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Nancy Keane's | Booktalks -- Quick and Simple | |
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Rowell, Rainbow.
ELEANOR & PARK New York : St. Martin's Griffin, 2013 IL YA ISBN 1250012570 (4 booktalks) |
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Booktalk #1 Have you ever met someone that you’ve just connected with? Who has so much in common with you and nothing in common with you at the same time? Someone who frustrates you more than anyone you know, and yet you can’t stop thinking about them for more than a couple of seconds? That’s what it’s like when Eleanor meets Park. (Vermont Green Mountain Book Award, 2015) Booktalk #2 It is 1986, and big, awkward Eleanor is the new kid at school and has nowhere to sit on the bus. Park prays that she won’t sit with him, but then begrudgingly slides over and demands that she sit down. After weeks of ignoring each other as they sit side-by-side, an unlikely romance slowly begins to evolve and these two misfit teenagers realize that they desperately need each other. But can love conquer all? Can it save them from tragic family circumstances? Readers’ hearts will swell and burst as Eleanor and Park struggle to overcome their insecurities and try to find their place in the world. (Tiff Emerick, Bensalem Township School District for Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Award, 2015) Booktalk #3 Eleanor is a large girl with red hair and “wrong” clothes. People at school pick on and bully Eleanor and she doesn’t fight back. She is one of five children in a poor family and has a drunk and abusive stepfather. Park is a nice looking, half Korean boy who has lots of friends, but still doesn’t feel like he fits in. He likes comic books, music and wearing eyeliner. He has very supportive parents who don’t really understand him, yet accept who he is. This unlikely pair of teens is forced together when Eleanor has to “sit down” in the seat next to Park on the school bus. Each day, the two fifteen-year-olds begin noticing each other more and finding that they have things in common. During their encounters on the school bus, the reader is drawn into the budding romance of Eleanor and Park. Set in 1985 in Omaha, Eleanor and Park is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. The book is told in alternating voices and reveals the good and bad parts of human nature. (Booktalk by JoAnn Olsson, Teacher-Librarian, Liberty High School, Renton, WA, Evergreen Book Award) Booktalk #4 When Park moves towards the bus window to make room for the new girl Eleanor, it’s not a gesture of friendship, just one of decency; no one else will let her sit because of her red hair, imperfect figure, and lack of fashion sense. Not that Park is one to talk – he’s a misfit as well and only wants to avoid attention in high school. In a way, they’re perfect for one another, and the bus ride they share each day leads to a relationship that is stronger than either of them could have imagined. (Booktalk by the Louisiana Young Readers' Choice Committee) |
| SUBJECTS: Love -- Fiction. Dating (Social customs) -- Fiction. High schools -- Fiction. Schools -- Fiction. Love stories. |
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