024001/ Copyright 2023. All Rights Reserved. This book review is part of a series of Banned Books Week reviews from Dr. Emilee Howland's Fall 2022 ENGL 460: Banned Books class. For more information about Banned Books Week and how to get involved, please visit BannedBooks.org. ...

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