Reading Level: Young Adult

Tales from Shakespeare

Tales from Shakespeare takes a trip through 10 of Shakespeare’s plays covering the gamut of plots. From lighter stories such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream to stormier plots like Macbeth, Packer does a thorough job portraying the range that Shakespeare had with his pen.

Shakespeare is often cautioned when given to readers as it can be hard to get through, but this book helps to break down that barrier. Packer tells Shakespeare’s stories in her own words while seamlessly weaving excerpts into the process. This method of storytelling removes the intimidation factor that Shakespeare can sometimes have with new readers without forfeiting the ingenious wordsmithing that the Bard is known for.

Perhaps as enticing as the beautiful stories are the incredible artwork that sits between the pages. Packer recruits a different illustrator for each of the plays, and each has vastly different styles. The variety of artwork is all too fitting for stories with vastly different plots. The illustrations serve as milestones when flipping through the book urging one to continue reading to reach the next scene. With highly detailed illustrations in high resolution, one finds themselves looking at the portrayed landscapes and characters and feeling a sense of escape. Illustrations appear every 10-15 pages, often at the beginning of a new story. Having such detailed imagery only seems fitting for literature that was intended to have a visual aspect as well. Originally, one would be listening to these stories while watching it unfold in the spotlight. This book simulates that feeling with the interplay of visual art and literature. Tales from Shakespeare feeds one’s fictitious hunger and lets one’s imagination roam.

It is a known fact that some of the topics covered in Shakespeare’s plays could be harsh for a younger audience. The original stories have sexual innuendos, violence, and strong language, and Tales of Shakespeare does not remove those topics. Packer does not alter the stories, but she does not dwell on graphic details that are portrayed in a matter-of-fact way. If someone dies, she mentions it, but she does not use the moment to leverage a reaction from the reader. The focus of this book is to welcome as many readers into the “Shakespearean fold” as possible by introducing his command of the human experience. The theme that ties these stories together is the timelessness of these plays, and how they have the power to cause one’s eyes to well up hundreds of years later.

Tales of Shakespeare is the perfect introduction to Elizabethan England, 17th-century English dialect, and Shakespeare’s stories. Shakespeare’s stories are timeless, and they have spoken to people throughout the ages. This book would serve as an excellent resource as an introduction to how plays are read and how they are formatted. The book includes the plays A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, The Tempest, Othello, As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, and King Lear. Tales of Shakespeare covers some of Shakespeare’s greatest works and the prowess of the Bard is made accessible through this book.

Sexual Content

  • Don Pedro and Claudio see, “A woman leaning out of Hero’s window kissing another man.” They believe Hero is cheating.
  • Romeo and Juliet are “laying in each other’s arms” and he is “sealing her lips with a kiss.”
  • Othello thought his wife looked so beautiful sleeping. “He could not resist giving her one last kiss . . . and then another . . . and then another.”

Violence

  • Hermia’s father threatens her with death if she doesn’t marry the Duke.
  • After Hamlet has slain Polonius, “the bloody corpse of old Polonius slumped forward.”
  • After being weighed down by her dress, Ophelia drowns in the river.
  • Hamlet and Laertes duel and at the end “both men now bleed.”
  • Hero fakes his death in order to test the love of Claudio.
  • Beatrice orders Claudio’s death and that Benedick should duel him. They do not duel and Claudio is unharmed.
  • Macbeth goes into Duncan’s chambers when he is sleeping and “plunged both daggers into the king’s chest” and fled “still clutching the gory blades.”
  • After Macbeth kills Duncan, Lady Macbeth is unsuccessfully trying to wash the stain of a bloody spot. “Here’s the smell of blood still.”
  • Macduff and Macbeth duel and Macbeth is slain. Macbeth realizes he was the king to fall and dies in regret after “blade met flesh.”
  • In an ambush, “Roderigo leaped from the shadows and jabbed a knife in the back of Cassio’s chest.”
  • Othello “pressed a cushion over his wife’s face, smothering her.”
  • Oliver offers a blood-soaked rag to Rosalind. Rosalind faints at the sight of it.
  • Mercutio “stumbles backward” and is slain by Tybalt. Tybalt is then slain by Romeo in revenge. “He wildly fought and the sword found its mark.”
  • Romeo drinks poison given to him by the friar. He believes Juliet to be dead and kills himself. Juliet wakes up to see her lover dead and says, “Oh happy dagger! This is thy sheath. There rust and let me die.” She proceeds to stab herself in the heart and falls next to her husband, Romeo.
  • Cornwall plucks out Gloucester’s eye saying “out, vile jelly” and then proceeds to pluck the other one out. Regan then “leaned over Gloucester’s bloody, unseeing face.”
  • Gloucester tries to take his own life by jumping off a cliff, but is unsuccessful. He swears to never do it again. He later dies from grief and from having his eyes taken out.
  • Goneril’s steward is “struck down” by Edgar after turning on him.
  • Regan dies from being poisoned by Goneril, and Goneril, who is overcome with grief, stabs herself.
  • Edmund orders both King Lear and Cordelia to die. Although it is not described, he is successful in killing Cordelia. When Lear sees his daughter dead, he is overcome with grief and dies as well.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Claudius promised to serve Hamlet a “goblet of poisoned wine for good measure.”
  • Queen Gertrude, the king, and Laertes are poisoned by wine.
  • Stephano, the king’s butler, “washed ashore with a case of wine and had spent the last hour swigging from a bottle.” He meets Caliban and he gets drunk as well.
  • Cassio gets drunk and gets into a fight with Roderigo.
  • Toby makes a drunken effort to draw his sword, but Maria crafts a plan to distract him.

Language

  • Polonius says to Ophelia, “You speak like an immature girl.”
  • “Get thee to a nunnery!” Hamlet says to Ophelia
  • Lady Macbeth yells “out damned spot” when trying to clean the blood from her hands.
  • Macduff shouts, “Turn hellhound, turn!”
  • Caliban says to Stephano, “What a thrice-double ass was I to take this drunkard for a god.”
  • Iago says to Roderigo “after all, it’s only natural that she tire of that ugly moor.”
  • In a rage against Desdemona, Othello says to kill her. “No, damn her, lewd minx.”
  • “Oh dishonorable, vile submission!… Wretched boy.” Tybalt exclaimed to Mercutio.
  • King Lear calls Goneril and Regan “unnatural hags.”

Supernatural

  • Puck gives Bottom a Donkey head.
  • Demetrius has a love potion cast upon him that makes him love Hermia.
  • Hamlet sees his father’s ghost and says that his father was murdered. His ghostly father makes him swear to avenge his murder and kill his uncle.
  • The three witches in Macbeth predict the future and the eventual demise of Macbeth. They create a potion and finish each other’s sentences.
  • Macbeth sees the ghost of Duncan at the dinner table, and others believe Macbeth is mad.
  • Caliban is an enslaved, scaled creature and the son of the witch Sycorax.
  • Prospero has strong magical powers, a book of charms, and creates the Tempest.
  • “’My daughter, O my daughter,’ Brabantio wailed. ‘Stolen from me and corrupted by spells.’” Brabantio goes on to accuse Othello of witchcraft.

Spiritual Content

  • Beatrice says, “God give you joy.”
  • As Hamlet dies, Horatio says, “Flights of angels sing to thy rest.”
  • “Oh let me not be mad, sweet heaven,” said King Lear who feared for his sanity.
  • After seeing Cordelia dead, the distraught King Lear says, “The Heaven’s vault should crack.”

by Paul Gordon

 

Wonder Woman: Tempest Tossed

Wonder Woman: Tempest Tossed follows Diana of Themyscira (AKA Wonder Woman), a sixteen-year-old who leaves her home island and learns about the modern world. Diana is the only child on her island, which is full of powerful, immortal Amazon women. With no one to share in her experiences, Diana has often felt lonely and confused while going through puberty. Even so, she lives an enjoyable life. The Amazons are happy and ensure that everyone is well-fed and cared for.

When boats full of refugees wash up on the shores of Themyscira, the Amazon women chase them off in order to protect their border. Diana, though, is determined to see the refugees to safety and accompanies them off the island and into the mortal world.

They land in a refugee camp in the Middle East, where Diana sees war, poverty, sickness, and cruelty. Her ability to understand and translate every human language soon catches the attention of UN ambassadors, who give her a visa to the United States. Diana soon finds herself living with Polish immigrant Henke and Henke’s granddaughter Raissa in the Queens borough of New York City.

Diana becomes passionate about helping the children of her new community. As a headstrong and compassionate warrior, Diana finds herself at odds with the forces of injustice and hatred. She must stand up for the truth and justice that she was raised to believe in. While fighting for the rights of immigrants, she finds a new family and home in the mortal world.

With skillful writing and drawing, Laurie Halse Anderson and Leila Del Luca have brought a new and original story to the Wonder Woman character. The full-color illustrations are detailed and visually engaging, with a diverse array of panel layouts for effective visual storytelling. While comics fans will recognize the characters of Diana and the Amazons, this story can be read independently of any other Wonder Woman comic book. Diana’s position as an idealistic fish-out-of-water lets readers gain a fresh, heartbreaking perspective on the injustices of war, poverty, homelessness, and even human trafficking. At the same time, Diana discovers the joys of caring for children, connecting with other teenagers, and partaking in modern culture. Diana encounters food trucks, regional slang, polka dancing, subway transit, and parkour with wide-eyed enthusiasm readers will find endearing.

The story culminates in an exciting fight where Diana uses her superhuman strength to rescue children from a rich and powerful villain. It’s satisfying to see a real-life “bad guy” vanquished so quickly and easily by Diana. Even so, the story will leave readers with the knowledge that change is not always easy, and that the human rights abuses (like poverty and human trafficking) portrayed in this piece of fiction have real-life parallels which are not so easily brought down. The story is political in nature, with a stance that mature readers will recognize as being pro-immigration. The message is optimistic and idealistic, but still emotionally compelling. It makes for an uplifting story that will interest not only superhero fans but also for casual readers who want to read about social justice in the modern world.

Sexual Content

  • At the refugee camp, a woman suggests Diana cover up her Amazon armor (which is sleeveless) with a sweatshirt because “the guards can be dangerous,” implying that she might draw unwanted attention.
  • Diana and Raissa are harassed by men on the street, who whistle and say, “Gimme that sweet candy, baby!” When Diana realizes their intentions, she slams them up against the wall saying, “My aunts would have killed those jerks.”
  • Diana is horrified when she learns about the concept of human trafficking, and even more horrified to hear that children who are kidnapped or trafficked are often “forced to have sex.”
  • Raissa gets into an argument with a rich man who is gentrifying her neighborhood. He taunts her by saying, “You’re hot. I like having pretty girls in my office. Want to be my personal intern?”

Violence

  • An Amazon kicks a refugee who has landed on the shores of Themyscira, saying, “Quiet! You’ve broken our barrier.” The other Amazons scold her and say she has gone too far.
  • A woman tells Diana that before she fled Poland, “Thousands were beaten and jailed for protesting. Including me.”
  • During an encounter with bureaucrats who want to stop her from feeding hungry children, Diana is so angry that she throws a picnic table and breaks it. She is arrested.
  • A fight breaks out when Diana rescues a group of children from human traffickers. The fight lasts four pages. Several of the kidnappers have guns, but nobody is seriously hurt.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • When mortals land on the shores of Themyscira, the Amazons give them a “forgetting tea” before sending them away.
  • Diana rescues a group of children who have been kidnapped by human traffickers. The children have been drugged to keep them asleep.

Language

  • Profanity is used very infrequently. Language includes bitch, badass, hell, ass, and shitty.

Supernatural

  • As a child of the Amazons, Diana has superhuman strength and abilities. She tries not to draw attention to these. When Raissa says she saw Diana send two vans flying into the air during a fight, Diana says, “You hit your head. You must have been hallucinating.”

Spiritual Content

  • Diana recalls how the “Five Mothers”—the Greek goddesses Athena, Aphrodite, Demeter, Artemis, and Hestia—created the Amazons. She also recalls how the Five Mothers granted the Amazon queen a child, which was how Diana was created.
  • Diana makes offerings of food at the Temple of the Five Mothers, and says a prayer to each. For example, to Athena, she says, “Athena, grant me your wisdom. Help me be a good Amazon.”
  • Diana feels that “the gods are warning” her with a vague ominous feeling. She says, “The gods are whispering, but I can’t hear what they’re saying.”
  • Diana says that the Statue of Liberty “looks like Hestia, the goddess of family and the home.”

by Caroline Galdi

 

War Storm

In the splintered Kingdom of Norta, freedom for Reds and newbloods is closer than ever before. Torn between the two princes and the feuding noble Silver Houses, Norta is ripe for the taking. All the Scarlet Guard has to do is clean up the mess Maven Calore made, and create the type of nation that will never discriminate against Reds and newbloods. The first step is to rip the crown from Maven’s head.

In order to change the world, Mare Barrow must ally with Cal, the boy who chose the crown over her. Cal’s betrayal nearly broke Mare, but now she must fight alongside him if she wants any chance at winning freedom. If she doesn’t, Maven will surely overrun them all, and capture her for himself. Maven’s obsession with Mare runs deep, and he’ll stop at nothing to have her again.

For the Reds to rise, they must first go through a war storm. Scurrying from nation to nation and striking deep into the heart of Norta is only the beginning, and there are endless battles in sight. Are Mare and the Scarlet Guard willing to sacrifice everything to achieve the impossible? Or will Maven crush them and their dreams?

War Storm is the final entry in Aveyard’s Red Queen Series, and the story will not disappoint readers. As Mare and the Scarlet Guard are about to secure a future for themselves, they fight intense battles. The action-packed series features different combinations of Silver and newblood abilities, which makes every battle feel unique and fresh. Readers will love how each battle plays out differently than the last.

Of course, all those battles support the theme of war, as nearly the entire continent gets dragged into the civil war between Cal and his brother, Maven. Maven brokers alliances with the powerful nation of the Lakelands, as well as the smaller nation of Piedmont. While Cal allies with the free country of Montfort, the only nation known that allows equality for Reds, newbloods, and Silvers.

The characters in War Storm are strong and interesting. Mare has grown into a girl that’s strong enough to handle whatever is thrown at her. Another fascinating character is Evangeline Samos, Mare’s former enemy, who begins the long journey to overcome her Silver-born prejudices. These strong characters will keep readers on the edge of their seats. While not every main character gets the most satisfying ending to their arc, the ending ties up most of the loose ends and will leave readers happy. Warm Storm is a satisfying conclusion to Aveyard’s Red Queen Series.

Sexual Content

  • Evangeline is in love with her brother’s wife, Elane. Evangeline thinks, “It breaks my heart to know she isn’t really mine.”
  • Evangeline’s brother, tells her that their mother wants grandchildren. “Prodding after grandchildren. She escorts Elane to my rooms every night. I think she might even stand guard outside the door.”
  • Davidson, the leader of Montfort, shares a kiss with his husband, Carmadon. “They embrace quickly, touching foreheads and kissing, before Carmadon backs away.”

Violence

  • During an attack on a military transport, Mare sees Evangeline lift a vehicle. Mare watches as Evangeline “hisses as she raises the heavy transport off the road, revealing twisted limbs and a few flattened skulls seeping brain like popped grapes leaking juice.”
  • During a battle, Kilorn, Mare’s best friend, is thrown off a building. Mare thinks, “The crack and thud of Kilorn hitting the railing below makes me sick.” Minutes later, when Mare gets to Kilorn, he “jolts and hacks, painting the steps with his own blood.”
  • Mare gets revenge on the Silvers that threw Kilorn, killing them with lightning, “I have to look away from the charred remains. Only their buttons and guns remain intact, smoking with heat.”
  • When Iris meets with Cal’s grandmother, Iris pictures, “her grip changing, shifting, and then my skull exploding open, spewing brain and bone all over the transport interior.”
  • Just before being ambushed, Mare sees pine needles floating in the air. One pine needle, “sprouts before my eyes, a sapling growing in midair. It spears a soldier before any of us can react.
  • During an ambush, Tyton kills a lot of raiders with his ability to control lightning. Tyton, “blinks once, twice. Killing anyone within his reach, leveling them with a fury of electricity in their skills.”
  • Iris thinks about the man who killed her father. The man “cut his throat. Attacked him from behind like some honorees dog.
  • Mare kills a man who attacked her. She strikes him with her lightning and “then his face explodes; shards of bone and torn flesh arc forward. His body follows the momentum, slumping over me, and the thunderous touch of electricity returns as quickly as he falls.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • During a dinner party, wine is served. Mare watches as her friend, Farley, “barely nods in thanks when Carmadon fills her glass with rich, almost black wine. She drinks deep.”

Language

  • Damn is used frequently. Mare thinks about Cal’s marriage to Evangeline, “Like us, Volo needs him. Needs his name, needs his crown, and needs his damn hand in that damn marriage to his damn daughter.”
  • Maven called Elane “Evangeline’s whore.”

Supernatural

  • Silvers and Newbloods have unique powers.
  • Mare is an electricon, a type of newblood that can manipulate lightning. Mare thinks, “I hardly know the depths of my own abilities. It’s the same for all newbloods I’ve met and helped train.”
  • Ella, another electricon, “used her own storm to strike the central, furious blue lightning cracking stone.”
  • Mare thinks about her ability to manipulate lightning, “I know what it is to pour lightning into a person, to sense their nerves sparking off and dying. It feels like a small death of your own, an ending you can never forget.”
  • Prince Bracken is a mimic. Iris thinks about his abilities, “If he were to touch me, he would be able to use my nymph abilities, albeit only for a time, and to a lesser extent. The same goes for any Silver.”
  • Jidansais is a telky. Iris thinks about Jidansa, “She used her talky ability to amuse Ti and me as children, juggling our shoes or toys with her mind.”
  • Evangeline is a magnetron, who can manipulate metal. After lifting a military transport, “Evangeline lowers the transport again. With a twitch of her fingers, she rips off one of the doors, allowing those inside to tumble out.”
  • Shadows can manipulate light. Mare sees, “The work of shadows, no doubt, manipulators of light. It sends harsh light and harsher darkness dancing across us all.”
  • Nymphs can manipulate water. Evangeline sees the signs of a nymph attack, “‘Nymph strike!’ I manage to scream as another towering wave crashes—backward.”
  • Evangeline recounts her first time teleporting, “It feels like being squeezed down to my marrow, all my organs twisting, my balance thrown off, my perception turned on its head.”
  • Windweavers can manipulate wind and air. Mare sees, “On the opposite side of the chamber, Radis gestures to Davidson, flicking out one hand. As he does so, a sudden breeze rustles through the Gallery.”

Spiritual Content

  • In the Lakelands, the people worship gods that don’t have faces.
  • Iris thinks it’s a blasphemy to speak for the gods.
  • Iris tries to get her betrothed, Maven, to accept her gods. When he refuses, she thinks, “Nonbelievers are not my problem. I can’t open their eyes, and it isn’t my job to do so. Let him meet the gods in death and see how wrong he was before he enters a hell of his own making.”
  • In Archeon, the capital of Norta, Iris tries to maintain her beliefs. She has, “a small temple—a shrine, more than anything—filled with candles and worn emblems of the nameless gods.”
  • In the Lakelands, the nameless gods are everywhere. Iris sees, “Worn faces, bland in their features, both strange and familiar, look down from the ceiling and walls. Our gods have no names, no hierarchy. Their blessings are random, their words sparse, their punishments impossible to predict.”

by Jonathan Planman

Halt’s Peril

While Will and Halt are hot on the trail of the Outsiders, which is a cult that’s been making its way from kingdom to kingdom by conning the innocent out of their few valuables, they are ambushed by the cult’s deadly assassins. Pierced by a poisoned arrow, Will’s mentor is near death and in dire need of the one antidote that can save his life. Time is not on Will’s side as he journeys day and night through the harsh terrain to Grimsdell Wood in search of the one person with the power to cure Halt: Malkallam the Sorcerer.

Halt, Horace, and Will track the Outsiders in the hope of dismantling the cult. The three travel through unknown territory in a story full of adventure, fighting, and friendship. However, this time both Halt and Horace face life and death situations. Their survival is not guaranteed. In order to save Halt, Will and Horace are willing to do anything. Unlike previous installments in the series, both Will and Horace no longer have qualms about killing others. While they try to use peaceful means to solve a problem, killing others becomes necessary to save Halt and defeat the Outsiders.

Halt’s Peril highlights the importance of loyalty, dedication, and friendship, but the book also has several scenes that readers may find disturbing. As the series progresses, the characters do not become stagnant. Instead, they mature, and their relationships become more complex. Readers will enjoy the changing relationship of Will, Horace, and Halt. Instead of Will and Horace being subordinates, Halt values their skills, knowledge, and friendship.

The conclusion of Halt’s Peril will leave the reader smiling because good overcomes evil, loves last through separation, and friends help each other in times of need. Flanagan delivers another action-packed story that will keep readers entertained until the very end.

Sexual Content

  • When Halt makes it back home, he cast “aside his usual reticence, he stepped forward to meet [his wife], swept her into his arms and kissed her for a long, long time.”
  • When Will makes it home, he “felt a gentle hand on his arm and looked up slightly to meet Alyss’s smiling eyes…” Will “stepped forward, embraced her and kissed her. His head swam a little as she responded enthusiastically.”

Violence

  • When Will leaves a tavern, two men follow him. To encourage them to leave, Will shoots an arrow at them. Then, “without warning, there was another hiss-thud between them. Only this time, Niallis’s hand flew to his right ear, where the arrow had nicked him on its way through. Blood ran hotly down his cheek.”
  • Two thugs, Niallis and Dennis, are told to remove Halt from a tavern. Halt says Horace’s name, then “Horace began with a straight right to Dennis’s jaw. It was a solid blow.” Niallis attempts to help Dennis, but “Horace had pivoted and hit him with a crushing left hook to the jaw. Niallis’s eyes glazed and his knees went slack.” Horace knocks out both thugs. The scene is described over one page.
  • Halt attempts to talk to a smuggler named O’Malley. When the man attempts to leave, Halt’s saxe knife “was now pressing a little too firmly against the smuggler’s throat.” The smuggler gives Halt the requested information.
  • When O’Malley follows Halt’s ship, Will and Halt begin shooting arrows at the boat. “One arrow thudded, quivering, into the bulwark less than a meter from the helm. The other buried itself painfully in the flesh part of O’Malley’s upper left arm…” As the arrows continue to rain down on the crew, chaos ensues. “Again they shot. This time, both arrows found their mark and the man pitched forward, rolling into the scuppers as the ship heeled…” The smuggler’s ship hits a reef and crashes. Halt has men throw “some barrels overboard to float down to them. It might give them a chance.” The scene is described over three pages.
  • Tennyson, a false prophet, orders his men to kill a farmer. Tennyson “heard the slap-whiz of two crossbows, and two bolts streaked across the field to bury themselves in the man’s back. He threw up his hands, gave a choked cry and fell face-first down in the grass.” Tennyson’s men kill the farmer’s wife, then burn the farm and the barn with all of the cows inside. The scene is described over three pages.
  • Halt, Will, and Horace hide in an ambush of Tennyson and his men of Scotti raiders. When the raiders are close, Halt and Will begin shooting arrows. As the raiders attempt to flee, “threatened by the hail of arrows, they bunched together uncertainly. A few seconds later, the crazed cattle smashed into them… When the stampede passed, at least half of the raiding party were lying, seriously wounded, on the field.” Half of the raiders die before the others are able to run off. The scene is described over one page.
  • Tennyson sends two assassins to kill Halt and Will. During the attack, “Will’s arrow slammed into [the assassin’s] side. He lurched sideways, jolting against his companion and throwing off his aim. Then Halt’s arrow slashed into his chest and he jerked the trigger with dead fingers as he toppled backwards.” Will hears “Halt’s brief cry of pain, followed by the sound of his bow dropping… wet red blood stained his cloak. There seemed to be a lot of it.” Halt is hit with a poisoned crossbow bolt. The scene is described over three pages.
  • Later, Will attacks the assassin. The two are on horseback when the assassin “struck once, aiming for Tug, but Will leaned forward over his horse’s neck and deflected the thin blade with his saxe…” Both men jump out of the saddle, and Will “stepped in and slammed the heavy brass-shod hilt of his saxe into the side of the man’s head. Then without waiting to see if the first blow had been successful, he repeated the action a little harder.” Will takes the assassin captive.
  • When the assassin insults Will, “Horace’s open hand slapped hard across the side of his head, jerking it to one side and setting his ears ringing.” Horace strikes the assassin several times throughout the story.
  • In order to help Halt, Will and Horace need to know what type of poison was on the crossbow bolt. In order to get the assassin, Bacari, to talk, Horace “put the razor-sharp tip of the bolt against Bacari’s inner forearm, then deliberately pressed it into the flesh, penetrating deeply so that hot blood sprang from the wound and ran down Bacari’s hand. Bacari screamed in pain and fear as Horace dragged the sharpened iron through the flesh of his arm, opening a deep, long cut.”
  • During guard duty, Horace falls asleep. “Horace came awake in panic as he felt something whip over his head and then tighten inexorably around his throat, dragging him back away from the fire, cutting off his air and strangling any attempt he made to call out.” When the assassin tries to kill Horace, Will steps in. Bacari “was still laughing when Will’s throwing knife, drawn and thrown the moment the saxe had left his hand, buried itself in his heart. He looked down and saw it for a fraction of a second before his sight went black and his legs collapsed underneath him.” The scene is described over four and a half pages.
  • In the past, Halt had saved another ranger’s life by “shooting two of the bandits and cutting the third down with his saxe knife.” Halt was injured when “the huge bandit leapt out, swinging a terrible blow with the massive club.” All of the bandits were killed. The battle is described in one paragraph.
  • When Tennyson is preaching, one of his men uses an optical illusion. When Will sees the man, “the young Ranger’s arm went up, then down as he crashed the brass striker into the man’s head, behind the ear.”
  • Tennyson takes his followers into a huge cave. Halt, Will, Horace, and Malcom interrupt Tennyson’s preaching. Tennyson’s men attack. “Quickly, Halt retreated before the first rush, drawing his saxe to deflect a dagger thrust, then slashing the razor edge across his attacker’s forearm. The man yelled in pain and dropped out of the fight.” In order to prevent Tennyson and his men from escaping, Will throws explosives. “Rocks and earth fell from the ceiling in ever-increasing amounts… Will saw a massive rock shaken loose from the wall above the ledge where Tennyson stood. It hit beside him, barely a meter away.” The preacher “stepped onto empty air and toppled slowly off the ledge. He smashed against the jagged rocks at the base of the wall.” The scene is described over five pages.

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • When Will goes into a tavern, he is offered ale or ouisgeah. “Ouisgeah, Will knew, was the strong malt spirit they distilled and drank in Hibernia.” When three men come into the tavern, “the tavern keeper immediately began to pump up three large tankards of ale without a word passing between them.”
  • While making stew, Will added, “a generous glug” of red wine.
  • The assassins dip their crossbow bolts in poison.
  • When Halt is shot, Will gives him a salve that was “derived from the drug warmweed.”

Language

  • “Why the devil” is used several times. For example, when someone tells Halt that Tennyson went to Picta, Halt says, “Why the devil would Tennyson want to go to Picta?”
  • “Oh my god” is used as an exclamation once. “My god” is used as an exclamation once.
  • “For god’s sake” is used as an exclamation twice. When someone has difficulty mounting a horse, Halt says, “For god’s sake, can’t you just haul him up behind you?”
  • When the cave is collapsing, Will tells someone, “get the hell out of here.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Tennyson is a false prophet who preaches about Alseiass, the Golden God. Tennyson convinces people that they must build Alseiass “the golden, jeweled alter that he desires—an alter that you can worship at for generations to come.”
  • Tennyson tells people, “Alseiass loves you! Alseiass wants to bring light and joy and happiness into your lives… Alseiass is the god of light and enlightenment! His light of mercy can be seen even in the darkest reaches of the earth.”

Better Off Friends

When Levi moves to town, Macallan becomes his best friend. Everyone thinks that guys and girls can’t just be friends, but these two are. They hang out after school, share inside jokes, their families are close, and Levi even starts dating one of Macallan’s friends. They are content being just friends.

But no one believes that they are just friends. Guys won’t ask Macallan out because they think she’s with Levi. On the other hand, Levi goes through a string of girlfriends, who each think he spends too much time with Macallan. Basically, when it comes to dating, Levi and Macallan keep getting in each other’s way. With everyone thinking the two are more than friends, and they begin to wonder if they really can be just friends or if they should be more.

Better Off Friends alternates between Levi’s and Macallan’s point of view. In addition, the end of each chapter has a short conversation between the two, which allows them to reflect on their past. Levi is portrayed as a selfish, stereotypical Californian. For example, he wonders, “Why couldn’t we have stayed in Santa Monica, where the weather was sweet and the waves were sick?” Even though the book is told from both of the character’s points of view, both Levi and Macallan are forgettable characters.

Macallan is more well-developed character than Levi. Her mother’s recent death has shattered her family, she tries to stay out of Levi’s love life, and she stands up for two characters with disabilities. Despite this, she is not a memorable character. Unfortunately, too much of the story focuses on Macallan and Levi’s internal struggle as they try to hide their true feelings from each other. Even after the two realize they are in love with the other, their refusal to openly talk about their feelings becomes tedious.

Instead of being a fun romance, Better Off Friends has a predictable plot, forgettable characters, and a cliché conclusion. The main characters spend too much time trying to prove that they are just friends, and predictably fall in love with each other. Unfortunately, none of the characters are unique and readers will quickly forget the story. With a plethora of teen romances crowding the shelves, readers should reach for a truly unique and memorable romance such as I Believe in A Thing Called Love by Maurene Goo or Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson.

Sexual Content

  • Macallan and an unknown person have a short conversation. The unknown person wants to know if Macallan “hooked up at some point.”
  • While on a date with Emily, Levi “wanted to kiss her. . .So I kissed her. And she kissed me back.”
  • Macallan went to the movies with Levi and Emily. She went to get popcorn and came back “only to discover them kissing (or, more accurately sucking face).”
  • At a party, Macallan walked into her bedroom to find “Emily and Troy were kissing on my bed.” Emily asks Macallan not to tell her boyfriend that she was kissing another boy.
  • After Levi gets back from a trip, Emily “ran out in the cold and kissed me, which helped warm me considerably.”
  • Emily lies to Levi, telling him that “nothing happened” between her and Troy. As she tells him, Emily “started rubbing my leg. . .She started to kiss me.”
  • Levi says, “My first girlfriend . . . started sucking face with some other guy the second she was alone with him. Tonight my girlfriend was away from me for like two seconds and she was going to make out with another guy. It clearly has to be me.”
  • When Levi thinks something is wrong with him, Macallan “grabbed his cheeks and pulled him in for a kiss. He was tense, probably from shock, for the first couple of seconds. Then his arms were around me and he eased into it.” Macallan tells him, “You are not a bad kisser. It has been verified. Moving on.”
  • When Levi wasn’t paying attention, Macallan’s friend Danielle says, “Macallan and I were going to have a lingerie pillow fight.” Levi thinks, “I desperately tried to get the thought of Macallan and Danielle in lingerie out of my mind. I sometimes thought Macallan forgot I was a guy. And we have certain responses that are difficult to control.”
  • Levi begins dating Stacy and they kiss twice. For example, when Levi picked her up for a date, “he bent over and gave [her] a kiss.”
  • Macallan and Levi kiss. Levi “relished her lips on mine. Her hands gently ran through my hair.”

Violence

  • A boy named Keith makes fun of Macallan’s uncle. Keith “bent his arms up toward his collarbone and let his wrist go limp so his hands were dangling. He collapsed his legs together at the knees and started to walk like he had a disability.” Then Keith says, “Just because your mom’s dead doesn’t mean you can be such a bitch.” Angry, Macallan “tightened up my fist and hit him right in the kisser. Keith, Mr. Athlete Extraordinaire, was knocked onto his butt.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Macallan has a unique name because her “dad liked a certain kind of Scotch Whiskey.”
  • Macallan, her father, Levi, and his parents have dinner. Levi’s parents bring a bottle of wine.
  • When Macallan’s boyfriend broke up with her, she asked, “Have you been drinking?”
  • When Macallan goes to Ireland, one of her friends takes her to a party and offers her alcohol. When she declines, her friend says, “You Americans are so uptight about alcohol.”
  • When Levi is injured, he takes “some serious painkillers.”

Language

  • Several times during the story, a handicapped person is called a retard or retarded. This includes Macallan’s uncle. Macallan stands up for to person and defends her uncle.
  • Levi refers to himself as an idiot eight times. For example, he thinks, “Macallan stood up to those three guys while I stood there like an idiot.” He also says that he’s been “a total idiot lately.”
  • Crap is used six times. For example, Macallan says, “I wasn’t in the mood for his crap today.”
  • Levi says, “I’m sorry. I was being a grade-A jerk.” Later someone else calls Levi a jerk.
  • “God” and “Oh my God” are both used as an exclamation once.
  • Someone calls Macallan a bitch.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Here to Stay

Bijan Majidi loves basketball, comic books, and his mom. When he makes it on the varsity basketball squad, he’s over the moon. Now he’s getting noticed and being invited to parties with the cool kids. But when someone sends the whole school a photoshopped picture that makes Bijan look like a terrorist, he has to deal with the fallout. Here to Stay examines the prejudices and identities that envelop the lives of Bijan and his classmates.

Here to Stay tackles discussions about race and prejudice against the backdrop of a wealthy, white, New England neighborhood. Sara Farizan’s commentary creates a rich dialogue that acutely questions a status quo that harms students who aren’t white. Bijan, who is half Persian and half Jordanian, experiences microaggressions and a hate crime. Bijan is also put under emotional and social strain. Despite this, Bijan is resilient and handles the situations thrown at him through his wit and the strength of his heart.

Along with the discussion of race, Farizan includes two LGBTQ+ characters who initially hide their relationship because they fear their community’s backlash. In both overarching plot points, acceptance and sticking up for oneself are recurrent themes. Although not everyone in the novel is kind to these characters or to Bijan, the supporting cast of friends are loyal and kind people.

Bijan is undeniably a good main character. He’s friendly, funny, and sticks up for himself and his friends. Occasionally, some characters’ dialogue comes across as strange or too young for teenagers. However, it doesn’t make the characters any less likable. Considering all the dark topics that Here to Stay covers, Bijan’s inner monologue is really funny and brings some much-needed lightness to an otherwise depressing situation.

Farizan does an excellent job presenting a discussion around prejudices and integrating it with a fun high school basketball story. Ultimately, life is made up of great, game-winning moments as well as terrible moments. Bijan’s story is about dealing with other people’s prejudices, but he’s also a teenager who has crushes and who likes basketball. These things are not separate from each other, and Farizan presents Bijan as a whole person who deals with a full range of human experiences. Here to Stay is powerful, not necessarily because Bijan is extraordinary, but because his story is a reality for many people. Readers certainly won’t have a difficult time finding something to like about Bijan and his story.

Sexual Content

  • Bijan has “an imaginary future ex-girlfriend, Elle.” He has a crush on Elle, and the topic of his love comes up often.
  • When Bijan is getting ready to go to a party, his mom tells Bijan that he can’t “get ‘fresh’ with any young ladies.”
  • According to Bijan, his best friend Sean “has had sex.” No other details are given.
  • At the start of practice, a basketball player throws his shirt to the side. “Some girls from the varsity squash team catcalled as they ran on the track above.”
  • Someone makes a comment about Bijan going back to “whatever country or Cave of Wonders” he came from. Bijan responds with, “I’ll go back to where I came from. Back to your mom’s house. She made me the best breakfast this morning after the time we had together last night. Her maple syrup tasted just as good as she did.”
  • Bijan’s best friend Sean makes a suggestive comment about another classmate. He says, “I wouldn’t mind tutoring Erin Wheeler . . . I’d answer any anatomy and physiology questions she may have.”
  • Another basketball player, Will, mentions his girlfriend to a teammate. Will says, “Once I get what I need from [my girlfriend], I’m calling it off. Then it’s college honeys for days, you know what I’m saying?” This statement is not explained further.
  • Will harasses Bijan about a girl in their grade. Will says, “ ‘It’s really nice of you to keep defending [Stephanie]. You giving it to her, man?’ Will dry-humped the air. ‘I mean, I guess she’d be a good lay. She’s got a nice physique for a munchkin . . . You put a gag over her head when you do her? So you can shut her up and not have to look at her? I know you people like your girls covered.’ ”
  • Stephanie and Erin have been secretly dating.  At a party, Bijan accidentally overhears them.  Stephanie says, “ ‘While we haven’t done anything, I like you. I like you very much’ Then [Bijan] heard it. Lips smacking. Stephanie was kissing someone!” Erin is worried about being found out because “My friends and that school are going to tear [Stephanie] apart.”
  • Will makes yet another comment to Bijan, this time about Bijan and Sean. “I thought you two were joined at the hip. How will you be able to take a piss without him holding your dick?” Bijan responds, “He’s his own man . . . But it’s true, my dick is far too big to hold. Your mom said so last night.” Will then responds with, “By the way…which of his moms did it with a turkey baster?”
  • Bijan and Elle kiss. “[Bijan] cupped her face in [his] hand. She was so warm. Kissing her was a million times better than scoring the winning basket for Granger.”
  • Erin and Stephanie start officially dating. Erin introduces herself as “[Stephanie’s] girlfriend, with all the confidence of her years in the New Crew.”
  • While in the locker room, Will makes a series of sexual comments about Bijan and Drew’s love lives. In response, Bijan says, “Why don’t you find a Jacuzzi jet to stick your dick into and call it a day, Will.”

Violence

  • Bijan talks about movies. He says that “Daniel LaRusso gets to crane-kick the crap out of Johnny.”
  • Occasionally, fouls occur in the basketball games and players are knocked down, pushed, or shoved.
  • After Bijan makes a comment about a player’s mom, the player “rushed [Bijan], knocking [him] to the sidewalk.”
  • Someone photoshopped Bijan’s face onto a racist version of the school mascot and sent it to the school. Bijan’s face was “photoshopped onto the head of a man with a long beard wearing a pakol hat and holding a gun.”
  • An email is sent to the Granger student body, but this time it outs Stephanie and Erin’s relationship and sexual orientations. It’s a picture of their photoshopped faces, and they’re “vomiting rainbows.” It is later revealed that Stephanie’s friend, Noah, is the one who made it out of jealousy, as he felt entitled to Stephanie’s affection.
  • Will gets drunk the night before the first tournament game and brings his buddies to beat up Bijan. One of them, “grabbed hold of [Bijan’s] shoulder and pushed [him] backward with his forearm against [his] chest. [Bijan] tried to get away, and wanted to yell but the fear wouldn’t let [him].”
  • At the basketball game, a group of white people who “had wrapped athletic towels on their heads and wore fake beards . . . held up a poster-sized version of the terrorist photo of [Bijan]” sat behind the basket and chanted “USA! USA! USA!” at Bijan.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At a party there is a “cooler full of beers.” Many of the underage students drink at the party.
  • Someone says to Bijan about the photoshopped picture, “Whoever did send it, I’d love to shake their hand and buy them a beer.” Bijan responds, “I’d love to buy a keg for whatever college will take you . . . How much does your grandpa pay to have you play for us?”
  • At another party the students drink again. Bijan drinks a beer and says it tastes “like wheat backwash.” Bijan also joins in on beer pong where he plays “with the guys for an hour.”
  • Drew talks about his dad. Drew says, “Mine’s a real piece of work. A guy named Tim who would rather play keno and drink than hang out with his kid.”

Language

  • Profanity is used somewhat often. Profanity includes damn, crap, bitches, ass, and hell.
  • Bijan says his life turned into a “crap salad in a bucket.”
  • Students make many comments about Bijan’s race, and they also make insensitive comments about other races as well.
  • Bijan briefly mentions that the JV locker room talk included “theories about what would happen if you smeared Icy Hot all over your junk.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • During a speech at school, Bijan talks about his parents’ religions. “My mom is Muslim but doesn’t speak to God as much since my dad died. My father was Christian. My relationship with God is personal and has nothing to do with you.” Bijan thinks, “I didn’t explain to them that terrorists who commit heinous acts in the name of religion don’t understand their faith at all, including the white Christian terrorists within our own country. I didn’t read to them the section of the Qur’an that says, ‘Whoever kills a person unjustly. . . it is as though he has killed all mankind, and whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind.’”
  • Bijan doesn’t drink, and he turns down a beer from another student. That student then says, “Allah’s not gonna mind.”

by Alli Kestler

 

 

 

 

 

 

Loveboat, Taipei

Ever Wong’s parents came to America with little, but they were determined to make a better life for their children. Ever’s father, a talented doctor, was unable to obtain a medical license in the US and the family is barely scraping by. The Wongs are determined to see their daughter become a doctor. The only problem is that Ever has very little talent for medicine and would much rather go to dance school.

Ever wants to spend her summer dancing with her friends, but her parents have different plans for her. Ever’s mother pawns her most valuable jewelry to pay to send Ever to a rigorous pre-med program. Then Ever’s mother sends her to Chien Tan, a summer program designed for Chinese-American high school students learn about their culture through eight weeks in Taipei, Taiwan.

In Taipei, Ever finds herself among a Chinese-American majority for the first time in her life, but she also discovers that many of her peers have grown up quite differently from her. Most of the Chien Tan students have enormously wealthy parents, and nobody else has had to pawn jewelry to pay for their airfare. Many of Ever’s peers are fluent or near-fluent in Mandarin, which Ever never learned.

Sophie, Ever’s roommate, tells her that Chien Tan has the nickname “Loveboat.” It’s the status quo for students to sneak out at night, go clubbing, and abandon their boyfriends and girlfriends back in the States for intense, short-lived love affairs. Away from her family for the first time, Ever begins to break all of her parents’ strict rules: she drinks, dresses immodestly, and kisses boys. She finds herself caught in an intense love triangle between golden-boy Rick and mysterious bad-boy Xavier.

Loveboat, Taipei addresses many issues that readers may find relatable: the pressure of overbearing parents, the pressure to get drunk or have sex for the first time, and the complicated feelings one can have over cultural identity. The romance is well-written and the love triangle is cute, but readers may find it hard to believe that the two most popular boys in Loveboat are both so smitten with the likable, but unassuming, Ever.

Much of the book’s plot concerns the drama around Ever’s love triangle. Through Ever’s perspective, readers see background characters work through their own drama, too. The cast of characters is large to start with, and it gets confusing when the book names too many extra characters who aren’t part of the plot and only exist to populate the background.  Chien Tan gives unbridled freedom to kids on the cusp of adulthood. They form hasty relationships, hurt themselves, and hurt each other—emotionally and sometimes physically. For example, Sophie spreads nude photos of Ever out of spite. Readers may think this was unforgivable, but they eventually make up.

Ever’s frustration with her parents is a major theme; despite their disagreements, the family clearly loves each other. The narrative reflects the nature of this complicated relationship. Ever learns to stand up for herself and exercise her new freedom staying true to her own values. Loveboat, Taipei will be a compelling choice for readers looking to read about culture, class differences, and “leaving the nest”.

Sexual Content

  • The official rules at Chien Tan say, “No boys and girls in a room with the door closed.” However, this rule is often broken.
  • Ever says that her mother believes that “sex is a by-product of marriage to be endured, preferably through a hole in the blanket.”
  • Later, after having sex for the first time, Ever says, “Sex isn’t the barely tolerable duty of procreation, like Mom always insinuated. It’s two human beings fitting seamlessly together.” However, she still feels guilty, because she “wanted to wait for love.”
  • Ever sees a boy she once kissed and remembers, “those big hands on my hips. His tongue pressing my lips apart. He taught me everything I know about kissing that I didn’t learn from practicing on oranges” with her best friend in middle school.
  • At the Chien Tan dormitories, a couple is ousted from their room. The girl is “clutching her pink dress to her bra.” Ever says that the boy “grabs his shorts–but not before I catch a glimpse of his . . . equipment.” Ever says she is “too stunned to close my eyes.”
  • Ever says that a girl enjoying a meal makes “moaning noises straight out of a scene I wouldn’t be allowed to watch on TV.”
  • Someone asks Rick if he and his long-distance girlfriend have been “having phone sex.”
  • At a club, Ever sees “middle-aged men who line the walls, eyeing girls on the dance floor.”
  • Ever dances with a boy from Chien Tan. “His eyes sweep my body. His neck gleams with sweat. My hair’s damp. I writhe with him, matching thrust for thrust. His hip wedges against mine as he pulls me deeper, deeper–and then I feel him. Oh my God. Oh my God. Is that what I think it is?” She realizes he has an erection and backs off. Later she thinks, “I’ll have to see him in class every single day, knowing I gave him a boner, and him knowing I know.”
  • Sophie tells Ever, “Xavier and I hooked up. Last night. We did it.” She tells Ever “far more detail than I need or want: how they’d made out the whole cab ride home, fumbled down the darkened hallway, tumbled into a spare bedroom on the first floor.” Ever notices that Sophie has “a pink, quarter-sized hickey” on her neck. Ever says, “I can’t imagine sleeping with a guy after knowing him only a week.”
  • Sophie and Ever go to take “glamour shots.” The photos get more and more risqué until Sophie takes a photo naked. “Her bikini lies in a silky, white heap on the floor. She’s naked. Not practically. Actually. Yannie’s lights shine off her golden skin, illuminating bikini patches.” Sophie tells Ever, “This is art, not porn.”
  • While taking photos, Ever remembers how she always felt “the grip of shame” about her body, especially when she “developed more parts to feel ashamed of flaunting.” She decides to follow Sophie’s lead and pose for her own nude shots.
  • Later, someone makes copies of Ever’s nude photos and distributes them to everyone. Ever sees the photos, which show “A girl. She’s back-dropped in white, the only object in her rectangular world. Her hands open like fans at her sides. She gazes out at me, chin raised boldly, dark-red lips parted with a seductive intake of breath, coils of black hair swept up to show off every curve of skin from the slope of her neck to her coyly cocked ankle–and everything in between.” The photos get her into a lot of trouble. The Chien Tan students and staff all see the photos, and Ever is mortified and almost expelled.
  • Ever recalls that some men have “Asian fetishes.” She remembers explaining to a white friend why attracting men’s interest simply because she’s Asian is “not flattering, why it’s based on stereotypes that have nothing to do with who you are.”
  • A girl in the bathroom seems very embarrassed while she scrubs at a blood stain on her sheets. Ever blushes when she realizes that they’re “not period stains” (The implication is that the girl bled during sex).
  • Later, after having sex for the first time, Ever sees “a red smear, like a smudge of calligraphy ink,” on the bedsheet. She’s embarrassed and hopes she’ll never have to see the boy again.
  • Ever passes a couple’s room and hears “soft little moans and kissing sounds.”
  • Xavier kisses Ever. “His mouth is soft, sweetened by wine. He tucks his fingers into my hair and cradles the curve of my neck. Under his lips, my back arches slightly… His mouth silences me, parting my lips, making me gasp with the unexpected pleasure of his tongue.” They stop a few moments later.
  • Ever has sex with Xavier, but the scene isn’t depicted. The next morning, “I lie on my side on a cloud of down feathers, nude between cotton sheets and a blue duvet and the weight of Xavier’s arm over my waist. His naked body presses against my back from shoulder to thighs. Last night returns like a dream: Xavier’s hand on my back, guiding me to this room as our mouths moved together, the click of the door sealing our privacy, then his mouth on my eyelids, my cheeks, the hollow of my neck, his hands exploring . . . my fingernails in his shoulders. My body is sore in places I didn’t know could feel sore.”
  • Ever and Rick bathe in a hot spring together and become intimate. The scene takes place over several pages and concludes with, “His mouth burns a line down to my belly button. It makes my body quiver like a tightly strung instrument. The splash of water echoes as he slips back into the pool. My stomach dips as his hands part my knees. He slides his shoulders between them, and his hands tuck under my thighs and take hold of my hips. He kisses a trail along the inside of each thigh, his breath warm on my skin, so near and intimate. My pals press the stones, all my body throbbing, unbelieving, as he asks permission to continue, and my whisper yes blends with the gurgle of the hot waters. He takes his time. A slow burn that builds and builds, until I am clawing at the stones and my back arches and my toes splash and my body ripens under his grip.” Later, Ever says, “Who knew Boy Wonder was so good with his tongue?”
  • During Chien Tan’s talent show, one of the boys dresses in drag. A character sees the drag queen and says, “Whoa, she’s stacked.” The drag queen’s “red lace bra is covered only by the middle button of her coat.”

Violence

  • Ever remembers hearing about a child prodigy who “died by suicide.”
  • Ever resents Rick and says, “I indulge a fantasy of me using that big, hard body as a punching bag.”
  • When Xavier gets out of his dad’s car, Ever notices that “a reddish blotch shines on his cheek–a bruise? Did his dad hit him?”
  • During a conversation with Ever, Xavier reveals that his dad said “[he] should’ve beat me harder to beat [the dyslexia] out of me.” Ever is horrified that Xavier was abused over his dyslexia. Xavier says, “My dad gave me a new set of trophies and told me I was a disgrace to nine generations.” Ever realizes that by “trophies” he means “bruises.”
  • Ever remembers “Mom with the chopsticks, hitting the inside of my bare thigh once, twice, three times. I don’t even remember what I’d done. The chopsticks only came out occasionally, and left no scars, but the shame has lingered.”
  • A man making ‘snake-blood sake’ cuts the head off of a snake. “His hatchet bangs down. The snake’s fanged head flies” at one of Ever’s friends. “Its severed end spurts dark red blood . . . Into one vial after another, the man squeezes the snake’s cut end. Dark red blood pulses out, pinking the liquor.”
  • At a bar, Ever is accosted by “two hundred pounds of meaty guy.” Ever says he “crushes me against the bar. He reeks of alcohol and sweat. I shove back, but it’s like trying to move a brick wall.” A boy from Chien Tan comes along and rescues her by telling the man, “She’s with me.”
  • A Chien Tan couple has arguments that “usually ended with something broken—a bulletin board, a lamp, his toe.”
  • When he’s angry, Rick “slams his fist through the center of his rice sack.”
  • Ever becomes interested in the choreography of fighting with staffs and sticks. She and Rick often mock-duel, but never with the intention to hurt. There are several pages of scenes where they ‘fight’. For example, “The crack of wood on wood punctuates the air, reverberating in my hands. I swing again. Again. Force him back until his foot hits a brick wall. And then he’s shoving me back, stick flying. . . swing a blow at his head. He ducks.”
  • During one fight, Ever says, “I instinctively whip my stick down—and slam his knuckles.” Ever apologizes immediately, because she didn’t mean to hurt Rick.
  • Someone tells Ever about “samurai of feudal Japan, soldiers who didn’t fall on their swords like the Romans did, but disemboweled themselves.”
  • Rick and Xavier get into a fight. “Xavier’s arms are locked around Rick’s neck, both bent double as they lurch into Marc, who grabs at them, earning himself a punch in the stomach . . . They’re inseparable, a force of muscled arms and legs and rage, knocking over everyone in their path.” Chien Tan counselors break up the fight and send them to the infirmary to clean up their bloody noses.
  • Sophie arrives home with a black eye and claims she “walked into a wall.” Later, Ever discovers that Sophie’s boyfriend Matteo has been violent with her. Ever sees Matteo “in a drunken stupor,” chasing after Sophie. Sophie locks herself in her room and Ever hears Matteo “spewing curses. The door shakes under his weight. I jam the door in place, then hang on tight. Under me, the door convulses as he pounds and pounds.” Later Sophie says that Matteo was mad because she “bit him.” Sophie agrees to let Ever tell the Chien Tan counselors about the incident, and Matteo is expelled and sent home.
  • Someone talks about how their mom struggled to find employment. “My mom went to work in a hotel and then some asshole manager slapped her butt and she shoved him onto his . . . now she’s cleaning toilets.”
  • Rick speaks about the tense relationship he has with his girlfriend, who suffers from severe depression and relies on him for emotional support. “We were in her kitchen. Cutting a loaf of bread we’d picked up. And she started crying and saying she couldn’t anymore, couldn’t take her parents, school, life, without me. She grabbed the knife, and I grabbed hold.” He “opens his palm to sunlight. Under its harsh yellow rays, the four inch-long scars line up in their row.” He admits that he eventually only stayed with her because he was afraid she would harm herself. The book later explores how this relationship has harmed Rick.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • When trying to navigate the airport, Ever runs into a man who stinks of “cilantro and cigarettes.”
  • Ever soon learns that the drinking age in Taiwan is eighteen—making her legally able to drink. Still, it’s against Chien Tan rules. She says she’s “never even tried alcohol,” and that the last time she went to a wedding, her mom “whisked [my] champagne glasses from under the waiter’s bottle.”
  • During a study group, some boys “are passing a steel bottle around.” Ever declines the first time, but partakes at later meetings.
  • Ever breaks her parents’ “no-alcohol” rule by drinking ‘snake-blood sake’. After watching a man chop off a snake’s head and squeeze the blood into the alcohol, she drinks it. “I throw back my head. The warm, salty blood and sake set my throat on fire. It tastes bitter. Like metal. Heat sears my chest, opening up a pipe there I’ve never felt before . . . My head feels stuffed with rice, then it explodes in a million directions. Kaleidoscopic tingles dance through my body.” Later in the evening, she throws up on the street and has to be carried home.
  • After being in Chien Tan for several weeks, guava cocktails are Ever’s “new favorite.”
  • Xavier hands Ever “a bottle of . . . a French wine with a white label. I fit its glass top to my lips and take a long pull. Dark cherry, rich and strong. I take a second pull, a third, letting its smoothness warm my body.”
  • In her messy room, Ever notices that some clothing lying on the floor “has soaked up a can of stale beer.”
  • After Ever sprains her ankle, a paramedic gives her “a white pill—prescription-strength ibuprofen.”

Language

  • Profanity is used infrequently. Profanity includes crap, ass, asshole, hell, damn, shit, bastard, bitch.
  • Oh my God and Jesus are occasionally used as exclamations.
  • Fuck is used four times.
  • Ever calls Rick a brown-noser.
  • Someone calls Ever a slut.
  • Someone calls Sophie “fucking bitch” and “cocktease.”
  • Ever remembers seeing a store clerk call her dad a “stupid chink.”

Supernatural

  • A hotel “has no fourth floor—the Chinese equivalent of unlucky thirteen, because four sounds like death in Mandarin.”

Spiritual Content

  • Ever describes her parents as “Chinese-Baptist.”
  • When dancing, Ever says she feels like “a goddess.”
  • Ever recalls “sorting I Ching sticks with a fortune-teller” while touring Taipei.
  • One girl at Chien Tan is “really involved with the weekly Bible study she started.”

by Caroline Galdi

 

 

 

 

Never Evers

Thirteen-year-old Mouse is pretty sure her life is totally over. Now that she’s been kicked out of ballet school, she has to go on her new school’s ski trip basically knowing no one. Well, except too-cool-for-school Keira and crazy Connie-May (and her adorable hamster, Mr. Jambon).

Meanwhile, Jack’s life is just about to begin. He’s on the way to the slopes with his school too, and all he can think about is how to get his first kiss.

With her new friends by her side, Mouse has more fun skiing and building igloos than she expected. And when Jack catches Mouse’s eye, he’s smitten. All’s well—that is, until mega-pop star, Roland arrives on the scene and sets his sights on Mouse too! A week in the snow is about to get complicated. . .

Never Evers is ridiculous, over the top, and funny. The story focuses on two friend groups. One group includes three boys—Jack, Max, and Toddy. Max is totally obsessed with kissing a girl—any “hot” girl. Even though Jack is smitten with Mouse, Max keeps pushing Jack to spend time with another hot girl, which causes some drama. Like many preteen boys, the three friends are immature, use body humor, and talk about “pubes” (pubic hair).

The other friend group includes Mouse, Connie, and Kiera. In order to determine if Jack likes Mouse, the girls make a love spell, which causes some laughable moments. However, unlike the group of boys, the girls are not obsessed with boys. Instead, Mouse is also dealing with getting kicked out of dance school, a mean girl, and making new friends.

Never Evers is full of friendship drama, crushes, jealousy, and misunderstandings. The story’s point of view flip flops between Jack and Mouse, which allows the reader to understand their confusion about the opposite sex. Using humor, the story expertly portrays the confusion and insecurity that many tweens feel about growing up. While the story is often laugh-out-loud funny, it also shows the importance of kindness and having friends who will stand by you no matter what.

While Never Evers is not great literature, it will resonate with tweens who often feel awkward and uncertain. Middle school readers who aren’t ready for more mature romances will enjoy Never Evers. If you’re looking for a similar tween-friendly romance, add Pugs and Kisses by J.J. Howard to your reading list.

Sexual Content

  • A group of boys talk about a boy who said, “he kissed sixteen girls in five days.
  • A group of boys talks about their inability to get a girlfriend. “You know Ed’s kissed ten girls now? Ten. He’s a month younger than me and he’s on double digits.”
  • Mouse has never kissed a boy, but her friend, Keira, has “kissed three other boys.” Keira says, “You’re not missing out on anything, to be honest. It’s a little anticlimactic, really. You think it’ll be this big, life-changing moment, but it’s actually just Elliot Campbell slobbering all over you.”
  • While on the bus, a boy moons a group of girls.
  • While talking about Connie’s true love, the bus passes a sign for a French teen singer. Connie says, “Ron is my one true love. But I might let Roland English-kiss me. To warm me up for Ron.”
  • While watching Romeo and Juliet, Mouse thinks, “Watching sex scenes with your parents is horrendous, but it turns out watching them with a bunch of people your own age is also really bad.”
  • While lost in the wilderness, Jack and Mouse go into an igloo to keep warm. Jack “buried all my worries and fears deep in the snow, and leaned in to kiss her.” Before he can, a rescue team shows up.
  • At a dance, Connie kisses a boy. Someone sees them, and says, “That Connie girl’s a man-eater.”
  • Jack thinks about kissing Mouse. “I knew I shouldn’t feel scared anymore, but I did. It was scary. Doing anything for the first time is scary. But I wanted to kiss her so bad.” He moves closer to Mouse, and, “Then I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and leaned in towards her.”

Violence

  • While talking to a group of girls, Jamie was teasing Jack and his friends. “Before I could stop him, Max launched himself at Jamie, shoving him hard in the chest and sending him crashing onto the cold, hard ice. . . Jamie was too shocked to even respond.” A teacher scolds the boys.

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • “Oh my God,” and “Oh God” are used as an exclamation frequently.
  • Occasionally there is name calling, such as dummy, idiot, lunatic, loser, jerk, freak, and wierdo. For example, Kiera calls a mean girl and her friends “a bunch of rancid, pathetic losers.”
  • Crap (or a version of it) is used six times. Jack says, “The only snow I’ve seen is the crappy kind that turns gray and icy and melts within a day.”
  • Freakin’ is used three times. A boy yells, “You’re a freakin’ maniac, Max!”
  • Hell is used seven times. When Mouse disappears, Jack thinks, “I couldn’t tell what the hell was going on.”

Supernatural

  • Mouse and her friends use The Teen Witches’ Book of Spells to cast a love spell. As part of the spell, the girls make a circle out of their clothes and stand in the circle. Mouse’s friend Keira says, “We need paper and a pen. A true belief in magic. A full moon. . . A hair from your head and a mason jar.”
  • Mouse puts a piece of her hair in a jar. Then she writes a boy’s name and puts it into the jar. Kiera says, “Okay, now we’re going to hold hands, and we all have to sing, ‘Name is written / Hidden singing / Compel the object to my bidding / So mote it be.”

Spiritual Content

  • Mouse hides in a bathroom stall so she can hear a group’s conversation. While there, she prays, “Please, God, don’t let my phone ring.”
  • Occasionally the teens pray. For example, when Kiera writes Jack (Mouse’s crush) on her jeans, Mouse prays that Kiera “didn’t wear those jeans again this week.”
  • Jack asks Mouse if she wants to get a hot chocolate. When she turns him down, Jack prays, “Please, God, let something happen now to end this moment—a fire alarm, an avalanche, a rip in the space-time continuum. . . Anything.”

The Betrothed

The King of Corona, Jameson, is young and handsome, but he is not the type to settle down. Everyone has watched him flirt his way from girl to girl. So when Hollis catches the King’s eye, she assumes that Jameson will quickly lose interest and move on.

Hollis has grown up at Keresken Castle among other daughters of nobility, most of whom hope to catch the King’s eye. So when King Jameson declares his love for Hollis, she is shocked. Hollis soon realizes that along with the extravagant presents and fawning attention, this new life brings expectations—expectations that make her wonder if she’s really cut out for life as a royal.

With a visit from the King of Isolte on the horizon, Hollis sees a chance to prove to Jameson—and herself—that she has what it takes to be queen. But when she meets an Isolten stranger with the mysterious power to see into her heart, she realizes the future she wants is one she never dared dream of.

Even though the story is told from Hollis’s point of view, it is hard to understand why King Jameson would want her as his queen. Hollis’s behavior is immature and self-serving. She doesn’t want to be a good queen for the sake of the country. Instead, she wants to be a good queen so others will admire her. This is reinforced when several characters, including Hollis’s parents, do not believe Hollis’s behavior is fit for a queen. Hollis’s self-serving nature makes it hard to relate to her struggles.

While The Selection Series by Kiera Cass is an engaging, action-packed series, The Betrothed has a weak plot and underdeveloped characters. For example, masked men kill everyone at a wedding. However, the murders are never investigated and the only death that seemed to matter was the death of Hollis’ husband. In addition, the conclusion is anticlimactic and unbelievable. The Betrothed is appropriate for middle school readers who may find the simple romance entertaining. However, most readers will want to skip The Betrothed for a more compelling romance such as What Light by Jay Asher or Pugs and Kisses by J.J. Howard.

Sexual Content

  • While on a boat ride, Hollis believes the King thinks she is “irresistible.” Since there are other people around, the prince “was forced to settle for placing a warm kiss on my cool forehead. It was enough to send new waves through my stomach, and I wondered if every moment with him would feel like this.”
  • Hollis knows the King has kissed other girls and wonders, “if his not kissing me yet was a good sign or a bad one.”
  • The King kisses Hollis. She “leaned into it. To finally be kissed was a wondrous thing, and to be kissed by a king was even more thrilling. Jameson drew me close, holding my chin and pulling away when he deemed the kiss long enough.”
  • While alone, Hollis and Silas kiss. “Silas cupped my cheeks, holding me with such tenderness that I felt everything inside my body melting. I could feel the calluses on his fingers as they traced the edges of my face, and I couldn’t help but compare the feeling to that of Jameson’s perfectly smooth hands.” They break apart when they hear footsteps coming.
  • Hollis and Silas kiss again. “It was so easy, like falling into the rhythm of a dance or taking a deep breath. Kissing Silas was like something that had always been waiting for me, something I knew how to do without thinking. His hands went up into my hair, holding me tight, and his lips moved feverishly. . .”
  • Hollis and Silas kiss and she thinks “it was the most beautiful thing, to be free and alone with Silas.”

Violence

  • At a wedding, masked men come and kill everyone in the house. One girl survives. She tells her mother, “They came with masks down and swords drawn, stabbing at anyone in their way, even the maids.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Hollis invites some friends to her apartment. Wine is served and Hollis “picked up a glass of ale.”
  • During a festival, wine is served. The king is seen with “the chalice in his hand, amber ale spilling from one side.”
  • At a wedding, the guests have “goblets of ale.”

Language

  • A girl whose parents are divorced, is called a bastard. The girl tells Hollis, “When everyone was muttering that I was a bastard, you ignored them.”
  • When Hollis decides to marry Silas, Hollis’ mother calls him “your pig of a son.”

Supernatural

  • When Hollis leaves the king to marry Silas, some believe she is a witch. “With the way the king was acting, someone said you must have cast a spell on him to drive him to such madness.”

Spiritual Content

  • The King asks Hollis, “Do you ever thank the gods that you have me for a king and not that grouch, King Quinten?”
  • When King Quinten comes to visit, the King says, “The Lady Hollis and I welcome you as my father did, as a fellow sovereign, placed by the gods, and as a dear friend.”
  • During a celebration, someone says, “Let us today renew our devotion to King Jameson and pray for his life to extend for many years, and for his heirs to be plenty!”
  • During the celebration, the King says, “I pray for our kingdom to prosper.”
  • At a wedding, masked men kill everyone present. Later, Hollis says, “I am grateful. I know that living through a situation where I surely ought to have died is a gift but I cannot think of why in the world the gods would spare me.”
  • When Hollis goes to look for Silas’s mother and sister, she “prayed that if I stayed on this course, I’d find them.”

 

The Unbound

In the sequel to Victoria Schwab’s The Archived, Mackenzie Bishop’s adventures as a Keeper of the Archive continue. At the same time, she must balance going back to school and figure out her relationship with Wes, her best friend, and fellow Keeper. But Mackenzie is still haunted by Owen Chris Clarke, the History who almost killed her and nearly brought the end of the Archive. Owen frequently visits her all-too-realistic dreams, and Mackenzie starts to question her sanity as the Archive’s other mysteries close in around her.

But her dreams aren’t the only things haunting Mackenzie. A string of disappearances follows her path, where she was the last person to interact with each of the missing persons. Plus a mysterious man keeps watching her while she’s traveling to and from school. As if that wasn’t enough, she keeps blacking out and waking up with no recollection of what happened. Is a lack of sleep, or something more sinister haunting Mackenzie?

The Unbound is shades darker than The Archived both in atmosphere and content, which helps to enhance the mystery of the Archive and its employees. As the stakes rise, it becomes clear that the reader knows little more than Mackenzie, who struggles with the trauma of almost dying and being manipulated by Owen in the last installment. Some plot points revolve around Mackenzie’s parents, who fear that Mackenzie is depressed, self-harming, and acting out. However, much of the trouble that Mackenzie encounters is because of the Archive and her nightmares. By the end of the novel, Mackenzie is ready to heal her relationships with her parents, Wes, and, most importantly, herself.

The back-to-school setting helps balance the darkness of the Archive and Mackenzie’s nightmares. Although school is not a completely safe location for Mackenzie, school is the one truly normal place that she and Wes experience. At times, their friends provide comic relief and tell Mackenzie more about Wes, who is notoriously secretive.

School also helps bring Mackenzie out of her inner world and the world of the Archive. In many ways, having friends and going to school pulls Mackenzie back into the realm of the living. In both The Archived and The Unbound, Mackenzie spends her time straddling the line between living and dead, between the real and imagined. But in this installment, Mackenzie becomes a more seasoned Keeper while also learning how to live her life.

The Unbound is an exciting follow-up to the darkly magical The Archived. The end neatly wraps up this book and provides a bridge to a potential third book. This book does continue the adventures from The Archived, so The Archived needs to be read first. This book is a must-read because Schwab’s creative prose wonderfully captures the world of the Archive and Mackenzie’s journey, through interesting discussions about grief, trauma, and the scars that we all carry. The dead never truly leave us, but as Mackenzie learns, sometimes it’s necessary to let go and embrace the living as tightly as we can.

Sexual Content

  • Mackenzie and another Keeper, Wes, are friends who spend a lot of time haplessly flirting, though Mackenzie insists that they aren’t dating. However, they do act like they’re dating and Wes sleeps in Mackenzie’s bed. Mackenzie narrates, “I catch his hand, music flaring through me as I draw him to the bed.” They do not have sex.
  • Since Mackenzie and other Keepers have the power to “read” people and objects, another person’s touch tends to be really noisy and overwhelming for Mackenzie. Wes kisses her regardless, and she describes, “The way his lips smiled against my jaw, his now-familiar noise—that cacophony of drum and bass—pressing through me with his touch before I could find the strength to tell him no.”
  • Cash kisses Mackenzie. She says, “His lips are warm and soft, and my head fills with jazz and laughter; for an instant, it feels sweet and safe and simple. But my life is none of those things, and I realize as the kiss ends that I don’t want to pretend it is, and that there is only one person I want to kiss me like this.”
  • Wes and Mackenzie kiss again. Mackenzie describes, “I kiss him, not gently but desperately.” The description lasts for a page.

Violence

  • Mackenzie has frequent nightmares about Owen, the History who tried to kill her in the previous novel. Mackenzie says, “I dream of him dragging the jagged side of his blade across my skin as he murmurs that the ‘real’ Mackenzie Bishop must be hidden somewhere under all that flesh.” This nightmare happens often, and he usually stabs her in the dream, “[driving] the knife forward into [her] chest.”
  • Mackenzie’s little brother Ben “was killed last year on his way to school” in a hit-and-run. His death plagues the family.
  • Wes has a rough home life, and Cash describes Wes’ parents’ divorce as “brutal.” When Wes retreated for a year, not contacting his friends at all, and then returned, Cash gave him a “black eye” for abandoning them. They are still good friends.
  • Mackenzie dislikes the family therapist because she assumes incorrect things about Mackenzie and she convinced Mackenzie’s mother to throw out Ben’s stuff after he died. Mackenzie recalls once that “the one time we met face-to-face, she saw a scratch on my wrist from a pissed-off History and was convinced I did it to myself to feel things.”
  • On her way home from school, two guys attack Mackenzie with a pipe and a knife. She blacks out and wakes up to the two men laying on the ground, “covered in blood.” Mackenzie has no recollection of what she’s done. She notes that one man’s “nose is broken. Blood is gushing down his face, and one of his legs looks like it’s bent at the wrong angle.”
  • Mackenzie runs over a jogger with her bike by accident. “The collision is a tangle of handles and wheels and limbs, and we both go down hard on the concrete.” Other than scrapes and scratches, both are ok.
  • A girl named Bethany goes missing, and Mackenzie learns from her classmates that Bethany’s home life was rough. Her mom had remarried and the situation was turbulent. One girl notes that “sleazy dude [the stepfather] has been there all of a week when he’s home alone with Bethany and takes a go at her . . . She did what any self-respecting Hyde schoolgirl would do. She punched him in the face. But when she tried to tell her mom what happened, she said it was Bethany’s fault.”
  • Someone attacked Cash, and he shows up to school with a “cut beside his eye [and] a bruise darkening his jaw.”
  • Owen, the History that tried to kill Mackenzie in the previous novel, is back, though Mackenzie doesn’t know how. He attacks her at school and kills a passerby. Mackenzie describes, “I hit the ground and roll over and up onto my feet again as he lunges forward and I lunge back. Or at least I mean to, but I misjudge the distance and the toppled shelves come up against my shoulders an instant before he forces the bat beneath my chin.” This continues for several pages.
  • Owen kills one of the Crew, another Archive employee, at the dance. The Crew “crumples, and before he can recover, Owen takes his head in his hands and snaps his neck.” A fight scene with Owen, Wes, Mackenzie, and several other Crew continues for several pages after this death.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Mackenzie takes medication for her headache and then promptly blacks out. When she wakes, “the drinking glass is lying in glittering pieces on the counter, my hand wrapped around the largest shard. Blood runs between my fingers where I’ve gripped it and down my other arm where I’ve carved a single deep line.” She has no recollection of what happened.
  • Mackenzie’s mother drugs Mackenzie to make her sleep. Mackenzie describes the moment when she realizes that her mom slipped a sleeping pill into her drink. She says, “At first I think I’m about to have another blackout, but those happen fast, and this is slow like syrup.”

Language

  • Dallas, the therapist, says to one Crew member, “I’d tell you not to be such an ass, Zachary, but it would be a waste of my breath.”

Supernatural

  • Mackenzie is a Keeper who returns wandering Histories, or ghosts, back to the Archive. The Archive is “a library of the dead, vast and warm, wood and stone and colored glass, and all throughout, a sense of peace.” Mackenzie travels between worlds and encounters quite a few dead people.

Spiritual Content

  • none

by Alli Kestler

Stormcaster

Pirate Evan Strangward has been hunted by Empress Celestine for most of his life. Being able to control the weather can only protect him for so long. Now, he’s looking to the Fells for allies to take the fight to the Empress. Evan must warn the queendom that Empress Celestine and her bloodsworn army won’t wait forever to invade.

After four years in Arden, Ash sul’Han is on his way back to his home in the Fells. It’s a chance to see his mother and sister, and all the friends he left behind. But once he finds out his sister, Lyss, was taken by Empress Celestine, he’ll stop at nothing to get her back and save the royal line. Ash might not trust Evan, but he needs the pirate’s help if he wants to infiltrate Celestine’s stronghold and end the war before it gets out of hand.

Stormcaster, the third entry in Chima’s Shattered Realms series, is a wonderful installment in this epic tale. The story primarily follows Evan Strangward and Ash sul’Han. Stormcaster goes back in time to show the beginning of Empress Celestine’s rise to power, as well as Evan’s reason for opposing her. Destin Karn’s backstory is also explored. While this backtracking is extensive, it’s a well-thought-out and interesting addition to the story.

When the backstories are caught up to the present, the rest of the main characters are reintroduced. Ash sul’Han, who was absent from the previous novel, is finally back in the picture. When he makes it home to his queen mother, he finds the world completely changed. Ash is a lovable character, who has matured from his rebellious stage. Now he is willing to do whatever it takes to protect his family. As he struggles to work his way back into a world he doesn’t recognize, Ash embodies the themes of maturity and loss.

Overall, Stormcaster is a fast-paced ride. Since most of the main characters are back in action, each chapter shows the reader another part of the world, creating a fleshed-out and believable setting. Luckily, the shifting views are easy to follow. The story focuses on bringing together most of the main characters, so they can plan how to stop Empress Celestine. Will Ash finally reunite with his sister? Will Evan be able to take down the Empress that’s been hunting him? Readers will find out in the final installment, Deathcaster.

Sexual Content

  • When Evan and his shipmate Brody look at Empress Celestine, Brody thinks she’s beautiful. Evan notices Brody “was gazing at the young captain in a way that he’d never looked at Evan.” Later, Evan thinks about his love life. “There were other, less complicated lovers in the ports on both sides of the Indio, boys who offered sweet kisses and warm embraces.”
  • Evan and Destin have an ongoing romance. While sitting close together, “Destin put his hand on Evan’s arm, setting his heart to flopping like a beached fish.” However, Destin is afraid of love. “He’d learned his lesson well—that love was as risky as mercy.” Evan thinks, “Do not fall for this dangerous, moody, mercurial boy. It will lead you to heartbreak or worse.”
  • After confiding in each other, Evan “gripped Destin’s coat, arched his body up, and kissed him firmly on the lips.”
  • Destin’s parents have a terrible relationship. Destin tells Evan that his father “kept pounding on my mother—trying to get her to admit to cheating on him. He didn’t want to believe I was really his.” Later on, Evan asks, “If he didn’t love her, then why couldn’t he just set her aside and marry someone else.”
  • When Ash’s mother, Raisa, speaks about her marriage, she says, “I’m glad, now, that I married young, so that Han and I had more time together. It was twenty-five years, but it just flew by.” Later, she tells Ash, “Falling in love in wartime is chancy, just like having children. We’ve had a lot of pain, but a lot of joy, all the same.”
  • Madeleine, younger sister to the new King Jarat, says, “They were talking about all the women they’d had, and would have. Jarat said Father never bedded a wolf, but he would, and even a wolf could be tamed.”

Violence

  • Destin and Evan talk about killing. Destin says, “Killing is always personal. It’s the second-most-intimate thing that can happen between two people.”
  • When Destin and Evan are captured by Destin’s father, the two are forced to fight each other. Evan punches Destin, and then, “Destin somehow wrenched free of his captors, lurched forward, wrapped his hands around Evan’s neck, and began to squeeze.”
  • Adrian talks with his mother, and thinks, “Your daughter Hanalea went into the borderlands, and was murdered. Your son went south, and became a murderer.”
  • Hal fights members of Celestine’s bloodsworn warriors. During the fight with a horselord, Hal “drove his sword beneath his rib cage, all the way to the hilt.” Later, Hal cuts off a man’s head. “The head splashed into the water, but the body continued to stagger around, spraying blood from its severed neck until it tripped over a rock slab and went down.”
  • One of Celestine’s bloodsworn cuts down an old man. “It seemed that one of them wasn’t moving fast enough, because his horselord guard unslung his blade and cut him down.”
  • Destin says his father beat his mother. Destin’s father, “beat her all the time. Half to death, once or twice. Sometimes at court, but mostly at his keep on the Bittersweet. He kept a full time mage healer to patch her up again.”
  • After Evan calls Destin’s father a monster, Destin says, “Oh, he is. He started beating me, too, once I was too big to ignore and still too small to defend myself. . . If I had to do it over again, I’d have opened his throat and stabbed him through the heart with a poisoned blade and cut off his head and hung it over my door.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Hal talks to his former subordinate, Bellamy, at a tavern. Bellamy orders a “Small beer. I’m on duty in a little while. On second thought, I’ll have bingo. A double.”
  • Lyss bumps into Breon. Breon tells her, “There’s a lot of rum around, if that’s appealing.”
  • Destin thinks about King Jarat and his entourage. “They were more than happy to take the young king under their tutelage in the study of drinking, hunting, dicing, wenching, and swordplay.”
  • One of King Jarat’s loyal men comes home drunk one night. Destin sees him as he “stumbled to the garderobe and unbuttoned his breeches, hurrying to unburden himself of excess ale.”

Language

  • Hell is used a few times. For example, when Evan first meets Destin, Destin tells him, “To hell with your bloody books.”
  • Damn is used occasionally. For example, when Evan thinks about his job as a shipmaster, he thinks, “He was damned by his own success.”
  • Bastard is used a few times. Once, “When Destin inquired about Lucky Faros, saying he’d heard good things about the young captain, Kadar had informed him that Faros was an ungrateful, greedy, unreliable bastard he should steer clear of.”
  • Kadar, the streetlord of Evan’s city, tells Destin, “Go suck the Breaker’s balls.”

Supernatural

  • Wizards, also known as mages, are commonplace.
  • Wizards and mages produce a power called “flash” constantly. Destin describes flash, “like a kind of magical vapor that dissipates as soon as it appears. Amulets allow us to accumulate enough to work significant charms. Power transfers to it through skin, when you touch it.”
  • Destin talks about amulets. “They’re used to store and control magical energy, something we call ‘flash.’ There are other magical tools as well, such as talismans to protect against magical attacks, all made by upland clans.”
  • A blood mage is a type of mage that uses blood in their spells. Brody, Evan’s subordinate, says, “They make people drink their blood, and turn them into slaves.”
  • Destin is a mage. Evan notes that Destin “had an entire menu of nuanced magic he could work using his amulet and specific words spoken in the wetland language. Power including immobilization, persuasion, interrogation, and the like.”
  • In Arden, magic is considered a sin. Destin tells Evan, “Back home, magic is considered to be the work of the Breaker, a misfortune, nonetheless, can be put to use for the greater glory of the crown.” He later says, “A mage is a precarious thing to be in the wetland empire, because of the church. The king finds us useful, but he is as changeable as spring weather when it comes to the tension between magic and religion.”
  • Evan is a stormlord, a mage that uses weather magic. When Destin attacked Evan, “A storm surge of magic welled up in him, and electricity crackled across his skin, as if the power that seethed beneath it was leaking out.” Later, Evan “didn’t consciously reach for power, but it came unbidden. Small whirlwinds erupted all around his feet, sucked up a mixture of sawdust and straw, flung it in the soldier’s face.”
  • Jenna is one of the magemarked, a group of people that have unique abilities even among mages. Destin tells Evan about Jenna’s abilities: “She claims to be clairvoyant—that she sometimes sees images of the future, sees people as they really are, or can tell when someone is lying.” Later, he also says, “She heals quickly, and is resistant to flame. In fact, she develops a kind of armor for protection.”

Spiritual Content

  • Kadar, Evan’s former employer, thinks about his gods. He thinks, “It seemed that Omari Kadar, street lord of the Tarvos waterfront, had been abandoned by the gods.”
  • Evan is worshipped by his Stormborn pirate crew. “In the space of four years he’d gone from being a kind of shipboard mascot to being ‘Lord Strangward,’ the central deity of a Stormborn cult.”
  • When Evan and Destin get a new ship, Evan wants to perform a ceremony to the gods. Destin’s mother says, “I hope you don’t plan to sacrifice a goat and make us drink the blood. The goats, I need.”
  • When Ash tells Lila about his mistakes, she says, “If you want absolution, go to a speaker or priest. I’m hardly in a position to give you advice.”
  • Ash’s mother tells him, “Some speakers say that we must wait to be rewarded in the next life.”

by Jonathan Planman

To Fly Among the Stars: The Hidden Story of the Fight for Women Astronauts

It’s the 1960s, and the United States and the Soviet Union are locked in a heated race to launch the first human into space. NASA selects seven men, superstar test pilots, and former air fighters, for their first astronaut class – the Mercury 7. The men endure hours of difficult tests, taunting by fellow pilots, constant media attention, and the public pressure of representing America in a whole new frontier.

But away from the media buzz, there are others quietly fighting for the same opportunity. Thirteen women, accomplished air racers, test pilots, and flight instructors, are putting themselves through those same grueling tests, hoping to defy the era’s boundaries for women and earn a seat aboard a space capsule themselves.

To Fly Among the Stars tells the story of seven men who hoped to ride rockets and thirteen women who dared ask for a fair chance to soar to the stars. Unlike many books, To Fly Among the Stars takes a look at the Mercury 7’s heroic deeds as well as their flaws. Some of the men’s partying, squabbling, and flirting ways were a stark contrast to the women’s behavior. The women had to overcome many obstacles in order to become pilots, including having to look like proper ladies as they flew. Even though these thirteen women were never able to realize their dreams, they took the first steps in breaking the glass ceiling for female astronauts.

Countless individuals worked behind the scenes to land the first man on the moon. While To Fly Among the Stars focuses on Mercury 7 and the 13 women who dreamed of going into space, the large group of characters makes it difficult to keep track of each individual. Often, a chapter will have a few paragraphs on one person and then jump to another person. The shifting topics make the story confusing.

To Fly Among the Stars highlights the brave women who dreamed of going into space and focuses on the discrimination they faced. While this is a valid point, the Mercury 7’s mistakes and bad behavior also become a focal point. The author states that “Accepting women as astronauts would mean that NASA—and all its feverish fans—would be forced to acknowledge that female aviators could do exactly what male aviators could do. And that might threaten the heroic, ultramasculine, tough-guy status the astronauts enjoyed.”

Black and white photographs help tell the story and the back of the book contains a two-page glossary. The difficult vocabulary, quickly changing topics, and the vast list of historical people make To Fly Among the Stars best for strong readers. The book would be excellent to use as a source for a research paper or a school project; however, those who are not interested in the history of flight will find the book difficult to slog through.

 Sexual Content

  • After Shepard went up in a space capsule, he had to go to a briefing. “During one interview, a pretty secretary delivered Shepard a cup of coffee. As she left, one witness reported watching ‘Shepard’s brain get up, leave the room, and follow her down the hall.’”
  • At a party, two astronauts performed a racist routine. “It was a cruel characterization of both homosexuals and Hispanics.”

Violence

  • Bill Odom, an air racer, “pushed his little green plane to nearly 400 miles per hour before losing control and punching right through a suburban home, killing not just himself but also a resident woman and her baby.”
  • Pilot James Vosyka died during an air race. “A wing on his racing plane collapsed on a hard turn, and his aircraft slammed into the ground in front of 12,000 spectators.”
  • Several times, the story talks about pilots shooting down MiG’s. For example, Wally Schirra “went on to shoot down another MiG in Korea.”
  • Many women joined the WASP in order to fly and help in the war effort. However, some men didn’t approve of women flying airplanes and played dangerous pranks on the women. After one prank, “Betty Taylor Wood’s airplane slammed into the ground near a runway, killing both Wood and her passenger. . . Someone had dumped sugar into the plane’s gas tank.”
  • During a training exercise, a pilot “ejected but died when he and his parachute slammed into the hard desert sand.”
  • Rankin had to eject during a high-altitude flight. “Immediately after exploding through the glass canopy of his cockpit, Rankin was overcome by the searing, stabbing cold. . .. His exposed skin froze almost instantly before going blissfully numb. And then the real pain started. . . His abdomen swelled. His skin stretched. Blood sprayed from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Rankin made it to the ground alive but barely.”
  • When an engineer joked about astronaut Shepard’s bad attitude, “Shepard picked up an ashtray and whipped it at the engineer’s face. He missed his target by a hair.”
  • Several astronauts were killed “during a practice launch when a spark caught inside their Apollo 1 space capsule. Three men burned to death right there on the launch pad while dozens of ground crew members sputtered and coughed and tried frantically to claw the capsule door open.”

      Drugs and Alcohol

  • John Gleen was a military pilot who had “flown angry, confident, and even–dangerously—rip-roaring drunk.
  • A woman pilot had to listen as “a drunk senator slurred his sexist judgments.”
  • A woman pilot was married to an alcoholic. While the woman was in astronaut testing, her husband called her every night. “He was drunk, angry, and cruel.”
  • Some astronauts partied at Cocoa Beach. “They drank too much alcohol and pulled elaborate pranks on one another. They flirted with women who weren’t their wives.”
  • The astronauts liked the pool at Cocoa Beach and the manager “went to great lengths to keep their parties stocked with alcohol, girls, and food, and free from the press.”
  • One of the astronauts had to convince a reporter not to print a photograph of a “drunk astronaut getting frisky with a strange woman.”
  • As training continued, “Shepard’s booze-fueled hijinks were becoming more public. . .” Shepard “was clamoring onto nightclub stages, drunkenly giggling racist jokes into microphones.”

Language

  • After a flight, a pilot “flipped the jet the middle finger.”
  • NASA was working hard “on new procedures to prevent the next guy from pulling another boneheaded screw up.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • During a launch, someone “said a silent prayer for Glenn’s success.”
  • Sunsets “made Glenn think of his Christian faith and miracles and the mysteries of existence.”
  • Millions of Americans watched Glenn’s mission. As they watched, they were “praying and fretting. . . They pleaded for his safety. Oh please, oh please.”

Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier

The United States may have put the first man on the moon, but it was the Soviet space program that made Valentina Tereshkova the first woman in space. It took years for the U.S. to catch up, but soon NASA’s first female astronauts were racing past milestones of their own. The trailblazing women of Group 9, NASA’s first mixed-gender class, had the challenging task of convincing people that a woman’s place is in space. But the women soon discovered that even NASA had a lot to learn about making space travel possible for everyone.

Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier follows Mary Cleave and Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, among others. Many people, including Valentina’s own mother, didn’t think women were capable of becoming astronauts. Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier takes a humorous look at the gender stereotypes that women astronauts had to overcome. For example, as the first American woman in space, Sally Ride faced great pressure from the media.

Once NASA allowed women to train as astronauts, men realized women were capable of completing difficult tasks. Despite their differences, every astronaut works as a team to complete essential tasks. When Mary finally went into space, she talks about the beauty of space as well as some of the difficult aspects of space flight, such as how difficult it is to use the bathroom with no gravity. While the book has some lighter moments, it also reminds readers, “when you made a serious mistake in this job, it cost lives. We’ve lost three crews: Apollo 1 in 1967, Challenger in 1986, and Columbia in 2003.”

Even though Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier is a graphic novel, it packs a lot of history into a short amount of text. Since the text rarely uses people’s names, keeping track of the huge cast of characters is difficult. The back of the book has several pages with pictures of different astronauts, but these pages do not include names. Younger readers may become frustrated by the difficult space language as well as the unique font that is used when the Russians speak. One example of a complicated sentence is when Mary said, “That’s because of the 1X resolver’s IMU BITE, we needed a GNC spec 1on CRT 2.”

Strong readers who have a love of history and space will enjoy being introduced to space history, astronaut training, and life in space. The often humorous artwork excellently shows the characters’ feelings through facial expressions. Most pages contain two types of text. The characters’ words are shown in white quote bubbles, while the narrator’s thoughts and basic information appear in the square, blue boxes. Each page contains 2-13 complex sentences.

Even though Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier focuses on women, the graphic novel will appeal to both girls and boys. In the end, the book shows that with hard work, dedication, and perseverance, anyone can become an astronaut. The last panel shows a diverse group of women who are the “future astronauts.” Everyone who dreams of going into space should read Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • None

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • When Mary interviewed for NASA, she was nervous so she tried to be funny. After she got the job, she says, “I didn’t have a beer just before going to John Young’s office for my first assignment.”
  • When they first get to space, some astronauts take ScopeDex which is an anti-nausea drug.

Language

  • During a test, one of the astronauts says, “good lord, doc.”
  • When Mary joined NASA, “I got one more welcome gift. Nicknames, thanks to my assignments and my degree. Sometimes my fellow astros called me ‘Sanitary Fairy,’ sometimes ‘Crap Com.’”
  • “Oh God” and “my God” are both used once. When Mary looked at the earth from space, she says, “My god.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • While the astronauts were getting ready to go into space, someone prays, “Dear Lord, don’t let these guys screw up.”

Losers Bracket

Annie’s two worlds collide when her biological family and foster family both come to watch her swim meet. A fight breaks out between the two families resulting in Annie’s nephew, Frankie, running away. Annie must rely on her friends, her foster brother, and her social service worker to help her better understand her biological family. In the end, Annie vows to help Frankie find a safe home.

Annie finds refuge from her troubles when attending a book club. In the book club, Annie and other high school students engage in discussions about heroism, family, and stories. These discussions help Annie make sense of her life. Annie also finds support and comfort in her best friend, Leah, and in Walter, a good-hearted biker.

Although Annie partakes in basketball and swimming, there are no play-by-play sports scenes and hardly any sports terminology is used. While sports give Annie an outlet to let off some steam, their main function is to give Annie’s mother an opportunity to see her. Sports fans may be disappointed by the lack of sports scenes.

Crutcher portrays a realistic take on the life of a foster child, and clearly and realistically communicates Annie’s intense feelings. The book is told in the first person, and Annie does not sugarcoat any of her feelings or experiences. Annie constantly disregards her foster parents’ rules, but she is very empathetic. Throughout the book, Annie learns that people can be immeasurably kind and selfless. She also learns to appreciate and love her biological family, even if they behave poorly. Loser Bracket teaches that everyone deserves to tell their own story.

Even though Loser Bracket is written at a fifth-grade reading level, the story hits on tough, mature topics such as abortion, obesity, domestic violence, and suicide. For example, Annie’s sister tries to kill herself and her son by driving her car into a lake. A must-read for mature readers, Losers Bracket is a thought-provoking book about what it means to call someone “family.”

Sexual Content

  • When Annie says she is going to suck at the butterfly stroke, Leah tells her it doesn’t have to be pretty because Annie “gets to dazzle some young horny Michael Phelps never-be studs laying out on a blanket in your skimpy Speedo two-piece between races.”
  • Annie thinks, “There is something powerful about making guys drool, even if they’re doughy little boys three to six years younger, walking around between races with their beach towels high up under their boy boobs to hide their cottage cheese handles. I’m pretty sure this sick little part of me has something to do with what Nancy calls my ‘Boots wiring,’ which is designed to ‘git yourself a man.’”
  • Annie talks about past experiences where she realized she could use her body to her advantage.
  • Annie’s mother encouraged Annie to use her body to her advantage. Annie’s mother “told me every chance she got that ‘them titties’ could get me all of what I needed and most of what I wanted. I’m not going into it, but mostly they got me fingerprints and lies.” Annie goes on to say she is “not going down that road,” and she only dates a guy “if he keeps his hands in his pockets.”
  • Annie thinks her swim coach’s girlfriend “doesn’t like the way I twitch my bikini butt at her boyfriend.”
  • At book club, Annie thinks a boy will remember Maddy because of her “outstanding cleavage.”
  • During book club, Maddy tells a boy to speak up and, “make your voice like your pecs.” Annie explains, “If he does make his voice like his pecs, it will be loud and clear . . . almost any T-shirt fits him like a coat of paint.”
  • Marvin, Annie’s foster brother, tells Annie he can hear his parents talking in their room through the heat grate in his room. He says, “Unfortunately, that’s not all you hear,” hinting that he can hear his parents having sex.
  • Although the word “masturbation” is never used, Marvin hints that he does it. He tells Annie, “Hey, everyone thinks guys my age are stumbling into puberty trying to figure out what to do with our di. . . private parts. I know exactly what to do with my private parts; I just don’t know who to do it with. Except for, you know, myself.” He goes on to tell Annie how his dad got him a kitten to “keep him from practicing” because “when a kitten sees something moving under the covers, he pounces.”
  • Annie describes the show The Leftovers. “On October 14 of whatever year, at the exact same moment, two percent of the population of Earth vanished . . . if you were some guy making love with one of the two percent, you better be on a soft mattress because you’re going to fall about a foot. Farther if it happened to be Nancy. . . these ‘leftover’ people screw like rabbits, because who knows when it will happen again.”
  • Annie jokingly tells Marvin to “memorize the naked scenes” on the show they’re watching because “there will be a test.” Marvin answers, “Which I will pass with flying colors. I may even go on the Internet afterward to pick up some extra credit.”
  • Someone tells Annie, “You’re almost eighteen. In some cultures, you’d be a sex slave by now.”

Violence

  • When Annie’s mom doesn’t show up to her swim practices, Annie feels an emptiness. But when she does show up, Annie is ready for a fight. Annie thinks her brain is “wired backwards,” and compares this phenomenon to “those chicks who cut on themselves; no obvious upside, but every one of them says there’s relief when the blade or the piece of glass slices through.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Walter says Annie’s mom didn’t show up to the basketball game because “Something urgent came up.” Annie asks, “Was it in a pill bottle?”
  • Annie watches her nephew Frankie play with two stuffed animals. He makes them talk, saying they “don’t need no dads ‘cause they do drugs and go to jail. And they hurted our mom.”
  • At Annie’s swim meet, her biological and foster families get into a fight. Annie recounts, “Sheila [Annie’s sister], who must be high, is convinced these people [her foster family] are actually here to taunt me.”
  • Annie and her best friend, Leah, spend hours looking for Frankie. When Leah tries to reassure her, Annie says, “Yeah, well, tell you what’s about to happen with my drug-crazed whore of a sister. She’ll get on TV and cry and say what a wonderful little guy her Frankie was and how desperate and brokenhearted she is, and when it dies down she’ll double her drug use and Frankie will just be another awful Boots memory.”
  • Leah says humans “get a nine-month head start with our mothers, no matter how messed up they are . . . We eat what they eat, share their fluids. . . Biology doesn’t separate vitamins from drugs.”
  • Someone tells Annie that her sister is dropping weight fast. Annie asks, “Like a meth user? Does she still have teeth?”
  • The family goes to Quik Mart every year for Thanksgiving dinner. “Though Quik Mart sells wine, you’re not allowed to drink on the premises, so Walter buys a few bottles and hides them in the toilet tank in each restroom, where you sneak in to fill the Diet Pepsi can you brought inside your backpack.”

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently. Profanity includes: crappy, crap, bitch, bitchy, son-of-a-bitch, ass, asshole, hard-ass, dumb-ass, kick-ass, shitty, shit, shithole, bullshit, damn, damned, hell, bastard, goddamn, fuckin, fuck, bigot, and piss off.
  • Lord, Jesus, God, Oh my God, and For Chrissake are all used several times as exclamations.
  • One of the characters is referred to as a dyke.
  • When Annie is losing a swim race, she was “cursing Janine like she’s the Antichrist.”
  • A woman says she is married with two kids that she would “murder Jesus for.”
  • Annie thanks her coach for “kicking my butt this summer. For keeping me swimming this god-awful butterfly until I got it.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Walter tells Wiz, a social worker, “I’m not a religious man, Wiz; don’t know God from no God from Christian God from Muslim God from Star Wars God.”
  • At book club, the members talk about heroes. Mark asks about Jesus, and Annie thinks, “Very little of what we discuss doesn’t go back through Nazareth for Mark.” When someone says Jesus isn’t real, Mark says, “Nobody more real than Jesus.”
  • Annie thinks, “Mark . . . holds tight to his Christian beliefs, though he never pushes them on you like some people. He also acts on them.”
  • Someone tells Mark, “Pinocchio is more real than Jesus.”
  • When students in the book club try to place Jesus in the same category of popular culture heroes, Mark says, “I’ve been in church every Sunday and Wednesday night since, like, before I can remember. . . that’s where all my heroes come from, starting with Jesus…I just couldn’t leave Him in with Yoda and Obi-Wan.”
  • During the book club’s debate on heroism, someone explains the dilemma of The Last Temptation of Christ.
  • When someone searches the river for Frankie but doesn’t find him, Annie thinks, “Thank God.”
  • Walter tells Annie how he struggled with PTSD. “I’d tried everything . . . Every church told me something different – didn’t know whether to let Jesus save me or save myself.” He goes on to say how he almost went “out the easy way,” but realized “if I jump and there’s a god, I’m going to have to account for myself.”
  • Walter tells Annie he wanted to help her biological mother, and Annie asks if he thought God was testing him. Walter answers, “The world tests you, Annie. If there’s a god, he has bigger fish to fry.”
  • Mark tells the book club about his sister who had an abortion and was thus banished from his religious family. Annie tells Mark, “If you do go to [your sister] you lose seven other people, all family.” Mark adds, “And Jesus.”
  • Another book club member says, “I go to church, too, and the Jesus I know would treat your mother like a money changer, no offense to your mother.”
  • Annie thinks, “I remember talking with Mark about God one night after book club last year, walking away thinking I hope he’s right. I hoped some great big entity is watching, some entity who wants things to turn out right . . . and who has the power to make that happen. But at the same time I was afraid to want it, because of how much it hurts to not get it.”

by Jill Johnson

Alabama Moon #1

For as long as ten-year-old Moon can remember, he has lived out in the wilderness in a shelter with his father. They keep to themselves, and their only contact with other human beings is an occasional trip to the nearest general store. When Moon’s father dies, Moon follows his father’s last instructions: to travel to Alaska to find others like themselves. But Moon is soon caught and entangled in a world he doesn’t know or understand. Soon, he’s become the property of the government he has been avoiding all his life. As the spirited and resourceful Moon encounters constables, jails, institutions, lawyers, true friends, and true enemies, he adapts his wilderness survival skills and learns to survive in the world of people, and even, perhaps, make his home there.

While Moon’s life is not something most readers can imagine, they will soon be entangled in his story. When Moon’s Pap dies, Moon doesn’t understand why he can’t continue to live in his dirt hovel. Moon wrestles with his father’s ways as well as the world’s ways. Despite his loneliness, Moon fights everyone who tries to drag him away from his hovel to a boys’ home. Moon’s fight is both fast-paced, engaging, and full of surprises.

Alabama Moon takes the reader into the backwoods of Alabama and shows the beauty of living off the land. While the story is full of action, readers will also form an emotional connection to Moon’s story. In the end, many readers will be left in tears as they wonder why our world is so harsh. While Moon’s story ends on a hopeful note, Alabama Moon doesn’t shy away from the tough topics of death and the effects of war. But the main theme that shines is the importance of friendship.

The author’s love of the outdoors and his knowledge of nature allows him to paint a realistic picture of surviving in the wild. Alabama Moon combines intense senses with moments of tenderness and humor. The story highlights the father-son relationship and shows the deep love a son feels for his father—even when his father isn’t perfect.

Anyone who loves an action-packed survival story will love Alabama Moon. The characters are realistic and imperfect. The story doesn’t portray adults as always having the right answers, and some of the adults admit to having made a wrong choice. In the end, Moon realizes the importance of having friends and supportive adults in his life. Moon’s story will leave a lasting impact on readers and will help them appreciate the people in their lives.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • When a store owner named Mr. Abroscotto says Moon’s father’s plan was crazy, Moon jumped on him. “I started hitting him with my one hand that wasn’t holding on to him. I pounded him on the cheek over and over as fast as I could. . .I kicked him in the knee.”
  • When a social worker shows up to take Moon to a boys’ home, Moon “balled my fist, and socked him in the crotch.” The social worker “pulled his knees in tight as a baby and moaned curses at me.”
  • When a constable tries to detain Moon, Moon tries to run away. Moon “punched him in the face as hard as I could. . . He stood up with me and crushed me against his chest. For a moment I couldn’t breathe, and I felt that my shoulders were about to snap. . . I spun around and bit him on the tit. . .” The constable is able to get Moon into the back of his car.
  • After the constable talks badly about Moon’s father, Moon, “Jumped at him. . . I bit into his shoulder and chewed at it like it was tough gristle. . . He grabbed me around the waist with both hands and squeezed so hard that my body shot with pain and I had to throw my head back and cough at the sky.” Moon pees on the constable. The constable squeezes Moon until Moon is sick.
  • The constable goes to see one of his renters, who is behind on the rent. He “suddenly let go of the steering wheel and backhanded the man across the jaw.”
  • When Moon gets to the boys’ house, he meets Hal, who trash talks him. “I swung my arm from under the blanket and hit him open-handed across the face. . . the big kid recovered and grabbed for my feet. . .” Mr. Carter breaks up the fight. When Hal is disobedient, “Mr. Carter took two steps and grabbed him by the shirt collar. He lifted Hal like a scarecrow and dragged him across the room. He hung there, red-faced and coughing against the shirt that pressed into his throat.” Mr. Carter throws Hal outside and makes him sleep in the cold.
  • Hal approaches Moon. “Hal was walking faster, and he seemed to have something in mind for me. . . While I was crouched down, I hit him as hard as I could in the crouch. Then I covered my face with my hands and started rolling across the ground.”
  • The constable, Sanders, puts Moon on a leash and drags him around. “After we had traveled about a mile, Sanders yanked the leash so hard that I coughed against it. A sharp pain shot up into my head, and I gritted my teeth again. . . I rushed against the leash and felt it jerk me backwards until I lay flat in the leaves. Sanders laughed over me.” When another adult sees Sanders and questions him, Moon is able to run away.

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Moon is put in jail. “The only other person in a cage, across the hall from me . . . said they locked him up for being too drunk and wrecking his car.”
  • The constable uses Copenhagen chewin’ tabacco.
  • Hal’s father is a drunk. Hal says, “My daddy never did learn to read good. He was so drunk most of the time, he could barely see.” When Hal’s father is driving home, he “pulled a bottle of whiskey from under the truck seat and took a swallow.”
  • When Moon walks up to Hal, Hal “held out a bag of Red Man chewing tobacco” and asked, “you want some?”

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently. Profanity includes ass, crap, damn, hell, and piss.
  • God and Jesus are both used as an exclamation several times. For example, after Moon hit Mr. Abroscotto, he said, “God, that hurt!”
  • Several times someone called Moon a “little bastard” and a “militia bastard.”
  • The constable asks a jailer, “Where’s that little pissant?”
  • The constable tells Moon, “You ain’t nothin’ but white trash. Worse than white trash. . . You’re stinkin’ militia trash, is what you are.” The constable tells Moon that his dad was “some dirty low-life.”
  • Four times, the constable uses the word “sum-bitch.”
  • Someone tells Moon that Sanders “is a bully and a bigot. . . He’s unintelligent, and he’s mean and he’s in a position of power. That’s a bad combination to be facing.”
  • A police officer tells Moon, “You’re a real pain in the ass, you know.”
  • Moon’s aunt says, “My Lord” twice. For example, when Moon tells his aunt that he’d like to eat four times a day, she says, “My Lord!”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Moon’s father “said you passed and came back as something else. It could be a squirrel or a coon. It could be a fish or an Eskimo. There was no way to tell.”
  • At the boys’ home, a prayer is said before dinner.
  • Moon’s father “told me I could talk to him be writin’ letters and burnin’ ‘em. He said you can talk to dead people that way.” Moon does this several times.

 

 

The Gravity of Us

Cal has his life figured out. He loves living in Brooklyn, where he has friends and a plan. He’s gaining views for his live reporting on the social media app FlashFame, and his journalism career is about to take off with a major internship. But all of this turns upside down when his father—Cal Senior—receives word that his application to NASA has been accepted. Cal’s father is slated to be on the upcoming Mars mission, and their family must relocate to an idyllic small town in Texas where all the astronaut families live.

While he’s upset to lose his internship, Cal soon realizes that he still has the chance to hone his journalism skills. A reality TV network called StarWatch has exclusive control over the narrative around the space program—and therefore the related public interest and government funding. Instead of focusing on the fascinating science of the upcoming Mars mission, StarWatch documents the lives of the astronaut families solely for manufactured drama. When Cal decides to keep live-streaming his own experiences, he becomes an opponent of StarWatch, who are obsessive about their tight control over the astronauts’ public images. Soon, Cal finds himself caught up in the world of high-stakes publicity. He tries to portray his family and the rest of the astronaut families truthfully and honestly, while multiple media forces vie for public interest.

Romance happens when Cal meets and immediately is enamored with another astronaut’s son, Leon. Leon, an ex-star gymnast, suffers from depression and is reluctant to enter into a relationship with someone who thinks he can “fix him.” Cal and Leon immediately have chemistry, but before they finally instigate a real relationship, they try to understand each other and respect each other’s needs.

The Gravity of Us promises a space-centered story but delivers a story that’s more focused on PR and social media journalism than a future Mars mission. While Cal is determined to make the public care about NASA for the science, readers may find that they still don’t get to see as much science as they want. Readers looking for an ultra-realistic view of NASA’s operations, like in The Martian, will be disappointed. Many fascinating logistical aspects of space missions—such as astronauts’ rigorous psychological testing and training—are swept aside or ignored.

The romance is cute but hollow. Cal and Leon have no barriers separating them except for Leon’s depression, which is never really given the attention it needs to be a fully effective aspect of the plot. The main conflict between them is that Cal is concerned that Leon doesn’t know what to do after he graduates from high school. In the end, Leon tells Cal that he’s figured out what he wants to do. It’s anti-climactic and may disappoint readers who want reassurance that they don’t have to have their lives figured out at eighteen.

Overall, The Gravity of Us has little of the gravitational pull promised. While it draws on the images of outer space in its title and cover, the book uses a vague portrayal of NASA to show an ordinary teen romance.

Sexual Content

  • Cal recalls interviewing a Republican Senate candidate and grilling him about “charges of sexual harassment.”
  • Cal says his mom is cautious when entering his room because “she’s always afraid she’ll catch me doing ‘something,’ and we all know what that ‘something’ is, but I’m also not an idiot and can figure out how to do ‘something’ twice a day having never been caught thank you very much.”
  • Cal recalls an old romantic fling with a boy named Jeremy, where he “sunk into his lips, the taste of Coors Light on our tongues.” Jeremy “was new and exciting, and he was there as I took a self-guided tour of my own queerness—something I may never fully find the right label for.”
  • When Cal is with Leon, “I get the urge to kiss him . . . nowhere in my perverse mind do I think he needs this kiss to fix him. I want him, and I want to do it for me. And humanity, even. I want the world to be that much better because of our lips touching and his hand in my hair and…”
  • Cal and Leon kiss. Leon’s “lips are soft and perfect and tug at mine like he’s been waiting for this moment forever. Like he’s been waiting for more than just a week to be with me like this. In seconds, our mouths are on each other and his hand is behind my neck. And my heart’s about to beat out of my chest. It’s too fast and not nearly enough.”
  • Cal and Leon kiss again. “This one isn’t as passionate, it isn’t as hungry, but it makes my insides jump the same way. There’s a caring force in the tug of his lips, and in his bite, I lose control of my body and feel light-headed.”
  • During a makeout session between Cal and Leon, “We’re pressed into each other, and there’s nothing on my mind but his taste. His tongue slips into my mouth, and I press mine against his. I moan softly because it feels so right. So perfect . . . just keep kissing him. We keep celebrating our closeness in muffled moans and gasped breathing.”
  • When Cal and Leon are alone in a hotel room, “We pull off our shirts, and I press his body into mine. His breath hits my neck as our legs hook around each other. We’re a mash of tongue and teeth and warmth.” They stay the night together, but the book doesn’t go into detail about what else they do.
  • Cal brings Leon over to his house because it’s “definitely empty,” with the implication that this is an opportunity for sex. “His face is pressed to mine as I get my key out and unlock the back door . . . and we push through the dark house.” The scene ends soon afterward without revealing any more detail.

Violence

  • When Cal sees how upset his mom is, “I scan her for bruises, for covered arms, for anything—though I know Dad would never hurt her like that.” His suspicions are unfounded—although Cal’s parents argue often, they never get violent with each other.
  • Cal says that the sound of his friend’s parents fighting in a neighboring apartment scares him. “The echoed sound of a fist breaking through a particleboard door settles in my head.”
  • A man looks like “his whole body might be made of stone.” Cal says, “I have a feeling that if I were to punch him in the gut, I’d be the one hurting.”
  • The characters wait anxiously for news about a jet, which was carrying NASA astronauts, that wrecked. One astronaut is killed and several are injured, but the crash isn’t described in detail.
  • An unmanned NASA launch “explodes in the sky.” Cal describes being “barely knocked back by the blast, like a strong but very warm gust of wind.” Then the spacecraft “becomes nothing but some smoking ash.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • When he gets into the astronaut program, Cal’s father pours champagne for the whole family—“Even for you, Cal. It’s a special occasion.”
  • Cal’s friend says that she likes “watching astronauts get drunk off champagne before falling face-first into a bush.”
  • At an astronaut party, Cal sees “bottles of champagne sitting in a copper tub full of ice.” He notes that “no one would notice a bottle—or ten—missing from this supply.”
  • Cal and Leon steal a champagne bottle from the party and go out back to drink it. Cal drinks the champagne. “The tart, fizzy liquid burns my throat as I swallow it down. The taste isn’t great, but I could get used to it.”
  • Someone gives Cal gum “to cover that champagne breath.”
  • Cal’s mother manages her chronic anxiety “with her therapy appointments and an assortment of low-dosage medication.”
  • Cal steals some champagne from his parents and pops the bottle when he’s alone with Leon. They drink from it together. “I pull the bottle to my mouth and take a sip of the bitter foam.”
  • Cal says, “I start to understand why people celebrate with champagne. It lifts me up, it celebrates my own energy.”

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently. Profanity includes: damn, hell, shit, and fuck.
  • “Oh my God” and “Jesus” are frequently used as exclamations.
  • Cal refers to Clear Lake, Texas as “literal hell” because of its hot weather.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • The Mars mission is named Orpheus, after the story of Orpheus and Eurydice from Greek mythology. A character explains how “Eurydice dies; Orpheus takes his magical lyre and travels to Hades to save her. He plays his lyre for Hades, who promises to return Eurydice under one condition: she would follow, but if he turned to look at her, she’d be gone forever.”

by Caroline Galdi

Path to the Stars: My Journey from Girl Scout to Rocket Scientist

Sylvia is surrounded by family and friends. She lives in a close-knit neighborhood where everyone speaks Spanish. Sylvia loves her life because there are always other children to play with. Then Sylvia’s sister, Laura, gets really sick and everything changes.

Even though Laura recovers, she is never the same cheerful, inquisitive child she once was. Because of Laura’s illness, Sylvia’s mother decides to move the family to a more affluent neighborhood. Soon, Sylvia is forced to go to a new school – one where the majority of students are Anglo. Sylvia is miserable and self-conscious. When a classmate invites Sylvia to join Brownies, Sylvia finds a place to belong and learn. The Girl Scouts teach her the importance of planning for the future and creating opportunities for herself. Because of Girl Scouts, Sylvia knew “that I could teach myself to fulfill a goal and work as a member of a team. . . I had learned that planning ahead and doing things properly could help you get what you wanted.”

Sylvia’s family life is often chaotic, but with the lessons she learns from Girls Scouts, Sylvia gains the confidence to take control of her life. However, Sylvia has to battle cultural and gender expectations. Sylvia felt “pulled between different worlds: home and school, Spanish and English, traditional and modern.” This doesn’t stop her from planning, learning, and striving to better herself. Sylvia becomes the first Latinx to graduate with a master’s degree in engineering from Stanford University and one of the few female rocket scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Now, Sylvia is the CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA.

This true story is told by Sylvia herself. Even though she has to struggle to overcome many obstacles, she continues to work hard in order to reach her goals. Sylvia refuses to be defined by gender roles. For example, when she began high school, the school enrolled her in home economics. However, she refused to go to the class because she didn’t want to be a homemaker. The principal allowed her to take an additional math class instead. This helped prepare her for her future career at NASA.

The autobiography Path to the Stars will encourage readers to plan and strive for a better tomorrow. Through Sylvia’s story, readers will come to understand the importance of hard work. Even though Sylvia’s journey was difficult, she continued working to meet her goals. Even though Sylvia gained much of her knowledge through books, she also found other ways to learn. For instance, when her parents’ car kept breaking down because they did not maintain it properly, Sylvia took a class that taught women how to maintain a car. After that, she changed the oil in the car herself, even though she wasn’t yet old enough to drive.

While Path to the Stars is motivational, some readers will struggle with the difficult vocabulary and the slow pacing in some parts of the story. However, the story teaches many life lessons that make Path to the Stars worth reading.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Sylvia’s parents argued, and “a couple of times at night, when they were arguing. I had heard Papá hit Mami. . . In those days, domestic violence was considered a private family business, and outsiders seldom intervened.”
  • One day, Sylvia’s mother told her “that she and Papá had a terrible fight and he had hit her the way he had in the past.” Sylvia’s mother planned to move to California and stay with a relative. Later that day, Sylvia’s mother changed her mind, but said, “If he ever hits me again, I’m leaving.”
  • Papá was angry and annoyed by Sylvia’s four-year-old brother. “We all knew when Papá was about to lose his temper, and sure enough, he lifted his hand, about to strike. Armando cowered, tears starting down his face even before the spanking, and I rushed forward to stand between my father and my little brother. . . Mario joined me. . .. Papá backed down.”
  • Sylvia refuses to reply to her father with, “Yes, sir!” So her father “smacked” her face. “Papá ran after me, and when he caught up, I hit him without thinking, just trying to protect myself.” Sylvia runs to her bedroom. Then, he “stormed into the room his eyes filled with rage, a look on his face I will never forget. He pulled off his belt and struck me once, twice. I curled up on the bed, and he kept hitting me, over and over, as Laura sobbed and begged him to stop.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Sylvia’s mother did not allow alcohol in the house. “This was partly because my family was Baptist and partly because my mother forbade my father to bring alcohol into the house. In the past, he’d sometimes had a problem controlling his drinking. Now he and Uncle Sam might enjoy an occasional beer, but that was all Mami would allow.”
  • In order to save for college, Sylvia and her friend collect recycling. When they had time, they would go to parks because they were “littered with soda and beer cans.”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Sylvia and her family attend church.
  • Hermana Diaz taught Sylvia and her brother English. “To build our vocabulary in English, she taught the song ‘Jesus Loves Me.’”
  • After Sylvia’s sister gets meningitis, her father stopped going to church. “Before Laura got sick, Papá had been a lay minister and leader of our church choir. After Laura’s illness, he felt betrayed that so many members of the congregation, instead of rallying around our family, stayed away from our home for fear of catching meningitis. . . Even then, when I was older, I never knew if it was because he’d been bothered by the behavior of other members of our church, or if his faith itself was shaken by Laura’s illness.”
  • Even after Laura recovered, Sylvia’s mother was sad. “She blamed herself for Laura’s illness and in some ways felt it was a form of God’s punishment, even though she knew that others had gotten sick too. . .”
  • For many years after Sylvia’s sister was sick, Sylvia “prayed that in the morning Laura would wake up to her old self and our family would be happy again.”
  • Many of the school children were Catholic. Sylvia “knew that my family’s Baptist religion made us different from most of our neighbors. I liked church, but I wondered why we needed separate churches with different rules. “
  • When Sylvia was in Brownies, she recited a pledge. “I promise to do my best to love God and my country. . .”

The Kings of Clonmel

In the neighboring kingdom of Clonmel, a mysterious cult, the Outsiders, has sprung up, promising the defense against lawless marauders in exchange for the people’s riches. Their sermons attract audiences from miles around, but there’s a dark side to the seemingly charitable group. This prompts Halt, Will, and Horace to investigate…but what the trio uncovers could threaten the safety of not only Clonmel, but their homeland of Araluen as well.

Halt, Will, and Horace band together to fight evil in the action-packed adventure The Kings of Clonmel. Unlike the other books in the series, The Kings of Clonmel takes a hard look at a religious cult that brutally murders innocent people in order to convince them to follow their leader, Tennyson. While much of the story revolves around Tennyson and his followers, the reader will also get a surprising look into Halt’s life before he became a ranger, which gives depth to his personality.

As The Ranger’s Apprentice series progresses, the relationship between Halt, Will, and Horace matures. No longer uncertain apprentices, Will and Horace have grown into men who are fiercely loyal and willing to go into dangerous situations in order to help the common man. Although Will and Horace respect Halt, they are now comfortable teasing him. This new element adds humor to the story, and it shows the great lengths the two men will go to support Halt. While Horace is straightforward and honest, Halt and Will are willing to use deceit in order to defeat the enemy. The contrast between the men allows the reader to see that friends can disagree without destroying their relationship.

The eighth installment of The Ranger’s Apprentice series will not disappoint readers. While the conclusion of The Kings of Clonmel still contains an epic battle, the story never feels like a repeat of previous books. Instead, the adventure still contains surprises. Halt, Will, and Horace have a deep friendship, and each man uses his unique talent in order to help others. The men clearly love their country and their king, and they are willing to sacrifice for the greater good. While the story contains some disturbing scenes where women and children are mercilessly killed, their deaths highlight the importance of following reason instead of mob mentality. Even though today’s men do not need to go into combat, The Ranger’s Apprentice series teaches important lessons that can be applied to today’s world.

Sexual Content

  • After being gone, Will returns to the castle. When he sees Alyss, “She leaned forward, kissed him lightly on the lips and slipped away.”
  • Horace mentions an event from an earlier book. Horace had asked about some skimpily clad girls. Instead of saying they were prostitutes, Halt told him “that they had short dresses because they might have to run with urgent messages.”

Violence

  • A group of men, the Outsiders, attack a family farm. When the men attack, a man “reached for the ax he had just leaned against a water trough. Before he could raise it, an arrow flashed across the clearing and buried itself in his throat. He gave a choking cry and staggered, falling half into the trough. The water began to turn red with blood.” When the men are dead, the killers “shouldered the door of the farmhouse open…” Once inside, a woman threw a pot of boiling water on a man. “He screamed in agony and lurched to one side, dropping the bloody sword and throwing his hands to his face.”
  • A surviving man “had a long pitchfork in his hands and he raised it as he ran forward. He never saw the bandit leader. He only felt the searing agony of the sword thrust into his side… He fell facedown.”
  • During the attack, a woman asks for mercy. “The raiders, oblivious to the splashed blood and sprawled bodies around them, helped themselves hungrily to the platters of hot, sizzling bacon…” Everyone is killed except for two children who were able to run away. The family’s death is described over three pages.
  • Halt stops raiders from setting a fire to villagers’ boats. “The first moment the raider knew he wasn’t alone was when an iron bar of an arm clamped across his throat while a powerful hand forced his head forward to complete the choke hold.” The man passes out. Then, Halt approaches another man and “slapped the burning pile of tinder out of his hand, scattering it onto the sand. Then he followed through with his other hand, his left, in a hooking palm strike that had all the power of his twisting body and shoulder behind it. The heel of his hand slammed into the man’s chin, snapping his head back and sending him crashing into the hull of the boat with a cry of pain.”
  • A man confronts Halt. Halt “flat-kicked sideways at the inside of the man’s left knee. The leg buckled and the man collapsed with a cry of pain, holding his injured knee and yelling.” The scene is described over four and a half pages.
  • The Outsiders try to capture Halt and send dogs after him. “Faced with a head-on target, the Ranger waited until the dog had lifted its head to send the snarling challenge… Then Halt shot for the throat, the impact of the heavy arrow, with the eighty pounds of draw weight from his bow behind it, sending the dog staggering backwards and sideways. The second arrow… dropping it stone dead.”
  • Another dog is sent after Halt. “As he watched, another massive gray-and-black shape detached itself from the group and came arrowing up the slope after them… This as a pitiless killing machine, perverted by its cruel training so that it sought only to kill and kill again.” Halt’s shot kills the dog instantly.
  • When a man tries to approach Will, “he’d barely begun to draw when a black-shafted arrow hissed downhill and sent him tumbling back into the trees. His companions looked at his lifeless body…” The men send another dog, and Halt kills it “and sent it rolling back down the slope, eyes glazed, tongue lolling.” The dog attack is described over four pages.
  • One of the bandits tries to track Halt, but Halt sees him and “Halt swung an overhand blow and brought the striker knob down hard onto the man’s skull, just behind the left ear.” The man “collapsed, limp as a rag, onto the ground.”
  • Halt takes a man, named Colly, prisoner. The man “tried to throw a punch at Halt. Halt ducked under the wild blow. Stepping in and pivoting his upper body, he hit Colley with a palm strike to the jaw, sending him sprawling again.”
  • When he was a teen, Halt’s brother tried to kill him numerous times. At one point, Halt says his brother “tried to poison me.”
  • Will looks at the evidence left behind in a village. “He could see the scene in his mind’s eye. A boy or a girl, terrified by the galloping, screaming men, had tried to run for the shelter of the trees. One of the raiders had swung out of line to pursue the little running figure. Then he’d cut his victim down from behind.”
  • Horace, Will, and Halt warn a village about the Outsiders preparing to attack. When the Outsiders attack, both Halt and Will begin shooting down men. “And within a few seconds, six men in the center of the advancing line went down. Two of them made no sound. The others cried out in pain, dropping their weapons.”
  • When the Outsiders’ defense begins to break up, “they fell back, leaving a number of their companions sprawled lifeless on the ground and on the barricade itself… they had paid the penalty for assaulting a well-defended position on their own.”
  • Horace goes after the enemy. “They began to back away, but they were too late. Kicker smashed into two of them, hurling one to the side and trampling the other… A sixth outlaw was already sinking to his knees, staring with disbelief at the black arrow buried in his chest. His head dropped forward. The lone survivor looked at his companions, scattered and broken, some of them lying still, others trying desperately to crawl away…” The battle takes place over seven and a half pages.
  • When a messenger mentions the Sunshine Warrior to Tennyson, Tennyson “let his rage loose and he beat back and forth at the wretched man with his closed fist. Blood flowered from the crouching man’s nose and he huddled lower, trying to protect himself from the savage fist.” Tennyson has a servant give the man ale and a meal. Then Tennyson has the messengers assassinated.
  • When trying to leave Tennyson’s camp, a sentry tries to stop Will. In order to escape, Will “shot his booted right foot forward, straightening his knee and slamming the sole of the boot hard into the man’s face. The man stumbled and went down…”
  • When Halt’s brother, King Ferris, won’t listen to Halt, Halt has Horace knock him unconscious. “The king was stretched unconscious on the floor an overturned chair beside him.”
  • Tennyson sends an assassin after Will. When Will sees him, “Will brought his right elbow up to face height and pivoted on his right heel, slamming the point of his elbow into the man’s face, breaking his nose and sending him reeling back against the people around them.”
  • Horace faces one of Tennyson’s assassins, Killeen, in a combat to the death. Killeen uses a mace while Horace uses a sword. The man hits Horace’s shield. “To Horace it felt as if a house had fallen on his shield.” When Killeen exposes his neck, Horace “stepped in and swung a lightning side stroke at the exposed two centimeters of neck. There was a roar of surprise from both sides of the arena as Killeen’s helmet went spinning away to land on the turf with a dull thud… the spectators realized that his head had gone with it.” The combat is described over four pages.
  • When Will finds an assassin in Horace’s tent, Will attacks. “…Something hard crashed into his head, behind the ear, and everything went black.”
  • Even though Horace has been poisoned and cannot focus, he still attempts to fight Gerard. Before Horace can be injured, Will intervenes. “Gerard’s snarl of triumph turned abruptly into a screech of agony as the arrow transfixed the muscle of his upper right arm…the sword falling harmlessly from his nerveless hand…” The scene is described over four pages.
  • Will and one of Tennyson’s assassins agree to a combat. Each man has to shoot arrows until one of them is dead. Will shoots his arrow, and then “the purple figure jerked suddenly, stumbled a few paces and then fell faceup on the grass.”
  • At the end of the combat, the King is found dead. “Peering behind the throne, he saw the flights of the crossbow bolt protruding from the thick wood. The missile had gone through the back of the chair and into Ferris’s back, killing him instantly, pinning him to the chair.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Someone poisons Horace, making him unable to focus. After a few days, the effects of the poison wear off.
  • Will finds a village that had been burnt down. The inn still had cheap brandy sitting on a shelf.
  • In order to infiltrate the Outsiders’ camp, Will knocks out one of the sentries and pours brandy on him. “If a sentry was found reeking of brandy and sleeping peacefully under a tree, no amount of protesting on his part would convince his superiors that he had been attacked.” While Will is sneaking into the camp, he sees a group of men who “were drunk and talking loudly, staggering slightly on the uneven ground.”
  • As Will is spying on the enemy, he heard “the clink of glasses from inside and the sound of pouring… There were one or two appreciative sighs—the sound a man makes when he has taken a deep draft of wine.”
  • While trying to recruit members, the Outsiders set up “several casks of ale and wine under a large, open-sided tent and were serving generous mugs of both to all comers.”
  • Several times during the story, people are served wine or ale. For example, when setting up for a combat, wine and ale are set up for the townspeople to purchase.
  • When the Rangers finish their Gathering, someone says, “So now let’s have a glass of wine and call it a night.”
  • Halt, Horace, and Will go to a farmstead and say, “we’ll pay well for a hot meal and a tankard of ale.”

Language

  • Halt calls his brother “a lying sack of manure.”
  • Damn is used three times. For example, Halt says, “Horace, when you get older, try to avoid being saddled with an apprentice. Not only are they a damned nuisance…”
  • Hell is used twice. Halt says that his brother’s castle is “drafty as hell in winter, too.”
  • “Oh for God’s sake” is used as an exclamation several times.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • A group of raiders, named the Outsiders, are posing as a religious group in order to fleece the town of its money. The people had a “simple message of friendship… they asked for nothing but a place to worship their benevolent and all-loving deity, the Golden God Alseiass. They made no attempt to convert the locals to their religion. Alseiass was a tolerant god…”
  • When trouble began in the village, “then the Outsiders would come forward with a solution. The outlaws surrounding the village were followers of the evil Balsennis—a dark god who hated Alseiass and all he stood for.” The villagers were told that “to expel Balsennis, special prayers and invocations would be required.” However, they had to build a shrine made of gold.
  • When Will realizes that the Outsiders are killing innocent children, he thinks, “You’d better pray that your god will protect you.”
  • Tennyson preaches about Alseiass, saying, “I’m a servant of the Golden God Alseiass. And he says all men are my friends—and I should be a friend to all men… There are evil, lawless men abroad in the world. They are the servants of the black spirit Balsennis. I see his hand everywhere I go, bringing sorrow and despair and death to the people of this wonderful country…”
  • Tennyson says that Alseiass doesn’t mind if a person worships other gods because “that isn’t Alseiass’s way. He doesn’t’ care to force himself upon you. If you have other gods you prefer, or no gods at all, he doesn’t condemn you.” Tennyson preaches for eight pages, trying to get support to overthrow the king.
  • When Halt goes into a town pretending to be looking to buy sheep, he says, “Thank God, I’ve seen little in the way of good animals arrive so far.”
  • When Tennyson’s inner circle go in to raid a town, one of the men says, “My men and I serve Balsennis, the mighty god of destruction and chaos.”
  • Halt meets a woman who doesn’t believe in Alseiass. She says, “Some of us here worship the old gods. We know the gods send us good times and bad to try us. I don’t trust a god that promises only good times… A god that brings you good and bad in equal amounts doesn’t ask for much. Maybe a prayer or two… A god that promises only good times? A god like that will always want something of you.”

Spaceman (Adapted for Young Readers): The True Story of a Young Boy’s Journey to Becoming an Astronaut

From the time he was seven years old and saw Apollo 11 land on the moon, Mike Massiamo dreamed of becoming an astronaut. But Long Island is a long way from space. Kids like him, growing up in working-class families, seldom left the neighborhood. But with the encouragement of teachers and mentors, Mike ventured down a path that took him to Columbia University and MIT.

It wasn’t easy. There were academic setbacks and disappointments aplenty—and NASA turned him down three times. Still, Mike never gave up. He rose to each challenge and forged ahead, inching closer to realizing his boyhood dream. His love of science and space, along with his indomitable spirit and sense of teamwork eventually got him assigned to two missions to fix the Hubble Space Telescope as a spacewalker.

Growing up, Mike didn’t know anyone who could tell him how to become an astronaut. “There was no science club at school where we could build and launch rockets. None of my friends were into space; it was something I did on my own. I had my spaceman costume, my Astronaut Snoopy and my library books, and that was it.” However, Mike learned that “being the smartest isn’t always the most important trait in school or in life; working hard, having a positive attitude, and getting help when you need it can be more important.” Mike chronicles his life’s failures, his successes, and the people who help him along the way.

Mike tells his story as if he were sitting down to coffee with a friend. His conversational tone and plenty of life lessons make his story even more interesting. He doesn’t leave out the difficult decisions he had to make, or the mistakes he made along the way. Mike says, “I don’t know if there are any lessons to take from this except to realize that the things you think are mistakes may turn out not to be mistakes. . . if you make the most of what you’ve got, you can find a way to keep moving forward.” In the end, what makes Mike stand out is his determination to find a way to overcome life’s obstacles.

Throughout Mike’s journey, he shows how people at MIT and NASA work together as a team. People helped Mike not to get something out of it, but “because that’s what you’re supposed to do. That’s how a team works. You help the people around you, and everybody’s better off for it.” Despite receiving help from others, Mike didn’t always know what to do, and he wasn’t always confident in his abilities.

Many of the lessons in Spaceman are told in such a matter-of-fact way, that it sounds like advice from a big brother. Mike reminds readers that, “If you get caught up worrying about things you can’t control, you’ll drive yourself crazy and waste valuable time. It’s better to focus on the things right in front of you that you can control.” Throughout his time at NASA, Mike’s experiences changed his perspective. To Mike, one important aspect of space travel is that “every person who goes to space, every person who gets to peek around the next corner, is someone with the potential to help change our perspective, change our relationship with the planet, change our understanding of our place in the universe.”

While Spaceman is full of encouraging advice, life lessons, and interesting anecdotes, younger readers may have a difficult time understanding the significance of Mike’s experiences. The ending’s pace is slow and uneventful because it explains how the termination of the space program affected Mike. However, anyone who loves space should read Spaceman. In addition, high school readers would greatly benefit from reading Spaceman because Mike shows how hard work and determination can help a person fulfill their dreams.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • None

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • When Mike went to work for NASA, he loaded up his car and “prayed I didn’t break down in the backwoods of Appalachia along the way.”
  • When Mike interviewed for a job as an astronaut, he worried that he couldn’t pass the eye exam. He “was praying for something so far out of my control that I could throw up my hands and say, ‘Well, that’s life. Nothing I can do.’”
  • When Mike reapplied to be an astronaut, he “prayed I’d be ready in time.”

The New Year’s Party

It’s five minutes to 1965. Beth should be at the party having fun with her boyfriend. Instead, she’s looking for her best friend, Karen. Suddenly, a group of men barge into the house with guns—they’re attempting a robbery. One man grabs Jeremy, Beth’s shy brother, puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger. However, nothing happens because the gun is fake. The robbery was just a prank pulled by Karen and some seniors. Upset, Jeremy runs off. Beth follows him into his car. They’re driving recklessly in the snow when suddenly they hit a boy. They swerve, then crash.

The story jumps in time to the present day. Reenie, Greta, Archie, and Sean are all friends who enjoy playing pranks on each other. For example, Archie hides in Reenie’s closet pretending to be a corpse. Reenie starts to get the idea that their pranks are going too far, though, when she falls off a cliff and nearly drowns in a frozen lake. She has an uneasy feeling when Archie suggests she throw a house party but ultimately agrees.

Archie and his friend Marc come up with the perfect prank to pull at Reenie’s party. They will get Sandi, the most popular girl in school, to ask P.J., the new quiet kid, to the party. At the party, Sandi will kiss P.J., then pretend to die. This prank goes too far when P.J. actually dies from shock. Reenie and her friends are horrified, but the horror turns to confusion when P.J.’s body disappears. In the next couple of weeks, Marc and Sandi are both murdered. Someone is taking revenge on Reenie and her friends, but they can’t figure out who.

 In addition to the supernatural elements, The New Year’s Party has relatable characters, who are not perfect. Like many typical teens, the characters try to justify their wrongdoings. In addition, the story includes fighting couples, friends who party together, and friends that have trouble with trigonometry. The story jumps back and forth in time, but the time differences are separated by chapters.

In the climax of the story, Liz, P.J.’s sister, invites Reenie and her friends to a New Year’s party. At the party, Liz reveals who killed Marc and Sandi, and chaos ensues. This exciting conclusion that connects the past to the present will shock readers.

The New Year’s Party is a gripping story that will keep readers turning the pages. Every chapter ends on a cliffhanger. The vocabulary is simple, and the plot moves quickly. Reenie’s friends play multiple pranks that always seem real, keeping the readers on the edge of their seats. In true R.L. Stine fashion, the book ends with a twist. The New Year’s Party is a good book for readers of all types who are looking for a quick, enjoyable read.

Sexual Content

  • Beth is at a party scanning the room for her friend when she sees a couple who “were making out in the corner.”
  • When the clock strikes midnight, Beth’s boyfriend, Todd, “pulled Beth to him and kissed her.”
  • Todd asks Beth if she wants to move to the stairs, where “four couples sat on the carpeted steps, making out.” Beth “didn’t want to make out in front of the entire party.”
  • At Reenie’s house, Artie sat next to Gret, then “leaned forward and gave her a long kiss.”
  • Sandi, a pretty, popular girl, slow dances with P.J. When the song ends, she “pulled P.J.’s face to hers. Kissed him. A long, slow kiss.” Reenie observes Sandi “kissing the helpless P.J. so intensely. . . her mouth moving over his, her arms wrapped tightly around his slender shoulders.”
  • Before he leaves the party, Sean “pulled [Reenie] close and kissed her. Reenie wished the kiss would never end. She didn’t want to think about anything but the way Sean’s lips felt against hers.”
  • Reenie is hiding under the bleachers in the gym so she can listen to Liz and Ty’s conversation. Reenie watches as “Liz gently pulled Ty’s head to hers and kissed him. A long, serious kiss.”

Violence

  • A group of men with pistols crash a house party. One of the men grabbed Jeremy and “pressed the gun barrel against Jeremy’s head. Then he pulled the trigger.” The gun didn’t fire because it was plastic. The whole thing was a prank played by a group of high school seniors.
  • Jeremy is driving recklessly on icy roads with Beth in the car. They saw a “dim figure” in the road before “something bounced on the hood with a heavy thud. A face appeared through the foggy windshield. A boys’ face, his mouth open in a scream of surprise. The boy dropped to the ground. The car rolled over him with a hard bump.” Because they are scared of facing the fact they just killed a boy, they do not stop to help him and keep driving.
  • Jeremy lost control of the car on the icy roads. “The car smashed hard into the snowbank. . . [Beth’s] scream ended in a grunt as she was thrown forward and her head cracked against the dashboard . . . Beth felt warm blood trickle down her forehead.” Beth watches the car break “through the snowbank” and feels “shock after shock of pain.” Beth is able to crawl out of the car, but she later realizes she is just a spirit, and her body is still in the car, dead.
  • As Reenie puts her sweater in her closet, she sees “bulging, blank eyes.” At first she believes it to be a “corpse” with “gooey blood, dark and caked, oozed over his head.” The corpse is actually Sean, and he was pulling a prank on Reenie.
  • Reenie falls off the edge of a drop-off that overlooks a lake. “She was falling, sliding and tumbling, down the snowy hillside. It knocked the breath out of her. She struggled to gasp in air.” She falls onto the frozen lake, and her “hip smashed against the hard surface. She let out a small moan of pain.” As she is walking to the bank, “the ice beneath her gave way with a groan. She slid into the freezing, black water.” Struggling to get out, “she thrashed her arms, trying to pull herself back up to the surface. . . her head hit the underside of the ice. ‘I can’t breathe,’ she realized. She pounded on the ice with her fists. Clawed at it.” Reenie passes out, but Sean rescues her.
  • As Artie speeds into an intersection with Reenie in the car, another car hits them. Reenie heard “metal slam against metal. Shattering glass. The car spun, slamming her into the door. . . She felt the seat belt biting into her stomach, as she was thrown forward. Then she lurched back against the seat.”
  • After Sandi kisses P.J., she shoves him away and “uttered a long, frightening moan. . . She sank to her knees, her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open. . . Sandi crumpled into a heap on the floor.”
  • Artie and Marc are working in the garage when Reenie and Greta come over. Artie leaves Marc alone in the garage. Marc’s friends hear “a high, ragged scream of terror” come from the garage. When they rush to the garage, they see “a body lay sprawled over the shiny red hood. Marc’s body. Blood dripped from his mouth and nose and his head . . . was twisted around on his neck . . . completely backward.” Marc was murdered.
  • Reenie leaves Sandi alone at the Burger Shack. When Reenie comes back, she finds Sandi dead in a trashcan. “Sandi’s eyes stared blankly at the ceiling. But she lay on her chest . . . Her head had been twisted around backward. And her face held the same terrified expression. Her blue eyes wide with horror.”
  • Liz is holding Sean, Greta, Archie, and Reenie captive. Sean holds a knife as he demands that Liz open the door to let them go. Liz “threw herself at Sean,” who “toppled to the floor with Liz on top of him. . . His body twisted and thrashed as he tried to throw Liz off.” Liz “tried to choke” Sean but Reenie “grabbed Liz by the shoulders and struggled to pull her off Sean.” Liz “tore at Sean’s wrist with her teeth,” causing him to drop the knife.
  • Once she regains the knife, Liz “grabbed Sean and pressed the blade against his throat . . . Reenie saw a drop of red blood roll down Sean’s neck.”
  • While Reenie distracts Liz, Sean “grabbed Liz around the waist. He pinned her against him with one arm—and grabbed the knife away with his other hand.” Liz “stumbled into [Sean]. And the knife plunged deep into her chest.” Everyone is frightened, especially when, “No blood poured from the wound.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Reenie has a house party and runs into Marc. “He stood so close she could smell the beer on his breath.”
  • At the party, Reenie notices Artie’s eyes look watery, and thinks, “Great. They’ve both been drinking.”

Language

  • Artie threatens P.J. after P.J. dropped a weight on him. Artie says, “I’m going to get that little creep, P.J.” Artie goes on to call P.J., “You little jerk!”
  • After he describes their “dumb practical jokes” to a police officer, Sean admits he sounded like a “total jerk.”

Supernatural

  • After they crash the car, Beth and Jeremy realize they are dead. They can see their bodies in the car. Jeremy tries to get back inside his body, but he can’t. He cries, “My arms passed right through my body!” Beth realizes Jeremy is starting to fade. Beth feels herself fading too. “Only the darkness remained. Everywhere. Closing on her. Claiming her.”
  • It is revealed that Liz and P.J. are the same people as Beth and Jeremy; they just changed names. Their spirits somehow reappeared solidly enough for them to act like real people. They died in a car crash thirty years ago, and they were trapped for years in a “cold, gray place.” Liz explains, “As the years passed, we grew stronger. And then suddenly we were back. Back in our old bodies. People could see us and hear us again.”
  • Ty confesses he was the boy Beth and Jeremy ran over, and he was also brought back to life to get revenge.
  • As the clock strikes midnight, Beth, Jeremy, and Ty fight with each other. “Liz and Ty and P.J. whirled around, tugging each other as if in a mad dance. Faster and faster. Waves of icy air swept off their bodies. . . A ghostly whirlwind.”
  • Beth, Jeremy, and Ty disappear once the clock strikes midnight. “A high, shrill whistle pieced Reenie’s ears. Louder. Shriller. Until Reenie covered both ears to shut it out. And the three ghosts began to fade. . . They faded to shadows. Then the shadows faded to smoke. A spinning column of smoke . . . The smoke faded. And floated away.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Jill Johnson

Lu

Lu’s birth was a miracle, and he’s used to being the only child and track star in the house. That is until Lu’s parents break the news that he’s going to be a big brother. In the final installment of the Defenders Track Team, Lu grapples with his father’s drug-dealing past, his mother’s unusual fruit masterpieces, and his own fears. All the while he’s trying to pick a name for his new sibling and help his team win the end-of-season track championship. Lu struggles while running hurdles; it’s the one race where he can’t seem to get past the first twelve steps.

Lu builds on the growth of the characters in the previous three books. However, Lu spends more time tackling personal integrity, drug abuse, and forgiveness. Lu’s teammates, family, and coach help him learn how to be a compassionate person who rights his wrongs, and he becomes a big brother that his little sibling can look up to. By now, the Defenders track team is a full-fledged family, and the end of the novel wraps up their journey together.

Reynolds knows how to write young teenagers’ voices. Lu’s voice strikes the balance between self-confident and insecure. He’s a great runner, and he’ll be sure to tell everyone about it, but the thought of running hurdles makes him afraid. Lu worries, would he be a good big brother? Can he face his childhood bully and show him kindness? Lu is a good kid, but his ability to overcome his fears and not let them consume him makes his character compelling. Lu even inspires others around him to be better by demonstrating integrity and eventually apologizing for his actions.

Lu is a good end to the series. Unlike the first book, not a lot of big events occur. Despite this, the story never seems to drag, and the smaller plot points carry more weight as they develop the characters. Reynolds’s straightforward style and vernacular usage are fun, and they help make the story believable and interesting.

Readers will enjoy the end of the Defenders Track Team series because it neatly ties up all the characters’ conflicts and ends on a compassionate note. If the reader has read the previous three books in the series, they should definitely read Lu because these books take themes like family, friendship, and track and give them life. Most importantly, these books ask the reader to always be the best version of themselves.

Sexual Content

  • Patty teases Lu about a girl named Cotton, but Lu says “Patty was only teasing me about Cotton because she thinks I like her and we should go together. But I don’t. I do. But not like that. Not all the way. But she cool. But go together. Grease face? Nah.”
  • Lu’s parents occasionally hug or kiss in greeting. When Goose, Lu’s father, returns from work, Lu’s mom “leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.”

Violence

  • Lu and his family playfully slap each other on the arm. For instance, when Lu hears about being a big brother, Dad “popped me on the arm with the back of his hand” out of excitement about the big secret.
  • Ghost playfully “slapped [Lu] on the arm” while getting a ride home after practice.
  • Lu fantasizes about throwing an orange at Kelvin, his childhood bully. In his daydreams, he “cocked [the orange] back like a pitcher, and fast-balled it at his ugly face.”
  • There are references to previous books when Ghost’s dad tried to kill Ghost and his mom. According to Ghost, Mr. Charles “saved our lives. He hid my mom and me in his storage room.” No other details are given.
  • Lu and his teammate Aaron get into a fight when Aaron trips Lu while running. Lu says Aaron “charged me and shoved me with his whole body, and I flew to the ground.”
  • It is implied that Ghost gives Lu a wedgie. The team was chatting with Lu when “one of them thinking it would be funny to give me a wedgie.” The wedgie is played off as friends goofing around.
  • It is implied that Kelvin was abused at home, probably by a parent since it is also mentioned that he went to live with his grandparents. While at the basketball court, Lu sees that Kelvin has “no blue-and-purple spots on his arm. No marks.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • A former runner referred to as “the Wolf” now has a drug addiction and begs for money. After giving him a dollar, Coach Brody says to Lu, “To me, that’s embarrassment. Not the dope—that’s illness. But to let something get in the way of your full potential…” There are many references to Wolf’s addiction throughout the book.
  • Lu’s dad, Goose, explains how he started selling drugs at 15. His dad says, “I’ve told you that before, and you know I’m not proud of it.” This is the extent of the conversation. Later it is revealed that Goose sold the Wolf “his first hit.”
  • Coach Whit convinces her brother and former track star, the Wolf, to check into a rehab center. Goose brings Lu along because Goose works with people struggling with addiction, and he wants to give Lu a chance to see what he does.
  • While sitting in the rehab center, Lu talks about the pamphlets he reads. Lu says, “I sat in the waiting room for what seemed like forever, reading these papers about detox, and how sometimes before they can even start real treatment they have to let the drug pass through people’s bodies, and how terrible it feels to, like get all the stuff out of you.”
  • At the dinner table, Goose drinks a beer. Lu says, “Juice for Mom. Beer for Dad. Milk for me.”

Language

  • The book is written in the main character’s vernacular, so the grammar is often purposefully incorrect, like when Lu says, “lightning so special it don’t never happen the same way or at the same place twice.”
  • A couple of times, Lu is flippant towards his parents. Early on, when he describes listening to his mother, he says, “I swear, sometimes she just be talking to be talking.”
  • Lu says that Shante Morris “looks like a horsefly” because “her eyes kinda made her look like she was always surprised how nasty those cupcakes were every year. Ha! Sorry.”
  • Words like shut up, dang, fool, stupid, and hater are all used frequently throughout the book.
  • Lu has albinism, so characters will make comments about it. For example, he notes that in his yearbook people write “Have a nice summer, you fine-o albino.”
  • When his dad is late, Lu considers calling him a “booboo-faced clown.”
  • Lu’s family has plenty of playful banter, like when Lu returns from practice and his parents tease him by saying, “You smell like bananas” and “stinky son.”
  • Lu has a laundry list of nicknames for a kid named Kelvin (“Smellvin”), who made fun of him for his albinism.
  • Two pages are dedicated to the things that Kelvin has said to Lu. Some of the more creative insults on the list include: “You look like a cotton ball dipped in white paint,” “Like milk. Like somebody supposed to pour you over cereal,” and “Like grits with no butter.” Of Kelvin’s appearance, Lu says, “It don’t even look like he was born, but instead was built, but together in some kind of blockhead bully factory.”
  • Coach Brody and Goose knew each other as kids, and Coach Brody would make fun of Goose for his stutter. Coach told Goose, “You sound like a choking Chihuahua.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Lu refers to his birth as “a miracle,” and at one point he says that his mom having another child was “magic.”

by Allison Kestler

The Boy in the Black Suit

Matt wears the same suit every day. Even to school. He needs the suit for his job at Mr. Ray’s funeral home, which he does because his mom died and his dad’s struggling with the bills and alcohol. Despite his mom’s recent death, Matt doesn’t mind working in a funeral home. In fact, he likes sitting in on the services and finding the most grief-stricken person. It makes him feel less alone.

Then Matt meets Love, who has experienced even more tragedy than Matt. She’s tough and kindhearted despite her circumstances. Matt finds himself drawn to her strength. Love understands Matt’s pain and loneliness, and she might be able to help him be strong too.

Death is the main focus of The Boy in the Black Suit, and the topic is handled gracefully and respectfully. Although the content is dark, Reynolds balances this with lighthearted moments. The funerals that Matt describes often have some element of comedy. Some characters treat the funeral as a celebration of life rather than a loss. Matt likes seeing both the positive and tragic responses because it gives him an outlet for his own pain.

Throughout the novel, Matt quietly deals with his grief. Matt’s grief over his mother’s death is not immediately obvious, but his thoughts slowly let the reader into his carefully locked-away emotions. Many of the other characters struggle with grief as well. For instance, Matt’s father sinks into alcoholism after his wife’s death. The funeral homeowner, Mr. Ray, still struggles with his wife’s tragic passing many years ago. Matt also discovers that when Love was younger, she witnessed her mother’s murder.

The grief-stricken characters deal with their sadness in realistic ways. Reynolds manages to create well-rounded characters while still showing how grief has influenced their personalities. The Boy in the Black Suit offers a variety of responses to terrible events. After her mom’s death, Love continues her mom and grandmother’s work with the homeless and carries their spirits with her. Despite the tragedies in Love’s life, she doesn’t let them get her down. Because of her compassion and quiet strength, Matt is drawn to Love. With her help and the powerful supporting cast, Matt can begin to come to terms with his grief.

The Boy in the Black Suit tells a story about grief and growth in an accessible way for young adult readers. The themes are universal, and many characters learn to grow from their unfortunate circumstances. The Boy in the Black Suit is an important read because it shows that kindness exists even in dark times, and it introduces topics like death in a mature way for readers. Although this book is somewhat darker, fans of Reynolds’s other work will enjoy this thoughtful story.

Sexual Content

  • Matt thinks about his best friend Chris Hayes and how “girls had a thing for his shaved head.”
  • One of Matt and Chris’s classmates, Shante, “got pregnant sophomore year.”
  • Mr. Ray, the funeral homeowner and Matt’s friend, tells Matt that he “was thinking about one thing only—skirts,” meaning girls. Matt misunderstands and says, “You were thinking about wearing skirts?”
  • Mr. Ray tells Matt that once he and his brother “Robbie done wrecked many a car, taking our eyes off the road to check out some lady’s hind-parts.”
  • Matt’s mom wrote on the cover of a cookbook: “The Secret To Getting Girls, For Matty” because “cooking is what girls really like.”
  • While in Mr. Ray’s basement that was dedicated to his dead wife, Matt “watched [Mr. Ray] take a few more moments down memory lane, back when he could make the game-winning three-pointer, then kiss his girl after he came from the locker room.”
  • At her grandmother’s funeral, Matt flirts with Love. Matt tells Chris about it later, and Chris misunderstands. Chris asks, “The girl from the Cluck Bucket [a local restaurant] is your girlfriend?” Matt says no, but he does express that he likes her.
  • Matt explains Chris’s dating history. Chris “used to kick it with Shannon Reeves, a certified winner. Shannon was so fly, all the older dudes would try to get at her until they found out she was only sixteen. And even then, some of them still tried to get at her. [Chris] also used to kick it with Lauren Morris and Danni Stevens at the same time. Danni was kind of geeky, but in a cute way. And Lauren was a cheerleader at our school, so she had that whole thing going on. Long hair, pretty smile, in shape, all cheery, all the time. The two girls knew about each other, because Chris was up front and told them the truth.” This exchange continues for several pages.
  • Matt tells his dad about how Matt and Love are having Thanksgiving together. Matt’s dad says, “And if for some reason you feel like having dessert, think twice, son. One slice of her pie could equal a lifetime of your cake, if you know what I mean.” Matt is mortified at this innuendo.
  • Matt and Love help at a homeless shelter. When handing out chicken, Matt asks, “Leg, wing, or breast?” An older man replies, “Well, I’m known to be a breast man.” The lady standing behind him “slapped him on the back of the head.”
  • At the park, there’s a couple making out on a park bench. Matt says, “The girl across from us moved her mouth to her boyfriend’s neck. Yuck.”
  • Love kisses Matt at the Botanic Gardens. He spends a page hyping up his feelings, and then describes the kiss as “a peck… Yup. Just a peck.”
  • After the Botanic Garden date, Love and Matt kiss again. Matt describes it, saying, “I pressed my lips against hers again, this time kissing her longer and pulling her as close as possible. I wrapped my arms around her, and I could feel her hands gripping my back.” This description lasts for less than a page.

Violence

  • When someone tried to steal a bag of chips from the local bodega, the owner, Jimmy, “pulled the biggest knife I’ve ever seen—I mean, like a machete—from behind the register and started banging the blade on the counter… He then said that if he catches anyone stealing, he’ll leave their fingers on the bodega floor for the cat to nibble on.”
  • Matt’s mom gives Chris’s mom “the green light to pop [Matt] if she needed to.” In a flashback where Matt is suggesting breaking the rules, Matt considers this potential consequence.
  • One night, Chris and Matt hear Chris’s neighbor get into an altercation with her boyfriend that ends with the cops and paramedics at the apartment complex. The boyfriend shot and killed her. The description of the altercation lasts for a couple of pages but is only told through what the boys can hear. Matt describes, “All of [the man’s] words were long, like he was halfway singing, so we knew he was drunk. And the lady was pretty much screaming, ‘It’s over! It’s over!’ and kept telling him to go home… the loudest sound I had ever heard in my entire life came rushing toward us, making both of us shout out and slam the door. Then came the screams of the woman, and the drunk man in the hallway now mumbling something about him being sorry and that he didn’t mean it.”
  • A car hits Matt’s dad. He was drunk. “When he got to the corner of Fulton and Albany, he lost his balance and stumbled out into the street. Gypsy cab got him.”
  • Mr. Ray’s wife “slipped, hit her head, and was gone before anyone could even get to her.”
  • Matt destroys the wilted flowers sitting on his mom’s grave because he’s upset. He “grabbed a fistful of the flowers by their brittle stems and began beating them against the ground… as if [he] were hitting a drum.”
  • When Love was seven, her mom was murdered. The guy was “accusing her of cheating. He called her all types of names… About five minutes later… gunshot.”’
  • The guy that asked Love for her number at the beginning of the book is killed. No explicit details are given, but Matt works the funeral.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At a funeral for a man named Speed-O, Speed-O’s friend, Mouse, tells a story about a horse that’s dead-tired. Mouse says that Speed-O said, “that somebody slipped a cigarette in the horse’s mouth to smoke because the dang horse looked so stressed out by the heat… ‘I know it was real because I was the one who lit the horse’s cigarette!’” It is made clear that the cigarette was not real but alluded to because of the exhaustion. However, later Speed-O was “lighting a smoke.”
  • Matt thinks about how rumors spread and warp into lies, including when it comes to his mother’s death. Matt thinks, “Knowing this neighborhood, people were probably saying it was a drug overdose because that’s always what people say. ‘Yeah, she used to get high. That’s why she was always so funny.’”
  • Outside of Chris’s apartment building there is often drug dealing. Matt describes, “There’s always a gang of dudes posted up outside all night, talking trash, and pushing packs of whatever to whoever.”
  • The night when Matt’s mom died, his dad was “down in the kitchen, pouring shot after shot of cognac since around midnight.” It is later described that after his wife’s death, he becomes an alcoholic. One night, Matt finds his dad in the kitchen, and Matt notes, “his words were slurring. I ran down the steps to find him on one knee, holding on to the kitchen counter, trying to pull himself up… On the kitchen floor was a soggy paper bag, soaked with what was obviously cognac. The bottle had broken and glass had torn through the bag and cut his hand. Liquor and blood, everywhere.”
  • Matt’s dad was an alcoholic before he met Matt’s mom. Matt thinks about how his mom says, “Baby, the bottom of the bottle was your daddy’s second home… And if I didn’t stop him, he would’ve made that second home his grave.”
  • Mr. Ray’s youngest brother “was a straight-up drunk” and is often seen loitering outside the liquor store.
  • On the way to the hospital to see his dad, Matt says that he would’ve “taken anything [Mr. Ray] offered [him]. Even a cigarette.”
  • Matt says that “Chris used to always tell [him] that drug dealers played [chess] to keep their minds sharp.”
  • Mr. Ray tells Matt about his friend who would “invite me and [Mr. Ray’s wife] to his shows—this was before he was doing Broadway—and we’d all go out afterward and run through a pack of smokes like it was nothing.” Matt notes that Mr. Ray was “probably thinking about his own cigarette habit that he couldn’t kick, even after cancer. Twice.”
  • Mr. Ray and his brother sometimes smoke cigarettes.
  • Outside the homeless shelter, “there were a few guys… all huddled up. One was holding a handful of cigarette butts while the others sifted through, picking out the ones that still had a little tobacco left in them.”
  • Outside one of the funerals, “teenagers stood on the steps and watched [the procession], some lighting cigarettes, others slipping fingers behind their sunglasses to wipe hidden tears.”

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently. Profanity includes asshole, crap, damn, and shit.
  • Fuck is used once. Mr. Ray has a shrine to his wife who passed away, and he shows it to Matt. Mr. Ray tells Matt, “I was a goddamn mess [when she passed], which is when I started this room, this shrine of all the fucked-up things that happened to me.”
  • A kid ran up behind Chris and Matt at school, “slapped [Chris] on the ass, and rambled off some dumb joke, calling us gay or whatever.”

Supernatural

  • None

 Spiritual Content

  • Mr. Willie Ray is the neighborhood mortician. Matt thinks, “after he beat [cancer] the second time, he basically became, like, a Jehovah’s Witness for cancer, knocking on doors and passing out pamphlets. He swears the only reason God spared his life twice is so that he could spread the word about the illness.”
  • Matt says that his mom used “to always joke with [Mr. Ray] and say, ‘Willie, God saved you just so you could torture the hell outta the rest of us?’”
  • Matt thinks about his father’s alcoholism. “All I could do was pray to God that he would get a handle on it.” Other characters also say, “Lord knows…” to explain their thoughts.
  • Matt works at Mr. Ray’s funeral home, and Matt often sits in on the funerals that take place in the church. Prayers lead by the surviving family members usually occur.
  • Matt attends a funeral for a woman named Gwendolyn Brown. The minister giving the opening speech says, “We don’t come in sadness. No, we come in joy, for sister Brown is finally at peace with the mighty King of Kings.” The funeral program stated that Brown “loved God.”
  • Matt goes to his mom’s grave and tells her about Love. He thinks, “I was going to ask my mother to make me and Love work out, like maybe she had some kind of magic power, or could ask God and the angels to fool around with Love’s mind to make sure this whole thing goes smooth.”

by Alli Kestler

King’s Cage

After completing her mission to secure an army of newbloods, Mare Barrow finds herself once again trapped in the royal palace of Norta. She’s become King Maven’s pet, forced to play a dangerous role at his side. Her forced words carry weight with the Reds, and create schisms in the Scarlet Guard and Norta as a whole.

Without Mare, the Guard has trouble accepting both the newbloods and Silvers into their ranks. Cameron Cole, a newblood herself, knows exactly what it’s like to be ostracized for her ability. After seeing Mare struggle to control her ability, Cameron fears becoming like her; yet, she’s not alone in the struggle. Farley, a new commander of the Scarlet Guard, continues to fight after losing her lover, Shade. Kilorn, Mare’s best friend, must decide whether to continue fighting or focus on protecting Mare’s family. Cal must figure out what side he will choose. Will he be able to continue to kill his Silver comrades, or will he betray the Scarlet Guard?

But just as loyalties are tested in the Scarlet Guard, so are they in Maven’s court. Evangeline Samos, now betrothed to Maven as the future queen of Norta, wants nothing more than to rule. When noble houses begin to betray Maven left and right, navigating the palace becomes more complicated. Will Evangeline get to rule Norta? Will Cameron and the Scarlet Guard prove too much for the Silvers to handle? Will Mare be able to change Maven for the better and abolish the monarchy?

As the third installment of the Red Queen Series, King’s Cage is an excellent continuation of the story because Mare is back in the thick of political intrigue. She’s right there to see the complicated and unique relationships between the Silvers, allowing the reader to see both sides of the power struggle.

The plot is a roller-coaster of twists and suspense, leading Mare, Cameron, and Evangeline through many life-changing and life-threatening moments. The three main heroines are fascinating to follow because each one is constantly on the edge of danger. For instance, Mare has gotten over her selfish and arrogant nature, but now struggles to stay at Maven’s side. Mare is forced to pretend that she betrayed the Scarlet Guard, yet she manages to stay sane enough to secretly gather intel. Cameron struggles with the fear of turning into a monster. And Evangeline must find a way to rule over Norta without becoming Maven’s bride.

The theme of betrayal is once again central to the plot, as characters and noble houses backstab each other left and right. The action scenes are the best yet with each heroine battling individually at first, but then all coming together in a big battle at the end. The buildup and suspense work well as Mare’s, Cameron’s, and Evangeline’s stories intertwine. Overall, King’s Cage is a great follow-up to a lackluster sequel. The story will conclude in the final book, War Storm, where readers will find out whether Mare will triumph over King Maven.

Sexual Content

  • During an argument, Maven kisses Mare. Mare thinks, “His kiss burns worse than his brand.”
  • Maven pledges his hand to the Lakeland princess, “From this day until my last day, I pledge myself to you, Iris of House Cygnet, princess of the Lakelands.”
  • One morning, Evangeline wakes up to her lover’s kisses. Elane “laughs against my neck, her touch a brush of lips and cold steel.”
  • Mare is torn up about her love for Maven. “There are still pieces of me, small pieces, still in love with a fiction. A ghost inside a living boy I cannot fathom.”
  • Mare is humiliated by her guards. “Kitten forces me into the scarlet gown, making me strip in front of them all.”

Violence

  • Mare’s former tutor says, “I watched babies die without seeing the sun.”
  • When visiting wounded Silver soldiers, Mare thinks, “Their kind aren’t meant to bleed. Not like this.” The soldiers fought in a battle against the Scarlet Guard.
  • In a military transport, Mare attacks Maven. Mare “jumps forward, lunging, hands stretched out to grab him by the collar. Without thinking, I shove, pushing, smashing him back into his seat.” Later, Mare thinks, “I fantasize about cutting his throat and staining Maven’s freshly painted walls with Silver blood.”
  • Mare is forced to attend a feast put on by Maven. It ends in an assassination attempt, which kills Maven’s foreign guest, Prince Alexandret. Mare sees, “Prince Alexandret, slumped dead in his seat of honor with a bullet hole between his eyes.” At the same time, Mare sees Maven wounded, “Silver blood bubbles from his neck, gushing through the fingers of the nearest Sentinel, who is trying to keep pressure on a bullet wound.”
  • During an attack on the capital, Cal kills Samson. “Fire races down Samson’s throat, charring his insides. His vocal cords shred. The only screaming I hear now is in my head.”
  • During a sparring match between Mare and Cal, Cal overwhelms her. Mare gets hit with Cal’s fire, and her “flesh ripples with fresh blisters, and I bite my lip to keep from screaming. Cal would stop the fight if he knew how much this hurt.”
  • In a final battle between Maven’s army and the Scarlet Guard, the first casualty is a Red soldier. Mare sees the soldier fall, and then “shouts as he goes over the edge, plunging thirty feet—before sailing skyward, born of a graviton’s concentration. He lands hard on the wall, colliding with a sickening crack.” In the thick of the fight, Farley, a Scarlet Guard commander, kills some Silvers. “Farley peppers them with gunfire, dropping a few Silvers where they stand. Their bodies slide off into darkness.” The battle is described over 20 pages.
  • A newblood committed suicide after being outed as a spy. Mare thinks, “I’ve seen suicide pills before. Even though I shut my eyes, I know what happens next.”
  • Three of the noble houses of Norta attack Maven. Mare watches as “Laris wind weavers toss Iral silks from one side of the room to the other with sharp gusts, wielding them like living arrows while the Irals fire pistols and throw knives with deadly precision.” A few of Maven’s guards are hurt in the fight.
  • When Cameron infiltrated a prison, she used her ability to kill Silvers. Her ability is to snuff out other abilities, as well as other lives. Cameron thinks, “The memory still makes me sick. I felt their hearts stop. I felt their deaths like they were happening to me.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Maven explains that his mother controlled his father. Maven says, “He was a drunk, a heartbroken imbecile, blind to so much, content to keep things as they were. Easy to control, easy to use.”
  • While at a party, Mare notices, “Music dances on the air, undercut with the sweet and sickening bite of alcohol as it permeates every inch of the magnificent throne room.”

Language

  • During a televised speech, Mare is forced to say the former King and Queen “rightfully knew that a Red with an ability would be considered a freak at best, an abomination at worst, and they hid my identity to keep me safe from prejudices of both Red and Silver.”
  • Bastard is used several times. For example, Cameron calls Cal a “Silver Bastard.”
  • When thinking of her twin brother, Cameron wonders, “Send him home? To another hellhole?”
  • Cameron thinks Mare is a “condescending twit.”
  • Ass is used several times. For example, Cameron calls Cal a “veritable pain in the ass.”
  • Someone calls Evangeline’s lover a “whore.”

Supernatural

  • Samson Merandus, one of Maven’s allies, describes his ability. “As a whisper, my ability allows me to bypass the usual lies and twists of speech that most prisoners rely on.”
  • During an infiltration mission into a Silver compound, Cameron takes the newblood, Harrick, along. She sees a pair of guards as Harrick uses his ability to make their “figures ripple slightly, like the surface of disturbed water.” Harrick can create illusions to manipulate people’s senses.
  • Cameron’s ability allows her to stop other’s abilities. When Cal confronts her, she notices his flames still “waver before my ability, fighting to breathe, fighting to burn. I could snuff them out if I wanted to.”
  • When he gets angry, Cal will let loose his fire. “The gleaming bracelet at Cal’s wrist flickers, birthing sparks that travel along his arm in a quick burst of red flame.”
  • Evangeline can manipulate metal. When Mare is about to be shot, Evangeline catches the bullet mid-air. “Her fist clenches and the bullet rockets backward to where it came from, chased on by splinters of cold steel as they explode from her dress.”
  • The leader of Montfort, a country far from Norta, can create blue walls out of thin air. He stops Cal and Mare’s sparring match with “another blue wall of something divides the spectators from our spar. With a wave of Davidson’s hand, it blinks out of existence.”
  • During the final battle, nymphs on Maven’s side flood a city. Mare watches as “the rain shimmers, dancing on the air, joining together into larger and larger droplets. And the puddles, the inches of water in the streets and alleys—they become rivers.” No one is injured.

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Jonathan Planman

All of Us with Wings

After running away to San Francisco, 17-year-old Xochi stumbles into a new job working for an eclectic group of people that live in Eris Gardens. Eris Gardens is a mansion inhabited by the rock band Lady Frieda and their various friends and lovers. The band members live like a big family. They operate under a creed of free love and polyamory while trying to keep their party lives under control enough to protect twelve-year-old Pallas. Xochi befriends Pallas and moves into Eris Gardens to become her governess.

The story is told mostly through Xochi’s third-person perspective, but many chapters are told through the perspectives of other characters. Some chapters show the perspectives of the precocious Pallas, other eccentric characters in Eris Gardens, figures from Xochi’s past, and even the intelligent neighborhood cat, Peasblossom. The rotating perspectives help round out the story and supply viewpoints that Xochi’s perspective alone couldn’t provide. However, readers may be confused, as the narrative gives little warning before introducing the viewpoints of brand-new characters.

Xochi and Pallas make a pretend potion in the bathtub, which has unintended magical consequences. Two small supernatural beings—dubbed “Waterbabies”—appear.  The mystical “Waterbabies” begin to meddle in Xochi’s life, attacking those who wish her harm and seeking revenge on those who have harmed her in the past. In order to stop them from going out of control, Xochi must face her past and make peace with the life and trauma she left behind.  Meanwhile, she begins a perilous and forbidden romance with Pallas’ 28-year-old father Leviticus. Through its rotating perspectives, All of Us with Wings tells the story of the difficult transition to adulthood for young people who have been abused and forced to grow up too quickly.

Like many seventeen-year-olds, Xochi is not quite sure what she wants, and spends much of the book aimlessly stumbling across San Francisco as she tries to grope with her past. Readers will enjoy the story’s unique magical realism. Characters receive prophetic visions and dreams, read tarot cards, and talk about their inner eyes and auras. In this book, San Francisco oozes magic from every alley, mysterious bookshop, public mural, and street corner.  The book portrays the excitement and mystique of San Francisco’s nightlife and counter-culture, but it also delves into the city’s dark side. Some scenes take place in bars, burlesque clubs, and even a heroin den.

Xochi’s difficult past centers around her mother, Gina, who abandoned her, and her mother’s boyfriend, Evan, who sexually abused her. The Waterbabies exact their revenge on these people psychologically—by replaying the memories of the harm they have done—and physically. Despite the fact that the Waterbabies have taken Xochi’s past into their own hands, it’s still up to her to come to terms with all that has happened to her.

One of the most puzzling pieces of this book is Xochi’s relationship with Leviticus, her 28-year-old employer. Both she and Leviticus know that their relationship is taboo. Leviticus has “a strict policy” about young women, “because the older person has more experience and more power.” Older men have taken advantage of Xochi in the past, and characters frequently make reference to her age, calling her “jailbait” even though they all seem to agree that she is “mature for her age.” However, the book ends with Leviticus and Xochi on amicable terms, and open to future romance, while skirting around the questions that readers may have about whether or not the relationship is appropriate.

All of Us with Wings is for mature readers. It includes a lot of graphic content and situations that are difficult to talk about. Readers will appreciate the portrayal of a young person growing up and entering the world, but the ending may leave them confused.

Sexual Content

  • Pallas spies on her mother, Io, and sees that “embedded in the small of Io’s back was a set of small silver hooks, much like the fasteners on Pallas’s own Victorian boots. A black ribbon crisscrossed her mother’s bird-boned spine, connecting the hooks like laces on an invisible corset.” She realizes that the piercings must be sexual and remembers seeing “a book of photographs of outlandish piercings and tattoos she wasn’t supposed to look at. Io’s disturbing new hooks and ribbons weren’t attached to some unimaginably painful private place, but like the piercings in the book, they were definitely sexual—frightening, powerful and secret.” Seeing this leaves Pallas shaken and upset.
  • Later at a party, Xochi sees “a man, naked and heavily tattooed, hung above a platform by thick metal hooks threaded through the skin of his chest. She expected to see blood dripping from the wounds in the skin above his pierced nipples, but there was nothing. This was less a crucifixion than a display of an unusual piercing done some other strange night and long since healed.”
  • Leviticus says he has a personal rule that he won’t have sex with “anyone who’s too high to operate heavy machinery.”
  • While kissing a strange man, Xochi “felt herself respond to his hands on her hips, the hardness under his jeans, unwanted but also hot.” After Xochi’s encounter with this man, a band member tells her that the man is “a good kisser, and his dick is huge. You must have noticed—he’s like zero to boner in three seconds.”
  • Xochi wonders if she has “some sort of fetish for older men.”
  • Xochi kisses Bubbles, a 24-year-old woman. “It was a long kiss, a little world. Bubbles’ tongue produced a ticklish little sting. In accord, they stopped and laughed.”
  • Pallas’ mother, Io, explains polyamory to Pallas. “Some people want to be part of a pair. They feel best when they give their love to one other person, like a husband or wife. Some people want to be singular, but love many people in lots of different ways. Some people don’t want a lover at all and like being alone. There’s no one right way to do love.”
  • The Waterbabies replay the memory of Evan’s abuse of Xochi until Evan realizes that she never consented to sex. Evan had “pulled her up. Brushed leaves from her hair. Held her, tried to comfort her. Then he kissed her. Her eyes flew open, all pupil. She was out of her mind, but her body knew what to do. When she kissed him back, she was all fire. His hands were in her hair, under her skirt, she was pulling him into her, nails digging through his T-shirt, her leg wrapped around his hip. It was fast and fierce. At the time, he thought she came. But now, watching, he wasn’t so sure . . . Afterward, alone in his bed, he’d told himself it was mutual. A freak moment born of grief. But the truth was, he’d been after this for a year, at least. After her. There’d been an opening, and he’d taken it . . . And she hadn’t wanted it. He could see that, too. After that, he only came to her when he was wasted, but he found a way to do it sober soon enough, never thinking of it when she wasn’t there, never planning in advance, living in the moments of sweet relief and forgetting them when they were done. Now he could see his mistake, taking silence for acceptance, despair for consent.”
  • In another supernaturally-induced flashback, Evan remembers a scene with Xochi’s mother, Gina. “Gina herself was on the floor. He stood over her, a monster. He was twice her size, but she met his eyes, defiant, blood smeared on her thighs because he’d been too rough. Too rough after her female troubles, too rough too many times. There were bruises on her arms, a black handprint spanning her bicep.”
  • Xochi remembers a summer when she “touched herself at night in bed, in the morning in the shower, in the deepest part of the swimming hole with the sun on her back and her face in the water, the pleasure proof she was perfect, needed no one.”
  • In a chapter narrated by Leviticus, he looks at Xochi and notices, “her legs were long, her movements coltish—just the sort of innocent-sexy detail that made him feel like a pervert straight out of ” (Lolita is a famous book about a man who abuses a young girl.)
  • Evan remembers how Xochi’s mother, Gina, had an IUD that she kept secret until it got infected. “If it hadn’t been for the trouble with Gina’s IUD, the awful infection, he would have always believed he was damaged goods when she never got pregnant.”
  • Leviticus thinks, “You could tell everything about a woman from kissing her – how she’d have sex, how she’d love. How it would end. Men weren’t like this. All you could tell from kissing a guy was how he gave head.”
  • Peasblossom, the cat, recalls living with a gay couple. One of them say that he thinks the cat “likes it when we fuck.”
  • Xochi walks through a neighborhood where, “Neon signs advertised Big Al’s Playboy Club, The Garden of Eden, and The Lusty Lady, where a topless cartoon redhead danced, the words ‘Live Nude Girls’ blinking on and off below her high heeled shoes.”
  • Xochi stops outside a strip club and talks to a dancer who works there. The dancer says, “They’ll hire you. You’re gonna rake it in.” Xochi clarifies that she’s not looking for a job, but the redhead continues to talk strategy, saying, “Focus on the old guys, play the nice girl and you’ll hardly have to do a thing.”
  • Xochi goes into the strip club, and watches dancers on the stage. By the end of a song, a dancer is “naked except for her thigh-high boots.” Xochi also sees lap dances happening all around her. She wonders, “What happened if the men ejaculated?” She also wonders if the dancers have to perform lap dances for creepy customers. “She felt—what? Scared, maybe. Definitely embarrassed. It was just so weird seeing this private thing done in public. So weird it was actually someone’s job. But the dancers were gorgeous. Watching them was like an endless Christmas morning, unwrapping gift after shiny gift.”
  • Xochi makes out with Leviticus. “They kissed and kissed, her lips raw from the stubble on his face, her hands tracing the shape of his arms, his back, his chest, pulling his shirt over his head. Her body was alive with purpose. His hands were on her back, her breasts.”
  • Xochi remembers her grandmother saying that a good rule for sex was, “If you can’t talk about it, don’t do it.” She thinks, “Maybe it was a good rule for drugs, too.”
  • Xochi is alone with an exotic dancer named Justine who takes her dress off to show Xochi a full-body tattoo of a tree. “Xochi leaned closer, her mouth an inch above Justine’s pale shoulder. Her lips rested there, and then her tongue took up the tracing, her piercing sparking along the tattooed branches. When she reached the apple, she didn’t think; her teeth just sank into the bright-red center of the forbidden fruit.” The next thing the reader sees is that “Xochi and Justine returned to the party, lips swollen, makeup smudged, hands entwined.”
  • When asked how far she went with Justine, Xochi says, “We fooled around. . . I don’t know what it’s called. When you do it to a guy, it’s a hand job.”
  • While Xochi is strung out on heroin with two near-strangers, Justine and Duncan, they “made a game of it. Justine undid a button on Xochi’s jacket. Duncan unbuttoned Xochi’s shorts. Justine undid another button. Duncan fumbled with her bra.” They are interrupted before they can go any further.
  • In a dream, Gina sees “an entire classroom of kindergarten Ginas, one girl for every day that year’s foster father drove her to school the long way.” The insinuation is that her foster father abused her.
  • A character recalls school bullies telling her, “Eww, gross, your dad is gay—he’s going to give you AIDS in your Cheerios.”
  • A character jokes that Peasblossom, the cat, “may be fixed, but he still tomcats around.”
  • At the climax of the story, Xochi says the word “rape” out loud, allowing herself to acknowledge what happened to her.

Violence

  • While walking alone at night, a strange man follows Xochi. The man says, “Bitch, I’m talking to you. Don’t make me chase you.” Xochi escapes without the incident escalating further, but it leaves her shaken.
  • When Evan is accosted by the Waterbabies, they drag him into a lake. “Something was touching his feet, pulling him down. He clutched at his ankles and found two pairs of miniature hands. He clawed and thrashed his limbs, but every movement seemed to add weight to his body, quickening his descent to the bottom of the impossible lake.” Once he reaches the bottom, he finds himself supernaturally able to breathe as the Waterbabies confront him and replay his memories for him. Later, Xochi hears that he was found dead in the lake.
  • The residents of Eris Gardens teach Pallas aikido for self-defense. Pallas says it’s “because I’m turning thirteen soon and becoming a woman.”
  • During self-defense training, Xochi goes into a trance while she spars with an Eris Gardens resident. When she awakes, the resident “was on his knees at her feet, doubled over in pain.” He says, “Just a flesh wound. Where’d you learn to fight like that?” Xochi is never told exactly what she did, but is confused at why she lost control. “She’d never hit anyone in her life . . . not when a girl pushed her down in middle school, or when a gang of boys chased her with a Screw magazine and forced her to look at the centerfold.”
  • The Waterbabies and Leviticus break into a drug den to rescue Xochi. The Waterbabies blow up the fish tanks, which explode. The shrapnel hits one man who “swore, clutching his crotch. His hands turned red. He ran to the bathroom, blood spilling down the front of his designer jeans.” The Waterbabies then attack Leviticus, thinking he means harm. One “decked and straddled Leviticus, hands wrapped around his pretty neck.” Leviticus is uninjured.
  • In a dream, the Waterbabies visit Gina, but another figure in the dream points a gun at them and says, “Get out or I’ll blow your heads off.”
  • Gina recalls how she “fought with most of her boyfriends. Sometimes the conflicts got physical, but they seemed more like battles than abuse.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Drugs and alcohol feature heavily in the plot. Xochi drinks and smokes cigarettes frequently, both out of pressure from the people around her and out of her own volition.
  • The residents of Eris Gardens “had a rule about never smoking in front of” Pallas, “but most of them smoked marijuana or cigarettes behind her back.” This quote is from a chapter narrated by Pallas, implying that the adults’ habits aren’t as well-hidden as they think.
  • Xochi spent much of her childhood on a pot farm and “had inhaled enough secondhand marijuana to last a lifetime. The few times she’d consciously imbibed, the plant had not been her friend.”
  • At a party, Xochi smokes a hookah with “hash and a little tobacco.” Someone shows her how to inhale the smoke without coughing. “She was halfway through her inhale when the smoke changed direction, exploding out of Xochi’s lungs in a fit of rasping coughs.” She describes the buzz she gets as “different from weed, but related. With the familiar dissolving of limbs came an added electricity, a psychedelic edge. The first wave of high hit gently enough, but it kept on coming.” Later, the hash makes her anxious, and she goes on a walk to calm down.
  • Pallas’ parents host parties at the house where Pallas wanders around unsupervised. Pallas sees someone with “a silver vial and a tiny spoon. She’d be kicked out if anyone from the house saw. Hard drugs weren’t allowed, but people did them anyway.”
  • When Pallas is upset, Xochi finds her with a lit clove cigarette, “barely smoked.” Pallas later says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t enjoy it.”
  • A character takes painkillers for a “monster hangover.” The type of painkillers aren’t specified.
  • Leviticus takes Xochi to a bar where the bartender gives Xochi a whiskey “compliments of the house.” Leviticus tells Xochi, “You don’t have to drink it. The bartender says you look like a whiskey girl. He thought about carding you, but he changed his mind. Pretty girls are good for business.” Xochi drinks the whiskey.
  • Leviticus tells Xochi, “I see you’re no stranger to the bottle.” She tells him, “I grew up with a bunch of guys. I learned to keep up.”
  • Xochi sees a band member “leaning over a mirror, chopping up some white powder with a razor blade. He snorted it and stood up.” He offers her a line, but she doesn’t accept. After the band member leaves, Xochi approaches the mirror and sees that the band member was snorting “white powder, speed or cocaine.” She “aimed the straw and sniffed, gagging at the chemical reek. The effect was instant, a bitter blast of awareness. Xochi’s sinuses burned and her eyes felt huge in her head.” She isn’t shown doing cocaine again.
  • Xochi remembers her mother doing cocaine with an old friend. “They’d lock themselves in the bathroom and come out pin eyed and sniffing.”
  • A character wakes up and does “two bong hits—breakfast of champions.” He eats no actual food for breakfast.
  • Evan describes his supernatural experience with the Waterbabies as being akin to an “acid-trip.”
  • Xochi goes to a party where “a keg was the only option for something to drink.” She drinks beer the whole night.
  • Later, when she is very drunk, she goes to a back room with Justine and Duncan, two people she barely knows. “Justine’s arm was clamped above the elbow by a rubber tube. She gave Xochi a long look and pierced the tender crease of her arm with the needle.” Later Xochi reflects on the experience and remembers that, “Justine hadn’t called it by name. Xochi hadn’t asked. She’d known, of course, but it was easier to pretend she didn’t.”
  • In the heroin den, a few young girls are strung out on drugs, half-conscious on the bed. They are “not much older than Pallas.” They exist in the background, and nobody describes them in detail.
  • Gina remembers that when she gave birth to Xochi, she was “hazy from the drugs Gina told them she didn’t want.”
  • A character remembers “the way heroin tasted, coming up from the blood instead of in from the tongue. The tracks on his arm whispered the things they remembered about rest and quiet and peace. That was the real siren song, his own blood’s memory.” It’s implied that he’s craving heroin, but he resists relapse.
  • In a memory, a character dying of AIDS is on morphine. He says he never did morphine “back in the day. I just like speed. It kept me skinny.”

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently. Profanity includes: fuck, shit, bitch, hell, ass, and damn.
  • A man on the street calls Xochi a “psych ward cunt.”
  • A clerk calls Xochi an “underage hoe.”
  • Gina remembers how everyone in her hometown thought she was a “trailer-trash whore.”
  • Leviticus mentally calls himself, “Faggot. Fuckup. Junkie. Whore. Failure. Pussy. Sellout. Fraud.”

Supernatural

  • The “Waterbabies” appear both in real life and in people’s dreams. According to an expert on the supernatural, they are “fey as fuck, but corporeal. Not a dream.”
  • A band called “Dead Girls” is known for singing “in a made-up language,” and they “never eat. They want people to think they’re, like, vampires or Parisian or something.”
  • When Pallas is upset, Xochi cheers her up by making a pretend potion, “with flower petals and crushed-up leaves and perfume and stuff.” She says, “Your family thinks they’re witches, right? But it’s us. We’re the witches.” Xochi puts aloe into the potion and calls it “Goblin blood.” Pallas puts in candies and calls them “Teeth of murdered toddler.” They think it’s just for fun, but they end up summoning real supernatural beings into the world.
  • At the end of their play-ritual, Xochi chants, “Fates! Fates and Furies! Open, open, open up the door!” The narration tells how, “Their feet pounded in a primal rhythm. They were spirit girls, priestesses, fiends.”
  • Occasionally, the book references tarot cards. In one scene, Xochi bumps into a stack of tarot cards and scatters them. They all fall face down except for a few. A resident of Eris Gardens tells Xochi that she’ll “know soon enough” what they mean.
  • A character says the Waterbabies are similar to “Tlaloques,” or “Chaneques,” which are names of Aztec and Mexican gods.
  • One of the band members, Kylen, has psychic abilities which are never fully explained. In a chapter from his perspective, Kylen looks into Xochi’s mind. He “focused his inner eye and focused himself to relax. It was always like this, a psychedelic trip down some stranger’s yellow brick road. There was usually light and color, and sometimes a scent.”
  • Kylen recalls how when Pallas started to venture out on her own, he drew a boundary line on a map of the neighborhood. He “traced the line slowly with a finger, charging the boundary with protection. On the dark moon, he walked the boundary at midnight, spitting on every street corner and dropping a few crumbs of snake root and angelica.”
  • Someone throws I Ching coins and tells Peasblossom’s fortune from “her dog-eared Book of Changes.” Peasblossom notes that the fortune was “remarkably apt.” (I Ching is the name of a popular divination text used by occultists.)
  • Someone tells Leviticus that recent events in his life were caused by “your Saturn return, right on schedule. Unfinished business coming back to haunt you.”
  • When Pallas gets her period, her mother asks, “You wouldn’t want . . . a moon ritual, would you? Some girls do them.” Pallas declines and says, “I’ve never been a very good witch.” Nobody ever revisits the idea of a “moon ritual,” or explains what it is.
  • A character recalls how she always laughs at “that part in The Exorcist when the priests did their ‘power of Christ compels you’ routine.”
  • Someone who can see auras watches Xochi and sees that “the light shooting from her left hand flickered, glowing pomegranate red.”

Spiritual Content

  • At a party, Xochi imagines that, “Whatever heaven” a dead family member was in, “it must be a lot like the swaying chaos in the ballroom below.”
  • Xochi gets her tongue pierced at a shop called “Pagan Piercing.”
  • The owner of “Pagan Piercing” tells Xochi about the process of trepanation, where ancient people drilled holes in their skulls. He says, “If you’re a shaman, it’s your job to communicate with the divine. Why not open the door and invite her in?”
  • Xochi says, “My grandma used to tell me that a lot of cultures see the salmon as sacred. When you eat them, you’re absorbing parts of the collective soul.” She also says that owls are “known to carry the souls of the dead.”
  • A character says, “One time, we found my mom down in the laundry room chanting ‘God hates me’ while she sorted a massive pile of tube socks.”
  • A musician says, “When I drum, I need my chakras connected to the earth, not the freaking ether.”
  • A restaurant has paintings of the Virgin Mary on the walls.
  • Leviticus says, “They say the veil thins on Solstice and Equinox,” referring to the veil between the living and the dead.
  • Xochi reads a book of poetry and notices the lines, “Everything was soulful/and all souls were one.”
  • In conversation with Leviticus, Xochi says, “I’ve been curious about paganism, for one thing. I was surprised to find out most of you are atheists. Io said something about your beliefs not being literal, like you don’t believe in actual gods and goddesses. That it’s more about celebrating cycles in nature, something like that. So maybe ‘atheist’ isn’t the right word?” Leviticus replies, “I think of myself as more agnostic. Like, there could be some sort of deity, but probably not. Like, the goddess is in everything. Everything is inherently divine.”
  • Xochi asks Leviticus about a tattoo on his arm that says “24:20.” He tells her it’s a Bible verse from the book of Leviticus.
  • Someone tells Xochi that, “In the Bible, snakes are about temptation and evil. But way before the Bible, they were symbols of wisdom and healing.”

by Caroline Galdi

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