Marfalfa does Reading Month

Since childhood, I've loved the focus on reading in March. I still try to read extra books in March. I'll be posting my current book count for March as well as what I'm currently reading every morning. 

So what am I reading today?

The Sunken Tower by Tait Howard

Total read in March: 0
 

Book review - A Many Feathered Thing

Title: A Many Feathered Thing
Author: Lisa Gerlits
Genre: realistic fiction
Similar books: Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake
                      The Seventh Most Important Thing by Shelley Pearsall
Rating:

lovely

Summary (provided by publisher): Eleven-year-old Clara is known as the "girl who draws," but she's not tortured enough to become a real artist. Her only suffering, besides embarrassment over her real name Clarity Kartoffel, German for Clarity Potato is a crippling inability to speak in public. When Clara and her oldest friend, Orion break their neighbor's glass gazing ball, Clara decides that in order to suffer like a true artist, she will do every hard thing in her path . . . starting with knocking on scary old Mr. Vogelman's door. That's when she meets "Birdman." That’s when she sees his swirling painting. And that's when everything changes. To pay for the broken glass ball, Clara begins working for Birdman in his atelier. He challenges her to throw away her eraser and draw what she sees, not what she wants to see. But as Clara discovers, seeing, really seeing is hard. Almost as difficult as befriending the new girl at school, or navigating awkward feelings for Orion or finding the courage to speak in front of the entire class. But little does Clara know, the biggest challenges are yet to come. To cope with tragedy, she will have to do more than be brave. As Birdman teaches her, she will have to "bring the hope."

My opinion: Let's get this out of the way: the general thrust of this plot is going to be entirely predictable to the average reader. In this case, the events are not really the point. This one is all about the characters and their individual journeys. We struggle along with Clara, feeling her pain and sense of inadequacy, her excitement over finding a mentor and her increasing confusion and complication with Orion. We know, instinctively, that she is making all the wrong choices. We even get the sense that she knows it as well. And yet, her choices seem inevitable, a necessary part of adolescence. It's a very realistic journey, painful and awkward, as Clara's lessons in art teach her more about interacting with other people. Gerlits has managed to create a straightforward story that can relay a number of lessons to the reader, one that will hold up to repeat reads.

More information: A Many Feathered Thing releases March 2.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley

Picture books for everyone

All About Allosaurus by Greg Gormley

Most kids love a dinosaur book, especially when it is essential to the plot that a character is a dinosaur. This book takes on a topic standard to picture books - feeling inferior and wanting to prove your value. The dinosaurs make it unique. The facts that Allosaurus writes about the other dinosaurs are a combination of science and personality of the individuals. All together, this is a sweet and funny story, conveying a postive message without becoming preachy or condescending. The illustrations are complex and engaging with a great sense of action and emotion. A small child will enjoy the characters on an individual level. Older kids could use this as an introduction to a project comparing dinosaur species or appreciating one another.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley

Non-fiction book review - Railway Jack

Railway Jack by KT Johnston

Talk about a cool historical story. We've got a lot of compelling elements at play here. First, there's a man who didn't let negative circumstances hold him back. Having lost his legs he could have resigned himself to a quiet life at home, other people taking care of him. Instead he found a way to prove himself and go back to work, even though it was much harder for him to do on wooden legs. And then we add in an intelligent and affectionate animal. Railway Jack's story proves that animals can learn. He wasn't simply trained to complete specific tasks. He learned to associate signals and respond accordingly. He drew conclusions. This is an absolute joy to read with just the right amount of detail for an elementary aged reader.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley

Book review - I Hate You Fuller James

Title: I Hate You Fuller James
Author: Kelly Anne Blount
Genre: teen romance
Similar books: 100 Days of Sunlight by Abbie Emmons
                      Pretty in Punxsutawney by Laurie Boyle Compton
Rating:

I have problems with it

Summary (provided by publisher): I hate you, Fuller James.
I hate your floppy hair and your lopsided grin and those laughing blue eyes that always seem to be laughing at me.
I hate that you’re the most popular guy in school and I’m still the girl who sneezed and spit out her retainer on someone at a middle school dance. It’s just such a cliché.
I hate that I’m being forced to tutor you in English and keep it a secret from everyone. Because otherwise it might put our basketball team’s chances at winning State in jeopardy, and even though I hate you, I love basketball.
I hate that it seems like you’re keeping a secret from me…and that the more time we spend together, the less I feel like I’m on solid ground. Because I’m starting to realize there’s so much more to you than meets the eye. Underneath it all, you’re real.
But what I hate most is that I really don’t hate you at all.

My opinion: Simply based on the description, most of us will be able to guess the major plot points of this novel. Predictability is generally not a desired trait, though we're far more inclined to forgive it in a romance than in any other genre. Personally, I can for give a predictable plot if the characters are compelling. And I'll grant Blount this: she's creating believable characters. I simply didn't find them especially likeable. This is largely because of the lengths the book goes to in order to reassure us that Fuller is a "good guy." His bet manipulating Wren is only to cover up his genuine feelings and to protect the basketball team (a thin explanation at best). The bullying he started was actually him repeating what someone else started. And let's talk about that bullying. The nickname "Wren-tainer". I acknowledge that this is a reference to what had been a painful moment for Wren, but she frequently references it as "the worst name ever". But is it really? Or is it akin to continuing to point out that someone vomited in a classroom once. Additionally, the plot relies on a number of tropes: the manipulative athlete, motivation-less mean girl, the surprisingly pretty smart girl. It takes a standard plot through a standard path, never plumbing any new depths.

More information: I Hate You Fuller James releases March 2.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley

3D glasses

I've never watched many 3D movies. As a lifetime glasses wearer, adding a pair of cardboard glasses is challenging. They never seem to line up correctly with my frames. When I decided I wanted to try drawing red-blue 3D images, I knew I needed a better way to do the glasses. So I made my own clip-on glasses out of some plastic packaging and sharpie.

I consider these 3D glasses Mark 1. Proof of concept though there's room for improvement. 

Book review - Junk Magic and Guitar Dreams

Title: Junk Magic and Guitar Dreams
Author: T. James Logan
Genre: magical realism
Similar books: Mr. 60%  by Clete Barrett Smith
                      The Bad Decisions Playlist by Michael Rubins
Rating:

decent, not great

Summary (provided by publisher): A guitar, a box of junk, and a pile of trouble...
Fifteen-year-old Otter is in a dark place. When he loses his mom to cancer, Child Services wants to put him in foster care, or even a home for troubled youth.
Living on his own, he’s one bad decision away from the street. His band’s first gig is only two weeks away, but his crush on their new lead singer has him tied in knots.
Then he inherits a box of random junk from a dead grandfather he barely knew. Can his grandfather’s memories help Otter win the girl of his dreams, reconnect with his family, and keep him out of juvenile detention...maybe even become a rock star?

My opinion: I struggle somewhat with this book. I think it's well intentioned. It highlights the struggles of kids in poverty, of marginalized communities. We see how stress and grief break a person down, make them fail to use logic, makes them make bad choices. We see how families and friendships fall apart is stages, seldom all at once. How each choice, each moment, builds on the ones that came before. I also think that the major plot points are obvious, the resolutions over simplified. I understand wanting to show how a vulnerable teen, especially a young man caught up in grief and feeling lost, can be radicalized. This is a very real problem in our society and worth discussing. BUt this particular presentation struggles with some logic issues.
More information: Junk Magic and Guitar Dreams releases March 1.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley