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Every Day Book Review

          What if every day of your life, you woke up in a different body, were a different gender, had to be someone else completely?           In Dave Levithan’s novel Every Day, we follow A, who does just that - he wakes up every single day in a different life and with a different body: always moving on after just one day. I call A a “he,” but his? her? gender is never actually revealed. A has good days and bad days, painful days and happy days, but every day is a new experience.  He passes through these days like a shadow, never getting attached, never becoming interwoven in the fabric of someone else’s life.           His perception on his outlook changes the second he meets Rhiannon. There is an instant spark, instant chemistry, and he feels connected to her soul, and this time, A needs more than just one day.  He longs for more time with Rhiannon, and so rises the question: can you be loved by a single person, and be in love with a single person, if you are never a single person from day to day?           The book is full of teenage love and angst, but I wish that Levithan had done something more constructive with gender and sexuality in this book.  A is genderless, and Levithan’s uncomfortableness with discussing gender as a part of A’s identity disappointed me a bit. Everyone assumes that A is a “he” because he falls in love with a “she,” but why couldn’t A be a “she” who falls in love with a “she”? It would’ve been interesting to do something with gender and identity, but I suppose the point is that A can be anyone, so why does it even matter?           In the end, this book is a great way to get kids to think about fantasy beyond the realm of magic and sword-and-sorcery. I think they have coined this type of fantasy “Urban Fantasy,” as it resides in the real(ish) world.  The fantasy is subtle in this, and instead the novel focuses on the strength of spirit and the fragile relationships between humans.  All good fantasy, at its core, is about more than magic: it is about love, loss, and relationships.           This book reminded me of an anime film that recently came out called Your Name, about a boy and girl who switch bodies every once and a while and live as each other, eventually falling in love: only to discover that the girl had died in an accident 3 years earlier.  This novel also reminds me of the book Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi, in which a writer’s character comes to life and they fall in love - and the writer must choose between fantasy and reality.           I LOVE urban fantasy so here are some other titles you might want to add to your queue: - Man Tiger, Eka Kurniawan - This Census-Taker, China Miéville - Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan

Levithan, D. (2012). Every Day. New York, NY: Random House Children's Books.

#every day #book review #dave levithan #YA

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Salt to the Sea Book Review

         I must start this review out by saying that I normally don’t enjoy reading much historic fiction (or non-fiction, for that matter); in fact, I purposefully avoid that section of the bookstore. However, this book ended up being devastatingly beautiful, and absolutely worth the read.          Salt to the Sea tells the story of the sinking of the German ‘MV Wilhelm Gustloff’ military transport ship, an historic maritime disaster that claimed over 9,000 lives and continues to be a much-overlooked piece of history - case in point, I had never heard of the disaster itself before I picked up and read this book. I think the main cause of this is because the American people were anti-Germany, so much so that German pain, suffering, and loss was never an issue.          The author, Ruta Sepetys, seamlessly weaves an intricate web of fact and fiction, telling the story of a group of WWII refugees aboard the ship, fleeing from the onslaught of Russian troops gaining ground against the German forces towards the end of WWII.  This story is told in alternating points of view, working to reveal an extremely human side of wartime disasters.          There is a colourful spectrum of characters throughout this novel, including Joana the Lithuanian nurse; Alfred, a young German soldier; Emilia, a young Polish girl; and Florian, Emilia’s mysterious rescuer.  There is an array of interesting supporting cast members as well, each of which play a significant role in telling this story intricately and intimately.          This story is harrowing, to say the least.  It is raw and real; at times, the story is painful, highlighting the depravity of humanity at times, as well as contrasting it with the power of the human spirit at others.          This story, very much like Bomb!, could be used in a cross-curricular setting.  History classes could use it to teach about the historic sinking of ‘MV Wilhelm,’ and the German perspective of WWII, and English classes could use it to dissect POV and story in the historic context.           Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse is similar to Salt to the Sea in the fact that it shows a different viewpoint other than American or Jewish during WWII and could be taught in conjunction to Salt to the Sea.

Sepetys, R. (2016). Salt to the Sea. New York, NY: Philomel Books.

#review #salt to the sea #YA #ruta sepetys

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Bomb! Book Review

          Bomb! The Race to Build - and Steal - the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon is classified as literary non-fiction, but plays out more like an Ian Fleming 007 novel, unraveling the birth of the atomic bomb in spy thriller fashion. The story zigzags into and out of historical timelines surrounding the most dangerous invention of all-time, from a plot trying to stop Adolf Hitler from building his own atomic bomb to troubled scientists trying to come to terms with the horrors they have created.  While reading the accounts in the book, I kept picturing the now infamous video reel of J. Robert Oppenheimer after completing his work on the atomic bomb, quoting from Hindu scripture: “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent... ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, in one way or another.”           This book is crammed to the brim with facts, but the book itself manages never to become boring. It details research, the process of creating the bomb, covers the scientists who made it, details the espionage that surrounded the technology, and eventually talks about the outcome and consequences of the technology, as disastrous as they were (and continue to be). Sheinkin does this expertly, by dropping breadcrumbs of knowledge and historical facts for us to walk to and disseminate, only giving the reader as much information as is necessary until the eventual exposé. He chooses his quotes carefully and sets up his scenarios to build the perfect amount of tension for the scene he is unfolding.           The story is framed liked a bookend, ending on the same line that it began with: “He had a few more minutes to destroy seventeen years of evidence.”           This book could be used as cross curriculum in English and History, with ELA focusing on how literary non-fiction is developed, with particular emphasis on the use of facts intermingled with gripping narrative to unravel style, structure, and characterisation.  History could focus on WWII and the effects of the US dropping the atomic bomb on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Film scholars today are still studying the effects of Fat Boy and Little Boy being dropped and it’s association with film form: it is witnessed in movies such as the original Godzilla, detailed in the cyber-punk film Akira, and shown in the recent Japanese film by Studio Ghibli called The Wind Rises. I think it would be fun and interesting to craft a multi-genre research project that centred around the different mediums that still showcase the Japanese reaction to the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as detailing the untold truths about the Japanese internment camps in the US around the same time.           Bomb! could be used in conjunction with other novels about Japan and the atomic bomb, such as The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson) or The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II (Denise Kiernan).

Sheinkin, S. (2012). Bomb! The Race to Build - and Steal - the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon. New York, NY: Roaring Book Press.

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Turtles All the Way Down Book Review

          Turtles All the Way Down (henceforth referred to as TATWD) is John Green’s newest novel.  I originally was going to read An Abundance of Katherines, but then this novel debuted and I couldn’t resist it. From the opening line of TATWD, (“At the time I first realized I might be fictional”) the reader straps in for a deeper John Green novel, one geared towards metafiction, with clever characters that defy all YA rules.  The novel follows Aza Holmes, and Aza first introduces herself as the sidekick of her best friend Daisy. The mantra for their group is “Break Hearts, Not Promises”. Daisy is a sassy, dynamic character; she serves as the mirror opposite of Aza, who is quiet, mostly due to her need to fight off thoughts that haunt her.  These thoughts are said to be a real manifestation of John Greene’s own OCD and anxiety disorders, and he weaves these struggles seamlessly into the fabric of this YA novel. Aza is fixated on the bacteria known as Clostridium difficile, and believes that every time her stomach makes a noise that she has been infected.           The two form a duo of detectives, and devise a plan to befriend Davis, whose father is a shady billionaire and recently fled to escape several impending lawsuits. The police are investigating his disappearance, and his company is offering a $100,000 reward for any information leading to his capture or whereabouts.  Aza befriends Davis again and soon an unlikely romance begins to bud between them. Both of these kids suffer from varying degrees of concern - Davis believes she is only after the reward money, and Aza is afraid that every time she kisses Davis, she will contract Clostridium difficile. Much of the novel is spend dealing with Aza’s mental illness, which is why I believe the novel is actually 2-in-1: 2 stories so intricately woven together, you almost get lost in which one you’re existing in.           What sets John Green apart from other YA novelists is that he writes knowledgeable teenage characters.  He doesn’t discount teenagers as unintelligent and recognizes that they’re able to comprehend complex concepts and feel true emotions.  I think that because of this, teens are drawn to his books because his characters are so relatable and so are their struggles. I think this novel has been written in such a way to appeal to both aspiring young readers and an aging generation of YA readers: it’s smart, complex, and deals with tough issues that don’t often get discussed.           This novel could be used to supplement curriculum in teaching mental illnesses possibly in a health class, or could be used purely in an English class setting - the vocabulary is immense, and the dual plots could provide great characterization analysis.           Other books that deal with mental illness in a great way are Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman and When We Collided by Emily Lord.           There is a fantastic film called The Road Within that deals with 3 teenagers who run away from a mental institute, all with different mental disorders, trying to live life but each burdened by their own flaws.

Green, J. (2017). Turtles All the Way Down. London, England: Penguin Books.

#TATWD #book review #YA #john green

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Speak Book Review

         Speak tells the story of Melinda, who is an incoming 9th grader.  While at a party before her freshman year begins, Melinda has a few drinks and meets Andy. Andy begins kissing and dancing on Melinda, who is a little too tipsy to say no and tell him to stop.  Andy eventually rapes Melinda while at the party, and Melinda calls 9-11.  When the cops arrive, Melinda is too afraid to speak out against Andy and the party gets broken up.          Her first day of freshman year, everyone knows that it was her who called the cops - but not the reason why she called them.  Melinda is shunned by everyone in her class, and spirals into a depression.  Her grades slips, she has no joy, she begins to cut class - and her parents think she is just being a normal rebellious teenager.  Her art teacher, Mr. Freeman, seems to notice some of the signs of her deep depression and he slowly encourages Melinda to use her artwork to show her internal voice. Eventually, Melinda finds out that Andy and Rachel are dating, and she warns Rachel about her own encounter with Andy.  Rachel leaves Andy at prom, and one day while Melinda is cleaning out her closet at school (which she had been using to hide in), Andy locks her inside and attempts to rape her a second time to get revenge for breaking him and Rachel up.  Melinda yells out, and the lacrosse team breaks in and saves her.          Speak, I think, falls into the difficult literature category again.  It’s a difficult subject to approach, and an even more difficult one to get people to open up about.  They feel ashamed and try to hide and get lost in depression.  I think this book is more suited for a high school audience, because of the sensitive subjects that it deals with.  I think the most obvious lesson is to have kids do what Melinda did - show their feelings and ideas in the form of their own art to find their voices and speak.          I can see this book being connected to Crutcher’s Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes in that it deals with abuse and the fear that comes alongside of it and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, both book and movie, which deals with the a boy on the fringes of his own classes as he witnesses sex, drugs, and the lives of his fellow classmates.

Anderson, L. H. (1999). Speak. New York, NY: Penguin Group.

#speak #laurie halse anderson #review #YA

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Mexican Whiteboy Review

          Mexican Whiteboy, by Matt de la Peña, is the story of Danny - a lanky boy who is tall, lean, and can throw a 95 mph fastball; despite having such an amazing arm, Danny is not on a single team.  Every time he goes up to pitch, he loses his nerve and chokes. His pitches are fast, but end up go everywhere and he is cut from the baseball team. Danny, like so many teens today, suffers from bouts of depression, where he resorts to cutting himself as a way to cope with his emotions.           Danny is a mixed kid: half-white, half-Mexican, and feels like he doesn’t fit in anywhere.  He is too Mexican for the white children at his private school, and too white for the Mexicans in National City, where he has chosen to spend his summer vacation with his cousin’s family.  Danny eventually becomes friends with a boy named Uno, who is the backside of the same coin in which Danny is the front.  Uno is poor, grew up mostly in the streets, and is bad-tempered. Danny is from an affluent family, but shy and quiet. The one thing that ties these boys together is their love of baseball.  Through the summer, Uno teaches Danny trust through an unlikely friendship, and Danny finds himself and learns to control his pitches on the mound.           This novel has a Lexile score of 680L, but due to the more graphic content of the novel such as the violence, language, and drug usage, I would recommend it more for 9th - 10th grade and up. I see this book being mostly read by male teenagers rather than female due to the sports themes of the book. However, I do think that any kid looking for cultural acceptance can find some answers to questions they’ve asked themselves within this novel.           Mexican Whiteboy is all about finding acceptance in a world that is not accepting, and ultimately being true to yourself, your heritage, and not being ashamed of who you are.           There is a great book called Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng about growing up Chinese American in a suburban Ohio town that reminds me a lot of the search for cultural acceptance in Mexican Whiteboy.

de la Pena, M. (2008) Mexican Whiteboy. New York: Random House, Inc.

#mexican whiteboy #matt de la peña #book review

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George Book Review

          George, by Alex Gino, is the story of Melissa, who is a transgender that was named George when she was born. Melissa lives her life as George, knowing that inside she is not a little boy, but a little girl.  Melissa’s school is putting on a production of Charlotte’s Web, and Melissa desperately wants the part of Charlotte, despite having the outward appearance of a male. This prompts bullying and ridicule from her classmates, and Melissa lives in constant state of confusion and fear.  Confusion might not be the right word - she knows she is a girl but how best to come out as the girl she is inside when everyone thinks she is a boy? Melissa confides in her best friend Kelly after Kelly lands the role of Charlotte.  George’s brother is also a very supportive figure, and after Melissa scours the internet for answers on who she is, her brother shows her how to clear her browsing history so no one else in the family will discover her queries. Kelly eventually makes a plan and lets Melissa dress up in her clothes, allowing Melissa to finally look like the little girl that she is on the inside.                    This book was a quick read, but heavy on good content.  Written by a transgender, it is a great insight into the struggles of transgender people, and especially trans children.  The confusion, ridicule, and bullying that most trans people have faced in their lives is evident here, and it’s an eye opening glimpse into a world I am admittedly not very educated about.  This book could be used in a variety of age groups, and its writing style and word use allow it to be used in young age groups.  Parents might find this book questionable, but I think introducing children to problems like these makes for a better society in general.           This book reminded me of the Amazon series Transparent and the film The Danish Girl, but had an innocence and purity about it that those shows overlook. I recommend either of these because they’re well crafted, but not sure if they could be used in conjunction with George.           There is a children’s book called I Am Jazz by Jazz Jennings about a young transgender girl that I have added to my queue of books to read (ages 2+ it says).

Gino, A. (2015). George. New York: Scholastic.

#george #book review #trangender #Alex Gino

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brown girl dreaming Book Review

          brown girl dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson, is a memoir told through poems.  Jaqueline details her childhood growing up as an African American in both the South and North during the Civil Rights era of the 1960’s.  Jackie mainly grows up in the North, but frequently travels down to South Carolina with her parents to visit her grandparents. Jackie witnesses the segregation that is still very much prevalent in the South.  Eventually, Jackie and her mother move back down to SC, and Jackie comes to love everything about it. Despite the racially charged backdrop of the time, there are many white people in the town that treat Jackie and her mother with respect.  Jackie and her mother eventually move to NY, where Jackie becomes friends with a Puerto Rican girl.  At the same time, Jackie is learning that she loves to wrote and decides from then on out that she longs to be a writer- it’s one of the only things she loves to do and she knows that she is great at it.  Jackie and her friend witness the products that come from the Civil Rights movement in the backdrop of their lives.  They come to admire and imitate Angela Davis from the Black Panther Party even though they don’t quite understand what it is that she represents.

          This is a great book to use in a classroom to pull kids out of the novel format of books and get them connected to poetry. The poems are easy to read and they each represent different things from Jackie’s life, and they flow extremely gracefully from page to page.  This book has a Lexile score of 990L, but is recommended for children ages 10-14.  I think that age range is a better assessment of readability than the Lexile score is here, and I think introducing kids to this kind of culturally relevant literature is especially appropriate in today’s political climate.  This book would be great for use while kids are studying the Civil Right’s Movement or reading other book that deal with African American Heritage, such as  Full Cicada Moon by Marilyn Hilton (also written in verse form) or Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor. Jacqueline Woodson has cited the novel M.C. Higgins, the Great as one of her major influences, and I think incorporating that into the discussion could show another side of the book.  Within the novel itself, Woodson also makes direct references to poetry by Robert Frost and Langston Hughes, offering another starting point for a poetry set of curricula.  

          I would love to see projects where students all write poetry about their own backgrounds and culture, or conduct interviews of their parents/ grandparents to talk about their memories growing up and what society was like during their childhood eras.

 Woodson, J. (2014). brown girl dreaming. New York, NY: Penguin Group.

#brown girl dreaming #book review #jaqueline woodson

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Staying Fat For Sarah Byrnes Book Review

Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, by Chris Crutcher, follows Eric “Mobe” Calhoun as his life intertwines and intersects with various characters.  Eric and Sarah Byrnes are best friends, drawn together by both being outcasts.  Sarah Byrnes has facial scarring from a childhood accident, and Eric is overweight, thus the Moby Dick reference in his nickname. Eric recalls events through the use of flashbacks in his stories with Sarah Byrnes, who is catatonic in a mental hospital when the novel begins.  Slowly it is revealed that Sarah is secretly terrified to go home because her father has been abusing her and she thinks it’s only a matter of time before he kills her. Eric and his teacher Ms. Lemry devise a plan to hide Sarah Byrnes in a garage apartment, and eventually Ms. Lemry takes Sarah Byrnes to Reno to find her mother.  While they are away, Sarah Byrnes’ father hunts down Eric and eventually stabs him in the back and cheek.  Eric’s mother’s boyfriend Carver, who used to be in the Special Forces, lays a trap to capture and injure Sarah Byrnes’ father to get back for what he did to Eric.

          This novel was one of the craziest and funniest books I’ve read in the YA category. The characters all seem like real, flawed people, and the story line, which gets a little outrageous, was enthralling to follow along with.  This novel addresses so much, and it’s hard to describe how useful this could be for readers.  The novel deals with body image acceptance and themes about trust and friendship are cornerstone on which the characters are set.  It deals with even more heavy topics, such as Atheism vs. Christianity and religion in general, morals such as abortion and abuse, philosophy, suicide, and social justice.  

         I can see this book being used in a classroom to teach any manner of important topics.  The best thing about these characters is that nothing is black and white: they are all shown to be products of emotional or physical abuse, and find comfort and friendship in sharing that abuse and being able to open up to others. This could also be used in conjunction with a Restorative Justice Circle, asking us to share and take a hard look about the forms of abuse around us.

          This book reminded me a lot of a few movies, which could be use in conjunction with it.  Namely, Freak the Mighty, which is based off the novel of the same name and deals with unlikely friendships and abusive families. Crutcher, C. (1993). Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes. Broadway, NY: HarperCollins.

#staying fat for sarah byrnes #book review #chris crutcher

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Monster Book Review

          Walter Dean Myers’ Monster follows 16-year-old Steve Harmon as his story takes the form of screenplay, interspersed here and there with journal entries inside prison and flashbacks to his memories.  Steve is on trial for a drug store robbery that went sour and became a homicide.  As we are introduced slowly to Steve’s fragmented narrative, we slowly assimilate the information presented and understand that Steve is innocent, but even after being acquitted, Steve still faces prejudice and hate.          As a Film Studies minor during my undergrad, I greatly appreciated the way this novel took shape.  The narrative was new to me in the novel form, and the quick dialogue in the courtroom greatly added to the suspense without any extra fluff.  The nuanced details such as Steve’s handwritten scrawls of “MONSTER” down the page behind the text, changing text size and font to represent journal entries, and the intersection of screenplay, journal, and flashbacks all added to the overall aesthetic of the novel.          I think this novel could be great for differentiated instruction.  You could have your students film some of the pivotal scenes using their cell-phones, have your students start a self-reflection journal, or conduct research over our broken criminal justice system in the United States, and how the school-to-prison pipeline disproportionately and adversely affects African American and Latino males.  Depending on the age level you are teaching this book at, your instruction could vary.  I think students from 6th-12th grade could read this novel and all have various take-aways from it.          There is a graphic novel version of this book, and I would love to see if it is introduced like a storyboard.   Other books with similar themes like Monster are:          - Tyrell, Coe Booth          - The First Part Last, Angela Johnson          - Bronx Masquerade, Nikki Grimes (a novel about racial tensions and self-exploration structured using slam poetry)

Myers, W.D. (1999). Monster. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

#walterdeanmyers #monster #review

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13 Reasons Why

          Thirteen Reasons Why follows Clay Jensen, a high schooler who returns home one day to find a package with seven cassette tapes inside.  The outdated technology contains the story of a girl named Hannah Baker, who recorded the tapes before she committed suicide. She instructs the listeners to pass the tapes onto the next person in the story line of her narrative, or risk a set of tapes with the same incriminating narrate being released to the public. Her narrative contains 13 reasons why she killed herself, so if you’re listening, you’re one of them.           I wanted to like this book.  I had been holding off watching the Netflix series of the same name until after I finished reading; however, I have already deleted the series from my queue because of how I felt about this novel. I found this book almost sadistic in the way it approached suicide, and was instantly turned off by the running narrative of Hannah through her tapes. She seems greedy, vengeful, and cruel in the way she drags everyone around her down with her even after she’s gone. Written by Jay Asher, this book feels more like someone’s glamourised idea of suicide rather than the actual thoughts of a suicidal person.  Speaking as someone who has actually tried to kill themselves, this book and Hannah’s narrative felt more like revenge porn than the last words of a dead girl. The 13 people listed on the tapes have “wronged” Hannah in various ways, ranging from being put on a “Whose Ass Is Hottest” list all the way to rape-- the disparities between offenses are vast.           Depression is a monstrous entity that consumes your heart and mind, and making tapes to tell people they’re the reason why you’re dead isn’t something that most suicidal/ depressed people do.  It’s almost implausible that our main character did this, especially in the nonchalant way that she narrates the tapes. But, we have to believe that she did (because that’s what the book says), so we can expel our disbelief for a moment to talk about the implications and realities of this book: - In 2015, the suicide rate among teenage girls hit a 40-year high, according to the CDC. - Major depression amongst teenagers in the U.S. has jumped 37% in the last decade.           I don’t think this novel should be the model by which adults start to talk about suicide to teenagers with, but it still raises some core questions that we can use to get teens to start a dialogue with about depression, suicide, and mental illness.  Some kids just need to relate to that depression, or those thought of suicide, and the book could be a jumping off point for that.           Does anyone feel like Hannah?           Can you relate to these thoughts?           Have you been turned away by a counselor like Hannah was?           How do seemingly insignificant actions snowball into something worse?We don’t want to glorify suicide in the way the book feels like it does, but we can use the themes in the book as fodder for discussion in an increasingly at-risk classroom.

YA books that deal with this deep topic with a little more grace are:           All the Bright Places, Jennifer Niven           It’s Kind of A Funny Story, Ned Vinizzi           My Heart and Other Black Holes, Jasmine Warga           I Was Here, Gayle Forman           Falling Into Place, Amy Zhang

Asher, J. (2007). Thirteen Reasons Why. New York City , NY: Penguin Random House.

#13reasonswhy #jayasher #review

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Book Review: Persepolis

          Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood is based upon the real-life experiences that author Marjane Satrapi went through growing up in Tehran, Iran during the 1980’s Iranian Revolution. It details the long history of the Middle East, specifically the ruling class history as it pertains to the rise and fall of an empire.             Although the novel spends a lot of time dealing with how the Iranian Revolution negatively impacts her life, Marjane humourously adds personal details that deal with the aspects of growing up in general.  She is a rebellious, smart, and straightforward child, but a child nonetheless.  When she is younger, she repeats facts (and lies) that she hears to others, unaware of how her words have consequences.  We see Marji begin to learn the cultural and historical impact of her people, and see her become more and more involved personally in the revolution.  This book taught me histories of Iran that I never knew, and opened my eyes to just how dictatorial their empirical reign of terror was.  The last half of the book I spent huddled in fear for our main character, knowing at any moment a bomb could be dropped on her or she could be taken away for being rebellious. Marjane pushed the boundaries of her culture, wearing sneakers and jackets and Michael Jackson buttons that had been deemed “whorish” by the Guardians of the Revolution, a religious sect set with the task of dealing with impurities.  Most importantly, this book deal with loss. Marjane loses friends, neighbours, family, and loved ones to the revolution, and eventually loses her parents because of it as well. She is sent off to Austria to study at a French school, and her parents remain behind to live in Iran.           Persepolis has a Lexile score of 380L, with a high indication for semantics and high demand for decoding.  While at its heart it’s a novel, it’s also a historical book, and a lot of the names can become difficult to pronounce and the history of the country a bit difficult to follow for younger readers.  Scholastic recommends this book for grades 9-12, and I think that’s an accurate assessment.  This novel deals with difficult topics, an extensive history, and violence within culture.           Books like Persepolis that I can recommend include:

- Maus by Art Spiegelman (a graphic novel about WW II and being a Holocaust survivor)

- American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (a graphic novel about racial stereotyping and growing up Asian-American)

          In terms of media, I highly recommend watching the film version of Persepolis.  It is told in the same illustrative style, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2007.

Satrapi, Marjane. (2003). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon Books.

#persepolis #bookreview #marjanesatrapi

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Book Review: El Deafo

          El Deafo, based on the true experiences of Cece Bell growing up being hearing impaired, follows the child-bunny version of Cece as she deals with the everyday struggles of life, such as losing friends, falling in love, being embarrassed, and being bullied, all while continually feeling ostracised by her peers for being hearing-impaired.  She wears the “Phonic Ear” to be able to hear better and imagines herself as the super-powered “El Deafo” to find solace during her loneliness.           Throughout this novel, we see our main character Cece (or CE-CE! as one of her friends yells at her) dealing with the hardships of growing up.  She finds friends who aren’t really friendly, loses friends that she loves, deals with the loss of her hearing, falls in love with a boy, and ultimately deals with the power of loneliness as it relates to her disability.  Cece feels like an outsider in every way, and finds it hard to even joke with the other children. Students who have a hearing disability could read this and feel comfort, and students who don’t have a hearing disability could read this and find comfort as well, along with ways to deal with people who have disabilities.  I smiled (and cried) through every page of this novel, and I think it’s an amazing book for an ever-expanding sub-genre.           El Deafo has a Lexile score of 420L, and at 248 pages of graphic novel, it’s a fairly quick read.  However, as a 26-year old man, I found myself hysterically laughing at some parts, emotionally torn at others, and otherwise overjoyed during my reading of this book.  It has a few large words that younger children might find confusing, and a lot of implied humour that would exceed their level of understanding; that being said, I think 3rd-12th graders could all and find redeeming qualities in this book, and find themselves represented amongst its pages.           Other books I would recommend after El Deafo are:

- Blankets by Craig Thompson

- This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki

- Stitches: A Memoir by David Small

Each of these is a graphic novel that deals with the pains of growing older, being alone, and ultimately finding ways to be happy in this life.           In terms of other media, I think the films Mary & Max and My Life as a Zucchini would be excellent companions to this novel.  Mary & Max deals with a child befriending a man with Asperger’s syndrome, and My Life as a Zucchini deals with a child who found his mother dead and goes to live with other foster children.

Bell, Cece. (2014). El Deafo. New York, NY: Amulet Books.

#eldeafo #bookreview #cecebell #graphicnovel

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My cover of Master and a Hound,  by Gregory Alan Isakov

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Matt Kelly and I covering a little Alexi M.

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This is probably one of the most BEAUTIFUL music videos I've ever seen.  It's an ambient band called Hammock and their song "Breathturn."

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Lawdy I need to go camping, and SOON.