How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity

Block, Francesca Lia, Levithan, David, Maguire, Gregory, Lanagan, Margo, Woodson, Jacqueline, Donoghue, Emma, Sleator, William, Shanower, Eric, Koertge, Ron, Boylan, Jennifer Finney, Schrag, Ariel, Peters, Julie Anne. (2009). How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.
Chapter Book: Yes Genre: Short Stories

Everyone has a story good bad or indifferent. Everyone has to deal with the issues of life. The choices you make will determine if you win, lose or draw, and that will determine "How Beautiful the Ordinary."

How Beautiful the Ordinary,is a book of short stories by twelve different authors. Each author sharing a different story about what he or she believes are some of the challenges young people face in dealing with who they believe they really are. The book begins with a story about someone who is dead watching over two boys trying to fit in with a society that is changing towards excepting their relationship but not fully. In the end they are admonished not to give up but to keep on loving each and in time maybe things will change for the better for them.  

Moreover, as I read further there were some stories written using graphic art. The colors were black and white however; the illustrator was able to capture the idea of what the author was trying to say. Some of the stories were very graphic in content and I would be very careful of the audience I would refer this book to. I think this book is suitable for students between the ages of 17 and above. One thing in particular I noticed was that in all of the stories there was an ever present shadow of sadness. For example: the story Dear Lang. I heard a friend of mine once say that in any relationship male female, male male, female female, when comes to breaking up for the most part it is never pretty. In this story two women live together as a family, they have a child, they break up and YaYa one of the women is not allowed to see the child anymore so she writes this heartbreaking letter to the child on her sixteenth birthday.

Most of these stories appear to take place in rural areas.  The story that grabbed my attention the most was The Silk Road Runs Through Tupperneck, N.H. I thought that story was very well written and it has good substance to it. However, as stated earlier I would be very careful about whom I introduced this book to only because of the graphic content and nature.