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P05.V53.I4
Adviser Update
Put this debut novel on your TBR list
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SPRING 2013
Page 20A
Carol Smith
is a freelance writer and editor
who lives in Springtown,
Pa. The former high school
journalism adviser and
English teacher was editor
of The Bethlehem News, a
Lehigh Valley News Group
publication. For 12 years, she
edited The Wall Street Journal
Classroom Edition Teacher
Guide, a Dow Jones &
Company publication. She can
be reached at casmith309@
verizon.net.
ournalist Jennifer Miller’s
students who live in an
debut novel, “The Year of
environment which can
the Gadfly,” explores the
often be hostile to those
halls and classrooms of a New England prep school By Carol Smith
who are different, Kaplan’s instruction is a good
and the mysteries and secrets they hide.
metaphor for teenage life where loves, fears and
Separated by a 12-year-timespan and told
obsessions are often taken to the extreme. Facing
through the point of view of three narrators, Miller
the coming of age in a hostile environment, Miller’s
unwinds an interwoven and intricate plot that will
characters are outcasts who are forced out of the
eventually link Mariana Academy students Iris
center and embrace the extreme.
Dupont and Lily Morgan and former student now
Establishing trusting high school friendships is a
biology teacher Jonah Kaplan.
difficult task as Iris and Lily discover in their
As a new student beginning her freshman year
experiences with Prisom’s Party, a secret society,
at Mariana Academy, Iris finds herself living in the
with an underground newspaper, The Devil’s
room of Lily, the daughter of Mariana Academy’s
Advocate. The newspaper welcomes Iris with a blank
former headmaster. Her journalistic curiosity is
sheet of paper to represent her clean slate at
aroused about who Lily is and why “Marvelous
Mariana and a warning: “For the sake of the
Species: Investigating Earth’s Mysterious
community (and for your own personal safety), we
Biology” would occupy a prominent place on her
implore you: don’t give us any muck to rake.”
bookshelf.
When the editor of the school’s accepted
At school, Iris’s biology teacher, Jonah, challenges her to
newspaper, The Oracle, refuses to assign Iris an investigation
have the courage to be an individual in an environment that
of this secret society she decides to go undercover to discover
seeks to make people want to be safe by fitting in with
the truth of this society’s existence which goes back to 1923.
everyone else. To Iris, Kaplan is the living version of her guide
Iris finds that when truth and lies become entwined it is difficult
and mentor, the long-deceased Edward R. Murrow.
for her to untangle them. Her investigation threatens the
What I liked most about “The Year of the Gadfly” is how Iris,
reputation of her beloved biology teacher and reveals that
when confronted with a difficult decision, is always asking
newspapers are fallible and that journalists don’t always do the
herself, “What would Ed Murrow do (WWEMD)?” To Iris,
right thing.
Kaplan spoke like Murrow and lived by his standards: To have
Miller’s well-written prose with its focus on anti-clichés and
the courage to speak the truth in spite of the consequences.
the role of the journalist to find the truth in the face of obstacles
Miller researched Murrow’s life and selected the dark,
is an entertaining literary work that should be on the TBR list
brooding cigarette smoking journalist as an incongruous
for high school journalists and their advisers.
mentor for a 14-year-old girl. Although sometimes lost to
But you decide. To see and hear an excerpt from the first
today’s journalists, Murrow was a significant journalist in
page of “The Year of the Gadfly,” go to http://www.
upholding democratic ideals in the era of Joseph McCarthy, a
byjennifermiller.com/p/year-of-gadfly.html.This video trailer
U.S. senator who in the 1950s made sensational but unproved stars high school journalists from around the country and
charges of Communist activity in U.S. government circles.
media greats like Brian Williams, Christiane Amanpour, Sam
Murrow fit with the novel’s action to go against authority.
Donaldson, Robert Siegel and Dan Rather.
“Difference is the essence of extremity,” says Kaplan as he
instructs his biology students in the importance of returning to
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, “The Year of the
their extremophile roots to discover what makes them unique
Gadfly” will be released in paperback in May.
and different from everybody else. Delivered to high school
BOOK REVIEW
Visit her Novelade Stand
Novel ideas promote journalist’s
debut fiction book
By Carol Smith
J
Jennifer Miller
Update photo by Diana Levine
ournalist Jennifer Miller
used her network and her
ingenuity to make a YouTube
book trailer for “The Year of
the Gadfly” that will get the
attention and, hopefully,
tweets of many news fans.
Promoting her recently
published debut novel about
high school freshman Iris
Dupont, an aspiring PulitzerPrize winning journalist, and
her investigation of a secret
society that exposes students
and teachers for their every
indiscretion, the video trailer
stars media greats like Brian
Williams, Christiane
Amanpour, Sam Donaldson,
Robert Siegel and Dan Rather
as well as high