Reading Level: Young Adult

The Cruel Prince

Jude, her twin sister Taryn, and half-sister Vivi lived a normal life until their parents were murdered by Madoc, Vivi’s war general faerie father. Despite killing their parents, Madoc takes the three sisters to live with him at his estate in Faerieland. While Vivi is half-faerie, Jude and Taryn are outsiders to their new world and some of the only well-treated mortals in the land. However, being the high general’s “children” does not grant them respect. At school, Taryn and Jude find themselves the butt of many jokes and are tormented by Cardan (a faerie prince), Nicasia, Locke, and Valerian. Jude often feels powerless against the fae and is subject to their glamours and compulsions. Plus, her mortality makes her vulnerable to their cruel jokes.

However, Jude’s life begins to change when she becomes a spy for Prince Dain, Cardan’s brother and next in line to be the High King of Faerie. Given a geas by the prince, which prevents compulsion, Jude begins to stand up to Cardan and his friends. She also begins a romance with Locke, who is the only one of Cardan’s friends that had ever shown her compassion. Jude’s mortality allows her to slip into Hollow Hall (Prince Balekin’s residence; Dain’s main competition for the throne) unnoticed and gather crucial information for Dain’s cause.

At the coronation, Taryn reveals that she is to be married to Locke, shocking everyone, most notably Jude, who believed herself to be Locke’s girlfriend. While Dain is being crowned, chaos breaks out and Balekin, Dain’s brother, challenges Dain for the throne. Madoc, who is secretly working with Balekin, kills Dain, and shortly after, all of Dain’s siblings have been killed or committed suicide—except for Cardan, who is nowhere to be seen. While scrambling for shelter from the bloodshed, Jude stumbles upon Cardan, and decides to take him hostage and use him as a bargaining chip with Balekin and Madoc. While holding him hostage, Jude discovers Cardan’s reason for hating her, which is that he cannot stop thinking about her and shamefully desires her.

Jude becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and discovers her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.

Told from Jude’s point of view, The Cruel Prince explores the triumph of an outsider. Although the characters feel believable, at times, it can be difficult to root for them, or even like them, because they are cruel. The novel pushes the point that cruelty only begets more cruelty, and that betrayal and ruthlessness are essential in the pursuit of power. The plot is rather complex, and the book is chock-full of events that all seem to be very important. Although some events seem superfluous at first, their relevance is revealed by the end of the novel. The dialogue, at times, can feel a little convoluted and antiquated, but this seems to fit with the holier-than-thou air of the fae. Altogether, The Cruel Prince is an engaging, fast-paced novel showcasing a strong female lead.

Sexual Content

  • Vivi is revealed to have a girlfriend in the human world. “Vivi is in the photos, her arm draped over the shoulders of a grinning, pink-haired mortal girl. Maybe Taryn isn’t the only one who has decided to fall in love.”
  • Vivi “kisses Heather,” her mortal girlfriend.
  • After being forced to consume faerie fruit, which is like a drug to humans, Cardan and his friends convince Jude to take of her dress, until all she is wearing is “mortal underclothes—a mint-and-black polka-dotted bra and underpants.”
  • Jude begins a romance with Locke, Cardan’s friend. At Locke’s house before a party, she thinks, “I want his mouth on mine, blotting out everything else.”
  • Jude sees Cardan at a party with a girl. “A horned girl I don’t know is kissing his throat, and another, this one with daffodil hair, presses her mouth against the calf of his leg, just above the top of his boot.”
  • While Jude is holding Cardan hostage, she realizes that Cardan desires her. Jude leans “toward him, close enough for a kiss. His eyes widen. The look on his face is some commingling of panic and desire.”
  • After realizing she has power over Cardan, Jude kisses him. “But kissing Locke never felt the way that kissing Cardan does, like taking a dare to run over knives, like an adrenaline strike of lightning, like the moment when you’ve swum too far out in the sea and there is no going back, only cold black water closing over your head . . . Then his hands come up, gentle as they glide over my arms. If I didn’t know better, I’d say his touch was reverent, but I do know better… He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to want this…He kisses me hard, with a kind of devouring desperation, fingers digging into my hair. Our mouths slide together, teeth over lips over tongues. Desire hits me like a kick to the stomach. It’s like fighting, except what we’re fighting for is to crawl inside each other’s skin.”

Violence

  • Madoc confronts Jude’s mother who faked her death. Madoc says, “The bones of an earthly woman and her unborn child in the burned remains of my estate were convincing.”
  • Madoc kills Jude’s mother and father as an act of revenge. Madoc is particularly violent when he kills Jude’s father. “The man plunged the sword into Dad’s stomach, pushing it upward. There was a sound, like sticks snapping, and an animal cry.” The scene is described over four pages.
  • When a faerie doesn’t bow to Cardan, he “grabs one of his wings. It tears like paper. The boy’s scream is thin and reedy. He curls up into himself on the ground, agony plain on his face.”
  • Madoc is a redcap, meaning that “after every battle, he ritually dips his hood into the blood of his enemies.” In one scene, the cap is described as, “stiff and stained a brown so deep it’s almost black.”
  • When Jude is awarded a ruby-studded pen from Madoc, one of her classmates becomes angry. “This threw Valerian into such a rage that he cracked me in the back of the head with his wooden practice sword.”
  • When she was a child, Jude was bullied because she is human. Jude mentions that “when I was nine, one of Madoc’s guards bit off the very top of the ring finger on my left hand.”
  • After being catcalled by a human in a visit to the mortal world, Jude attacks the catcaller, “I am turning before I can think, my fist cracking into his jaw. My booted foot hits his gut as he falls, rolling him over the pavement. I blink and find myself standing there, staring down at a kid who is gasping for air and starting to cry. My boot is raised to kick him in the throat, to crush his windpipe.”
  • After answering a question right in school, Jude is harassed and a classmate “slaps [her].”
  • After sneaking into Cardan’s house, Jude sees Cardan and his brother practicing swordplay. “Balekin brings down his staff hard, smacking him in the side of the head. I wince at the sound of the wood against his skull.”
  • After Cardan and his brother spar, Balekin punishes him for failure and has a servant whip him. “The servant strikes twice, the slap of the leather echoing loudly in the still air of the room.”
  • One of Cardan’s friends tries to get Jude to kill herself because she is embarrassing him. Jude retaliates, however, and “pull[s] the knife from my little pocket and stab[s] him in the side. Right between his ribs. If my knife had been longer, I would have punctured his lung.”
  • Jude tries to take a human servant that she had saved back to the human world. However, the servant, Sophie “tilts to one side, let’s go of the steed’s mane, and lets herself fall.” She falls into the ocean after filling her pockets with stones, committing suicide.
  • After finding out that Jude has stabbed Valerian after Valerian attempted to kill her, Dain, Jude’s spymaster, begins to question her loyalty to him because she has revealed her inability to be glamoured, putting the whole operation at risk. Because of this, Dain tells her to stab herself and prove her loyalty. Jude’s eyes were “on him, I slam the knife into my hand. The pain is a wave that rises higher and higher but never crashes.”
  • Angry with Jude for besting him, Valerian sneaks into Jude’s house and attacks her. As he chokes her, Jude retaliates. “Despite his fingers against my windpipe, despite the way my vision has begun to go dark around the edges, I make sure of my strike before I drive my knife into his chest. Into his heart,” killing him.
  • When Jude shoots a faerie spy, “the creature topples over, a flailing arm sending a pyramid of golden apples spilling to the dirt.”
  • At the coronation, while Dain is being crowned, “Madoc thrusts his sword through Dain’s chest with such force that the blade emerges on the other side. He drags it up, through his rib cage, to his heart.”
  • At the coronation, Jude takes Cardan hostage and “press[es] the tip of the knife against his skin so he can feel the bite.”
  • It is revealed that “Dain poisoned his own child, still in the womb.”
  • Locke has been secretly dating both Jude and Taryn. When Jude finds out, she challenges Taryn to a fight. Afterward, Madoc questions Taryn, “Did she thrust a sword into your hand and make you swing it? Do you really think that your sister has no honor, that she would chop you into pieces while you stood by, unarmed?’”
  • Jude challenges Madoc to a duel, and they fight for about 5 pages. Jude feigns “left and then land[s] a clever slice to his side. It’s a shallow hit, but it surprises us both when a line of red wets his coat. He thrusts toward me. I jump to one side, and he elbows me in the face, knocking me back to the ground. Blood gushes over my mouth from my nose.” She knows that she cannot win the fight, but she poisoned Madoc and just has to outlast him until the poison takes effect.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • There are many instances where people drink wine at faerie parties and also at dinner. At parties, people are described to, “drink themselves sick and numb themselves with poisonous and delightful powders.”
  • At the first revel Jude attends, Cardan is drunk. “His breath is heavy with the scent of honey wine.”
  • At dinner, Madoc and his wife, Oriana, “drink canary wine,” while the children “mix [theirs] with water.”
  • At one party, Jude is glamoured by a faerie to drink. “So [Jude] drank; the grass-green faerie wine slipping down my throat like nectar.”
  • Faerie fruit is dangerous for humans to consume. It “muddles the mind, which makes humans crave it enough to starve themselves for another taste, which makes us pliant and suggestible and ridiculous.”
  • When first introduced to Dain’s spies, Jude is offered a drink. The Ghost, one of Dain’s spies, “pours out four shots.” Then he says, “Have a drink. And don’t worry . . . It won’t befuddle you any more than any other drink.”
  • Jude talks about the various poisons that exist in Faerieland. Jude read “about the blusher mushroom, a pale fungus that blooms with beads of a red liquid that looks uncomfortably like blood. Small doses cause paralysis, while large doses are lethal, even for the Folk. Then there is deathsweet, which causes a sleep that lasts a hundred years. And wraithberry, which makes your blood race until your heart stops. And faerie fruit, of course, which one book called everapple.”
  • Jude begins to poison herself to build up immunity to poisoning. She consumes “a leaf of wraithberry from the palace garden. A petal from a flower of deathsweet. The tiniest bead of juice from the blusher mushroom. From each, I cut away a tinier portion and swallow. Mithridatism, it’s called. Isn’t that a funny name? The process of eating poison to build up immunity. So long as I don’t die from it, I’ll be harder to kill.”
  • While at a party, Jude and Locke “drink pale green wine that tastes of herbs out of massive goblets that Locke finds in the back of a cabinet.”
  • Jude worries about going to a party, but Locke reassures her by saying, “They’ll quickly be too drunk to notice.”
  • While in someone’s study, Jude notices that he has various herbs, and “a few are poisonous, but most are just narcotic.”
  • During Dain’s coronation, Jude sees Cardan, “unsteady on his feet and with a wine-skin in one hand. He appears to have gotten himself riotously drunk.”
  • Jude tricks Madoc into drinking a glass of poisoned wine. Jude gives “him a quick smile, pouring two glasses of wine—one light and the other dark. I am careful with them, sly-fingered. I do not spill a drop. . . I offer them both up for Madoc to choose between. Smiling, he takes the one the color of heart’s blood. I take the other.”
  • While at a coronation, Cardan drinks “directly from the neck” of a bottle of wine.

Language

  • Profanity is used rarely. Profanity includes bitch. For example, when Jude fights a stranger, the stranger’s friend screams, “Bitch. . . Crazy Bitch!”

Supernatural

  • Supernatural elements play a large part in the novel, as it takes place in Faerieland, a place ruled and inhabited by the fae.
  • Vivi, Jude’s half-sister, who is half-fae, is described as having a “split-pupiled gaze” and “lightly furred points of her ears.”
  • Jude describes the precautions that humans must take in Faerieland, and how her housemaid, Tatterfell protected her. “It was Tatterfell who smeared stinging faerie ointment over my eyes to give me True Sight so that I could see through most glamours, who brushed the mud from my boots, and who strung dried rowan berries for me to wear around my neck so I might resist enchantments. She wiped my wet nose and reminded me to wear my stockings inside out, so I’d never be led astray in the forest.”
  • When Tatterfell is doing Jude’s hair, she notes, “’I put in three knots for luck.”
  • One of Madoc’s spies is “a wrinkled creature with a nose like a parsnip and a back hunched higher than her head.”
  • While attending a faeire party, Jude describes the folk who are in attendance. “There are dozens of the Folk here, crowding around the entrance to the vast throne room, where Court is being held—long-nosed pixies with tattered wings; elegant, green-skinned ladies in long gowns with goblins holding up their trains; tricksy boggans; laughing foxkin; a boy in an owl mask and a golden headdress; an elderly woman with crows crowding her shoulders; a gaggle of girls with wild roses in their hair; a bark-skinned boy with feathers around his neck; a group of knights all in scarab-green armor.”
  • Prince Dain, a faerie, has “hooves and deer legs.”
  • Cardan has a tail, “with a tuft on the end! It coils up under his clothes and unfurls like a whip.”
  • As Jude and Taryn walk to school, they “spot mermaids and merrows sunning themselves near craggy caves, their scales reflecting the amber glow of the late-afternoon sun.”
  • The Lake of Masks is a magical lake, that “doesn’t reflect your own face—it shows you someone else who has looked or will look into it.”
  • Jude describes some of the fae. “There are hobs born with lined faces like tiny, hairless cats and smooth-limbed nixies whose true age shows only in their ancient eyes.”
  • Jude is compelled by a faerie to drink and dance at a party. Jude isn’t able to stop of her own accord because a stranger “compelled me to drink, and so I drank; the grass-green faerie wine slipping down my throat like nectar. He danced me around the hill. It was fun at first, the kind of terrifying fun that makes you screech to be put down half the time and feel dizzy and sick the rest. But when the fun wore off and I still couldn’t stop, it was just terrifying. It turned out that my fear was equally amusing to him, though.”
  • Vivi can summon beings called ragwort ponies and, “They look a little like sea horses and will ride over land and sky, according to Vivi’s command, keeping their seeming for hours before collapsing back into weeds.”
  • After rescuing a human servant, Jude explains the world of Faerie. The girl responds, “I always wanted there to be magic. Isn’t that funny? I wanted there to be an Easter Bunny and a Santa Claus. And Tinker Bell, I remember Tinker Bell. But I don’t want it. I don’t want it anymore.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Sara Mansfield

 

 

 

 

Shine

What would you give for a chance to live your dreams?

For seventeen-year-old Korean American Rachel Kim, the answer is almost everything. Six years ago, she was recruited by DB Entertainment—one of Seoul’s largest K-pop labels, known for churning out some of the world’s most popular stars. The rules are simple: train 24/7, be perfect, don’t date. Easy right?

Not so much. As the dark scandals of an industry bent on controlling and commodifying beautiful girls begin to bubble up, Rachel wonders if she’s strong enough to be a winner or if she’ll end up crushed…especially when she begins to develop feelings for K-pop star and DB golden boy, Jason Lee. It’s not just that he’s charming, sexy, and ridiculously talented. He’s also the first person who really understands how badly she wants her star to rise.

Get ready as Jessica Jung, K-pop legend and former lead singer of Korea’s most famous girl group (Girls’ Generation) takes us inside the luxe, hyper-color world of K-pop. The stakes are high, but for one girl the cost of success—and love—might be even higher. It’s time for the world to see: this is what it takes to SHINE.

Life as a trainee is not glamorous. Instead, the girls’ daily weight checks are belittled and they are treated harshly. For example, one of the trainers yells at Rachel. “Look, if this is too hard for you, go home. You think giving me attitude will make you a better dancer? Get your head out of your ass and try harder. If you can’t even get these dance steps, you’ll never get anywhere.” All of the girls take the abuse because they are afraid that speaking up will cause them to be kicked out of the training program.

In the K-pop world, men and women have different standards. Women get lower pay, aren’t supposed to date and are treated badly. One K-Pop singer says, “All they [her agents] care about is making us into perfect K-pop machines that will do everything they say and rake in the money for them.” Shine puts a spotlight on the sexism in the K-pop world as well as in the girls’ families. Even though women are treated differently than men, the women never come together to work to improve their situation.

Even though the narrator, Jessica, is self-centered, acts rashly, and is sometimes mean, readers will get caught up in the drama of the K-Pop world. Jessica’s erratic behavior keeps readers on the edge of their seats. Unfortunately, all of the characters have flaws that will leave readers wondering why anyone would subject themselves to the abuse of training. Jessica leaves the reader with one thought, “When we feel like we cannot do this any longer, we remember that we already have, and we will again.” If you’re up for a fun, romance-based Korean comedy, add I Believe in A Thing Called Love by Maurene Goo to your must-read list.

 Sexual Content

  • Rachel sees two people she knows with their “lips locked.”
  • Right before a concert, Jason “cups one hand gently against my face, and I let my eyes close as I lean in. I feel his lips press softly against mine. Warmth floods through my entire body as he moves his hand to the back of my neck, sparking in my stomach and out to my fingertips.”
  • While at a party, Jason kisses Rachel. “When he finally turns toward me, his face lit up in the familiar Jason way, it feels like a thousand tiny fireworks going off in my heart. . . I throw my arms around him and kiss him.”
  • Rachel overhears trainees talking about a love triangle between a K-pop star and two girls. The girl says, “I heard she’s [Rachel’s] pregnant with Minjun’s love child. . .”
  • A boy comes over to Hyeri’s house, one of Rachel’s friends. “Hyeri throws her arm around him and presses her lips against his. Juhyn and I cheer as Daeho wraps his arms around her and kisses her passionately back. . .”

Violence

  • Rachel sees Akari, a trainee, being yelled at by her trainer. “Her voice cracks on the high note and the trainer bends over, slapping her hard in the gut. Akari winces through the blow but doesn’t stop singing. . . the trainer hits her again. Harder.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • When a trainee was let go “rumors had run rampant that she had a drug problem and she owed thousands of dollars to her dealers.”
  • Rachel goes to a party at the trainee house. “I trip over more than a few empty beer cans as I march toward what looks like the bar area. . .”
  • Rachel and other people at the party drink. “People are dropping shows of grapefruit soju into beer glasses and downing the whole drink.”
  • While at the party, Rachel gets drunk and then one of the trainees puts something in Rachel’s champagne. Later, Rachel wonders, “What the fuck did Mina put in that drink?”
  • Rachel goes to a hotel buffet and sees “a young couple sharing a bottle of wine with their salmon dinner.”
  • Jason and Rachel go to a restaurant for dinner. While there, they see three girls. “One of them is clearly wasted, chugging soju straight from the bottle.”
  • Rachel and Jason go to dinner with Jason’s aunts, who order wine.
  • Rachel and Jason go to a party, where alcohol is served to minors.
  • Rachel goes to her friend’s house and they have “alcohol bottles lined up neatly on the table, all ready for the twin’s predrink.” Upset, Rachel grabs “the bottle of tequila and pop[s] it open. . . I take a big gulp straight from the bottle.” All three of the girls get drunk.

Language

  • “Omg,” “God,” and “ohmygod” are occasionally used as exclamations.
  • Profanity is used often. Profanity includes ass, asshole, badass, bitch, crap, damn, fuck, hell, holy shit, piss, and shit.
  • Rachel says “thank god” several times.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

Charlie Thorne and the Lost City

Charlie Thorne is a genius. Charlie Thorne is a fugitive. Charlie Thorne isn’t even thirteen.

After finding Einstein’s last equation and going incognito, Charlie’s ready to take it easy in the Galapagos Islands. That is until she’s approached by the mysterious Esmerelda Castle, who’s on the hunt for a legendary treasure and has a code only Charlie can decipher.

In 1835, Charles Darwin diverted the HMS Beagle’s journey to go on a secret solo expedition in South America. When he returned to the ship, he carried a treasure that inspired awe and terror in his crew. And so the treasure vanished, never to be seen again. . . but Darwin left a trail of clues behind for those brave and clever enough to search for it once more.

In a daring adventure that takes her across South America, Charlie must crack Darwin’s nearly two-hundred-year-old clues to track down the mysterious discovery—and stay ahead of the formidable lineup of enemies and CIA agents who are hot on her trail.

In an epic Amazonian adventure, Charlie teams up with Milana and Dante as they try to solve the clues and find Darwin’s “treasure.” They must outmaneuver the Castellos siblings who have teamed up with a Russian spy. The groups try to outsmart each other and the bad guys are willing to use any means necessary to find the treasure. The fast-paced action will have readers at the edge of their seats as they try to guess who will betray who.

Even though Charlie and the others are trying to decipher Darwin’s clues, these messages take a back seat to the story’s action. However, readers will gain insight into some of the Amazon’s plight including the loss of habitat. But the real treasure in Charlie Thorne and the Lost City is the introduction to the Amazon’s flora and fauna. Another interesting aspect of the story is when the group finds a creature that would prove that evolution is a fact. While some believe that the creature should be introduced to society, Charlie believes that the only way to keep the creature safe is to keep its existence a secret.

Middle school readers who are ready for a more realistic mystery that has cruel villains will enjoy Charlie Thorne and the Lost City. While most of the action revolves around Charlie being chased, the villains make it clear that they will kill anyone who stands in their way. The story also explores the idea of evolution. Fans of the Theodore Boone Series by John Grisham will enjoy Charlie’s winding trip through the Amazon and her courage to do what is best for the creatures that remain hidden deep within the Amazon’s depths.

Sexual Content

  • Dante took Charlie’s advice and “kissed Milana Moon.”

Violence

  • When a strange man and police appear looking for Charlie, she sets a booby trap so she can escape. “The resulting explosion blew the policeman off his feet, throwing him across the tiny kitchen. The cabinets all burst open spilling glass and plates, which shatter on the floor.” No one is seriously injured, but one policeman’s “eyebrows had been scorched off his face.”
  • While looking for Charlie, Ivan goes to the Darwin research facility to question an employee. When he doesn’t get the answers he wants, Ivan “spun Luis around, wrenching the young man’s arm behind his back so that he cried out in pain.”
  • Charlie attempts to get out of town unnoticed but Ivan gives chase. Ivan “clipped two cars and sent them skidding. More cars crashed into those, and a terrific jam blossomed instantly.”
  • There is a multi-chapter chase where Charlie’s group tries to avoid being killed by Esmerelda and her brothers. By plane, Esmerelda and her brothers follow Charlie into the Amazon. Esmerelda’s “brothers’ bullets only hit the water. Gianni got caught up in the excitement and lobbed a stick of dynamite as well. . . The blast had been close enough that she, Dante, and Milana had been soaked by the plume of water.”
  • Trying to avoid being shot, Dante was “weaving back and forth across the river. . . Milana had her gun out, ready to fire on the approaching plane.” Milana’s bullet “caught the guy on the pontoon in the arm, making him drop the machine gun, which plunked in the river.” During the chase, Milana is hit with “a piece of red-hot shrapnel” but is not injured badly.
  • Charlie swims to a barge and sets a trap. “As Esmerelda approached the barge, Gianni took the remaining submachine gun, stepped out onto the pontoon, and prepared to shoot. . . Charlie ran as fast as she could while the plane closed in on her. Gianni opened fire. Bullets sparked off the metal skins of the oil tank. . . And then the world erupted into flame.”
  • The tanker explodes. Esmerelda’s “plane was directly above the first tanker when it blew apart like an enormous firecracker. The blast tossed the plane like a toy, while a ball of fire and smoke enveloped it. . .” The plane catches fire. “Esmerelda and her brothers leapt from it, their clothes on fire too. Just after they dove into the water, the plane blew up.” Everyone survives, but Esmerelda and her brothers are “badly burned.”
  • Esmerelda and her brothers join Ivan, a Russian spy. Ivan holds Charlie, Milana and Dante at gunpoint. In order to escape, Dante and Milana “targeted the Castellos first. . . Dante and Milana made quick work of them.” Charlie runs.
  • Milana, Dante, and Charlie try to escape the bad guys in a multi-chapter chase. Each group is trying to capture a creature. Someone shoots the creature, who “shrieked in pain and tumbled across the wet ground, then rolled back to its feet and scampered away into the cover of the rain. . .”
  • After someone shoots a creature, its friends attack. “Then the creatures’ assault was quick and well coordinated. And while their weapons were rudimentary, only rocks and sticks, they wielded them with terrifying skill.” The man shoots and hits a creature. “It crumpled into the mud, whimpering in pain.”
  • Charlie helps a creature. “It was bleeding from it’s leg where Oz’s bullet had struck it and was in obvious pain.”
  • Someone shoots Dante. “Dante turned to see who had shot him, but his vision was already going blurry. His mind was clouding. His strength was ebbing.”
  • A snake attacks one of Esmeralda’s brothers. “It moved with startling speed for such a big creature, first sinking its teeth into Gianni’s torso and then coiling around him. . . He was certainly hurting now—and he was terrified.” When Gianni’s brother tries to help, “the snake responded by wrapping its tail end around Paolo as well.”
  • Esmerelda sees her brothers. “The anaconda had already killed them both. Gianni’s body was floating facedown in the creek, while the giant snake was actually consuming Paolo. It had unhinged its jaw and begun the long process of swallowing her brother headfirst.”
  • Ivan and Esmerelda capture Charlie. In order to escape, Charlie throws a bullet ant at them. “Ivan felt the sting first. . . It felt as though every nerve ending in his body had suddenly caught fire. It was so intense that it leveled him. . . Esmerelda went down next. . . She sank to the floor as well, gripped by convulsions.
  • Charlie and Esmerelda fight. “Charlie intercepted her attack, catching Esmerelda’s arms in her hands. She used her fingernails as a weapon like Milana had told her, digging them deep into Esmerelda’s skin. . .” Charlie had put poison on her nails.
  • Esmerelda “lunged for Charlie with the knife. . . [A creature] slammed into Esmerelda, sending her reeling backward into the cockpit. . .” Charlie escaped but Esmerelda and “the helicopter plummeted into the gorge, crashed into the river. . . and exploded in a ball of fire.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • While in America, Ivan, a Russian spy, helped support the illegal drug trade.
  • While at a lodge, “The adults were drinking beer” and Dante “had brought another beer back to the room from the bar.”
  • Someone shoots Dante and Milana with a tranquilizer dart.
  • After an expedition into the Amazon, Milana and Dante finally make it back to civilization and they both have a beer.

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Darwin makes an incredible discovery, but others think it is “an affront to God.”
  • When a group of creatures attack, they chase a man. “He had to get away from the ones that were chasing him and pray that there weren’t others ahead.”

 

Lovely War

In a hotel room in Manhattan in the midst of World War II, the Greek gods Aphrodite and Ares are caught in an affair by Aphrodite’s husband, Hephaestus. Hoping to understand Love’s attraction to War, Hephaestus puts Aphrodite on trial. Her defense is to tell the tale of one of her greatest successes, the intersecting love stories of Hazel Windicott and James Alderidge, and of Aubrey Edwards and Colette Fournier. Aphrodite’s witnesses are Ares (god of war), Apollo (god of music), and Hades (god of death). Each contributes their own different, but overlapping, perspectives to the proceedings.

The story begins as piano player Hazel and soldier James meet at a parish dance and fall into instant, dizzying love, only to be separated three days later when James is sent to the front. Desperate to distract herself from anxiety about her soldier’s well-being, Hazel joins the YMCA where she meets Colette, a singer who lost her whole family in an attack on her home in Belgium. There, they happen upon ragtime musician Aubrey, a Black soldier who desires to make a name for himself on stage and on the battlefield. Aubrey and Colette bond over their music and realize their affections go beyond an appreciation for each other’s talents.

While the story addresses dark and violent subject matter due to its historical period, the frame narrative allows for light moments as well. The banter among the gods, and their respective belief that their part of the story is the most memorable, allows the mood to lift as needed. The darker moments hold meaning within the larger narrative and the smallest joys are heralded as gifts from the gods.

The human characters hold their own amongst their immortal narrators. Each character is likable and humorous in his/her own way. Over the course of the war, Hazel emerges from her meek demeanor, learning to stand for what she sees is right, while not losing her innocence and goodness of heart. James is goofy and sincere, making his experience in combat all the more tragic, as he must reconcile that what he does on the battlefield does not have to mean a loss of himself. Colette is strong-willed and a fierce defender of her friends, though internally she fears that anyone she loves is destined to die. She opens up, however, to the charming dreamer Aubrey. Aubrey’s experiences with racial violence show that the enemy to their happiness is not only the German soldiers they encounter on the battlefield but also those who perpetrate violence and discrimination against black Americans within their own neighborhoods and war camps.

Teenage readers who enjoy romance, Greek mythology, and historical fiction may enjoy this book. It is recommended that readers proceed carefully, as the book does address racism and racial violence as well as the terrors and destruction of war. Despite the hate and violence which surround them, the couples find their way back to love amidst it all. Their fragility as mortals in wartime allows for precious love to shine, as even the impermeable gods come to admire. After Aphrodite reminds Hephaestus that the mortals die, he responds, “They do. But the lucky ones live first. . . The luckiest ones spend time with you.”

Sexual Content

  • Two characters are briefly described as having an affair. “In an instant they are in each other’s arms. Shoes are kicked off, hats tossed aside. Jacket buttons are shown no mercy.” Their kisses are “like a clash of battle and a delicious melding of flesh, rolled together and set on fire.”
  • Athena and Artemis are called, “Those prissy little virgins.”
  • Some of the gods make brief jokes about paying attention to women’s bodies.
  • Hazel’s attraction to James sparks “a series of little explosions” which “began firing throughout her brain and spread quickly elsewhere.”
  • Stéphane admires Colette’s spine and thinks that “he could run his fingers along her back.” He does not act on his thought.
  • Colette is attracted to Aubrey’s musical talent, saying, “It was sexy. And so was its athletic high priest at the piano bench.”
  • During an attack on Aubrey, a racist soldier implies that Aubrey is after white women. Aubrey retorts asking if the man has “ever been with a black girl.” When the soldier laughs, Aubrey “had no illusions about her being a willing participant.”
  • Joey assumes an encounter between Aubrey and Colette was sexual in nature. He asks Aubrey, “Did you . . .?” Aubrey informs him, “It’s not like that,” and then scolds him for presuming that Colette is a “hooker.”
  • Aubrey hides so as not to be seen by a supervisor and realizes “he was free to ogle Colette from the shoulders down just at that moment, and he took advantage of it.”
  • Colette tries to understand Hazel’s fear about meeting up with James. Colette assumes that Hazel’s fear might be due to the possibility of one of them “taking advantage” of the other. Hazel admits that “if anyone found out, there’d be such a scandal.” She explains, “When I’m around James, I do the most outrageous things.”
  • Colette recognizes that being “alone in the dark” could lead to “dozens of ways a young man could try to take advantage of this situation,” although nothing comes of it.
  • A couple says goodbye, and “the brief kiss she gave him at the door was filled with neither passion nor desire, but sweetness, affection, gratitude.”
  • Hazel removes her stockings at the beach, and it is said, “The sight of her bare feet was just about enough to give poor James a stroke there on the spot.”
  • Hazel is pushed into James’ arms and, “The feel of her body pressed against his went through him like an electric shock.” They hold each other for a moment, spinning in circles.

Violence

  • There are multiple instances of racial violence perpetrated against Aubrey and his bandmates. There are also third-party historical sources referenced. Words such as “darkie,” “coon,” “negroes,” and “colored” are frequently used by other characters to address these men. At one point a southern soldier states, “An ape’s an ape.” Other racist comments permeate the experience of the black soldiers at home and abroad.
  • The black soldiers face fears of waking to a “lynch mob.”
  • The narrator describes an instance of police brutality. “A white police officer had entered a black woman’s home without a warrant, searching for a suspect. When she protested, he beat and arrested her, dragging her from her home though she wasn’t fully dressed. When a black soldier saw this and tried to intervene to defend the woman, the white policeman pistol-whipped the black soldier, seriously injuring him.” She then briefly mentions the “shooting that followed” which killed many people.
  • When addressing the possibility of looking at white women, Aubrey states, “No pretty face is worth swinging from a tree.”
  • The “Rape of Belgium” is described in detail over five pages. The narrator notes that German soldiers “pulled men from workplaces and homes and hiding places and executed them in the streets. Women, children, and babies were executed too. As old as eighty-eight. As young as three weeks.” Later, Aphrodite goes on to reference “the stories of women raped, children crucified, nailed to doors, of old men executed. . .”
  • The story frequently finds itself in the midst of trench combat. There are descriptions of the training process, of learning how to kill another man with minimal remorse, and of soldiers often encountering death and the bodies of those lost in battle. The men learn about the effects of gas attacks and how “those poor buggers in the first gas attacks drowned in their own blood.” At one point the trenches are described as “slick with blood.”
  • James imagines his own brother ending up the way his fellow soldiers have. “He saw Bobby’s burnt and blood-soaked body lying in the mud at the bottom of a trench.”
  • The soldiers travel “past live horses and dead horses and trucks and motorcycles.”
  • Multiple racially motivated murders take place in the camps. Two men are “strangled” and the discovery of one body is described over 6 pages. Aubrey and Lieutenant Europe come to the realization that “that was blood on the snow. His head. His face. His bloated, blackened face.” They assume the killers “beat his face in with their rifles.” They note, “You almost wouldn’t know it’s him” and they “gently [close] his gaping lower lip to hide the horribly broken jaw.”
  • Aubrey is held at gunpoint by a racist soldier who says, “We ain’t gonna let you Negroes get a taste for white women.” Aubrey took the man’s gun and “pressed the cold muzzle of the revolver against his victim’s temple.” Then, Aubrey warns his attacker not to mess with the Black soldiers again.
  • The narrator cynically describes how little detail is provided in the notifications of soldiers’ deaths, explaining, “They never said, ‘hung for hours on a barbed wire fence with his bowels hanging out, pleading for rescue, but nobody dared go for fear of hostile fire.’”
  • James partakes in trench warfare. He is a sniper and frequently must shoot German soldiers. After he shoots a man, “a red throat pours blood down a gray uniform.” James actively tries to not think about what he is doing in order to protect his friends.
  • A flamethrower is used in combat. The soldiers try to distinguish the fire, and the narrator notes that “the smell of flesh on fire reminds James of food, of cooking meat.” Ares goes on to narrate that “Chad Browning has stopped his screaming. His clothing is half melted away, half fused to his skin.”
  • Hazel is sexually assaulted by a prisoner of war. The attack is thwarted quickly but not before, “He licked her lips and teeth with his foul tongue, then forced it inside her mouth.”
  • Multiple explosions occur throughout the text. For example, after one explosion “the smoke lifted, and James scrubbed the grit from his eyes, Frank Mason wasn’t there anymore. Just a fire, a helmet, a torn pair of boots, and a little charred prayer book.” It is later implied that there would not be a body to bury.
  • Later, another explosion occurs. “The engine and the first two cars were annihilated. The cars beyond buckled and crashed into one another. Soldiers and war workers were thrown all about the cars. Shards of glass from shattered windows flew like shrapnel. Colette emerged unscathed, for Hazel had thrown her body over her friend’s.” James must treat Hazel’s injuries. Hades goes through the necessary course of action to “apply pressure to the bleeding and summon a medic. Clear airflow, release tight clothing.”
  • Hazel receives a blood transfusion. She notes the “tubes of red blood dangled from jars mounted to a metal frame and ran, Hazel realized, into a needle injected into her arm.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • A character jokes about how the soldiers of the 369th “were knocked on their backs by the routine daily allotment of wine for French soldiers.”
  • While under treatment for shell shock, James is given sedatives.

Language

  • The narrator quotes real news articles about the 369th infantry; these include racist comments and one censored use of the n-word.
  • Offensive terms for opposing soldiers are often used. These include “Jerry,” “Russkies,” “Fritz,” and “Boche.” They refer at one point to Kaiser Wilhelm as “Wee Willie Winkie.”
  • Audrey calls the racist behavior of another soldier “shit” twice.
  • A trainer tells soldiers that in the event of a gas attack, “‘If you’ve lost your mask, you still stay calm. If all else fails, piss on a hankie and breathe through that.’” He warns that they will “break out in damnable sores everywhere” and that they “hurt like hell.”
  • Joey calls Aubrey a “jackass.”
  • Men are called “bastards” twice.
  • Aubrey calls his own behavior “damnably stupid.”
  • There is one use of the oath “Chrisssake.”
  • Emile regrets not being injured sooner, saying, “But non, you stayed away, leaving me healthy and sound, so the Germans could piss on me with their shells and bullets year after year…”
  • Aphrodite calls her husband a “blooming ass.”

Supernatural

  • Spirits occasionally observe their loved ones from the afterlife. At one point, James feels Frank’s presence and begins speaking to him. James wonders if he is going mad.

Spiritual Content

  • The story is told from the rotating perspectives of four Greek gods. Their influence and powers are often employed as catalysts for plot developments.
  • Hades comes dressed as a Catholic priest, as that is how he presents himself to humans.
  • Many of the human characters are Christian and are described praying, visiting churches, and lighting votive candles. They also reference Christian stories and practices.
  • After losing everyone she loves to the war, Colette struggles with her faith. She believes herself to be a “plaything to a vindictive god.” She calls god “it” and explains that “a loving god would never allow this. And if there was no god at all, surely chance would occasionally favor me, non?”
  • After standing up to an authority figure, the narrator says that Hazel “wasn’t a Catholic, but at the rate she was going, she probably needed a priest to take her confession. Before she was struck by lightning and cast down to hell.”

by Jennaly Nolan

 

14+    480   4.7   4 worms   AR   hs  (World War I)

Diverse Characters, Strong Female Character

 

 

 

 

 

Hannah

Hannah wants to be normal, but she’s not. The sea calls to her, and she can see a delicate tracing of scales on her legs. Billowing waves soothe her, but flat land makes her sick. She knows there’s something wild in her that’s different, wrong, and deeply thrilling.

Only one person seems to know who—or what—Hannah is. He’s a guest in the house where she works as a scullery girl and his fascinated gaze follows her. She doesn’t understand his terrifying allure, or her longing. But even as the mystery deepens, Hannah is sure of one thing. A sea of change is coming.

The first installment of the Daughters of the Sea Series focuses on Hannah, who doesn’t know that she is a mermaid. Much of the story focuses on the class distinction during the time period and the relationship between the serving class and the wealthy Boston family. While the running of a household is at times interesting, the story has little action. Instead, Hannah is trying to figure out why she is different than others and why the sea calls to her.

Readers looking for a book that explores the world of mermaids will be disappointed with Hannah’s story. There are too many plot points that are left unanswered. Hannah’s background is never explained and when Hannah meets a merman, the interaction borders on sexual harassment; at one point, the much older merman grabs Hannah and forces a kiss on her. While Hannah is occasionally an interesting character, some readers may find it difficult to relate to her struggles.

The long-winded descriptions, lack of plot development, and dysfunctional family dynamics make Hannah a difficult book to get through. Readers who enjoy historical fiction and want to learn more about the late 1800s may enjoy Hannah. However, if you are looking for a peek into the magical world of mermaids, you should bypass Hannah altogether.

Sexual Content

  • Lila has a crush on Mr. Wheeler. Lila’s sister says, “Lila wants to wear something that Mama says is much too daring for a girl her age. You know what I mean, Hannah, very naked-looking. I think she wants to look almost naked for Mr. Wheeler.”
  • Hannah goes out into the forest. When Mr. Wheeler follows her, she yells at him. “He suddenly stepped toward her. He wrapped his arms around her, pressing her to his chest. . . He was kissing her lips, crushing his face against hers. She was lost. She was adrift. She was happy.”

Violence

  • When her cat goes missing, Lila hits her sister and makes her bleed.
  • Lila goes into Hannah’s room at night. Hannah tries to lead her back to her room. “Lila’s eyes were wild. She was scratching at Hannah’s face and the cat suddenly came to life and pounced on her back. Hannah could feel the claws digging into her shoulders, close to the neck of the nightgown. . . The strings of Hannah’s pouch were cutting into her throat, and she was gasping for air. . . “
  • After Lila and her cat attack Hannah, Hannah runs into the ocean. Lila’s sister, Ettie, follows Hannah. When she sees the cat, Ettie throws a rock at it. Lila points to “a clump of blood-soaked sea lavender where Jade was sprawled. The cat’s head was twisted at an odd angle to its body. One side was bashed in and there was a mangled mash of fur and protruding bone.”
  • After Ettie kills the cat, Lila “exploded and hurled herself across the grass, knocking down her sister. His hand was reaching for a rock when Mr. Marston ran up and dragged her off Ettie.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • One of the workers asks the butler if he can “add two bottles of the sweet sherry to the wines and spirits order.”
  • Three men share some sherry.
  • While getting the summer cottage ready for their employers, the workers “slid the miniature wine bottles into the racks in the wine cellar.”
  • While serving dinner, the butler goes into the kitchen to get “two more bottles of wine.”
  • Lila is given a sedative: laudanum. The butler says, “Administered properly, it alleviates anxiety and induces sleep.” However, the cook disagrees with him and says, “Drugs, pure and simple. They might as well have sent her to an opium den.”

Language

  • Damn is used six times, usually referring to the cat. For example, the workers do not like the house cat. One of the workers says, “I’d like to wring that damn cat’s neck.”
  • My God is used as an exclamation once.
  • Someone says that Lila’s cat is “mean as cat’s piss.”
  • Someone calls Lila a “hell hag” and her cat a “hell cat.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Occasionally Hannah prays. For example, when Hannah is taken away from Boston, she becomes sick. Hannah says, “I have prayed to God every night. I must go back. This land is not good for me.”
  • While applying for a job as a maid, Hannah prayed, “Let me just seem normal. Let me fit.”
  • While helping serve dinner, Hannah prays, “God do not let me spill this.”

 

 

02/01/2011   12+    336      5.3    3 worms    AR

Breaking the Ice

Sophie Fournier’s first love is hockey. When she’s the first woman drafted into the North American Hockey League (NAHL), she finally gets her chance to play hockey for a living. But being the first woman in the NAHL means she has to be perfect on and off the ice in order to prove that women should have a shot at being drafted. Not meeting that perfection means no playing—not just for her—but for every woman wishing to play.

Breaking the Ice is a hockey-heavy book. Sophie’s love for the sport comes up often because it’s her career, and there are many scenes depicting games and practices. The story starts with Sophie being drafted and ends with the next year’s draft, leading the reader through her first season with the Concord Condors as she battles with opponents and some teammates. Although this story and Sophie are fictitious, most of the scenes are very realistic.

Sophie is a strong protagonist. She’s extremely intelligent and understands how the press and her teammates perceive her is very important to her survival as the first and only woman in the NAHL. Because Sophie is so well-controlled in her behavior, she does occasionally come off as aloof and uptight. As the story progresses, she begins to befriend her teammates and some of her icy exterior thaws. As she allows herself to open up, she becomes friends with some of the other characters, like her opponent Dmitri and teammate Merlin.

Sophie does have issues with a couple of teammates, opponents, and the press because she is a woman and many feel that she doesn’t have a place in the NAHL. Sophie takes these confrontations with as much grace as possible, and she pushes herself to be absolutely perfect on and off the ice. As this is the first book in the series, Sophie’s need for perfection as well as her character growth will most likely continue in the next books as her team vies for the Maple Cup. Sophie wants it all, like any serious athlete, and she’s working hard while knowing that her mark can help or hinder the next woman who wishes to be drafted and taken seriously.

Breaking the Ice has a steady pace throughout as it details Sophie’s first season with the Condors. As a result, those looking for a book with a very exciting ending probably will not find it here, though there is much excitement throughout. Sophie’s story is enlightening for hockey players as well as those who don’t know anything about the sport, and her dedication is admirable. Sophie has a lot of obstacles to overcome in Breaking the Ice, but readers will see she is more than up for the challenge.

Sexual Content

  • Sophie has played on men’s hockey teams for a long time. Sophie mentions that “she’s had teammates hit on her before, a waste of everyone’s time, but that was in high school.”
  • None of Sophie’s teammates are allowed to be alone with her, even if it’s just driving to and from practice, according to the team’s PR person. Sophie says “they don’t want to give any ammunition to the inevitable rumors that she’s sleeping with one, or more, or her teammates.”
  • One of Sophie’s teammates offers Sophie some advice. He says, “If a boy tells you he’s too big for a condom, punch him and run.”
  • Sophie expresses no interest in dating men. Her reason is that “after years of guys slamming her into the boards and trying to break her wrists and listening to what they’d do to her if the officials weren’t there to stop them, she has no desire to get closer.”
  • Sophie has lunch with her former teammate Travis, and Travis’s current teammate. Sophie tells Travis’s teammate not to leave because she’s not allowed to be alone with anyone because of rumors that might be spread, though Sophie and Travis make it clear that they would never try anything like that. Sophie then turns to Travis’s teammate and says, “Of course, maybe Forbes likes to watch.” She says this in jest.
  • Sophie and her teammate Merlin joke about Sophie’s admiration for another player’s hockey abilities. Sophie makes a point to show she can like a player for hockey and not romantically. She says, “You can like someone’s hockey without wanting to see them naked.”
  • A fellow hockey player tells Dimitri that he only scores the pretty goals and needs to score “some dirty ones too.” Dimitri responds by saying, “I score dirty.”  The other hockey player responds with, “Keep it in your pants.”

Violence

  • Dimitri and Sophie are sharing a piece of cake. Jokingly, Sophie “kicks his shins then steals the best bite of cake.”
  • There are a lot of playful slaps and hits between the hockey players on the same team. For instance, one player “slaps Matty’s [another player’s] ass on the way by then laughs all the way down the tunnel.”
  • Sophie has a rival teammate named Hayes with whom she fights for the same position on the ice. They also fight over who gets number 93 on their jersey, then Sophie gets the first pick. Hayes is mad, and “she’s almost to the door when Hayes catches up to her. She looks over her shoulder in time for him to shove her up against the wall . . . She knocks his hands away and shoves him back.”
  • Hockey is a high-contact sport where fighting and checking into the boards are commonplace. Sophie, being the only woman in the league, often gets the brunt of the hits. For instance, “[An opponent] slams her into the glass a second later. He snarls at her, and the fans pound the glass, hoping for a fight.”
  • One of the other incoming players physically threatens Sophie after a game one night. Sophie narrates, “He grabs her by the lapels of her suit jacket and slams her back against her car.” Soon after, he leaves.
  • At a hockey event, Sophie sees someone holding up a “well-drawn, and graphic, image of Sophie on the ground, her limbs bent at awkward angles as a condor picks at her intestines.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At the hockey team’s Canadian Thanksgiving party, one of the younger players drinks a beer “even though [he’s] still a few years too young.”
  • At a backyard party, one of Sophie’s teammates says, “Alcohol and painkillers don’t mix.” Another player responds, “I learned that one the hard way.” They don’t explain this story further.
  • Some of the fans show up to games already drunk. Sophie describes how at one game, “Fans, already drunk, pound the glass and shout at her when she skates her two easy laps.”

Language

  • Profanity is included often throughout. Profanity includes: stupid, shit, ass, bullshit, fuck, dick, bitch, and slut.
  • One of Sophie’s opponents makes a nasty comment towards one of her teammates that seems to be racially charged. Sophie notes, “Walker sneers something, all Sophie hears is, ‘The Rez.’ [One of Sophie’s teammates] freezes, shock and disgust on his face.”

Supernatural

  • None.

 

Spiritual Content

  • Sophie celebrates Christmas with the General Manager of her NAHL team, but there are no references to church.

 

by Alli Kestler

 

The Hunters

Hal and his fellow Herons have tracked Zavac across the ocean, intent on retrieving the stolen Andomal, Skandia’s most prized treasure. Even though a fierce battle left Zavac and his fellow pirates counting their dead, the rogue captain managed to escape right through the Skandians’ fingers. If they hope to bring Zavac to justice and reclaim the Andomal, the Herons must take to the sea. But the challenge ahead is a dangerous one that could very well take out Hal’s entire crew.

In the first installment of the Brotherband Series, it was difficult to keep track of all of the characters. However, the main characters are now well-rounded individuals and their unique traits are beginning to shine. Hal has grown into a confident skirl, who knows his crew, which allows him to assign each person a job that is best suited to his/her talent. Even though Lydia is a girl, during battles she contributes because her skills are extremely useful. Readers will enjoy the interplay between the Herons and laugh at some of their mischievous ways.

While the second installment of the series, The Invaders, was slow and uneventful until the end, The Hunters has the perfect blend of suspense, character development, and battles. The Herons work as a team and show the importance of hard work, friendship, and loyalty. One of the best aspects of the series is that everyone has a valuable skill and that skill does not have to revolve around fighting. For example, Edvin cooks, knits, and steers the Heron. Even though the crew teases Edvin about his knitting, in the end, even Edvin’s knitting is used to benefit the entire crew.

The Brotherband Series brings to life the sea-faring warriors of Skandia, while teaching important lessons about working as a team and valuing others. The Hunters quickly captures the readers’ attention and keeps readers hooked by introducing interesting characters and conflicts. Even though all of Flanagan’s books end in an epic battle, each battle is realistic, unique, suspenseful, and told without gory details. The book’s conclusion is both heartwarming and humorous. After finishing The Hunters, readers will be eager to pick up the next book in the series, The Slaves of Socorro.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Thorn and Lydia go after Rikard, who hears them and jumps to his feet. Lydia reacts and “her arm whipped forward and the long dart hissed away through the morning air. It flashed at knee level between Rikard’s legs, tangling between them.” Rikard falls “flat on his face.” Torn “hauled the pirate to his feet, then hit him with a thundering left, sending him crashing back to the ground once more.”
  • A pirate overhears a man talking about his pirate ship. The pirate walks into the man. “Nobody noticed the thick stiletto that he slid into the old man’s side. Pegleg’s gasp of pain was lost in the tavern’s bubble of shouting, drunken voices.”
  • When a pirate sees Rikard walking down a dark alley, he “stepped forward and rammed his knife up and under the other man’s ribs, shoving and twisting until it reached, and stopped, his heart. Rikard shuttered briefly. . . his hands went to the blood welling from the terrible wound.”
  • A sentry detains the Heron. Upset, Thorn “stepped toward the guard. His left hand flashed out to grip the spear at its midpoint, thumb down. Then he twisted his hand and the spear upward in a half circle and jerked backward, all in one rapid motion. . . Thorn had leveled the razor-sharp point at the captain’s throat.” The Herons are eventually allowed to pass.
  • Doutro has the Herons’ crew arrested. In order to get Hal to reveal where the crews’ valuables are hidden, Doutro has Hal beaten. “Hal tried to duck the first blow, but the man behind him held him still. The big fist exploded off his cheekbone. He grunted in pain.” Hal is beaten until he is unconscious. The description of the beating is described over several paragraphs.
  • Doutro has Lydia taken to his house because he is thinking about selling her as a slave. As Lydia tries to escape, a young man tries to stop her. She knocks him off balance and then “hit him on the side of the jaw with the heel of her open hand, fingers spread to increase its rigidity.” The man blacks out.
  • The Herons are put in a prison cell with another man. When the Herons escape, Stig hit the other man “with a blinding right cross that sent him sprawling. Luckily, there was a pile of dirty straw to break his fall. He lay spread-eagle on it, out cold.”
  • As the Herons leave the prison, the guards “went through the guardroom like a hurricane. . . In seconds, they were sprawled unconscious on the floor.
  • Pirates attack a merchant ship. The Herons jump in to help the merchants. Lydia uses her atlatl and “one of the longboat’s crew rises to his feet in agony as the dart transfixed him. Then the pirate crashed over, falling on the rower in front of him. . .” Hal uses a huge crossbow to shoot at the pirates. “The helmsman collapsed over the steering oar and the longboat swung wildly.”
  • After several pirates have been injured or killed, some of the Herons board the longboat. “Thorn and Stig moved forward like a two-man battering ram. The huge club and Stig’s whirling ax swept away anyone who tried to oppose them. . .” In the end, many of the pirates jump into the river to avoid being killed. The battle is described over 8 pages.
  • A group of pirates attack the Herons in an ally. Stig attacks a pirate and “the two blades rang together and shrieked against each other as Stig’s axe slid down the sword’s crosspiece. . .[Stig] grabbed the swordsman’s right hand with his left, twisting it down and around, bending the wrist back. The man howled in pain and inadvertently leaned forward to try to lessen the twisting pressure. . . Stig head-butted him in the face and jerked his wrist one more time.”
  • Seven pirates try to stop Stig’s movement. “The first man to move had taken two paces when Stig’s sword darted out and back. The thug clutched at his chest, a surprised look on his face, he crumbled to his knees.” The pirate dies.
  • Thorn arrives and sees the Herons are in danger. “Thorn kept coming, his massive club-hand rising and falling, then sweeping from side to side, smashing ribs and skulls and arms as he scattered the gang, spilling them like ninepins before him. . . The shaggy old sea wolf, transformed into a terrible and terrifying instrument of violence, simply lunged the club-hand in a straight-armed punch at the terrified thug. It hit him in the chest and hurled him backward. . . the man flew between them [Hal and Lydia], smashing into the brick wall with a sickening sound, then sliding to the ground as his knees gave way.” The fight scene is described over three pages.
  • The book ends with an epic ship-to-ship battle between the Herons and Zavac’s pirates. Hal shoots a giant crossbow and “the bolt streaked away and plowed through the packed men in the bow of the ship. . . He figured that first bolt had killed or wounded at least four men. . .” As Hal shoots the crossbow, Lydia uses her weapon to shoot darts at the men. One of Lydia’s darts hits Zavac’s first mate who “staggered and fell.”
  • Some of Zavac’s men were able to board the Heron by making a bridge of oars. In man-to-man combat, Hal uses a spear and “thrust quickly, hitting him [the pirate] in the thigh. The Magyaran dropped his spear, reached to clutch the wound in his leg and toppled off the oars into the sea.”
  • Hal’s crewman, Ingavr “swung the oar at full length, smashing it into them, sweeping them from their unsteady foothold. One fell back aboard the Raven, three of his ribs fractured by the oar. The others went into the sea.”
  • Hal rams the Raven with his boat. “Heron’s sharp prow sliced like a giant blade along the starboard bank of oars, smashing and splintering them as she went, hurling the oarsmen off their benches as the butt ends of the oars jerked forward and smashed into them. The air was filled with the shouts of injured men and the grinding, smashing sound of the oars as they flew into splinters.” Two men are injured and two men are knocked unconscious.
  • The Herons board the pirate ship and begin swinging their axes. A pirate stabs Wulf with a sword and “blood welled out.” Thorn helps the two boys. “Thorn swung a backhanded stroke across his head, shearing through the helmet.”
  • Zavac tries to kill Hal. Zavac “suddenly thrust down with a convulsive heave, putting all his weight behind the knife. Hal just managed to twist his body to the side. The dagger scored a shallow cut across his neck and he felt the hot blood flow from the cut.”
  • Thorn appears and puts a hook on Zavac’s arm. “Zavac screamed in agony as the two-piece clasping hook clamped down on his forearm like a vice. Hal actually heard several small bones cracking as Thorn increased the pressure. . .” Zavac is left to go down with his ship. This final battle is described over 26 pages.
  • Tursgud, the Heron’s nemesis, acted belligerently and Ingvar’s massive hand, balled into a fist, flashed up in a thundering, devastating uppercut. It caught Tursgud on the point of his jaw, picking him up and hurling him backwards for several meters. He slid across a table, collapsing it, then crashed into the ground. . .”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Thorn goes into a tavern to see if he can get some information on a pirate ship. The patrons were drinking ale.
  • A pirate goes into a tavern and “he signaled the tavern keeper for another jug of brandy.”
  • While trying to sleep on the Heron, Hal hears “drunken voices of sailors heading back to their ships after an evening in the taverns close to the waterfront.”
  • When the Herons return home, the town throws a party. “There were platters of roast vegetables and barrels of ale and wine for those who wished it.” Several of the adults drink the wine.

Language

  • The Skandians often use their gods’ names in exclamation. For example, “For Gorlog’s sake” is used as an exclamation three times. “Lorgan’s ears” and, “Oh Gorlog help us,” are both used as an exclamation once.
  • One of the Herons’ crew calls someone a “treacherous cow.”
  • Several times someone is called a fool.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Zavac “wore on the gods of several different religions, none of which counted him as a devoted follower. . .”

Clap When You Land

Camino and Yahaira’s lives are turned upside down when they hear the news, “There have been no survivors found from flight 1112.”

Sixteen-year-old Yahaira lives in New York with her mother and father. Every year, her father returns to his home country – the Dominican Republic. This summer, he was on flight 1112. After Yahaira is told her father died in a plane crash, she is devastated by the news and weighed down by a secret – her father had a wife and a child in the Dominican Republic.

 Sixteen-year-old Camino lives in the Dominican Republic with her aunt. After Camino’s mother died, her father moved to New York. Camino’s father returns to the Dominican Republic every summer to spend time with her. Camino is crushed by the loss of her father and the discovery that he had another child, Yahaira, in New York.

Camino works with her aunt as a traditional healer and had aspirations of joining her father in New York to study medicine and become a doctor. Her father pays a local sex trafficker to leave Camino alone so she can focus on her schoolwork. Without her father funding this and her private education, she feels as though her dreams are now out of reach.

Clap When You Land follows Camino and Yahaira on their journey to discover how their lives are interconnected and what it means to be family. They both feel betrayed by their father’s secrets and must learn to cope with the aftermath. Camino and Yahaira learn the world is not always black and white, that maybe their father truly loved both of them. Yahaira comes to terms with her father’s deception saying, “I know now, Papi could not move between two families. When he was here – he was mine, when he was there, he was theirs.”

This spellbinding novel follows the two girls on the cusp of adulthood. Both girls must learn to deal with life’s challenges. Yahaira navigates life in New York as a lesbian, while Camino learns how to follow her dreams despite her circumstances. Clap When You Land will help readers understand the grieving process and how to cope with an immense loss.

The narration is provided in prose, switching between Camino and Yahaira’s voices which provides multiple perspectives on how loss can change someone. Camino and Yahaira’s relationship provides a valuable perspective on sexual assault and what it means to be a survivor. Camino and Yahaira find comfort in leaning on each other as they deal with the emotional and physical trauma they have suffered.

In addition, Clap When You Land discusses health disparities that exist both in the Dominican Republic and in the United States, providing important commentary on health inequities throughout the world. High school-aged readers will find Camino’s and Yahaira’s journey entertaining and captivating. The two young women are relatable characters who impart valuable life lessons.

 Sexual Content

  • As Camino walks to school, she sees “the working girls I once went to school with.” She is referring to girls who had to drop out of school to become sex workers.
  • Camino discusses how her father didn’t need to be strict with her because “I don’t mess with dudes from the barrio who love gossip at the domino bars about the girls that they’ve slept with.” Camino only flirted with the American boys from her school, but “not because they’re cute or interesting – they’re often obnoxious and only want a taste of my gutter-slick tongue and brownness; they act as if they could elevate my life with a taste of their powder-milk-tinged pomp.”
  • Camino discusses the neighborhood sex trafficker saying, “El Cero always gets a first taste of the girls who work for him. Before he gussies them up and takes them by the resort beach in cut-off tanks and short shorts so the men from all over the world who come here for sun and sex can give thumbs-up or -down to his wares.”
  • Yahaira reminisces about when she and her girlfriend, Dre, were intimate for the first time. Yahaira thinks, “The first time Dre touched me without our clothes on, she kept running her hand from waist to hip. And I wanted to write Miami a thank-you text, for giving my body a spot that was made to nest Dre’s head in.”
  • Yahaira describes Dre as saying, “If you tell a dirty joke, Dre will talk about plants that pollinate themselves. If you talk about hoeing around, you’d see Dre blink as her mind goes down a long winding path of tilling dirt.”
  • Camino is worried about El Cero, the local sex trafficker. She thinks, “Even the women, girls like me, our mothers and tias, our bodies are branded jungle gyms. Men with accents pick us as if from a brochure to climb and slide and swing.”
  • Yahaira was sexually assaulted on the train. She says, “When I felt a squeeze on my leg I thought it was an accident and when I felt fingers float up my thighs I thought I must be mistaken and when he palmed me under my skirt openhanded I dropped my trophy but did not scream, did not make a scene did not curse him out there was no strategy no alternate plan no way to win, there was just me stuck, and being felt up on a public train.”
  • Camino said her aunt always answered her questions, “whether it was about sex, or boys, healing or the Saints.”

Violence

  • When Camino learns that no one survived the plane crash, she thinks, “A body means there is no miracle to hope for; dead is dead is dead.”
  • Dre plays Nina Simone’s music when she is dealing with difficult events. Yahaira says, “She will play her when we see videos on social media of another black boy shot, another black girl pulled over, another kid in the Bronx stabbed outside the Bodega. Dre plays Nina when two girls holding hands are jumped.”
  • Yahaira’s mother won’t let her see her father’s remains because “the airline representative mails us a catalog of all the bits of cloth, and bone, and hair, and suitcase things that probably belong to my father.”
  • When a man sexually assaults Camino, she desperately thinks, “kick him back scratch at the eyes mouth open cry cry cry for help.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Camino frequently smokes cigars. “I lift my mouth to the cigar. Inhale. Hold the smoke hard in my lungs until the pain squeezes sharp in my chest.”
  • Camino’s aunt “hauls the honeyed rum.”
  • When they are making an offering to Camino’s dead parents, Camino and her aunt have a drink. “We pour a bit of homemade mamjuana into the water, and Tia doesn’t even stop me when I take a sip from the bottle. I am feeling guilty.”

Language

  • Damn is used occasionally. For example, after Yahaira’s coach calls to give her condolences. Yahaira thinks, “Who knew death must be so damn polite?”
  • Fuck is used sparingly. For example, Camino described how her house was blessed by saints, but “a lot of people don’t fuck with that kind of thing here.”
  • When walking down the street, Yahaira avoids “dog shit.”
  • Yahaira is planning on flying to the Dominican Republic to attend her father’s funeral even though “Miami is dead-ass serious that she isn’t going to the DR funeral.”
  • A man calls Camino an “uppity, ugly bitch.”

Supernatural

  • Yahaira asks Camino if she believes in ghosts. Camino answers, “Of courses, I believe in ghosts. There are spirits everywhere.”
  • Yahaira describes the alter in Camino’s home. “Miami and I have been ignoring the alter in the corner. I don’t know much about Saints or ancestors, only the rumors of sacrificing chickens and how it all relates to voodoo.”
  • Camino and her aunt are traditional healers and frequently call upon spirits. The townspeople say Camino’s aunt “has the Saint’s ear.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Paige Smith

Cinderella is Dead

King Manford rules Lille as a tyrant. He ensures women have no rights and are completely under the power of men. Cinderella has been dead for two hundred years and history has twisted her story to make it seem as though she found true love at the ball with Prince Charming. King Manford uses this story to ensure that each 16-year-old girl attends an annual ball where men choose a woman to wed. Many girls grow up looking forward to this day, where they think they will get their chance to find their own Prince Charming.

But sixteen-year-old Sophia is not like other girls. She has always rebelled against the rules and does not have faith in the story of Cinderella. Most importantly, Sophia does not want to marry a man. Instead, Sophia desires to run away with her best friend Erin. Since homosexual relationships are banned under King Manford’s rule, Sophia and a gay man, Luke, attempt to partner up at the ball. But the king discovers their plan, resulting in devastating repercussions for Luke.

Sophia narrowly escapes and goes on an adventure to take down King Manford. Along her journey, she meets and falls for Constance, the last living descendant of Cinderella’s family. Together they discover the fairy godmother, who is actually an evil witch. They also uncover the lies that have been spread about Cinderella, King Manford, and the rules that hold everyone in this patriarchal hierarchy.

Bayron twists a beloved fairytale into an empowering story where women get to decide their own fate and do not need to wait for their Prince Charming to come and save them. Cinderella is Dead is both captivating and moving as Sophia witnesses a seemingly picture-perfect fairytale crumble around her. In order to create a society where girls have the same freedoms as men, Constance says, “we need to burn the whole thing to the ground and start over. The entire system, the ideals that have been woven into society. It all has to go.”

Sophia is a powerful LGBTQ+ woman of color who works to overthrow a corrupt system. Sophia empowers all readers who have been pushed aside by society, making this novel a must-read for any queer teenager. Bayron’s story exemplifies how standing up for yourself and refusing to be shoved aside can truly benefit all people. Sophia’s adventure touches on many difficult subjects such as domestic violence and homophobia. However, these challenges are told in a sensitive way that will help introduce high school readers to the real difficulties and challenges of the world. Sophia is a powerful and personable character that readers will love, root for, and ultimately feel her pain as she attempts to create a just world.

Sexual Content

  • Sophia is upset the carriage ride to the ball would be the last time she would see Erin. Sophia reminisces, thinking that Erin was “the first and only person I’ve ever kissed.”
  • Sophia is harassed by an old man at the ball who “leans in and presses his lips to mine. I try to pull away, but he holds me close. He smells like wine and sweat, and all I want to do is get away from him.” Sophia fought him back as she “steps back and brings her knee up as hard as she can between his legs.” This causes an uproar, allowing Sophia the opportunity to escape.
  • Sophia and Constance share an intimate moment that Sophia describes. “Before I have a chance to overthink it, I press my lips to hers. Her hands move to my neck and face. A surge of warmth rushes over me as she pressed herself against me. There is an urgency in her kiss, like she’s trying to prove to me how much she cares, and I yield to her, unconditionally.”
  • Constance embraces Sophia when she returns from a trip. “Constance presses her lips against mine as she winds her arms around my neck.”
  • When she has to go to the winter cotillion, Sophia says goodbye to Constance. “I lean forward and kiss her, wrapping my arms around her, breathing her in and hoping this isn’t the last time.”
  • Sophia and Constance embrace. “Tears come again, but she wipes them away with the tip of her fingers, kissing my hand and pulling me close.”

Violence

  • Morris, Luke’s schoolmate, makes fun of Luke for being gay, which angers Luke. “Luke’s fist connected with Morris’s right cheek, sending spittle and at least two teeth flying.”
  • At the annual ball, the guards detain Luke. Sophia sees Luke getting “punched in the ribs and doubling over.”
  • A guard makes fun of Sophia’s friend, saying, “I would have offed myself, too, with a face like that.”
  • The local seamstress is falsely accused of helping Sophia escape at the annual ball. She is publicly executed and her head is cut off with an ax. Sophia saw “the seamstress’ head roll into the dirt.”
  • A local man harasses Constance and Sophia which leads to Constance fighting him. “Constance raises her knife and brings the hilt down on top of the man’s head, sending a loud crack! echoing through the alley. He falls face-first onto the ground.”
  • When Sophia plans to murder the king, she says, “I’m going to have to let him get close to me, so I can put a dagger in his neck.”
  • At the cotillion, a man attempts to flirt with Sophia, and a guard attacks him as a result. “As I turn, a guard sweeps in and strikes him on the top of the head with the hilt of his sword. The man collapsed into a heap.”
  • Sophia tries to assassinate King Manford. “In one quick move I plunge the dagger into his neck. I twist the blade the way Constance showed me. He blinks. Standing upright, he staggers, clutching his throat. I jump back, pulling the blade out. I smile at him. I’ve done it. I’ve ended him. Constance said that if I killed him, he would probably collapse into a heap. King Manford doesn’t move. She told me blood would rush from the wound. He doesn’t bleed.” As King Manford is no longer human, there is simply a gaping hole in his neck, but it did not cause him any pain as the hole slowly closed itself.
  • After Sophia’s attempt to kill King Manford, the guards restrain her. “Someone yanks my arm so hard it feels like my shoulder might come out of its socket.”
  • Sophia escapes her cell by attacking a guard. The guard “blinks, confused, as I bring the candlestick down with all the strength I can muster. It impacts his head with a sickening thud, and he falls into a pile, his knees and elbows jutting out in an unnatural way.”
  • Sophia continues attacking guards with her candlestick as she helps others escape the prison. The other prisoners cheer her on saying, “Hit him again!”
  • Amina, the fairy godmother, betrays Sophia and Constance. Constance stabs Amina for her betrayal. “The tip of Constance’s dagger sticks out of Amina’s chest as Constance grips the hilt behind Amina’s right shoulder.”
  • Sophia realizes King Manford is kept alive through magic and sees a bright core in him where the magic resides. She stabs the bright, magical center. “Bright, hot, and crimson like a heatless flame, the light in his chest erupts out of his mouth and engulfs the king’s entire head as he rears back, his hands clutching wildly at the air. A sound escapes his throat, the cries of a dying animal. What is left of his skin begins to shrivel and crack like burned paper.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Sophia considers Helen, a local potion maker, to be a hoax. Sophia thought, “Her potions were probably watered-down barley wine.”
  • Sophia describes the Bicentennial Celebration where every night of the week, “before curfew, people crowd the square to make music and drink.”
  • As Sophia and Erin ride to the annual ball, Erin speculates, “I hear they have tables and tables of food and wine.”
  • Amina, the fairy godmother, frequently smokes from a pipe. “She puffs away on her pipe, a wreath of earthy-smelling smoke encircling her head.”
  • The evil king, King Manford, meets Sophia at the cotillion. Sophia describes him. “From his smell, a mixture of wine and smoke, to the predatory look in his eyes, everything about him repels me.”
  • Amina describes the guilt she felt for betraying Cinderella, Sophia, and Constance. Amina felt “a twinge of guilt about Cinderella, but it’s nothing that can’t be stifled with a full pipe and a stiff drink.”

Language

  • Damn is used occasionally. For example, Sophia’s mother is frustrated with Sophia’s behavior and says she wishes Sophia “would sit down and stop trying to get herself arrested like some damned fool.”
  • Shit is used a couple of times. When Luke sees Morris, his classmate who always bullies him, he says “shit.”

Supernatural

  • Sophia walks past Helen’s Wonderments and thinks about the different potions Helen claims to brew up. The sign outside Helen’s store reads, “Find a Suitor, Banish an Enemy, Love Everlasting.”
  • Amina, the fairy godmother, explains how she learned magic. “All my life I’ve practiced magic. My mother raised me in the craft, taught me from the time I was young.”
  • Amina, Constance, and Sophia plan to use necromancy to raise Cinderella from the dead so Cinderella can help fight the king. Constance explains necromancy as, “It’s when you communicate with the dead.” Amina corrects Constance by explaining, “You have to call the spirit back to communicate with them.”
  • In order to see the future, Amina, Constance, and Sophia complete a divination ritual. In Sophia’s vision she sees Cinderella and the king. Then, the king’s “face transforms into something horrid and rotting – something dead. A ball of white-hot light erupts between us, pulling at the center of my chest. I cry out.”
  • Amina uses a spell to make the guards sleep. Amina describes the spell as “a little sleeping dust to send them to dreamland. . . It brings nightmares. . . The kind you never forget. The kind that haunt you even in your waking hours.”
  • Amina describes a special stone that allows the holder to see into the future. Amina explains, “An alternative to the kind of divination we used at the pond. An enchanted stone, polished up like a mirror. It can be used to see all sorts of things – the future, the present – but they are exceedingly rare.”
  • Amina raises Cinderella from the dead. Sophia describes the emotions of seeing Cinderella as, “A literal ghost is speaking to us, it takes everything I have not to give in to the little voice in my head that is screaming at me to run.”
  • Amina uses magic to create a gown for Sophia. Sophia describes the experience. “The same strange luminescence that clings to it clings to me. I hold my breath as a dress of shimmering silver materializes around me.”
  • Sophia realizes how the king has stayed alive for hundreds of years. When Sophia is imprisoned, the girl in the cell next to her explains, “He siphons the life from your very soul. There is a light, a pull, and whatever he takes from you, he uses to make himself young, to live as long as he so chooses.”
  • Sophia finds Cinderella’s journal which also explains how King Manford used magic to stay alive. Cinderella had written, “A channel opened between us, a connection. I could see right into his blackened heart. Something invisible, something unnatural, surrounds the source of the light. And now I know that there is no hope for me. Or for anyone.”
  • King Manford attempts to draw the life out of Sophia. Sophia describes the experience saying, “I’m dying. I feel the life being pulled out of me in long, rasping draws. A fire ignites in my chest, burning away any feelings of hope or love or happiness. Something tugs hard at my waist, and suddenly I’m sliding backward across the ballroom floor.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Paige Smith

 

 

Before the Ever After

ZJ’s dad, “Zachariah 44” Johnson, is a football star and ZJ’s entire world. He has always been there for ZJ and his mom. Zachariah 44 is a source of pride for the neighborhood and his fans. But after his most recent football concussion, ZJ’s dad has been different: Wild mood swings, forgetting ZJ’s friends’ names, even forgetting ZJ’s name. ZJ finds himself watching as the father that he loves deteriorates before his eyes. Clinging to his friends and mom, ZJ dreams about what life was like before the ever after.

Told in verse by ZJ, Before the Ever After highlights important moments that ZJ remembers about his father—the good and the bad. This is a story that pertains to head injuries in the NFL in the early 2000s and how they were dealt with. It specifically highlights the impact these injuries had on the families of these players.

In a way, ZJ is narrating a tragedy about his father’s fall from football star to a father that can’t remember his own son’s name. ZJ and his mother deal with the situation as best they can, and ZJ’s stories of the good times with his father carry a strong nostalgic tone. ZJ is elementary to middle school-aged, and the way he understands and relays information is perfect for younger readers. ZJ also plays football, but his relationship with it is complicated as ZJ tries to come to terms with the sport that his father loved so much. Although this story is about ZJ’s father, it is very much ZJ’s story as well.

Although Before the Ever After isn’t very long, Jacqueline Woodson carries us along with simple yet powerful verse that conveys the somber tone of ZJ’s particular voice. Throughout the course of the novel, ZJ learns that the things we love in life become a part of us, whether it’s a hobby or career or a person. Those things that we love unconditionally live in our memories, good and bad. By the end of the book, ZJ’s narration is mostly in the present rather than in the past, showing that he’s starting to accept his new reality. Although what happened to his father will never be okay, ZJ isn’t alone, and that’s the most important lesson of all.

Sexual Content

  • ZJ’s mom takes his dad to the doctor, who tells ZJ’s dad that he can’t drive anymore. ZJ narrates, saying “the doctor said to Daddy, / Look on the bright side. You have this / beautiful chauffeur. / Then he winked at Mama. / Look on the bright side, my daddy said / back to the doctor. / You’re a total chauvinist.”

Violence

  • “Zachariah 44” Johnson (also referred to as Dad) is a professional football player, so football-related pains and injuries are abundant. Once, Johnson describes, “His whole body . . . / is 223 pounds of pain / from toes to knees, from knees to ribs, / every single hit he took yesterday / remembered in the morning.”
  • One day, Ollie and ZJ are playing tackle in the yard when “Ollie tackled [ZJ] so hard, [his] head hit / the ground / and [his] nose bled.” Ollie felt terrible about the situation.
  • ZJ notes that “[his] dad probably holds the Football / Hall of Fame record / for the most concussions. Even with a / helmet on.”
  • This book takes place during the late nineties through the early 2000s. The topic of Y2K and what comes with the millennium comes up in conversation. ZJ talks about “this guy on the radio [who] said the world / was going to end / when we got to the new millennium. / That it was gonna explode—a whole / ‘nother big bang / but this time, instead of the earth being / created, / it was just gonna burst into smithereens / and all of us would be gone from here.”
  • ZJ’s dad’s mental state deteriorates throughout the course of the book from years of many concussions. Dad often forgets things and gets irrationally angry, and he sometimes will “slam the door so hard / the whole room shook.”
  • ZJ says that when he was a little kid, his grandma would say, “You’re about to get yourself / in deep water.” ZJ explains, “Deep water was a spanking from her.”
  • Football-related violence is sometimes described. ZJ notes that one time, his dad “got hit so hard, a / vein broke / in his left eye / and it stayed bloodred for days and / days.”
  • ZJ and his friend Ollie have a snowball fight in the park, and ZJ looks for specific gloves. He says, “I don’t know why / but those gloves seem to have a / superpower / when it comes to shaping snowballs and / firing them / at the sucker who didn’t duck fast / enough.”
  • ZJ gets tackled during a touch-football game. ZJ describes, “I’m going down, tasting snow and / dirt and spit / and something else too. / Blood.” ZJ, thinking about his dad’s injuries, quits football then and there.
  • ZJ’s dad punches out a window in the bedroom. ZJ says, “I’m half asleep when I hear the glass, / shattering once, then again as it’s / falling. / I hear my mother screaming and run to / their room, / where my daddy is standing at the / window, his arm through it, / and cold air blowing in.” The scene lasts for a couple of pages, and it’s clear that ZJ’s dad is confused about what’s happening.

 

Drugs and Alcohol

  • ZJ says that Ollie’s mom Bernadette comes over and drinks “sometimes, if it’s a Friday night, / one glass of wine.” Bernadette jokes, “Any more than that. . .  / and I forget my own name.”
  • After ZJ’s dad forgets who ZJ’s friends are, they ask “was your dad drunk?” and “maybe it was drugs.”
  • The doctors want to prescribe some “experimental drugs” to help ZJ’s dad cope with his migraines, memory loss, and anger.
  • ZJ describes some of the pills that his dad takes, saying, “there’s the pill that makes his feet / swell. / And the one that blurs his vision. / And the one that makes it hard for food to stay / in his belly. / And when none of those pills work, / there’s another doctor to see.”
  • ZJ remembers his dad’s earlier birthday parties, before people had stopped visiting them: “the ones who used to fill up our house, / their wineglasses clinking, / their laughter echoing through the / rooms.”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • ZJ’s best friend Ollie was left on the doorstep of a church as a baby. As a result, “a preacher and his wife found / and kept [Ollie].”
  • ZJ talks about the toll that his dad’s condition is taking on his mom. ZJ says, “Last night I found my mom outside / standing on the deck, looking up at the / sky. / Are you counting stars? I asked. / No, she said. I’m looking for God. / If anyone has any answers, I guess / God would.”
  • ZJ’s mom prays to herself, saying “In Jesus’s name, I pray. Amen.”

by Alli Kestler

The River

Two years after Brian Robeson survived fifty-four days alone in the Canadian wilderness, the government wants him to head back so they can learn what he did to stay alive. This time Derek Holtzer, a government psychologist, will accompany him. But a freak accident leaves Derek unconscious. Brian’s only hope is to transport Derek a hundred miles down the river to a trading post. He’s survived with only a hatchet before—now can Brian build a raft and navigate an unknown river? For the first time, it’s not only Brian’s survival that’s at stake.

As Brian embarks on his journey, he realizes that being in the wilderness with another person isn’t the same as crash landing. There is no danger. No tension. And then Derek is injured, and Brian must make a life or death decision. However, the situation still has little suspense or action. Even when Brian is rafting down the river, there is little excitement, and Brian’s hallucinations are confusing. However, when Brian becomes exhausted, he thinks, “It would be better if Derek were gone. What were the differences? He was dumb enough to rise up and get hit by the lightning, and he should be gone.” Brian doesn’t give in to this momentary weakness and ends up saving Derek.

Even though The River follows Brian on another adventure, Brian’s character does not grow. Much of the plot focuses on Brian’s thoughts and emotions, which slows down the pace. The conclusion is abrupt and the secret that plagued him in Hatchet is never resolved; however, it no longer bothers Brian. The River has few intense moments and the plot and characters are underdeveloped, which makes it hard for readers to connect with the characters.

Readers who enjoyed Hatchet will find Brian’s journey interesting. However, if the slow pace of Hatchet made finishing the story difficult, you will want to avoid picking up The River. Brian’s next adventure, Brian’s Winter, takes the reader back in time and shows what would have happened if Brian wasn’t rescued after his plane crash. Readers who enjoy understanding character’s thoughts and emotions will find The River satisfying. However, if you’re looking for a more fast-paced survival story, Adrift by Paul Griffin would be a better choice.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Derek is hit by lightning. “Some thing, some blueness of heat and light and raw power seemed to jump from the tree to the briefcase and radio and enter Derek’s hand. All the same part of a second it hit him and his back arched, snapped him erect, and then it seemed to fill the whole shelter and slammed into Brian as well.” After being hit, Derek is in a coma.
  • Brian falls into the river and is swept along with the current. “. . .he was down again, mashed down and tumbled by the pressure wave, smashed into the rocks on the bottom, and all he could think was that he had to stay alive. . . He fought and clawed against the rock, broke his face free, then was driven down again, hammered into the bottom.” Brian finally finds the raft and is able to get on it.

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • God is used as an exclamation four times.
  • When Derek is injured, Brian thinks, “The woods. The damn woods.”
  • When Brian decides to build a raft and travel down the river, he thinks, “Oh, hell, we just have to do this. . .”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Brian was trying to make a difficult decision. “Please, God, he thought—and did not finish it. Just that—please, God.”
  • When the raft is near huge rocks in the river, Brian whispers, “God. . . “

Becoming RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Journey to Justice

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a modern feminist icon—a leader in the fight for equal treatment of girls and women in society and the workplace. She blazed trails to the peaks of the male-centric worlds of education and law, where women had rarely risen before.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has often said that true and lasting change in society and law is accomplished slowly, one step at a time. This is how she has evolved, too. Step by step, the shy little girl became a child who questioned unfairness, who became a student who persisted despite obstacles, who became an advocate who resisted injustice, who became a judge who revered the rule of law, who became RBG.

Growing up during World War II and living during the McCarthy era made a huge impact on Ruth. Because she witnessed discrimination, she was determined to help others. However, Ruth’s main focus was helping those who faced gender discrimination. While most of her cases focused on “girls who were held back by unequal treatment,” she also defended men who received unfair treatment because of their gender. Ruth’s goal was “identifying and removing the barriers that restricted what women could do, and that also restricted what men could do.” Ruth knew that as a judge she must listen to others and engage with opposing ideas in order to overcome discrimination.

As a woman, Ruth had to face many obstacles. While society thought that a girl’s greatest goal was to “find a husband who could take care of his wife and family,” Ruth’s mother encouraged her to be independent. Ruth’s mother wanted Ruth to chase her dreams as well as act like a lady. Her mother said, “A lady reacts calmly to upsetting things and without anger. A lady has nothing to do with jealousy.” Throughout her life, Ruth often based her behavior on her mother’s advice.

Eleanor Roosevelt was another positive influence in Ruth’s life. Eleanor Roosevelt spoke against intolerance and cruelty. She said, “Don’t be prejudiced. Be open to refugees who come to our country. Don’t be cruel, even to enemies.” Ruth’s story includes many examples of how both Ruth’s mother and Eleanor Roosevelt affected Ruth’s behavior in a positive manner.

Readers who aren’t interested in the law may find Becoming RGB’s focus on the legal cases that Ruth fought overwhelmingly. The graphic novel has different shaped text boxes which often make it difficult for readers to know which order the text should be read in. However, the text includes explanations of terms that readers may not be familiar with. Even though Becoming RGB is a graphic novel, some of the pages are text-heavy and have advanced vocabulary.

Readers will enjoy the graphic novel’s illustrations that are white with shades of blue. Some pages have pops of red that highlight important aspects of the story. Each short chapter has a title that helps readers know the topic of the chapter. Even though some parts of the biography are dominated by legal cases, Becoming RBG is worth reading. Ruth’s story of perseverance is packed full of life lessons and shows how one woman helped change the world for the better.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Ruth lived during World War II when the Nazis were “creating a nation of all those they considered true Germans and repressing—even killing—people they considered inferior.”
  • During World War II, Japan surrendered after America “dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima. . . Three days later, the US military dropped a second atom bomb on another Japanese city, Nagasaki.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • During World War II, some thought “Jews were Christ Killers.”
  • One of the Supreme Court justices “suggested that divine law ordained that women shouldn’t be lawyers. He wrote, ‘The paramount density and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.’”

 

 

 

The Berlin Boxing Club

Karl Stern is Jewish in heritage only. No one in his family practices and Karl doesn’t even see himself as Jewish. However, in Nazi Germany, Karl is Jewish, whether he or his family practice the religion. Despite this fact, Karl’s concerns are less about the Nazis and more about becoming a cartoonist, flirting with his neighbor Greta Hauser, and learning how to box from his father’s friend, the great Max Schmeling. But as the restrictions tighten around Jewish people, Karl must learn what it means to be a man, to be Jewish, and to be strong.

Although The Berlin Boxing Club is set in Nazi Germany and has a Jewish protagonist, the events lead up to Kristallnacht, or night of the broken glass, instead of describing a concentration camp. Although the reader will be familiar with the Holocaust, the characters do not know what’s to come. The historical events, like the laws passed against Jewish people, did actually happen, and the reader gets to experience discrimination and hatred through Karl’s eyes. As a form of escapism, Karl draws cartoons that depict him and his sister fleeing the bullies in their lives. These cartoons appear throughout the book and help them keep up hope, even when the situation is dire.

The Berlin Boxing Club contains some characters who are real historical figures. Most prominently featured is Max Schmeling, who was a real German boxer who lost in a historic fight against African American boxer Joe Louis. Although Schmeling was beloved in Germany before this event, his loss failed to prove Hitler’s assertion that the so-called “German race” was superior. This loss helped move Schmeling out of the spotlight. Most importantly, Schmeling historically helped hide two Jewish children. Schmeling’s history is closely tied with Karl and his family, and it is a clever way of mixing fiction with historical facts. It should be noted that Karl and his family are fictional.

The main theme shows Karl’s evolving understanding of manhood. Karl desperately wants to be a boxer because he hates getting beaten up at school, and he would like to be strong to defend himself and exact revenge against his bullies. At the beginning of the book, Karl ties manhood to physical prowess, causing him to knock heads with other characters. Then, Karl meets his father’s friend, the Countess, who is a man dressed as a woman who lives with his male partner. Initially, Karl reacts very negatively towards both of them. But as the story progresses, Karl learns that the Countess fought in the Great War, and he eventually risks his own safety to help hide Karl and his sister. Through characters like the Countess, Karl unpacks his negative baggage around masculinity and learns that courage and strength come in more forms than just physical.

The Berlin Boxing Club is sometimes upsetting due to the events that took place in Nazi Germany and due to Karl’s own internalized issues that stem from damaging propaganda about Jewish people, women, and homosexuality. Karl’s personal journey shows that he can unlearn those terrible things that he thought were true, and that people are far more complicated than Karl gives them credit for. Readers who have already read other fictionalized and real accounts of life from Jewish people under Nazi rule will find that The Berlin Boxing Club is a change of pace, and they may enjoy the different perspectives that the book brings to the conversation. As Karl unpacks his own preconceived ideas, The Berlin Boxing Club is also worth unraveling to find its heart.

Sexual Content

  • Item number three on Karl’s list of biggest concerns in his life is, “Getting inside Greta Hauser’s pants and having her find her way into mine.” Karl mentions that he “was also obsessed with the recently bloomed chest of Greta Hauser, who lived with her family in [Karl’s] apartment building.” Karl mentions Greta’s breasts several times.
  • Karl talks about how he finds abstract art difficult to digest. He says that he prefers “paintings and drawings of whores, exposing themselves to men on the street and in brothels.”
  • In pursuit of a flyer about one of his father’s artists, Karl finds an ad lying on the floor that he describes as a “sexy message.” It reads, “Berlin is still hot ladies—You just have to look in the right cracks. The countess has just what you’ve been waiting for . . . ” An “ink smear” prevents Karl from reading the rest of the page.
  • The building superintendent of Karl’s apartment reads a Nazi tabloid. Karl swipes his copies “because of the pinups, not because of the Nazi propaganda.”
  • On his morning run, Karl passes a “weary prostitute walking home from a long night.”
  • Greta kisses Karl in the furnace room. Karl describes how “she wrapped her arms around me, rubbing the back of my neck. Goosebumps spread down my spine, and our kisses became more intense as she pressed her body against mine, so close that I could feel the pulse of my heart beating against hers.”
  • The apartment superintendent catches Karl and Greta kissing. As Greta leaves, he says to Karl, “Hope she tasted good, Stern. I’ve had my eye on that for a long time.” Karl and Greta are 14 and 15, respectively.

Violence

  • To “prove” that Karl is Jewish and humiliate him, three of Karl’s classmates pull down his pants to show that he is circumcised. Karl describes, “Franz roughly unbuckled my belt and unbuckled my trousers . . . my penis bobbed in front of them in all of its circumcised glory.”
  • The boys who humiliate Karl then fight him, though Karl wants no part of any physical confrontation. One boy punched him several times, “catching me on the edge of my chin and sending my head snapping back. More laughter. Franz (the one boy) then threw several punches at my face, landing on my eye and the side of my mouth. My top lip caught on the corner of my right canine tooth, and blood gushed out of my mouth and dribbled down my chin, eliciting more howls.”
  • When the boys hear a teacher’s voice from down the hallway, they shove Karl down the stairs. Karl says, “I fell hard against the side of the stairwell, knocking my face against the metal handrail as I went down. I slid down a few steps until I came to a stop face-first on the landing.” One of his teeth gets knocked out.
  • When Karl, his father, and his sister come home one night, they find Uncle Karl “bending over the sink with his bare ass hanging in the air. A small dark bloody hole had punctured his left buttock, which my mother was probing with long tweezers.” The adults won’t tell Karl or Hildy what happened, though it is implied that it has something to do with the political climate exacerbated by Hitler.
  • Karl wants to know what happened to Uncle Jakob when they find that one of his butt cheeks has been punctured in an altercation. Uncle Jakob jokes that “One of [Jakob’s] girlfriends found out about one of [his] other girlfriends, and the next thing [he] knew [he] had a hole in [his] Hintern [butt].”
  • Karl knows some things about Uncle Jakob, including that “Uncle Jakob was a member of an underground Communist group that was trying to organize against the Nazis.” From that, Karl guesses that Uncle Jakob “was part of a secret meeting that had been broken up by the Gestapo and that he’d gotten shot while he fled the scene.”
  • The boys in the Hitler Youth continue to harass Karl at school. One day they “grabbed [him] by the arms and pulled [him] back, pinning [his] arms behind [him]” so he couldn’t escape.
  • The boys in the Hitler Youth have a new initiation for their members, that requires they “baptize a Jew.” They grab Karl and plunge his head into a toilet in the school bathroom. Karl describes, “I quickly held my breath as I felt my hair and top of my face plunge into the water.”
  • Karl is upset when Max hasn’t come to get him for boxing lessons. Karl imagines in his “most exaggerated fantasy . . . becoming a heavyweight contender and defeating Schmeling himself, with [Karl’s] long arms snapping off a series of rapid-fire punches.”
  • When their mom won’t respond, Karl and Hildy break into the bathroom. Upset about having to let the housekeeper go, their mom falls asleep in the bathtub and it seems that she has come close to drowning. Karl describes how “she choked and gasped as water went up her nose.”
  • Karl learns how to box from Max Schmeling, who was a real professional boxer in Germany in the 1930s. Boxing is a violent sport, and Karl gets beaten up regularly during training. Max says about boxing, “There’s an art to boxing and plenty of skills to learn, but at the end of the day, boxing is just fighting, plain and simple.”
  • Karl describes what it’s like landing his first punch in a spar. Karl narrates, “The punch had mass and weight, and a wonderful electric thrill ran down my hand and across my body as I sensed his muscles tighten.”
  • Neblig, one of Karl’s friends at the boxing gym, reveals that he is blind in one eye because some other boys tried to beat him up. He also has a stutter, which comes through his dialogue. He says, “I held th-th-them off good. But then one of them hit me in the eye, and it almost p-p-p-popped right out.”
  • Karl reads a profile in a magazine about the Jewish American boxer Barney Ross. The magazine says that Ross’s father “was killed during an armed robbery.”
  • Uncle Jakob is arrested because his “political group doesn’t agree with the Nazis . . . They took him to a concentration camp in a place called Dachau.” The family only hears “rumors of torture and murder in the camps,” but at this point Karl’s family is unsure.
  • After Uncle Jakob’s arrest, Karl’s parents have a loud fight about leaving Germany. Karl describes the scene. Karl’s father “kicked the suitcase so it slid into my mother’s leg with a dull thud. She grabbed her shin in pain where the suitcase had struck her. ‘Goddamn you!’ she screamed. She picked up the suitcase and hurled it toward my father. He ducked out of the way, but it struck him on the shoulder and then bounced against the wall.”
  • Karl and the few other Jewish students are expelled from their school because of the implementation of the Nuremburg laws (which barred Jewish people from doing a host of activities and jobs, and defined who was “a Jew”). Afterward, some of the boys at school run to beat up Karl and the others. Karl is faster than Benjamin, another Jewish student, and Karl looks back to see a student “grab [Benjamin] by the back of his jacket and swing him to the ground . . . he was completely covered by the kicking and punching bodies of the other boys.”
  • Bertram Heigel (the Countess) tells Karl about his experience in the First World War with Karl’s father, who had saved Heigel’s life. Heigel notes, “Your father had already made it and was returning fire to give us cover when a mustard gas cloud swept over us . . . We had lost our masks during the retreat, and I started gagging as the gas hit the back of my throat.” Karl’s father pulls them from the trenches. This description lasts for a couple of pages.
  • Karl’s apartment superintendent ambushes Karl and Greta’s meet up one night, and he grabs Greta with the intent of sexually assaulting her. He tells Karl to go away or he’ll throw Karl’s family out on the street. Karl discovered “Greta pressed up against a tree by Herr Koplek [the building superintendent].” Karl then “lunged forward and gave [Koplek] a quick shove, which sent him tumbling to the ground.”
  • Koplek gets revenge by forcing Karl’s family to move out, claiming that Karl was “making sexual advances” on Greta. Although untrue, the rumor has spread, and no one can afford to believe Karl.
  • Karl’s family receives word that Uncle Jakob died of “dysentery” according to the records at Dachau.
  • After school, the boys from the Hitler Youth hit Hildy. They throw rotten eggs and say, “Ten points to whoever can hit the first Jewess.”
  • In the news, Karl hears that “a Polish Jew living in France…had entered the German Embassy and shot and killed a German diplomat.”
  • Karl and his family experience what would become known as Kristallnacht, or the night where Nazis were “attacking Jews and Jewish businesses.” Karl is badly injured by Nazis when the rioters break into the art gallery, and Karl watches as “the man plunged the piece of glass into my father’s side.” Karl’s father is alive, but his doctor friend takes Karl’s parents away so they can hide. The scenes from Kristallnacht last for several chapters, and Karl sees scenes like Nazis “kicking an elderly Jewish man” who was lying in the street.
  • The Gestapo takes Karl’s father. Nothing is heard of him afterward.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Karl and his sister Hildy help serve wine at their father’s art gallery openings and exhibitions. Karl’s job was “to redistribute the wine from the full bottles into the three empty bottles and then fill up the difference with water.”
  • Karl takes “a small taste from each one.” Hildy, who is eight, asks if she can try some, and Karl says, “When you’re thirteen.” Germany’s legal drinking age and drinking regulations for minors are much different than those in the United States, though this is not outright stated in the text.
  • Max has a string of rules for Karl, including “no tobacco . . . no booze.”
  • Karl’s father comes home one night “smelling of cigars and the peppermint-flavored liquor he preferred.”
  • While listening to Schmeling’s fight with Joe Louis, Karl drinks some beer with his fellow boxers. At this point in the story, Karl is almost seventeen. Karl notes that the beer makes his “brain tingle pleasantly.”
  • Karl gets drunk on beer during Schmeling’s fight. Karl says, “After an hour of steady drinking, I had to get up and relieve myself. I pushed myself up from the table, and my legs felt rubbery as I staggered into the men’s room.” He blacks out while in the men’s room.

Language

  • The Nazis and Nazi-sympathizing townsfolk use slurs and negative stereotypes towards the Jewish characters. Some of Karl’s classmates call him a “dirty pig” and say, “You should’ve been honest with us . . . We might’ve wanted to borrow money from you, Jew,” and “Jews are destroying our country.”
  • Profanity is fairly common throughout the book. Swear words (in both German and English) include: scheiss (shit), verdammt (damned), schwein (pig; swine), crap, ass, bastard, and retard.
  • Karl says of people who practice Judaism, “I disliked Jews as much as they did. I didn’t identify with them at all . . . To me, most of the Nazi propaganda about Jews had a ring of truth to it . . . And just like Adolf Hitler, I believed they were ruining everything. Only Hitler saw the Jews as ruining Germany, while I merely saw them as threatening my standing at school with my friends.”
  • Sometimes characters use exclamations like “God.” For instance, when Herr Boch finds Karl injured at the bottom of the steps, he says, “Du Lieber Gott! My God! What happened?”
  • Some of the students in Karl’s class call Karl a “Red,” referring to Russian communists. One of his classmates also comments that “All the Reds are Jews anyway, aren’t they?”
  • There are discussions about Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf. Much of the book is known for Hitler’s demonization of many groups of people, including Jews, LGBTQ+ folks, and many others. This book would go on to influence the Nazi party as well as much of Hitler’s regime in Germany. But The Berlin Boxing Club also discusses the parts where Hitler “specifically advocated for boxing to be part of the standard physical fitness program for all German boys.”
  • The apartment superintendent of Karl’s apartment was “an avowed fan of Hitler and kept a Nazi flag pinned to the outside of his door. He loyally read the Nazi tabloid, Der Stürmer, which featured the most virulent anti-Semitic articles and cartoons.”
  • At school one day, Karl notices that many of his classmates are wearing the regalia of the Hitler Youth. Karl notes, “I saw many boys wearing some sort of Nazi or Hitler Youth insignia, from buttons to belt buckles or kerchiefs around their necks . . . The Hitler Youth uniforms filled me with envy rather than fear. What boy wouldn’t want to wear a military uniform?”
  • During an assembly, a teacher wearing a “green Bavarian jacket with a small enamel swastika pin” leads the students in the Nazi salute and shouts, “Heil Hitler.” Karl participates because he “doesn’t want to draw attention to [himself] for not doing it.”
  • There is a lot of rhetoric against Jewish characters. For instance, the new principal at Karl’s school says that Jewish people “are the greatest threat to our fatherland.”
  • In biology classes at Karl’s school, the students “received long lectures on the purity of Aryan blood versus Jewish, African, [and] Gypsy blood.”
  • One of the boys in the Hitler Youth points at Karl and says, “Take a good look, boys. On the outside, he appears like us, but his blood and his cock are pure Jew.”
  • Karl’s father asks Karl to make a delivery to the Countess. Karl peeks at the package and sees “a simple illustration of two people dancing . . . both of the people were men with slicked-back hair, wearing tuxedos. The caption above the image read: The Countess presents another private winter ball for the beautiful boys of Berlin.” Karl, upon seeing this, reveals that he is homophobic. He says that his father “was somehow in league with homosexuals. It was risky enough being Jewish, but associating with homosexuals would put us at an even greater risk. Even Jews didn’t like homosexuals. It was the one thing everyone seemed to agree on.”
  • Karl meets the Countess, and he discovers that the Countess is a man dressed as a woman. Karl is not sure how to address him, and thinks to himself, “What were you supposed to call those people?”
  • Karl suspects that because his father is friends with the Countess, that his father is “a homosexual.” Then Karl wonders, “Did [he] have homosexual blood in [his] veins too?”
  • The girls at school call Hildy a “rotten apple” in reference to a very antisemitic book the class reads of the same name. On the cover, Karl sees the depictions of the apples. He notes, “The tree was filled with beautiful apples, except some of the apples had strange human faces with large noses and droopy eyes.” The book also praises Hitler for “cutting [Jews] out of Germany.”
  • Some of the boxers at the gym discuss a new and upcoming American boxer named Joe Louis. One of the boxers thinks he’ll take the heavyweight belt in no time. To this statement, another boxer says, “A Negro champion? It won’t happen.” When someone points out that Jack Johnson, an African American boxer, had already won the belt, the other boxer responds with, “A fluke . . . Negros don’t have the brainpower to be champions.” This conversation continues for about a page. The term “Negro” is used when referring to Joe Louis and other black characters.
  • Karl talks about how he makes deliveries for folks who live in the Berlin underworld— “homosexuals, Gypsies, Jews, Communists, anyone whose lifestyle or beliefs forced him or her to live in secret.”

Supernatural

  • Greta sees Karl shoveling coal in the apartment basement and says, “Well, if it isn’t Vulcan at his forge.” When Karl is confused, she clarifies, “The god of fire.” She then notes the difference between Vulcan and Hephaestus, saying, “Vulcan was a Roman god . . . Hephaestus was the Greek god of fire.”
  • Karl and Greta talk about mythology again in the furnace room, and this time Karl brings up the story of Pandora. Karl says, “Zeus ordered Hephaestus to create Pandora to punish mankind for stealing the secret of fire . . . Her box released all the evils of mankind—vanity, greed, envy, lust . . . ”

Spiritual Content

  • Karl is Jewish, but he was “raised by an atheist father and an agnostic mother, I grew up in a secular household. I had absolutely no religious background or education.”
  • Karl’s father fought in the First World War, and he hates religion and politics. He says, “I learned everything I needed to know about politics and religion during the war. They’re all worthless.”
  • Karl talks about pseudoscientists “proving Hitler’s theories of racial superiority” and who were also perpetuating “medieval myths about Jews’ kidnapping Christian children and drinking their blood in strange religious rituals.”
  • Greta’s family is Catholic, so her father “doesn’t want [her] talking to Lutheran boys” or Jewish boys.
  • Greta tells Karl that she’ll “have to say a special prayer” for him before his first real boxing match.
  • Greta confesses that “she was not sure that she believed in God at all.”
  • Jewish-American boxer Barney Ross’s father was an “Orthodox rabbi.”
  • Karl and Hildy’s mother sends them to attend a Jewish school since their old schools expelled them for being Jewish in the eyes of the Nuremburg laws. Karl is told on the first day that he is required to wear “a yarmulke,” or a small cap while at school even though he does not practice Judaism.
  • Karl has some thoughts on attending a Jewish school. He notes, “I felt no connection to the religious Jews and didn’t believe in any of their traditions. Why should God or anyone else care if I ate a pork sausage or walked around without a hat?”
  • The Jewish owner of the store where Karl buys his ink is suffering because of the laws against non-Jewish people doing business with Jewish people. He says a prayer over Karl before Karl leaves the store one day. The owner tells Karl, “That was the Tefilat HaDerech; it’s a prayer for a safe journey.”

by Alli Kestler

A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns is set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s last thirty years—from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding. It puts the violence, fear, hope, and faith of the country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war. In war, personal lives—the struggle to survive, raise a family, and find happiness—are inextricable from the history playing out around them.

Mariam and her mother live as outcasts. With little contact with the outside world, Mariam dreams of a time when her father will accept her. When Mariam’s mother dies, Mariam has no choice but to show up at her father’s house. Her father quickly arranges for Mariam to marry Rasheed. At first, Mariam is hopeful that living in a new city with a new husband will be the beginning of something good. But after a string of miscarriages, Rasheed becomes violent and forbids Mariam from seeking friendship.

Meanwhile, Laila grew up with parents that believe everyone deserves an education, including girls. While Laila’s childhood is far from perfect, she is surrounded by loving people. Then, just when her family plans to leave their war-torn city, Laila’s parents are killed. With no family or friends left, Laila isn’t sure where to turn. When Rasheed offers marriage, Laila reluctantly agrees to become his second wife. However, she wasn’t prepared for his first wife’s hate or Rasheed’s violence.

A Thousand Splendid Suns has worked its way onto many schools’ required reading lists because the story helps readers understand Afghan history. More importantly, it is a story of family, friendship, and hope. Mariam and Laila’s friendship gives them strength to live in a brutal environment, where their husband is cruel and abusive. Through their plight, readers will begin to understand the role women play in Afghanistan and how the Taliban changed their world overnight.

Readers will be deeply moved by the story’s events. However, the brutality of war, the massacre of innocent people, and the harsh physical abuse of both Mariam and Laila is graphic and disturbing. Hosseini paints a realistic picture of living in a war-torn country, and the images of death will remain with readers for a long time after they close the cover of the book. Even though A Thousand Splendid Suns has a positive message, sensitive readers will find the descriptions of Rasheed’s abusive behavior and the constant death upsetting.

Before you read A Thousand Splendid Suns, grab a box of tissues because the story will bring you to tears. Because of Laila’s friendship, Mariam makes a decision that will forever alter both of their lives. Through Mariam’s experiences, readers will come to understand how powerless women were under the Taliban’s rule, but they will also see how friendship and kindness have the power to change one’s life.

Sexual Content

  • After Mariam’s mother got pregnant, the baby’s father told his wives that her mother had “forced” herself on him.
  • Mariam is forced to marry a much older man. Before the marriage, Mariam thinks about her mother’s words. “It was the thought of these intimacies in particular, which she [Mariam] imagined as painful acts of perversity, that filled her with dread and made her break out in a sweat.”
  • One night, Mariam’s husband comes into her room. “His hand was on her right breast now, squeezing it hard through the blouse. . . He rolled on top of her, wriggled and shifted, and she let out a whimper. . .The pain was sudden and astonishing. . . When it was done, he rolled off her, panting.”
  • Mariam finds pornography in her husband’s room. The women in the pictures, “their legs were apart, and Mariam had a full view of the dark place between.”
  • Mariam’s husband desires intimacy. “His appetite, on the other hand, was fierce, sometimes boarding on violent. The way he pinned her down, his hand squeezes at her breast, how furiously his hips worked.”
  • Laila’s feelings for her best friend, Tariq, begin to change. She wonders “what would it be like to kiss him, to feel the fuzzy hair about his lips tickling her own lips?” Later, they have sex. “Laila thought of Tariq’s hands, squeezing her breast, sliding down the small of her back, as the two of them kissed and kissed.”
  • Laila hears a story about three sisters who were raped and then “their throats slashed.”
  • After Laila’s parents die, an older man asks Laila to marry him. He implies that if she says no, she may have to work in a brothel. Laila agrees to marry him because she is pregnant.
  • After Laila and the man are married, he has sex with her. “Laila had a full view of his sagging breast, his protruding belly button. . . she felt his eyes crawling all over her.” They have sex several times, but the action is not described in detail.

Violence

  • The book often describes the violence of war. For example, someone says that the Mujahideen forces boys to fight. “And when soldiers from a rival militia capture these boys, they torture them. I heard they electrocute them. . . then they crush their balls with pliers. They make the boys lead them to their homes. Then they break in, kill their fathers, rape their sisters and mothers.”
  • After Mariam goes into town, she comes back and sees “the straight-backed chair, overturned. The rope dropping from a high branch. Nana dangling at the end of it.”
  • After Mariam has a miscarriage, her husband becomes different. It wasn’t easy tolerating him talking this way to her, to bear his scorn, his ridicule, his insults. . . [Mariam] lived in fear of his shifting moods, his volatile temperament, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks. . .”
  • Russians took over Afghanistan and people talked about “eyes gouged and genitals electrocuted in Pol-e-Charkhi Prison. Mariam would hear of the slaughter that had taken place at the Presidential Palace.” The president was killed after he watched the “massacre of his family.”
  • Mariam’s husband was angry because of her cooking. “His powerful hands clasped her jaw. He shoved two fingers into her mouth and pried it open, then forced the cold, hard pebbles into it. Mariam struggled against him, mumbling, but he kept pushing the pebbles in, his upper lip curled in a sneer . . . Then he was gone, leaving Mariam to spit out pebbles, blood, and the fragments of two broken molars.”
  • A teacher would slap students. “Palm, then back of the hand, back and forth, like a painter working a brush.”
  • A boy shoots a water gun, spraying a girl with urine.
  • After a girl is bullied, her friend fights the bully. “Then it was all dust and fists and kicks and yelps.”
  • A rocket hits one of Laila’s friend’s houses. “Giti’s mother had run up and down the street where Giti was killed, collecting pieces of her daughter’s flesh in her apron, screeching hysterically. Giti’s decomposing right foot, still in in its nylon sock and purple sneaker, would be found on a rooftop two weeks later.”
  • A rocket hits Laila’s house. “Something hot and powerful slammed into her from behind. It knocked her out of her sandals. Lifted her up. And now she was flying, twisting and rotating in the air. . . Then Laila struck the wall. Crashed to the ground.” Laila sees her dead parents.
  • Laila hears a story about soldiers “raping Pashtun girls, shelling Pashtun neighborhoods, and killing indiscriminately. Every day, bodies were found tied to trees, sometimes burned beyond recognition. Often, they’d been shot in the head, had their eyes gouged out, their tongues cut out.”
  • Rasheed, Laila’s husband, hits both of his wives often. “One moment [Laila] was talking and the next she was on all fours, wide-eyed and red-faced, trying to draw a breath. . .” She drops the baby she was carrying. “Then she was being dragged by her hair.” Her husband locks her in a room and then goes to beat his other wife. “To Laila, the sounds she heard were those of a methodical, familiar proceeding. . . there was no cussing, no screaming, no pleading. . . only the systematic business of beating and being beaten, the thump, thump of something solid repeatedly striking flesh.”
  • When the Taliban take over Afghanistan, they kill the Afghanistan leader. The Taliban “had tortured him for hours, then tied his legs to a truck and dragged his lifeless body through the streets.”
  • After Rasheed hits Laila, she “punched him . . . The impact actually made him stagger two steps backward. . . He went on kicking, kicking Mariam now, spittle flying from his mouth. . .” At one point Rasheed put the barrel of a gun in Laila’s mouth.
  • Rasheed gets upset at Laila and begins “pummeling her, her head, her belly with fists, tearing at her hair, throwing her to the wall.” Mariam tries to help Laila but Rasheed hits her too.
  • After an old friend comes to see Laila, Rasheed gets angry. “Without saying a word, he swung the belt at Laila. . . Laila touched her fingers to her temple, looked at the blood, looked at Rasheed, with astonishment. Rasheed swung the belt again.” Rasheed begins to strangle Laila. “Laila’s face was turning blue now, and her eyes had rolled back.”
  • In order to save Laila, Mariam hits Rasheed with a shovel. “And so Mariam raised the shovel high, raised it as high as she could, arching it so it touched the small of her back. She turned it so the sharp edge was vertical . . . Mariam brought down the shovel. This time, she gave it everything she had.” Rasheed dies from his wounds.
  • When an Afghanistan leader is killed, Laila thinks about some of the violence that he caused. “She remembers too well the neighborhoods razed under his watch, the bodies dragged from the rubble, the hands and feet of children discovered on rooftops or the high branches of some tree days after their funeral. . . “

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Someone is given morphine after being injured.
  • Laila overhears a story about her husband. He was drunk when his son “went into the water unnoticed. They spotted him a while later, floating face down.” The boy died. Someone says, “This is why the Holy Koran forbids sharab. Because it always falls on the sober to pay for the sins of the drunk.”

Language

  • Profanity is rarely used. Profanity includes ass, piss, shit, and damn.
  • As a child, Mariam’s mother reminds her that she is a bastard because she was born out of wedlock.
  • Mariam yells at her half-brother, saying “he had a mouth shaped like a lizard’s ass.”
  • Mariam pleads with her father, asking him not to make her marry a stranger. He yells, “Goddamn it, Mariam, don’t do this to me.”
  • A child yells at a bully, saying, “Your mother eats cock!” The child does not know what the words mean.
  • Someone calls Laila a whore. Later, Laila’s husband also calls her a whore.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • The story focuses on characters who are Muslim. They often pray.
  • Mariam’s mom said she had a difficult labor. She said, “I didn’t eat or sleep, all I did was push and pray that you would come out.”
  • Mullah Faizullah teaches Mariam about the Koran’s words. He tells her, “You can summon them [God’s words] in your time of need, and they won’t fail you. God’s words will never betray you, my girl.” During difficult times, Mariam thinks about verses from the Koran.
  • Mariam asks Mullah Faizullah to convince Mariam’s mother to let her go to school. He replies, “God, in His wisdom has given us each weaknesses, and foremost among my many is that I am powerless to refuse you, Mariam.”
  • Mariam’s mother tells her, “Of all the daughters I could have had, why did God give me an ungrateful one like you?” Later that day, her mother commits suicide.
  • After Mariam’s mother commits suicide, Mullah Faizullah says, “The Koran speaks the truth, my girl. Behind every trial and every sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.” Later, he tells Mariam that Allah “will forgive her, for He is all-forgiving, but Allah is saddened by what she did.”
  • After Mariam’s father forces her to marry, her father says he will come to visit her. She tells him, “I used to pray that you’d live to be a hundred years old. . . I didn’t know that you were ashamed of me.”
  • When Mariam learns that she will have a baby, she thinks about a verse from the Koran. “And Allah is the East and the West, therefore wherever you turn there is Allah’s purpose.”
  • When Mariam has a miscarriage, she gets angry, but thinks, “Allah was not spiteful. He was not a petty God. . . Blessed is He in Whose hand is the kingdom, and He Who has power over all things, Who created death and life that He may try out.”
  • When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, flyers were passed out with new rules including “all citizens must pray five times a day. . . If you are not Muslim, do not worship where you can be seen by Muslims. If you do, you will be beaten and imprisoned. If you are caught trying to convert a Muslim to your faith, you will be executed.”
  • A man tells Mariam, “God has made us differently, you women and us men. Our brains are different. You are not able to think like we can.”

Above All Else

Del is a striker on the school soccer team, the Cardinals, which has gone almost three seasons undefeated. To Del, it’s just a game, but some of the players think winning is all that matters. After an in-game altercation with the Cardinals’ main rival, the Rebels, one of Del’s teammates is attacked and seriously injured by an unknown assailant. Is it an act of retaliation or did someone finally take the above-all-else mentality too far?

Above All Else blends on-the-field action and mystery into a fast-paced story that will leave readers with one question: should a team play dirty in order to win?

While the story has some play-by-play soccer descriptions, much of the story revolves around the mystery of who hurt Del’s teammate. The mystery focuses on Del’s perspective, which allows the reader to piece together the clues. In the beginning, Del avoids conflict by staying quiet. However, in the end, he stands up for what he knows is right. Both Del and his teammates learn that “you can lose and walk off the field with your head high.”

Above All Else will appeal to both sports fans and mystery buffs. Written as a part of the Orca Soundings books, which are specifically written for teens, Above All Else is a fast-paced book that explores the idea of winning at all costs. While Above All Else may appeal to younger readers, parents may object to the frequent profanity and name-calling. However, older readers who are reluctant to read will enjoy this high-interest, easy-to-read story.

Sexual Content

  • Riley and Kira start spending time together. She goes to Riley’s soccer game. At halftime, Kira “threw her arms around Riley’s neck and kissed him full on the lips.” After the game, Riley and Kira “were locked in an awkward-looking kiss.”
  • Riley and Kira kiss several more times, but the kisses are not described.

Violence

  • During a soccer game, Rom intentionally hurts a player named Tim. Tim “was almost past Rom when Rom performed a slide tackle, knocking the ball out of bounds and sending Tim flying.” Tim is angry, but not injured.
  • Later in the game, Tim is getting ready to score when “Rom rushed him. Tim went head-on into the challenge, probably thinking he could rotate around Rom at the last second. . . Rom charged and, as Tim began his rotation, jutted his leg out and caught him square on the knee.”
  • After Rom takes down Tim, Tim’s teammates “ran right into Rom and took him down. He managed to get four quick punches in before his own teammates pulled him off . . .”
  • Del and his friend, Riley, find their teammate Rom injured. Riley says, “I just found him here . . .” Rom was “completely out.” Later Rom tells his friends, “Someone came up behind me while I was getting into my car and choked me out.” Rom’s ankle is also badly injured.
  • Del and his friends go into an abandoned mall, looking for the person that they think injured Rom. Del “turned around to find Jared sitting on top of Doug Richards.” After that, there is a lot of chasing, but everyone gets out of the mall without being hurt.
  • Elsa tells Del, “my brother got beat up at the mall the other night.”
  • At a game, Del accidentally crashed into the goalkeeper. The goalkeeper “caught me in the side of the head with a quick sharp punch. . . I tried to stand up to get away from the situation and he kicked me in the gut.”
  • Elsa and Del go back to the abandoned mall and a gang chases them out. When Elsa and Del get in the van, “the guys were banging on the van like wild apes.” When she goes to leave, Elsa runs over someone’s foot.

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Profanity is used often. Profanity includes ass, bullshit, crappy, damn, hell, piss, and shitty.
  • There are many instances of name-calling, which include asshole, dick, dickhead, idiot, sucker, prick, dillweed, and knobs.
  • Del and his friends are going into an abandoned mall. When Del doesn’t want to go, his friend says, “Grow a pair, Del.”
  • One of the other team’s players yells at Del, “Goddamn dirty players.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

An Abundance of Katherines

Just hours after graduating from high school, Katherine XIX dumps Colin Singleton. Colin grew up as a child prodigy, who does not get along well with others. And he only falls for women named Katherine. He understands that his role in the universe was to fall in love with Katherines and then to inevitably be dumped by them.

Following the break-up, Colin’s only friend, Hassan, takes Colin on a road trip. They end up in Gunshot, Tennessee where they meet Lindsey. Lindsey’s mother offers Colin and Hassan a summer job collecting an oral history of the small town. The two boys interview people about their experiences in Gunshot. At the same time, Colin works on creating a mathematical theorem to graph, describe, and predict relationships.

An Abundance of Katherines follows Colin as he grapples with finding his purpose in the world. Colin struggles with being an incredibly gifted child prodigy but feeling as though he is failing to live up to his expected potential. Colin states, “Prodigies can very quickly learn what other people have already figured out; geniuses discover that which no one has ever previously discovered. Prodigies learn; geniuses do.” Colin also struggles with the expectations his parents have for him, as his father always pressures him to not only be a prodigy but also to grow into a genius. This causes Colin to frequently have anxiety when he fails to meet these unrealistic goals. But Colin is still determined to make his mark on the world and be remembered.

Colin, Hassan, and Lindsey are likable characters who provide many perspectives. Although the book is only told from Colin’s perspective, Hassan and Lindsey’s experiences are thoroughly described as they spend every day with Colin. Colin provides meaningful insights into a gifted child struggling with failure and navigating the process of growing up. Readers will be able to relate to Hassan who struggles with discrimination and finding motivation in life’s endeavors. In addition, Lindsey’s perspective helps readers understand the struggle to identify their true self.

This upbeat novel takes the reader on a journey of self-discovery and maturing into adulthood. An Abundance of Katherines will resonate with readers of different ages because of the relatable conflicts. As teenagers transition into adulthood, they might grapple with understanding their place in the world. Colin’s journey provides readers the opportunity to feel less alone in these struggles, while also providing an entertaining, hilarious story. Ultimately, Colin finally has his Eureka moment by discovering, “You matter as much as the things that matter to you do.”

Sexual Content

  • Hassan frequently refers to his penis, which he has named “Thunderstick.”
  • Colin jokes with Hassan. Colin says that if he had religious beliefs, “I’d like to believe that I could fly into outer space on the fluffy backs of giant penguins and screw Katherine XIX in zero gravity.”
  • Sexual intercourse is insinuated a few times. For example, Colin was surprised his parents were allowing him to go on a road trip, but he assumed “maybe they just wanted a few weeks alone to rekindle the romance.”
  • Colin and Hassan see Lindsey’s purple bra. During this interaction, Colin thinks back to Katherine XIV “who wore a black bra and everything else.” He also thinks about other girls’ bras he had seen.
  • Colin recalls his time with Katherine XIX where they “climbed into bed downstairs, she pulled off his shirt and he hers, and they kissed until his lips were numb except for tingling.”
  • While thinking about his failed relationships, Colin has his Eureka moment, describing it as, “feeling like a thousand orgasms all at once, except not as messy.”
  • When Colin meets Lindsey’s friend, he describes her as “tall and thoroughly Abercrombified in her tight tank top. The girl also had – how to put this politely – gigantic gazoombas. She was incredibly hot – in that popular-girl-with-bleached-teeth-and-anorexia kind of way.”
  • Colin attempts to explain how unpopular he is by saying, “The end of that story is that I came relatively close to having a lion bite off my penis. And my point was that shit like that never happens to popular people.”
  • For two pages, Lindsey tries to teach Colin how to make his story about the lion more interesting by emphasizing his “giant winky.”
  • Lindsey describes an attractive guy at her high school. She describes him as a “self-professed proponent of the 4 Fs: find ‘em, feel ‘em, fug ‘em, and forget ‘em.”
  • Hassan plays spin the bottle with Lindsey and her friends. Hassan ends up kissing someone. The next day Hassan tells Colin the story. Hassan says, “She made a beeline for my mouth and, I swear to God, her tongue was licking my teeth.” Hassan proceeds to embellish the story for three pages.
  • When she goes out with Colin, Lindsey jokes to her mom saying, “We might be back late. Hot sex and all!”
  • Hassan begins going out with a girl. He tells Colin that he and the girl got to “second base over the shirt.”
  • Hassan’s girlfriend and Lindsey’s boyfriend are caught having sex: “She was facing away from them, her back arched, her butt bobbing in and out of visibility. Colin had never seen actual people having actual sex before.”
  • Colin finally convinces Hassan to go to college. Hassan says, “I only registered for two classes in the fall, so don’t start creaming yourself.”
  • Colin tells Lindsey about all of the Katherines he has dated. He said Katherine X “was the first girl I ever French-kissed, and I didn’t know what to do so I sort of kept darting my tongue out from behind closed lips like I was a snake.”
  • Colin discusses Katherine XVI. In their brief relationship at an academic decathlon, Colin says, “we had to kick her three roommates out of her hotel room so we could make out properly.”

 

Violence

  • After Colin is dumped by Katherine XIX, his parents are attempting to comfort him. Colin felt “a tremendous need to get them out of his room immediately like if they didn’t leave, he would blow up. Literally. Guts on the walls; his prodigious brain emptied out onto his bedspread.”
  • The violence surrounding Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination is frequently discussed. For example, while Lindsey is providing a tour of his grave, she states, “From everything I’ve read about Franzy, he and Sophie had about the happiest marriage in the whole history of royalty. It’s sort of a cute story, except for how on their fourteenth wedding anniversary – June twenty-eighth, 1914 – they were both shot dead in Sarajevo.”
  • Lindsey also describes how Franz Ferdinand became the successor to Austria’s throne. “His uncle was the emperor Francis Joseph, but being the Austro-Hungarian emperor’s nephew don’t matter much. Unless, say, the emperor’s only son, Rudolph, happens to shoot himself in the head.”
  • The first meal Colin and Hassan have at Lindsey’s house is quail. Colin asks, “The bird was shot?” To which Lindsey states, “Yup.” Colin responds, “And I’m eating the bullets?” Lindsey smiles and states, “Nope. You’re spitting them out.”
  • Lindsey attempts to have Hassan and Colin conduct interviews of the townspeople. Hassan responds, “No fugging way. That’s how horror movies start. We drop you off, walk into some stranger’s house, and five minutes later some psycho’s lobbing off my nuts with a machete while his schizophrenic wife makes Colin do push-ups on a bed of hot coals.”
  • One of the townspeople was arrested for killing a neighbor’s pet snake. When explaining his rationale, he states, “You see a snake, you kill it. That’s just how I was raised up. So I shot it. Split it right in two.”
  • The same townsperson said he did not want to go off to fight in any war, so he “shot off two of his toes because he is a coward.”
  • Colin’s father is nervous that Colin is staying with a stranger in Tennessee. Colin responds, “Dad, I survived seventeen years in Chicago without ever getting mugged or stabbed or kidnapped.”
  • When Lindsey finds out her boyfriend has been cheating on her, a fistfight breaks out between her boyfriend and Colin and Hassan. This is described in detail for six pages. At one point, Colin and the boyfriend face-off, “In the moment before the strike, Colin felt it in his loins – the phantom pain – and then Lindsey’s boyfriend’s knee came up into Colin’s groin so hard he briefly left the ground.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At a rest stop, Colin finds graffiti on the bathroom stall stating, “CALL DANA FOR BLOW” causing Colin to wonder “whether Dana provided fellatio or cocaine.”
  • Colin’s childhood tutor, Keith, used to drink with Colin’s parents. Colin remembers thinking, “After those dinners, the parents would sit in the living room laughing louder as time passed, Keith shouting that he couldn’t possibly drive home, that he needed a cup of coffee after all that wine – your home is an Alamo for oenophiles, he’d cry.”
  • Lindsey attempts to describe her popularity by stating, “I’m not just some former ugly girl who sold her soul to date hotties and go to the finest keg parties the Greater Gunshot Area has to offer.”
  • One of the townspeople says he was arrested multiple times. He was arrested when he “was drunk in public in 1948.”
  • Colin thought his mother wanted him to behave like a more “normal” kid. He thinks that “she’d be secretly pleased if he came home one night at three in the morning reeking of booze because that would be normal. Normal kids come home late; normal kids drink warm forties of malt liquor in alleys with their friends.”
  • For two pages Hassan tells Colin how he “drank half a beer.” He split it with Lindsey.
  • Colin contemplates what would happen if he became popular. He thinks, “He had seen enough movies to know what happens when dorks go to cool-kid parties: generally, the dorks either get thrown into the pool or they become drunk, vacuous cool kids themselves.”
  • Lindsey and Colin share moonshine together. Lindsey states, “Sweet holy shitstickers, it tastes like you’re washing down a bite of corn with a pint of lighter fluid.”

Language

  • Colin and his best friend Hassan periodically use profanity, which includes ass, hell, damn, dick, pissed, and bastard.
  • When addressing each other, Colin, Hassan, and Lindsey occasionally use the word “retarded” or “tard.”
  • Colin and Hassan use the term “fugger” frequently. The term is used in conversation as “fucker” normally would. For example, when Hassan is confronting Colin for being a poor friend he says, “Have you ever sat with me for hours and listened to me whine about being a fat fugger whose best friend ditches him every time a Katherine comes along?”
  • Lindsey asks, “Why the fuck do you and Hassan say fug all the time?”
  • “Shit” is used frequently. For example, when Colin is describing himself, he states, “I’m washed up, I’m former. Formerly the boyfriend of Katherine XIX. Formerly a prodigy. Formerly full of potential. Currently full of shit.”
  • One time, Colin also uses the word “merde,” which is French for “shit.”
  • Hassan and Colin frequently refer to each other as “Kafir,” which is a derogatory Arabic term meaning “infidel.”
  • At a rest station, Hassan finds a table that has “God Hates Fags” written on it.
  • When Colin continues to drive without deciding on a destination, Hassan complains, “I like this interstate as much as the next guy, but the farther south we go, the hotter it gets, and I’m already sweating like a whore in church.”
  • Hassan says he does not need to go to college or work because his father is, “rich as balls.”
  • “Pussy” is used twice. Lindsey teaches Colin to shoot a gun with a lot of kick, saying, “I don’t want you to look like a pussy.”
  • Colin calls Lindsey’s boyfriend a “paardenlul”, which directly translates to “horse penis,” which is stated in the footnotes.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Colin and Hassan frequently discuss Hassan’s religion. Hassan introduces himself to Lindsey as, “Hassan Harbish. Sunni Muslim. Not a terrorist.”
  • Colin makes fun of Hassan saying, “How very odd, to believe God gave you life, and yet not think that life asks more of you than watching TV.”
  • Hassan frequently prays. On the road trip, they stopped at a rest stop so Colin could use the restroom “while Hassan knelt on the concrete outside, facing Mecca.”
  • Hassan discusses his viewpoints on haram, stating, “The haram shit I do is, like, having a dog. It’s not like smoking crack or talking behind people’s backs or stealing or lying to my mom or fugging girls.”

by Paige Smith

 

 

 

 

Isabel Feeney, Star Reporter

Isabel Feeney is one of the few newsgirls working in 1920s Chicago during the era of guns and gangsters. Every day, while she sells copies of the Tribune, she dreams of being a journalist like her hero, the famous crime reporter Maud Collier. So when Isabel stumbles upon a murder scene on her own street corner, she’s determined to solve the case.

Who murdered mobster Charles “The Bull” Bessemer? Was it his beautiful fiancée, Miss Giddings, whose fingerprints were found on the gun? A jealous husband? Or Bessemer’s associate, Al Capone? As Isabel tracks down clues, she finds herself working alongside Maude, who is covering the case.

But as Isabel gets closer to discovering who killed a gangster, someone becomes determined to silence her, too.

Readers will quickly fall in love with Isabel, who is intelligent, observant, and determined to solve the murder mystery. As Isabel follows the clues, she meets several possible suspects and her snooping often gets her into trouble. Along the way, Isabel meets two new friends, Flora and Robert. These friendships add interest because Flora’s family are gangsters, and Robert has a physical disability due to polio.

Even though the fast-paced story takes readers into the violent world of Chicago, none of the crimes are described in gory detail. Instead, Isabel’s journey focuses on finding the true killer by meeting the people in the prime suspect’s life. Isabelle’s new friends include the dead man’s daughter, a famous female reporter, and a police detective. As Isabel searches the city, readers will get a look at Murderess’s Row—a wing of the Cook County Jail.

Isabel Feeney, Star Reporter will appeal to both mystery and history fans. Despite Isabel’s good intentions, she often speaks without thinking and gets herself into potentially dangerous situations. As Isabel follows the clues, she writes them in a notebook, which helps the reader keep track of all the clues. Even though the story is written from Isabel’s point of view, all of the characters are uniquely interesting and well-developed. The conclusion wraps up all of the story threads and will leave the reader smiling. Readers who love a mystery that revolves around a plucky heroine should add The Friday Barnes Series by R.A. Spratt to their reading list.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • After a man is murdered, Isabel is the first person on the scene. The man is “stretched out on the snow, bleeding.” Isabel sees “a puddle of blood near his ear.”
  • Isabel tells a detective, “I’ve had way worse fights with the kid next door—pounded him—but it doesn’t mean I’d kill him.”
  • Isabel thinks about her dad’s death and wonders, “if my father had suffered, like from poison gas the Germans had used, or if he’d gone quickly, like from a bullet. Or if it had been really horrible, from a bayonet.”
  • A reporter tells Isabel, “I’ve trudged through the ash-covered remains of big fires. And waded into the river to get a better look when a corpse was being dredged out. And of course, I’ve stepped over bodies, sometimes several at once, because this is a violent city.”
  • A gangster is called the Nose because his nose got shot off.
  • Isabel mentions how “Mrs. Harq had bumped off her dentist husband . . .”
  • The newspaper has an article about how “Marty Durkin, who’d killed a federal agent in Chicago, had finally been caught after leading police on a wild-goose chase over America.”
  • While walking down an alley, someone hits Isabel over the head. She “stumbled on something—right before everything went black.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Al Capone is mentioned several times. “As everybody in Chicago—even kids—knew, Al Capone was a very dangerous man who’d made millions of dollars selling alcohol, which was illegal because of Prohibition.”
  • Isabel passes a speakeasy. “Secret places where men and women went to listen to jazz music and drink bootleg alcohol, away from the police—until the parties got raided.”

Language

  • Heck, darn, and jeez are used occasionally.
  • Isabel thinks that her friend is a witch.
  • A man calls Isabel a “brat” and a “lying little monster.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

 

All Summer Long

Thirteen-year-old Bina has a long summer ahead of her. She and her best friend, Austin, usually do everything together, but he’s off to soccer camp for a month, and he’s been acting kind of weird lately anyway. So it’s up to Bina to see how much fun she can have on her own.

At first it’s a lot of guitar playing, boredom, and bad TV, but things start to look up when she finds an unlikely companion in Austin’s older sister, Charlie. They like the same music, and Charlie actually seems to think Bina is cool. But then Austin comes home from camp, and he’s acting even weirder than when he left. Can Bina and Austin get back to the way things used to be? Or does growing up mean growing apart?

When Bina starts spending time with Charlie, she is excited that a cool high school student wants to hang out together. But it often feels like Charlie is using her. For example, Charlie needs help putting boxes in the attic, but leaves Bina to do the work alone. At first, Bina is afraid to tell Charlie how she feels, but when Charlie skips out on Bina while babysitting, Bina finally speaks up.

Middle school readers will relate to Bina, who wants to appear cool but is also insecure. Even though none of her friends appreciate music, Bina doesn’t let that stop her from playing her guitar. While much of the plot revolves around Bina’s summer, the story has glimpses of her family life. One aspect of the plot is Bina’s older brother and his husband adopting a baby. While this plotline isn’t well developed, Bina is looking forward to being an aunt.

Readers will enjoy the graphic novel’s panels, which are black with orange highlights. Each page has eleven or fewer sentences and the story uses simple vocabulary. However, the text is small, which makes some of the words difficult to read. Despite this, the format of All Summer Long will appeal to many readers.

All Summer Long deals with themes of friendship, family, and coming of age. However, the story’s plot is not well developed and is not very memorable. Despite this, Mila’s experiences will encourage readers to find their own passions.

Sexual Content

  • Austin runs into a boy from soccer camp. Austin introduces Mila as “my friend.” The boy asks “with benefits?”
  • Austin’s teen sister has a boy come over to her house. Austin tells Bina, “That skater guy’s been in Charlie’s room all afternoon, so maybe I’ll get to be a fourteen-year-old uncle.”
  • Austin tells Bina about a girl he met at soccer camp. He says, “Her name’s Rosemary. Ro. We met at camp. She’s a striker. . . It means she scores a lot.” Bina makes a funny face and asks, “Did she score with you?”

Violence

  • After an argument, Austin and Bina shove each other.

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Someone is called a jerk three times. When Bina is upset with her best friend, she thinks he is a jerk.
  • When Mila loses her house key, she thinks, “Crud! Where’d it go?!”
  • Freakin’ is used once.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

The Disappearance of Sloane Sullivan

 No one wants me to tell you about the disappearance of Sloane Sullivan.

Not the lawyers or the cops. Not her friends or family. Not even the boy who loved her more than anyone. And most certainly not the United States Marshals Service. You know, the people who run the witness protection program? Yeah, those folks definitely don’t want me talking to you.

But I don’t care. I have to tell someone.

If I don’t, you’ll never know how completely wrong things can go. How a single decision can change everything. How, when it really comes down to it, you can’t trust anyone. Not even yourself. You have to understand, so it won’t happen to you next. Because you never know when the person sitting next to you isn’t who they claim to be…and because there are worse things than disappearing.

This story begins with Sloane once again changing her name and going to a new school. While Sloane is quickly brought into a group of friends, none of the characters are likable. By the end of the story, readers will wonder why Sloane let any of these people into her life. Each character is so full of secrets that it is difficult to distinguish the truth from rumors. While Sloane’s lies are understandable, the rest of the characters come off as self-centered, manipulating liars.

Sloane tells her own story, which allows the reader to understand her motivations. In addition to her thoughts, Sloane often has flashbacks. Readers will empathize with Sloane, who constantly has to move in order to keep safe. Her only stability is Marc, who is posing as a federal Marshal. Marc has taught Sloane the importance of being aware of her surroundings as well as how to protect herself. Despite this, Sloane makes so many mistakes that it’s amazing she is still alive.

While The Disappearance of Sloane Sullivan has a unique premise and suspenseful moments, by the end, none of the characters can be trusted. The complicated ending is not believable, and even Marc, Sloane’s protector, turns out to be a bit of a creep. At 400 pages, some of the high school drama and Sloane’s inner struggles could have been cut out. If you’re looking for a suspenseful mystery romance, some better options would be Six Months Later by Natalie D. Richards and Crossing the Line by Simone Elkeles.

Sexual Content

  • While talking about the senior trip, someone says, “I heard the chaperones go to bed early and everyone sneaks out and hooks up.”
  • When Sloane was a freshman, she skipped school to hang out with Ben, a senior. “Ben gave a throaty laugh as he pushed my brown hair off my shoulders and kissed the side of my neck. My heart jumped in my chest.” When Marc finds them, Ben “leaned in and kissed me right on the mouth, all the while glaring at Mar . . I’d done my fair share of imagining my first kiss, even the possibility it might happen with Ben, but I never thought it would happen just to taunt Mark.”
  • When Sloane enters a new school, she sees some students “making out in front of classrooms.”
  • Sloane thinks back to a time when she had a boyfriend named Duke. “He leaned in and kissed me. It was slow and sweet and steady, just like him.”
  • Sloane’s friend, Livie, is upset that her boyfriend broke up with her. Livie says, “But we were together for almost two months. We made out tons of times. . . That counts for something, right?”
  • According to rumors, Jason has “slept with half the girls in the school.”
  • Jason said he left a party because “I found my date making out with him [the host] in his bedroom?” Another time, he agreed to go to a party with Lauren, but “when I got there, she and her friends were already drunk. . . she kept trying to take me to her room so we could be ‘alone.’ She said she wanted to ring in the new year by doing something special and she wanted me to be her first.”
  • When a girl disappears, some people say that she’s “hooking up with a guy and she’s “holed up in a motel room somewhere.”
  • Even though Sawyer knew Sloane didn’t like him, he kissed her.
  • While on the senior trip, Livie implies she’s going to a boy’s room to have sex. Livie says she can ask the guy if “he has any lonely friends.” Sloane tells her, “I don’t want some random trip hookup, Livie.”
  • Sawyer and Livie “slept together.”
  • Once Jason knows who Sloane really is, they kiss. Sloane “grabbed a fistful of his shirt, pulling him the rest of the way to me. . . So when I finally pulled away from him, breathless and dizzy from the amazing softness of his lips and the feeling of his hands against my skin. . .” After this, they kiss several times, but the kisses aren’t described.
  • After months, Jason and Sloane are reunited. “And then Jason is kissing me. His kisses are urgent at first, insistent like he’s trying to erase the last eight months. Then they slowly turn soft and sweet and gentle. . .”

Violence

  • Sloane was told her father committed suicide, but later she finds out he was murdered. The death is not described.
  • When a boy gives Sloane an unwanted kiss, she “yanked my knee up as hard as I could until it landed between Ben’s legs. He groaned and doubled over, and I shoved him with both hands. . . I watched him hit the ground.”
  • Sloane has a series of flashbacks. She saw two men kill a man. “The older man slumped against the warehouse at their feet. His blond curly hair was matted with blood and his face was swollen and bruised.” The flashback is described over two pages.
  • While at a birthday party, the girl’s father walks behind Sloane and scares her. “Without thinking, I crouched down and swung my leg around in an arc just like Mark taught, sweeping a man’s legs out from under him. He crashed onto his back with a loud oof . . .”
  • Sawyer gets angry at Jason. “Sawyer planted his hands on Jason’s chest and shoved with all his drunken might. Jason stumbled backward, but caught himself before he fell.” Sloane gets between them and stops the fight.
  • Sawyer taunts Jason and Sloane “grabbed Sawyer’s wrist with my right hand, pulled his arm across my chest, and flipped him over my shoulder in one impossibly fast movement. He hit the ground with a loud smack. . . Then he lunged at me. Faster than I could react, Jason jumped in front of Sawyer and punched him so hard his teeth clicked together as his head snapped back. . . He was out cold.”
  • When the “bad guy” shows up at Sloane’s school, she runs home only to find a man’s body. The man’s eyes “were dull and empty and I couldn’t look at them.”
  • Marc’s family is full of gangsters. He says, “For my tenth birthday, my uncle Gino taught me the best places to cut a person so it would hurt like hell but they wouldn’t bleed out before they confessed.”
  • A rival gangster, Reuben, killed Marc’s little sister. Reuben “told us where we could find her body. He even mocked the way she’d begged for her life.”
  • When Marc threatens Jason with a gun, Sloane “shot him.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • While talking about the senior trip, someone tells Sloane, “people smuggle alcohol along and party in their hotel rooms.”
  • In the past, Sawyer got drunk and “got pissed someone beat [him] at cards and punched a hole in the drywall in [his] basement.”
  • While at a party a girl is drugged. The doctors “think someone must’ve slipped something in her drink. . . No injuries or evidence of sexual assault or anything.”
  • At prom, Sawyer gets so drunk that he can’t stand up.

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently. Profanity includes ass, crap, damn, hell, holy hell, pissed, and shit. For example, a boy tells Sloane, “You’re getting ready to tell me we shouldn’t be friends, right? That you don’t want to be dragged into all of my crap.”
  • Christ, Jesus, oh Lord, God, and good God are used as exclamations occasionally. For example, when someone makes a sexual innuendo, Sloane says, “Oh my God! You did not just turn Harry Potter into something dirty.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Occasionally, Sloane prays for something. For example, when Sloane sees someone from her past, she prays that her brown eyes “would be enough to throw him off.”
  • When Sloane and her friends sneak out of school, they go to a carousel. When the cops show up, Sloane introduces everyone. Sloane “prayed, prayed, he didn’t know the characters’ names from The Goonies.”

 

Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation

Decades ago, Albert Einstein devised an equation that could benefit all life on earth—or destroy it. Fearing what would happen if the equation fell into the wrong hands, he hid it away.

But now, a diabolical group known as the Furies are closing in on its location. In desperation, a team of CIA agents drags Charlie into the hunt, needing her brilliance to find it first—even though this means placing her life in grave danger.

In this adventure that spans the globe, Charlie must crack a complex code created by Einstein himself, survive in a world where no one can be trusted, and fight to keep the last equation safe once and for all.

Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation starts with an epic chase scene and continues the fast-paced adventure until the very end. The story is told from Charlie’s point of view, which makes her relatable despite the fact that she is a genius. Even though she is intelligent, Charlie doesn’t always know what to do. But when it comes to difficult situations, Charlie can visualize numbers in her head, which allows her to solve complicated problems. This talent comes in handy when she uses a cipher to reveal Einstein’s message.

Charlie wants to keep Einstein’s equation out of the hands of terrorists and hostile governments, but she’s not sure the U.S. government can be trusted. Charlie is cynical when it comes to the U.S. government. She says, “America’s priorities are pretty darn clear: The first thing we do with any major discovery is try to kill people with it.”

Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation deals with some mature topics including religious extremism, death, and Charlie’s complicated family life. The intense fight scenes, life-or-death chases, and the death of several characters may upset sensitive readers. In addition, the complicated plot is best suited for strong readers. However, readers who are ready for more mature content will have a hard time putting the book down because of the action and mystery.

Charlie’s journey takes readers on a suspenseful trip that will keep readers guessing until the very end. Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation will entertain mystery fans. At the end of Charlie’s adventure, she realizes that “all the talent in the world doesn’t mean a thing if you squander it.” The conclusion wraps up all of the story threads and also leaves readers wanting to know what will happen next. Readers will be eager to pick up the next book in the series, Charlie Thorne and the Lost City.

Sexual Content

  • Charlie teases her brother Dante, saying, “Jeez, you might know a whole lot about terrorist cells, but you don’t know much about women. That was a full-on ‘I wish Dante would say to heck with the regulations and just kiss me’ look.”
  • Dante tells Charlie to go to bed, but she will have to share the bed with his partner agent Milana. Charlie says, “You’re sure you wouldn’t rather be in there with her? You could do a little smooching before bed.”

 Violence

  • At Einstein’s request, his friend Ernst began burning Einstein’s papers. Ernst “continued feverishly stroking the flames, even as he heard the men break down the front door and shove Helen aside, even as they burst into the room and pulled their guns and screamed at him to stop, right up until their leaders clubbed him from behind, crumpling him to the floor.”
  • Charlie wants to steal the pool guy’s truck. When he refuses to give her the key, Charlie “lashed out a leg and swept the pool guy’s legs out from under him. . . He slipped and landed flat on his back.” Charlie shoves the guy into the hot tub and then takes off.
  • The KGB captures an American spy, who “cowardly offered secrets in return for his life. The old man and his fellow agents listened as the American spilled his guts—and then they killed him anyhow.”
  • The narration states, “The world’s most infamous serial killers had all been unimpressive losers who had been unsuccessful at just about everything except murdering helpless people.”
  • A terrorist steals one of Einstein’s books. When “the young archivist instinctively moved to protect it. . . he [Marko] punched the archivist in the face, then drilled a fist into his stomach as he reeled backwards. The archivist went down, whacking his head on a table. . .”
  • Charlie tries to get Einstein’s book back. She grabs a skateboard and jumped on a railing. “Then she rode down quickly grinding along the rail, bearing down on Marko . . Charlie bounced off the railing, hitting Marko with the full force of her body. The two of them tumbled across the asphalt.”
  • When Marko recovers, he “lowered his shoulder and rammed into her [Charlie]. . .He knocked the wind out of her while sending her falling backward into the trunk of a parked car. The trunk caught her. . . sending a lightning bolt of pain up her spine.”
  • Marko tries to escape Charlie but she uses the skateboard to trip him. “He flew forward, the rage on his face now giving way to surprise. . . Marko plowed headfirst into a lamppost, hitting so hard that the sound rang across the parking lot. . .She grabbed a handful of his hair, and with a surge of adrenaline and rage she’d never known she had, she slammed his head back into the lamppost again.” One of Marko’s companions kills him and then tries to kill Charlie. The chase scene is described over six pages.
  • In order to escape Dante, Charlie “drove her knee into her brother’s crotch.” Dante runs after her. “Charlie was thrown several feet by their combined momentum and crashed into a kiosk selling fresh fruit.” Dante wrestles her to the ground and drags her to a safe house.
  • When entering the safe house, the terrorist attacks Dante and Charlie. Dante is “beaten down and a gun was pressed against her [Milana’s] head.” One of the terrorists “kicked Dante in the stomach so hard it made Dante curl into a ball.” In order to escape the terrorist, Charlie“grabbed the mug and smashed it on Alexei’s temple, sending him reeling. Then she threw it at Vladimir, hitting him in the face.” As Charlie and Milana run, Charlie can hear the sound of fighting and guns being fired.
  • As Charlie and Milana try to escape, Dante “fired down, directly through the floor. There was a scream of pain from below, and then Dante dove away as more bullets tore upward through the floor. . .” The fight with the terrorists is described over 20 pages.
  • The terrorists kill a CIA agent. A terrorist says, “The brown man? He’s dead. We tossed him in the bathroom.”
  • When Charlie and Milana run from the terrorists, Charlie runs into a fruit stand. “The owner grabbed her arm roughly and raised a hand to strike her . . .” Milana stops the man and “wrenched the man’s arm so hard that he howled in pain, releasing Charlie.”
  • When the terrorists catch up to Charlie and Milana, Charlie threw chili powder into a man’s eyes. “Oleg roared in pain and stumbled forward blindly. Milana spun around and drove a knee into his crotch, folding the man like a hinge.” Charlie throws boiling water in a terrorist’s face. The scene is described over two pages. Both Charlie and Milana escape.
  • The CIA looks at the security video from the safe house. An “unknown figure . . . shot both of the agents before they could even react.”
  • While leaving a church, “three of the pilgrims pounced on her [Milana], knocking her to the ground. . .” Charlie was hit and “her legs were swept out from under her, her face was slammed into the cobblestones, and a gun was pressed against the back of her head.” Then the Mossad arrested them.
  • In order to free Milana and Charlie from the Mossad, Dante shoots one man “in the shoulder, spinning him and dropping him to the ground.” The Mossad lets the two go free, but then there is a high-speed chase.
  • In a multi-chapter conclusion, Alexei, a rogue CIA agent, the Mossad, and Charlie’s group race to get Einstein’s work. The rouge agent shoots and kills a man sitting in a car. Agents shoot at each other and someone points a gun at Charlie’s head.
  • Milana tries to catch Charlie, but “bullets stitched the earth around her, and she felt a sting as one caught her thigh. . . The bullet had only nicked her, although it still hurt like heck.”
  • The rogue CIA agent, John, catches up to Charlie. Charlie punches John. “The punch caught him off guard, but he rolled with it and then came in low. He drove his fist into Charlie’s solar plexus, then caught her with another blow that floored her.” A bullet hits a propane tank and there is a strong explosion. “The explosion roared over her [Charlie] and blasted John off his feet, slamming him into a tree with such force that his bones snapped. . . His spine had been broken when he had been thrown into the tree. . . John felt a sudden rush of heat and smelled something burning close by. . . Within seconds, the flames leapt up all around him. John screamed, but no one heard him.”
  • While trying to flee Jerusalem, Milana and Dante have to get by the security guards. “The CIA agents caught the poor security agents by surprise, rendering them unconscious within seconds.” Then the terrorists show up and open fire. “The CIA agents emptied their guns. One after the other the Furies screamed in pain and dropped. Alexei was the last to go.” When one of the Furies shoots toward a fuel tanker and “emptied his clip. . . The tanker exploded. A ball of fire raced toward the plane. . .” Charlie, Milana, and Dante escape. Three people die. The scene is described over seven pages.

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • When Albert Einstein was gravely ill, his doctor gave him morphine.
  • Alexei goes into a bar and talks to a man who has been drinking. “At first Alexei thought the [man’s] story might be the ravings of an alcoholic.”
  • Einstein’s friend believed he had failed Einstein. A few months after Einstein’s death, his friend died in an alcohol-related death.
  • Several men who are part of a group of terrorists have been in jail for drunk driving. One of the men spent time in jail because of public intoxication.
  • After a fight with a terrorist, Charlie takes ibuprofen for the pain.
  • The terrorist discovers a man works for the CIA and, “The Furies, drunk and vengeful, had shown no mercy. . .the Furies were brutal.” The CIA agent’s body was unrecognizable.

Language

  • The story has a lot of name calling including: creep, idiot, jerk, slimeball, and stupid punk. For example, Charlie calls a pool guy a “sexist jerk.”
  • Crap is used four times. For example, Charlie drove her friend’s “crappy car.”
  • Charlie tells a CIA agent, “I nearly killed myself trying to save your stupid butt. What kind of idiot jumps in front a moving truck?”
  • God is used as an exclamation once.
  • Damn is used once.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Alexei is planning on bombing a large city “teeming with people of inferior races. . . He would destroy them all. The day was close. Alexei knew it. God had willed it.”
  • Alexei believes that immigrants are “rats” and his job is to wipe them out. “God had chosen him to do it.”
  • While trying to escape the terrorists, Charlie was “praying her math was right.”
  • Charlie “wasn’t religious . . . And now, here she was sitting inside one of the most important churches on earth. It occurred to her that maybe she should take that as a sign and pray for Dante.”
  • Einstein “didn’t believe God played dice with the universe.”
  • Charlie thinks about God and Einstein. “Einstein had been a religious man, but he had claimed the God he favored was that of Baruch Spinoza, who had declared, ‘God is in the details, the beauty, the math of the world.’”
  • While looking for Charlie, Alexei, “Prayed to God that he would get to Charlie Thorne before the Mossad.” When Alexei finds Charlie, he thinks, “God smiled on him again.”

 

The Invaders

As champions of the Brotherband competition, Hal and the rest of the Herons were given a simple assignment: safeguard the Skandians’ most sacred artifact, the Andomal. When the Andomal is stolen, the Herons must track down the thief to recover the precious relic. But that means traveling stormy seas, surviving a bitter winter, and battling a group of deadly bandits willing to protect their prize at all cost. If it comes down to a fight, Brotherband training might not be enough to ensure the recovery of the Andomal—or the safety of the Herons.

Even though the Herons have left Skandia, their training continues as they wait for the winter winds to cease. The beginning of The Invaders focuses on Thorn’s training of the boys, which allows Thorn’s character to shift from a broken-down drunk to a respected warrior. The story often shifts focus from the Herons, to the pirate Zavac and back to Skandia. While the three story threads are easy to follow, the large cast of characters do not allow for sufficient character development. Hal and Thorn are well-developed, but the other characters fade into the background.

Despite the lack of character development, one theme runs true: “We all have different levels of ability. What we must do is make the most of what we’ve got.” Each character has a different ability and even Ingvar, who has poor vision, is a valuable member of the crew. The Invaders adds Lydia to the crew. Lydia is not a helpless girl who needs a man to save her. Instead, her skills are essential in helping save lives during the battle against the pirates.

While the plot is somewhat predictable, the interactions between the Herons’ Brotherband, Swengal’s Skandian crew, and the town people add interest. Unfortunately, at 400+ pages, The Invaders does little to advance the plot. The story ends with the pirate Zavac’s escape and the Herons alone in their search to find Zavac and take back the Andomal. The sluggish beginning, the difficult vocabulary, and the descriptive sailing scenes make The Invaders best for strong readers.

Unlike the Ranger’s Apprentice Series, the main characters are not fighting to help their country. Instead, Hal is fighting to restore his Brotherbands’ reputation. Another main difference between the two series is that Hal’s ingenuity is constantly praised, and he does not learn and grow. Readers who fell in love with Will in the ranger’s apprentice, will miss the three main characters—Will, Horace, and Halt. Even though The Invaders is not as captivating as the Ranger’s Apprentice Series, readers ready for an adventure on the high seas will enjoy the story.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • When Jesper questions Thorn’s ability to train the boys, Thorn “moved with blinding speed. . . The old sea wolf’s left hand closed on Jesper’s collar in an iron grip and hoisted the boy off his feet, holding him suspended, his feet dangling clear of the ground. Then he gathered himself and hurled Jesper away like a sack of potatoes.”
  • While training the boys, Thorn uses a hickory baton to give the boys “a none-too-gentle rap on the behind” to get them moving. Once, Thorn “put a little extra venom into a whack.”
  • Thorn teaches the boys how to fight in battle. During an exercise, “Stig launched one last, massive blow at Thorn. . . Thorn caught it on the slanting face of his shield and deflected it.” Stig loses his balance, and “Thorn jabbed the baton painfully into his ribs like a snake striking.”
  • Pirates attack a ship. When a sailor tried to surrender, “a pirate’s spear was already thrusting forward. It took him in the middle of the body and drove him back. He screamed and fell to the deck, the spear still transfixing him as the pirate struggled to free it.” Even the sailors that surrendered were killed. “One died in silence. The other gave a brief cry of pain and despair, then fell to a bloodstained deck.”
  • The pirate captain, Zavac, questions a sailor to find where the ship’s treasures are hidden. Zavac “slashed the thin blade of the dagger across the Gallican’s face, laying open a long cut. . . Now the pain registered with him, a burning sensation across his face, accompanied by the rush of blood dripping down onto his clothes.” When the sailor stays quiet, Zavac tells his men, “Torture him. . . . On second thought, when he’s ready to talk, keep torturing him for another five minutes. Then call me.” After being tortured, the sailor is “barely recognizable. . . Two of his fingers on his right hand were missing, as was his left ear.” The sailor was eventually killed. The ship attack is described over eight pages.
  • Zavac and the pirates attack a small town, killing many people. The watch commander and his men try to defend the town. Zavac joins the fight and “he pivoted on his right foot and thrust viciously with the long curved blade in his hand. He felt it strike a momentary resistance, pause, then penetrate. Only now, he looked, and saw his sword deep in the belly of one of the garrisons. . . Zavac’s thrust had gone just below the highly polished breastplate that the man wore. The officer’s eyes were wide-open with shock.” The man dies. The pirate’s attack is described over several chapters.
  • A group of pirates chase Lydia. Trying to escape, she gets into a skiff. A pirate “grabbed hold of the stern” and Lydia “unshipped one of the oars and jabbed it at him, aiming at the hand that clutched the stern. He yelled in pain, releasing the boat.” Another pirate comes after her and Lydia “took quick aim at the man who had nearly caught her, then cast. His comrades were startled as he screamed and threw his arms up, then fell backwards against the wave. . .” The pirate dies.
  • Stig asks Barat, a company commander, to allow some of his men to help save Hal. Barat tells Stig no and Stig “hit Barat with every ounce of his strength. . . It was a savage right that connected flush on the side of his jaw, lifted him off his feet, then dropped him to the sand like a sack of potatoes. . . Barat was out like a light.”
  • The Skandians team up with the town people to defeat the pirates. Hal and his crew hit the balustrade with huge arrows. “A few seconds later, a section of the pine balustrade around the tower exploded in a hail of splinters as the heavy projectiles smashed into it, then through it, cartwheeling among the defenders and knocking men over.” Some pirates are injured, but the injuries are not described.
  • After Hal and his crew set the watch tower on fire, the pirates flee. However, the Skandians are waiting for them. The Skandians “smashed into the disorganized Magyarans, axes rising and falling in a deadly rhythm. The pirates, stunned and demoralized by the sudden onset of the watchtower fire, eyes streaming from the smoke, had no chance against the charging Skandians.”
  • Swengal and one of the pirates have one to one combat. “The Magyaran panicked as he tried in vain to withdraw his trapped spear. As a result, he never saw the roadhouse stroke from the massive ax that ended the fight for good.”
  • The story ends with a multi-chapter battle where the Skandians help free the town from pirates. When one of the invaders was shooting arrows at the Heron, Lydia threw a dart at him. The man “reappeared, arrow nocked, bow half drawn—and stepped straight into the plummeting dart she had just thrown. He threw up his hands, the bow went spinning away, and he reeled, then toppled over the railing, hitting the support frame several times as he fell.”
  • One of the Heron’s crew, Ingvar, was hit by an arrow. “. . . Ingvar [was] writhing on the deck, clutching at the arrow that was protruding from his left side, close to the hip.”
  • The Heron uses an oversized crossbow to send projectiles into a platform. The projectiles “wreaked havoc on the platform, smashing and splintering the railing and cutting down five of his [the pirate leader’s] men.”
  • One man is hit with a dart and then “toppled off the catwalk and thudded to the street below.”
  • Another pirate tried to flee, but Thorn “slammed the small metal shield into his unprotected midriff and he gasped and doubled over. A rib-cracking jab from the club finished him, sending him sprawling.”
  • During the battle, many pirates die. One dies when Hal “jabbed quickly forward and saw the shock on the man’s face as the sword penetrated his defense and slid between his ribs.”
  • When some of the pirates attempt to flee, the towns’ people attack them. “After a few brief violent moments, the townspeople moved on, leaving the broken, battered bodies of the pirates sprawled on the cobbles.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • A Skandian in the common room had an ale cup in his hand.
  • Sometimes Thorn’s past drunken behavior is discussed and Thorn is called a, “Broken-down old drunk.”
  • A ship that the pirates attack is carrying “a few barrels of wine and ale.”
  • After the town is liberated, they throw a celebration where ale is served.

Language

  • One of the boys says, “Don’t be an ass, Stefan.”
  • Lydia calls someone a “pompous, overbearing prat of a man.”
  • Thorn calls someone a “preening idiot.”
  • Gorlog is a Skandian god. Five times, Gorlog’s name is used in creative exclamations such as, “Oh for Gorlog’s sake.” Another time, Thorn says, “Gorlog’s bleached and broken bones you’re a sorry lot.”
  • Someone says, “Oh Bungall’s braided beard.” Bungall was a minor deity, generally referred to as the god of acting in an embarrassing manner.
  • One of Hal’s crew says, “Perlins and Gertz,” who are the Skandian demigods of snow and ice.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Occasional the Skandian gods’ names are used as exclamations.
  • Thorn thinks, “May the Great Blue Whale fly up to the sun.” The reference is not explained.
  • There is a brief reference to Tharon, the god of thunder.
  • When Hal and his crew are found, Swengal says, “Thank the gods you’re all safe.”
  • After a man knocks out Barat, he tells one of Barat’s men to tell the others “Barat stayed behind to pray to Torink for a great victory.” Torink was their god of battles.

More Happy Than Not

Aaron struggles with his father’s seemingly meaningless suicide and his own attempted suicide. Through the process of coming to terms with his losses, Aaron leans on the support of his mother, brother, girlfriend, and friends. He has been with his girlfriend, Genevieve, since before his father’s suicide and she supported him after his own suicide attempt, solidifying her role as a central part of Aaron’s support system. Then, Aaron meets a boy from a nearby neighborhood, Thomas, who changes his entire life as he begins to fall in love with him.

Since Aaron can’t stay away from Thomas or turn off his newfound feelings for him, he considers turning to the Leteo Institute’s revolutionary memory-alteration procedure to straighten himself out, even if it means forgetting who he truly is.

More Happy Than Not follows Aaron’s journey of meeting a boy who changes his life in a way he has never experienced before. The story is told from Aaron’s perspective which allows the reader to understand Aaron’s internal struggles as he grapples with his sexuality. The reader follows Aaron’s feelings for his perfect girlfriend, which become complicated with his potential feelings for a new boy, Thomas. Aaron struggles with this internal battle of sexuality, his love and care for others, and internalized homophobia.

Following his regained memories, Aaron is upset that the Leteo procedure did not “fix” his sexuality. He confides in Genevieve, who reveals she was aware of his previous relationship a boy, and had helped him through the Leteo procedure in the hopes that it would help him love her the way she loved him. With the return of painful memories and a rejection by Thomas, the novel ends with Aaron considering whether or not he should undergo an additional Leteo procedure to take the pain away.

This raw novel highlights struggles of sexual identity, mental illness, suicide, grief, homophobia, and hate crimes. Aaron is a likable character with challenges that may be relatable to LGBTQ+ readers. More Happy Than Not is an engaging, suspenseful story that is difficult to put down. Yet Aaron’s experiences may be painful for some readers, especially those who have not yet come out. However, it is important that this story be told for LGBTQ+ youth who have faced discrimination as Aaron’s experiences explore how to move forward after painful experiences.

This sensitive and gruesomely realistic novel takes the reader on a journey of understanding Aaron’s inner conflicts. In the end, Aaron learns an important lesson and he decides, “I will do my best to always find the sun in the darkness because my life isn’t one sad ending – it’s a series of endless happy beginnings.”

Sexual Content

  • Aaron’s girlfriend, Genevieve, insinuates she wants to have sex with Aaron, to which he thinks, “A sexy lightbulb flashes on. . . I remember something very crucial: Fuck, I have no idea how to have sex.”
  • When preparing to have sex with Genevieve, Aaron thinks, “I am so screwed later on. Okay, poor choice of words . . . I was hoping I could watch an unhealthy amount of porn to memorize techniques. . . I’ve considered maybe watching porn in the morning while he’s [his older brother] knocked out, but even naked bodies can’t wake me up.”
  • When preparing to have sex, Aaron consults his friends. A friend states, “Fuck all that. I boned a bunch of girls just so I could get off and get better.”
  • When Aaron has sex with Genevieve, in-depth details aren’t given, but kissing and undressing are discussed. Aaron broke “free from her not-so-tight grip, slide up on her, and kiss her lips and neck…She pulls my shirt off and it sails over my shoulder. . . I take off her shirt and leave her in a bra. She unzips my jeans and I kick them off with much awkward difficulty.”
  • Aaron discusses having sex with Genevieve. “Skinny-Dave wanted to know how many times we did it (twice!) and how long I lasted (not long but I lied).”
  • Aaron thinks back to when his best friend said, “Yo! I just got my first blow job!”
  • In his recovered memories, Aaron recalls a previous romance with his classmate, Collin. As they grew closer Aaron wanted to move forward in their relationship physically. “Collin has already lost both of his virginities. He got it on with this girl Suria when he was fourteen, after she gave him a hand job under the bleachers in the gym. Then he let this guy plow him last year when he was vacationing in the Poconos. I still have both of my virginities to lose. . . I want to take it to the next level with Collin.”
  • Once Aaron recovers his memories, he remembers he had sex with Collin multiple times. Aaron thinks back to when he tackled Collin “against the wall, unbuttoning his shirt, and it’s all condoms and awkward first memories from there.”

Violence

  • The book opens with Aaron thinking of his father’s suicide and his own suicide attempt. “I trace the smiling scar, left to right and right to left, happy to have a reminder to not be such a dumbass again.”
  • Aaron shares a long hug with Thomas. When Aaron’s friends see him, they jump him. During the fight, Aaron thought, “I don’t know where we’re going until we crash through the glass door of my building and I am sprawled across the lobby floor. There’s an explosion in the back of my head, a delayed reaction. Blood fills my mouth. This is what death feels like, I think. I scream like someone is turning a hundred knives inside of me, spitting up blood as I do.”
  • When Aaron recovers his memories, he angrily remembers how his friend’s brother died. “Kenneth was fucking gunned down yesterday and it’s all Kyle’s fucking fault. Kyle couldn’t fucking help himself and just had to fucking fuck Jordan’s fucking sister, even though we all fucking knew Jordan is the kind of fucking guy who would fucking kill someone if you fucking crossed him. Those bullets were fucking meant for fucking Kyle but no, they fucking found their way into fucking Kenneth when he was fucking innocently coming home from his fucking clarinet lessons at school.”
  • When Aaron remembers coming out to his father, he recalls his father’s violence. Aaron’s father said, “ ‘I’ll fucking throw him out myself.’ My mom guards me. Dad wraps his big hands around her throat, shaking her. . . I run over, grab his TV remote, and hit him so hard in the back of his head with it that the batteries pop out. . . My dad – the man who fucking played catch with me – punches me in the back of my head. . .””
  • Aaron was sitting close to Collin in a park and two guys yell, “Yo. You two homos faggots?” Then the two guys jump Aaron and Collin. “One slams my head into the railing, and the other hammers Collin with punches. I try punching the first guy in his nose. . . I have no idea how many times he punches me or at what point I end up on the sticky floor with Collin trying to shield me before he’s kicked to the side. . . His kind brown eyes roll back when he’s kicked in the head.”
  • When Aaron gets home after being jumped, he enters his bathroom to find his dead father. “When I see who’s sitting in the bathtub, I drop the shirt and blood just spills down my face and chest. Holy shit. Dad. His eyes are open but he’s not looking at me. He didn’t take his clothes off before getting into the tub. The water is a deep red, stained by the blood spilling from his slit wrists. He came home to kill himself. He came home to kill himself before I could bring a boy here. He came home to kill himself because of me. All this blood. All this red makes me black out.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Aaron and his friends frequently drink together. For example, Aaron and his friends are in high school and sneak onto the roof top of Thomas’s apartment complex to drink and party together. During one of these parties, Genevieve goes to find Thomas and Aaron, who are talking in Thomas’s room, and she shouts, “Is party central happening down here now? Let’s go up and drink! Wooooo!”
  • In addition, Aaron and his friends drink in excess. However, when they drink in excess they make a point to not drive. Aaron noticed Genevieve had been drinking heavily and says, “Genevieve is pretty damn drunk and needs to get home.” Then Aaron calls a taxi to drive her home.

Language

  • Dumbass is used frequently by Aaron and his friends. For example, Aaron uses the word “dumbass” to refer to himself after attempting suicide.
  • When jokingly trying to get his girlfriend to break up with him, Aaron calls her a “bitch.”
  • Profanity is used excessively. Profanity includes ass, fuck, dick, holy shit, and shit. For example, when asking his friends how to properly have sex with his girlfriend, he responds to their remarks by saying, “Thanks, asshole. Help me not fuck this up.”
  • Aaron says, “It feels like a dick move to take a girl’s virginity without some kind of present.”
  • The term “faggot” is routinely used in a derogatory manner. For example, Aaron’s friends call him a “faggot” and Aaron’s dad yells, “I’ll be damned if I’m alive the day you bring a boy home you fucking faggot.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Paige Smith

See You in the Cosmos

Alex is a brilliant eleven-year-old, fascinated by space and astronomy. He has been working on building a rocket to launch his “Golden iPod” into space. After working at a local gas station sorting magazines in Rockview, Colorado, he saves enough money to attend SHARF, a rocket festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

On the way to SHARF, Alex meets Zeb who is an author that frequently meditates and has taken a vow of silence. By using a chalkboard to communicate, Zeb becomes friends with Alex and accompanies him to the rocket festival. On the day of the rocket launches, Alex’s rocket does not end up in space but crashes into the ground. While crying in disappointment, Alex is comforted by a fellow attendee who encourages Alex by telling him how his team went through many failures before finally succeeding. Alex learns, “Right now is the most important moment – how they react to failure. They could either let it stop them or they could redouble their efforts, figure out what went wrong, and fix their mistakes so they can make the next try a success.”

From Colorado to New Mexico, Las Vegas to L.A., Alex records a journey on his iPod to show other lifeforms what life on earth, his earth, is like. But his destination keeps changing. And the funny, lost, remarkable people he meets along the way can only partially prepare him for the secrets he’ll uncover—from the truth about his long-dead dad to the fact that, for a kid with a troubled mom and a mostly absent brother, he has way more family than he ever knew.

See You in the Cosmos is a heartbreaking and touching story of a child following his dreams and his unconditional love for his family. The story is told as a transcript of the recordings Alex makes on his “Golden iPod,” which he is determined to launch into space someday so extraterrestrials will know what life on Earth is like. The reader is given an opportunity to look at the world through the eyes of an eleven-year-old, which provides a new perspective on life’s challenging issues.

The novel follows Alex as he learns to cope with difficult family situations as a young child with a limited view of the world. Upon returning from his adventure, his mother gets diagnosed with schizophrenia, and Child Protective Services gets involved to determine Alex’s future. The reader forms an emotional connection to Alex, feeling empathy for the experiences Alex is facing while providing the reader a deeper understanding of how children interpret life’s events.

See You in the Cosmos provides an innovative story that will pull at the hearts of readers of all ages. Younger readers may miss the deeper meanings behind Alex’s journey. However, since this book is told from the perspective of an eleven-year-old boy, this novel could serve as a new way for children to learn to cope with difficult situations in life or help children understand situations that others, such as classmates, might be going through. This book will teach readers how to be themselves, what it means to be brave, and how to follow your big dreams.

 Sexual Content

  • Alex records the story of how his parents met saying, “They went to the top of Mount Sam on the tramway and when they got up there they looked out over all of Rockview and up at the stars and that’s when they have their first kiss.”
  • Alex’s half-sister, Terra, tells him about a guy she is seeing. Alex asks her if she French-kissed him, and she responds, “Yes. We French-kissed.”
  • Terra and Zed’s roommate, Nathaniel, were alone in Nathaniel’s bedroom and Alex sneaks in with his iPod saying, “I thought maybe they were French-kissing and I thought you guys might want to know what that sounds like.”
  • Alex asks Terra what being in love means asking, “Is it wanting to French-kiss somebody?”

Violence

  • Steve has a crush on Terra, and when he sees Terra and Nathaniel alone together, he punches Nathaniel. Terra says, “Oh god, he’s bleed–.”
  • While climbing up a roof, Alex falls off the ladder and is impaled on a fence. Terra records on the iPod saying, “Just hearing his voice– I kept seeing him hanging over that fence.”
  • Ronnie tells Alex the truth about their father. “Deep down he was selfish and abusive.” Alex responds, “Did he hit Mom with a hockey stick like Benji’s dad hit his mom?”
  • Later in the conversation, Ronnie says, “Dad never hit Mom, at least that I know of. He never hit me either but he came really close once. . . He started yelling and undoing his belt and Mom was trying to shield me. . . Just ‘cause he never hit us doesn’t mean he wasn’t abusive in other ways.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Terra explains why she did not attend college. She says, “Why go hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt when you’re competing against other people on an artificial standard or even worse, drinking and partying away four years of your life only to come out with a piece of paper that isn’t worth sh–.”
  • Terra, Zed, and Zed’s two roommates all drink beer and vodka. Alex says, “I don’t know how you guys can drink that stuff because I tried a sip of one of Benji’s dad’s beers once and it was so gross.”
  • Alex reflects on a party. Alex stayed in his room all night but he had to use the restroom, and he ran into a girl drinking from a red cup. He asked her what she was drinking and she responded, “Coke and vodka.”

Language

  • Alex occasionally says “bleep” where individuals would normally curse in a sentence. For example, when he is at SHARF and sees the Southwest High-Altitude Rock Festival Banner and registration desk, he says, “HOLY bleep!”
  • Terra and Alex discuss swear words, and Alex says, “One time in school, Justin Peterson who’s on the basketball team and his locker’s next to mine asked me, Do you even know any swear words? And I said, Of course, I do, DUH! and then I told him all the swear words and I said sometimes Benji and I even combine them into sentences like, Bleep the bleep bleep who bleeped on my bleep bleep bleeping bleeper.”
  • Alex speaks into his recording saying, “Venice Beach was so huge, guys. I could see it even as we were driving up, and I said, Son of a beach! B-E-A-C-H.”
  • Steve gets into an argument with Terra and yells, “You think I’m an idiot, don’t you? Well maybe I AM. Maybe it takes an IDIOT like me to tell Alex here how things work in the real world. An IDIOT who’s not just going to feed him a bunch of false hopes!”
  • After the argument, Terra tells Alex, “Steve’s a jerk.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Paige Smith

 

 

 

 

Komi Can’t Communicate Volume 2

Socially anxious high school student Shoko Komi’s greatest dream is to make some friends, but everyone at school mistakes her crippling social anxiety for cool reserve. Luckily, she meets Tadano, a timid wallflower who decides to step out of his comfort zone in order to help her achieve her goal of making 100 friends.

It’s time for the national health exam at Itan High, and the excitement of eye exams and height measurements has fanned the flames of competition in the heart of Makeru Yadano. She’s determined to beat the class idol, Komi, in the health test. Komi’s total obliviousness to their impassioned duel just feeds Makeru’s determination. As the epic battle heats up, how will Komi handle her first rival when she’s barely made her first friends?

Much of the time Komi seems to be in her own world and doesn’t notice those around her. For example, at the beginning of the story, one classmate wants to compete with Komi on the physical fitness test. However, Komi doesn’t even realize the classmate is trying to beat her during the races and other activities. Even though Komi has social anxieties and doesn’t talk to anyone, many of Komi’s classmates idolize her and consider her a “goddess.”

Several of the characters are odd. For example, one classmate, Agari, acts as if she is Komi’s dog. Another classmate, Yamai, desperately wants to meet Komi, so she threatens Komi’s friend, Osana. After Osana agrees to introduce Komi to Yamai, the situation becomes even stranger. Yamai kidnaps Tadano, binds him to a chair, and puts tape over his mouth. Later that day, Osana and Komi go to Yamai’s house where they discover Tadano trapped in a closet. Despite this, Komi still wants to be friends with Yamai.

Komi Can’t Communicate Volume 2 shows Komi’s growth from a girl with no friends, to one who is beginning to communicate and has two friends. Even though Komi communicates by writing on a piece of paper, she does stand up for Tadano. Tadano is a bright spot in the story because he truly wants Komi to form friendships, and he pushes her to try new things. However, one drawback of Komi’s friends is that they all focus on her beauty.

The black and white illustrations are adorable and portray the socially awkward girl and her interactions with others with humor. Each page has 1 to 11 simple sentences which appear in quote boxes. Square boxes are also used to show characters and general information. The illustrations help show Komi’s nervousness by showing her tremble.

Even though Komi Can’t Communicate Volume 2 has some strange events, the story will resonate with high school students who are insecure. As Komi begins to communicate, she also begins to act like a normal teenager by going to the mall and eating at a restaurant with her friends. Komi Can’t Communicate Volume 2 will entertain readers, even though it lacks the depth of Volume One. Readers will be curious to find out what happens with Komi’s new friend Yamai in Volume Three.

 Sexual Content

  • Yamai has a crush on Komi and is obsessed with Komi’s smell.

Violence

  • Yamai kidnaps Tadano, threatens him with a knife, and binds him to a chair. Yamai thinks, “It’s utterly bizarre for a loser like him to hang around a divinity like you, Komi.” Yamai justifies her actions by saying Komi is “glorious, so it’s psycho for a bottle-feeder like Tadano to hang around you!”
  • Komi doesn’t talk to Yamai, so Yamai threatens to kill herself with a knife. She says, “I have no reason to keep living!”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • One of the students says, “F*** you!”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None
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