Reading Level: Young Adult

Love in English

Sixteen-year-old Ana is a poet and a lover of language. Except since she moved to New Jersey from Argentina, she can barely find the words to express how she feels. 

At first, Ana just wants to return home. Then she meets Harrison, a very cute, very American boy in her math class, and discovers the universal language of racing hearts. But when she begins to spend time with Neo, the Greek Cypriot boy from ESL, Ana wonders how figuring out what her heart wants can be even more confusing than the grammar they’re both trying to master. After all, the rules of English may be confounding, but there are no rules when it comes to love. 

Told from Ana’s perspective, Love in English shows Ana’s struggle with understanding both the English language and American culture. To convey Ana’s language difficulties, Ana’s family’s conversations are peppered with Spanish words. In addition, when others speak to Ana in English, she misses many of the words which are written as “####### ########.” Ana also struggles with words, such as “close,” that have two meanings and are pronounced differently. Throw in American idioms like “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush” and “a stich in time saves nine” and readers begin to understand and empathize with how hard it is to learn English.  

It’s not just English that Ana struggles to understand. Ana meets Harrison and Neo at school. When Ana meets Harrison, she thinks, “There’s so much I wish I could ask him about. . . but I can’t catch any of the words needed to form those questions. They swim in my brain, some visible, some shapeless, but none want to coalesce into sentences. It’s so frustrating. It’s like someone stole all my words.” Ana struggles to understand the language of love, which often leads to misunderstandings.  

Much of the plot revolves around Ana’s inner dialogue, which makes Ana feel like a new friend that you want to sit down and share coffee and a secret with. Ana is extremely likable and deals with many of the same struggles as today’s teens. However, readers who love action-packed stories full of adventure will find Love in English difficult to read. For those who love looking into a character’s heart and soul, Love in English is the perfect book. Many readers will relate to Ana, who is trying to find a place where she belongs in life and in America. Through it all, Ana learns that “The most important words are the ones we’re brave enough to share.” 

Sexual Content  

  • While leaving the classroom, Ana bumps into Harrison. She thinks, “For a second, I want to grab his hand and hold it. Or pull him toward me, and we will have our first kiss here in our math classroom.”  
  • One of Ana’s new friends, Altagracia says, “You like boys? Girls? Both? I like girls myself.” Later, Altagracia tells Ana that “she went on a date with another girl and they kiss[ed].” 
  • In the cafeteria, a girl says she can’t keep lipstick on for more than twenty minutes. Her friend replies, “You should probably stop kissing so many people then.” 
  • Ana goes to a night club to watch Harrison’s band play. Ana sees Harrison dancing with Jessica, a girl from school. Jessica “pushes onto the tiptoes of her high-tops. The lean in is slow, so slow. . . Her lips land on his. He stands there. . . She gets off her tippy toes and runs her thumb gently over his lips.”  
  • After seeing Jessica kiss Harrison, Ana leaves but has no way to get home so she calls Neo. Instead of going home, Ana goes to Neo’s house and they watch a movie. Ana looks “up at Neo. He’s so close, a few inches away. He looks at me steadily. . . His lips look perfect, the dimple in his chin a little shadowed where he missed a spot shaving. . . “ Ana’s phone rings and she’s left to wonder if she wanted Neo to kiss her. 
  • Ana goes to Harrison’s house and he asks Ana permission to kiss her. Ana is “looking at Harrison, and I know I want to kiss him. Instead of words, I use my lips. His lips are soft, and wonderful, but he doesn’t move them. I am self-conscious. Am I supposed to do something more? I kiss him again. He kisses too, then pulls away.” 
  • Neo takes Ana to a poetry slam and then the Empire State Building. While at the top, he “leans in. When his lips touch mine, the moment shivers through me, his lips, warm and perfect, part mine. His hand is on the small of my back, and he pulls me in, and I can’t breathe.” The kiss is described over a paragraph. 

Violence  

  • Several times, a boy from school makes snarky remarks about Neo being an immigrant. One day, Ana gets to school and sees Neo and the boy fighting. “One has the other in a headlock. . . It’s Neo in the headlock, swinging his arms, connecting with a thud on the other boy’s lower back. He pulls Neo tighter.” Neo has blood on his face when teachers break up the fight. 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • While at a night club Ana sees some girls from school and one of the girls is “flirty drunk.” 

Language  

  • Ana overhears profanity in the hallways at school. Ana writes in her journal, “Fuckface. A face that likes to do sex? Doosh noze? Shit biscuit? Duck butter? Bananas. Like ‘crazy’?” 
  • Profanity is used rarely. Profanity includes damn, fuck, and shit. 
  • Oh my God is used as an exclamation.  

Supernatural 

  • None 

Spiritual Content  

  • None 

Prince of Song & Sea

Before Prince Eric’s mother, the Queen of Vellona, went missing two years ago, she reminded him of the deadly curse that plagued his entire life. The curse? If he were to kiss someone other than his true love, he would die. With a neighboring kingdom looking for any excuse to invade their shores, plus rumors of ghost pirates lurking the seas, Eric is desperate for any information that may help him break his enchantment and bring stability to Vellona. The answers he has been searching for come to him in the form of a letter that reveals Eric must find his true love—the one with a voice pure of heart—or kill the sea witch responsible for cursing him in the first place.

Now, Eric sets off on a quest to find the Isle of Serein, the witch’s legendary home. But after he is rescued by a mysterious young woman with a mesmerizing singing voice, Eric’s heart becomes torn. Does he enter a battle he is almost certain he cannot win, or does he chase a love that might not even exist? Then, when a shipwrecked young woman with flaming red hair and a smile that could calm the seven seas enters his life, Eric discovers true love isn’t something that can be decided by magic. 

Prince of Song & Sea retells the story of The Little Mermaid from Prince Eric’s point of view. However, most of the story focuses on Eric’s backstory, allowing Eric’s personality to become fully formed. Eric hasn’t been able to have normal relationships because of the witch’s curse. However, he does have two close friends who follow him in his quest to find the sea witch. His two friends add humor and depth to the story. Although Eric wants to break the sea witch’s curse, his reasons aren’t purely selfish. When he discovers that the sea witch wants to control Vellona, Eric puts the needs of his country above his own. Ultimately, Eric’s quest allows his bravery and compassion to shine.  

Anyone who loves The Little Mermaid will find Prince of Song & Sea a fun read. While it stays true to the Disney version of the story, focusing on Eric’s life adds an interesting perspective that allows readers to understand why Ariel was willing to risk her life for Eric’s love. Ariel is not portrayed as a love-sick teenager but as a curious, brave, and selfless woman. While some readers may miss Skuttle and Sabastian in this version of the story, Ariel is still a loveable character. 

Fans of fairytales will be swept into Prince Eric’s life and enjoy seeing what the world looks like from his point of view. While Prince of Song & Sea is an enjoyable read, it mirrors The Little Mermaid, which makes the story less suspenseful. Despite this, readers who love fairytales and mermaids will find Prince of Song & Sea entertaining. 

Sexual Content  

  • Eric thinks about kissing Ariel. Eric thinks, “She was wild and beautiful, hair damp with the sea. As they stared at each other, her tongue wet her lips, and Eric couldn’t help wondering what they would feel like against his own. They both leaned closer, her eyes fluttering shut. Eric reached for her, and – the boat tipped.” 
  • One of the female pirates flirts with another girl, and later, the two marry each other. 

Violence  

  • Pirates attack the ship Eric, and his friends are sailing. “A footstep cracked behind Eric. He twisted away, the blade of a short sword piercing the railing where he had been. . . Eric rammed his hilt into [the pirates’] temples.” 
  • Eric’s adviser, Grimsby, fights a pirate named Sauer. “Grimsby plunged his hand into his coat. A shot rang out. Sauer fell backward, blood splattering across the rail. They steadied themselves, blood dripping down their badly grazed cheek, and covered their faces with a hand.” Sauer is injured but doesn’t die. 
  • The pirates tie up the crew. “A purple welt marred Vanni’s cheek, and Gabriella’s bottom lip was busted. Not a single person had died, but neither were they unharmed.” The pirate battle is described over five pages. 
  • After the pirates capture Eric and his crew, they encounter sirens, which can make people see what they most desire. One of Eric’s friends, Gabriella, “lunged toward the edge of the ship…A wide, glassy grief lit her eyes, and she choked back a sob.” 
  • A supernatural storm batters the ship. “Another wave washed over the ship, rocking it to its side, and half the crew vanished in a blink.” The ship breaks up during the storm, and everyone climbs into a rowboat. Eric hears his dog, Max, and climbs back onto the ship. “His foot plunged through the wood, and he tossed Max as hard as he could. The dog vanished over the side of the ship. . . Pain shot through his ankle, and his heart stopped with each clunk of the loose barrels rolling across the fiery deck. . . And the world exploded.” Eric reawakens on the beach. 
  • The crew is attacked by “a malformed tentacle made up of eels. Hundreds of them were knotted together in one monstrous mass, the tangles so tight that blood rained. . . The tentacle curled over the ship, snapping rope and ripping away part of the sails, and gripped two of the masts tight.”  
  • The eels are able to generate electricity. “A terrible crack split the air. . . suddenly the eels along the tentacle bared their teeth. Eric lunged at it, butting through one of the small eels.” When Eric kills the eels’ leaders, “they untangled themselves from the knot of eels, and the electricity fizzled out.” No person is seriously injured. The scene is described over five pages. 
  • Ursula, the sea witch, disguises herself as Vanessa and compels Eric to marry her. But before the wedding, seagulls attack. “The flock swooped again, dropping half-eaten fish and seaweed on the deck. Vanessa shrieked, and the guests scattered. . . the world became a swirl of white feathers. . . A pair of sea lions barreled through the crowd, sliding across the deck and into Vanessa.”  
  • Ursula changes into her true form, grabs Ariel, and jumps into the sea. Eric follows on a dinghy. Ursula “had pinned Ariel against a rock, jabbing the trident at Ariel’s neck. . .[Eric] hauled his arm back before launching the harpoon. It sliced through Ursula’s arm, drawing a hazy cloud of blue blood.” Ariel escapes. 
  • Ursula’s eels grab Eric and “pulled him deeper and deeper, and salt burned in Eric’s eyes. He struggled against his hold, but teeth nipped at his hands every time he tried to break free.” A fish rams into the eels, and Eric gets free. 
  • Ursula causes a whirlpool that “pulled Eric in, sucking him beneath the waves and the holey hull of an old ship passed over him.” Eric pulls himself onto the ship. Before Ursula can kill Ariel, “Eric screamed, muscles aching at the grip it took to keep the ship steady. . . the bowsprit cut through her stomach, impaling her, and the pale waters ran sapphire blue with her blood.” Ursula dies. The battle is described over 14 pages.  

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • None 

Language  

  • When a storm arrives, a crew member asks, “Which one of you pissed off Triton?” 

Supernatural 

  • Eric’s mother “saw a body floating in the surf. It was a child, small and chilled to the bone. . .” Eric’s mother saved the child, but a witch claimed that the child was hers. When Eric’s mother refused to hand the child over, the witch cursed her unborn child. The witch said, “If that thing in your belly ever kisses someone without a voice as pure as their spotless soul, someone who isn’t its true love, then it will die, and I will drag its soul to the bottom of the sea.”  
  • Before going on a voyage, Eric’s friend Gabriella “tipped a full bottle of wine into the sea before they left the bay as tribute to King Triton of the Sea, and there had been clear skies since.” 
  • Eric hears rumors of a Blood Tide and a ghost ship. “Once you acknowledge the ghosts are there, they ensnare you and force you to make a deal with them. Used to be they just offered. Now you have no choice.” The ghosts use their voice to control people.  
  • The legend behind the Blood Tide and the witch is explained. People would “make a deal with something in the depths so they could live their wildest dreams. The costs, though, were always souls.” 
  • There is a debate about whether ghosts are people who are dead. The pirates capture a ghost, who is “as translucent as a spiderweb in the wrong light.”
  • The witch captures souls, and “they require no maintenance other than a space to store them.” The witch turned Eric’s mother, Eleanora, into a ghost. “A ribbon of seagrass burrowed into her chest. Her form spun and shrunk, bones cracking and mouth open in a silent scream. She condensed. . . all that was left in her place was a ragged brown blade of grass with two branches like flailing arms. It shimmered with trapped magic.” 
  • The witch knows how to use magic in various ways, including how to compel people. At one point, the witch changes into a beautiful woman who uses her voice to control Eric. In addition, “the witch can transform people into whatever they want.” 
  • Nora discovers that one of her parents was from the mer world. Because of this, Nora transforms into a mermaid when she goes into the ocean. A merman explains, “You should’ve been taught how to control the transformation so that it became as natural as breathing. Most children who are part human and part merfolk transform every time they leave or enter the sea, but it can very much be controlled.” 

Spiritual Content  

  • None 

How to Speak Cat: A Guide to Decoding Cat Language

We know cats are beautiful, secretive, and independent … but even the most loyal cat owners are often baffled by their own pet’s behavior. With veterinarian expert Dr. Gary Weitzman as guide, this fun book helps kids understand what cats are trying to communicate by their body language and behavior. So, if you’ve ever wondered what Fluffy means when she’s purring or moving her tail emphatically from left to right—this book is for you! It’s full of insights, expert advice, and real-life cat scenarios. It also showcases more than 30 poses, so you’ll soon learn what each meow and flick of the tail means! 

Every cat lover should read How to Speak Cat. Each page is packed full of information and illustrations that make learning about cats a delight. Even though the book covers a vast array of cat topics, the text is broken down into smaller parts and includes headlines, subheadings, lists, infographs, and “Dr. Gary’s Vet Tips.” Each two page spread features cats, colorful quotes, and bite-sized sections that are easy to read. How to Speak Cat is educational and engaging. Each page feels like you’ve opened a treasure chest full of sparkling knowledge, unexpected facts, and frame-worthy cat portraits.  

Anything you’ve ever wondered about cats can be learned in How to Speak Cat. However, the facts are so interesting and the pictures so adorable that the book will appeal to any animal lover. And if you have a pet cat, then How to Speak Cat is a must read because it will help you keep your beloved pet healthy and safe. And if you haven’t had enough cute cats after reading How to Speak Cat, the book includes a website that allows you to view cats in action. If you’re ready to take a deep dive into the lives of cats, then snuggle up with your favorite feline and read How to Speak Cat.  

Sexual Content  

  • None 

Violence  

  • Dr. Gary informs readers on how to keep their cats healthy and safe. For example, “We need to worry about cats and cars. Besides the risk of being run over, cats love sleeping in or underneath parked automobiles. . . Many are horribly injured when their unsuspecting owners leave for work. The hiding cats either get cut by turning fan belts or thrown out of the wheel wells at high speed.”  
  • Cats’ hunting habits are described, and one full-page picture shows a cat with a dead mouse in its mouth. Cats “bring their trophy home to show their family and eat it later. Even mountain lions drag their prey into the woods. . .nibble it little by little. . . house cats return with their catch.”  
  • Hunting can be risky for cats. “A captured bird could poke her in the eye with its beak. A rat could bite her ears or face.” 
  • A cat’s whiskers help her hunt. “If all goes well, the cat will attack, deliver a killing bite, and savor his catch. . . a cat could end up with a live rat dangling from his mouth. Then the rat could turn on the cat and injure him badly.” 
  • Coyotes pose a threat to cats. “Coyotes regularly feast on cats—both feral and pets. . . [In Tampa, Florida] two coyotes grabbed hold of a pet cat—one grabbed her by the neck and the other by the tail. They were shaking her violently, when Jack the pitbull rushed into the fray. Jack scared off the coyotes and freed the cat, who suffered a broken tooth and swelling in the brain. But she survived. . .” 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • When cats have lasting anxiety, “Prozac and other anti-anxiety drugs developed for humans also help cats.”

Language  

  • None 

Supernatural 

  • None 

Spiritual Content  

  • In Ancient Persia “the Egyptians worshipped the goddess Bastet, who is thought to take the form of a cat.” 
  • Pope Innocent VIII proclaims that “cats are witches in disguise. As a result, all over Europe, cats are tortured and killed on sight.” 

Deep Water

Six hours. One marathon swim.

That’s all Tully Birch needs to get her life straightened out. With the help of her best friend, Arch, Tully braves the waters of Lake Tahoe to break the record for the youngest person ever to complete the famous “Godfather swim.” She wants to achieve something no one in the world has done, because if she does, maybe, just maybe, her mom will come back.

The swim starts off well—heart steady, body loose, Arch in charge of snacks as needed. But for Tully, all that time alone with her thoughts allows memories to surface. And in the silence of deep waters, sadness can sink you. When the swim turns dangerous, Tully fights for her survival. Does she keep going and risk her own safety and Arch’s? Or does she quit to save them both, even if it means giving up hope that her mother will return? 

Tully is a likable protagonist who struggles with her mom’s disappearance. She decides to make the swim to prove to her mom that “I am HERE, and I am ALIVE, and I’m worth showing up for.” Tully thinks her mother abandoned her because she didn’t love her. Since the story is written from Tully’s perspective, the reader gets an in-depth view of Tully’s emotions and thought process, which allows readers to empathize with Tully’s situation.  

Tully’s friend, Arch, reluctantly agrees to help Tully secretly swim the “Godfather swim.” He helps Tully navigate, tells her stories, and tries to keep Tully from overthinking. However, his presence also increases the story’s tension by highlighting the dangers that Tully faces in the water. In addition, Arch is left to intercept text messages from both of their parents. While Arch doesn’t reveal Tully’s whereabouts, his parents use his phone’s GPS to locate them. Tully’s dad and the Coast Guard use this information to find the two teens. When they arrive, Arch’s relief is understandable.  

Deep Water compassionately explores the difficulties of living with a parent with a mental illness. Knowing that her mother has a mental illness doesn’t lessen Tully’s hurt and confusion when her mother disappears, especially because her family “has things we are not supposed to talk about that sit in the corner of the room like a pile of dirty clothes which has been there so long you stop seeing it.” The story’s conclusion doesn’t give a solution to Tully’s inner turmoil; however, the ending hints that Tully will learn how to navigate her emotions with the help of her father, her friend, and a counselor.  

Tully’s story comes to life in verse, which keeps the story moving at a fast pace and enhances Tully’s emotions. Occasionally, the text is placed to create a visual element that enhances the story’s emotion. For example, when a lightning storm threatens Tully, the text is written to look like a lightning bolt. Deep Water uses a unique premise to explore family dynamics and mental illness. In the end, Tully realizes that, “Maybe perfection isn’t possible without sacrifice. But I don’t want to be perfect if it means ending up alone.”  

Sexual Content  

  • None 

Violence  

  • When Brent is mean to Tully’s friend, she “gave Brent a gentle shove, which just so happened to cause him to trip, because Brent’s ego is so big it makes him lose his balance.” Tully was suspended for two days. 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • Tully’s mother took medication for a mental illness. However, the mental illness and medication aren’t named. 

Language  

  • Tully thinks that if her mother died, people would say things like: “She’s at peace now.” Tully thinks words like this are “a load of crap.”

Supernatural 

  • None

Spiritual Content  

  • When Tully picks a date to swim her marathon, she “prayed to the weather gods to bless our journey.” 

Cleopatra Rules: The Amazing Life of the Original Teen Queen

Most of what we’ve known about Cleopatra—and what crept into art, film, and literature—came from her enemies, the Romans. Ascending to the throne at young age of 17, Cleopatra proved to be a brilliant negotiator who forged alliances that kept her in power and in control of her kingdom.   

Readers will be surprised to learn that Cleopatra was more of a bookworm than a seductress. The text is divided into small sections, with headlines announcing each topic. In addition, some sections answer common questions such as, “Was she beautiful?” To answer the question, the author refers to ancient documents. According to Plutarch, the ancient biographer, “The charm of her presence was irresistible, and there was an attraction. . . with a peculiar force of character. . . [that] laid all who associated with her under its spell.” 

Even though Cleopatra Rules is written at a high reading level, readers can use context clues to understand most words. Even reluctant readers will be able to enjoy the book because it features many sidebars and color illustrations: maps, photos of ancient artifacts, and artwork from many historical periods. The book is written in a humorous tone that can appear flippant. For example, the text explains the mummification process: “The organs, stuffed into special jars, stayed near the body. They pulled the brains out through the nose. After all, who needed brains?” 

Since Cleopatra’s life was entwined with both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, readers will also learn more about Rome and the period’s politics. Anyone who loves history or is curious about Cleopatra will fully enjoy Cleopatra Rules because it presents history in an easy-to-read format that is engaging and educational. However, readers need to beware: Cleopatra Rules will make you want to dig deeper into ancient Egypt’s and Rome’s history because the political leaders are fascinating.  

Sexual Content  

  • In ancient Egypt, it wasn’t unusual for siblings to marry each other. Cleopatra’s father “probably expected the two to marry when the boy got older. And the eww factor gets even worse. After all, Cleopatra’s mother was likely also her aunt, her father’s sister.”  
  • The ancient Egyptian gods were often married to their siblings, which is why pharaohs often married each sibling. “All pharaohs were the human embodiment of Horus, sharing his divinity. When pharaohs died, they became fully divine. . .” 
  • The Romans believed Cleopatra was a “harlot.” However, she only had two romantic relationships.   

Violence  

  • When Cleopatra and her father went to Rome, Cleopatra’s sister Berenice claimed the throne. “It was a dumb move because as soon as Daddy regained control of the throne, Berenice parted with more than her crown. She parted with her life, too. . . she was executed for treason.” 
  • To gain Caesar’s favor, Cleopatra’s brother “had Pompey the Great—one of the most powerful leaders in Rome—beheaded on Egyptian soil.” When Caesar arrived in Egypt, “the boy king’s advisers shoved Pompey’s pickled head into his face.”  
  • Egypt attacked Caesar because he refused to leave Egypt. To escape, Caesar “jumped into the choppy waters and swam to a boat farther out to sea . . . Arrows and spears flew, nearly blotting out the bright Egyptian sun.” Caesar escaped, but Cleopatra’s brother drowned, and her sister Arsinoe was arrested. 
  • When Caesar became too powerful, “Twenty-six senators knifed Caesar to death at a senate meeting.”  
  • Mark Antony received a note saying Cleopatra was dead. “Antony then took the sword and stabbed himself in the belly,” causing “bleeding and gasping in pain.” When he discovered the note was false, he asked his servants to take him to Cleopatra.  
  • When Octavian captured Cleopatra, she “grabbed a dagger hidden in her dress and tried to stab herself, but Octavian’s man was too quick. She’d been captured.” 
  • After Antony died, Cleopatra “finished her ritual prayers at Antony’s tomb.” Then, she killed herself by letting a snake bite her. However, scholars debate whether this is true or if Cleopatra took poison. 
  • After Cleopatra died, her son was a threat, so Octavian “had him hunted down and murdered.” 
  • Cleopatra’s only grandson, Ptolemy of Mauretania, was murdered because he “wore a purple cloak that was prettier than” the Roman Emperor Caligula’s cloak. 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • When Cleopatra and Mark Antony were together, they threw parties where “tasty wine flowed.” 
  • Mark Antony drank heavily.  
  • The Romans celebrated a war victory with “food and wine. Party time!” The celebrations could last for days. The partying even had a religious vibe because the conquering hero was likened to a god.

Language  

  • By killing a Roman general, Cleopatra’s brother made a “boneheaded move.”

Supernatural 

  • To Egyptians, jewelry was “a form of fancy magic. . .They figured the more jewelry you put on, the safer you were from bad things happening. . . Almost every piece of jewelry had some sort of symbolic meaning or magical power.” 

Spiritual Content  

  • The ancient Romans worshiped many gods, including Montu, the Egyptian god of war. “The Buchis bull was believed to be the incarnation of the war god, Montu. When a Buchis bull died, it was mummified and placed in a special tomb. . . “ Cleopatra celebrated in a ceremony for the Buchis bull. 
  • The Buchis bull was “papered” because Egyptians believed it “helped cure the sick and delivered oracles.” 
  • When Cleopatra became queen, she “dressed as Venus, lay beneath a canopy of gold cloth, with boys costumed as Cupid stood on either side, fanning her. Beautiful girls posed as minor goddesses, and sea nymphs burned sweet incense to perfume the air around them. . . To the Egyptians, she was Isis, the main goddess of Egypt. And, as in a religious experience, everyone was hushed in awe at the sight of the goddess-queen.” 
  • The Egyptians worshiped “a healer god of perfume—Nefertem.”  

The Golden Scarab of Balihar

Magic made her wish come true. Now she’ll need magic to undo it. 

In a kingdom surrounded by the ever-flowing sands of ancient Persia, sixteen-year-old Zahra dreams of attending the sultan’s lavish events rather than serving at them. Until she crashes headlong into the mysterious prince. Then she just dreams of the prince. Too bad she has no poise, position, or charm to catch his eye. To win his affection would take a miracle. Or magic… 

When Zahra interrupts a love spell meant for the vizier’s daughter, the prince falls for her instead. Zahra gets her wish but incurs the wrath of the vizier, and now he wants her head. Fleeing for her life, Zahra seeks the mythical Golden Scarab of Balihar, desperately hoping the power of the jinni within can shield her from his vengeance. But when she learns the extent of his plan, she’ll have to decide whether to save herself, her prince, or the entire kingdom. 

Readers will be instantly captivated by Zahra, who dreams of becoming a princess. However, when a love spell makes Prince Amir fall in love with her, instead of taking advantage of the situation, Zahra is determined to reverse the spell. Readers will relate to Zahra’s desire “to have something. To experience something. To be a part of something. To belong somewhere.” Despite this, her honesty and integrity won’t allow her to marry the prince unless he genuinely loves her. Zahra’s honesty is admirable and her compassion for others makes her an incredibly likable character who leads readers on an exciting adventure. 

As Zahra flees the kingdom, she acquires a diverse group of friends who help her along the way. Included in the group is the love-stricken Prince Amir who refuses to leave her side, a young servant boy, and an older gentleman who was attacked by thieves and lost everything. Instead of just being stock characters, each person is unique and has some surprising qualities that make them likable. When the group finds the Golden Scarab of Balihar and the jinni, the jinni is full of quirky characteristics that make him unique; the jinni adds an unexpected element of humor to the story. 

Anyone who fell in love with Aladdin as a child will find The Golden Scarab of Balihar enjoyable. After helping save the kingdom, the sultan tells Zahra, “You have also shown yourself to be loyal. More than that—brave, clever, and noble of spirit—worthy of my family, more so than any princess I’ve invited to meet my son. If you so desire, you may wed my son, and a princess you will be as well.” Even though Zahra dreamed about marrying the prince, she realizes that she “didn’t need the life of a princess to be happy.” Zahra’s happy ever after doesn’t include being a princess, but being true to herself. This is an essential message for everyone, and The Golden Scarab of Balihar relays the message with delightful characters and a fun adventure.  

Sexual Content  

  • After Prince Amir saves Zahra from a perilous situation, Amir kisses her. “She lost herself in his firm embrace and in the feel of his lips on hers. She had imagined this more than once . . . For a long moment, she forgot he was under a [love] spell. She seized hold of him and kissed him back. . .” Their kiss is interrupted.  
  • The vizier uses reverses the first love spell and makes a new one that makes Prince Amir fall in love with the vizier’s daughter, Maliha. After they are married and then the marriage is annulled, Maliha sees Hani, the man she truly loves. “She grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him to her. ‘I love you.’ She kissed him softly on the lips.”  

Violence  

  • A young slave, Rafi, picks dates and eats one before giving them to his master. His master “slapped Rafi hard across his face, knocking the date from the boy’s mouth and causing a trickle of blood to drip down his lower lip. The man grabbed Rafi by the ear and hauled him away, thumping him on the head with the other hand.” 
  • Zahra befriends Rafi and a man named Josef. As they leave an oasis, the king’s vizier sends guards to look for her. While in the desert, a “man blew a long, deep note, and then a second guard joined him using a horn of his own.” The notes summon a dust demon. “Zahra watched in horror as the older man was yanked from his feet and lifted high into the air.” The book implies that Josef died. However, he reappears uninjured.  
  • Zahra, Rafi, and Prince Amir enter a magical underground cave. Vines cover a passageway. “As soon as Amir grabbed hold of the first vine, it snapped out and twisted around his arm, pulling him forward. . . his feet slid along the cave floor as he was dragged into the other tendrils. Rafi was likewise caught in their grip.” Zahra tries to pull Rafi free, but the vines also capture her.  
  • As Zahra tries to escape the plants, “The coiling plants pulled her tight. . . Again she could hardly breathe, not from being strangled, but from having her face covered in creepers. . . Her arms were constricted against her chest.” The three companions free themselves. The scene is described over three pages. 
  • A snake guards the Golden Scarab of Balihar. “Zahra lashed out and wrapped her fingers around the snake’s neck. . . The thing hissed at her, and its body pulled up off the dial to coil around her arm. . . She tried to pull it off her arm with her other hand, but it was wrapped too tightly. . . It opened its mouth and hissed sharply as [Amir] got close, so Zahra pressed down on the top of its head with her thumb to close its mouth.” Then the snake transformed into a “piece of jewelry that wrapped around her forearm.” When Zahra touches its head, it regains “its slithery living form.”  
  • The magical cave that holds the Golden Scarab of Balihar has a huge, living eye on one wall. Zahra “balled her hand into a fist, and pressed it directly into the squishy part of the eye. There was a great roar of wind through the cave, the eye’s lids snapped shut with a wet thwack, and the chamber was plunged into darkness.” 
  • When Zahra and her companions leave the cave, they face a giant scorpion. Amir throws a giant fruit at the scorpion, and “it approached again, claws extended, snapping at both him and Rafi. They each dove aside. . .” When the scorpion tries to strike Rafi, Zahra grabs its tail. 
  • The scorpion tries to “shake” Zahra loose. “Amir ran at the scorpion from the side and jumped onto its back, Rafi following his example from the other. . .” They run back into the magical cave, and the scorpion follows. 
  • While in the magical cave, “The monster slashed out with a claw aimed straight at Rafi’s neck. Amir threw his hands up to catch the pincher. He deflected the strike sufficiently to save Rafi.” Amir falls to the ground and the scorpion’s “pincher snapped shut and lopped off Amir’s pinkie finger.” 
  • When the scorpion goes into a passageway full of stalactite, “The scorpion’s wide body brushed against several of the cave protrusions. Crack!—Snap!—Squish!—Snicks!—Splash! Spike after spike slammed up and down and into and through the carapace of the scorpion.” Blood and gore splattered the prince and Zahra. The scorpion attack is described over four pages. 
  • After Amir lost his finger, Nadim, the jinni, was tired of listening to Amir “screaming like a baby crying for its mother.” So, “Nadim held up a hand, manifested a sharp knife, and sliced off his own pinkie finger. Blood sputtered out and started pouring down his hand.” The jinni offers to heal Amir’s finger, but only if Zahra uses a wish. She does not. 
  • The vizier and his men capture Amir, whom they tie up and gag. Then the vizier “flicked a powder into Amir’s face and he couldn’t avoid breathing it in. ‘Forget,’ the guard said.” Zahra, Rafi, and the jinni Nadim are left without food, water, or horses in the desert. 
  • Zahra and her friends find Amir and try to save him. Zahra falls, and the vizier “stepped on her back to hold her in place, his weight pressing her hard into the earth . . . She saw him draw forth a curved dagger. He was going to kill her! She thrashed, trying to escape. . .” The prince comes to her rescue. 
  • Zahra and Amir were able to escape. As they ride off, “Zahra risked a glance back and saw the vizier wave his hands and throw something to the ground. . . The sands formed into columns and then into the shape of men.” The vizier commands the sand soldiers to capture the prince and kill Zahra and her friends. 
  • When escaping the sand soldiers, Zahra and Amir find a group of brigands threatening Rafi. Zahra tricks the brigands into fighting the sand soldiers. “The brigands yelled again and slashed and hacked at the sand warriors, managing to chop off arms and legs and even a couple of heads, but the warriors absorbed sand from beneath them and regrew their bodies. . . The battle was quick; in a short time, three dead brigands lay sprawled in the dirt.” Later, Amir finds a way to dissolve the sand warriors. 
  • When Maliha, the vizier’s daughter, marries Prince Amir, the demon Ghazi demands to be set free. Maliha refuses the request. “The moment she uttered the last syllable of her defiance, [her father] Yaseen gasped, and his eyes bulged. He fell to his knees. His hands came to this throat—he was struggling to breathe. . .” To save her father, Maliha sets Ghazi free. Ghazi tells Maliha, “You and your father will watch as I tear this so-called Palace of Light to pieces around you. . .”  
  • In a multi-chapter battle, Ghazi attacks the city. “The palace shook again, and more sculptures toppled over and shattered. Braziers fell clanging to the floor . . . The palace residents and guests alike screamed and fled in terror.” 
  • Zahra, Amir, and Rafi go to find the sultan. When they reach his chambers, “the doors lay splintered in pieces in the hallway. Two of the king’s guardsmen lay dead at the entrance, and in the sultan’s expansive inner room, more guards were strewn about, some lying motionless and others writhing in pain.”  
  • The demon Ghazi creates a storm. “A twisting funnel descended and whirled toward the city, raging through the outer wall. Stones and humans alike were swept like debris into the air.” 
  • Ghazi punishes Zahra. “Zahra felt something tightening around her throat. She tried to pull it away, but there was nothing there. . . She couldn’t breathe. Her eyes locked with Rafi’s, and she saw his terror. . . Nadim’s leg arched past her, his foot slamming into the ifrit and sending the demon flying through the wall of the sultan’s anteroom and into the chamber of the Eternal Flame.” Zahra is freed. 
  • Amir jumps into the battle. “He lifted a mirror shard and held it up to the Eternal Flame. An intense beam of light reflected off the mirror, and he aimed it directly into the demon’s eyes. . . the sheer brilliance of it overwhelmed him, and he threw up his arms to cover his eyes.”
  • To save the city, Zahra feeds the Golden Scarab of Balihar to a magical serpent. “The smoke around Nadim and Ghazi had turned to an inky black. It twirled and spun and was sucked inward, shrinking. Zahra heard Nadim’s voice call out one more time.” Nadim gave her “a blood-soaked dagger” so they could release Amir from the love spell.

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • After her marriage, Maliha “poured herself a glass of wine.”

Language  

  • None 

Supernatural 

  • The king’s vizier uses a spell to summon an ifrit, a demon. The ifrit “had flame-colored skin covered in tattoos of swirling lines and glyphs. Twin spiral horns protruded from its skull above large, tapered ears.” The ifrit can change his appearance “with ease.”  
  • The vizier makes a love spell out of “a jar of frankincense, one of kohl, and a vial of cobra venom.” The spell also required acid from the darkling beetle. The ifrit tells the vizier, “Simply have your daughter present the flower to the prince, see that he smells it, and when his gaze meets her face, he will fall instantly in love.” This spell is used multiple times.  
  • Zahra goes on a journey looking for the Golden Scarab of Balihar. “It was said the Scarab contained a powerful jinni, and everyone knew a jinni would grant wishes to those who freed them from confinement.”  
  • Zahra and her companions find the Golden Scarab of Balihar. When she pulls the wings, “The Scarab once again burst into motion. It thrummed and flew from her hand, up into the air in the middle of the cave, sparks and flashes of golden light trailing behind it. . . A burst of smoke filled the cavern, swirling and raining down glittering powder. . . Finally the air cleared, revealing a figure standing before them.” 
  • The jinni first appears in human form. Then, “he snapped his fingers and golden smoke swirled around until it completely obscured him. The smoke expanded, and from it his teeth and four arms, each wielding a shining scimitar.”  

Spiritual Content  

  • None

Reawakened #1

When seventeen-year-old Lilliana Young enters the Metropolitan Museum of Art one morning during spring break, the last thing she expects to find is a live Egyptian prince with godlike powers who has been reawakened after a thousand years of mummification.

And she really can’t imagine being chosen to aid him in an epic quest that will lead them across the globe. But fate has taken hold of Lily, and she, along with her sun prince, Amon, must travel to the Valley of the Kings, raise his brothers, and stop an evil, shape-shifting god named Seth from taking over the world. 

Lily is a compelling protagonist who has always been a rule follower and an obedient daughter. This all changes when she meets Amon. At first, Lily is suspicious of Amon and doesn’t understand the strange power he has over her. However, when Lily learns that he is a reawakened prince, her determination to help Amon gives her the strength to make decisions based on her own thoughts and feelings. Readers will admire her determination and willingness to put herself in danger to help Amon. 

Reawakened incorporates Egyptian history and rich world-building. However, at times, the world-building is long-winded and breaks the story’s pace. While much of the information is necessary to understand the book’s events, the information often seems like a boring lecture. Lily’s inner musings also slow down the book’s pacing. At first, Lily is trying to understand her physical attraction to Amon as well as Amon’s powers. However, nothing exciting takes place until after the two travel to Egypt. Readers who enjoy action and adventure may find it difficult to slog through the first part of the story.  

From the start, Amon’s goal is to reawaken his brothers. However, the brothers don’t make an appearance until the story’s end, which increases the story’s action and suspense. In addition, the brothers are so incredibly likable that the reader will wish they could jump into the story and meet them. The three brothers’ strong bond and dedication to each other is heartwarming. The brothers are so interesting that some readers will be disappointed that they weren’t given more time.

Unfortunately, the climax isn’t very dramatic because it’s seen through Lily’s point of view, which gives the reader a limited view of the fight against good and evil. However, the conclusion has several surprises, including Lily’s willingness to sacrifice herself for Amon. Readers who enjoy character-based stories that allow them to understand the inner workings of the protagonist will find Lily a relatable character who grows throughout the story. Instead of ending with a happy ever after, Lily’s and Amon’s story will continue in the next book in the series, Recreated. 

Sexual Content  

  • Amon tells a story about Iris and Osiris, two siblings who were married. Amon says “incest” was common among the gods and pharaohs. 
  • Lily often talks about her attraction to Amon and not all of the passages are included below. For example, while they are dancing, “his hands, splayed on my back, moved inch by tantalizing inch downward until they reached the bare skin at my waist. . . he put his forehead to mine. The side of his mouth tickled my cheek. . . I could be kissing him. But I was too much of a coward to make the first move.” The scene is described over a page.  
  • When Lily and Amon are really close, she thinks: “Any slight movement and we could be kissing. With a twang of alarm, I realized that I wanted to experience his lips pressed against mine, and I wondered if it was something I truly desired for myself or if he was making me want it.” 
  • After Lily is injured, Amon’s “gaze dropped to my mouth, and my breath caught. . . I knew without a doubt that he wanted to kiss me. And Egyptian heaven help me, I wanted him to. But despite the fact that I was vividly imagining the press of his lips against mine. . .” Amon moves away from Lily. Lily tries to get Amon to kiss her several times after this, but he continues to keep his distance. 
  • After Lily and Amon’s bond is permanently sealed, he kisses her. “I’d waited so long for his kiss, and it was so much more, so much better than I had dared imagine. Golden sunshine burst behind my closed eyelids as I became a being entwined with the sun.” 
  • Amon’s brother, Astern, makes many sexual innuendos. For instance, when his body is re-formed, Astern says, “I am also grateful for my fully re-formed front, since I am partial to it.” 

Violence  

  • Since the story revolves around Egyptian gods, much of the violence is documented below under supernatural. Amon tells a story about three siblings—Iris, Osiris, and Seth. Seth tricked Osiris into climbing into a box, and Seth’s servants “sealed the lid with molten lead.” Then, Seth went to find Iris. “He was determined to take possession not only of the throne but of his sister as well.” To escape, Iris “leapt upon a moonbeam and vanished.” 
  • Later, Iris discovers that Osiris’s chest “had been thrown into the Nile. By the time she was able to raise the box, it had been broken into by crocodiles, and her husband’s body had been torn to pieces.” 
  • The god Amun-Ra sent out fellow gods, Seth and Horus, to search for Nebu, a golden stallion that roamed the desert. “Seth had heard the rumor that Horus had very powerful eyes and he worried that Horus would likely be the first to find Nebu, so in an act of desperation, he stole upon Horus while he slept and ripped his eyes from their sockets. . . He left Horus to die.” Horus promised to become the leader that Egypt needed, and Amun-Ra gave him a third eye. “It is said that an amulet made with the Eye of Horus can ward off evil, shielding its bearer from harm.”  
  • While looking for Amon’s canopic jars, Lily and Amon enter an ancient passageway leading to a tomb. “Rocks and debris shifted, rising into the air. . .  Amon continued to murmur in ancient Egyptian and the rubble rose higher, shooting past us in a cloud of stinging dust. Pebbles came next, firing through the air like bullets.” Amon’s spell keeps them safe, but the entrance is sealed. 
  • Seth asked three kings to sacrifice their children. When the kings refused, Seth took over a priest named Runihura’s body. “Runihura thrust his fingers into his eyes and yanked the bloody orbs from their sockets. . . he squeezed each eyeball, then opened his hands, a puff of light rising from each palm. . . the light pierced [the son’s] foreheads, and the boys cried out as dark magic lifted them into the air and threw them across the temple.”  
  • The priest warns the kings of doom. “The dying priest gathered his remaining strength and spat. Blood and saliva spattered across the king’s cheek, spraying his white robes with red. . . King Heru surged forward and plunged his own dagger into the neck of the priest, whose body finally slumped in death.” 
  • Seth, who is also known as The Dark One, sends a sandstorm. Amon tells Lily to hide, but she does not. She “cried out in pain and glanced down. The tremendous force was crushing my forearm, bruising the muscles, grinding against my bone, ripping into me, but nothing was there. Suddenly, the pressure lifted, and a crescent-shaped puncture appeared on both sides of my left arm.” Lily is bit several times before she is pulled to a safe location. She discovers the Dark One sent the creatures that bit her.  
  • While in a mountain, “a worm the size of Godzilla” attacks Amon, Lily and Amon’s brother, Astern. “Its gray skin oozed. The front half was all mouth with sharp, circular teeth that went back as far as I could see.” The worm tries to wiggle out of the mountain and attack. “Amon slashed at its side while Astern created magic dust that blew up in puffs of light. . . In retaliation, the worm opened its mouth, spewing neon-green slime and fat clumps of glistening saliva over everything. . .” Astern turns into a bird and takes Lily to safety. 
  • When Amon was a boy, he and his brothers skipped school and went on an adventure. Their teacher didn’t want them to get into trouble, so he followed their trail. He came across jackals. The teacher “did not survive. Our beloved instructor’s gnawed-upon bones were laid before the three of us, and our father honored his sacrifice as a hero.” 
  • Amon finds a man “burned, abused, and bleeding, with one eye ripped out, broken limbs, and bones protruding in several places, yet he still breathed.” The man tries to give Amon a message, but “he gasped as an invisible power lifted his torso. His broken arms dangled at his sides . . .” The god Seth speaks through the man.  
  • In the multi-chapter conclusion, Amon and his brothers fight the Great One in order to keep the god of chaos, Seth, from ruling the world.  
  • To defeat Amon and his brothers, the Great One raises “Masaw Haput—those born of death. You would call them zombies.” A zombie goes after Lily and her companion, Dr. Hassan. “Dr. Hassan sank his two files deep into the zombie warrior’s chest. It just stared at the two of us, breathing raggedly. Then, raising its sword overhead, it let out a supernatural scream, its jaws unhinging, a metal staple the only thing holding the jaw to its skull.” One of Amon’s brothers “took its head off” before it could hurt anyone. 
  • Lily hears Amon’s screams. When she finds him, a tray of ancient tools is close to him. “A pool of sticky blood surrounded the tray . . . Rivulets of blood had dried on his arms. . . Deep slashes marked several places on his thigh, and ugly stab wounds peeked out from between the fragments of what was left of his shirt.” Amon’s eyes had also been removed.  
  • Mummy crocodiles and living crocodiles attack Lily and Dr. Hassan. Amon’s brother, Ahmose, turns into a bird, and the two climb on. Lily falls “landing on the back of a croc mummy that did not like the fact that its remaining back leg broke off upon impact. It spun quickly and snapped at [Lily], grabbing [her] shirt in its teeth.” The crocodile is killed before it can injure Lily. 
  • Dr. Hassan and Lily create an effigy of Sebak, a reawakened man given power by the god Seth. “Dr. Hassan hit the figure three times and I heard a sharp snap like bone breaking. A scream full of rage blossomed, not from the doll figure, but from the giant creature by the pyramids. . .” Sebak became a crocodile beast and was trying to get to Lily. “His left front leg hung limply at his side, and one of his back legs seemed to have given way.” Dr. Hassan finds a way to send Sebak back to the underworld. 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • While opening Amon’s canopic jars, Lily is covered in a red powder that makes her feel “nauseated, weak, and dizzy.” Later, she discovers that the red power was a poison that would have killed her if Amon hadn’t intervened. 

Language  

  • Amon yells, “Son of a stunted jackal.” 

Supernatural 

  • Since many of the characters use chants and spells, not all of them are listed below. The story revolves around the god of chaos, Seth, who wants to defeat Amon and his brothers so he can rule Earth.  
  • Amon’s power “is a gift from the sun god Amun-Ra and his son Horus.” Amon says that he needs to “waken my brothers and complete the ceremony to align the sun, the moon, and the stars so that the Dark One, Seth, the god of chaos, may be kept at bay for another thousand years.” Amon often uses chants to help him complete his mission and keep Lily safe. Often, no specific words are given. The chants used to create spells appear below.  
  • After completing the ceremony, Amon “will have my full power and I will be able to manipulate time and send you back to your home so that you will arrive just a moment after we left. No one will miss you. Your family will never even know you were gone.” 
  • In order to talk to Lily, Amon “invoked a spell from the Book of the Dead to be able to communicate my thoughts to you.” 
  • Since he cannot locate his canopic jars, Amon must pull energy from Lily. When he pulls energy from her, “it felt like a gradual draining, but the pull was sharp and painful like someone was vacuuming out my insides with a steel wool attachment.”  
  • When Lily is injured, Amon uses magic to help her. “Amon ran his hand up my arm to my hurt shoulder, and I hissed as he cupped it with his palm. After a quick chant he poured enough warmth into the muscle to rival a heating pad.” Her injury has not completely healed but has lessened. 
  • Amon transports Lily by using sand. The first time, Lily “screamed as wind swept around our bodies, gritty sand stinging my skin like thousands of needles. I watched in horror as my body unraveled, piece by piece, to join the tumult, and my cry was cut off because I no longer had a throat, let alone a voice.” 
  • Amon can use his voice to command people. When Lily tries to leave Amon, he tells her to stop. When she didn’t, “my legs froze with a jolt so sudden that my bag flopped around my front and pulled me off balance. I feel in a heap. . .” 
  • When Amon commands Lily to take his hand, she “made a concerted effort to refuse his command and was rewarded with pain—stabbing, knife-twisting-in-my-gut pain. It made me gasp. . . When my determination weakened, and the pain overwhelmed me, I whimpered and gave in.”  
  • According to Amon, “When you know the true name of a being, be they god, human, or animal, you gain power over them.” A person’s true name “represents your ideal self. The person at the center. The name that is engraved upon your heart.” 
  • Amon reawakens two dead shabti. Shabti are described as, “Human servants were entombed with their leaders, with the understanding that they could journey to the afterlife with their masters and continue to act as servants for the dead kings or pharaohs.” In order to do this, Amon weaves a spell that begins with “Shabti servants, apportioned to me,/ You who molder in corruption,/ I summon you from the realm of the dead. . .” The spell is half a page. 
  • Amon discovers that one of the shabti broke his canopic jars. When Lily opens the one remaining jar, particles “coalesced until they formed a light. . . Slowly, the golden light rose up and out of the container, where it stretched until two wings became visible.” The light turns into a falcon. Amon weaves a spell by saying, “I call upon the falcon, born in the golden fires of the sun. . . Lend your whole, living soul to the one rent in pieces. / offer your resilient wings, your piercing talons, and your discerning eye. . .” Afterward, Amon and the falcon become one. 
  • Amon attacks the shabti. “The shabti shrieked and turned to run, but the falcon was upon him. . . its sharp golden talons grabbed the man, squeezing his torso mercilessly. . .” Before Amon can send him back to the underworld, the shabti disappears “with a puff of red smoke.” 
  • Apophis, a human priest, is a “lecherous man who abused anything or anyone he considered weak and soft. . . He lured women, and when they were at their most vulnerable, he’d strike. . . When he was ready to move on to the next victim, he would sacrifice the young maiden to a giant croc that he adorned with gold bracelets . . .” He was given the nickname, the Eater of Souls, not only because he threw victims to crocodiles but also because of his ability to control the undead. 
  • Apophis sent biloko to hurt Lily. Biloko are “invisible demons with crocodile snouts that, like Apophis, have a taste for females, though, in their case, they prefer the sweetmeats of the eyes, intestines, liver, and heart.” 
  • Amon murmurs, and “grains of sands twisted and writhed, and suddenly three horses burst from the dunes in a blast of shimmering powder.” The horses take Amon and his companions to a forest. 
  • Amon and his companions use an adder stone to pass through a mountain. Lily thinks, “What really freaked me out was that I wasn’t in a secret cave hidden within a mountain; I was passing through solid rock.” 
  • In order to raise his brother from the underworld, Amon weaves a spell. “The stars rise. The stars fall. The stars die. / As do you, my brother. / Astern—the embodiment of the stars. / It is time for rebirth. For renewal. For remaking. . .” 
  • As Amon chants, “sightless orbs and a gaping mouth rimmed with teeth peek[ed] through the wrappings as they fell away. . . The remaining skin was stretched tight and looked like fragments of old leather. In some places, it was ripped off completely, revealing graying bones with hanging bits of flesh.” When Astern is fully formed, he is handsome and muscular. Later, the third brother is also reawakened similarly. 
  • When Amon’s canopic jars were stolen, he lost some of his powers. Amon’s powers are restored when Lily is willing to sacrifice herself for him.  
  • In order to send Amon back, Lily must kill him. She is reluctant to do this, but when Amon reaches up to kiss her, “the kiss was brief. Amon lay back down, eyes wide, as a trickle of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. . . the sharp blade as embedded in Amon’s chest up to the hilt.” Afterward, a god mummified Amon. Lily and the god recite a spell from the Book of the Dead and “commemorate his name as we do so. In naming him, we connect his body, his ka, or soul, his ba, which is the character, and his shut, or shadow.”

Spiritual Content  

  • In Ancient Egypt, three kings held a summit, and “each city worshiped a different god. . . The kings had been convinced by their priest that their patron gods had abandoned them and that they should come together as one to make offerings to appease a new god, namely, the dog god, Seth, in order to secure the safety and well-being of the people.” 
  • After the kings made an offering, each king’s wife became pregnant. But then, “the god Seth demands that three young men of royal blood be sacrificed to him and that they serve him indefinitely in the afterlife.” The princes were sacrificed.  
  • Amon, one of the sacrificed princes, chants to the god Seth. “Protect me, God of the Morning Sun. Rebuff those who work evil. Turn aside this calamity. . .” The chant is one page long.  
  • Amon has “been imbued, gifted, with a portion of [the sun god’s] power so that [he] may fulfill [his] duties.” 
  • Amon explains why the pharaohs aligned with a god. “They believed that if they took the names of the gods for themselves, they would receive divine aid. . . They made it so that to reject a pharaoh was to reject deity.” 

The Valiant #1

Princess. Captive. Gladiator. Always a Warrior. 
 
Fallon is the daughter of a proud Celtic king and the younger sister of the legendary fighter Sorcha. When Fallon was just a child, Sorcha was killed by the armies of Julius Caesar.
 
On the eve of her seventeenth birthday, Fallon is excited to follow in her sister’s footsteps and earn her place in her father’s war band. She never gets the chance.
 
Fallon is captured and sold to an elite training school for female gladiators—owned by none other than Julius Caesar himself. In a cruel twist of fate, the man who destroyed Fallon’s family might be her only hope of survival.
 
Now, Fallon must overcome vicious rivalries, deadly fights in and out of the arena, and perhaps the most dangerous threat of all: her irresistible feelings for Cai, a young Roman soldier and her sworn enemy.  The Valiant recounts Fallon’s gripping journey from fierce Celtic princess to legendary gladiator and darling of the Roman empire.  

The Valiant jumps right into the action and proceeds at a breathtaking pace until the very end. Overnight, Fallon’s dreams are obliterated, and her life falls apart. As a captive, Fallon’s fierce determination to free herself is admirable. While Fallon’s pain is understandable, her strength and bravery never falter. Fallon takes the reader on her adventure, which leads her to several eye-popping surprises and forces her to question her beliefs while retaining her strength of character. 

Told in first person, The Valliant focuses on Fallon, who must learn about Rome’s culture and politics. At one point, Fallon meets both Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. This adds an extra layer of interest. As a strong woman, Cleopatra reinforces one of the book’s themes: “A woman ought to be able to chart her own course in life.” In addition to Caesar and Cleopatra, the book has many characters that play a significant role in the story but are not well developed. Despite being underdeveloped, Fallon’s romantic interest, Cai, has several swoon-worthy scenes that break up the battle scenes. 

The Valiant is an entertaining book that follows a brave protagonist worthy of rooting for. However, the book deals with dark topics, including slavery, murder, and worshiping the Greek god of death. And while the gladiatrix fights bravely, war is not glorified. Cai reminds Fallon, “Honor is nothing but a dangerous lie, Fallon. In battle, there is no honor, not really. Caesar never won because he was honorable. He isn’t. He won because he was clever and tenacious and used whatever means necessary. . .” Mature readers who aren’t squeamish about violence will enjoy following Fallon’s adventure into the Roman empire. For a less bloody adventure, read the Protector of the Small Series by Tamora Pierce and The Royal Ranger Series by John Flanagan. 

Sexual Content  

  • Fallon and Mael hope to one day get married. After practicing for battle, Mael kisses her. “His lips on mine silence my apology, muffling words with his sudden, hungry kiss. My eyes went wide. . . then drifted shut, plunging me into a red-lit darkness. . . My pulse surged loudly in my ears, and my fingers tangled in his long hair as I drew him down to me again.” The kiss is described over a page.  
  • Fallon’s father betrothed her to Mael’s brother, Aeddan. After the announcement, Aeddan “spun me around and kissed me hard on the lips.” Fallon does not kiss him back. Later that night, he brings wine to Fallon’s house to celebrate. 
  • When Aeddan tries to kiss Fallon again, she “jammed my knee into his groin, shoving him away as he gasped in pain and staggered back.” Before Aeddan can try to kiss her again, Mael appears and uses his sword to push Aeddan out of the house. 
  • A Roman officer, Cai, meets Fallon, who wanders the gladiator school’s grounds. “He took me again by the shoulders, drawing me toward him. . . Cai’s hands lightly moved up my arms, over my shoulders and down my back to my waist, tracing my body through the thin material. . .” Fallon flees before Cai can kiss her.  
  • After Fallon breaks Cai’s ribs, she goes to the infirmary to apologize. “Cai pulled me tightly to his bandaged chest and held me there. . . and he kissed me with a hungry desperation that tore the breath from my lungs. His hands tangled in my hair, and my arms tightened around him. . . he didn’t stop kissing me. Not for a long, dizzying while.” 
  • When Fallon goes to have a slave collar removed, Cai goes with her. Afterward, “Cai reached up and ran his fingertips along my skin, and I shivered at this touch. . . his hand shifted to slide into my hair, and he brought his face down to mine and kissed me. The kiss thrilled me all the way to my toes.” 
  • After professing his love for Fallon, Cai kisses her. “His mouth was nectar-sweet as he kissed me, and we fell back together into the soft, cool grass beside the stream.” 

Violence  

  • Mael and Aeddan fight over Fallon. “Suddenly, Aeddan reared back and head-butted his brother sharply. Mael reeled away in pain, blood running down his face. . .” Aeddan stabs Mael with a blade, and Mael “opened his mouth, and a dark gout of blood bubbled up and spilled down his chin. Aeddan wrenched the dagger out of his brother’s flesh, and Mael collapsed.” Fallon assumes Mael dies.  
  • Fallon was lost in the forest at night when “a broad-shouldered man swung his fist like a mallet at my head. I fell, consumed by a dark red tide.” When Fallon wakes, she tries to scream, but the man “pressed a knife blade up under my left ear. The scream building in my throat died instantly.” Fallon is kidnapped and sold to a slave trader. 
  • The man who kidnapped Fallon hit her. “A short, sharp jab to my stomach. . . his thick fingers fumbling at the lacing of my tunic. I kicked and swore at him, but I was chained, and he was much stronger.” The man intended to rape her, but the slave master stops him.  
  • The Varnini are a tribe of fierce women fighters. Fallon and Varini girl are put into a wagon and chained together. They get into a fight. Fallon describes, “She lashed out at me with one long leg, the leather sole of her sandal slapped painfully against my thigh. . .” The girl hit Fallon’s face, and “pain exploded from my left cheek, and a red mist descended in front of my eyes. . . I howled in fury and swung my clenched fist in a double blow that caught the Varini on the temple and sent her reeling.” The fight is described over three pages. 
  • Because of Fallon and the Varini’s fight, the wagon tips over. The slave driver’s “head was bent at an unnatural angle, and his mouth was frozen open in a silent cry of shock. A slick of dark blood painted the sides of his face, and his eyes were empty and staring.” 
  • When the Varini was first captured, she attacked the slave trader. She said, “I bit off half his ear and kicked him in the balls so hard he still limps.” 
  • Fallon and the Varini girl, Elka, run, but they are still chained together. They try to hide, but a group of men find them. “The man reared back again, and while his attention was focused on Elka, I sprang forward with a low, darting thrust that tagged him solidly on the upper thigh. . . I pulled my sword and blood spilled down the front of his leg.” The fight is described over two pages. 
  • Charon, the slave master, finds the girls who are being attacked. “With one swift motion, Charon had grabbed the brigand by the shoulder and yanked him around. Two moves and the man lost first his sword hand. . . and then his head. . . The man’s head toppled from his neck and bounced away into the undergrowth, the whites of his eyes glittering in the moonlight.” 
  • Pirates attack the ship that the slaves are in. The slaves are locked below deck. Fallon watched as “the body of a man fell across the grate. His mouth and eyes were frozen open in a horrible death grimace. Wind-dark blood flowed from a gaping wound to his chest. . .”  
  • Fallon breaks out of the ship’s hold and enters the fighting. “A legionnaire gutted one of the pirates not three strides in front of me, and the man twisted in a horrid dance as his guts spilled. . . Legionnaires in their uniforms [were] hacking and slashing and killing.” 
  • When being sold as a slave, Fallon and Elka are chained together. Two other slaves are given weapons and told they will be freed if they can kill the two women. When one of the men attacks Fallon with a pike, “with a powerful thrust of [Elka’s] long legs, Elka had launched herself toward us, howling with battle madness. The point of her sword blade disappeared up under the man’s helmet chinstrap. . . then the man’s chest bloomed suddenly with a dark crimson that flooded down over his painted skin.” 
  • During the attack, Fallon “swung up at a sharp angle and met my attacker’s weapon, screeching up its length in a flash of sparks. . . I brought the sword back around and down in a vicious slash across the man’s extended forearm. Blood spurted, crimson, and sparkling in the sunlight.” The fight is described over three pages. One man dies. 
  • While being trained to be a gladiatrix, a group of women attack Fallon. “Another crack of the whip and a line of fire licked across the backs of my legs. I fell to my hands and knees with a grunt. . .” When Fallon falls, “the girls kicked and punched at me in the darkness, and I curled into a ball to try to avoid the worst of it. . .”  
  • Enraged at her attackers, Fallon grabs two torches. “I spun circles of flames in the dark air, batting the whip away from me and almost setting the retiarius net aflame. . . One girl screamed in alarm as my torch set her tunic hem smoldering.” The next day, Fallon “hobbled out to the practice yard, where the throbbing, livid bruises on my legs and arms went glaringly unremarked upon.” The attack is described over three pages. 
  • After the swearing-in ceremony, two women were eager to use their weapons. One woman accidentally injures her sparring partner. Fallon sees “the crumpled body of a girl lying in a pool of blood, shockingly red against the white-gold sand. . .” The girl, Lion, lost her hand. Someone “was on her knees, tearing linen into strips and wrapping Lion’s arm tightly as she could while crimson spurted in time with the beating of the girl’s heart. . .” While in the infirmary, the doctor, Heron, “and his assistant worked to stanch the flow of blood. . . He returned with a bronze brazier full of angry red coals and a metal bell-shaped tool that had been heated until it glowed.” The woman survives. 
  • Cai is angry that Fallon will not allow him to buy her. He spars with her. “He was relentless, he was humorless. . .” Fallon tricks Cai, who looks away. “I wound up with all the strength that I could muster and delivered a slashing blow to his exposed flank. I heard his rib crack like a slap of a hard-shot arrow. Cai dropped to one knee in the sand. . .” Cai’s rib is broken.  
  • The end of the book has several gladiator tournaments described in long, bloody detail. Not all of the battles are described here. During one fight, “one gladiator’s trident had gone straight through the guts of his opponent. Two of the tines stuck out obscenely from his back, dripping wet. . .” The wounded gladiator’s “face [was] rigid with pain, and gestured for the mercy blow”. . . his opponent picked up his sword and “thrust the point through the other man’s neck.” 
  • During Fallon’s first gladiatrix battle, she is knocked down by the Fury. Fallon is “down on all fours in an instant, sucking sand-gritty air through my teeth. . . In the very last instant before her attack, I slammed the hilts of my twin swords together and thrust them out before me. . .” The swords went into the Fury’s ribs. The Fury’s “body slammed into me, throwing me back down to the ground. . . I thrashed and struggled and heaved her off me.” Fallon watches as “blood bubbled up and spilled out the sides of her mouth, staining my fingers.” The Fury dies. 
  • At a party, two gladiators fight. One of the men, Ajax, “looked down to see two blades protruding from his chest, the points red with his own blood.” Later, Fallon sees a group of men huddled around the body. “They had split Ajax’s torso open like the roasting carcass of a wild boar. I glimpsed the white gleam of his rib cage grasping like rigid fingers at the shadows, and I could hear the wet, gluttonous sounds of feasting.” 
  • A fellow gladiatrix named Nyx tricks Fallon and Elka into drinking spiked wine, Elka is flogged. Afterward, Fallon finds Nyx in the laundry. Fallon “went straight for trying to drown her in the tub. I used my shoulder to hit her from behind square in the middle of her back, and she fell face-first into the water. . . I grabbed a length of sodden linen and slapped it hard across her torso, knocking her over.”  
  • Fallon and Nyx are in a reenactment of one of Julius Caesar’s battles. However, they are on opposite sides. During the battle, Fallon attacks Aeddan. Fallon “rammed the butt of my spear into his side. The breath left his lungs in a whoof as he stumbled sideways, and I followed up with a series of swift, vicious jabs.”  
  • Fallon gets into a chariot and demands that Aeddan drive it. “Aeddan steered so that we would pass within arm’s length of Nyx’s chariot on our right. . . Nyx’s whip cracked, and I ducked instinctively . . . The wasp-kiss of the whip left a crimson welt on my upper arm.”  
  • After several passes, Fallon tells Elka to send a spear into Nyx’s chariot. “The chariot shot upward, arching through air like it had been unleashed from a legion catapult. . . Nyx screamed, arms and legs flailing frantically as she sailed up and over her horses’ heads.” Nyx is injured but not killed. The final battle is described over ten pages.  

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • Every two years, the tribes come together to feast and drink alcohol, and many become drunk. 
  • Alcohol, usually wine, is often served with dinner. 
  • Fallon confronts her sister, Sorcha, who “strode over to a side table that held a wind jug and goblets. She sloshed a generous measure of dark red wine into one of the goblets and took a long drink.” 
  • After drinking the spiked wine, Fallon passes out on the side of the road. A group of girls finds her and takes her to their house. When Fallon awakes, she is at “a house of whores.”

Language  

  • Profanity is used rarely. Profanity includes arse, bitch, damn, and bastard. 
  • “Oh dear goddess” and “Lugh’s teeth” are used as exclamations once. 
  • Another gladiatrix convinces Fallon and Elka to go to a party. As they walk to it, they consume wine. Fallon “took another swallow, and my urge to run faded as the liquid heat from the wine coursed through my limbs.” Later, she discovers the wine was spiked with mandragora, “a powerful intoxicant.”  

Supernatural 

  • Fallon’s tribe has both men and women warriors. “The legions thought of the Island of the Mighty were demons, aberrations whose corpses they burned in heaps after battles so that their black souls could never escape to inhabit another body.”  
  • When Fallon’s sister, Sorcha, was alive, she spent “time with the chief druid. . .The druiddyn were sages and mystics of our tribe. They dealt with portents and prophecies. . .” 
  • After Fallon kills a woman in battle, she is shaken. Her friend, who has killed before, tells her, “His shadow visits me almost nightly in my sleep. We’re so familiar with each other now, he’s almost a friend.” Later, Fallon “said a silent prayer for the Fury and thanked her for giving me the fight that would send me hurtling toward my destiny.”  
  • To frighten Fallon, someone nails a raven to her door. Some think it is an omen of “ill luck.”

Spiritual Content  

  • Fallon often refers to Morrigan, “goddess of death and battles.” Fallon had a dream that Morrigan visited her and called her daughter.  
  • Sorcha explains why she allowed her family to believe she was dead. Afterwards, Fallon “heard the sound of wings beating overhead. I looked up, the sky was clear. Empty. But in my mind, a throaty voice whispered, ‘Daughter’ and ‘Victory.’” Morrigan’s voice reassures Fallon.  
  • After being taken captive, Fallon prays to Morrigan, the triple goddess of blood and battles. “Mach. Red Nemain. Badb Catha . . . hear me. Wind, carry my words. Shadows and darkness, see my plight. Let the Morrigan hear my pleas. Give me strength to vanquish my enemies and wreak my vengeance.” 
  • After someone vandalizes Fallon’s room, “I whispered a prayer of thanks to Morrigan that I’d had the foresight to take the box of Charon’s armor directly to the quartermaster.” 
  • A woman died in a gladiator fight. During her funeral, someone says, “Last night the goddess Nemesis, she of the midnight brow, in her great wisdom called Ismene to the realm of heroes and sent forth Mercury to guide her there. She feasts now in the halls of Dis, she spars with Minerva. . .” 
  • When a gladiator is killed in battle, “the gladiator’s body was dragged from the arena by hook-wielding men dressed in outlandish headdresses meant to resemble long-eared desert dogs. . . the men were playing the ritual part of an Egyptian god of the dead called Anubis.”  
  • Fallon tells her friend, “Morrigan hates me.” Her friend replies, “Your goddess has brought you this far. Maybe this is her way of telling you she thinks you’re worth the effort.” 
  • During a battle, Fallon realizes that “The Morrigan had not forsaken me. She wasn’t against me. The true Morrigan had shown herself to lead me to victory.”  

Women in Space Exploration

Women have been traditionally underrepresented in space exploration, but that has changed in recent years. A career in space exploration is the perfect choice for a variety of people—from those who like conducting research about the universe, to adventurous souls who want to travel to and live in space. In this book, you’ll learn about groundbreaking female astronauts and space research professionals, career paths in space exploration, how to prepare for the field, key skills for success, methods of learning more about careers while in school, and much more.  

Women in Space Exploration gives readers an inside look at the little-known career opportunities available in space exploration, including careers that do not involve flying into space. Each of the five chapters follows the same format. The first page lists words and definitions that appear in the chapter; these words include conductivity, cosmology, celestial, and more. These words appear in bold gray font, which makes them easy to identify. 

Women who were pioneers in space exploration are featured, including Sally Ride and Mae Jamison. Each woman faced many obstacles. Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian woman to enter space, was told by a professor that being an engineer was not “ladylike,” and her father dissuaded her from being an engineer. This did not stop Chawla from earning her PhD from the University of Colorado and working for NASA. Each biography highlights how different skills are used in the space field. Five biographies also include a QR code so readers can learn more about the women through educational videos.   

The book is straightforward and easy to understand despite the use of informational space exploration jargon. The short paragraphs are broken up with photographs of women at work that appear every one to two pages. In addition, the book has short blurbs about issues important to women in space, such as the international space stations, finding time for family, and the NASA Astrobiology Institute. Often, important information is presented in lists, such as skills needed for success. The end of each chapter includes a research project and text-dependent questions that check for understanding.  

Women in Space Exploration explores many women’s roles in the space industry. The book highlights the skills and education needed for anyone interested in working for NASA and other space companies. By featuring women who work in the field, readers will discover the many different degrees that can be used in the field. In addition, the biographies prove that dreams do come true for those who persevere. 

Readers who dream of flying into space will find Women in Space an excellent source of information and encouragement. The book highlights the necessary education needed for anyone who wants to work in the space industry, as well as shows that space exploration is for everyone. Readers who want to learn more about women in the space industry should also read To Fly Among the Stars by Rebecca Siegel, Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier by Jim Ottaviani & Maris Wicks, and Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross by Traci Sorell. 

Sexual Content  

  • None 

Violence  

  • None 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • None 

Language  

  • None 

Supernatural 

  • None 

Spiritual Content  

  • None

Unwind

After America’s Second Civil War, the Pro-Choice and Pro-Life armies came to an agreement. According to their Bill of Life, human life may not be terminated from the moment of conception until the age of thirteen. But between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, the child may be gotten rid of by their parent through a process called “unwinding.”

By repurposing a teen’s organs and other body parts in living recipients, the unwound child’s life doesn’t technically end. According to society’s leaders, unwinding leads to a healthier and safer community, as troublesome and unwanted teens are used for the greater good.

Connor is a rebel whose unwinding was ordered by his parents. Risa, a ward of the state, has been slated for unwinding due to cost cutting. And Lev, his parents’ tenth child, has been destined for unwinding since birth as a religious tithe. As their paths intersect, they start to fight for their own destinies. But do they stand a chance of escaping their fate or proving their lives are worth saving? 

Readers who want a light, entertaining read should avoid the Unwind Dystology. Unwind has plenty of action and suspense that propels the story forward at a fast pace and leaves the reader questioning their beliefs about the value of human life—both before and after birth. Shusterman expertly delves into difficult questions from multiple perspectives by focusing on three completely different characters. After Lev is kidnapped, he chooses to escape his destiny—being unwound. At this time, he begins to question God’s will. Lev’s friend says, “You got it in your heart to run from unwinding, ain’t no one can tell you it’s the wrong thing to do, even if it’s against the law. The good Lord wouldn’t have put it in your heart if it wasn’t right.” In the end, Levi learns that he can still believe in God but not condone human tithing. 

On the other hand, Risa grew up in a state institution where she helped care for babies that no one wanted. Since abortion is illegal, many babies are left on people’s doorstep, but this doesn’t guarantee that the child will be loved or cared for. Risa wonders, “Which was worse. . . to have tens of thousands of babies that no one wanted, or silently make them go away before they were even born?” Risa’s experiences force the reader to ponder both the pro-life and the pro-abortion point of view.  

Unwind is a thought-provoking story that begins with the question: Should unborn children have a right to live, or should women have a right to choose what happens to their bodies? To put a spotlight on these questions, Shusterman creates a dark world full of violence that is not for the faint of heart. However, readers who aren’t afraid of exploring controversial topics will find that each protagonist—Connor, Risa, and Lev—has a different system and wants to do what is right. The next installments of the Unwind Dystology explore human evil in more detail. Although the series makes readers ask important questions, many readers will not be ready to face the books’ disturbingly dark images. Readers who want a tamer dystopian book have many options, including Matched Trilogy by Ally Condie, The Maze Cutter by James Dashner, and Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. 

Sexual Content  

  • When Connor’s friend, Ariana, says she will run away with him. He “kisses her.” 
  • A woman helps Connor, Risa, and a storked newborn hide. Storked are those left on doorsteps. The old woman assumes that Connor and Risa are the baby’s parents. The woman says, “If you really want to stay alive, honey, have him get you pregnant again. They won’t unwind an expectant mother, so that will buy you nine whole months.” 
  • One boy says that he has two dads, but “I’m not like my dads—my compass points to girls, if you know what I mean.” 
  • While hiding out in a warehouse, two kids “make out all day long, drawing a cluster of other kids who sit there and watch.” 
  • Connor kisses Risa. “She did not expect it, and when he breaks off the kiss, she realizes from the look on his face that he hadn’t expected it either. . . she pulls him into another kiss—this one longer than the first.” 
  • Connor and Risa are sent to a harvest camp to be unwound. While they wait, “They meet in the girls’ bathroom . . . They hold each other in the tight space, making no excuses for it. . . they kiss as if they’ve done it forever.”

Violence  

  • When Conner discovers he is supposed to be unwound, he runs away. Connor’s father and the police find him hiding in the back of a semi. To escape, Connor runs across a busy highway. “He hears a gun fire. He feels the impact, but not in his skin. The bullet embeds in his backpack.” Connor realizes that they’re firing tranquilizer bullets. 
  • As Connor is running across the highway, a Cadillac’s “side mirror smacks him painfully in the ribs before the car screeches to a halt, sending the acrid stench of burned rubber up his nostrils.” Connor sees Lev in the Cadillac so he grabs Lev to use as a human shield. 
  • Connor puts a “choke hold” on Lev and drags him across the road. As they run, “bullets now fly past them.” To escape, “Lev grabs the arm that’s locked around his neck and sinks his teeth in with the full force of his jaws until he tastes blood. The kid screams.” Lev is hit with a tranquilizer bullet and falls to the ground. 
  • While Connor is running, a bus swerves, and “Risa’s head is slammed against the window as the bus suddenly pulls to the right. . . Risa is thrown forward, down the aisle, as the bus comes to a sudden, jarring stop.” 
  • After the bus crashes, “the windshield is smashed, and it’s covered in blood. Lots of it. . . It’s the bus driver’s blood. His hands halfway through [the windshield], and he’s not moving.” 
  • Connor and Risa work together to trick a police officer. Risa pretends to be injured. When the officer goes to help her, “the officer is knocked to the ground, and suddenly there are two figures attacking him—The Unwind and the girl.” Connor uses a tranquilizer gun on the police officer. 
  • An unwanted baby is put on Connor’s doorstep. His parents did not want to take the child in, so they put it on a neighbor’s doorstep. Eventually, the child is placed back on Connor’s doorstep, but by then, it’s so sick that it dies.  
  • Roland, a runaway, was sent to be unwound because he “had beaten up his stepfather for beating his mom. The mother took her husband’s side, and the stepfather got off with a warning. Roland, on the other hand, was sent to be unwound.” 
  • A newspaper article talks about a hospital that was harvesting stem cells. “The council described a general culture of trafficking of children snatched at birth. . . The pictures show organs, including brains, have been stripped—and some bodies dismembered.” 
  • Roland corners Risa while she’s in the bathroom. “He grabs her hands, pushes her back against the cold green tile wall, and presses his hip against her so that her knee can’t reach its mark.” Rolands implies that he is going to have sex with her whether she wants to or not. Another teen comes in and interrupts. Roland lets Risa go. 
  • Lev goes to a pawnbroker to sell a stolen bracelet. The pawnbroker opens the safe. “He feels something hard and heavy connecting with his head. His thoughts are instantly scrambled. He loses consciousness before he hits the ground.”  
  • While hidden in a warehouse, the Unwinds are woken so they can be transferred to another hiding place. The “Fatigues,” adults in charge of watching the Unwinds, have rifles. “A cranky kid pushes a Fatigue for tearing away his blanket. The Fatigue with the gun hits him on the shoulder with his rifle—not enough to seriously wound him, but enough to make it clear to the kids, and everyone else, that they mean business.” 
  • Lev turns Connor and Risa into the cops. Afterward, Connor “hauls off and punches Lev in the eye. Not hard enough to knock him down, but hard enough to snap his head halfway around and give him a nasty shiner.” 
  • Someone shows Connor a crate that has five dead kids in it. “There are no signs of blood, no wounds. They could all be asleep except for the fact that [one]’s eyes are open and staring at nothing.” Later, Connor learns that the kids suffocated in the crate. 
  • Connor entices his enemy, Roland, into an airplane. Connor “leaps forward and firmly plants the muzzle of the Admiral’s gun against Roland’s back. . . Roland makes his move. He spins, knocks Connor back, and grabs for the gun.” Connor pushes Roland into a crate and locks him in. “While Roland rages inside, Connor takes aim at the crate and fires the gun, once, twice, three times.” After making sure Roland can breathe, Connor leaves. Later, Roland is let out, uninjured. 
  • To hurt the Admiral, a mob of kids attacks the Admiral’s jet. “The first of the kids reaches the top of the stairs and heaves the hatch open, only to be met by Risa, and a brutal punch to the jaw. It sends him tumbling over the side and to the ground . . . The second kid is met by an aerosol burst of Bactine [a pain-relieving spray] right to the eyes. The pain is excruciating. He stumbles backward. . .” The mob destroys everything they can get their hands on. The scene is described over multiple chapters. 
  • Cleaver, a helicopter pilot, tries to get away from the mob but is unable to. Connor breaks up the kids and finds “the man on the ground is battered and bloody. . . He’s been beaten to a pulp.” Helpless, Connor watches Cleaver die. 
  • Connor thinks about the Mayan game of pokatok. “The game was a lot like basketball, except that the losers were sacrificed to the Mayan gods.”  
  • Roland and Connor fight. Roland “begins swinging, and Connor is quick to defend. . . Connor taps into his own wellspring of fury, and he lets loose a brutal offensive of his own. . . [Roland] slams him against the wall his hand pressed against Connor’s windpipe. . . Connor’s struggles become weaker without oxygen to feed his muscles.” Roland thinks about killing Connor and is surprised that he can’t. The scene is described over two pages. 
  • Roland is unwound and is conscious of the entire procedure. As Roland’s body is taken apart, a nurse says, “You may feel a tugging sensation near your ankles. . . it’s nothing to worry about.” 
  • An hour and fifteen minutes into the procedure, “surgeons leave, new ones arrive. He looks towards his toes but can’t see them [because they have been removed]. . . A clanging of metal. The lower half of the table is unhooked, and pulled away. . . Now Roland feels discomfort in his gut. Discomfort, a tickling sensation, but no pain. The surgeon lifts things away.” 
  • The nurse leaves once Roland’s eyes have been removed. Roland sees “not quite darkness, just an absence of light. He hears everything around him but can no longer communicate. . .” The doctors talk about sports as they continue to remove parts of Roland’s brain. After three hours and nineteen minutes, the procedure is complete, and Roland is still alive, but he is confused about what has happened. The procedure is described over six pages. 
  • In the conclusion, three Unwinds [Lev, Blaine, and Mai] decide to attack the harvest camp where they are being held. Blaine and Mai both go inside the “Chop Shop” where the unwind procedure is performed. A guard sees Blaine and “aims his tranq gun at Blaine’s left thigh, and fires. . . The impact of a tranq bullet is more effective than a detonator. Blaine and the guard are instantly incinerated as the six quarts of liquid explosive coursing through Blaine’s body ignite.” 
  • During the attack, Connor is injured. “His face is a shredded, bloody mess. He’s lost an eye. His right arm is crushed and mangled. But he’s alive!” Connor is in a coma for several weeks. When he awakes, he has been given an Unwind’s eye and arm. The revolt scene is described over eight pages.

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • At a party for Lev, champagne is served to the adults. Lev’s brother, Marcus, pretends to be drunk so he can go on a rant. 
  • A police officer thinks that Unwinds are “often high on illegal substances. . . Nicotine, caffeine, or worse.”  
  • Lev is hit with a tranquilizer gun. When he wakes up, “his head hurts, he feels like he might puke, and his brain is still only at half power.” 
  • An adult who helps hide Unwinds talks to Connor when “the Admiral adds some whiskey from a flask to his own coffee.” After the Admiral’s son was unwound, he “left the military, spent several years more drunk than I am now.” Then he sobered up and began helping the Unwinds. 
  • A boy who has asthma takes Xolair. 
  • Roland steals a bottle of ipecac from the infirmary. “He was planning to use the stuff to spike the drinks and create a puke-fest.” His plan is never carried out. 

Language  

  • Profanity is used seldom. Profanity includes hell, damn, crap, and ass. 
  • My God and for God’s sake are used several times as an exclamation.

Supernatural 

  • When a person is given a body part from an unwound person, the body part remembers what the person learned. For example, one man received a new hand, and the hand still knew how to perform magic. 
  • One boy, Cyrus, was injured and received half of a boy’s brain. Now, the boy is in Cyrus’s head. “This boy in the corner of his head doesn’t talk to him in words. He feels. He emotes. He doesn’t understand that he’s only a part of another kid. . . Now he keeps looking for things in Cyrus’s head that just aren’t there. . . And so the kid hurls out anger. Terror. Grief. Waves pounding the wall, and beneath it all, there’s a current tugging Cy forward.” 

Spiritual Content  

  • Lev is a tithe, “a child of a religious family who is born and raised to be unwound, as an act of charity.” 
  • Lev’s parents are Christians who “have always given 10 percent of everything to the church.” This includes giving Lev as a tithe, who will be unwound. Lev’s parent told him, “Your life will be to serve God and mankind.” Because he is a tithe, Lev has “always felt closer to God than to his friends, or even his family.” 
  • Lev’s family believes “everyone’s equal in God’s eyes.” 
  • Lev is jealous of his siblings, who are not unwound. Lev’s pastor tells him that God asks for the best fruits, not the first fruits. Lev thinks, “Giving of one’s self is the ultimate blessing.” 
  • After Lev is kidnapped, he still wants to be unwound, “as it was ordained to be. . . Being torn from his purpose was the most unnerving thing that had ever happened to Lev, but now he understands why God let it happen. It’s a lesson. It’s to show Lev what happens to children who shrink their destiny: they become lost in every possible way.” 
  • When Lev talks about being tithed, he says, “Tithing’s in the Bible; you’re supposed to give 10 percent of everything. And Storking is in the Bible, too.” Storked is when babies are left on doorsteps. “The homeowner is obligated to keep and raise the child.” 
  • When talking about storked babies, Lev uses Moses as an example. “Moses was put in a basket in the Nile and was found by Pharaoh’s daughter. He was the first storked baby, and looked what happened to him!” 
  • Unwanted babies are raised in a state institution or storked. Connor wonders, “If a baby was going to be so unloved, why would God want it brought into the world?” 
  • After Lev runs, he says his parents “loved God more than they loved me, and I hate them for it. So I guess that means I’m going to hell.” 
  • Connor and some of the other Unwinds discuss when a soul is put into an unborn child. One Unwind says a girl believed that “if someone actually gets unwound, then they never had a soul to begin with. She said God must know who’s going to be unwound, and he doesn’t give them souls.” The conversation lasts for three pages. 
  • Lev is part of the group that plans to destroy the harvest camp. Before he can set off his detonator, he thinks: “God, dear God, what am I doing? What have I done? How did I get here?” Lev is unable to set off the detonator and helps rescue people instead. 
  • While Lev is in a cell, Pastor Dan visits. The pastor “resigned my position. I left the church. . . I still very much believe in God—just not a god who condones human tithing.”  

Mexican WhiteBoy

Danny is tall and skinny. Even though he’s not built, his arms are long enough to give his pitch a power so fierce any college scout would sign him on the spot. He’s got a ninety-five mile an hour fastball, but the boy’s not even on a team. Every time he gets up on the mound, he loses it.

But at his private school, they don’t expect much else from him. Danny is brown. Half-Mexican brown. And growing up in San Diego that close to the border means everyone else knows exactly who he is before he even opens his mouth. Before they find out he can’t speak Spanish, and before they realize his mom has blond hair and blue eyes, they’ve got him pegged. But it works the other way too. And Danny’s convinced it’s his whiteness that sent his father back to Mexico.

That’s why he’s spending the summer with his dad’s family. But to find himself, he may just have to face the demons he refuses to see—the demons that are right in front of his face. He may also have to open up to a friendship he never saw coming.  

Danny and his rival-turned-friend Uno become almost inseparable, which allows the reader to see how each teen deals with similar situations. Since they are both biracial, Danny and Uno struggle to fit in. Unlike his Mexican relatives, Danny doesn’t speak Spanish, making him feel as if “he’s not really Mexican. His skin is dark like his grandma’s sweet coffee, but his insides are as pale as the cream she mixes in.” Likewise, Uno struggles with his identity because his mom is Mexican and his dad is Black. Uno feels as if he’s “stuck in the middle.” His parents fight, and “one is pulling his left arm, the other pulling his right. Like it’s some kind of tug-of-war between black and Mexican, and he’s the rope.” The struggle to understand their place in the world is one that many teens will be able to relate to, especially those of mixed race. 

Mexican WhiteBoy also shows the difficulties Danny and Uno have because of their absent fathers. Danny hasn’t seen his father in three years and thinks his father is in Mexico. Danny’s emotional trauma is shown when Danny ruminates on his father’s absence. Danny also writes fictitious letters to his father. While the letters aren’t based on reality, they show Danny’s dream life. Unlike Danny, Uno sees his father once a month. Uno’s domineering father, who’s gotten off drugs and out of trouble, often lectures Uno about how finding God has made him a better person. The father-son relationships add to the story’s emotional depth.  

Matt de la Peña integrates Danny’s love of baseball and pitching into the story. Despite this, Mexican WhiteBoy is not a typical sports story since no baseball games are ever played. However, readers will empathize with Danny, who is trying to answer the questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? At the beginning of summer, he lacks confidence, is depressed, and self-harms. Danny’s relationship with Uno helps Danny find his footing in life and take his place on the baseball diamond. Danny and Uno’s friendship transforms both boys, and they help each other find hope for the future. Mexican WhiteBoy shines a light on the realities of life for many inner-city teens. The gritty scenes don’t sugarcoat the teens’ struggles. Instead, Mexican WhiteBoy conveys the importance of believing in yourself and shaping your own future. For those who’d like to explore another book that shines a light on the issue of self-acceptance, check out Bruiser by Neal Shusterman. Readers who want a book that focuses more on the game of baseball should read Heat by Mike Lupica and Fast Pitch by Nic Stone. 

Sexual Content  

  • Danny’s cousin Sophia introduces him to her friends. When the girls flirt with Danny, Sophia says, “I see my homegirls gonna try and corrupt you, cuz. Better watch it, though, these heinas got mad STDs.” 
  • Danny has a crush on Liberty. Danny’s cousin and her friends gossip about Liberty. Someone says the girl is “sixteen and already droppin’ her drawers for billetes.” 
  • A man keeps showing up to watch Danny pitch. Uno says, “I thought homey was a molester or some shit.” 
  • Danny’s aunt and uncle come home after a night on the town. “Uncle Tommy and Cecilia stumble in reeking of cigarettes and tequila. . . [Cecilia] extends her neck, but when Tommy’s lips get close she pulls back, giggling some more . . . He kisses her neck, reaches a hand up for his wife’s chest.” They disappear into the bedroom. 
  • Uno, Danny and a group of other teens play truth or dare. Danny “watches Flaca, on a dare. . . saunter over to Raquel, take her face in her hands and kiss her while all the guys cheer and the girls laugh. He watches Sofia, on a dare . . . pull up Uno’s black Dickies shirt and leave a dark brown hickey on his already dark stomach.” On another dare, Danny’s cousin, Sofia, and Uno disappear into the bedroom and don’t return. 
  • Danny comes out of the bathroom half-dressed. His cousin, Sofia, asks, “What were you doing in there so long, beating off?. . . It’s perfectly normal you know. I heard ninety-five percent of guys beat off and the other five percent are lyin’.” 
  • Uno kisses Sofia “on the lips.” 
  • After spending time with his crush, Danny gets up to leave. “She grabs Danny’s face in her hands and kisses him on the lips real quick. When they separate, she stands there giggling. Then Danny takes her face in his hands and kisses her.” 

Violence  

  • During a stickball game, Uno throws the ball at another player, Raul, who has just finished batting. “The ball smacks him right in the ass. Raul trips and falls to the ground, clutching the back of his jeans.” 
  • Danny accidentally hits Uno’s brother, Manny, with a bat. Uno “rushes Danny, shoves him with both hands. . . Danny backs up a couple of steps, surprised.” Danny’s cousin, Sofia, tries to stop the fight. “Uno shoves Sofia out of the way and gets in Danny’s face again, pokes a finger into his forehead.”  
  • Before Danny can try to defend himself, Uno is “already stepping forward with all his weight, delivering an overhead right that smashes flush into Danny’s face. Snaps his head back. Buckles his knees.” When Danny falls, he “knows there was a loud crashing sound in his brain.” There is “warm liquid running down his neck. . . Running into his mouth. . . Salty. Smell of copper.” 
  • Danny goes to the hospital because he has “a nasty gash under his left eye” and a dislocated jaw. He needs “five stitches under his left eye, ten to the back of his head. . .” 
  • Danny and Uno are scamming people out of money. After one incident, three guys, including one named Carmelo, attack Uno. “One of the other guys slugs him in the back of the head. Uno spins around, narrowly avoids a wild right from another kid and punches the kid who hit him in the jaw. . . Uno breaks free and pounces on Carmelo. He gets him in a tight headlock, tries to choke the life off of him. But the other guys pull Uno off, hold his arms while Carmelo punches him twice in the stomach . . .” 
  • Danny jumps into the fight to help Uno, who watches Carmelo “rear back and throw a punch right at [Danny’s] face, but he ducks it and the punch grazes the face of Carmelo’s own guy. . . [Danny] swings a vicious right and hits him on the side of the face, sending him sprawling onto the ground. Blood starts coming from the guy’s nose.” Danny and Uno have bruises but no serious injuries. The fight scene is described over two pages. 
  • While at the beach, a man whistles at Danny’s mom. Her husband gets mad and attacks the man. Danny hears “the sound of punches landing and shouting and then sirens and cops shouting. . . the cops handcuffed his dad and pushed him into the back of their squad car. By his face.” Afterward, his father leaves for Mexico and doesn’t come back. 
  • Uno’s stepdad, Ernesto, comes home smelling of tequila. He yells at Uno. “When Ernesto’s been drinking tequila he’s liable to swing an open hand. ‘Course it ain’t the open hand he’s scared of, it’s what he might do in response to the open hand. So instead of killing this man and getting locked up for real, he nods and nods and nods and nods.” 
  • When a girl starts talking to Danny, her boyfriend, Marzel, gets mad. Marzel “rears back to throw a punch, but out of nowhere Uno steps in and blasts the guy from the side. Puts him flat on his back and then stands over him, glaring down. . . Marzel looks up at Uno, touches his bloody lip and holds his fingers in front of his eyes. He stands up slow, swings wildly at Uno, but Uno ducks it, lands two quick and powerful body blows, doubles Marzel over.” A couple guys break up the fight. 
  • Danny’s parents separated when his father hit his mother, but there are no other details. 
  • Danny, his uncle Ray, and other men were driving when a “big hippie guy came walking down the middle of the road . . . Ray hit the gas and ran smack into the guy, a nasty thumping sound against the hood. The guy’s head whipped all forward, and when Ray hit the brakes, he flew from the Bronco like a rag doll.” 
  • The guy got up and “threw a right at Uncle Ray through the open window, but Uncle Ray ducked it, grabbed the guy by the arm and pulled him halfway into the cab and his boys started whaling on him. . . Rico smacked him in the same part of the face so many times, the sound of the blow actually changed. They became muted. Tim delivered blow after blow to the guy’s ribs and stomach.” 
  • When the guy became limp, “Blood was all over the place, on Danny’s face. . . Uncle Ray flipped the Bronco into reverse and backed up. He turned the wheel slightly and pulled forward, ran over both the guy’s legs. Danny could actually hear and feel the bones crush and snap under the tires. . .” Uncle Ray races away when the “guy was completely still and covered in red.” The scene is described over three pages. 
  • While in prison, “the scout” meets Danny’s dad. The scout tells Danny, “One day I got jumped by a bunch of black guys. . . They tried to kill me. Your dad was the only one who stepped in. He beat two of them real bad and the others backed away . . . And me and your dad turned into friends.” 
  • Danny self-harms when he is upset. He digs “into the inside of his forearm with his nails to remind him he’s a real person.” He “holds his left arm against the sink and runs the sharp part of the tweezers across the inside. Goes back and forth in a straight line. Back and forth again. A thin trickle of blood starts creeping out. . . He drops the tweezers in the sink and turns on the water full blast. Washes the blood off. . . But the line of blood comes back even thicker. It’s all over the sink now, too.” 
  • While at Danny’s school, Barker, a rich white kid, insults Uno. Danny “punches Barker in the face. Spins the kid around. . . He takes a step toward Danny and throws a wild right, but Danny ducks it, hits the kid again. Harder this time, in the eye.” A senior breaks up the fight, which is described over a page. 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • Both the adults and the teens drink often; thus, not all of the drinking is described below. 
  • A girl tells Danny they can hang out and drink “a little white Zin and shit.” 
  • During stickball, there are some “young bucks, los ratas, hanging out on stolen bikes, pulling drags off stolen cigarettes.”  
  • As Uno is walking, he sees “a broken forty bottle lying at the mouth of the gutter. . . Wonders how much alcohol must be flowing through National City’s gutters after an average Friday night.”  
  • Uno’s father goes on a rant about drugs such as Ritalin, Vicodin, and Zoloft. His father says, “Who benefits more from all these prescriptions? The patient or the doctor?” 
  • Uno’s father used to “smoke anything I could roll up in a Zig-Zag.” 
  • While planning a trip, Sofia asks her friends who will be “sneakin’ in the thermos of jungle juice?” 
  • The last time Danny saw his dad, they were sitting together, and his dad had a “beer dangling” in his hand. 
  • Danny’s mom invites a man to have dinner with her and Danny. The man brings a bottle of champagne. 
  • When Danny goes to family events, the adults “are drinking homemade horchata and Pacifico and Bud Light and tequila with lime—always tequila.” 
  • Several of the teens smoke cigarettes. 
  • Danny gets drunk for the first time. “He learns that jungle juice makes him feel light as a feather. That it makes him feel ten feet tall. . . Makes him feel like smiling and talking to anybody and everybody, at any time—though he hasn’t.” 
  • When Danny was little, he was sick. His father stayed home to take care of Danny. However, his dad spent most of the time watching TV and smoking pot. Danny “remembers thinking [the smoke] looked like a magic carpet. And because he was a little high, took from the secondhand, he started wondering what it would be like to ride a magic carpet?” 
  • Uno gives Danny a beer. “Danny cringes as the cold beer washes past his tastebuds, down his throat. It’s only his third time drinking beer—all summer—and he doubts he’ll ever like the taste.” 
  • At a party, “Lolo puts a shot of tequila into Raquel’s belly button, [a guy] slurps it out and bites into a wedge of lime.” 
  • A girl’s “real mom” died of a supposed overdose. 
  • One of Danny’s uncles “breaks up a bud, rolls the weed in a Zig-Zag and licks. He pulls a lighter from his pocket and, out of pure habit, cups a hand over the fire.” 

Language  

  • Both English and Spanish profanity are used often. Profanity includes ass, bitch, chingado, damn, goddamn, fuck, motherfucker, piss, puta, and shit. 
  • Uno’s parents yell at each other. Uno’s mom calls his father “a good-for-nothing black bastard.”  In return, his father says, “Bitch, if I didn’t have the Holy Ghost. . . I swear to God.” 
  • When Uno was young, he got hurt during a baseball game. His father began yelling, “Get up, you little punk-ass bitch! Get your ass up! Ain’t no son of mine gonna lay there crying!” 
  • Jesus, Jesus Christ, God, and oh my God are occasionally used as exclamations.  
  • A rich white kid calls Danny a “wetback.”  
  • When Uno and Danny go to Danny’s school, a rich white boy says, “Now get your black ass outta here.” When Uno threatens him, the boy says, “Bring it, dude! I ain’t afraid of no blacky!” 

Supernatural 

  • None 

Spiritual Content  

  • Sofia’s aunt goes to church. One of Sofia’s friends says, “That old broad is too fat to go to church.” 
  • Uno’s father was a gangster and drug addict before he found Jesus. His father says, “I love you! Just like I love Jesus! He felt powerless, too, you know. Like you and me. When he took the most messed-up suckers and died for them, he died for us!” 
  • Uno’s father said that “studying the Bible taught him to love himself. Taught him to look inward for companionship. Taught him to actually look forward to spending time alone with himself.” 
  • Uno’s father says that suicide is “a deadly sin in two books. God’s and mine.” 
  • Uno tells Danny about his father’s religion. “But sometimes I think maybe God’s down here. In regular everyday stuff. Like the power of a train.” 
  • Uno‘s father says that everyone has “a little piece of God.” 

Charlie Thorne and the Royal Society

Charlie Thorne is a genius. Charlie Thorne is fearless. Charlie Thorne may have finally met her match.

Charlie Thorne is used to being on the run. Ever since she was recruited by the CIA to track down Einstein’s most dangerous equation, Charlie has traveled around the world with former CIA agents Dante Garcia and Milana Moon to prevent history’s greatest discoveries from falling into the wrong hands. But after beating others to the secrets hidden by Einstein, Darwin, and Cleopatra, Charlie and her comrades realize they are not the only ones searching for an immensely powerful discovery of Isaac Newton’s.

From a chase over the rooftops of Cambridge University, to scaling the Sydney Harbour Bridge and skirting a volcanic eruption, Charlie will need to think one step ahead of her opponents in order to follow Newton’s trail of devious clues and keep herself out of the hands of the many enemies who are hot on her tail. 

Filled with high-stakes action scenes, historical facts, and plenty of adventure, Charlie Thorne and the Royal Society is a thoroughly enjoyable read. Along the journey, readers will enjoy deciphering the clues and ciphers leading to Newton’s discovery. In addition, readers will learn about the explorer James Cook, Ferdinand Magellan, and other historical figures. Since Charlie is following in Cook’s footsteps, she also explores the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

Newton’s discovery has a surprising twist—Newton discovered an elixir that gave him immortality, but immortality was a blessing and a curse. Newton discusses how immortality affected his life, and when Charlie has an opportunity to use the elixir, she doesn’t take it because “I don’t want to live forever. Someday, I hope I’ll meet someone and have a family with them. I don’t want to outlive them and all my kids and grandkids, too. That sounds a whole lot worse than dying.” Newton makes it clear that the elixir should only be used by someone of great intelligence, like Charlie, so that it is not abused.

The conclusion wraps up the series and leaves readers with this thought: family is the greatest treasure. The Charlie Thorne Series is a must-read for anyone who wants to travel the world. The series will give readers hours of adventure and teach interesting historical facts. Readers can find more adventure by reading the Explorer Academy Series by Trudi Trueit and the TombQuest Series by Michael Northrop. For readers interested in decoding codes and ciphers, take a peek into how ciphers work by reading Spy Files: Codes and Ciphers by Adrian Gilbert and The Usborne Book of Secret Codes by Eileen O’Brien & Diana Riddell.

Sexual Content  

  • None 

Violence  

  • A mob forms outside of Isaac Newton’s house. “An angry laborer threw an empty liquor bottle at the building. It shattered off the wall just below Newton’s window. The other members of the mob cheered, then began to throw things as well: stones, garbage, empty bottles of their own.” Newton flees out the back door.  
  • When Newton flees in a carriage, several men try to stop him. “Two men clung to the outside of the approaching carriage. . . but Newton’s coachman coaxed a burst of speed from his horses at the last minute. . . The vehicle toppled into the street, throwing Newton’s potential attackers into the path of the other two carriages. The horses trampled them. . .” Newton escapes. 
  • Charlie finds one of Newton’s discoveries but a boy, Kenji, tries to steal it. “Charlie threw the book down onto his foot hard enough to make him yelp. . .” Charlie runs away, but two “big” men give chase.  
  • Dante sees the men chasing Charlie and swings a pole. “He swung it like a bat, catching the big man across the chest. . . the blow knocked him back a step but didn’t knock him down.” The man uses the pole like a spear and “charged like a medieval knight, looking to run Dante through.” The man clubs Dante, “knocking him to the ground. . . [the man] prepared to impale him with it.” Someone “clobbers” the man, knocking him out and saving Dante. 
  • In an emergency, Dante tries to take someone’s truck. When the man tries to stop him, Dante “dropped him with a single punch, then stole the keys.”  
  • Charlie is kidnapped by a wealthy man and Kenji’s grandfather, Yoshi. When she wakes up, her “wrists and ankles were bound with duct tape.” Charlie tells the man, “You realize that keeping a teenage girl tied up in your private office makes you look like a pervert, right?” The kidnapper forces Charlie to look for Newton’s discovery.   
  • When Yoshi drinks a potion and passes out, Kenji attacks Charlie. “Kenji clamped a hand on Charlie’s neck, hard enough to make her gasp. He pushed her against the wall. The rough stones jabbed into her back. Charlie struggled for breath, feeling her consciousness start to slip away.” Someone hits Kenji over the head and knocks him out. 
  • When Yoshi awakes, he tries to recapture Charlie. However, Newton helps her flee. Newton attacks Yoshi. “He drove Yoshi backward to a small ledge by a channel through which the lava was flowing. They tottered on the edge, then toppled into the channel. . . A burst of flame flared up as the molten rock consumed them.” 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • King John keeps wild animals as pets and gives them wine and beer to drink. 
  • Yoshi discovers a vial that he believes is Newton’s discovery. When he drinks it, “his eye bulged. His face turned red. His hands clutched at his throat as he wheezed.” He passes out. 
  • Isaac Newton was in a carriage when “one rioter managed to leap onto the running board . . . He was so drunk that Newton could smell the liquor on his breath.” 

Language  

  • None 

Supernatural 

  • None 

Spiritual Content  

  • As Isaac Newton flees, a young scientist says, “God be with you.”  
  • When explorer James Cook went to Hawaii, he was mistaken as a “powerful Hawaiian God named Lono,” and “James and his men were showered with food and gifts.” The natives finally realized Cook was not a god, and a mob killed him. 
  • Newton hid his discovery because “there were many more who might think it was the result of witchcraft—or a pact with the devil—or other dark forces.”

Change the Game

Written by Colin Kaepernick and Eve L. Ewing and illustrated by Orlando Caicedo, Change the Game is a graphic novel that follows Colin Kaepernick’s high school years. This was a difficult and critical time for Kaepernick. With college fast approaching, he felt pulled between two career paths. He was an excellent baseball pitcher, earning him several offers from colleges, which his parents and teachers encouraged him to pursue. However, these deals saw him only for his athletic ability and disregarded his academic success.
Along with this, Kaepernick had no passion for baseball. Instead, he felt a strong calling for football. His high school football team was a place of comfort for him, where his closest friends played alongside him. Meanwhile, his high school baseball team was made up of mostly strangers who regularly made racist comments. When Kaepernick spoke up against his teammates, the coach scolded him. 

In Change the Game, readers will come to understand how Kaepernick’s love for football developed alongside his awareness of the racial prejudices of his environment. Kaepernick grew up in a predominately white small town. He lived in a household with white adoptive parents and siblings. Since most of his friends on his football team were people of color, Kaepernick felt he could truly be himself around them. Not only did his teammates share his love for football, but he could also talk to them about their mutual feelings growing up in their town.  

Caicedo’s dynamic illustrations help the reader understand Kaepernick’s feelings throughout the story. For example, Caicedo illustrates Kaepernick’s daydream of a potential baseball career in wavy, overlapping panels. The climactic playoff game is illustrated across a double-page spread, with a small, claustrophobic layout of panels depicting Kaepernick’s anxious, shifting focus; the pictures include a closeup of the ball being caught, a referee barking out calls, a closeup of a shouting fan. The illustrations help the reader fully understand the intensity and anxiety of the game. Each page’s panels have zero to eight sentences. 

The book ends with a section describing Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp, a free camp that raises awareness on higher education and self-empowerment for young people of color, as well as instructions on how to interact with law enforcement in various situations. The section includes photos from the camp and quotes from its members, who answer how they plan to “change the game” as future leaders of change. 

Overall, Change the Game is an excellently illustrated graphic novel led by Kaepernick’s candid and personal voice as he retells the beginning of his athletic career. In this book, Kaepernick stresses the valuable lesson these experiences taught him: you should always stand up for what is right, even if it feels uncomfortable. The story is sure to resonate with young readers who may share Colin’s experience as well as readers who may not already recognize the more covert examples of racial prejudice in their own environments. 

Sexual Content 

  • Colin describes a “sort of game” in which his father would ask him who on TV he found attractive. 

Violence 

  • None 

Drugs and Alcohol 

  • None 

Language 

  • Colin overhears a white student saying the “n” word. 
  • A member of Colin’s baseball team refers to a “Mexican stealing another job” from a white store owner. 
  • Colin describes how he would overhear white fans of his high school football team refer to the team’s Black members as “animals out there,” or “real beasts,” without acknowledging that these descriptions are dehumanizing. 

Supernatural 

  • None 

  

Spiritual Content 

  • None

Gamer Girls: 25 Women Who Built the Video Game Industry

Women have always made video games: from the 1960s, first-of-its-kind, projector-based Sumerian Game to the blockbuster Uncharted games that defined the early 2000s. Women have been behind the writing, design, scores, and engines that power one of the most influential industries out there. In Gamer Girls, you can explore the stories of 25 of those women. Bursting with bold artwork, easy-to-read profiles, and real-life stories of the women working on games like Centipede, Final Fantasy, Halo, and more, this dynamic illustrated book shows what a huge role women have played—and will continue to play—in the creation of video games.

With additional sidebars about other influential women in the videogame industry, as well as a glossary and additional resources page, Gamer Girls offers a look into the work and lives of influential pixel queens such as:   

  • Roberta Williams (one of the creators of the adventure genre) 
  • Mabel Addis Mergardt (the first person to write a video game) 
  • Muriel Tramis (the French “knight” of video games) 
  • Keiko Erikawa (creator of the otome genre) 
  • Yoko Shimomura (composer for Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, and Kingdom Hearts) 
  • Rebecca Heineman (first national video game tournament champion) 
  • Danielle Bunten Berry (creator of M.U.L.E. and early advocate for multiplayer games) 
  • And more! 

Anyone who plays or wants to make video games should read Gamer Girls, which gives readers a peek inside the video game industry. Many of the women made an impact on the video game industry by using their unique perspectives. The gamers discuss how they overcame obstacles; this includes creating new technologies that were necessary to bring their video game ideas to life. In addition, each woman gives advice. For instance, Kazuko Shibuya, the video game artist behind the Final Fantasy Series, explains: “There’s no substitute for experiencing things with your own two eyes, taking the whole atmosphere and context directly. A designer must hone all five of her senses. . . They are all connected to creativity. The more experiences you have to draw from, the more depth you will be able to impart to your creations.” 

Gamer Girls is broken into clear sections that are easy to follow. The first page introduces a new woman, features a full-page illustration of the woman, and lists her role in the video game industry. Each illustration is drawn using orange and purple, which give the pages a lively feel. Short sections titled “Side Quest” introduce other women who impacted the industry. And since some readers may not understand all of the technological terms, there is a glossary.  

Even girls who don’t dream of creating video games can still learn important lessons from the women featured in Gamer Girls. Donna Bailey, writer of the first romance game, advises, “Never stop learning new skills. Whether it’s choosing a new career because of a song, or leaving a career to reconnect with yourself, never lose the sound of your inner voice, and never lose curiosity.” Readers of Gamer Girls will come away feeling inspired to make their dreams come true. 

Sexual Content  

  • Game Developer Robin Hunicks spoke at a video game conference. “Robin quickly listed the types of game art displayed in hallways: ‘Sexy babes who can’t stop touching themselves. Coy babes who are kinda naked. Lesbian baaaaabes. Studded babes!. . . Latex babes.’ Hunicks went on to talk about how to reach women gamers.” After her rant, she “flipped the audience a set of double birds and walked off the stage.” 
  • A Japanese video game called Seduction of Condominium Wives was “a role-playing game in which a door-to-door salesman tries to sell condoms to women and fights Yakuza and ghosts.” 
  • Two video game designers became frustrated with people asking, “What’s the game mechanic for sex?” Later, they released “a game about sex that has nothing graphic in it. It’s a collection of flowers, shapes, colors, circles, and eyes.” 

Violence  

  • None 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • None

Language  

  • One game developer’s advice is to “know your shit.” 

Supernatural 

  • None

Spiritual Content  

  • None 

And Break the Pretty Kings

Princess Mirae is destined to inherit a dark legacy: Her mother, Queen of the magical city of Seolla, is succumbing to madness, which has stemmed from her connection to the Inconstant Son, a mysterious entity trapped beneath Seolla who threatens to destroy the world. Now, with her mother’s health failing, Mirae must face a trial of the gods, who will decide if she’s worthy to follow in her mother’s footsteps as Queen. 

On the night of her trial, disaster strikes. When Mirae obtains the power of horomancy – controlling time – she unwittingly is trapped in a vision of the future. The Inconstant Son attacks the city during the chaos and kidnaps her brother, Minho, to turn him into a slave to govern his army of brainwashed soldiers. Mirae must save her brother, despite the premonition that she must let Minho die. Nevertheless, Mirae sets out on a journey with an unlikely group of companions while her unpredictable magic gives her terrifying visions of a future she must stop at any cost. 

After multiple meetings with the Inconstant Son, Mirae learns that Seolla – which only allows women to practice magic – has built their monarchy by branding the men who can do magic with a mark that represses their abilities. The man trapped beneath Seolla is not the Inconstant Son but instead his descendant, who has been trapped for centuries. This man – called the Netherking – wants to use Mirae’s brother to start a male-led revolution. In particular, he wants revenge on Mirae’s mother, who abandoned the Netherking’s beloved wife and daughter to an awful fate. As the story progresses, Mirae’s loyalties are tested as she finds it necessary to ally with the Netherking to get her brother back while also wanting to prevent him from destroying her kingdom. However, she tries to treat her enemies with grace. After stopping the Netherking’s plans, she gives his allies a new chance at life in Seolla despite their past wrongs.  

Mirae is a talented and promising young woman who always tries to find the bright side. For example, she professes, “There are two sides to every moon. . . depending on where you’re standing.” Even when she can’t see the path ahead, Mirae boldly forges her own. She is not solely good nor evil but understands both are part of life.   

Mirae, the rest of the supporting characters, and the story’s multiple villains all get their time to shine. The villains feature prominently in the story and have well-developed backstories, making the whole cast of characters seem less like villains and heroes and more like individuals trying to do what they think is right. This allows all of the characters to be compelling. 

From the beginning, many things are fated to be: The queens of Seolla go mad, men can’t practice magic, the kingdom of Josan is evil, and the Inconstant Son will ruin the world. However, the story’s events slowly convince Mirae that the destiny of her kingdom is not set in stone. She makes her own way forward, offering forgiveness to the misguided and defying the long-standing rivalry between Seolla and Josan. Her main concern is protecting those she loves, but she begins to see merit in uncovering the truth behind the Inconstant Son if it means bringing peace to both kingdoms.  

And Break the Pretty Kings is a very difficult read due to the intricate worldbuilding and endless unfamiliar terms. Almost every page references types of magic, types of people, and creatures of legend. Because of its complexities, the book is almost inaccessible to the average reader without a base knowledge of Korean folklore and culture. However, if you already have some knowledge, this book could be an enjoyable challenge as it blends fantasy with history in a unique way. Those who enjoy high fantasy stories with cultural ties and intricate worldbuilding will enjoy reading Mirae’s journey as she tries to change her fate.  

Sexual Content  

  • None

Violence  

  • Mirae’s mother is afflicted with madness, which causes her to attack her children. “Mirae lowered her damp palms, bidding the elements under her control to disperse. But they didn’t obey. Instead, the water roiled into a whirlpool of rage. . . As the droplets churned each other into chaos, Minho became nothing more than a flailing blur, fast running out of air. . . Mirae whirled towards the palanquin and saw a pale, skeletal arm reaching through the beaded curtains, stretching in Minho’s direction. A second later, her mother’s face pushed past the beads. . .The madness. It had taken hold of her mother, filling her mind with delusions once again. Turning her magic against those she loved. . . Mirae fell to her knees, gasping for air as her mother’s magic crushed her head and neck.” Mirae dispels the magic before she goes unconscious. 
  • Mirae hears the oracles that attended her trial being murdered. “The sound of something whipping through the air, trailing a series of clacking noises behind it. Chattering teeth or guttural clicks deep in the throat. More wet slices. Chokes and gurgles. Then the screams of oracles being murdered.” 
  • Mirae’s mother goes insane and attacks her husband. “Mirae shot one last look at her father. Her mother was sending more violet fireballs at him. . .” Mirae watched as “her father grabbed her face and kissed her, just as her clawlike hands raked red lines down his back, bloodying his blue robe like a smear of a sunset against a perfectly calm sky.”  
  • Minho is kidnapped and drowned in a tub of magical water. “A wide stone room [was] lined with deep basins. Each was filled to the brim with black water. . . The guards lifted [Minho], fighting futilely against them, into one of the tubs. They submerged all but his head, which he kept above the water with all his strength. [They] grabbed Minho’s hair and shoved his head under. Mirae watched, horrified, as the dark water bubbled with air her brother could no longer breathe. Once the ripples stopped altogether and the black water fell still, Minho floated to the surface face-down.” Minho is unconscious until his rescue. 
  • Mirae kills the Netherqueen. “Mirae lifted the sword over her head and struck the Netherqueen’s body with everything she had. As soon as the sword hit flesh, it glowed, slicing through the Netherqueen’s shoulder and lodging in her heart. Sparking, searing, smoking everything it touched except for Mirae’s hand.”   

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • None 

Language  

  • None 

Supernatural  

  • Three types of magic exist and are mentioned frequently. They are known as Sacred Bone Magic. Sacred Bone Daughters are women in Seolla who are blessed by a magical lineage. 
  • The first type of magic is the ability to control the elements (earth, air, fire, and water). This magic is called Jade Witchery, which can be used to summon fire or manipulate the earth. For example, Mirae throws a fireball while training. “Mirae raised a hand to the heavens. . . A small, white-hot orb appeared in her palm; before its sharp heat could blister her skin, Mirae lobbed it with all her strength at her opponent.” 
  • Mirae witnesses someone using Jade Witchery to repair destruction in the palace’s courtyard. “Mirae heard the sound of the grass rustling as it righted itself and the ground rumbling as it stitched itself back together. It would be long before the field looked exactly as it had before, heeding the will of a powerful Jade Witch.”  
  • The second type of magic is illusory, called Ma-eum Magic. Mirae describes it as “the ability to trick an opponent into sensing something that wasn’t actually there.” Mirae uses this magic to change her appearance when she’s in the Josan kingdom so she can’t be recognized. It is used many times in the story to alter a character’s physical appearance, such as making them smell like perfume or altering their facial features. 
  • A general enchantment type of magic is also mentioned frequently, such as when Mirae enchanted a turtle to fly and talk, but the incident is not described. 
  • The third type of magic is called Horomancy, the ability to manipulate time. Mirae describes it: “Of the three magic systems, which exemplified the virtues of cunning, craftsmanship, and foresight, horomancy was the most enigmatic power. Mirae had never seen it used, though she knew that was for good reason. The rules of time were rigid, dangerous things to manipulate.”   
  • Hongbin, Mirae’s younger brother, thinks a visitor to the palace is a “gumiho,” a Korean creature of legend similar to a nine-tailed fox. He previously thought the visitor was a dokkaebi, the Korean name for demons. 
  • There are three powerful relics called the Sacred Bone Relics that correspond to the ancestors of the different branches of magic. They are the dagger of the Silver Star (representing Ma-eum magic), the seong-suk – a stone – of the Deep Deceiver (representing Jade Witchery), and the black bell of the Unnamed Dragon (representing Horomancy). Mirae chooses the black bell to guard her reign. 
  • After picking the bell, Mirae switches to another time period where she sees her brother, whose face looks “like he’d battled monsters and knew that the world held many, many things to fear.” She realizes she has used Horomancy to travel into the future. Several times, she switches time periods, which works like visions of the future that guide her on her journey. 
  • Mirae switches time and sees a festival in the spirit world where people dance and sing in animal masks.  
  • Mirae’s mother gifts a magical necklace with 12 beads depicting the 12 horoscope animals. Each bead contains a different power, which Mirae uses. For example, she uses an ox bead to gain strength. “She picked up the ox bead and put it on her tongue. The powers of the bead made her stumble back almost immediately with vertigo, trembles, goosebumps, and a crashing headache all at once. But the symptoms faded in seconds. As the bead warmed on her tongue, Mirae felt its power swell within her, roping around her muscles and making them bulge. Just then, the door to the room she was hiding in flew open, and Mirae reacted on instinct; she punched her opponent right in the chest with all the strength of an ox, throwing him through the door and into the wall behind him.” 
  • Mirae and her companions encounter a gwisin, the evil spirit of a woman who has suffered. This gwisin, the haggard moon gwisin, is described as having “hair dark and long enough to blend in with the spaces between trees. There was a starry paleness to her sleeveless knee-length dress, which wasn’t long enough to hide the fact that she didn’t have any legs – nor did she have a face. . . Gwisin lingered because they, or someone they loved, had been wronged. . . according to legend, the haggard moon gwisin [was] abandoned by a friend, left to die alone and in pain, and subsequently drowned anyone who showed her any kindness, before they had the chance to betray her too.” 
  • Mirae summons a dragon with Sacred Bone Magic. 

Spiritual Content  

  • The book frequently references mudang, the name for Korean shamans. These women are known for performing rituals in which gods possess them. When Mirae and her companions are traveling, she pretends to be one of these shamans, triggering her “switching” power instead of actually becoming possessed. 
  • The book also references “gods” or praying to the gods, but no gods are named in particular.  
  • Mirae’s family are known as the “gods-touched” guardians of Seolla. The gods are beings that are respected, and are often mentioned in the context of fate and destiny, such as “I could only do something like that with permission from the gods” or “I hope the gods are on our side.”  

The Red Pyramid

After his mom’s sudden death, Carter Kane has spent every moment traveling the world with his father, Dr. Julius Kane, an Egyptian scholar. While Carter’s sister, Sadie, has lived with her grandparents in the United Kingdom, where Carter and Julius visit her every year. What starts as a normal visit to the British Museum turns their lives upside down when their father accidentally summons several Egyptian gods and goddesses and is captured in the process.  

One night, Dr. Kane brings the siblings together for a “research experiment” at the British Museum, where he hopes to set things right for his family. Instead, he unleashes the Egyptian god Set, who banishes him to oblivion and forces the children to flee for their lives.

Soon, Sadie and Carter discover that the gods of Egypt are waking, and the worst of them—Set–has his sights on the Kanes. To stop him, the siblings embark on a dangerous journey across the globe — a quest that brings them ever closer to the truth about their family, and their links to a secret order that has existed since the time of the pharaohs. 

Along the way, Carter and Sadie meet Zia, a magician who is part of the House of Life, a group of magicians that Carter and Sadie’s parents were a part of. With her knowledge from being trained by the House of Life, Zia helps Carter and Sadie learn to use magic. “The Egyptian word shesh means scribe or writer, but it can also mean magician. This is because magic, at its most basic, turns words into reality.” Zia helps Sadie and Carter learn to develop their abilities as magicians, but she also becomes their friend; helping them fight chaos up until the final battle at the end of the book.  

The Red Pyramid shows the growth of Carter and Sadie’s friendship and relationship as siblings. They have lived apart for so long that they now have to get to know each other as pre-teens while they work together to learn about magic and save their dad. Each sibling is jealous of the other. Sadie says, “Poor [Carter], forced to travel the world, skip school, and spend time with Dad while I get a whole two days a year with him!” Carter responds, “You get a home! You get friends and a normal life and don’t wake up each morning wondering what country you’re in!” Eventually, Sadie and Carter learn to appreciate each other.  

Carter’s and Sadie’s experiences highlight how power in the wrong hands can be corrupt. For example, the god Set wanted the throne and power so badly that he imprisoned another god, Osiris, and harmed his sister, Isis, and her son, Horus. Horus tells this story to Carter and says, “Anger gave me the strength to defeat Set and take the throne for myself, you must do the same.” But unlike Horus and Set, Carter doesn’t want to rule. Carter says, “I don’t want a throne, I want my dad.” Carter and Sadie never give into the advantages that Set or the powers of chaos would give them, which makes them empathetic characters.  

Ultimately, The Red Pyramid leaves readers with an important message: you cannot assume anyone is completely good or completely evil. As their fight with Set ends, Sadie and Carter recognize that while Set is “evil, faithless, ruthless, vile . . . [Set] is also the strongest god” and they need his help to defeat the coming chaos, Apophis. Set is surprised by their ability to team up with him after all he’s done, but Carter and Sadie recognize, “we have to gain strength too—gods and men, united like in old times” to defeat Apophis, as “chaos is rising.”  

Readers who enjoy mythology, action, and magic will absolutely love Carter and Sadie’s journey in this book as they learn how to use their powers and make sacrifices to stop chaos from overtaking the world. Readers will empathize with Sadie and Carter as they strengthen their brother and sister bond while fighting to stop chaos and rescue their dad. This book will keep readers on the edge of their seats, eager to see what happens in the next book in the series. 

Sexual Content  

  • Sadie meets the god Anubis and says, “In person, if possible, Anubis was even more drop-dead gorgeous.”  
  • Carter says, “I was very aware of [Zia’s] shoulder pressed against mine . . . She had a dried chili stuck in her hair, and somehow that made her look even cuter.” 
  • Carter says, “Zia squeezed my hand, which sent a tingle up my arm.”  
  • Sadie sees a vision of the last time her parents saw one another: “They kissed one last time, as if they were saying goodbye.”  

Violence  

  • Carter explains that his mom died when he and Sadie were young. “I knew [mom] died in an accident in London. I knew my grandparents blamed my dad. But no one would ever tell us the details.” 
  • Carter and Sadie watch their dad fight a fiery being. “With another flick of his hand, he conjured a glowing coffin around our dad . . . My dad caught my eyes one last time, and mouthed the word Run! before the coffin sank into the floor, as if the ground had turned to water.”  
  • While entering the Land of the Dead, Sadie and Carter run into Shezmu, a creature defending the entrance. Shezmu explains that his role in the Land of the Dead is destroying the souls of wicked people after they have been judged by the God of the Dead, Osiris. Shezmu says, “Lord Osiris lets me behead the wicked! I crush them in my wine press, and make wine for the dead!”  
  • While the fiery god, Set, is fighting Carter, Sadie, and Zia, he threatens, “I will rend your limbs from their sockets!” For example, during this battle, when another magician arrives to help, Set quickly incapacitates him in a brutal way: “Set rose up behind [the magician] and swung his iron rod like a baseball bat. [The magician] tumbled, broken and unconscious, all the way down the pyramid.” 
  • Carter explains how easily Set is able to throw magicians around when they try to defeat him: “[Set] pointed at me, and I slammed against the wall, pinned as if an entire football team were holding me down.”  

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • None 

Language  

  • None 

Supernatural 

  • Carter and Sadie witness their dad using magic at the British Museum. “Dad was writing on the [Rosetta stone]. Wherever the [wand] made contact, glowing blue lines appeared on the granite. Hieroglyphs.” Carter and Sadie’s dad is opening the Rosetta Stone by writing magic hieroglyphs on it: “Dad raised his arms. He chanted: ‘Wo-seer, iei.’” Carter and Sadie’s dad is summoning the god of the dead, Osiris.  
  • Carter and Sadie realize they have magical powers when they reflect on a story from Sadie’s sixth birthday. Carter and Sadie were arguing and fighting with one another. Carter says, “We started yelling. [Sadie] grabbed my shirt. I pushed [Sadie] . . . Sadie’s birthday cake exploded.”  
  • Carter and Sadie accidentally awaken a shabti, a clay doll that can perform magic. Shabti “were supposed to come to life when their master called.” Several times, Carter and Sadie ask the Shabti to bring them information. 
  • When Sadie and Carter are about to be attacked by a scorpion goddess, Sadie’s cat, Muffin, turns into the Egyptian goddess of cats, Bast. Bast was a friend to Carter and Sadie’s parents and has promised to protect them as best she can. Sadie explains, “My cat was no longer there. In her place was a woman—small and lithe like a gymnast.” Bast is able to protect Carter and Sadie and she meets back up with them at a later point in the book after this battle.  
  • Carter and Sadie have unwittingly become hosts to the gods Horus and Isis. The goddess hosted by Sadie’s cat Muffin, Bast, explains, “Part of Isis’s spirit now resides inside [Sadie]. Just as Carter now carries the spirit of Horus.”  
  • Sadie and Carter see their dad in the Land of the Dead. He says, “I am both Osiris and Julius Kane. I am alive and dead . . . Osiris is the god of the dead, and the god of new life.” To bring Osiris back to his rightful place as a god, their dad had to die. 
  • Sadie and Carter also see their mom in the Land of the Dead, and she speaks with them reassuringly, explaining, “We can’t go back . . . But nothing is lost, even in death.”  

Spiritual Content  

  • The gods and goddesses of Egyptian mythology are a large portion of this book. However, instead of being reverently written, they act more like humans, showing traits like jealousy, vulnerability, and anger. For instance, Horus tries to influence Carter to take on more power and focus on anger: “Anger gave me the strength to defeat Set and take the throne for myself. [Carter] must do the same.”  
  • Uncle Amos explains to Carter and Sadie the ancient Egyptians’ understanding of the gods. Amos explains, “Egyptians had learned that their gods were not to be worshipped. They are powerful beings, primeval forces, but they are not divine in the sense one might think of God. [The gods] are created entities, like mortals, only much more powerful.”  
  • Carter’s dad gave him an ancient amulet that “was an eye of Horus, a popular protection symbol in Ancient Egypt.” 
  • The gods “cannot walk the earth in their pure form—at least, not for more than a few moments. They must have hosts [human hosts].” Carter and Sadie both unwittingly become hosts for Egyptian gods in this book. Carter hosts Horus and Sadie hosts Isis. Carter explains what it is like when he and Horus work together during a battle as Horus’ power allows Carter to have protective shields and amplified strength. Carter says, “[Horus] did not control me. I did not use [Horus] for power. We acted as one…My combat avatar formed around me, lifting me off the floor and encasing me with golden energy.”  
  • Sadie can communicate with Isis in her mind because she is hosting the goddess. Carter is able to do the same with Horus. Sadie describes struggling to decide what to do in the final battle: save her dad first or make sure Set is defeated. The discussion with Isis in Sadie’s mind is depicted, “Set must be dealt with first, Isis warned. But if I can free Dad…I stepped towards the throne. No, Isis warned. It is too dangerous.” Ultimately, Sadie works with Isis to defeat the chaos god Set. Sadie hosting Isis gives her the ability to open a magical portal. “‘A mortal can’t,’ [Sadie] agreed. ‘But a goddess can.’” 
  • Uncle Amos tells Carter and Sadie, “In the old days, the priests of Egypt would call upon these gods to channel their power and perform great feats. That is the origin of what we now call magic.”  
  • Uncle Amos explains an ancient Egyptian burial ritual: “In ancient times, the east bank of the Nile was always the side of the living, the side where the sun rises. The dead were buried west of the river. It is considered bad luck, even dangerous, to live there.”  
  • Carter and Sadie learn from the god Thoth that, “Everything in Creation has a secret name . . . Even gods.” And they learn that “To know a being’s name is to have power over that creature.”  
  • Before making an alliance with Set to fight chaos, Sadie and Carter ask Set to “Swear by your own name and the Throne of Ra” to ensure he keeps his word does so. 

Bruiser

Tennyson is not surprised, really, when his family begins to fall apart, or when his twin sister, Brontë, starts dating the misunderstood bully, Brewster (or The Bruiser, as the entire high school calls him). Tennyson is determined to get to the bottom of The Bruiser’s reputation, even if it means gearing up for a fight. Brontë, on the other hand, thinks there’s something special underneath that tough exterior. And she’s right . . . but neither she nor Tennyson is prepared for the truth of what lies below the surface.  

Told through Tennyson, Brontë, and Bruiser’s points of view, this dark, twisting novel explores friendship, family, and the sacrifices we make for the people we love. Shusterman masterfully weaves a haunting story that leaves the reader questioning what they would do in a similar situation to the book’s characters.  

Tennyson, Brontë, and Bruiser are not typical teens readers will relate to. In fact, Tennyson and Brontë aren’t very likable. Tennyson is a bully who ends up putting his own personal needs in front of everyone else—even if that means Bruiser gets hurt in the process. On the other hand, Brontë treats Bruiser like a project instead of a person. Even after Brontë realizes why Bruiser chooses not to have friends, she pushes him into her own social circle. Although Bruiser shares his secret with the siblings, Tennyson and Brontë don’t consider Bruiser’s needs. And in the end, readers will question if Bruiser was better off before Brontë takes an interest in him. 

Since Bruiser is narrated by Tennyson, Brontë, Brewster, and Brewster’s brother Cody, readers get an inside perspective of each character’s thought process. Each voice is distinctive and unique, especially Brewster’s point of view, which is written in poetry. Brewster’s point of view is haunting because it shows his pain, his isolation, and his struggle to balance his gift with the needs of others. The realistic conclusion doesn’t show a happy ever after for any of the characters. Instead, it leaves readers with this message: “Everyone must feel their own pain—and as awful as that is, it’s also wonderful.” 

The book’s point of view switches often, keeping the suspense high; this is one reason readers will not want to put the book down. Readers will also become emotionally attached to Bruiser, who is willing to sacrifice his own happiness to help the people he loves. To further that thought process, in the author’s note, Shusterman explains his inspiration for Bruiser and the questions the book explores. If you’re looking for a fun book with a hint of adventure and romance, Bruiser is not the book for you. However, Bruiser is a thought-provoking book that will linger with readers long after they put it down.  

Sexual Content  

  • While on a date with Brewster, Brontë “found myself leaning forward to kiss him. . . It was just a peck, really, and I moved so quickly that our teeth bumped.” 
  • After the first kiss, Brewster and Brontë kiss several times, but the kiss isn’t described.  
  • When Brewster moves in with Brontë’s family, her dad tells him, “You’ll never need to go upstairs.” This is where Brontë’s room is located. Brontë gets upset and yells, “My God, Dad, why don’t you install motion sensors on the stairs to make sure he doesn’t come up at night?” 
  • Brontë’s father had an affair. Brontë thinks, “Tennyson and I knew what Dad had done. We had been furious about it, because fathers aren’t supposed to have girlfriends—even if only for a short time.  
  • Tennyson sees his mom having lunch with another man. Tennyson thinks, “What’s she even doing sneaking around with this guy?”  
  • After a lacrosse match, Tennyson goes over to his girlfriend, and “I pull her in for a quick kiss. She doesn’t resist, but she does try to pull away after a second.” Afterward, the girlfriend breaks up with Tennyson. 

Violence  

  • Brewster’s younger brother is crying over a dead bull. His uncle tells the boy to “get your ass away from it.” When the boy doesn’t move, his uncle takes off his belt, and “he brings his arm back, threatening to swing the buckle.” Tennyson races toward them. “The moment I’m close enough, I realize my lacrosse stick is a weapon. . . Then I stare the man in his hateful, rheumy eyes and say, ‘If you hit that kid, I’ll take you down.’” 
  • After an awkward dinner at Brontë’s house, Brewster takes off. The next day, Brontë finds Brewster at his locker. “He turned to me and I found my arm swinging even before I was conscious of the motion. . .I slapped him so hard, his head snapped to the side, hitting his locker, which rang out like a bell. . . All of that fury I was feeling needed a way out.”  
  • Brewster and Cody’s uncle, Uncle Hoyt, become drunk and then go after Cody. “He grabs at me –missing mostly, but catching enough of my shirt to get me off balance. I fall, hitting the edge of the TV, and I know that Brew isn’t close because it hurts! . . . Uncle Hoyt tosses me, though, like I really am a rag doll. . . He moves closer. I can see his right hand clenching into a fist, and I know he’s gonna use it, so I reach for something.” Cody throws an ashtray, hitting Uncle Hoyt in the forehead. 
  • Uncle Hoyt takes Cody to the shed. Cody tries “to hide underneath the workbench. . . but he reaches right in and grabs my leg, and drags me out. I feel the concrete floor scraping my elbows; and as he pulls at me, I bite his arm with all the force I can. . .” Uncle Hoyt beats Cody until, “I close my eyes and stay limp, bouncing and flopping around the shed, lettin’ him kick, and hit, and pull, and tug.” The scene is described over five pages. 
  • Uncle Hoyt gets drunk again. Brewster “can smell scotch everywhere/ And wonder how much of that amber poison / Is pickling his brain.” Uncle Hoyt trashes the house, breaking everything. Uncle Hoyt has a stroke and dies.  
  • A cheerleader calls Brewster a psycho, and Brontë “gets into a death match catfight in the street” with the cheerleader.
  • While at a smoothie place, Ozzy, a teen who knows Brewster, starts saying mean things to Brewster. Tennyson jumps in to defend Brewster. When Tennyson makes fun of Ozzy, Ozzy pushes Tennyson and then hits him. Ozzy “lands one right on [Tennyson’s] mouth, then backs away to let it sink in.” Tennyson reacts, “Today I fight not to win, but to destroy. I start in on Ozzy with perfectly controlled methodology. . .” Tennyson hits him in the nose, and “I feel bone breaking against my knuckles. . . blood immediately begins to gush from his face, spilling onto the ground. He collapses. . .” The fight is described over five pages. 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • When Tennyson meets Uncle Hoyt, Tennyson “can tell he’s either drunk or hungover.” 
  • Brontë’s dad came home and opened a bottle of wine. “Tonight, he guzzled the first glass with the wine bottle still in his hand and poured a second.” Brontë tells him, “Dad, save the second glass for dinner.”  
  • When Uncle Hoyt is upset, “he goes drinking so as to get himself nice and mean. That’s why he drinks—he wants to get super-mean instead of just regular-mean, and he needs alcohol to get there.” 
  • Cody hears Uncle Hoyt on the phone. “He’s already been drinking, and he’s slurring his words.”  

Language  

  • Profanity is used very rarely. Profanity includes ass, crap, goddamn, and hell. 
  • “For God’s sake” and “Oh my God” are used as exclamations several times. 

Supernatural 

  • If Brewster cares about a person, he takes away their physical and emotional hurts. He has no control over this. For example, Brontë cuts her hand. The next time she is close to Brewster, she notices Brewster bleeding. “I could see the wound clearly now. It was my wound. Same size, same place. Only now it was on his hand.” 
  • Brewster’s brother, Cody, jumps off the roof. “. . . I landed on my feet, they slid out from under me because the ground was muddy. . . I felt the bone snap. . . I was getting ready to feel the hurt that I knew would be coming, but it didn’t come. Instead, when I lifted my arm from the ground, the snap undid itself; and I heard Brewster screaming’ bloodymurder.” Brewster’s arm was broken, but Cody’s arm was uninjured. 
  • Uncle Hoyt gives Brewster “his bursitis, his ulcers, and every one of his aches and pains.”  
  • Uncle Hoyt “took his cigarette out of his mouth. . . then he slowly lowered the lit end toward his arm, just beneath his elbow. He pressed the cigarette to his own skin. . . There was a red spot on his arm, but only for a couple of seconds and then it was gone. And inside Brew screamed bloodymurder.” 
  • While swimming alone, Brontë slips on the ladder rungs and hits her head, “knocking [her] unconscious.” Brewster finds her and pulls her out of the water. He thinks, “I have one last gift for you, Brontë, and it’s one you can’t refuse. /Inches from you now, I stop kicking, let my arms relax. /They drift down to my side. . .She starts to revive, I start to let go, /Giving myself to the waters.” Brewster willingly takes Brontë’s injuries and ends in the hospital in a coma. 

Spiritual Content  

  • Several times, when talking about his mom, Tennyson says, “God rest her soul.” 
  • When thinking about kids who are bullied, Tennyson thinks, “Thank God I’m good at sports, or I might have been pegged early in life and beaten up in the hallways.” 
  • When Uncle Hoyt is having a stroke, he asks Brewster to take his pain. Brewster doesn’t because “Your death is yours alone, Uncle Hoyt; it’s what you created, what you’ve earned. And you’ll know soon enough if God truly has mercy enough to forgive you. Because I can’t.” 
  • After Uncle Hoyt dies, Tennyson and Brontë’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Gorton, take Brewster and Cody in. “Apparently, Mr. and Mrs. Gorton are very big in their church, which means setting an example as Pillars of Virtue and doing the whole What Would Jesus Do? thing.” 
  • After Tennyson and Brontë’s parents take in Brewster and Cody, the social worker says, “God bless you. God bless you both.” 

Abracadabra: The Story of Magic Through the Ages

A magician never reveals his secrets . . . but HP Newquist does, in this illustrated history of magic and famous magicians!

Magic is a word we use to describe something amazing, awe-inspiring, or spectacular. Truly great magic makes us believe in things we know can’t be real. In the hands of the greatest magicians, even a simple card trick can become truly wondrous.

Now, in this nonfiction narrative of magic through the ages, HP Newquist explains how the world’s most famous tricks were created. From the oracles of ancient Egypt and the wizards of medieval Europe to the exploits of Houdini and modern practitioners like Criss Angel, this book unlocks the secrets behind centuries of magic and illusion. 

This fascinating book will astound readers as they learn about the history of magic. While much of the information will surprise readers, they will recognize some of the famous magicians the book discusses such as Robert-Houdin, P. T. Barnum, David Copperfield, and others. Although the stories are interesting on their own, the book also includes drawings, artwork, and pictures every one to three pages. These graphic elements break up the text and help readers understand some of the more complicated tricks.  

Abracadabra: The Story of Magic Through the Ages includes information on magic tricks such as who created the trick and how the trick works. In addition, the book also explains the social and cultural climate of the time. For instance, in the 1800s France controlled Algeria in North Africa. “A small group of Muslim holy men. . . planned to revolt against the French government.” The French government hired Robert-Houdin to trick the Algerians with magic. The Algerians believed Robert-Houdin had incredible powers and “they decided not to rebel against the French.” In addition to interesting historical facts, the book also covers how the business of magic changed throughout time.  

Abracadabra: The Story of Magic Through the Ages is packed full of interesting facts and will springboard readers’ interest in the most famous magicians throughout time. The interesting facts, fun format, and engaging text make Abracadabra: The Story of Magic Through the Ages a book that everyone can enjoy. And for those who dream of bringing a little magic to life, there are step-by-step instructions for eight classic magic tricks.  

Sexual Content  

  • None 

Violence  

  • During the Dark Ages, people who performed magic were accused of “practicing black magic. Witch hunts occurred regularly throughout Europe as villagers sought to destroy anyone they thought might be a witch. Many suspected witches were arrested and executed.”  
  • During the 1500s, “people began to look to both science and religion instead of local superstition to help them understand their daily lives.” People started exploring science. “Nonetheless, religion was still a more important part of people’s lives than science. And many religious leaders of the time didn’t like science. . . To stop scientists and others who didn’t follow its teachings, the church began inquisitions. . .” People who did not practice religion were “imprisoned, tortured, or executed.”  
  • In 1584, Reginald Scot wrote The Discovery of Witchcraft which “stated that there were no such things as witches or wizards, and no one on Earth had the power to control nature or change the things God made. . .” Outraged, King James and his soldiers burned all of the copies they could find. 
  • After a show, magician Harry Houdini was “relaxing on a couch. . . talking to some college students about how strong his stomach and chest muscles were.” One of the students “hit him several times without warning. Houdini had no time to prepare for the punches, which came hard and fast.” Houdini didn’t realize how badly he had been injured and died because of “a ruptured appendix and peritonitis.” 
  • Magicians Siegfried & Roy stopped performing after “Roy was mauled onstage in 2003 by one of the tigers in their act.” 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • None 

Language  

  • None 

Supernatural 

  • None

Spiritual Content  

  • During the Dark Ages, people believed “good things came from God and bad things came from the devil. Many churches in Europe even claimed that magicians were friends of the devil. . . Since God didn’t give men and women magical powers, there was only one explanation for magicians: they must have gotten their special powers from the devil.” 

Last Ride

Tom killed his best friend, Logan, in a street-racing accident a year ago. He tries to make amends to Logan’s girlfriend and keep his promise to never race again, but Tom thinks he is haunted by his dead friend. He thinks Logan is trying to tell him something. Not only that but because Tom faces huge medical bills from the accident and may have to give up his car, the pressure to race is almost unbearable. 

Last Ride focuses on Tom, who is living in guilt and fear. When Tom starts seeing Logan’s ghost, Tom thinks he’s being haunted because Logan is angry—angry that Tom caused Logan’s death and angry that Tom has a crush on Hannah, Logan’s girl. In addition to feeling guilty about Logan’s death, Tom also feels terrible that he has left his mom drowning in medical bills. While the details of Logan’s death are never explored, one thing is clear: Tom feels that without racing, he has no value. 

When Logan’s ghost finally gets Tom’s attention, Tom is surprised at Logan’s message: the accident wasn’t his fault. In addition, Logan wants Tom to stop living in fear. Logan says, “You’re scared you don’t measure up. . . You think you’re nothing without five thousand pounds of steel between you and the world.”  

Logan’s words make Tom examine his fears. Tom is afraid that without racing, he will lose his car, his chance to help his mom and his pride. He also worries, “What if I give it all up, and Hannah still doesn’t want me?” In the end, Tom finally finds the strength to give up racing and to make plans for the future. Plans that don’t include illegal activities, but instead focus on going to school to become a licensed mechanic. 

While most readers won’t relate to Tom’s conflicts, his insecurities, and uncertainty about the future will resonate with many teens. As a part of the Orca Soundings Series, which is specifically written for teens, Last Ride is an easy-to-read story that uses large text, short chapters, and a relatable protagonist to keep readers engaged. 

Last Ride gives readers a glimpse into the life of a street racing teen and shows the negative side effects of living a life involved in illegal activities. While Tom’s problems are not explored in detail, he regrets his past actions and is determined to change his life for the better. Even though readers get an inside look at Tom’s emotional conflicts, the story still has enough drama to keep readers interested until the end. Plus, Tom’s experiences show that people’s value doesn’t come from the car they drive or the possessions they own. 

Sexual Content  

  • Tom goes to a party. When he gets there, Aisha wants to dance with Tom. She “plants a wet, sloppy kiss on my cheek.” Another guy notices Aisha. “Cole’s eyes are trained on Aisha’s breasts, which are practically spilling out of her tank top.”  
  • While in class, Tom is talking to Hannah. However, Tom isn’t thinking about what Hannah is saying. Instead, “I’ve been mostly thinking about her breasts in that sweater.” Later, he thinks, “I wish I could throw my arms around her neck and kiss her. I wish I had the hots for someone other than my dead buddy’s girlfriend.”  
  • While at school, Hannah walks up to Cole, a classmate. Cole “pulls her into the crook of his arm and kisses her temple.” 

Violence  

  • None 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • Tom goes to a party at a teen’s house. When Tom enters the house, “The overpowering smell of smoke and booze hits my nose.” Several of the guys are “doing shooters.” There is plenty of alcohol at the party including tequila, beer, and vodka.  
  • The man Tom works for smokes cigarettes.  
  • While at work, Tom’s boss eats pizza and drinks a beer. 

Language  

  • Profanity is used occasionally. Profanity includes ass, badass, crap, damn, hell, holy shit, and pissed. 
  • A teen calls Tom’s boss a prick. 
  • The ghost of Logan calls Tom a dweeb, a wuss, and a loser.

Supernatural 

  • Tom keeps seeing flashes of his best friend, Logan. Before he sees Logan, Tom smells cherry Twizzlers, Logan’s favorite treat. While racing, Tom feels “that familiar prickle. . . There’s a flash of movement off to my right. It’s Logan. Staring at me from the passenger seat. One side of his face is cut and bleeding, the other is smashed beyond recognition.”  
  • Logan’s ghost wants Tom to stop living in fear. After talking, “Logan dips his head the way he used to. For a second, I [Tom] forget about his blood and ripped skin and exposed flesh. I see Logan, my friend. And I miss him.” Then, Logan disappears.  

Spiritual Content  

  • Tom sees Logan’s sister walking across the street. He slinks down so she doesn’t see him. Tom thinks, “Thank God I’m in the car. Thank God my steel shell is protecting me. I couldn’t stand her seeing me like this.”  

Pemmican Wars

Echo Desjardins, a 13-year-old Métis girl adjusting to a new home and school, is struggling with loneliness while separated from her mother. Then, an ordinary day in Mr. Bee’s history class turns extraordinary, and Echo’s life will never be the same. During Mr. Bee’s lecture, Echo finds herself transported to another time and place—a bison hunt on the Saskatchewan prairie—then she finds herself back in the present. In the following weeks, Echo continues to slip back and forth in time. She visits a Métis camp, travels the old fur-trade routes, and experiences the perilous and bygone era of the Pemmican Wars. 

Echo knows little about the Métis, the First Nations tribe from which she is descended. Even though Echo’s “grandpa was very proud to be Métis,” neither Echo nor her mother know much about their heritage. However, at the end of the book, Echo teaches her mother what she learned at school.  

Readers will have to rely on visual cues to understand Echo’s life because the graphic novel uses few words. In fact, Echo only has 20 lines of dialogue, and many are one-word responses. Despite this, Echo’s isolation is clear. Throughout the school day, Echo doesn’t interact with other students and tunes out the world by listening to music. When she goes home, there is little interaction with her foster mother or the other residents. Instead, Echo hides in her room. When Echo visits her mom, the two are not comfortable with each other, which adds to the feeling of isolation.  

When Echo enters the past, a young Métis takes her into the camp. Here, Echo learns about her people and watches a battle between the Métis and white settlers. In the current time, Echo’s history teacher, Mr. Bee encourages Echo to learn more about Métis history. Mr. Bee says, “The Métis have many things to be proud of. . . You’re not any less Métis because you don’t know your history.”  

Since most of the story is told through illustrations, the story lacks development. For example, Echo lives in a foster home. However, it’s unclear why Echo doesn’t live with her mother. Despite the lack of character development, the book teaches about the Pemmican Wars and explains how the Northwest Company and the Hudson Bay Company fought for dominance in the fur trade. During this time, the Métis’s land was taken over by white settlers, who demanded the Métis not sell pemmican or use horses to hunt buffalo.  

Including more historical information would help readers understand the significance of the Pemmican Wars. However, the book does include a timeline of the Pemmican Wars, a Pemmican recipe, and a poem about the wars. While the book doesn’t go in-depth, it shows the harmful effects of colonization, which are still felt by the Métis today. 

Sexual Content  

  • None 

Violence  

  • A battle between the Métis and white settlers is depicted over two pages. One illustration shows the Métis shooting at the white settlers. In the image, one man is in mid-fall with blood splatter around him while a Métis warrior, who has been shot in the chest, is being carried to safety. 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • None 

Language  

  • None 

Supernatural 

  • None 

Spiritual Content  

  • None 

Notable Native People

This beautifully illustrated collection celebrates the lives, stories, and contributions of Indigenous artists, activists, scientists, athletes, and other changemakers. From luminaries of the past—like nineteenth-century sculptor Edmonia Lewis, the first Black and Native American female artist to achieve international fame—to contemporary figures—like linguist Jessie Little Doe Baird, who revived the Wampanoag language—Notable Native People highlights the vital impact Indigenous dreamers and leaders have made on the world.

This powerful and informative collection also offers accessible primers on important Indigenous issues, from the legacy of colonialism and cultural appropriation to food sovereignty, land and water rights, and more. Notable Native People is an indispensable read for people of all backgrounds who are seeking to learn about Native American heritage, histories, and cultures.  

Notable Native People highlights native people who use their talents to improve the world. The book showcases native people from North America—including Hawaii and Alaska—and introduces artists, activists, authors, engineers, public speakers, etc. Readers will see how each person contributes to their tribe and positively impacts others.  

The book’s format is visually appealing. Each two-page spread features a full-page illustration of a person with a one-page passage. The illustration also includes an item important to the person. For example, Edmonia Lewis (a sculptor) is pictured with one of her sculptures and while Tallchief (a ballerina) appears in a ballet costume. While most people featured are still living, some lived during the 1800s.  

Anyone who wants to learn more about native history will be inspired by reading Notable Native People. Each person explains how their culture shaped them and discusses why keeping their traditions and ancestorial knowledge intact is important. Navigator Nainoa Thompson said, “Our people and those who come here should know the richness of our heritage. And not only know that but respect it.”   

Notable Native People will appeal to a wide range of readers, especially those interested in native history and the effects of colonization. Each person featured is inspiring because they are dedicated to a cause close to their heart, and they use their skills and passion to honor their tribe. Notable Native People will help dispel stereotypes surrounding native people and give readers a better understanding of native cultures. In addition, the stories will motivate people to positively impact their community.  

Sexual Content  

  • None 

Violence  

  • None 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • None 

Language  

  • None 

Supernatural 

  • None

Spiritual Content  

  • Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Daniel is a professional runner who participates in prayer runs. “These runs raise awareness for specific Native causes, and the participants use the runs as a ceremonial space to pray. . . You’re giving up that time and space . . . for your loved ones, for your relatives, for your communities, and staying in prayer and praying for them.” 
  • Kanaka Maoli, wife of a Hawaiian ruler and co-regent to the king, converted to Christianity in 1824. 

Rez Ball

These days, Tre Brun is happiest when he is playing basketball on the Red Lake Reservation high school team—even though he can’t help but be constantly gut-punched with memories of his big brother, Jaxon, who died in an accident. 

When Jaxon’s former teammates on the varsity team offer to take Tre under their wing, he sees this as his shot to represent his Ojibwe rez all the way to their first state championship. This is the first step toward his dream of playing in the NBA, no matter how much the odds are stacked against him. 

But stepping into his brother’s shoes as a star player means that Tre can’t mess up. Not on the court, not at school, and not with his new friend, gamer Khiana, who he is definitely not falling in love with. After decades of rez teams almost making it, Tre needs to take his team to state. Because if he can live up to Jaxon’s dreams, their story isn’t over yet.  

Anyone who feels as if their siblings overshadow them will relate to Tre, who often feels like he is walking in his brother’s shadow, even after his brother dies. As a sophomore, Tre is excited when he’s called up to the varsity team, hoping to prove his worth, but he struggles to fit in with Jaxon’s old teammates. In addition, the team likes to party with drugs and alcohol. Tre jumps into the party scene because he wants his teammates to think he is cool. Even though Tre’s parents know he is partying, they ignore the behavior. When Tre’s drinking begins to affect his basketball-playing ability, he finally confronts his teammates and asks them to make a pact to stop drinking until after the playoffs.  

Tre is a well-rounded person who loves basketball, superheroes, and hanging out with his best friend. Readers will relate to Tre’s struggle to fit in with his teammates and his desire to prove his worth on the basketball court. Tre exercises and practices during the summer to prepare for the basketball season. His motivation and determination are admirable qualities. Tre’s struggle to adjust to playing varsity and to fit in with his teammates is realistic and authentic. Through Tre’s experiences, readers will see the importance of friendship and forgiveness.  

Rez Ball shows the unique challenges that come with growing up on an Ojibwe reservation. Tre and his friends experience discrimination and police harassment. In addition, Tre must overcome the belief that, as an Indian, he isn’t capable of making it to the NBA. Rez Ball is first and foremost a book about basketball and there are many play-by-play basketball scenes. Yet, Tre’s family and school life is interspersed throughout the book, allowing the reader to understand how all aspects of Tre’s life affect him. Readers will also appreciate the references to comic books, superheroes, and Star Wars. 

By writing Rez Ball, Graves wanted to encourage other Native athletes to “Keep your heads up; keep your dreams alive. Have fun. Be grateful for what we do have, but don’t be afraid to go after more.” Ultimately, Tre’s team doesn’t win state, but their winning streak helps bring their community together. In addition, the story ends on a hopeful note—Tre gets his first recruitment letter from a university and his future looks bright. Sports enthusiasts should also read the true story Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team by Steve Sheinkin. To learn more about the conflicts unique to indigenous people, read Powwow Summer by Nahanni Shingoose. 

Sexual Content  

  • Tre and his friend Khiana are standing by Tre’s locker. When Tre’s friends sees them, he asks, “Are you two banging now or what?” They are interrupted before Tre or Khiana has time to answer. 
  • Khiana tells Tre about a past relationship with another girl. Khiana says, “I’m two-spirit, which among other things means I date boys and girls.” 
  • Tre is getting ready to leave to pick up Khiana. His uncle “Ricky reaches for his wallet in his pocket. ‘You need protection. I might have some in my wallet.’” Tre’s dad gets upset and replies, “He’s not a hornball like you were in high school.”  
  • Khiana shows up at Tre’s house wearing pajamas, which “turns on” Tre. Later, when Khiana sees Tre’s expressions, she says, “I know that look. . . The doe-eyed, falling-in-love look.” She tells Tre that she only likes him as a friend.

Violence  

  • Tre tells a new girl about the gangs by the reservation. “They’re here. Once in a while something messed up happens. Someone will get stabbed or shot. But I think they mainly sell drugs.” 
  • At a party, Tre gets drunk and starts yelling at his best friend, Wes. Tre says, “What the fuck ever. Fuck you, Wes. Fake-ass friend. Get the fuck out of here.” The partygoers encourage Tre and Wes to fight. Tre describes, “I finish my beer, crush it in one hand, then throw it at Wes. It smacks his forehead. He punches me. I grab my lower jaw; the pain is instant and sharp. . . I shove him down, jump on top of him, and throw wild punches at his face. People try to pull me off, but I keep slipping free to punch again. . .” Someone finally pulls Tre off of Wes.  

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • Tre’s dad smokes cigarettes and drinks beer often. In addition, when Tre’s uncles come over, they also drink beer.
  • Tre and the other basketball players often party where there is alcohol and weed. For example, Tre and his friend go to a party at a basketball player’s house where there is alcohol and a “cloud of weed.” Tre takes a drink of vodka. “I almost die coughing it up.” Tre doesn’t drink anymore. 
  • At one party, Tre worries about what his teammate, Mason, will do. “I worry that he’s drunk and going to be even more ballsy than normal.” To look cool, Tre drinks beer and tequila shots. “I lose track of how many drinks I’ve had. But my lips feel numb, and I’m no longer steady on my feet.” Most of the people get drunk.  
  • At one party, Tre gets really drunk. “The next morning, I struggle to walk, still feeling dizzy and a little drunk.” Another time, Tre gets so drunk that he goes home and “collapse onto my bed. . . When I close my eyes, the room spins. My tongue feels sandy. I’m dying for water or Gatorade, but if I drink anything, it’s coming right back up.”  
  • One of the basketball player’s dads is known as “the guy who brings the drugs in.” 
  • When Tre goes to his friend’s house, the basement smells like weed. 
  • Tre goes to a school dance and one of his friends takes out a flask. Tre and a few other guys take a swig and then chew gum to cover the smell. Later, two of the guys get suspended from basketball because they got caught drinking.  
  • One of the basketball players tells Tre that after high school, they will “go to work at the casino, or sling weed, or end up alcoholics, hooked on drugs, or dead.” 
  • Tre and his teammates often party and get drunk. Tre’s friend, Dallas, often drives Tre to the parties. Even though Dallas drinks and drives, Tre doesn’t say anything because he’s “trying to be cool.” 
  • When Tre’s dad was in high school, his team spent days “partying nonstop. They were so hungover that they got their asses handed to them in the regional tournament.”  

Language  

  • Profanity is used excessively among teens and adults. Profanity includes ass, bitch, damn, fuck, goddamn, hell, pissed, and shit. 
  • Christ, Jesus Christ, oh my God, holy and holy shit are used as exclamations frequently.  
  • During a game, Tre’s basketball coach yells at him. “You’re running around out there like a goddamn crackhead on the first of the month.”  
  • Infrequently, there is name calling such as bastard, bitch, and dick. 

Supernatural 

  • None

Spiritual Content  

  • At a tournament game, “some of the older white fans have their hands clasped in nervous prayer as they stare up at the scoreboard.” When a player sees the fans, he says, “Jesus was Black.”  
  • At dinner, Tre’s parents often talk about his brother Jaxon. “I swear to the Creator, almost every dinner, he’s all they talk about.”  
  • Tre isn’t sure what to do at a game until Dallas, one of the basketball players, waves Tre over. Tre thinks, “Thank the Creator for Dallas.”  
  • While at a party, Tre gets drunk and still drinks Jose Cuervo. “I throw back my shot and almost put it up. . . I’m holding a balled fist up to my mouth, praying to the Creator I don’t hurl all over the table.”  
  • After getting into a fight and getting a black eye, Tre prays “to the Creator that my mom can do something” to help cover his bruise. 
  • After Tre gets into a fight with his best friend, Tre’s mom says, “We need to smudge you down before you leave.” Then she takes a “shell with sage burning in it [and]. . . waves the smoke around me, I close my eyes, instantly feeling a bit better about everything.” Afterward, his mom says, “There’s a pouch of tobacco on the kitchen table. You need to put some out before you leave. Talk to the Creator. Thank him for today, for everything you have, and ask him to give you the courage to make things right.” 
  • Before a tournament game, the coach smudges the team. “Coach comes out from a back office with sage burning in a shell. We stand as he walks by us, one by one. We wave the smoke closer, carrying it up and over the back of our heads.” Afterward, the coach shows the guys footage of the team they are about to play. 

In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse

Jimmy McClean is a Lakota boy, though you wouldn’t guess it by his name. His mother is Lakota; his father is half white and half Lakota. Over summer break, Jimmy embarks on a journey with his grandfather, Nyles High Eagle. While on the road, his grandfather tells him the story of Crazy Horse, one of the most important figures in Lakota and American history. Through his grandfather’s tales about the famous warrior, Jimmy learns about his Lakota heritage and, ultimately, himself. 

Expertly intertwining fiction and non-fiction, author Marshall chronicles the many heroic deeds of Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse took up arms against the U.S. government. He fiercely fought against encroachments on the Lakota’s territories and to save the Lakota’s way of life. Crazy Horse led a war party to victory at the Battle of the Greasy Grass (the Battle of Little Big Horn), and he played a major and dangerous role as a decoy at the Battle of the Hundred in the Hands (the Fetterman Battle). Alongside Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse was the last of the Lakota to surrender his people to the U.S. Army.  

By drawing references and inspiration from the oral stories of the Lakota tradition, Marshall gives readers an inside perspective of the life of Tasunke Witko, better known as Crazy Horse. Jimmy and his grandfather follow in the footsteps of Crazy Horse, which allows Jimmy to better understand his heritage and to learn lessons from Crazy Horse’s life. For instance, Crazy Horse conveys the importance of generosity when he uses his hunting skills to “take care of the helpless ones.” Crazy Horse didn’t help others “because he wanted people to notice. He didn’t even want people to thank him. He just didn’t want anyone to go hungry.”  

When Crazy Horse’s best friend and his daughter died, Crazy Horse wasn’t afraid to show his grief. Crazy Horse openly cried, and his tears demonstrate that “even tough guys cry.” Many times, Crazy Horse proves his bravery when he puts his life on the line to help others. The Lakota believed that “courage was a warrior’s best weapon, and that it was the highest honor to give your life for your people. . . That’s what being a warrior was all about: facing the scary things no matter how afraid you were. That’s what courage is. And what’s more, it doesn’t only happen on the battlefield. You can have courage and face the tough things that happen to you anywhere.”  

While many warriors wanted to continue fighting the U.S. army, Crazy Horse ultimately surrendered for the tribe’s well-being. “He did it for the helpless ones, the old people, the women, and the children.” Surrendering was courageous because it meant acknowledging defeat and giving up his people’s freedom. In the end, Crazy Horse’s decisions emphasize the importance of bravery, generosity, and putting others’ needs first.  

Most of In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse focuses on Crazy Horse’s life. Since the story is being told to Jimmy by his grandfather, this allows Jimmy to ask questions and connect Crazy Horse’s experiences to his own life. In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse is an engaging story that teaches the importance of storytelling and remembering the past. The story allows readers to see history from the Lakota’s point of view and examines the reasons that Crazy Horse fought to keep his people free. To learn more about Native American’s culture and their unique struggles, you can also read Rez Dogs by Joseph Bruchac. 

Sexual Content  

  • None 

Violence  

  • The Lakota called the American soldiers Long Knives. “Long Knives were known to attack any Lakota—man, woman, or child. They were mean people—if they were people at all.” 
  • When Light Hair [Crazy Horse] was a boy, his village was attacked and set on fire. “The ground was scorch black where the flames had passed. Every buffalo-hide lodge was burning or had already been turned into a pile of ash. . . Light Hair saw that the bundles on the ground were people.” As Light Hair walked through the village, he saw many bodies. “Some of the bodies were small children.” 
  • After the attack, Light Hair finds a woman hiding. She says, “They shot people. My husband is . . . He’s gone. . . So is my baby.” The Long Knives took some of the people captive. The battle is described over four pages.  
  • A cow wanders into the Lakota’s village and is “butchered and the meat given away to old people.” Soon, soldiers appear, wanting the cow. The Lakota offered payment, but the man wanted his cow. Soon, Long Knives had gathered at the village. A soldier “demanded that the man who had killed the cow be brought to him.” 
  • When the Lakota can’t turn over the cow, a soldier fires a cannon into the village. “Conquering Bear was one of the first to fall, severely wounded. The waiting warriors attacked, charging the Long Knives. . . Many soldiers fell, and some ran away. Those fleeing were chased and cut down.”  
  • When the Long Knives were away from the fort, the warriors attacked. “Crazy Horse could hear the screams and shouts of the soldiers. Frightened horses were screaming too. . . Many of the soldiers were running, crowding together in the narrowest part of the ridge, and warriors on both slopes were firing arrows at them.” The soldiers tried to hide “but many had already fallen, struck down by bullets and arrows.”  
  • The warriors flanked the soldiers. “At a signal from Crazy Horse, the flanking warriors charged the remaining soldiers. Crazy Horse struck down with his war club.” Eighty soldiers were killed, and “some say forty warriors were killed.” 
  • During the fight, Crazy Horse’s best friend, Lone Bear, was killed. “Lone Bear had been shot through the chest. But it was so cold, the blood froze around the wound and stopped the bleeding.” Crazy Horse “held his friend in his arms until he died.”  
  • A Cheyenne woman dressed like a man and followed the warriors into battle. “When her brother’s horse was shot down, she raced in to rescue him. Soldiers were shooting at her from two sides, but she still managed to save him.” 
  • During a battle, “firing from the soldiers and the [enemy] warriors was constant. Every moment was filled with the sound of gunshots.” Some soldiers tried to take cover, but the Lakota “fired guns and bows and started fires.” The soldiers tried to cross the river, but “soldiers were falling, hit by bullets and arrows.” The scene is described over six pages. 
  • Later that day, the warriors attacked the soldiers who made a barricade. “Custer’s soldiers, his five companies, began to suffer casualties. That is, soldiers were being hit by bullets and falling. . . The sad fact is that Custer lost all his men, including himself. Every man in the five companies he led was killed in this second part of the battle.” The second part of the battle is described over three pages. 
  • After a battle, people from the Lakota village sought their loved ones. “Many of them were angry at the Long Knives . . . Then someone took a knife and cut a soldier’s body. All that anger was hard to hold back. So they began stripping bodies, taking things, and then mutilating them. . . Cutting arms and legs.” Grandpa Nyles says, “I personally think it’s a bad thing no matter who does it. But that’s the way it was then.”  
  • Soldiers and jealous warriors tried to capture Crazy Horse to imprison him. “When the Indian policemen saw [Crazy Horse’s] knife, they surrounded him. [An Indian leader] Little Big Man grabbed his arms from behind.” A soldier came and saw “a Lakota fighting with the Indian policemen, so he thrust his rifle with a long bayonet on the end of the barrel, at Crazy Horse.” The wound killed Crazy Horse. 

Drugs and Alcohol  

  • None 

Language  

  • None 

Supernatural 

  • None 

Spiritual Content  

  • None 

Code Talker

The United States is at war, and sixteen-year-old Ned Begay wants to join the cause—especially when he hears that Navajos are being specifically recruited by the Marine Corps. So he claims he’s old enough to enlist, breezes his way through boot camp, and suddenly finds himself involved in a top-secret task, one that’s exclusively performed by Navajos. He has become a code talker. Now, Ned must brave some of the heaviest fighting of the war, and with his native Navajo language as code, send crucial messages back and forth to aid in the conflict against Japan. His experiences in the Pacific—from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima and beyond—will leave him changed forever.

Throughout World War II, in the conflict fought against Japan, Navajo code talkers were a crucial part of the U.S. effort, sending messages back and forth in an unbreakable code that used their native language. They braved some of the heaviest fighting of the war, and with their code, they saved countless American lives. Yet their story remained classified for more than twenty years. But now, Joseph Bruchac brings their stories to life for young adults through the fictional tale of Ned Begay.

While Code Talker includes pieces of Ned’s early life, most of the story focuses on Ned’s experiences in the war. While at the mission school, Ned and the other Indians were taught that “it was no good to speak Navajo or be Navajo. Everything about us that was Indian had to be forgotten.” This is one reason why Ned was eager to join the Marines. He wanted to use his “sacred language” to help the United States win the war. While in battle, the code talkers proved their worth by becoming an integral part of their battalions.

Ned and his battalion fought through the Pacific and often endured heavy fighting. Ned describes the battles without using gory details; however, many people were killed and wounded, and these scenes may upset sensitive readers. Since the story includes Ned fighting many battles, the fight scenes become repetitious, and the story begins to drag. Another downside of the book is that none of the supporting characters are well-developed, and they lack unique personalities. Nevertheless, the supporting characters help readers understand that on the battlefield, Ned was able to make lasting friendships that helped him through this difficult time.

When Ned returned home after the war, he still faced discrimination. “It didn’t matter that I had fought for America. It didn’t matter that I had made white friends who would have sacrificed their lives for me when we were at war.” Some people only saw Ned as “another stupid Navajo.” Despite this, Ned learned to be “self-confident as a Marine, to believe that I could succeed in even the hardest battle.” Ned’s self-confidence and pride in his culture are inspiring, and Code Talker shines a light on how the Navajos were a critical component of winning the war. Anyone interested in history will find Code Talker a worthwhile read, especially because the Navajo code talkers’ role was kept a secret. In fact, it wasn’t until 2001 that Congressional Gold Medals were given to the Navajo and other code talkers.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • When the Americans came to the Navajos’ territory, “the Americans made war on all of the Navajos. They burned our crops, killed our livestock, and cut down our peach trees. They drove our people into exile. They sent us on the Long Walk.”
  • At the mission school, the principal heard Ned speak Navajo. The principal “slapped his hand over my mouth and picked me up under his arm like I was a little puppy who had done something bad. He carried me inside to the sink where there was a bar of brown soap. . . forced me to open my mouth, and then shoved that big, wet bar of soap into it. . . I choked and coughed and thought I was going to die.”
  • The children who refused to give up Navajo “were beaten with heavy sticks. . . Sometimes [the principal] would beat the boys and girls so badly that they would not be able to walk the next day.” One boy who refused to speak English was “taken into the cold stone basement and chained in a dark corner. He was kept there for a week with nothing to eat but pieces of stale bread and nothing to drink but water.”
  • When Ned goes into battle, he often describes the violence he witnesses so not all of the violence is listed below.
  • When Ned and his unit got to Guadalcanal, “shells landed all around [the American soldiers] . . . They heard the crack of the .25 caliber rifles of hidden snipers. . . There were plenty of bodies. Taking care of the American dead was the first priority in combat and as a result, the bodies of the Japanese soldiers were often left unburied for days.”
  • In Guadalcanal, “although the Japanese said they were liberating the island, they used the native people like slaves, beating or killing them if they tried to escape. . . [One man] had terrible scars all over his chest from when the Japanese had tied him to a tree and tortured him by stabbing him with bayonets.”
  • The American soldiers waded through the water to get to the beach. “The noise of hostile fire, the sound of men crying out as they were hit by shrapnel and bullets, we kept pushing forward.” Ned’s friend was injured by shrapnel, and Ned knotted a bandage around the wound. Ned learned that “seventy Marines [were] killed or missing. Another 124 wounded.”
  • The Japanese set up booby traps. “Two Marines had just been wounded in their arms and legs by shrapnel when they tried to retrieve a seemingly discarded .35 caliber Japanese machine pistol.”
  • Ned took a message to the Second Battalion, but they thought he was a Japanese soldier. An American soldier “stuck me right in the back with a bayonet. Before it could sink in, I rolled headfirst into a foxhole.” Someone recognized Ned and saved him from further attack.
  • Ned’s battalion was sent to the Mariana Islands to fight the Japanese. “The Marines stopped them with machine gun fire. The enemies fell like tall grass cut by a scythe. . . The Japanese women and children ran from the Marines in terror. They’d been told that Americans were devils who would kill and torture them.” The people were so afraid of the Americans that “they didn’t allow themselves to be captured. They blew themselves up with grenades. They climbed to the tops of cliffs and threw their children off before hurling themselves into the rocks below.”
  • Ned walked through one town that looked “broken.” “No living people were to be seen, but there were many bodies of native people, who’d been slaughtered by the angry Japanese as they pulled back.”
  • When night came, the Japanese attacked. “Many of those attackers were killed by our machine guns, but others fought through. Each time a wave of attackers was wiped out, another human wave came screaming in . . . Thirty-five hundred enemy soldiers had died, including many of their high officers.”
  • Ned was out in the jungle and described, “One moment I had been walking along. The next I heard a sound like the buzzing of an angry bee just as something slapped me on my shoulder. . . when I looked at my shoulder I saw blood welling out and felt my knees getting weaker.” Ned recovers from his injuries.
  • During a battle, “tracer bullets stitched the air above our heads. Once again I heard the sound. . . the dull thud, between the sound of a slap and a bunch, of a bullet hitting the body of a human being. I heard it again and again, followed by cries of pain from those who were not killed when burning pieces of lead struck them.”
  • While in the thick of battle, Ned heard a cry from his friend Georgia Boy who was “holding his own throat. Blood was spurting through his fingers, and his helmet had been knocked off . . . Someone was yelling for a medic. It took me a moment to realize that the person was yelling in Navajo. . . Then I realized I was the one doing the yelling.” Georgia Boy survived.

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • When some of the men had free time, they drank heavily. “When they were drunk, they no longer could think of those things. Some of our Navajo code talkers joined in the heavy drinking. After the war, they still kept on with that drinking to try to keep that terrible world of war out of their minds”
  • On New Year’s Eve, some of the men drank beer. Ned and his friend poured beer over each other.

Language

  • Some of the soldiers called the Navajo code talkers “Chief.” Ned “knew that my own white friends who called me Chief didn’t mean to insult me and I didn’t want to hurt their feelings by correcting them.”
  • A General said, “We’ll catch seven kinds of hell on the beaches and that will be just the beginning. The fighting will be fierce and the casualties will be awful, but my Marines will take the damned island.”

Supernatural

  • Some American soldiers wore cotton waistbands called sennimbari, or Cloth of a Thousand Stitches. “They believed that those sennimbaris had the power to protect their wearer from being hit by enemy bullets.” Ned doesn’t believe the sennimbaris can save people.

Spiritual Content

  • After the Navajos were forced on the Long Walk, “Our people prayed. They did a special ceremony.” Afterward, the Navajos were allowed to return home.
  • Before Ned went to the reservation school, his uncle “had been praying life would not be as hard for me at school as it had been for him…”
  • The Navajo “men and women always kept their hair long. It was a sacred thing. Cutting your hair was believed to bring misfortune to you.” Despite this, when the Indians got to the mission school, their hair was cut off.
  • Since the school was a mission school, some Navajos belonged to the Catholic church. Ned’s parents “had been baptized and went with us when we attended church. But being Catholic did not mean we would forget the Holy People and our Navajo Way.”
  • A Marine said, “You know. . . That Golden Rule and those other things that Jesus Christ said people needed to live by? Well, that Golden Rule and those other things he did makes me believe that maybe Jesus was a Navajo.”
  • Before Ned goes off to war, he is given a Blessingway. During a Blessingway “many family members and friends and well-wishers gathered around the hogan, all of them putting their minds together to wish success and goodness for you.” Corn pollen is “sprinkled on the earth into crosses where you kneel. Then you, too, are blessed with that pollen. . .”
  • Before Ned is shipped out, he “rose before dawn and prayed with my corn pollen. I asked the Holy People to remember me and help keep me safe on the ocean from the monsters that hid beneath its surface.”
  • Before going out to battle, Ned “reached down to touch my buckskin pouch filled with corn pollen. I had prayed earlier that morning, but now I whispered the words again in our sacred language, asking the Holy People for protection.”
  • The Navajo “tradition tells us that we must avoid the bodies of those who have died. A bad spirit sometimes remains around the corpse. To even look upon the body of a dead person may make you sick.”
  • Ned’s parents sent him a letter saying, “We are continually praying in church for your safety and for our other Navajo boys over there. We are praying for your quick return home.”
  • Ned sent his unwashed battle fatigues home “to stand for me in a protection ceremony. . . On the day when prayers and songs would be offered to ask help for me, my clothes would be there, in the hands of my family. On that day I would feel the presence of the Holy People.”
  • When Ned got to Iwo Jima, “I faced the east, took a pinch of pollen from my pouch, and placed it on my tongue. I put a little dab of pollen on top of my head and spoke to the Holy People. ‘Let me have clear thoughts, clear speech, and a good path to walk this day,’ I prayed.”
  • When the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, Emperor Hirohito talked over the radio. “It was a shock to those people in many ways, grandchildren. None of them ever expected to personally hear their emperor. Remember that Hirohito was a distant god to them. They had never heard a god’s voice before.”
  • When the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, Ned prayed “that such bombs would never fall on human beings again.”
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