Book review - I Rise

 

Title: I Rise

Author: Marie Arnold

Genre: realistic fiction

Similar books: Required Reading for the Disenfranchised Freshman by Kristen R Lee

                     Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro

Rating:

 

worth reading and reflecting upon

Summary (provided by publisher): A heartbreaking and powerful novel about racism and social justice as fourteen-year-old Ayo has to decide whether to take on her mother's activist role when her mom is shot by police. As she tries to find answers, Ayo looks to the wisdom of her ancestors and her Harlem community for guidance.
Ayo's mother founded the biggest civil rights movement to hit New York City in decades. It’s called ‘See Us’ and it tackles police brutality and racial profiling in Harlem. Ayo has spent her entire life being an activist and now, she wants out. She wants to get her first real kiss, have a boyfriend, and just be a normal teen.
When her mom is put into a coma after a riot breaks out between protesters and police, protestors want Ayo to become the face of See Us and fight for justice for her mother who can no longer fight for herself. While she deals with her grief and anger, Ayo must also discover if she has the strength to take over where her mother left off.

My opinion: These days we get a fair amount of books that present us with teen characters thrown into protest and social justice movements by tragic happenstance. In this novel, Arnold shows us instead a character who's whole life has been driven by the movement. Ayo is hoping to define herself outside of that world for the first time. Of course, circumstance forces her back into it but the set-up allows us to consider the question from a different angle - when we see something wrong, what is our obligation? When are we obligated to step-up and is there a fight too big? That's the other interesting element. We meet characters who can't handle the fight and that's okay. They recognize their limits and there's no shame in that. While the book has some elements that don't always ring true or that go too far, overall the discussion it introduces makes it well worth the read.

Advance Reader Copy provided by NetGalley

Pick 6: survival

As a child I went through a period where I was obsessed with survival stories. My interest was piqued with My Side of the Mountain and absolutely cemented by Hatchet. For a solid year and a half I read every survival story I could get my hands on, mowing through Gary Paulsen, the I Survived series, and Will Hobbs. It was such a large part of my reading history that I still have affection for those books now and read new survival stories often. So here are six new survival stories published in the past six months.

6 new survival stories:

1. Green Arrow: Stranded by Brendan Deneen
2. Mountain Runaways by Pam Withers
3. Across the Desert by Dusti Bowling
4. Out of Range by Heidi Lang
5. The Hike to Home by Jess Rankin
6. Fire on Headless Mountain by Iaian Lawrence
   

Non-fiction book review - Africa is Not a Country

 

Africa is Not a Country by Margy Burns Knight and Mark Melnicove

This is a topic that we probably need to address for every continent but is especially true for Africa. We have a special cultural blindness for Africa in the West and tend to paint all people in the continent with a single brush. Knight and Melnicove set out to correct this misconception in a simple but clear way. We are introduced to children in a variety of African nations going about their day - doing chores, going to school, interacting with friends and family. We see the parallels in their lives, of course, but also the marked differences in their dress, religion, level of technology, privilege. This is easy enough for even young readers to understand and would make an excellent addition to most any social studies collection. 

Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley

Book review - Big Rig

 

Title: Big Rig

Author: Louise Hawes

Genre: realistic fiction

Similar books: The Stars of Whistling Ridge by Cindy Baldwin

                     The Hike to Home by Jess RInker

Rating:

 

a unique premise

Summary (provided by publisher):Life on the road with Daddy is as good as gets for Hazmat. Together, they've been taking jobs and crisscrossing the US for years. Now Daddy's talking about putting down roots—somewhere Hazmat can go to a real school and make friends. Somewhere Daddy doesn't have to mail-order textbooks about "nature's promise to all women." Somewhere Mom's ashes can rest on a mantel and not on a dashboard.
While everything just keeps changing, sometimes in ways she can't control, Hazmat isn't ready to give up the freedom of long-distance hauling. Sure the road is filled with surprises, from plane crashes and robo trucks to runaway hitchhikers and abandoned babies, but that all makes for great stories! So Hazmat hatches a plan to make sure Daddy's dream never becomes a reality. Because there's only one place Hazmat belongs: in the navigator's seat, right next to Daddy, with the whole country flying by and each day different from the last.

My opinion: I can't say as I've ever encountered a book like this one before. It's more than just the trucker detail (though that's certainly a first). It's a child clinging to a way of life that the world tells them is dying, even as her father seems determined to move on in her best interest. Certainly we've seen child characters go to great lengths, hatch grand plans, to convince their parents that they are right. That small piece of this is familiar. But largely this is the grand story of people on the road: the characters that they meet and the chaos they encounter. The primary characters are strong and dynamic. The secondary characters are complex enough to be interesting. The plot takes some pretty wild turn but we can forgive that in the name of entertainment. A solid read.

Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley

Pocket gnomes

 Earlier this summer I was messing around in my yard and decided to whittle a chunk of stick that I found into a simple gnome. I was pretty happy with how he turned out and decided to make more to sell at craft fairs as pocket gnomes. Now, that first gnome (the red hat in the photo) was made of out pine. And pine is a hardwood, so it wasn't exactly easy to carve in the first place. So for the rest of the gnomes I'm working with basswood. It's much easier to cut though it lacks the rustic air of that first gnome.

Book review - Star Knights

 

Title: Star Knights

Author: Kay Davault

Genre: fantasy graphic novel 

Similar books:  Star Beasts by Stephanie Young

                      Cucumber Quest by Gigi D.G.

Rating:

 

good fun

Summary (provided by publisher): What makes a hero?
Brave Star Knights are heroes who go on adventures. But Tad is just a frog, and frogs can’t save the day. Can they? Determined to out-hop his mud-dweller fate and pursue his dream of being a knight, Tad finds himself on a quest with a surprise group of adventurers, including the Star King!
It’s a race against time as Tad searches for a way to take the Star King to the moon so that he can bring peace to the forest—and prove that anybody can be a hero.
Even a frog.

My opinion: I enjoyed this book far more than I expected. I'm not always a big fan of fantasy, especially when it involves witches and transformative magic, though I find it easy to digest in graphic novel form. This is built on a familiar premise - a team of highly magical heroes with unique abilities that they use to protect the innocent and make the world a better place. But Davault quickly moves us out of expected territory. We realize pretty early on that all is not as it seems with the Star Knights. We have a clear social hierarchy that is bound to be turned on it's ear by the story's resolution. While the ultimate reveals are fairly predictable, the characters are charming and the story is compelling. There is the perfect level of tension for middle grade readers. Just a touch of fear without ever becoming properly frightening and a fair dose of humor as well. This is a solid choice for most middle grade readers.

Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley

Listen with me

 

Twice as Perfect by Louisa Onome

Let's start by establishing something: I am an adult, white, woman living in the United States. So a book about the teen daughter of Nigerian immigrants living in Canada is pretty far from my lived experience. And my initial response to not understand parts of this book was "okay, so this book is not intended for me". But on further reflection I realize: that's exactly why it is intended for me. A major theme of this book is how these teens struggle to fit into different cultures, how they feel expected to speak for an entire culture. They are weighed down by expectations from their parents and the world around them and it's desperately unfair that they have to act as a bridge. So, no I'm not an immigrant. I don't know Nigerian immigrants. But reading books like this one, books that delve deep into character and ask us to connect with these worlds on a personal level, can help members of the dominant culture understand the unfair ways that they treat people and help us be more sensitive. They endeavor to answer the impertinent questions and maybe prevent us from asking them of real people. And that is valuable. That makes this book absolutely for everyone, both those who will see themselves in it and those who don't know this world at all.

Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley