Lion Dancer

I've got some bigger projects in the works. So for now, here's a doodle I made this week in honor of Chinese New Year. My favorite element of New Year parades: Lion dancers.

Book review - How I Became A Spy

Title: How I Became A Spy
Author: Deborah Hopkinson
Genre: historical fiction
Similar books: Listen to the Moon by Michael Morpurgo
                      The Romeo and Juliet Code by Phoebe Stone
Rating:

less than I wanted it to be

Summary (provided by publisher): Bertie Bradshaw never set out to become a spy. He never imagined traipsing around war-torn London, solving ciphers, practicing surveillance, and searching for a traitor to the Allied forces. He certainly never expected that a strong-willed American girl named Eleanor would play Watson to his Holmes (or Holmes to his Watson, depending on who you ask).
But when a young woman goes missing, leaving behind a coded notebook, Bertie is determined to solve the mystery. With the help of Eleanor and his friend David, a Jewish refugee--and, of course, his trusty pup, Little Roo--Bertie must decipher the notebook in time to stop a double agent from spilling the biggest secret of all to the Nazis.

My opinion: At face value, the plot for this book is interesting. Espionage is, by it's very nature, intriguing. And Hopkinson is playing with some interesting ideas. I like d the inclusion of instruction in codes and ciphers. We do get some subtle social lessons: guilt, gender bias, racism. These are fairly simple explorations. I found the actual writing stiff and unrelatable. And the plot is built on a shaky premise that is not sufficiently explained. It doesn't live up to promise.

More information: How I Became a Spy releases February 12.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley..

Pick 6: animals

I'm often intrigued by the approach an author takes to a plot. This is especially true when they make the main characters animals. You can do things with animal characters that would seem implausible with humans. Simply by virtue of being animals, they encourage us to expand our suspension of disbelief. Not to mention they're usually cute and fun. Here are six new books published in the past six months that feature animal characters.

6 new animal stories

1. Freya & Zoose by Emily Butler
2. Kitten Construction Company: Meet the House Kittens by John Green
3. Snazzy Cat Capers by Deanna Kent
4. Tiger Vs Nightmare by Emily Tetri
5. Narwhal's Otter Friend by Ben Clanton
6. Escape from the Palace by Santa Montefiore

Book review - Pretty in Punxsutawney

Title: Pretty in Punxsutawney
Author: Laurie Boyle Crompton
Genre: romance
Similar books: 29 Dates by Melissa de la Cruz
                      Not Now, Not Ever by Lily Anderson
Rating:

nice enough

Summary (provided by publisher): A Groundhog Day meets Pretty in Pink mashup that tells the tale of a shy, introverted high school girl who must relive the first day of school over and over again until her first kiss can break the curse … she hopes.
Andie is the type of girl who always comes up with the perfect thing to say … after it’s too late to say it. She’s addicted to romance movies—okay, all movies—but has yet to experience her first kiss. After a move to Punxsutawney, PA, for her senior year, she gets caught in an endless loop of her first day at her new school, reliving those 24 hours again and again.
Convinced the curse will be broken when she meets her true love, Andie embarks on a mission: infiltrating the various cliques—from the jocks to the nerds to the misfits—to find the one boy who can break the spell. What she discovers along the way is that people who seem completely different can often share the very same hopes, dreams, and hang-ups. And that even a day that has been lived over and over can be filled with unexpected connections and plenty of happy endings.

My opinion: I wasn't sure the plot of this book would really land for me, given that I haven't seen either of the influencing movies. As it turns out, they are so culturally ubiquitous that I could guess much of the plot regardless. There were details referenced with which I was unfamiliar, but major plot points were fine. In some ways, the plot is the epitome of a shallow teen rom-com. While the parallels are intentional, it never transcends the genre standards. Andi meets a cute guy who's a bad match for her, explores friend groups, realizes there is more to others than the surface, etc. And while it's admirable to have your protagonist realize that her snap judgements are ignorant, it's a very shallow lesson. The romance is flat and expected, most of the characters without much nuance. It's entertaining, to be certain, but doesn't have much depth backing it. A light read.
Advanced Reader copy provided by NetGalley

The Great Owl Repaint Project part 6

This owl was almost separate from my big project. Mostly the original design was so quirky. The shape is truly odd and there are these funny star shapes around the eyes. It makes the original glaze that much more disappointing. They really could have gone wild on the design and I considered it myself. 
 

It looks so much like a cat

In the end, though, he really wanted to be part of the owl family. The new design is inspired by the Malay Eagle Owl. He's been dubbed Crazy Uncle Seawolf.

Check out the rest of the family:  Evangeline, Leif, Clara, Beatrice, and Rowan .

Non-fiction book review - Carter Reads the Newspaper

Carter Reads the Newspaper by Deborah Hopkinson

Early in this book, Hopkinson refers to Carter Woodson as "a hero we often forget." I'd argue he's an hero we've never heard of. His was a name entirely unfamiliar to me and that is an absolute shame. What a compelling life story. This is a story of doing what is necessary to achieve your dreams, no matter how hard you have to work. Through his life, Carter  worked around, through, or with his limitations. He saw challenges as sources of strength. In this book we not only get Carter Woodson as an example of persistence, we get the brief story of Oliver Jones, a man who opened his home and kept himself and his peers informed by whatever means possible. Several times in this narrative, Hopkinson gently points out to the reader how much one can achieve simply by being aware of the larger world. This easily understood book will resonate with young children and middle graders alike.

More information: Carter Reads the Newspaper releases February 1.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley

Book review - Between Before and After

Title: Between Before and After
Author: Maureen Doyle McQuerry
Genre: historical fiction
Similar books: Lord of the Mountain by Ronald Kidd
                      The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz
Rating:

a bit of a mixed bag

Summary (provided by publisher): “The carnage began with the roses. She hacked at their ruffled blooms until they dropped into monstrous drifts of red on the parched yellow lawn … Only two things kept my mother grounded to us: my uncle Stephen and stories.”
Fourteen-year-old Molly worries about school, friends, and her parents’ failed marriage, but mostly about her mother’s growing depression. Molly knows her mother is nursing a carefully-kept secret. A writer with an obsession for other people’s life stories, Elaine Donnelly is the poster child of repressed emotions.
Molly spends her California summer alternately watching out for her little brother Angus and tip-toeing around her mother’s raw feelings. Molly needs her mother more than ever, but Elaine shuts herself off from real human connections and buries herself in the lives and deaths of the strangers she writes about. When Uncle Stephen is pressed into the limelight because of his miracle cure of a young man, Elaine can no longer hide behind other people’s stories. And as Molly digs into her mother’s past, she finds a secret hidden in her mother’s dresser that may be the key to unlocking a family mystery dating to 1918 New York—a secret that could destroy or save their future.
Told in dual narratives between 1918 New York City and 1955 San Jose, California, Between Before and After, by award-winning author Maureen McQuerry, explores the nature of family secrets, resiliency, and redemption. This is an historical coming-of-age Young Adult story about the complex bonds between mothers and daughters.

My opinion: Initially, I was very into this book. I loved the back and forth perspectives, the way information revealed in Elaine's story  influenced the events in Molly's story. I was certainly intrigued by the promise of a big secret in New York that would provide final context for the California story. And that's why the moment when Molly learns the truth about the boarding school was a bit of a disappointment. It took the impact out of the big reveal. 
The miracle aspect was unique. I liked that the focus was less on whether miracles are real and more on how destructive the claim of a miracle can actually be. Here are these lives that are totally disrupted and family secrets that are nearly revealed to the world based on intense public scrutiny. And the pressure of being a "miracle child" leads the boy to take an insane risk. A mixed bag of expected plot points and interesting explorations.

More information: Between Before and After releases February 5.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley.