I had a really hard time getting into this book, and I’m not sure if it had more to do with my current state of mind (extreme stress and borderline depression #2020sucks) or with the long, rambling sentences which alternate between extreme highbrow and earthy lowbrow (perhaps in imitation of the young adults who are […]
This was a very nice addition to our reading list for Arizona, particularly for a Young Adult audience – the reading level is on the younger end of this group, but the main character is raised in a brothel (though not as a sex worker herself). It’s a historical fiction novel set in Tombstone in […]
This was an accidental choice, but it’s turned out to be a fairly happy accident. Which is a bit of a coincidence, as the book was accidentally announced as a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Despite the error having been made internally, Myracle had to withdraw from the contest. […]
I love to see books with unusual main characters–it seems like there has been a lot written recently about the importance of seeing yourself in books, and that goes for kids with special needs too. From that perspective, The Islands at the End of the World seems like a big win, although I have absolutely […]
Wow! This book has it all when it comes to setting and our reading challenge–geography, history, all the different people who make up Hawaii–and the setting is so integral to the story! So many aspects of the story are uniquely Hawaiian, there’s nowhere else it could be set. I am reading my way across the […]
The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church would be a fantastic book for a book club discussing feminist issues–I may have to post it as a suggestion to Emma Watson’s Our Shared Shelf. I was somewhat mislead by the descriptions into thinking there would be more about the development of the atomic bomb, […]
It’s a testament to Cindy Dyson’s power as a writer that I was able to identify with and root for a main character who is so different from me and has so many characteristics that I tend to think of as weaknesses (the casual drug use and the alcohol abuse in particular). I’ll try not […]
This books brings up some great discussion topics – things I’d be interested in hearing about from other people’s perspectives. Below I’ve posted three broad topics / questions that I would love to hear your thoughts on. In the next week or two, I will also be posting a link to my thoughts for each […]