From: BRUCE H KNOTH <knoth>
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 12:34:40 -0400 (EDT)

With a friend I recently began a young adult book discussion group for some adolescent girls who are living in a group home/school because of a variety of sad complications in thier lives. We have six young women, ages 14 in the group. We assigned the first book, Taste of Salt, as something which dealt with adversity but which would not be "too close" to their own lives. Since the girls are in group and individual therapy we wanted something which would give them a bit of distance but which would still give them insights into how adolescents deal with the terrible things which are thrust upon them by the world. In any case, we had high hopes for the book and it fell totally flat. The girls found it impossible to relate to, even with the discussion. I would try the book again in another setting and will not fail to recommend it to young people, but I was very interested in the response from these girls. They could not make the leaps from their own lives to Haiti to become involved in the story. This might tell us more about this audience than about the book, but it took me by surprise.

We had tremendous success with our third book, Dear Nobody, by Berlie Doherty.

Maeve Visser Knoth Arlington, MA
Received on Fri 28 Jun 1996 11:34:40 AM CDT