REVIEW: Days of Blood & Starlight (Favorite quotation: "Kiss/Punch")

Taylor, L.  (2012).  Days of Blood & Starlight.  New York:  Little, Brown, and Company.

513 pages.

Appetizer:  After the events of Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Karou has disappeared, leaving her best friend Zuzana to obsess, worry, and deal with the aftermath Karou having been recorded flying over a bridge in Prague.

Tensions are mounting between the angels and chimaera and Karou and her former love (of a couple of lives), Akiva, are separated and fighting on opposite sides once more.

Strange and mysterious thefts has occurred at many museums around the world.  Someone is stealing from the large animal displays.  Someone is taking the beasts' teeth.

Although still amazingly well-written, I initially had trouble keeping my focus on this book the way I managed to dive into Daughter of Smoke & Bone.  My suspicion is that Days of Blood & Starlight jumped upon too many different characters' perspectives for my tastes.  Plus, with Karou and Akiva's love being on ice, and Karou separated from her best friend/comic relief, Zuzana, my drive to know what was happening next was lessened.

But, by mid-book, friends and love interests were interacting and the drama heightened and Days of Blood & Starlight won me over and now I'm left waiting for the final book in the trilogy.

Taylor once again manages to write beautiful prose, establish a love triangle, and deliver some surprising plot twists.  It is worth noting though, that these beautiful prose do include some difficult and dark situations (including one extensive and disturbing sexual assault scene).  Still, the second book in this trilogy does live up to the first.  Keep reading this series!


Dinner Conversation:

"Prague, early May.  The sky weighed gray over fairy-tale rooftops, and all the world was watching.  Satellites had even been tasked to surveil the Charles Bridge, in case the...visitors...returned.  Strange things had happened in this city before, but not this strange.  At least, not since video existed to prove it.  Or to milk it.
"Please tell me you have to pee."
"What?  No.  No, I do not.  Don't even ask."
"Oh, come on.  I'd do it myself if I could, but I can't.  I'm a girl."
"I know.  Life is so unfair.  I'm still not going to pee on Karou's ex-boyfriend for you." (p. 1)

"Karou didn't understand.  The world she was returning to was not the one from her memories.  She would find no help or solace there--only ash and angels." (p. 7)

"Affixed to it [a table] with a twist of silver wire was a small square of paper on which was written a word.  It was a chimaera word, and under the circumstances the cruelest taunt Akiva could fathom, because it meant hope, and it was the end of his, since it was also a name.
It was Karou." (p. 26)

"A phantom, the news anchor said.
At first, the evidence of trespass had been too scant to be taken seriously, and of course there was the matter of it being impossible.  No one could penetrate the high-tech security of the world's elite museums and leave no trace.  There was only a prickle of unease along the curators' spines, the chilling and unassailable sense that someone had been there." (p. 39)


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

REVIEW: A Tale Dark & Grimm (Don't miss this one!)

Gidwitz, A.  (2010).  A Take Dark and Grimm.  New York:  Dutton Children's Books.

249 Pages.

Appetizer:  This expansion of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale features a pushy narrator who uses a lot of false endings (see the pictures below) and who weaves together multiple stories inspired by some of the Grimm originals to share the siblings' complete adventure of betrayal and forgiveness.

The story begins before the birth of the twins Hansel and Gretel to a king and queen.  You see, the king and queen were only able to marry due to the help of a servant named Johannes who helped them to avoid three potential curses upon their wedding by sacrificing himself.

The only way to free Johannes is to behead Hansel and Gretel.

Understandingly upset about their beheadings, Hansel and Gretel decide to leave their parents and the kingdom of Grimm to find parents who will treat them better.  What follows is a journey that will involve sacrifice and a whole lot of courage.

Returning some of the violence and icky-bits to fairy tales, there are passages of A Tale Dark & Grimm that live up to the title and made me cringe.  But the narrator always provided proper/humorous warning to get wee-readers out of the room for those parts, thereby properly preparing any and all older readers for the gruesome bits.

That pushy narrator reminded me strongly of the narrator from The Tale of Despereaux.  I think the books would be wonderful to pair together since the themes of forgiveness and yearning for family run through both books.

What is more, since each chapter of A Tale Dark & Grimm could be read as its own individual fairy tale (beginning with "Once upon a time...," of course), each chapter would lend itself to a read aloud thereby allowing a teacher or parent to help kids manage the ickier passages.

Having taken multiple folklore classes, I thought Gidwitz captured some of the essential elements of traditional folktales:  The pushy narrator help the reader to feel as though he or she is being told this story.  There is a lot of repetition of three's in terms of the structure and events of the story.

A Tale Dark & Grimm also serves as a powerful allegory for trust and forgiveness within a family.  I found that Hansel and Gretel's adventure could be traced onto the experience of children having to go into foster care and being shuffled from place to place, trying to find a sense of home and forgiveness of what their parents had done.

The book itself avoids trying to answer why bad things happen, but still totes the power and capabilities of children.


Dinner Conversation:

"Once upon a time, fairy tales were awesome.  I know, I know.  You don't believe me.  I don't blame you.  A little while ago, I wouldn't have believed it myself.  Little girls in red caps skipping around the forest?  Awesome?  I don't think so.
But then I started to read them.  The real, Grimm ones.  Very few little girls in red caps in those.
Well, there's one.  But she gets eaten." (p. 1)

"You see, there is another story in Grimm's Fairy Tales.  A story that winds all throughout the moldy, mysterious tome--like a trail of bread crumbs winding through a forest.  It appears in tales you may never have heard, like Faithful Johannes and Brother and Sister.  And in some that you have--Hansel and Gretel, for instance.
It is the story of two children--a girl named Gretel and a boy named Hansel--traveling though a magical and terrifying world.  It is the story of two children striving, and failing, and then not failing.  It is the story of two children finding out the meaning of things."  (pp. 2-3)

"Once upon a time, in a kingdom called Grimm, an old king lay on his deathbed.  He was Hansel and Gretel's grandfather--but he didn't know that, for neither Hansel nor Gretel had been born yet.
No hold on a minute.
I know what you're thinking.
I am well aware that nobody want to hear a story that happens before the main characters show up.  Stories like that are boring, because they all end exactly the same way.  With the main characters showing up.
But don't worry.  This story is like no story you've ever heard." (p. 5)

"Once upon a time, two children left their home and walked out into the wide, wild world.
The land was dark as Hansel and Gretel made their way across the level turf beyond the palace moat.  They had never left the palace by themselves before, and they knew little of the great world beyond its walls." (p. 39)

"For, as you well, know, the baker woman was planning to eat them.
But she wasn't a witch.  The Brothers Grimm call her a witch, but nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact she was just a regular woman who had discovered, sometime around the birth of her second child, that while she liked chicken and she liked beef and she liked pork, what she really, really, liked was child.
I bet you can figure out how this happened." (p. 43)


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

REVIEW: The Book of Blood and Shadows

Wasserman, R.  (2012).  The Book of Blood and Shadow.  New York:  Knopf.


434 pages.



Appetizer:  To beef up her resume for college, Nora Kane, along with her best friends Chris, Adriane and Chris's kinda creepy roommate Max, are working as a research assistant for a professor.  They're studying The Book, the Voynich Manuscript, an ancient and mysterious text in Latin that the professor organizing their research has rested his career upon.  Nora's job is to translate letter's of a girl named Elizabeth Weston, the step-daughter of an alchemist who may have authored The Book.

As Nora works to translate Elizabeth's letters, she feels connected to her and reconsiders some aspects of her own life (like how Chris's roommate, Max, may not be as odd as she first thought).  As Nora makes strides in her work, events take a dark turn.   Some get hurt, others die and it falls to Nora to find a way to save the survivors and herself all while someone is following her.

But that may not be the beginning of her story.  Her life is also divided around her older brother Andy's death in a car accident.  He'd been drunk when he'd crashed, killing himself and a girl.  These events have left Nora's parents despondent and haven't exactly won her a lot of friends at Chapman Prep in Massachusetts.

As for her end?  Well, that might be in Europe.  Her friends had planned a wonderful adventure to  France, but Nora may be the only one able to go.  Instead of a fun spring break, she must go to Prague to solve the mystery of what happened to her friends and how it all connects to The Book that seems to have ruined so many lives.

The writing of The Book of Blood and Shadow is wonderful.  The opening did a great job of catching my attention and curiosity.  Wasserman used a lot of rich and beautiful language. (Although, having said that, I also wouldn't have minded if the novel had been 50-60 pages shorter.)

But still, love.

I approve.

Read it.

It made me feel as though I needed to improve the writing in some of my own manuscripts.  This is a compliment to Wasserman, although, it's a little sad for my own writing journey.

This is by no means a perfect text.  Some of Elizabeth Weston's letters were a little long, confusing or were a little too conveniently found.  Also, two or three twists or reveals of characters' secrets were on the obvious side.  But I liked the continuing uncertainty about who Nora could trust as well as her connection to someone in history.

Read The Book of Blood and Shadow and then let me know what you think!


Dinner Conversation:

"I should probably start with the blood.
If it bleeds it leads and all that, right?  It's all anyone ever wants to know about, anyway.  What did it look like?  What did it feel like?  Why was it all over my hands?  And the mystery blood, all those unaccounted-for antibodies, those faceless corkscrews or DNA--who left them behind?
But beginning with that night, with the blood, means that Chris will never be anything more than a corpse, bleeding out all over his mother's travertine marble, Adriane nothing but a dead-eyed head case, rocking and moaning, her clothes soaked in his blood, her face paper white with that slash of red razored into her cheek.  If I started there, Max would be nothing but a void.  Null space; vacuum and wind.
Maybe that part would be right.
But not the rest of it.  Because that wasn't the beginning, any more than it was the end.  It was--note the brilliant deductive reasoning at work here--the middle.  The center of gravity around which we all spiraled, but none of us could see." (p. 3)

"Until the September I turned fifteen--the September I enrolled in Chapman Prep--my life could be divided pretty neatly into two eras.  Before Dead Brother; After Dead Brother.  BDB, I was the youngest in a family of four, father a Latin professor, mother a part-time bookstore manager, both of them teetering on the edge of divorce but sticking together, in that noble tradition of post-boomer bourgeoisie, for the kids.  ADB, there were still four of us, it was just that one--the only one anyone cared about anymore--happened to be dead." (p. 9)

"I told myself I deserved some good luck, overlooking the fact that it would call for substantially more than luck to thrust me into one of those narratives where plain-Jane new girl catches the eye of inexplicably single Prince Charming, because somehow the new school has revealed her wild, irresistible beauty, of which she was never before aware.
Spoiler alert:  Chris had a girlfriend.  An endless string of them, in fact." (pp. 13-14)

"Chris and I got Adriane through advanced Latin, Adriane and I got Chris through remedial chem, the two fo them got me through the new-girl phase with a minimum of muss and fuss, and for two years we were, if no happier than the average high school student juggling APs and SATs and extracurriculars and defective parents, at least not miserable, and not alone.  Then Chris went to college (albiet, via the path of least resistance, down the street), I found Max, we all found the Book, and everything went to hell." (p. 17)

"I have been here before.
I have done this before.
Before.
There were flashing lights, before.  Sirens screaming.  Someone screaming.
There was blood, before, blood on the road, blood I imagined and blood I saw, blood that shimmered under streetlights as we sped by, tires crunching over broken glass, my father grim and pale behind the wheel, my mother with one hand cupped to her ear, like she was still hearing, or trying not to hear, the call that had summoned us from before to now, to after." (p. 105)


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

REVIEW: A Monster Calls (A stunning examination of grief, recovery and story by @Patrick_Ness)

Ness, P.  (2011).  A Monster Calls.  Somerville, MA:  Candlewick Press.

206 pages.



Appetizer:  Thirteen-year-old Conor has a multitude of problems:  His mom is sick and the treatments may not be working.  His grandmother, who he doesn't get along with, is coming to the house to help.  He almost never hears from his Dad who has a new family in America.  He's bullied by three kids at school and all of the teachers and other students treats him differently because Lily, who had once been a close friend, told everyone about how ill his mom is.

Oddest of all, a monster begins to visit Conor some nights at 12:07 AM.  Surprisingly, Conor isn't frightened by it.  He has a nightmare that is far worse; one that he fears more than anything and refuses to tell anyone....

The monster insists he tell Conor three stories and in return Conor must tell him the truth of his nightmare.  The monster's stories prove strange and Conor seeks ways that they and the monster can help him with his grief and difficult situations, most important among them, saving his mother.

The characters of A Monster Calls were originally the children of Siobhan Dowd, who died far to young.  The novel I most associate with her name is Bog Child, a book that I have been meaning to review for several years.

A Monster Calls recently won two (COUNT THEM!  TWO!!!!!!  One and one equals two!...boy, am I good at math....) Carnegie Awards:  One for text and one for illustration.  I think both awards are well deserved.  It was wonderful to ease into a well-written book and the art did an amazing job of adding to the tone and eeriness of the story.  Here are some of my favorite images:

I set this one as one as one of my desktop backgrounds!

Also, if you'd like to read about the creation process for A Monster Call's, click here.

I found A Monster Calls to be a great complex read (although, certainly not a book to pick-up if you want a laugh).  It has the feel of a classic.  The way Ness deals with the emotions Conor is avoiding and enduring is beautifully done and can provide a lot of comfort to anyone who has shared some of the feelings Conor struggles with.


Dinner Conversation:

"The monster showed up just after midnight.  As they do.
Conor was awake when it came.
He'd had a nightmare.  Well, not a nightmare.  The nightmare.  The one he'd been having a lot lately.  The one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming.  The one with the hands slipping from his grasp, no matter how hard he tried to hold on." (p. 1)

"He felt a rush of panic, his guts twisting.  Had it followed him?  Had it somehow stepped out of the nightmare and--?
"Don't be stupid," he told himself.  "You're too old for monsters."
And he was.  He'd turned thirteen just last month.  Monsters were for babies.  Monsters were for bedwetters.  Monsters were for--
Conor. (pp. 2-3)

"I have come to get you, Conor O'Malley, the monster said, pushing against the house, shaking the pictures off Conor's wall, sending books and electronic gadgets and an old stuffed toy rhino tumbling to the floor.
A monster, Conor thought.  A real, honest-to-goodness monster.  In real, waking life.  Not in a dream, but here, at his window.
Come to get him.
But Conor didn't run.
In fact, he found he wasn't even frightened.
All he could feel, all he had felt since the monster revealed itself, was a growing disappointment.
Because this wasn't the monster he was expecting." (p. 8)

"The monster gave an evil grin.  The wind died down and a quiet fell.  At last, said the monster.  To the matter at hand.  The reason I have come walking.
Conor tensed, suddenly dreading what was coming.
Here is what will happen, Conor O'Malley, the monster continued, I will come to you again on further nights.
Conor felt his stomach clench, like he was preparing for a blow.
And I will tell you three stories.  Three tales from when I walked before. (p. 35)


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

REVIEW: Wonder

Palacio, R.J.  (2012).  Wonder.  New York:  Alfred A. Knopf.

310 pages.



Appetizer:  Ten-year-old August "Auggie" Pullman is going to school for the first time in his life.  He, his parents and his sister, Via, who is starting the ninth grade at a different school, are all nervous about this.  Auggie's face looks different from those of other kids.  Due to a one in several million chance of genetics, people stare at Auggie wherever he goes.

Despite the fact that his parents, the principal, and some of the teachers and students try to create a welcoming environment for Auggie at Beecher Prep, Auggie still faces bullying, questions and betrayals from his classmates who fear being near him.  At times, Auggie will want nothing more than to return to homeschooling.

What a powerhouse of a book with such a moving story!  Experiences of love and loss, kindness and cruelty, and devotions and betrayals abound.  With content related to science (genetics), social studies (Ancient Egypt) and messages about bullying, acceptance and being kind, this is a great classroom read for 4th-6th graders.

Wonder is an allusion-rich text.  I found myself wishing I'd watched all six of the Star Wars movies more recently so I could know exactly what Auggie was describing.  There are also references to The Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Our Town, and a particularly powerful reference to the Cheese Touch from Diary of a Wimpy Kid, that truly demonstrates how ostracized Auggie was during the first part of fifth grade:

Tristan didn't even care about the spilled powder on the floor or that he ruined the experiment.  What he was most concerned about was getting to the lab sing to wash his hands as fast as possible.  That's when I knew for sure that there was this thing about touching me at Beecher Prep.
I think it's like the Cheese Touch in Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  The kids in that story were afraid they'd catch the cooties if they touched the old moldy cheese on the basketball court.  At Beecher Prep, I'm the old moldy cheese." (p. 72)

Yikes!  And very moving!  The way Palacio and Auggie describe his classmate's behaviors ring true.  This book can be a very upsetting mirror for some readers' behaviors.  (But don't worry, this metaphorical mirror doesn't always reveal the worst of ourselves.  Palacio does a great job of showing the complexity and varied natured of a lot of the characters' struggles.)

I was rather surprised when I reached Part II of Wonder and I realized that the book jumped to Auggie's sister's point of view (and in later parts to those of some of both siblings' classmates).  I wanted to stay with Auggie!  But, the more I read, I saw the importance of seeing different characters' perspectives and motives.

Also, I'm rather fond of Wonder's booktrailer.  You can watch that here:

Here's also a Publisher's Weekly article describing how support for Wonder has lead Random House Children's Books to launch an online anti-bullying campaign called Choose Kind.

Dinner Conversation:

"I know I'm not an ordinary ten-year-old kid.  I mean, sure, I do ordinary things.  I eat ice cream.  I ride my bike.  I play ball.  I have an XBox.  Stuff like that makes me ordinary.  I guess.  And I feel ordinary.  Inside.  But I know ordinary kids don't make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds.  I know ordinary kids don't get stared at wherever they go." (p. 3)

"'I don't want to go to school,' I answered, folding my arms.
"It would be good for you, Auggie," said Mom.
"Maybe I'll go next year," I answered, looking out the window.
"This year would be better, Auggie," said Mom.  "You know why?  Because you'll be going into fifth grade, and that's the first year of middle school--for everyone.  You won't be the only new kid."
"I'll be the only kid who looks like me," I said.
"I'm not going to say it won't be a big challenge for you, because you know better than that," she answered.  "But it'll be good for you, Auggie.  You'll make lots of friends.  Any you'll learn things you'd never learn from me." (p. 12)

"They were just being normal dumb kids.  I know that.  I kind of wanted to tell them that.  Like, it's okay, I know I'm weird-looking, take a look, I don't bite.  Hey, the truth is, if a Wookiee started going to the school all of a sudden, I'd be curious, I'd probably stare a bit!  And if I was walking with Jack or Summer, I'd probably whisper to them:  Hey, there's the Wookiee.  And if the Wookiee caught me saying that, he'd know I wasn't trying to be mean.  I was just pointing out the fact that he's a Wookiee."  (p. 62)

"For me, Halloween is the best holiday in the world.  It even beats Christmas.  I get to dress up in a costume.  I get to wear a mask.  I get to go around like every other kid with a mask and nobody thinks I look weird.  Nobody takes a second look.  Nobody notices me.  Nobody knows me.
I wish every day could be Halloween.  We could all wear masks all the time.  Then we could walk around and get to know each other before we got to see what we looked like under the masks."  (p. 73)

"August is the Sun.  Me and Mom and Dad are planets orbiting the Sun.  The rest of our family and friends are asteroids and comets floating around the planets orbiting the Sun.  The only celestial body that doesn't orbit August the Sun is Daisy the dog, and that's only because to her little doggy eyes, August's face doesn't look very different from any other human's face." (p. 82)


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

REVIEW: Chopsticks (OHMYGOSH, AWESOME! One story: told in music, illustration, texts, articles and videos. Read it now!)

Anthony, J. & Corral, R.  (2012).  Chopsticks.  New York:  Razorbill.

No page numbers....but, I'd guess it's more than 300 pages.  Since most of the stories is told in images or small bits of text, it's a great read.


Appetizer:  In December of 2009, 17-year-old Glory Fleming, a piano prodigy, disappears.  But, much of the story of Chopsticks focuses on 18 months earlier, when Glory was still performing and an Argentinian boy named Francisco moves in next door to her house on Usher street in the Bronx.

A romance soon begins.

But the question is, can their romance survive as Francisco struggles with racism and bullying at school and Glory with her controlling father/manager who insists on touring.  Can the two teens find a way to be together?


This novel is shared predominantly in images, with much of the plot being pieced together by found objects like newspaper clippings, programs, family albums, text messages, etc.

And it is wonderfully done.  A relatively simple story, I found that a lot of details--like Francisco's anger with his ESL homework (pictured below) to add deeper layers and criticism.

I also loved the different forms of communication.  Throughout the text messages Francisco and Glory exchange are urls to youtube videos that, while a little inconvenient to set down the book and type into my laptop, provide a lot of secondary depth.  I liked the references to Sylvia Plath and Pablo Neruda.  The book also includes playlists of songs that the two exchange, really providing a lot of focus on music.  This story does an amazing job of using a lot of different forms to tell a story.  I approve.  I approve strongly.

Plus, there's an app version of the book.  (But alas, after already spending $20 on the book, I'm too cheap to spend another $7 on the app.  Somebody else buy the app and tell me what you think!)

If a teacher wanted to find a way to include Chopsticks into a classroom, he or she could focus on looking at a section of a text as an anthropologist, studying a person or culture through the objects they have.


Dinner Conversation:

Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

REVIEW: Daughter of Smoke & Bone

Taylor, L.  (2011).  Daughter of Smoke & Bone.  New York:  Little, Brown and Company.

418 pages.



Appetizer:  Karou is not like the other girls who live and go to her art school in Prague.  Her ultramarine hair is its natural color since she wished it that way.  She's had some tattoos for as long as she can remember.  She lives alone in her beautiful flat.  And when summoned by a bat-bird creature, she does errands all around the world for the demons who have watched over her for as long as she can remember.

Karou travels from place to place through a network of doors that always open into her guardian, Brimstone's, store where he sells wishes for extracted teeth.  Karou's biggest fear is that, someday, when she knocks, nobody in the magical realm of the demons will answer and she will be stranded in a strange city, penniless.

When Karou begins to notice handprints burned onto some of the entryways that the demons use, she discovers that the angels may be planning a strike against them.  And Karou will be stuck in the middle with one angel in particular fixated on her.

I had heard rave reviews of Daughter of Smoke & Bone as well as Laini Taylor's other book, Lips Touch.  I had been meaning to get around to reading both of them for a while now.  And I'm glad I finally did!

Taylor's writing is beautiful.  I mean it.  This is an author who knows how to use words to affect emotion in her readers.  Arguably, there were sections of Daughter of Smoke and Bone that fascinated me less than the rest, but Taylor's prose were beautiful enough to keep me reading and engaged.

From it's first few pages, Daughter of Smoke and Bone drew me in with Taylor's accessible and beautiful prose style and Karou's emotional turmoil with her ex-boyfriend.  Taylor does an amazing job of describing the setting and setting up a tone that was haunting and dark, but that also had a touch of humor.

Read it.  Or else....


Dinner Conversation:

"Walking to school over the snow-muffled cobbles, Karou had no sinister premonitions about the day.  It seemed like just another Monday, innocent but for its essential Mondayness, not to mention its Januaryness.  It was cold, and it was dark--in the dead of winter the sun didn't rise until eight--but it was also lovely.  The falling snow and the early hour conspired to paint Prague ghostly, like a tintype photograph, all silver and haze."  (p. 1)

"It wasn't like in the storybooks.  No witches lurked at crossroads disguised as crones, waiting to reward travelers who shared their bread.  Genies didn't burst from lamps, and talking fish didn't bargain for their lives.  In all the world, there was only one place humans could get wishes:  Brimstone's shop.  And there was only one currency he accepted.  IT wasn't gold, or riddles, or kindness, or any other fairy-tale nonsense, and no, it wasn't souls, either.  It was weirder than any of that.
It was teeth." (p. 33)

"Sometimes, maybe most of the time, she forgot to see Brimstone.  He was so familiar that when she looked at him she saw not a beast but the creature, who for reasons unknown, had raised her from a baby, and not without tenderness.  But he could still strike her speechless at times, such as when he used that tone of voice.  It slithered like a hiss to the core of her consciousness and opened her eyes to the full, fearsome truth of him.
Brimstone was a monster.
If he and Issa, Twiga, and Yasri were to stray from the shop, that's what humans would call them:  monsters.  Demons, maybe, or devils.  They called themselves chimaera."  (p. 38-39).

"She had been innocent once, a little girl playing with feathers on the floor of a devil's lair.  She wasn't innocent now, but she didn't know what to do about it.  This was her life:  magic and shame and secrets and teeth and a deep, nagging hollow at the center of herself where something was most certainly missing." (p. 45)

"In general, Karou managed to keep her two lives in balance.  On the one hand,she was a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague; on the other, errand girl to an inhuman creature who was the closest thing she had to family.  For the most part, she'd found that there was time enough in a week for both lives.  If not every week, at least most.
This did not turn out to be one of those weeks." (p. 60)


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

Audiobook Review: The Fault in Our Stars

Green, J.  (2012).  The Fault in Our Stars.  New York:

313 pages.


So, my signed copy of Green's novel arrived on its release date and it has dutifully sat on my bedside table, begging to be read.  But alas, I lacked the time.

I even had a student who came in to talk to me about the book, but I had to tell her I hadn't read it yet; like a failure.

*Points skyward.*  To the audio book I went (the Kate Rudd version, not the John Green...sorry, Kate's recording was cheaper)!



Appetizer:  Hazel Grace Lancaster is living with cancer.  Worried that she's depressed, her mom makes Hazel regularly attend a support group.  At one meeting, Hazel meets Augustus, a cancer survivor who is there to support his friend Isaac who is having surgery soon.  Augustus and Hazel trade book recommendations that leads to a quest to know what happens to the characters in Hazel's favorite book.  Along with their quest, romantic tensions arise, but with Hazel's terminal diagnosis and Augustus's regular scans to check for more cancer, their future together is uncertain.

So, I loved The Fault in Our Stars.  The audiobook was wonderful.  The way Kate Rudd brought Augustus's voice to life was great.  This was one of those audiobooks that I didn't want to stop listening to even after there was nothing I could think of to do while listening.  (I actually dusted my apartment so I could keep listening!)

Green does a good job of sharing about a realistic romance (which I imagine was one of his many goals with writing this book).  He specifically critiques paranormal romances and "cancer books."  Here's one example:

"AIA is about this girl named Anna (who narrates the story) and er one-eyed mom, who is a professional gardener obsessed with tulips, and they have a normal lower-middle-class life in a central California town until Anna gets this rare blood cancer. 

But it's not a cancer book, because cancer books suck.  Like, in cancer books, the cancer person starts a charity that raises money to fight cancer, right?  And this commitment to charity reminds the cancer person of the essential goodness of humanity and makes him/her feel loved and encouraged because s/he will leave a cancer-curing legacy.  But in AIA, Anna decides that being a person with cancer who starts a cancer charity is a bit narcissistic, so she starts a charity called The Anna Foundation for People with Cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera."  (pp. 48-49)

Yay!

I absolutely loved Hazel's friend Kaitlyn, who is described as a girl "who just happened to be an extremely sophisticated twenty-five-year-old British socialite stuck inside a sixteen-year-old body in Indianapolis.  Everyone accepted it" (p. 42).  I've been friends with a Kaitlyn sort of girl.  They're fun.

When I teach, I tend to use Looking for Alaska, but I think in the future, I may switch to using The Fault in Our Stars.


Dinner Conversation:

"Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.
Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer.  But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer.  Depression is a side effect of dying.  (Cancer is also a side effect of dying.  Almost everything is, really.)" (p. 3)

"'What?' I asked.
"Nothing," [Augustus] said.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Augustus half smiled.  "Because you're beautiful.  I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence."  A brief awkward silence ensued.  Augustus plowed through:  "I mean, particularly given that, as you so deliciously pointed out, all of this will end in oblivion and everything."  (p. 16)

"'I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things.  I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you."  (p. 153)


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

REVIEW: Revolver (Built with amazing mood, tone and tension since 1910/1899)

Sedgwick, M. (2009).  Revolver. New York: Roaring Brook Press.

201 pages.

Appetizer:  Sig's father is dead. He died in an accident on the arctic ice. He died falling through thin ice that he should have--must have--known better than to cross over. 14-year-old Sig doesn't question the tragedy of his father's death too much until the very next day, when a strange and threatening man arrives at the family's cabin while Sig is there alone with his father's dead body. The man insists Sig's father took something from him and Sig must decide whether or not to use the revolver that his family has kept hidden for ten years.

Goodness gracious, ya'll! What a well-structured and tense little book.

Told in short chapters and in interweaving periods between 1899 when Sig's father first got the revolver and 1910 when Sig must decide whether he's going to use it, Revolver makes wonderful use of allusions, foreshadowing and a stark mood to create a wonderfully tense story as Sig contemplates the moral implications of using his father's gun.

Srsly, everyone, I heart it.

That doesn't mean Revolver is perfect. I wasn't too crazy about the flashbacks to 1899 and the omniscent narration that jumped among characters' perspectives all willy-nilly. But still, bravo. I approve.


Dinner Conversation:


"Even the dead tell stories.
Sig looked across the cabin to where his father lay, waiting for him to speak, but his father said nothing, because he was dead. Einar Andersson lay on the table, his arms half raised above his head, his legs slightly bent at the knee, frozen in the position in which they'd found him; out on the lake, lying on the ice, with the dogs waiting patiently in harness." (p. 1)

"If.
The smallest word, whcih raises the biggest questions." (p. 3)

"It was at these times that Einar told Sig important things. The things a son should learn from his father. It was at these times that he told him about the gold days, and the gold lust, or about the revolver, which sat in its original box, like a princess's jewels in a case. And Sig, like a good pupil, would listen, always listen, with maybe a rare question now and again.
"A gun is not a weapon," Einar once said to Sig. "It's an answer. It's an answer to the questions life throws at you when there's no one else to help" (p. 8).

"He'd come for the gold, and he hadn't meant to stay.  These things never lasted long, Einar knew.  Just like the Klondike, by the time the rest of the world got to know about the gold, it would be too late; all the best strikes found, the land claimed, the easy pickings gone.  All that would be left would be the struggle to survive in a world of danger, both natural and man-made, with the occasional speck of gold dust coming his way.  Just enough to keep that stupid dream of easy money alive, the dream of fantastic wealth, of ease and luxury and fine things for the rest of his days, but in reality not enough to live on for even a week."  (p. 45)

"Maria woke and propped herself up.  Her movement disturbed Sig, who woke too, to witness one of the few scenes from his early childhood that he would remember forever, and clearly.
He remembered the look on his mother's face as she saw what Einar had bought.  Only many years later would he finally be able to put a word to that look.  Despair.
"What is it?" Anna repeated.  "Is it food?  Is it for when the food runs out?"
"No," Einar muttered.  "It's something else.  For when the faith runs out."  (p. 50).

"He ran out of things to say, and Wolff stayed exactly where he was.
"I don't think you understand.  Since your father is no longer with us, that makes you his heir.
"That means my business is with you."  (p. 83)


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

REVIEW: The True Meaning of Smekday (I still heart it)

The last time I read The True Meaning of Smekday, I listened to the audio book...

And it was magnificent!

This time around, I decided to read the actual text, so the graphic novel portions would be a little easier to follow and so I could write a proper review of the book.

I actually only got about 40 or 50-pages in, before I found myself desperately missing the voice of Bahni Turpin and went back to the Odyssey Award-winning audio book.

(She adds so much personality to the Boov voices!)

And look, I still managed to write a review of the story.

Rex, A.  (2007)  The True Meaning of Smekday.  New York:  Hyperion Books for Children.

423 pages.

Appetizer:  As part of a school assignment and national competition, twelve-year-old Tip (AKA Gratuity Tucci) must write about "The True Meaning of Smekday" and describe her personal experience during the recent alien invasion.

Tip had quite the experience, to say the least.

In this hilarious road-trip story, Tip recounts how her mother was abducted by aliens, how she befriended a Boov alien who goes by the name J.Lo and how together the crossed much of the country in search of Tip's mom.

Although the middle part of the story does feel to drag on a little as Tip and J.Lo go from state to state encountering various characters, I absolutely love the way this novel explores and discusses issue of race, discrimination and the forced relocation of people.  (And those are topics that normally a person would be hard-pressed to say that they "love" anything about discussing them.)

There are so many wonderful humorous moments in the story that even a year after reading this book for the first time, can still make me giggle.

My biggest regret in terms of The True Meaning of Smekday is that I did not listen to or read it soon.  *Bows to Holly who had originally recommended the book to me months and months before I ever got around to reading it.*

I've used this book in my classroom twice so far.  Once, I read aloud a portion of pages 24-29 to demonstrate the misunderstanding of when people (in this case creatures) from different cultures meet and to highlight the power dynamic between different cultures meeting (and from there show how some science fiction novels include cultural critiques and can be a vehicle to discuss race relations as well has historical periods when people from a specific culture were forced to relocate...*wipes brow*  that's a lot for one little read aloud to be able to do.)

The second time I used the book, I first did a pre-reading activity in which my writing students had to invent and describe their own "Smekday" holiday.  Many of them seemed to have a lot of fun with it.  In terms of their thoughts on the book.

I also used the book to discuss audience, since during her narration, Tip mentions several times that she's writing for people in the future.

Mmm, delicious.  So much to talk about.

I have to admit though, *after* reading the book, only a handful of my students enjoyed the book as much as I did.  Many seemed to think it was too long.

My argument that the meandering middle just provided "more for them to love" only went so far.


Dinner Conversation:

"ASSIGNMENT: Write an essay titled THE TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY. what is the Smekday Holiday? How has it changed in the year since the aliens left? You may use your own personal experiences from the alien invasion to make your points. Feel free to draw pictures or include photographs" (p. 1)

"It was Moving Day.

Should that be capitalized? I never would have capitalized it before, but now Moving Day is a national holiday and everything, so I think it should be.

Capitalized.

Anyway.

It was Moving Day, and everybody was crazy" (p. 3).

"I remember Apocalypse Hal was on the corner by the Laundromat.  Hal was a neighborhood street preacher who worked at the fist and crab place next door.  He wore a sandwich board sign of Bible verses and shouted angry things at passerby like "The end times are near" and "Seafood samples $5.99."  Now his sign just read "TOLD YOU SO," and he looked more anxious than angry.
"I was right," he said as I passed.
"About the fish or the apocalypse?" I asked.  He followed beside me.
"Both."  (p. 4).

"I stifled a laugh.  "J.Lo?  Your Earth name is J.Lo?"
"Ah-ah," J.Lo corrected.  "Not 'Earth.'  'Smekland'."
"What do you mean, 'Smekland'?"
"That is the thing what we have named the planet.  Smekland.  As to tribute to our glorious leader, Captain Smek."
"Wait."  I shook my head.  "Whoa.  You can't just rename the planet."
"Peoples who discover places gets to name it."
"But it's called Earth.  It's always been called EArth."
J.Lo smiled condescendingly.  I wanted to hit him.
"You humans live too much in the pasttime.  We did land onto Smekland a long time ago."
"You landed last Christmas!"
"Ah-ah.  Not 'Christmas.1  'Smekday."
"Smekday?"
"Smekday"  (p. 28).

"Okay.  Starting before the Boov came.
I guess I really need to begin almost two years ago.  This was when my mom got the mole on her neck.  This was when she was abducted.
I didn't see it happen, naturally.  That's how it is with these things.  Nobody ever gets abducted at a football game, or at church, or right after Kevin Frompky knocks all your books out of your hands between classes and everybody's looking and laughing and you have no choice but to sock him in the eye.
Or whatever" (p. 33).

"My birth certificate says "Gratuity Tucci," but Mom's called me Turtlebear ever since she learned that "Gratuity" didn't mean what she thought it did.  My friends call me Tip.
I guess I'm telling you all this as a way of explaining about my mom.  When people ask me about her, I say she's very pretty.  When they ask if she's smart like me, I say she's very pretty" (p. 37).


Tasty Rating: !!!!!

REVIEW: Beauty Queens by @libbabray (Somehow, even more awesome than Going Bovine! It seemed impossible, right?)

Hi all!

Sorry for the lack of posting over the last few weeks.  I am teaching my first graduate class on multicultural children's literature and all the readings, the new class prep work and the super-awesome-AMAZING level of discourse among the students is keeping on my toes and striving to learn more and more so I don't drop the ball can keep challenging my students.

On top of that, I've also started training to do some part-time online tutoring.
(They actually had me teach a lesson on math!  EEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEE!)
So, I'm still working to adjust to the changes in my schedule.

ON TOP OF THAT on top of stuff, last week I also received a job offer for a year-long position that would require me to move to Louisiana within...oh, about three weeks time and begin teaching two courses (one of which the likes of which I haven't taught before).  So, yeah.  Crazy times for me.

But enough excuses, on to the review...

Bray, L.  (2011).  Beauty Queens.  New York:  Scholastic Press.

390 pages.

(An ARC was sent to my boss...AND I STOLE IT!)


   Hunger Games
   Lost
   Lord of the Flies
   Some Feminist commentary
   The worst/best of reality TV
   Libba Bray
   Satire
   Craziness
+ Fun                                         
Beauty Queens


Appetizer:  There has been a plane crash on a remote island.  The plane had been filled with 50 Miss Teen Dream Pageant contestants, their handlers, costumes and a few camera crews.  But after the crash, only a handful of the beauty queens survive.  They must determine whether they should continue to prepare for the big pageant as they await rescue or focus on survival.

As the days pass, the girls realize that there is something odd about the island and that they may have to work together and save themselves.

So, based on my love for the Printz Award winning Going Bovine and any interview that I've seen of Libba Bray, I fully expected that Beauty Queens would amuse me.

It did not disappoint.  (And actually, I think I like it even more than Going Bovine since it explores so many wonderful questions surrounding femininity and feminism. )  And by 'many,' I mean TONS OF ISSUES!  There is explorations of racial and gender stereotypes, transgendered and disability experiences, female desire for sex, many version of what femininity is.  There is also a lot of social and cultural commentary and criticisms about boy bands, beauty products, T-shirt designs, and ON AND ON.  I would love to teach this book in a feminist YA lit course!  (*Hint*  Somebody--hire me to teach a feminist YA lit course.)

In terms of classroom uses though, I would probably only do read alouds of select portions that could work as a stand-alone or short story.  (I actually used one chapter with my current students to discuss princess culture.)

Plus, both Miss Ohio and Miss Michigan survive the initial crash.  Since those are the two states I've lived in for most of my life, I was happy to follow my representatives, excited that the midwest was ON THE ISLAND!  (Of course, post-Louisiana job offer, I can't help but notice that a Miss Louisiana is missing in action.)

I did initially have some trouble with the omniscient narrator.  I wanted to stay with Adena, the first character the reader meets.  I also had trouble keeping track of who was who.  (It is worth noting that keeping track of or remembering names is a reoccurring problem in my life.  But it is also admittedly made more difficult when all thirteen-ish of a book's main characters are interchangeably referred to as Miss STATE-Name and So-and-so-first-name.)

But the more I read, the more I enjoyed the story, liking how the quirky aspects all came together.  I loved the critiques provided in the footnotes.  I also loved the way the author dove below the surface of each of the girl's characterization to break down stereotypes.  There are certain beauty queens on the island that it would have been easy for me to hate if they were presented as mere stereotypes (I'm looking  in direction of Miss Texas), but I wound up engaging with them all.  (On that note, I especially liked that the story didn't turn into a girls vs. girls massacre, which had seemed like a possibility in the early chapters.)

YAY, beauty queens!


Dinner Conversation:

"This book begins with a plane crash.  We do not want you to worry about this.  According to the U.S. Department of Unnecessary Statistics, your chances of dying in a plane crash are one in half a million.  Whereas your chances of losing your bathing suit bottoms to a strong tide are two to one.  So, all in all, it's safer to fly than to go to the beach.  As we said, this book begins with a plane crash.  But there are survivors.  You see?  Already it's a happy tale.  They are all beauty queen contestants" (p. 1).

"Okay, Miss Teen Dreamers, I know we're all real flustered and everything.  But we're alive.  And I think before anything else we need to pray to the one we love."
A girl raised her hand.  "J.T. Wooodland?"
"I'm talkin' about my personal copilot, Jesus Christ."
"Someone should tell her personal copilot that His landings suck," Miss Michigan muttered.  She was a lithe redhead with the panther-like carriage of a professional athlete.
"Dear Jesus," Taylor started.  The girls bowed their heads, except for Adina.
"Don't you want to pray?" Mary Lou whispered.
"I'm Jewish.  Not big on Jesus."
"Oh.  I didn't know they had any Jewish people in New Hampshire.  You should make that one of your Fun Facts about Me!"
Adina opened her mouth but couldn't think of anything to say."  (p. 7).

"Reality check:  We're stuck on a freaking island with only a few bags of pretzels to each and God only knows what kinds of dangerous animals or mega-zombie-insects out there, and you want us to keep working on our pageant skills?"
Taylor glossed her lips again and smacked them together.  "Correct."
"Don't be so negative," Miss Ohio said.  "I'll bet the coast guard is on its way to rescue us right now."
Adina shook her head.  "What we need is a team leader."
"I accept," Taylor said.
"Um, not to be rude or anything, but usually you put it to a vote.  It's a democracy, right?" Adina laughed uncomfortably" (p. 20).

"'I think you're missing the salient point here,' Shanti said.  "Miss Teen Dream is a girls' pageant.  You are not a girl.  Ergo, you are disqualified."
"Who says I'm not a girl?"
"You have a wang-dang-doodle!" Tiara squeaked.
"Is that all that makes a guy a guy?  What makes a girl a girl?"
And the girls found they could not answer.  For they'd never been asked that question in the pageant prep" (p. 99).

"The baton passed from girl to girl as ideas were discussed:  Huts.  Fishing lines.  Rain-catching tarp.  Zip lines.  Tanning booth.  By the time the baton came to Taylor again, the girls had a renewed sense of hope.  After all, they were the best of the best.  They had lived through the pageant circuit, which was no place for wimps.
"When they come to rescue us, they will find us with clean, jungle-forward, fashionable huts and a self-sustaining ecosystem.  We will be the Miss Teen Dreamers they write about in history books," Taylor said.
"Nobody writes about Miss Teen Dreamers in history books," Adina scoffed.
"They will now, Miss New Hampshire.  We will be the best ever.  This is my new goal.  And I am very goal-oriented" (p. 104).

"Mary Lou and Sosie gathered rocks and pebbles from the beach and spelled out the word HELP along the shore so that it might be seen from a passing plane.  At the end of the word, Sosie made an exclamation mark with a smiley face at the bottom.
"That way, they'll know we're friendly," she reasoned."  (p. 120).


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

REVIEW: The Shadow Thieves (Cronus Chronicles Book One)

Ursu, A.  (2006).  The Shadow Thieves.  New York:  Aladdin Paperbacks.


420 pages.

Not to be confused with one of the books in the Peter and the Starcatchers series by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson that has the same name, The Shadow Thieves is the first book in the Cronus Chronicles which features Greek gods and creatures.  (Although, with all the shadows being separated from their children, it is difficult to not think PETER PAN!  YAY!)


Appetizer:  Thirteen-year-old Charlotte Mielswetzski (Meals. Wet. Ski.) thinks her life would be a terrible story since nothing much has happened to her.  (I disagree with a humorous narrator like hers, her life seems pretty interesting to me.  But terrible or not, her life is about to change:  Her cousin Zachary is moving in with her family, her odd new English teacher, Mr. Metos, is doing a unit on Greek mythology and Charlotte keeps having dreams of the ground breaking under her feet and her falling.

Her cousin, who likes to go by Zee, is having some problems of his own.  His grandmother died over the summer and ever since then it seems all of the other kids around him are getting sick.  It will be up to him and Charlotte to figure out what is going on and to fix it.

This story won me over from pretty much page one.  The narrator rambles humorously in a way that I wish I could write.  Plus, the narrator is very pro-kittens (How could you not be?!).  Writing as someone who has read...oh, over thirty-something novels that include the gods in the modern world, the narrator's voice was very refreshing.

I did struggle a little with the way that the text shifted perspective.  I immediately loved Charlotte and did want to leave her story-line to hear about other characters.  I also felt like some of the characters figured out what was wrong a little too easily.

But aside from that, I looooooved The Shadow Thieves.  I'm not saying everyone will love it, but I recommend it highly.


Dinner Conversation:

"Pay attention.  Watch carefully, now.  Look at the sidewalk, there.  See that girl--the one with the bright red hair, overstuffed backpack, and aura of grumpiness?  That's Charlotte Mielswetzski.  (Say it with me:  Meals-wet-ski.  Got it?  If not, say it again:  Meals.  Wet.  Ski.  There.  You thought your name was bad?)  And something extraordinary is about to happen to her.
No, the extraordinary event will not be related to that man watching her behind the oak tree...that oddly pale, strangely thin, freakishly tall, yellow-eyed, bald-headed man in the tuxedo" (p. 3).

"So, anyway, there she was, walking along in an ordinary way, muttering to herself about curses, with her bursting backpack and her metaphorical black cloud and her ordinary bad mood--when something extraordinary happened.
A kitten appeared in front of her.
Not--poof!--not like that.  Nothing magical at all.  Quite ordinary, in fact.  A normal chain of events, just what you would expect with a sudden appearance of a kitten"  (p. 5).

"Charlotte did not sleep well that night.  For a few days she had fancied herself on the periphery of some great mystery, one that had begun with the sudden arrival of her British cousin and then seemed to encompass her English teacher as well.  But suddenly Charlotte wasn't living in a mystery anymore, in a fantasy world made of dark secrets and hidden tunnels and vampiric teachers and foggy London nights.  Now Charlotte lived in this horrible world where her best friend could get so sick she couldn't lift her head" (p. 70).

"Lots of kids are sick.  So I guess--"
"Wait," Zee leaned forward.  "How many?"
"I dunno," Charlotte shrugged.  "Maddy's got it.  She's been gone for a week."
Zee leaned toward her and grabbed her arm.  Bartholomew fell off his lap.  "What is it?  What does she have?"
Charlotte stared at him.  "I don't know!  Nobody knows.  She can't get out of bed, it's really awful, she's just lying there-"
Zee fell back into the couch.  "Oh no."  His hands flew to his face.  Charlotte and Bartholomew stared.
"What?"
"It's my fault," he said slowly.  "It's all my fault."
Charlotte could not stand it anymore.  "What's your fault?  Zee, what's going on?"
Zee had lost all color in his face.  He seemed to be shaking.
"They followed me."  (p. 84)


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

So, about a year ago, my dissertation advisor suggested I read this series since it was so closely related to my dissertation.  I planned on it.  I meant to read it.  Somehow, I got the idea in my head that the series wasn't that closely related to my topic.  Stupid ideas and stupid head.

I'm so glad I read this book before my dissertation was finished even though I now have to go back in and add new segments to heavily edited and polished chapters.  There would have been a gap in my dissertation without including this series.

On to book two, The Siren Song!

REVIEW: Matilda

Dahl, R.  (1988).  Matilda.  New York:  Puffin Books.

240 pages.


Appetizer:  Ooh, sweet, sweet enjoyment and childhood memories.  I remember absolutely loooving this book when I was a second-third-fourth-no-definitely-second-or-third grade-ish age.

I remember that this book kept me up late, reading into the night and that I fell asleep with my cheek on the page.  I felt insanely jealous of Matilda because she was younger than me and a genius.  I wanted her ability to move objects with her eyes and would practice, hoping to feel the hands extend from my eyes too.

*Sigh.*  Memories....

So, having all these lovey-dovey feelings for this book made it hard to reread as an adult and look at the book critically (but was still a great experience, since I recommend my students do such an exercise if they are interested).  Now it turns out, Matilda stands up to the test of time (one of the greatest tests out there).  But it was strange, because I still found things to be critical of (like having more of a hint that magical powers were possible earlier in the story...but then, there are already many other aspects of the book that involve suspension of disbelief.  Plus, a sudden turn to fantasy is kind of Dahl's thing.)  The British vocabulary could throw some young American readers for a loop.  I don't remember having a problem with it when I was a kid.  But when I discussed the book with some of my undergrads, they said they had trouble with the language difference.

For those of you who missed this novel, five-year-old Matilda doesn't really fit in with the rest of her family.  Her father, a used-car salesman, mother, a bingo player, and brother all love to watch TV, and Matilda--who taught herself to read and do math--prefers spending her afternoons in the library, where she has already gone through all of the children's books.  When Matilda finally gets to start school, it becomes clear to her wonderful new teacher, the aptly named Miss Honey, that Matilda is special, put the Headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, won't let Matilda learn at her own level.  In fact, Miss Trunchbull is unjust toward many of the students.  As with her family, Matilda takes it upon herself to get back at those who wrong her and the people she cares about.

Part of what makes Matilda so fun is how horrible the villains of the book are to her.  They're so vile toward the seemingly-powerless children, that as young readers (or child-like adults, in my particular case) you immediately empathize with Matilda.  I had the same reaction to the Dursleys in the first Harry Potter book.  These young protagonists' families are just so mean to them that as a reader I feel so super frustrated by their situations that I'm completely drawn into the story.  And so, it's that much more satisfying when the kids gain the upper-hand and take back power from the horrible, evil, vile adults.

I assigned Matilda as the first reading assignment to my undergrads.  While I usually go more old school with Grimm tales and Aesop's fables, I thought Matilda opens up the discussion on literacy, love of reading, perception of teachers, feeling powerless, gender in children's literature, etc.  My students seemed to like the story (aside from the pesky British spellings).  When I turned the discussion to the way gender was presented, they acknowledged that the way femininity was presented wasn't exactly ideal.  And while the guys in the class admitted to liking the story, they also admitted that if they were still in grade school, there would have been no way they would have picked up the edition of the book with the pink cover.  No way.


Dinner Conversation:

"It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers.  Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.
Some parents go further.  They become so blinded by adoration they manage to convince themselves their child has qualities of genius.
Well, there is nothing very wrong with all this.  It's the way of the world.  It is only when parents begin telling us about the brilliance of their own revolting offspring, that we start shouting, "Bring us a basin!  We're going to be sick!" (p. 7).

"It was pleasant to take a hot drink up to her room and have it beside her as she sat in her silent room reading in the empty house in the afternoons.  The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives.  She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad.  She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India and Rudyard Kipling.  She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village."  (p. 21)

"She resented being told constantly that she was ignorant and stupid when she knew she wasn't.  The anger inside her went on boiling and boiling, and as she lay in bed that night she made a decision.  She decided that every time her father or her mother was beastly to her, she would get her own back in some way or another.  A small victory or two would help her to tolerate their idiocies and would stop her from going crazy.  You might remember that she was still hardly five years old and it is not easy for somebody as small as that to score points against an all-powerful grown-up.  Even so, she was determined to have a go.  Her father, after what had happened in front of the telly that evening, was first on her list."  (p. 29).

"The village school for younger children was a bleak brick building called Crunchem Hall Primary School.  It had about two hundred and fifty pupils aged from five to just under twelve years old.  The head teacher, the boss, the supreme commander of this establishment was a formidable middle-aged lady whose name was Miss Trunchbull.
Naturally Matilda was put in the bottom class, where there were eighteen other small boys and girls about the same age as her.  Their teacher was called Miss Honey, and she could not have been more than twenty-three or twenty-four."  (p. 66).


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

REVIEW: My Life as a Book

Tashjian, J.  (2010)  My Life as a Book.  New York:  Christy Ottaviano Books.

211 pages.


Appetizer:  Derek's mom, dad and teacher are always trying to force him to read and to make vocabulary lists (although, he prefers to create images using stick-figures to represent the words.  These decorate the margins of My Life as a Book.)  He is less than excited about this.  He's okay with reading, he just likes to read comic books and collections of Calvin and Hobbes (Sidenote--the book is dedicated to Calvin and Hobbes author Bill Watterson, how nice of a touch is that?).  Why won't adults just understand that?

When Derek discovers an old newspaper article about the death of a teenage girl on Martha's Vineyard in the attic, he can't help but be curious as to why his parents have kept it.  Especially after his mom refuses to talk about it.  All Derek wants to do is have an adventure over the summer, but his best friend, Matt, is set to go to Martha's Vineyard to solve the mystery without him.  His mom won't stop bugging Derek about reading his assigned books and she even enrolls him for an educational day camp.  How can he have an adventure now?

There's a lot of heart to this story, especially as Derek struggles with the way that he is connected to the dead teenage girl.  Plus, when he's stuck at an educational day camp with his class know-it-all, Carly, he is forced to get to know her better and discovers that they just might have interests in common and that his parents just might have some good reasons for wanting Derek to excel at school.

My Life as a Book is the kind of middle grade novel that teachers absolutely love.  It speaks to the experience of being a reluctant reader and uses a lot of humor.  As Derek learns to appreciate literature, he's guided by various people through the process of visualizing stories, engaging with the characters emotionally and predicting what will happen.  *Does a dance*  Yay for a book helping to teach kids how to engage with a story!!!!!!!

I'm so excited about the literacy dimensions of this book that, even though I talked about visualization with my undergraduates last week, I created a new class discussion so I could bring up the book with them later today.

The doodles in the margins, (done by the author's own teenage son, I believe), will appeal to kids who love to draw and kids who had previously taken a chance on reading for enjoyment and gotten hooked on The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

I'd previously read Tashjian's young adult novel, The Gospel According to Larry and actually found myself enjoying this book a bit more.  I think it was my teacher perspective that made the difference.

The one aspect of the story that had me going, "hmm," was the fact that Derek is twelve-years-old.  He feels much younger, like nine years old, perhaps.  Making Greg behave that young actually makes a lot of sense though.  Since many reluctant readers will probably refuse to read about characters who are younger than them, by aging Derek to be twelve it means a wider range of kids can try to pick up the book.  Plus, even with the pictures of vocabulary words, there is some advanced vocabulary, even with some of the words that aren't defined with pictures.

There's also a nice touch about companion animals who help people with physical disabilities, and training and fostering them.  Derek's mom is a vet, so he gets to meet a companion monkey.  And in his words,  "I now have a new and exciting mission:  talking my mother into letting us raise a monkey" (p. 138).


Dinner Conversation:

Page 1, My Life as a Book

"The teacher places the reading list squarely in front of me.  "I'm afraid you'll have to try and fit in three of these books during all that fun."
I like Ms. Williams, but I wouldn't complain if she was kidnapped by crazed bank robbers in need of a getaway car.
The reading list--unfortunately--isn't going away either.  I stare at it and wonder what I've gotten myself into.  One of the books is about a kid and his dog over summer vacation and all the exciting things they do together and the lessons the boy learns.
I have a dog and--trust me--that stuff only happens in books."  (pp. 8-9)



"I still would rather be home, but I suppose there are worse things than doing sports all summer.  I tell her I'll look through some camp Web sites and find a good one tonight.
She shakes her head.
"Skateboard camp?" I ask.
"Not this time."
"Rock climbing camp?"
"No."
"Karate camp?"
"No again."
I suddenly fear for my life.
"You have too much time on your hands," she says.  "You're going to Learning Camp." (p. 63)

Page 83, My Life as a Book

Tasty Rating:  !!!!!