Review: Divergent

I've been jumping from book to book lately without really committing to or finishing anything. But then I got the YA Fiction Divergent by Veronica Roth from my books on hold at the library. I read it in two days, which is really good for me these days. It was entertaining and interesting. Even though I finished it hours ago, I feel like I should pick it up again and keep reading. It had a good ending, but obviously has a sequel coming.

It fits right in with the current YA craze of dystopian societies. If you liked the Hunger Games series, you will probably like this book. It is not a copycat of it by any means, but it is in the same vein and has the same feeling about it.

Reread: The Hunger Games Trilogy

I just reread The Hunger Games trilogy so that I could actually read them in quick succession instead of waiting months between books.

I think I read them almost as quickly as I did the first time. Even though I knew the endings, it was still interesting and engaging. And I'm good at forgetting details of books and movies, so I can enjoy my second time around almost as much.

There are some complaints about these books and its main character. Katniss is a bit slow at picking up on the hints and help people try to give her sometimes. Some people also think she's a bit wishy washy when it comes to her two romantic options. But I think it helps to remember that Katniss is only around 16 years old when these books take place. How well would you have done in her situation when you were 16? I prefer not to think of myself at 16, so keeping that in mind, it helps me forgive some of her silliness. Also, if she always picked up on the clues that the readers do and was always certain who the love of her life is, where would half the suspense be?

I liked these books just as much the second time around. And I'm looking forward to seeing how they adapt them to movies. Especially since the main audience is YA and many of the scenes are quite gruesome. It reassures me that it's for a YA audience though, or I don't think I could stomach it in movie form.

Review: The Last Battle

This week I finished reading The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis aloud to my daughter. And thus we finished reading the complete Chronicles of Narnia together.

I've read these books many times, but there's just something about a good story read aloud. Even if I'm reading it more to myself than my daughter. It also set a good tone for reading together each day. She used to ignore me and play while I read. But in the last few months, she took that time to bring me books to read to her while I was reading. So our reading of the Chronicles of Narnia was interspersed with readings of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Bob and Larry's ABCs (a Veggie Tales ABC book that is her favorite--she calls it Bob).

Next I'm going to read aloud her Beatrix Potter collection that my mom gave her. After that, I have no idea. But it's a habit that I want to keep up.

And now for The Last Battle. It is the only Narnia book that I didn't read and reread as a child. I read it once and never picked it up again. When I read it this time, I remembered what I didn't like about it.

Spoiler Alert: Susan is taken out of it. She is "no longer a friend of Narnia" and has become preoccupied with nylons and lipstick. She was always the most skeptical of the Pevensie kids, and C.S. Lewis might have been trying to make a last days of Narnia thing realistic by not having every person we know end up in "Aslan's country." But I didn't like it. Susan is by no means my favorite character, but it still made me wonder what C.S. Lewis had against her to turn her into a snob and leave her out. If I ignored that fact, I enjoyed this book a lot more than I did the first time.

Review: The Lightning Thief

What if the Greek gods were real and were still around today? Well, they'd be doing what they've always done, which includes hanky panky with mortals that results in half-god, half-mortal children, i.e. heroes.

That's the premise of The Lightning Thief and the other Percy Jackson and the Olympians books. I read the first book quickly. It's an easy, entertaining read. I found a couple of bits a little predictable, but there were plenty of unexpected plot twists as well.

I'm not rushing out to read the next one, but I probably will read them all eventually. They'll be good for when I've been doing too much heavy reading and need some lighter fare. Plus these books include just enough allusions to popular Greek myths so that someone (like a young adult, the target audience) who doesn't know the myths can follow the book but also might be interested enough to learn more. Which can only be a good thing.

Review: Heart of a Samurai

Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus was another recipient of a 2011 Newbery Honor. I'm really liking this being caught up on all the Newbery Award Medalists so that at the beginning of each year I have time to check out the Honor books as well, because they're all amazing. I really don't know how you would decide between them.

Heart of a Samurai is too incredible of a story to be fiction. It is based on the true story of a young Japanese boy in the mid 19th century who is lost at sea on a fishing boat, deserted on an island with nothing but rocks and birds, rescued by blue-eyed barbarians (aka Americans), works on a whaling ship, and is likely the first Japanese person to step on American soil.

Can you imagine the kind of prejudice you would have to face from people who had never seen anyone who looked like you? Can you imagine the fear you would experience being rescued by blue-eyed barbarians whom you had been told also eat people?

Manjiro's story is fascinating and strange. This book covers many years, as it has to in order to give you a sense of how remarkable his life was. It also includes beautiful black and white drawings by Manjiro himself of many of the things he saw and did.

If you have any interest in history, in true stories, in adventures on the high seas, or in different cultures, you will enjoy this book.

Review: Moon Over Manifest (2011 Newbery Winner)

Moon Over Manifest is the story of a girl sent to live in the town of Manifest during the Great Depression. As she searches for evidence of her father who lived there as a boy, she discovers the story of a town full of immigrants as they struggled to work together and survive during World War I.

I wasn't pulled into the story immediately, but I think it had much more to do with my mood than the book itself. Because once I got into the book, I was hooked. The characters are real people, the fictional town is a real place, and this story is a true story--as all good stories are, whether fact or fiction. It heartily deserves the Newbery Medal.

I found it interesting that two of last year's best books for young readers (this one and Turtle in Paradise) are set during the Great Depression. We are not experiencing times nearly as hard as that, but maybe in our hard times it is good to remember that people have been through worse and still survived and thrived.


Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool is the winner of this year's Newbery Award.

Review: A Long Walk to Water

After the Newbery Award winning A Single Shard, Linda Sue Park has been one of my favorite YA authors.

A Long Walk to Water was a Newbery Honor book for 2011. It is based on the real life of Salva Dut, a Lost Boy of Sudan who was driven away from his home by civil war in 1985 and spent more than a decade walking across Africa and in refugee camps before he found a home in America. Not content to rest on his eventual good fortunes, Salva now spends his time on a project to help the people of Southern Sudan have clean drinking water. Check out his foundation: Water for Sudan.

Salva's story is woven with the story of a young girl living in Southern Sudan who must walk half a day for one trip to and from a pond to bring back water for her family. Water that is dirty and often makes them sick. This helps the reader to understand the importance of Salva's work to help his country and its people.

A Long Walk to Water is a short, simple, and moving tale that for just a moment helps you to appreciate what you have. Simple things like being able to turn on the tap and have an abundance of clean water.

Review: The Silver Chair

I finished reading The Silver Chair aloud to my daughter today. I miss the Pevensie kids, but it is full of adventure, magical beasts, evil witches, and journeys through strange lands.

As I read it, I imagined how the film version might play out. I wasn't sure how many of the books of The Chronicles of Narnia would be turned into movies, but at the end of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there is both a hint that Eustace might be back to Narnia and a reference to Jill Pole (the girl who joins him on his journey to Narnia in The Silver Chair), so I'm fairly confident that the movie will be coming out, likely at the end of this year.

Review: Turtle in Paradise

"Everyone thinks children are sweet as Necco Wafers, but I've lived long enough to know the truth: kids are rotten. The only difference between grown-ups and kids is that grown-ups go to jail for murder. Kids get away with it."

And so begins the story of Turtle, a girl sent to live with her aunt in Key West during the Great Depression.

I picked this book because it received a Newbery Honor this year. I haven't read the winner yet, but I think Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm easily deserved the prize as well. The characters are funny and believable (some of them based on real people who lived in Key West in the 1930s), the story is charming and heartbreaking and beautiful, the narrator is real and tough, and the ending is touching without being too sappy.

This book was so good I read it in one day--which didn't used to mean much, but with an active toddler and a house to take care of, that is a lot more significant these days. Let's just say that my house is maybe not as clean as it could be, but I read an excellent book today. I recommend it to anyone.

Reread: Catherine, Called Birdy

Despite my goal to start reading all the heavy classics that I have on my TBR shelf, I needed something lighter the past few days. So I reread Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman.

My sister read it a few months ago and said that she thought it ended in a strange place because you really don't know what's going to happen with our heroine. I hadn't read it in years so couldn't remember it well enough to comment at the time.

I can definitely see what she means. Catherine's fate is uncertain at the end of the book. But the book ends at the close of her childhood and just before a new chapter in her life begins. So although I'm left wondering what happened to Catherine, I feel that what happens next would be another book entirely. And yet I don't think Cushman would write that book because the next book would be Catherine stepping into adulthood and wouldn't fit into the YA genre anymore.

The appeal of this book is a spunky, independent girl in a world where most women were neither of those things. And we'd all like to think we could be the same in her situation, but I don't believe that any of us can really know what we would have been like in a different time and place, if we had been raised in a completely different world. It makes me grateful for being born when I was, and especially grateful that one of my regular household chores if not catching and squishing the fleas in my bed.

Review: Messenger

I just finished reading Messenger by Lois Lowry. In this last book, the characters from The Giver and Gathering Blue come together for a conclusion to the series. Messenger had a more complete ending than the other two books, which is what I was looking for. But my initial reaction was not wanting to like the ending. It's a good ending, but it's a sad one.

As an undergrad, I took a literature class that focused on landscape. In Messenger, the landscape not only plays an important role in the story, it is a character itself. It was an interesting look at the idea that how we live effects where we live.

If you've read either of the first two books, you should certainly read this last book. But like the first two, Messenger can stand on its own as well.

Review: Gathering Blue

As I began reading Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry, I realized that I had read the book before. When I read it the first time, I don't remember realizing that it was a companion book to The Giver. Probably because nothing about The Giver is ever mentioned in Gathering Blue. I assume they tie together in the third book, Messenger, which is sitting on my shelf waiting for me to read.

Knowing the connection between the two books, I got more out of Gathering Blue this time because I was conscious of the differences and similarities between the two civilizations portrayed. The differences are obvious to anyone who's read them. Shielded from pain and hardship in The Giver, everything is pain and hardship in Gathering Blue.

The similarity that I was most struck by is the intense need to remember the past. Even though in one book, the people remain in ignorance of their past and in the other they gather yearly to hear their past sung, the need to preserve it is equally important in both. And the person who holds the memory of their past is the most honored, but also in many ways the most unfortunate member of their society.

There is also a lot of secrecy in both books. The people are all being told, or not told, many things in order to keep them in line. Whether through fear or ignorance, the results are the same: a group of followers who do not question.

I'm looking forward to making more connections, and maybe encountering an ending, in Messenger.

Review: The Giver

In honor of Banned Books Week, I reread The Giver by Lois Lowry. The first time I read it, I felt like I knew what the ending meant. Now I can see a few different interpretations--though that still means I'll choose the interpretation that I like. With the book fresh in my mind though, I am going to go check out its companion books Gathering Blue and Messenger.

Besides being an enjoyable and interesting read without being too laborious (that's what I love about quality YA fiction), it was good for me to read this book at this time in my life. Lately my toddler has been getting hurt or sick every time I turn around. It's stressful and sometimes I want to just put her in a bubble (or maybe wrap her in bubble wrap), but this book shows the extreme end of never having any pain or troubles. We need pain and suffering to know joy and love. I always knew it, but it's a good reminder right now.

Prince Caspian

I just finished reading the fourth book in the Chronicles of Narnia aloud to my daughter. I love the movies versions of both The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. Though when I've recently read those two books, I've noticed how many differences there are between the books and the movies. But in this case, the differences aren't important because I think the movies capture the spirit and imagination and magic of the books.

I'm excited that we finished Prince Caspian because I know that we'll be able to get through Voyage of the Dawn Treader before the movie comes out this December. Which I'm excited about for more than just the fact that Ben Barnes, who plays Caspian, has a beard in the movie--but that helps.

Review: Gregor the Overlander

"Courage only counts when you can count."

Since I read the Hunger Games series, I decided to try out Suzanne Collins's first book: Gregor the Overlander. I found it interesting and entertaining enough, even though I am by no means its intended audience. I'm not about to run out and read the second book in the five book series, but I may pick it up another time when I want something entertaining and easy to read.

Like the Hunger Games series, this series is pretty scary and violent for a YA book. In some ways Gregor the Overlander was even scarier to me, probably because of my fear of spiders of any size, let alone enormous ones. I was more freaked out than any ten year old when the huge spiders chased Harry Potter and I spent a couple of years dreading the enormous spider from the Lord of the Rings (because I anticipated it in the second movie, but it didn't arrive until the third one).

One moment in this book seemed to echo one of my favorite YA books, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. Compare the two quotes:

“Despair settled like a stone in the pit of Meg’s stomach. She had been so certain that the moment she found her father everything would be alright. Everything would be settled. All the problems would be taken out of her hands. She would no longer be responsible for anything.” - A Wrinkle in Time

"This was the scariest part of all. Gregor had thought he would get a parent back when he found his dad. Then he could stop having to make hard decisions. He could just be a kid." - Gregor the Overlander

Both Meg and Gregor learn a hard lesson early on: your parents can't fix everything, and eventually you have to start making hard decisions for yourself whether your parent is there or not.

Thoughts: Mockingjay

*No spoilers--I wouldn't even call this a review of the book.

Last night I finished reading Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. I am very proud of myself for not neglecting my child or going to bed at a ridiculous time to finish reading it.

I have tons of things to say about the book to someone who's read it, but I don't want to ruin anything for someone who hasn't. So I'll just say I liked it, and I liked the ending. There was the plot twists throughout like the first two books, but this one had closure (thank goodness, being the last book in the series, but that's not always a guarantee).

As I was reading it I was thinking about Suzanne Collins and the kind of pressure she faced as she wrote the book. The Hunger Games series had become so popular that there were millions of fans with their own ideas and expectations for the book. The characters had truly taken on a life of their own.

I didn't read The Hunger Games or Catching Fire until this year, but I still wish I could have read them both again just before reading Mockingjay. It was honestly hard for me to keep track of some of the characters simply because there already were so many and many more are added. I'm sure someone who was more obsessed with the story would have no problem keeping track of them--I don't think it's the fault of the writer or the editors. Just my tired mom-brain that needs help these days. Maybe I just should have kept a character list. At any rate, I will definitely read the three of them back to back at some time--probably before the movie comes out.

Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast

I picked up another comfort read--Beauty by Robin McKinley.

Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairy tale, and this is one of my favorite retellings, although I like Robin McKinley's Rose Daughter even better. (Beauty is for a younger audience, Rose Daughter is for adults.) Beauty is a simple, beautiful, and surprising take on the classic story.

Disney's Beauty and the Beast is my favorite Disney movie. It always has been, but it has a special place in my life since it's my husband and my movie. We don't have a song, we have a movie. We had a our first kiss while watching Beauty and the Beast. And yes, it was during the cheesy, romantic Beast changing into handsome prince part.

Comfort Reads

When my real life is turned upside down, I reach for familiar books with happy endings. Nothing too complex or deep, nothing too dark or sad. Just a good story that I know will end well because it ended well the last dozen or so times I read it.

Today that was The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare (Newbery Winning author, but not for this book). Looking at the limited books I have on my shelf in this transition period of life, I think I'll be reaching for Beauty by Robin McKinley next.


What are your comfort reads?

Review: A Single Shard

"I am going to--to Songdo," Tree-ear said at last, as if testing the words. He looked at his companion pleadingly. "It seems too far away, to say it."

"No, my friend," Crane-man said. "It is only as far as the next village. A day's walk, on your young legs."

Tree-ear frowned, mystified. But before he could speak, Crane-man continued. "Your mind knows that you are going to Songdo. But you must not tell your body. It must think one hill, one valley, one day at a time. In that way, your spirit will not grow weary before you have even begun to walk."


I reread A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park because I remembered how much I had enjoyed it while thinking back on all the Newbery Award winning books I have read. It is still one of my favorites--simple, beautifully told, interesting history, moving story. You won't regret reading it once or twice either.

Review: A Fistful of Sky

I picked up this book because the title sounded cool and because the author, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, lives in Oregon, thus fulfilling one of my goals to read more local authors. But I'm sorry to say that I was disappointed in it.

First of all, it was weird. It has a fantasy element to it, so that should be expected. But it was in that odd in between stage where the world is almost normal, but not quite.

My main complaint as I read is that the main character was very juvenile. In some reviews I read, I think this book is supposed to be for a YA audience, but it wasn't shelved that way at my library. Plus, there are so many YA books that crossover well for an adult audience. This was not one of them.

But what I liked the least was the ending. It could have and should have ended a couple of pages earlier. The main character's final choice just didn't make sense with all of her thoughts and actions leading up to it. And it was weird. And I thought it was stupid.

So...I really wanted to like this book, but really, really didn't. The author has gotten such great reviews for her books that I wanted to like this one enough to try another of hers, but I was so disappointed in the ending, that I don't think I'll ever pick up another book by her.