I’ve read The Chocolate War before.

It was one of the first YA books I read in the YA Lit class I took in graduate school. Which means it’s a book Kimberly’s read, too — for those of you just tuning in, she and I met when we took that class.

Let me tell you a little bit about myself, circa September 2008: I had yet to actually work in a library with teenagers. I’d worked with teenagers before, but it was in a classroom setting for one summer. These were a very narrow group of teens. And this is nothing against them because they were wonderful to work with, but they all came from privilege, were all gifted, and they were all selected to participate in this series of advanced-level summer classes.

In other words, I’d yet to see the extremes of teens. I saw a pretty homogenous group with similar backgrounds.

My reading and reflection upon books and their audience very much was telling in my own experiences. (Isn’t it neat to see that in yourself, though? That’s one huge benefit of keeping track of your thoughts on books — you see your own growth and development as a reader and thinker and professional.)

To be fair, I don’t think I liked any of the books I read in the class I took. We read only a handful of classics, and the book that was most updated in our reading was The Geography Club. I did record all of my reactions to the books in Goodreads, so naturally, I have a nice review of The Chocolate War to share:

Not as controversial as I hoped, though I was disgusted by the characters discussing how they raped attractive girls with their eyes.

That’s all I had to say about Cormier’s book on my first read. I suspect my second read might merit a few more words, and I’m dying to know whether either of these statements still hold true. What did I want in terms of controversy in 2008? Will I see gender issues still? I’m actually pretty surprised to see that pop up in my review because when I thought about my reading of the book back then, gender wasn’t something I remembered at all. But it was apparently noteworthy!

Now, I should note that I did a couple of significant projects on banned and challenged books before I went to library school. My threshold for what I controversial, well. Let me say The Chocolate War may have been the most gritty (if that’s even the word I want) book I read to date at that point. So my perspective was not necessarily what it is today now that I’ve discovered dark contemporary books are totally my thing.

I’ve read so much more since 2008. I’ve also learned about reading and about the history of YA. I bring a lot more to the book and to the history of it now. Will this context and experience change my reading experience?

I guess we’ll find out at the end of the week.

This is the week! Liz Burns, Leila Roy, and myself will be reading and blogging about our experiences and thoughts about Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War. Anyone is welcome to join in during the week, by either blogging about the book or contributing a piece to STACKED. Just leave a note and I can hook you up. I’ve got a few posts planned throughout the week tackling everything from first impressions to a formal review and more things I don’t want to lay out quite yet.

If you’re joining in and posting on your own blog, please drop a link for each post you write in the comments. We’ll try share it across our social networks, and we’ll do a roundup of selected posts at the end of the week to highlight everyone else’s thoughts and posts. And please feel free to steal our image above and use it for your posts!

Let’s get real with one of the most well-known YA, not to mention one of the foundational, realistic titles.

The Chocolate War is a classic of YA fiction. It’s a classic of realistic fiction and has been cited numerous times by authors today as the book which inspired them to want to write and to write contemporary/realistic fiction that’s at times brutal and gritty and at all times, honest.

It’s been a few years since I’ve read it. In fact, it was the class in which I read the book where I met Kim (and we know where that story goes, as it’s being written here). I think my reading of it now, many years later, will be way different and I’m eager to have that experience.

After talking with Liz and Leila, we decided we all were ready to give it a reread — or in Liz’s case, a first read. We thought we’d blog a little about it, too, including our first impressions, our reviews of it, and I know all of us have another idea or two up our sleeves, including watching the film and seeing how it does or doesn’t do the book justice. I have some ideas in regards to contemporary YA I want to talk about, too, and how Cormier’s classic has inspired so many other books.

But more than us reading and blogging about it, we wanted to open this up to anyone interested in joining in a read and blog along to Cormier’s book. We’re doing it May 12 through 19, and you’re welcome to post as much or as little as you’d like to. We will have a kick off post on May 12 where anyone who wants to join in can drop a link to their posts throughout the week, and at the end, we’ll highlight some of the posts we read.  Yes, you can and should steal my graphic above if you want to join in.

If you are interested in joining but don’t want to blog yourself or don’t have a blog and would rather write a guest post, I am happy to host any and everything relating to the book or movie. Drop a comment here or email me and I’ll set things up. We want this to be fun, so offer up anything you want to. Also note the hash tag for anyone playing along via Twitter.

We will, of course, post a reminder closer to the start date, but we’re so excited about this, we wanted to get the word out early. And, bonus, you know you can now get the book as an ebook if you want to, right?

Let us know if you’re going to join in!