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You Hear Me?: Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys (Betsy Franco Yas) |
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| Author: Published: 2001-05-01 |
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List price: $6.99 Our price: $6.99 |
Usually ships in 24 hours As of: November 19th, 2008 07:04:58 PM |
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Customer comments on this selection. Great!Fridays are poetry days in my classroom. Every few weeks, I pull out this book, or Things I Have to Tell You, and read a poem or two. Time and again, boys will approach me after class and ask to borrow the book. These poems say to kids what Whitman, Frost (sorry--you know I love you, Robert) and Tennyson just can't. Kids must speak to kids. These books assure tentative nascent poets that they can do it, too, and they deliver a strong peer message to kids who are struggling. Betsy Franco has done a great thing here. HonestThis book is a genuine, heartfelt, and very honest portrait of teenagers in urban America. There are those, no doubt, who will be offended by its explicit language and subject matter. Nevertheless, explicit language is one of the hallmarks of teenagers grappling with issues of sexuality, drug use, disability, and a myriad of complex social relationships. This book will not expose teenagers to issues with which they are unfamiliar - despite its language, it will not taint innocent minds. Rather, it will model a healthy way (writing poetry) to grapple with the questions most teenagers face as they navigate the difficult path to adulthood.  AppallingThe facts about this book are clear from these excerpts from an article in the New York Daily News,Dec. 7, 2006: "Sixth-graders at a Queens school were getting quite an education - in homosexuality, French kissing and cursing - thanks to three books widely available in classroom libraries. ... Several parents learned of the racy books after overhearing their kids snickering about the sexual themes. The poem 'I Hate School' in a book called 'You Hear Me?' includes the rhyme, 'F--- this s---, up the a--. I don't think I'll ever pass.' Another poem compares eating an orange to having sex, while several passages repeatedly use vulgar slang for genitalia. Principal Carmen Parache said ... they were ''definitely inappropriate.' ... 'As soon as I saw them, I pulled them and they are no longer in the school'"  great-except for first entry..."Time somebody told me" has been around a lot longer than the young man who submitted it - Otherwise, love the real, true feelings expressed! Tender? Deep? Try Tolerance Run Amok{First of all, I rate this a 1-Star book. I mistakenly submitted my review with five stars and you can only edit the review - not the rating.} (...) YOU HEAR ME: POEMS AND WRITINGS BY TEENAGE BOYS is a collection of teenage angst that will shock most any parent who reads this book. That may come as a surprise to those on the left who promote the acceptance of trash as "tolerance"... but "shocked" is probably being kind as many parents would be flat-out angry at finding their 7th-12th grader in possession of this book. Let me be honest: This book cannot even be reviewed with the frankness I would like, in using words from the book itself, because Amazon would, rightfully, strike it for being obscene! The editorial reviews above give you a taste. Teenage boys, for YEARS, have grown up learning right from wrong, but to those who praise this book I suppose that's an oppressive and old-fashioned concept. Books like this - and praise for them - say that it's okay (and right) to use vulgarity, promote pre-marital sex - and more - all in the name of "acceptance of young boys angst." Sorry, but some of us still believe you stand up for what is right and true and good and call trash what it deserves to be called - and what this book is - TRASH that belongs nowhere near a junior high library. |
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