Booktalk Card, HERO by Perry Moore

Hero by Perry Moore, 2007.

Hyperion: New York

428 pages, hardcover, $19.99 Cnd.

ISBN – 10: 1-4231-0195-2

ISBN – 13: 978-1-4231-0195-6

Plot Summary: Action packed. Begins on the high school basketball court and moves into the community fighting one crime after the other. Also a love story As Thom becomes more confident about his sexuality he lusts after various people and then finally falls in love with Goran.

Characters: Thom Creed is an athletic gay high school student who develops super-hero powers.

Hal Creed – Thom’s father is the former Major Might, a super hero who had no other-worldly powers but still managed to become one of the most beloved super heroes, until his fall from grace, that is.

Thom’s mother – a superhero who disappears and has vanished for most of the book.

Scarlett – a superhero who is able to control fire but has a very bad temper. She also has Cancer.

Typhoid Larry – literally makes people sick just by his presence.

Ruth – is able to see the future.

Golden Boy – is in love with Scarlett.

Coach – a minor character who is present only in the beginning of the book but who is used by the author to set the anti-gay tone that pervades the high school and the town itself.

Uberman – the superhero that Thom admires.

Justice – the superhero who turns out to be bad.

Goran – Thom’s superhero in the end.

Setting: The protagonist and his father live in “a modest two-bedroom on the outskirts of what was then [when his father bought] the toniest new neighborhood in the suburbs. [Their] home was also known to [their] snottier neighbors as “the shittiest house in the whole subdivision” (p. 7). A lot of the action takes place in their house but also in the high school gym (where Thom plays basketball), as well as all throughout the town.

Style: Action packed, fantasy. Like reading a super hero comic book without the drawings. All of the things you would normally see in pictures in the comics are written out for you in this book.

Author: Perry Moore, executive producer of the Chronicles of Narnia films, author of a book about making The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, author and director (with his partner, Hunter Hill) of the feature film, Lake City. Hero is his first novel.

Series: Not yet.

Intended Audience: Young adults, males or females, males who are gay and/or anyone who just doesn’t feel like they fit in for one reason or another.

Report on the experience of developing a book talk for Youtube – 500 words.

I’ve been feeling a little hesitant about this book talk. I think the book is excellent but I’m a little concerned about my ability as a middle aged woman to sell it to a young adult audience. I really believe it should be sold by a teenager. I think if I was in charge of the Y/A section of a library I would have some of my youth advisors do booktalks. I would be in the background for guidance but I think youth need to be told by youth that a book is good rather than having an adult tell them.

I have also been thinking about the content of this book and our discussion in class the other day in which I was surprised to hear how many books with gay characters still portray them without a voice. In Hero the protagonist is gay and, not only does he have a voice, the whole story is written in his voice AND he becomes a hero and saves the world. It is a MUST READ!! How much more encouraging could a book be? That said, I would also like to figure out how I can get straight teens to read it. It’s really a good book, I enjoyed it tremendously, and I’m hoping there will be a series.

With regard to using the technology –I am happy I’m being pushed to use it. I think new technologies have a place in libraries and I would like to start this career ready to use them. Having them embedded in the class like this is especially wise because it gives us an actual application for them. Having said that, I did run into a couple of snags along the way. First, I don’t have a Mac. Apparently this project would have been easier with one. I’m told I could have done voice over music and had the music fade in and out complete with visuals of sound waves if I had a Mac. On my Dell it was a little more tricky. Second, I discovered that you can’t rotate a video. I had first filmed the book jacket with the camera held sideways so the book jacket took all of the space in the viewer. When I went to watch it on the computer, however, it appeared sideways on the screen and it did not allow me to rotate it. If it had just been a photo it would have. Perhaps on a Mac it would have as well. So I ended up shooting the video again. The second time I shot it I left too much space with just music and an image of the jacket cover before I came back on to say “Hero, by Perry Moore, check it out.” Perhaps I should have done it again, but my time was limited so I left it at that. I was also given a new camera for Christmas and had not had time to really become intimate with all of the settings so transferring the video to my computer took a little longer than it should have and when I went to upload the video on to YouTube it again took a long time. In all, I spent an entire afternoon working on something which – once I become more familiar with the technology – should not take long at all. Perhaps the biggest challenge for me, though, was psychological. I really needed the push. Now that it’s done, I don’t think it’s such a big deal and I wouldn’t hesitate to do another one. I think though that I would have done a better job and had more fun doing it if I did it with a group rather than individually. Although a lot of people in this program complain about group work, I think it is a great way to meet our future colleagues and it is also helpful for those who might need not only a push to get things done but also a bit of encouragement to try something new.