CHANNELING MARILYN
Mima Tipper
Author Mima Tipper ’82 is back with another compelling, character-driven young adult novel, Channeling Marilyn. Marilyn is Marilyn Monroe, whose black-and-white afterlife is suddenly interrupted by a glimpse of scarlet red, which is the hat of tall, plus-size Lexa Donovan, a senior in high school. Lexa is in distress after being tapped to play the role of sexy showgirl Cherie, a role once played by Monroe, in the spring production of Bus Stop. Lexa’s lack of confidence and insecurities about her body prompt something in Marilyn, and things take a strange, unexpected turn when Marilyn’s spirit suddenly shows up—in Lexa’s body—ready to help Lexa prepare for her role. Tipper handles the paranormal occurrence with charm and humor. Marilyn is a fully developed character whose story follows as much of an emotional arc as Lexa’s. As Lexa learns how to embrace who she is and how she looks, Marilyn similarly confronts her own dilemmas from unfinished business in her own life. An engaging supernatural coming-of-age story, this novel will have you rooting for both of its protagonists, dead and alive.
MEN OF TROY
Monte Burke
Men of Troy: The Epic Afternoons, Wild Nights, and Enduring Legacy of Pete Carroll’s USC Trojans is more than a book about a football team. While it does delve into how Pete Carroll took a losing team and turned it into a powerhouse in the 2000s, it also examines the broader themes of the intersection of sports, celebrity, money, and mythmaking. Monte Burke ’94 has delivered a deeply researched account of the resurrection of the Trojan football team, their games that became must-see events in Los Angeles, and how the team’s success ultimately unraveled amid scandal. A seasoned journalist, Burke bases his tale on over 150 new interviews along with the original reporting on the rise and fall of the USC football program, and as a natural storyteller, he takes his narrative beyond game days and into locker rooms, onto recruiting trails, and into the glamorous LA nightlife scene that surrounded the program. Football fans and lovers of a good tale alike will be drawn in and carried along by the momentum of the story.
BUBBLE SHEET BLUES
William Durbin
Standardized tests have long been the bane of the elementary school teacher. In his latest young adult novel, Bubble Sheet Blues, William Durbin, MA English ’86 shows how truly insidious those tests can sometimes be. The story introduces Luke Collins, an eighth grader who has learned how to turn research assignments into easy, fast jobs by writing different versions on the subject of manatees. Forced by his English teacher to pick a new topic, he turns to the impending Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) for third graders after witnessing children in tears of anxiety about it—failing the test means repeating third grade regardless of classroom performance. What starts out as Luke’s attempt to finish his assignment quickly becomes an eye-opening investigation with his friends Claire and Gabe into corporate test profiteering. Durbin’s portrayal of a lazy student turned motivated activist is compelling and funny with engaging, well-developed characters and meaningful social commentary.
HER WOMANHOOD OF MINE
Haley Hutchinson
In her debut book of poetry, Her Womanhood of Mine, Haley Hutchinson ’23 writes a personal chronicle of her experiences as she matures from a young girl into a young woman. The poems are grouped in three sections, each labeled with a street name of places called home—Pine Street, Pleasant Street, and Pierce Street. With rich, sensual language, Hutchinson moves from the tender longings of girlhood and domestic inheritance (Pine Street) to complicated adult desires and relationships (Pleasant Street), to maturing love where intimacy is an intentional daily practice (Pierce Street). Her verse roots itself in the physical body as the girl moves to womanhood, and the beautiful, sensory images abound with tactile details, like tearing basil by hand or halving a piece of fruit, that turn the description of simple tasks into a profound reading experience.
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