Reading Level: Young Adult

The Crossover (Graphic Novel)

Twelve-year-old Josh and his twin JB Bell are the kings of the basketball court. Untouchable and unstoppable—the sons of former professional basketball player Chuck “Da Man” Bell couldn’t be anything less than excellent. But when Alexis walks into the twins’ lives and steals JB’s heart, Josh is left without his best friend by his side. Meanwhile, the boys’ father’s health is on the decline, despite Chuck’s utter denial. Josh and JB must deal with the consequences of everyone’s actions—including their own.

The illustrations in the graphic novel, The Crossover, bring the story to life. Illustrator Dawud Anyabwile’s comic book style illustrations match the high-pace action of the novel, especially during the basketball scenes. Most of the illustrations are in black and white with detailed shading, but Anyabwile frequently utilizes orange to help features pop off the page. The text changes in size and shape which helps to capture the rhythm of the poem. Even though this is a graphic novel, the poetic language makes The Crossover a good choice to read aloud.

The pages vary in the amount of text and pictures. Some pages have full-bodied scenes with a few sentences, while others have smaller pictures with mostly narration or dialogue. Alexander’s free-verse poetry moves very well and, thus, lends itself to these variations in page styles. The text placement only serves to emphasize parts of the story. Even though the graphic novel has some difficult vocabulary, the words are often defined and the repetition of the words allows the reader to understand the term. Readers will learn new vocabulary, but the more advanced vocabulary is balanced with realistic dialogue and trash talk during the basketball scenes.

The words themselves rarely vary from the original book, though the verse orientation on the page serves to emphasize different phrases. Those who have read the original text will still find that the graphic novel conveys characters’ moods and personalities in different ways due to the addition of illustrations. Josh, JB, and their friends and family are all vibrant characters and the pictures give them new life and add to the reading experience.

The Crossover was already a moving story, but the story benefits greatly from the addition of illustrations. The illustrations enhance the characters’ emotions and the story’s stakes feel heightened. The story speaks truths about grief, love, and basketball, and the pictures serve to bring those wonderful themes to another dimension. Newcomers and fans of the original story will find this edition to be a worthy addition to their shelves.

Sexual Content

  • Josh and JB’s dad, Chuck “Da Man” Bell, tells his sons about how back in the day, he “kissed/ so many pretty ladies.”
  • Josh says that the only reason why JB has been “acting all religious” is because classmate “Kim Bazemore kissed him in Sunday/ school.”
  • Josh does his homework while “Vondie and JB/ debate whether the new girl/ is a knockout or just beautiful,/ a hottie or a cutie,/ a lay-up or a dunk.”
  • Josh teases JB and asks if “Miss Sweet Tea” (Alexis) is his girlfriend. JB dodges the question. However, it is clear that he likes her a lot because “his eyes get all spacey/ whenever she’s around,/ and sometimes when she’s not.”
  • Chuck faints, and his wife, Crystal, demands that he see a doctor. Chuck refuses, and they argue. In an attempt to diffuse the tension between them, he says, “Come kiss me.”
  • After Crystal and Chuck stop arguing about Chuck’s health in the bedroom, Josh narrates, “And then there is silence, so I put the/ pillow over my head/ because when they stop talking,/ I know what that means./ Uggghh!” This happens a couple times throughout the book, though it is never illustrated.
  • Alexis wants to know “am I [JB’s] girlfriend or not?”
  • Josh likes Alexis romantically as well, but JB doesn’t know that.
  • JB and Alexis walk into the cafeteria, and she’s “holding his/ precious hand.”
  • JB and Alexis kiss in the library, and Josh sees them. The kiss is illustrated.
  • JB tells Alexis “how much she’s/ the apple of/ his eye/ and that he wants/ to peel her/ and get under her skin.”

Violence

  • JB plays with Josh’s locks of hair. Josh “slap[s] him/ across his bald head/ with [Josh’s] jockstrap.”
  • JB accidentally cuts off five of Josh’s locks of hair. Josh gives JB several noogies over the course of a few interactions.
  • Josh nearly breaks JB’s nose with a hard pass during a basketball game. He does it on purpose because he’s upset with JB, and Josh is suspended from the team. The description is only a couple of words long.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Crystal’s younger brother “smokes cigars.”

Language

  • There are a few rude terms used occasionally by the younger characters. Some terms include crunking, stupid, and jerk.
  • When Josh narrates his plays in games, he talks big about his game and this leads to him occasionally threatening physical contact during the game. For instance, Josh says in part of his beginning speech, “Man, take this THUMPING.”
  • Josh’s nickname is “Filthy McNasty.”
  • JB suggests a bet against Josh. Josh responds with, “You can cut my locks off,/ but if I win the bet,/ you have to walk around/ with no pants on/ and no underwear/ at school tomorrow.”
  • JB responds with, “if you win,/ I will moon/ that nerdy group/ of sixth-graders/ that sit/ near our table/ at lunch?”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • JB only went to one basketball summer camp because “he didn’t want to miss Bible/ school.”
  • The Bells go to church on Sundays before basketball. Josh says, “When the prayers end/ and the doors open/ the Bells hit center stage,” meaning the basketball court. Josh sometimes mentions team prayers or praying to win games.

by Alli Kestler

 

 

Patina

Ever since Patina and Maddy’s mom got diabetes and lost her legs, their lives have changed dramatically. Now they go to the fancy Chester Academy and live with Aunt Emily and Uncle Tony. Patina has fears other than trying to fit in at her school, though. She’s afraid “The Sugar” will take her mom from her too. Patina is finding that no matter how fast she runs, she can’t outrun her fears.

Even worse, Patina’s attitude has slipped, and Coach is making her run in a relay with the people she argues with. Depending on her teammates, especially the ones she doesn’t get along with, seems, well, impossible. When her aunt and Maddy get in a car crash, Patina realizes that depending on others is necessary. When her uncle steps in, it only shows further that she isn’t alone and doesn’t have to be the parent to her younger sister—or herself. She doesn’t have to do everything alone, including the relay. It’s okay to wait for the handoff, both in track and in life.

In the second installment of Reynolds’s Defenders Track Team series, Patina takes over as narrator. Tragedies shape her life: when she was young, one morning her dad never woke up. Her mother then developed Type II diabetes, or what she calls “The Sugar,” and lost her legs. Now, Patina lives with Emily and Tony, and although they’re good people, Patina misses her parents. For someone with her history, it’s no wonder why Patina runs with a chip on her shoulder. Anything less than first place, as far as she’s concerned, is losing. Because she runs for Ma and Maddy, she feels that anything less than first is her failing her family.

Patina is intense and often confrontational, but her fierce loyalty and love for her family make her relatable. With the help of her coaches and teammates, she is able to let go of her independent streak enough to let others in. Patina shows that the world needn’t be entirely on anyone’s shoulders. Not all burdens, especially emotional ones, should be carried alone.

Reynolds has a knack for writing unique characters in specific situations that, despite their specificity, contain universal themes. The power of each book in this series resides within the characters’ capacities to overcome their daunting situations. Patina knows her mom is living on borrowed time and that one day, she will lose her, too. What makes Patina strong is that she’s able to keep running, and she runs for her mom, her sister, her adoptive family, and her teammates. Family, blood-related or otherwise, remains a key component of the Defenders Track Team series, and particularly in Patina’s life.

Patina is a strong sequel to Ghost. The returning cast and newcomers blend together to create a realistic environment for Patina and her cohorts to flourish on and off the track. Track fans and non-sport readers alike will find that this story places importance on friendship and family. Patina’s story emphasizes one of the really beautiful parts of life: no one is ever really alone.

Sexual Content

  • Sunny likes Patina. They stretch together at practice and Sunny stares at her legs. Patina thinks, “Was Sunny checkin’ me out? If he was, now was not the time. Also…no…gross…stop it…right now…seriously.”
  • Cotton, Patina’s friend, likes Lu, who is one of the other runners. Cotton says to Patina, “’You think if I wink at Lu on the track, he’ll wink back?’”

Violence

  • Patina and Krystal, another runner, get into an argument while practicing the relay. Krystal says to Patina, “What makes you better? Your white mother?” To which Patty goes on a page-long rant that ends with her saying, “Better watch who you playin’ with.” Coach Whit “grabbed [Patina] by the arm and dragged [her] off the track to the gate.”
  • Patina has a temper. When she gets mad, she will imagine “breaking invisible teacups.” This is her way of dealing with grief and stress.
  • Patina thinks that she was “about to give Krystal a good old-fashioned Beverly Jones Funky Zone beat-down.” She does not do this.
  • Patina teases Lu, another runner, about Cotton. Then Patina ays to Lu, “Don’t deny my girl, Lu, or I’ll leave you laid out across this track.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Patina’s aunt Emily is on “heavy-duty pain meds” after her surgery and is a little loopy.

Language

  • Stupid, fool, and shut up are all used frequently.
  • Of two girls in Patina’s class (Taylor and Teylor/TeeTee), Patina thinks, “They’re like attached at the ponytail and call themselves T-N-T, which is funny because most of the time I just wished they’d explode.”
  • Patina has names for the different types of kids in her school. She thinks, “The mess of hair-flippers, the wrath-letes (kids feel like it’s a sport to make everyone’s life miserable), the know-it-alls, the know-nothins, the hush-hushes…The YMBCs (You Might Be Cuckoo)- the girls who wear all black and cover their backpacks with buttons and pins- and the girls whose boyfriends, brothers, and fathers all wear khaki pants.”
  • At one point, Patina’s nicknames for Taylor and Teylor are “Bony McPhony and her cousin Lie-Lie.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Patina’s mom (Ma) references God and Jesus frequently. There is a scene in their church where Patina says that Ma yells, “Yes, Lawd! Yessssss!” After, Patina thinks that Ma is in a good mood because “Ma’s all high off Jesus.”
  • Ma prays for people throughout the book. In one instance, she says to Patina, “You know I pray for you. I pray God put something special in your legs, in your muscles so you can run and not grow weary.”
  • Patina thinks church is “a whole lot of talk about grace and faith and mercy and salvation, which, to me, all just equaled shouting, clapping, and singing in a building built to be a sweatbox.”
  • Patina explains Ma’s religiousness. She thinks, “after Dad passed, that’s when Ma got all churchy-churchy. The beginning of catching the spirit and dancing in the aisle and ‘praying of peace in the eye of the storm.’”

by Alli Kestler

My Lady Jane

According to the history books, Lady Jane Grey became the Queen of England for nine days before quite literally losing her head. But according to authors Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows, there is definitely more to the story.

Edward hasn’t done very much in his lifetime. Sure, he’s been the King of England since he was a child, but he’s never even kissed a girl—and now he’s caught a deadly illness known as “the affliction,” which means he’ll be dead within a year. Unable to trust either of his sisters to take the throne, Edward decides to rewrite the line of succession, leaving the throne to the future male heir of his cousin, Lady Jane Grey.

Sixteen-year-old Jane would love nothing more than to escape from her life. Her nagging mother and a never-ending string of unfortunate engagements are positively boring compared to the adventures she reads about in her favorite books. She might want her life to be more exciting, but getting married to a complete and total stranger was not what she had in mind.

The stranger in question, Gifford Dudley (please call him G), isn’t too thrilled to be getting married either. Every morning G transforms into a horse and stays that way until sunset. He’s gotten used to the fact that he’s cursed, but he’s not totally sure how to explain that to his pretty new wife.

My Lady Jane is a fascinating alternate history adventure; it is set in a world where people called Eðians have the ability to transform themselves into animals. Despite being based on 16th-century British nobility, Edward, Jane, and Gifford all read as super-relatable to a modern teenager. Stubborn, bookish Jane and sweet, clueless Gifford certainly don’t know how to make a relationship work, let alone run a kingdom. Edward might have been the King of England, but that can’t protect him from being totally awkward around the girl that he likes.

Serious history buffs might not appreciate the extreme liberties that the authors take with the timeline, but the story will definitely appeal to open-minded historical fantasy fans and anyone looking for a good laugh. The story takes readers on a rollicking adventure across England, complete with attempted regicide, a giant bear, and lots of romance. Jane and Gifford’s slow, often awkward progression from unfriendly strangers to loving partners is equal parts endearing and frustrating. Readers will surely be rooting for the protagonists as they learn that sometimes your heart’s desire can be found in the most unexpected places.

 Sexual Content

  • According to rumor, King Henry’s second wife was an Eðian, “who every so often transformed into a black cat so she could slip down the castle stairs into the court minstrel’s bed.”
  • Edward is described as having “the correct genitalia” to rule England.
  • Edward thinks that if he had been born a commoner, “at least he would have had an opportunity to kiss a girl.”
  • Edward thinks that producing an heir would be fun because it would “definitely involve kissing with tongues.”
  • Edward is reluctant to approve of Jane’s marriage because “in the back of his mind he’d been holding on to the idea that perhaps someday he’d be the one to marry Jane. This was back when it was slightly less frowned upon to marry your cousin.”
  • Edward’s advisor says, “Life would be a lot simpler if I only had to attend to my wife in the hours between dusk and dawn.”
  • Gifford’s father tells Edward that Gifford is “a little too easy on the eye for his own good, I’m afraid. He tends to attract…attention from the ladies.”
  • Gifford’s brother mistakes Jane for one of the women he thinks Gifford has been sleeping with. This causes Jane to panic about her wedding because “Her husband to be was a philanderer. A smooth operator. A debaucher. A rake. A frisker.”
  • Gifford lets his parents believe that he is “carousing with the ladies” so they don’t discover that he’s been spending his time writing and performing poetry.
  • Gifford’s father says that Jane is “as far as can be anticipated” fertile.
  • Jane’s mother explains sex using the euphemism “a very special hug.” She says that although the hug might be unpleasant, “it’s part of the wedding night, and part of your duty as a wife.”
  • At the end of their wedding ceremony, Jane and Gifford kiss. “The kiss came quickly. It wasn’t anything more than a touch of his lips to hers, so light it might not have happened at all.”
  • Gifford says that “not one in twenty men” would find Jane unseemly, and that “the supple pout of her lips” could inspire poetry.
  • Gifford, annoyed at how concerned everyone seems to be with the consummation of their marriage, thinks, “at least the nobility of England no longer required live witnesses to the event.”
  • Edward and Jane seem so close that Gifford thinks they might be “kissing cousins.”
  • Edward says that he saw a “flicker of surprise and definite male interest” in Gifford’s eyes when he first sees Jane at the wedding.
  • As Edward watches Gifford and Jane leave their wedding feast, he thinks, “I am never going to consummate anything. I’m going to die a virgin.”
  • Jane gets angry at Gifford and calls him a “drunken lothario.”
  • After bonding during their honeymoon, Jane and Gifford almost kiss. As they stand alone in the parlor, Jane realizes they’ve gotten quite close and wonders, “Would he kiss her? Part of her hoped he would. A big part maybe. Multiple parts: her butterfly-filled stomach, her thudding heart, and her lips, which remembered the gentle breath of a kiss during their wedding.”
  • When Edward transforms back into a human, he finds himself naked and alone in a strange village, where a woman accuses him of being a pervert. She says, “This was a decent village, you know, before your kind came around spoiling it. Thieves and murderers, the lot of you. Like those dogs that watch me get dressed through the window and then run away. Perverts!”
  • Gracie is an Eðian who can turn into a fox, which is ironic considering how attractive Edward finds her. The narrators take the opportunity to tell the reader that “the term fox, used to convey the attractiveness of a woman, was not invented until Jimi Hendrix sang ‘Foxy Lady’ in 1967.”
  • Edward wants to kiss Gracie but can’t because “he wanted her to want him to kiss her.”
  • Gifford and Jane share a single set of clothing while they are on the run from Mary’s soldiers. Jane describes the situation as an “awkward (and scandalous, though they were married, so did it really count as scandalous?) clothing situation.”
  • Jane reflects on her growing feelings for Gifford. “He teased her, but never with an intent to hurt her feelings. He often held her hand. He called her pet names like ‘my darling’ and ‘my sweet.’ Those things shouldn’t have had such an effect on her, but they did. Being with him made her breath come quicker and her heart pound and her palms get all clammy. It made her wish she could remain human all the time so that they could stay together.”
  • The King of France tells Edward to find a wife and produce some male heirs as soon as possible. The King says, “I have three sons, myself, and a number of bastards. It’s very comforting for me to know that I will never find myself in your predicament. My bloodline is secure.”
  • Edward finally asks Gracie to kiss him by saying, “I’ve never kissed a girl before and I want it to be you. Will you?” She considers it, but ultimately she isn’t able to get past the difference in their stations and runs away.
  • On the morning of a battle, Jane finally kisses Gifford for real. As they were saying goodbye, Gifford “kissed her. Softly at first, but then she pulled him close and pressed her lips harder to his. And that was it. She could feel him giving in by the way his body pressed against hers, the way one of his hands cupped her cheek, and the way the other slid down her arm. She could feel his desire to stay human in the fevered, desperate way he kissed her.” The description lasts about half a page.
  • Gifford reflects on the kiss. “How had a girl like Jane kissed him like that? With her whole heart and her whole body? She’d probably read a dozen books with titles like The Kiss: It’s Not Just About the Lips. The way Jane kissed, it was like an art. She kissed by the book.”
  • After breaking into the castle, Jane and Gifford are reunited. They finally say “I love you” to each other, and Gifford is able to stay a human. “The two lovers embraced, while Edward and your narrators turned their heads to give the lovebirds their moment of blessed union.”
  • After the battle, Edward can’t stop thinking about Gracie. “Because he wanted to tell her that he’d stepped down from the throne and see that surprised look on her face. And (let’s be honest) he still very much wanted to kiss her. He thought about it embarrassingly often.”
  • Edward tells Gracie that he gave up the throne, and they finally kiss. “Edward closed the space between them in two strides. He didn’t really know what he was doing, only that he had to do something right now or he’d explode. Her warm heart-shaped face was in his hands, his fingers caught in her curls. She opened her mouth to say something and he kissed her.” The scene lasts about a page.
  • At Jane and Gifford’s second wedding, “Jane didn’t wait for instructions to kiss. She stood on her toes and wrapped her arms around her husband’s shoulders and kissed him as the guest clapped and clapped.”
  • After the wedding, Jane and Gifford have a conversation that devolves into kissing. “Lips met lips, soft and questioning at first, then suddenly desperate and wanting. And at their first wedding, their wedding-night chamber seemed full of the echoes of strangers eager to have their say, tonight, they were very much alone.” The narrators cut in before it gets too steamy but do assure the readers that “they totally consummated.” The scene lasts for about a page and a half.

Violence

  • At the beginning of the book, the narrators summarize the historical version of what happened to Lady Jane Grey: “She was queen for nine days. Then she quite literally lost her head.”
  • There is a group called the Verities who believe that all Eðians are an abomination, “And because Verities were largely in charge of everything, Eðians were persecuted and hunted until most of them died out or went deep into hiding.”
  • When King Henry discovers his own ability to turn into a lion, he decrees that Eðians aren’t so bad after all. “The head of the Verity Church was not pleased with King Henry’s decision, but every time Rome sent a missive denouncing the decree, the Lion King ate the messenger. Hence the phrase don’t eat the messenger.”
  • Edward says one of the things he wants to do before he dies is to beat the weapons master in a sword fight because “[he] was the only person [Edward] knew who forgot to let him win.”
  • Because of rumors of his second wife’s infidelity, “the king had her head chopped off.” It is also briefly mentioned that his fifth wife was beheaded too.
  • Edward says the only time he’s seen his sister Mary enjoying herself was “when some traitor was beheaded or some poor Eðian got burned at the stake.”
  • An Eðian group called the Pack has been “raiding and pillaging from Verity churches and monasteries.”
  • While traveling, Jane and Gifford come upon a group of villagers being attacked by wolves. “A handful of people brandished sticks and pitchforks and various other farming tools, attempting to block the path of the Pack of wolves.” Some of the villagers have been injured and Jane wants to help them, but Gifford stops her. The description of the event lasts about three pages.
  • When his nurse tries to feed him poisoned food, Edward imagines her “less-than-slender form stretched on the rack while he dropped poisoned berries in her mouth.”
  • Edward’s sister, Mary, tells him that when she becomes queen, “We will root out this Eðian infestation, starting with that horrible Pack that everyone’s talking about. I’ll see them all burn.”
  • After Edward refuses to eat his poisoned food, he is attacked by his would-be murderers. “Before he was even fully awake, rough hands were upon him, forcing his arms up painfully. Hooded men loomed all around his bed. Someone had latched one of his wrists to the bedpost.” The description of the scene lasts about three pages.
  • As a bird, Edward kills and eats a mouse. “Edward-the-bird struck the mouse with tremendous force and snatched it from the face of the earth. The poor thing gave a rather awful shriek, which was understandable, and then went quiet.”
  • Edward meets Gracie, a Scottish Eðian and thief who threatens him with a knife. “If he told her who he really was chances were that a) she wouldn’t believe him, and she’d cut his throat, or b) she’d believe him, and because he was the ruler of England and she was Scottish and this was the year 1553, she’d get even more pleasure out of cutting his throat.”
  • Gracie and Edward get into a fight with a farmer. “The bird that was Edward descended on him, talons clawing at the man’s face. The farmer screamed and released his sword. The girl took this opportunity to knee the farmer in the acorns. He dropped to the floor. She kicked him.”
  • Mary and her army show up to take the throne away from Jane. Jane and Gifford refuse to cooperate with her and are ultimately held captive. “[Jane] tried to wriggle away and Gifford snapped and kicked, but then one of the men held a sword to Gifford’s long neck. Someone else pressed a knife to Jane’s throat.”
  • When Gifford transforms into a horse, Mary tells Jane, “In the morning, he will be burned at the stake.” Jane can swear allegiance to Mary and the Verities, or she will be beheaded too.
  • When Gifford and Jane attempt to escape the castle, they are confronted by several guards. “The first guard [Gifford] dispatched quickly in a move that Jane would probably describe as elegant swordsmanship, but he knew was really the result of the sword slipping from his sweaty hand. As he lunged to retrieve it before it hit the goring, he plunged he sword through the heart of a guard who was just rounding the corner.”
  • Gracie bests Edward in a sparring match. Gracie “bashed him in the ribs. If it’d been a real sword in her hand, instead of half of a broken broomstick, he would’ve been done for.” The scene lasts about four pages.
  • Gracie tells Edward about how her family was killed by British soldiers because they were Eðians. “That night I woke to our cottage burning. We were all inside, my ma and dad and brothers—I had two brothers—and they’d blocked the door from the outside, boarded the windows too.”
  • Edward and Gracie come very close to kissing, but they are interrupted by his grandmother. “At that moment we should confess that Edward briefly considered murdering his dear sweet grandmother. And he might have gotten away with it, too, on account of the rest of the world thinking the old lady was already dead.”
  • Gifford, Jane, and Pet get into an altercation with the Pack and Jane gets injured. “All at once [Gifford] became aware of the blood soaking the front of his shirt and how unusually quiet she was. Jane was never quiet. She was hurt.” The description of the fight lasts about three pages.
  • In order to get the Pack to help Edward take back his throne, Edward and Gifford must kill the Great White Bear of Rhyl. When the bear attacks them, Gifford tries to play dead. “The bear sniffed G’s leg. G tried to make his leg look less like food. The bear pushed G’s shoulder and pushed again as though trying to turn him over. G wasn’t sure if complying would make him seem more or less dead.” Ultimately Edward is able to kill the bear. The description of the fight lasts four pages.
  • Edward is concerned about meeting with Mary Queen of Scotts because of the bad end of their engagement. “When King Henry received word that Mary’s regents had accepted another offer of marriage, this one from the King of France, pairing her with the French dauphin, Francis, King Henry had eaten the messenger immediately and remained a roaring lion for days. And then he’d invaded Scotland.”
  • During their siege on the castle, Jane, Edward, and Gifford run into some guards who want to kill them. “The guard on the right re-raised his sword and took a deep breath as if to speak, but he didn’t get a sound out before a loud bang rang out and he dropped like a stone. Jane stood behind the guard, her frying pan raised to where the man’s head had been.” The conflict is described over three pages.
  • As Gifford, Edward, and Jane attempt to break into the castle, Gifford’s father and brother confront them. Gifford “looked at his father’s outstretched hand and it made him sick that he shared the same blood as this man… With a flick of his sword, he cut a gash in Lord Dudley’s palm.” The confrontation lasts about three pages.
  • Gracie tells Edward that she’s the new leader of the Pack because the old leader has died. “He took an arrow to the chest in the first ten minutes of the siege.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At the wedding feast, Gifford gets very drunk because he’s too nervous to tell Jane about his horse curse. “Every time G thought about how to break the news to her, he gulped down a cup of ale. And he thought about it a lot. Every time he looked at his new bride. And he looked at her a lot.”
  • When he turns back into a human, Gifford goes to a tavern attached to a brothel to steal some clothes because “There it was easy to grab clothes strewn about, the owners of which would be too sloshed to care.”

Language

  • When he learns he’s going to die from the affliction, Edward says, “bollocks,” twice.
  • Damn is used once. Gifford tells Jane she should abdicate, “Well tell them thank you so much for the very kind offer of running the country, but no thank you. I have no desire to honor my cousin, the king’s, wishes. Now where are my damn books?”
  • During a sparring match, Gracie and Edward trade insults, including “Lilly-livered scutt” and “beef-witted varlet.”
  • Edward calls Mary a “poisonous bunch-backed toad.”

Supernatural

  • The book is set in an alternate world where certain people, known as Eðians, have the ability to turn into animals. “Certain members of the general public could turn themselves into cats, which greatly increased the country’s tuna fish population, but also cut down on England’s rat population. (Then again, other individuals could turn into rats, so nobody really noticed.)”
  • King Henry VIII was an Eðian, who “during a fit of rage transformed into a great lion and devoured the court jester.”
  • There’s a rumor that Jane’s mother is an Eðian, which caused Jane and Edward to try to uncover their own Eðian forms. “Jane had read in a book that Eðians often manifested into their animal forms when they were upset. They’d cursed each other and slapped each other’s faces, and Jane had even gone so far as to throw a stone at Edward, which actually did rile him, but they had remained stubbornly humanly human throughout the whole ordeal.”
  • Edward’s dog, Pet, reveals herself to be an undercover Eðian. “Pet stood up, then lifted her front paws to the edge of Edward’s bed, her neck thrown back like she was stretching. There was a flash of light, as painful as if Edward had accidentally glanced into the sun, and he closed his eyes. When he opened them again there was a naked girl standing at the foot of his bed.”
  • Jane is locked up in a tower, hopelessly anticipating her upcoming execution, when she finally unlocks her Eðian powers and turns into a ferret. “A brilliant white light flared about her, making her blink back stars. When she could see again, everything was different. The room was bigger, for one, and she felt…funny. Shorter, which was saying something, but oddly long.”
  • Edward’s grandmother tries to teach Jane, Gifford, and Edward how to use their Eðian powers. She tells them that the secret to changing into your animal form is to know your heart’s desire. Edward’s grandmother says, “If, in the moment you want to change, you do not know why you want to become a bird or ferret or horse or human, then you will stay exactly as you are.”
  • When Edward shows up to take his throne back, Mary gets so angry that she turns into a mule. “Then Mary let out a bellow of rage and barreled toward Bess with outstretched hands, as if she would choke the life from her sister. But before she could reach Bess, a light flashed. The onlookers gave a collective gasp. Where Mary had been standing, there was now a chubby mule.”

Spiritual Content

  • Edward believes he was “designed by God” to be the king of England.
  • Jane’s mother says that her Eðian form is unnatural, but Jane disagrees. “In one of my books about Eðians, the author said that long ago, in ancient times, all people were able to change into their animal form. Everyone was Eðian. It was considered their true nature. It was considered divine.”
  • Edward feels bad about having bad-mouthed women, thinking, “He’d only said what Bess had told him to say, and besides, it was true, wasn’t it? Women were the weaker sex were they not? Wasn’t that even written in the Holy Book?”
  • While Jane is breaking into the castle, Gifford says several prayers. “He closed his eyes and sent a quick prayer to the heavens that he would see her again. He prayed Edward would keep her from harm. He prayed if Edward failed, she would turn into a ferret and hide. He prayed if she was discovered she would slip from the soldier’s clumsy fingers. And that if she couldn’t escape, they would kill her quickly.”

by Evalyn Harper

Rebound

Ever since Chuck “Da Man” Bell’s father died, Chuck’s turbulent emotions are holding him back from his relationships. When his mom sends him to his grandparents’ house for the summer, Chuck finds healing through basketball. With the help of his friends and relatives, Chuck also learns about his family’s past.

Chuck is an emotional 12-year-old who disobeys his mother and gets into trouble with his friend, Skinny. However, Chuck’s attitude towards life adjusts as his grandparents and cousin, Roxie, teach him wisdom and basketball. Chuck realizes that his grandparents are suffering after their son’s death as well, and Chuck makes an emotional connection with them. This story presents the multifaceted nature of grief through Chuck and his family. The narrative emphasizes this shared humanity rather than suppressing the trauma that the family has endured. The family helps Chuck come to terms with his emotional turbulence, and the end shows him as a happy adult who learned how to cope.

Chuck’s story pairs well with Alexander’s creative narrative styles. The poetry might be off-putting to some readers, but the flow is similar to reading prose fiction thanks to his free verse. The graphic novel panels help build excitement in the basketball/daydream sequences and give a different look into Chuck’s imagination. This book is a good introduction into poetry for younger readers.

Told in free-verse poetry and graphic novel panels, Rebound shows the turbulent healing process after tragedy strikes. As Chuck learns about basketball and how his family members deal with loss, he begins to understand the world outside his emotions. The book is told from Chuck’s perspective, but his grandparents are a large focus of the story. His grandfather, Percy, uses humor and tough love to help Chuck come to terms with his father’s death. However, Percy is serious and kind when Chuck is struggling the most, but Percy never comes off as preachy.

Alexander’s writing style is unique, and it switches between poetry and graphic novel panels. However, the story flows well and has many fast-paced basketball scenes. Alexander uses different poetic techniques to emphasize sounds, emotions, and dialogue. These portions and the graphic novel panels depicting Chuck’s daydreams help enhance his narrative voice and his dreams of success. Rebound is the prequel to Kwame Alexander’s book Crossover, but Rebound can be read as a stand-alone book.

Rebound tells a story about shared humanity and suffering, and it reinforces the need for family in difficult times. Alexander writes interesting and complex family dynamics, and his integration of basketball and comic books into the text feels natural with these themes. He grounds the abstract nature of grief in a manner that is digestible for younger readers. Rebound is a good read because it presents a character who rises above self-pity and gains perspective in dire times. Anyone who has faced a difficult situation will enjoy Rebound’s blend of poetry and graphic novel elements because they effectively portray themes of grief, love, and the power of family.

Sexual Content

  • Chuck’s friend CJ likes Chuck, a topic that is revisited somewhat often throughout the book.
  • CJ pulls Chuck out on the roller rink and “kisses [him]/on the cheek,/and, just like that,/ lets go/of [his] hand,/ and skates away,/and [his] heart/ almost jumps/ out of [his] chest.”
  • Chuck’s grandparents, Alice and Percy, kiss. Percy says to Alice, “Now give me some sugar.”
  • Chuck’s friend, Skinny, meets Chuck’s cousin, Roxie, and calls her “a pretty young thing,” which does not make Roxie or Chuck very happy.
  • Uncle Richard brings his boyfriend to the Fourth of July party.

Violence

  • Skinny mentions that his cousin “Ivan got into a fight” when his team lost a basketball game, but no other context is given.
  • Chuck says, “I remember/my father spanking me/when I was little,” as his mom tries to hit him for smack talking.
  • Chuck’s mom tries to hit him when he talks back. Chuck says, “Her hand/is like/a razor-sharp claw/about to slice/the air/lightning fast/in the direction/of my face, /but I duck/before the blast/almost rips/my head off.”
  • In her way of showing affection, CJ occasionally gives Chuck “a punch/to [his] stomach/that hurts/in a good/kind of way.”
  • Chuck says to his mom, “Some of my friends’ parents got divorced, /remarried, and the new fathers abused the/ kids, and that’s not cool.”
  • On a walk, Percy tells Chuck, “My/mother wasn’t so easy. Used to make me/get a switch from our peach tree, then we/ got whupped good.”
  • When Roxie sees Chuck sitting in the truck, she “punches [Chuck]/ in the arm.”
  • After Roxie and Chuck lose a game, one of the boys on the other team taunts them. The other boy says, “Maybe you should play on a girls’ team,” and Chuck narrates, “She raises/HER fist, / ready to punch, but I grab it, / and get/in HIS face.” Percy pulls them apart before an altercation can occur.
  • While waiting outside the rink, Skinny’s cousin and his friends run over to “this other/ crew of guys/ like they’re about/ to throw down.” It is implied later that they fight off-screen.
  • Ivan walks into the roller rink “with specks/ of blood/ on his shirt/ and a sneaker/ in his hand.” It is inferred that he was in the fight that occurred off-screen, and that someone was seriously injured. No other details of the fight are given.
  • Chuck says that Ivan is bragging about “the beatdown/ they just dished out.”
  • Someone brings a gun to the rink, and everyone scatters.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Before Chuck’s father died, “he promised/to get me/ some fresh sneakers/and let me/taste beer, /as long as/You don’t tell/your mother, Charlie.”
  • At the end of the book, Chuck narrates, “my mom/ let me taste beer/ and it was disgusting.”
  • Skinny has an uncle that “smokes incessantly.”
  • According to Chuck, “Ivan/used to be/pretty cool/and fun/to be around/till he started/smoking/and hanging out/with a group/of delinquents/he met/in juvie.”
  • It is insinuated that the older guys hanging with Skinny’s cousin are drinking alcohol “hidden in/ brown paper bags.”
  • The police stop Skinny and Chuck outside the rink, and they unknowingly have Ivan’s bag containing “three sandwich bags/ filled with/ cannabis.” They are arrested for possession.

Language

  • Words like stupid, sucks, punk, wimp, nerd, loser, and fool are used frequently throughout the book.
  • There are some loud altercations near the beginning of the story when Chuck’s mom yells at Chuck in creative ways. For example, when Chuck defies his mom and slams his door in her face, she yells, “Boy, I am this/ close to wringing your neck.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • After Chuck scores the winning point in a three-on-three basketball game, he thinks, “The gym / roars like / a hyped-up choir / in church /after a sermon.”
  • Of Chuck’s father’s death, Alice says, “There’s a masterplan, and I’m not the / master. We just have to trust in the plan.”

by Alli Kestler

The Outcasts

Hal never knew his father, a Skandian warrior. But unlike his esteemed father, Hal is an outcast. In a country that values physical strength over intellect, Hal’s ingenuity only serves to set him apart from the other boys his age. The one thing he has in common with his peers is Brotherband training. Forced to compete in tests of endurance and strength, Hal soon discovers he’s not the only outcast in this land of seafaring marauders—and that his battle for acceptance has just begun.

Hal and his best friend, Stig, have always felt like outsiders. People have looked down on Hal because he is half-Araluen, and they look down on Stig because his mother makes a living doing other people’s washing. When the two boys go to Brotherband training, Tursgud and Rolland choose their team members, and the eight boys who were not picked form the third Brotherband. Hal is chosen as the reluctant leader of the third Brotherband, the Herons.

As the three teams compete against each other, the Herons learn to help and rely on each other. While few people believe the Herons can be turned into warriors, Hal and his ragtag group find creative ways to defeat the other teams. Even though many of the Herons do not have physical prowess, each member of the Brotherband has an important role. Everyone—even a half-blind boy—can contribute. Through their experiences, readers will learn the importance of controlling their anger, working as a team, taking responsibility for their actions, and using their intelligence.

Middle school readers will relate to Hal and the other Herons as they fight to prove their worth. The story focuses on Hal, who is often criticized for his creative intelligence. However, it is this very intelligence that allows the Herons to win competitions. The Skandia society admires warriors who have strength, courage, and are not afraid of going to battle. These Skandian qualities allow the fast-paced story to have many exciting scenes as well as many descriptions of bullying and violence.

The connecting story arcs, difficult vocabulary, and huge cast of characters make The Outcast best for stronger readers. The conclusion connects all of the story arcs together and ends with a surprising twist. The Brotherband Series features several adults that also appear in the Ranger’s Apprentice Series. Despite this, readers do not need to read the Ranger’s Apprentice Series in order to understand the Brotherband Chronicles. Both series appeal to a wide audience because of the engaging plots, the likable characters, and the life lessons.

Sexual Content

  • The Herons are declared champions and, “Hal was delighted when a certain blond-haired girl slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips.”

Violence

  • During a raid, village soldiers go after the Skandians. One of the Skandian warriors “slammed the flat of his ax into the shoulder of the charging horse, throwing it off balance. As it stumbled, he drove forward with his shield, hitting the animal again and sending it reeling to one side.” The rider falls off and when the Skandian scares the man, he runs away.
  • As the Skandians are heading back to their ship, one warrior named Mikkel is injured by a spear. “The heavy iron head penetrated underneath Mikkel’s raised arm, burying itself deep in his upper body. He let go a small cry and fell to his knees, then crumpled sideways.” Mikkel dies from his injuries. The raiding scene is described over three pages.
  • A known bully, Tursgud, insults Hal and Hal’s mother. Hal “thrust forward and shoved both hands into Tursgud’s chest, sending the bigger boy stumbling and falling in the soft sand.” The bully “grabbed Hal’s shirt front in his left hand and drew back his right, fist clenched.” An adult breaks up the fight.
  • Pirates attack a group of cargo ships. When the pirates board one ship, the ship’s captain “hears the sounds of battle, axes and swords clashing against each other. . . He heard men shouting, heard the defiant war cries of the Rainbow’s crew.” The Rainbow’s crew was “murdered in a few brief seconds.”
  • The pirates board another ship, the Golden Sun. “The clash of weapons had died away and there was a series of splashes alongside. He [the captain] realized that the pirates were throwing the crews’ bodies overboard.”
  • The pirates overtake a third ship. The Skandian crew “smashed into the disorganized pirates, their heavy oaken shields used as weapons of offense, slamming into the pirates and hurling them to either side. The first rank of the pirates fell before the massive onslaught. The deck ran red with their blood. . .” The pirates throw the captain and his nephew overboard and kill the entire crew. The pirate scenes are described over 10 pages.
  • One of the boys misinterprets an instructor’s command. Next, the instructor “realized that the tree trunk-sized club was whistling through the air at blinding speed, and in the next half second would knock his head clean off his shoulders. With a startled yelp, he dropped flat on the still-wet ground, feeling the wind of the massive weapon as it passed over his skull, missing him by a few centimeters.”
  • Tursgud and his brotherband corner Hal. Hal “sent two lightning left jabs into Tursgud’s face, feeling the other boy’s nose crunch under the impact of the second, then stepped forward and hooked savagely with his right at the big boy’s jaw, hoping to end it there and then.” The last punch misses and the fight continues.
  • Tursgud’s friends grab Hal and hold him captive. “Hal’s ears were ringing and he realized that consciousness was slipping away from him. A hand grasped his hair and pulled his head up, sending tears flowing from his eyes with pain. . . the fist scrape painfully along the side of his face, tearing at his ear, so that blood started to trickle down his face.” By the end of the fight, Hal is semiconscious. The vicious fight takes place over six pages.
  • During the fight, Tursgud’s brotherband ties up Stig, stopping him from helping Hal.
  • One of the brotherband’s competitions is a wrestling match. During a match between Bjorn and Stig, Bjorn throws insults. Stig angrily attacks, which allows Bjorn to pin him. Bjorn “raised his right foot and placed it in Stig’s belly. At the same time, he fell smoothly back onto the grass, then straightened the leg, adding his left leg to the thrust as he rolled backward into the grass.” Bjorn was able to pick up Stig and “the Herons’ representative flew for several meters, landing heavily on his back with an ugly thud that drove the air out of his lungs.” There are three wrestling matches that are described over sixteen pages.
  • During a competition, Stefan mimics Tursgud’s voice in order to confuse Tursgud’s brotherband. When Tursgud sees Stefan, Tursgud runs after him. Tursgud “rapidly overtook Stefan and hurled himself on him, driving him to the ground. Stefan curled in a half ball, elbows and knees up to protect himself from the wild punches Tursgud was throwing.” An instructor breaks up the fight.
  • Pirates sneak into town and kill two of the town watch. Someone reports, “Their throats had been cut.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Thorn becomes a drunk after his best friend dies in battle. At one point, Thorn “had become so drunk the previous night that he had lost his way while heading back to the boatshed where he lived. He had crawled into the shelter of the wall, out of the wind, and laid down, vaguely hoping to die.” While Thorn stops drinking in chapter two, others often talk about his drunkenness.
  • After his friend’s death, Thorn became depressed and looked “for comfort in an ale or brandy tankard. There was very little comfort in either, but there was oblivion, and a strong drink helped him forget his loss, albeit temporarily.”
  • After the Herons are forced to surrender their title, Thorn thinks about Hal’s dismal future and he wants to drink. He gets a strong brandy that was hiding in his room. He is able to resist the temptation because he realizes, “If he drank himself insensible, he would eventually wake up. And this situation would not have changed.” His struggle is described over three pages.
  • A ship was carrying “valuable goods—oil, wool, fleeces, and brandy.”
  • A pirate ship lands in Skandia; the ship is carrying wine.
  • When the Herons are declared champions, the town throws a celebration and many of the adults drink ale.

Language

  • The Skandians often use their gods’ names as exclamations. For example, when someone sees a drunk, Hal says, “Oh, by Gorlog’s claws and nostrils, Mam! He stinks.” Later, someone uses “Gorlog’s breath” as an exclamation.
  • Someone uses “Gorlog and Orlog” as an exclamation. Orlog “was Gorlog’s lesser-known brother, only invoked in moments of great stress or surprise.”
  • When two brothers argue they call each other names such as a “bowlegged monkey,” “ugly gnome,” and “numbskull.”
  • A boy calls Thorn an “old wreck” and a “dirty old cripple.”
  • While fighting, someone calls Tursgud a coward and another boy calls him “coward scum.” As Tursgud punches Hal repeatedly, his brotherband yells, “Kill him! Kill him!”
  • Hal is often reminded that he is half Araluen. One boy calls him an “Araluen weasel.” Later, another boy calls him a “mongrel.”
  • The characters call each other idiots a few times. For example, Hal yells at two arguing brothers, “You blasted, blithering idiots. . .”
  • When an instructor sees two brothers arguing, he tells the group leader, “Gorlog help you if they’re always like that.”
  • An adult calls someone a fool.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • The Skandians believe “if a sea wolf died in battle without a weapon in his hand, his soul would wander in the netherworld for eternity.”
  • Gorlog “was one of the second rank of Skandian gods, like Ullr the hunter or Loki the liar, although unlike them, Gorlog had no specialized skills.”
  • When Hal saw a boy fell, he “breathed a silent prayer of thanks” because the boy’s fall ensured Hal’s brotherband would not be punished.
  • Stig calls Thorn a “broken down tramp.” Later Stig apologizes. When Thorn accepts the apology, Stig says, “Well, praise Gorlog for that!”
  • While getting ready to sail, Hal tells one of his team members, “ ‘All right Ingvar, pull as if Hulde herself was on your heels.’ Hulde was the goddess of the dead, and definitely not someone you would ever want close behind you.”
  • After the Herons fail at protecting an ancient relic, someone says, “Orlog curse the lot of you!”
  • When the Herons leave Skandia, someone says, “ ’May Ullr guide you.’ Ullr was the god of hunters.”

The Paper Cowboy

More than anything, Tommy wants to be a cowboy just like the great Gary Cooper or the Lone Ranger, but really he’s more of a bully. He picks on other kids at school, gets into fights, and acts more like one of the bad guys than the cowboy he wants to be. But there’s a reason Tommy misbehaves: things at home are bad. After his sister is badly burned doing a chore that it was Tommy’s turn to do, his mother’s usual moodiness and scoldings turn into beatings. Tommy is racked with guilt. And without his sister, who is hospitalized, he’s left alone to face his mother’s anger.

As the beatings get worse, Tommy’s bullying spirals out of control. He’s even caught stealing from the neighborhood store. Instead of taking his punishment as a true cowboy would, Tommy seeks revenge on the store’s owner, Mr. McKenzie, by framing him as a communist. The results are disastrous.

But in his heart, Tommy knows a cowboy would make things right, so he sets out to find the real communist. But when the real communist is uncovered, it may make Tommy question what it really means to be one of the good guys.

The Paper Cowboy is a compelling story told from Tommy’s point of view. As Tommy navigates through life, he takes inspiration from the cowboys he has seen in movies. Tommy “longed to be a cowboy. Not a bully. But a cowboy who stands up to others. Who fights for the people he loves, for the town they live in.” After Tommy frames Mr. McKenzie for revenge, Tommy is racked with guilt and he becomes convinced that finding the real Commie is the only solution. As Tommy talks about his dilemma, one character says, “It only takes a little poison to ruin a well on a farm, or to spoil a reputation in a big city.” Later, someone tells him, “It doesn’t matter what you intended. The damage has been done. It’s easy to start a rumor. Much harder to stop it.”

The Paper Cowboy portrays the fear of the McCarthy Era by focusing on the townspeople Tommy comes into contact with. It is through these interactions that Tommy stops judging people based on their appearances and instead judges them based on their character. When Tommy is determined to prove that his neighbor, Mrs. Glazov, is a communist, he begins spending time with her hoping that he can find evidence. He thinks she is a communist, but as he learns more about Mrs. Glazov, he begins to like her and wonders, “What was wrong with me?” In the end, Tommy comes to the conclusion that Mrs. Glazov doesn’t belong in jail, even if she is a communist.

Readers will quickly get caught up in Tommy’s world. While Tommy isn’t always likable, readers will empathize with him as he struggles to become a better person, to right his wrongs, and to understand others. The Paper Cowboy takes readers back into time and allows them to understand how the politics of the McCarthy era affected one small town. In the end, Tommy grows into a cowboy, is able to emulate Gary Cooper’s good qualities, and makes his father proud. Tommy’s dad says, “It wasn’t the shoot-out that made Gary Cooper a great man. It was that he cared for others. He faced his problems. He didn’t walk away. He solved them. A good cowboy is a leader who looks after his heard and his posse. No one goes missing.” Tommy’s well-developed voice jumps off the page and his experiences will show readers the importance of finding your own voice and doing what is right.

Sexual Content

  • Tommy’s sister Mary Lou wanted to wear lipstick, but her mom “wouldn’t let her. She said it was only for loose women. I wondered what that meant. . .”

Violence

  • Tommy’s mom is abusive. She frequently yells and slaps him. After Tommy steals two yo-yos, his mother makes him take his pants down. “This was standard procedure for a whipping. I didn’t mind so much with my dad, but it was humiliating to pull down my pants and underwear in front of my mom. I put my hands on the kitchen counter. . . The belt whipped through the air. Eight, nine. It made a whistle and then a slap as it hit me. Ten, eleven. She didn’t stop. Mom kept hitting me, again and again, until finally the belt snapped back and hit her on the chin. . . In the quiet, I could feel each individual welt on my buttocks. There were tears on my face, but I wiped them away.” Tommy thinks he deserved the punishment.
  • Tommy mentions Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg who were “convicted of spying for the Soviets.” They were executed. During recess, Tommy and his friends like to play “electric-chair tag.”
  • One of Tommy’s classmates has a burn scar on his face. The boy’s father explains, “It happened during the war. There was an air raid and we’d made it to the shelter. We thought we were safe. . . But a bomb caused a water heater to explode and it scarred his face.”
  • When a boy tells the store owner that Tommy stole the yo-yos, Tommy punched the boy in the stomach and the boy “bent over double.” Later, Tommy shoves the boy, who “lost his balance and fell into the dirt.”
  • Tommy’s mom gets upset at him and commands him to take his pants down. “When Mom started whipping me, I tried to make myself concentrate on normal things. . . But Mom just didn’t stop. I could feel the welts forming on welts on my butt. And when a lash went wild and hit my back, I couldn’t help crying out. . . Mom kept hitting me. It felt like a thousand bees, stinging me at once. . . Mom kept on. And Dad never came in to see if I was okay.”
  • Tommy’s neighbor tells him why she came to America. “The Nazis not just throw me in camp. They kill my boys and my husband.”
  • Tommy’s mom is upset that Tommy gave Mary Lou a pain pill. “Mom yelled at me to stop [crying], and I tried to, I really did. I wanted to be tough and stoic, but the tears kept coming. . .” Mary Lou told their mom to stop. “I knew Mary Lou was trying to help, but it was mortifying to have my older sister see me, my pants around my ankles, crying like a baby. . .Mom just ignored Mary Lou and kept hitting me. . .Mom paused, the belt dangling from her hand. . .Mom was breathing hard, sweat on her forehead, even though it was cold in the room.” Tommy’s dad intervenes.
  • Tommy and his friend, Eddie, play a mean joke on Little Skinny. At school, Little Skinny confronts them and “punched Eddie in the stomach. . . Little Skinny had his full weight on top of Eddie and was pounding away. One hit after another, I could see the blood pour out of Eddie’s nose.”
  • When Tommy is late, his mother slaps him. Tommy tells her, “’Go ahead. Slap the other side.’ She did.” One of the school nuns intervenes.
  • Tommy’s dog is hit by a car. “There was a huge red gash from one end of his belly to the other. . . I was pretty sure I could see his guts hanging out.” Tommy takes the dog to an adult friend, who is able to sew the dog’s wound. The dog lives.
  • When Tommy misses the bus, his mom “didn’t wait for me to pull down my pants this time, just slammed my hands down on the counter and started hitting me. . . I was too terrified to cry. Her blows were wild now, as likely to hit my back or my legs as my buttocks.” Tommy’s sister Pinky tries to stop her mom. “The belt flew through the air again. Pinky gasped. A big welt rose up on her skinny little arm.” Tommy yells and runs out of the house. The scene is described over three pages.
  • Tommy doesn’t keep his best friend, Eddie’s, secret. So at school, Eddie, “slugged me in the stomach. I wasn’t expecting the blow and I fell to the ground. My belly ached, twisted in knots, and for a moment, I thought I was going to throw up.” Tommy thinks about his mom’s beatings and doesn’t hit back.
  • Tommy, Eddie, and their dads go fishing. Eddie’s dad, Mr. Sullivan, gets drunk and the men start arguing. Mr. Sullivan “slapped Eddie on the cheek” for being disrespectful. Then Mr. Sullivan began shaking Eddie. Tommy thinks, “I bet it hurt being shaken like that. It had hurt when Mom had hit me.”
  • As the men’s arguing escalates, Mr. Sullivan “pulled out a handgun and pointed it at my dad’s face. . . Dad picked up the knife we used to gut fish.” Tommy and Eddie work together to diffuse the situation. Mr. Sullivan, “still had the gun pointed at my dad, but it was a bit lower now. . . Eddie and I both jumped onto his father, knocking him to the ground. The gun went off, but the bullet went wild, into the marshy grass.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • While Mary Lou is in the hospital, the doctors give her morphine for the pain. Her mother worries that “she’ll become an addict!”
  • When Mary Lou is allowed to go home for a visit, her mom “started rationing Mary Lou’s pain pills.” Her mom is worried that Mary Lou would become a drug addict.
  • When the sheriff goes to talk to the store owner, the owner gives the sheriff a beer.
  • On Halloween, a doctor gives Tommy’s mom “a pill” to help her sleep. After that, Tommy’s mom continues to take the pills and sleeps a lot.
  • After Tommy’s father goes to see Mary Lou, he comes home smelling like whiskey.
  • On Thanksgiving, Tommy’s father leaves and when he comes back, he “smelled like alcohol again.”
  • While in a courtroom, Tommy “listened to the next case: a man who had had too much to drink had backed his car into his neighbor’s bed of prize-winning roses.”
  • A man is fired because he was drinking at work.
  • While eating lunch with a friend, Tommy’s dad has a beer.

Language

  • The kids in the book occasionally call each other names such as stupid, jerk, and idiot.
  • Crap is used once.
  • A boy tells the store owner that Tommy stole the yo-yos, and Tommy calls the boy an idiot and a rat. Tommy’s friend calls the boy a tattletale.
  • Tommy calls a fat classmate, “Little Skinny.” Tommy often calls Little Skinny names such as idiot and fatty.
  • Tommy’s mom has to go in front of a judge for a speeding ticket. She curses to the judge in Polish, saying “pieprzony dupku!”
  • Tommy calls a girl, “Lizard-Face.” One of his friends joins in and calls someone else, “Monkey-Head.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Tommy’s family is Catholic and he goes to a Catholic school. When Tommy’s sister is burned, his mom says “prayers to the Virgin Mary.” Tommy says, “so many Hail Marys, it seemed like those were the only words left in the world.”
  • At school, the students have mass “every morning. That meant thirty-five minutes of peace and quiet—well, except for the standing up and kneeling, and chanting in Latin, but I could do all that in my sleep.”
  • After Tommy’s sister is injured, several people tell him, “We’re praying for your sister.”
  • When Tommy sees his sister for the first time after the accident, he begins to cry. He thinks, “I know I should be happy and thanking God, but I couldn’t stop crying.”
  • Tommy thinks the “Commies didn’t believe in freedom of religion either. Heck, they didn’t believe in religion at all.”
  • One man doesn’t want to include Sam when planning an event because his dad was rumored to be a communist. However, someone reminds the group of, “Ezekiel 18:20. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father.’”

The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World

The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World switches between the perspectives of Billy and Lydia—two teenagers who live in a poverty-stricken area in the Pacific Northwest called Fog Harbor. After their high schools merge, the two outcasts form a strange friendship. As they learn more about each other, strange things begin to happen around them: they experience unexplainable weather events and earthquakes, and they see apparitions that nobody else sees. The narrative borders on magical realism, as the strange events that plague the narrative seem to be tied to the characters’ personal and emotional journeys.

Lydia, whose mother disappeared when she was a child, is emotionally closed-off and spends all her days in the makeshift dance studio behind her father’s bar. Billy lives in a decrepit house with his emotionally abusive grandmother, where he spends all his time watching therapy talk shows on the 24-hour Alcoholics Anonymous TV channel. The setting of Fog Harbor is set in a larger world that serves as an exaggerated parody of late-2010s America, where the president has been replaced by a king. Savvy readers may recognize the King’s mannerisms and policies, as the figure seems to be a caricature of America’s 45th president, Donald Trump.

Caleb, who is Billy’s uncle, Fog Harbor’s most famous resident, and one of the world’s most notorious musicians, frequently speaks in interviews about his upbringing in poverty-stricken, drug-addicted Fog Harbor. When Caleb—a heroin addict who has been through rehab several times—disappears following a violent breakdown and shows up in Billy’s attic, Billy is tasked with keeping a secret and is forced to reckon with his family’s dysfunctional past. Meanwhile, Lydia begins to take dance lessons for the first time and is followed around by a small apparition that seems determined to make trouble for her.

The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World is as wordy as its title, with many wonderful lines and genuinely touching moments in the main characters’ central friendship. It is honest and discomforting in its depictions of a small town ravaged by poverty and drug addiction. Whether or not readers recognize their own hometowns in the foggy surrealist landscape, they will find the characters’ narrative voices compelling and achingly human.

Despite the harsh language and troubling subject matter, this narrative shines, especially in its portrayal of the main characters’ innocence and unwavering hope in the face of despair. Billy’s dogged determination to see the best in everyone is a heartrending and almost blinding contrast to his grandmother’s neglect and his family’s history of addiction. Lydia’s outer sarcastic façade hides her inner sensitivity and unhealed trauma at having lost her mother. Secondary characters like Lydia’s father and Billy’s grandmother create a cast of irresponsible adults who are imperfect and real.

Despite its political undertones, The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World is not quite a call to action or to political revolution. It’s something more subtle—perhaps a call to be kinder to one’s neighbors—but it’s engaging and surprising in the way it delivers this message. This book is the perfect read for a curious older reader who’s looking for a unique, high-quality literary narrative.

Sexual Content

  • Billy sometimes watches a show called Sexy Sober Survivor, where “fashion models go to rehab, except the rehab is on a deserted island…and they’re naked the whole time.” He wonders “whose job it is to put all those black bars on their interesting parts,” and “inevitably started thinking about what’s under those black bars, and then things got awkward again, and I had to excuse myself and go upstairs to my room, and hope… that this won’t be the time the house decides to finally collapse on me.” When the firefighters dig him out, he won’t be trying to “hide my boner when my arms are pinned under this thousand-pound beam.”
  • A therapy-TV personality sometimes tells “the story of how she used to be a prostitute who lived in a van by the river.” The reader never actually learns the story.
  • Lydia remarks that her peers are “just hoping they’re not the one who gets pregnant… as if babies and death are things you catch, as inevitable as a cold.”
  • While walking home, Lydia is harassed. “‘Looking good, baby,’ some douchebag yells out of a truck.” She gets them to go away by shouting, “Hi, I have AIDS and gonorrhea and a very small tail fused to my spine. Want to fuck?’”
  • The book frequently references a fictional YA series called “Unicorns Vs. Dragons,” where the hero “keeps his unicorn love interest chained up in his mountain cave to ‘protect her,’ which strikes Lydia as ‘rape-y.’”
  • The King, America’s dictatorial monarch, “ordered up a girlfriend, kind of like how [Lydia’s dad] ordered up a wife from the Philippines.”
  • Billy’s grandmother used to tell him “how I’m just a late bloomer and that’s good because it’s better that I stay her sweet boy as long as possible instead of turning into a sex-crazed pervert too early like most guys do.”
  • Caleb, Billy’s uncle, supposedly “got a girl pregnant when he was fourteen and Grandma had to pay for the abortion because no one else would.”
  • Billy recalls how, upon being approached by a tour bus for photos, Uncle Caleb’s friend Gordon “whipped out his penis and started peeing in the tour’s direction.”
  • In an interview, Uncle Caleb’s girlfriend recalls how “the sex that night was amazing.”
  • In another interview, the girlfriend “starts kissing [Caleb], and then she straddles him right there on the couch and starts unbuttoning his shirt, and then the interview is over.”
  • Caleb says he once “screwed an old lady for a case of beer.”
  • Lydia recalls how a regular in her father’s bar “has been staring at me since I was thirteen… he feels the need to tell me I’m pretty enough to be a supermodel.” Lydia finds this “gross because it proves that he’s looking at me the way drunk lonely men look at girls that are way too young for them. This is not a healthy environment for a teenager.”
  • A local says, “I heard [Billy’s] mom was still turning tricks long after she was showing.”
  • Lydia tells Caleb, “I guess you think all women should dress like your girlfriend and drip sex diseases everywhere they go.”
  • Lydia, after experiencing an emotional moment with Billy, thinks, “This is probably something close to how people feel after they sleep with someone and regret it.”
  • Billy thinks, “I would probably jump at any opportunity to do anything the least bit sex-related with an even non-beautiful girl who miraculously wanted to with me.”
  • Billy says, “I think giving someone art is just about the most intimate gift a person can give, except for maybe sex toys or something.”
  • A teacher tells Billy about “some kind of magic stone egg she bought from her life coach that she puts in her vagina, which I’m pretty sure is illegal for her to talk to me about.”
  • Lydia kisses Natalie, a girl from her dance studio. “I lean in and feel the world expanding as my lips touch hers. I feel everything pulse open and wash clean.”
  • In the epilogue, Billy lives with his girlfriend. Billy says, “It’s not even like we spend all our time doing hanky-panky (though that is a large percentage of what we do).” The reader is never given a clarification as to what hanky-panky is.

Violence

  • Billy recalls how his grandmother “threatened to smack my chin, even though these days, smacking chins is mostly considered child abuse.”
  • Much of the violence in the story is observed by the main characters when their high schools merge. Billy’s grandmother suggests he bring a steak knife to the first day of school.
  • Students have to use plastic utensils now because “a girl stabbed a guy last week with her fork.”
  • During a fight at school, “one guy pummels another… and then blood starts flying.”
  • Billy recounts how a kid in his class “got so mad when he had to put his phone away that he started punching a teacher in the nose.”
  • Lydia throws a glass at a drunk man at the bar. “The glass barely misses his face as it smashes into the wall behind him.”
  • During his public breakdown, “Caleb’s tiny, sweatpantsed figure is swinging a guitar around, chasing his bandmates, who are fleeing off the stage… Then he throws the guitar into the audience, then the mic stands, then the drums, and the muffled voices turn to screams.”
  • In another public appearance, he “tears the mic off his shirt, jumps out of his seat, and smashes his beer bottle on the camera.”
  • Billy’s grandmother tells a journalist to kill himself.
  • A news report says that the King “accidentally bombed the wrong village somewhere this morning and killed a few thousand innocent people.”
  • Caleb’s girlfriend expresses a desire to “bomb all of Washington State west of Olympia so they can give it back to the trees.”
  • Billy’s neighbor, who is in an extremist religious cult, threatens another resident with “one of those big scary guns people only use in wars and mass shootings and starts chasing the guy down the street.” Billy watches the scene from his porch, and the situation de-escalates over three pages.
  • Caleb recalls how Billy’s grandfather “smashed up the house on a regular basis.”
  • Billy thinks that if he expressed his true environmental opinions, the locals would “probably murder me and tie my dead body to a tree and write on it with blood, ‘Are you happy now, tree hugger?’”
  • A riot breaks out over an announcement regarding logging rights in the forest. “One man pushes another, who falls into another man behind him, who falls into another, who falls into another man behind him, and then all hell breaks loose, the crowd a flurry of pushing, punching, shouting, glass breaking, and random things on fire.” Billy watches it on TV.
  • School is let out early because of a bomb threat.
  • Lydia tells Caleb, “If you try to commit suicide in my house, I will fucking kill you.”
  • In addition to verbal abuse, Billy’s grandmother hits him. This only happens once in the narrative, but it is implied to have happened before. When Billy tries to approach her after she’s heard a distressing news story, “She spins around, whacks my arm, lunges, and even sitting on the couch she’s strong enough to push me to the floor.”
  • The King drops a nuclear bomb in the Pacific, causing a tsunami to destroy most of Fog Harbor. The climax of the book follows the characters as they race to higher ground. Many people survive, but a loss of life is implied.
  • “Cult Girl” points a gun in a reporter’s face to get her to go away.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • An old town rivalry is rumored to have started with “opium-crazed mill workers.”
  • Billy’s town has “the highest per capita heroin deaths in the state.”
  • Billy says he’s never been tempted to do drugs because “I’m not cool enough to be straight-edge, and I’m not smart enough to be a nerd, so mostly I’m just sober out of fear.” His grandmother often tells him “that addiction is in my blood and I’m a junkie waiting to happen, and I figure going through withdrawal once as a baby is more than enough.”
  • Lydia’s father runs a bar, so she spends most of her time there. “Technically, it’s against the law for me to be in here since I’m underage, but no one cares about laws like that here.”
  • Caleb smokes cigarettes and weed. While hiding in the attic, he enlists Billy to buy him weed from his old friend and dealer, Gordon. Billy doesn’t want Caleb to relapse, but Caleb says, “In the great scheme of things I’ve done, weed is barely a drug.”
  • When visiting Gordon to buy weed, Billy watches him take “some kind of contraption with water in it from the table, grips it between his legs while the hand of his good arm holds a lighter to it, inhales, and exhales a giant cloud of sweet, but slightly rancid-smelling smoke.”
  • Billy completes the drug deal and receives “a plastic baggie of dry greenish-brown clumps” (marijuana).
  • During a later drug deal, Gordon hands Billy a beer and offers him “molly” and “nitrous cartridges.” Billy doesn’t drink the beer or take Gordon up on his offer.
  • When Caleb smokes all his weed and falls asleep, Billy wonders, “Can someone die of a marijuana overdose?”
  • Caleb tells Billy to ask his drug dealer “where to get some dope.” Billy tells him, “I’m not going to help you kill yourself. If you want heroin, you can leave this attic and get it yourself.”

Language

  • Fuck, shit, damn, hell, goddamn, and asshole are used frequently. Bitch, bastard, crap, and “screw you” are used infrequently.
  • Lydia works at a fast-food restaurant called “Taco Hell.”
  • A regular at Lydia’s father’s bar calls Billy “retarded.”

Supernatural

  • Some of the events that surround Billy and Lydia seem supernatural. During one of the final scenes, while the town is being threatened by a natural disaster, Lydia and Billy see unicorns and dragons running through the streets. “What looks like a dragon and two unicorns run by, way larger and way faster than anyone in costume could possibly be.” The narrators never get a good look at the creatures.
  • A small girl nobody else can see follows Lydia around, often kicking her or breaking things.
  • A fan asks Billy if he is Caleb’s ghost.

Spiritual Content

  • Billy’s neighbors are in a cult. Billy often sees the neighbors’ child—a girl his age— in the window, and he refers to her as “Cult Girl.”
  • Cult Girl and her family attend “some weird church in a trailer by the freeway that says women are supposed to stay in the home and kids should be kept pure and not have any contact with sinners, aka everyone else.”
  • When Billy gets the chance to talk to Cult Girl, he thinks, “For all I know, the only history she’s ever been taught is stories from the Bible. She might still think the Earth’s flat.”
  • Later, Billy asks Cult Girl what happened after the Biblical great flood. Ruth says, “The waters took a while to recede, but then there was a brave new world to conquer… Then God invented rainbows. But it’s just a story. God also said He’d never make it flood again. But He lied… God made it flood because He realized He made a mistake and humans were evil and needed to be destroyed.”
  • Lydia’s father, who is going through a “Wicca phase,” tells the kids, “Samhain is the ancient pagan holiday marking a time when the boundary between this world and the spirit world thins and can be more easily crossed… I can tell you some incantations you can use to summon the spirits.” The kids don’t take him up on his offer.
  • Billy says, “No one ever taught me how to pray, but I did it anyway. I got on my knees and everything. I asked God or whoever to protect my uncle and keep him safe.”
  • A group of kids at school form a “morning prayer circle table,” where they stand up from their seats and shout, “Who’s in the house? J.C.’s in the house!” Billy thinks, “Who in their right mind would thank God for any of this?”
  • A teacher tells Billy about “chakras and crystals.”
  • Lydia calls Christmas “a marketing conspiracy in the guise of a religious tradition I don’t even believe in.”
  • During an emergency, a girl from Lydia’s dance studio runs away from her parents because they “kept praying. It was driving me crazy.”
  • Caleb goes to a Thai meditation retreat and says he wants to become a monk.
  • Billy says, “Apparently that Buddha guy that Caleb likes came up with the idea [of living in the moment] way before therapists did.”

by Caroline Galdi

 

Eclipse

Now that Edward is back, Bella wants things to go back to the way they were…but too much has changed. Her best friend Jacob happens to be a werewolf, the mortal enemy of vampires. She is desperate to keep her friendship with Jacob, but she isn’t sure how that will be possible. Edward actively stops her from seeing Jacob, and Bella is constantly hurting her best friend by not loving him the way he wants her too.

Even worse, old enemies are on the prowl. The Vulturi will be a threat until Bella is changed into a vampire. She wants to change immediately, but Edward’s family insists on waiting until after her high school graduation. To Bella, it seems a terrible time to remain human, especially as Victoria is back, and more elusive than ever on her quest for revenge.

Eclipse spins out a heartbreaking love triangle among constant danger and suspense, which forces Bella to decide how much sacrifice love is worth. This installment in the Twilight Series will captivate readers of both Team Edward and Team Jacob, and it will leave them in breathless suspense until the end. As the series hurtles towards its final book, Bella will make a heartbreaking decision that will decide the trajectory of her life.

Eclipse combines Edward’s family and their enemies from Twilight with the werewolves introduced in New Moon. The interactions between these two sets of immortals will excite readers and keep them turning the pages long into the night. Parents may not like that Bella pushes to sleep with Edward, but they will appreciate that Edward says no – he will not sleep with her until they are married. Overall, Eclipse continues to uphold the quality of this engaging series.

Sexual Content

  • Bella and Edward kiss several times. Some are described in detail, such as “My arms locked behind his neck . . . One hand slid down my back, pressing me tighter against his stone chest . . . Making the most of my last seconds, I crushed myself closer, molding myself to the shape of him. The tip of my tongue traced the curve of his lower lip.” Other kisses are briefly described, such as, “He interrupted me with a quick kiss,” or “then he pulled the helmet off so that he could kiss me.”
  • When Bella’s dad tries to talk to her about being safe “when you’re physically involved,” Bella exclaims, “Please tell me you are not trying to have a sex talk with me.” When her father refuses to drop the subject, she says, “I really wish you were not forcing me to say this out loud, Dad. Really. But . . . I am a . . . virgin, and I have no immediate plans to change that status.”
  • Angela and Ben, two friends from Bella’s school, are dating. Ben “threw his arm around Angela’s neck and pulled her face down to his height so that he could kiss her enthusiastically.”
  • Edward kisses Bella to make Jacob jealous. “I turned my face up for a goodbye peck, but Edward took me by surprise, fastening his arms tightly around me and kissing me with as much enthusiasm as he had in the garage—before long, I was gasping for air.”
  • Jacob thinks Bella is in love with him, and to prove it he kisses her. Jacob’s “lips crushed mine, stopping my protest. He kissed me angrily, roughly, his other hand gripping tight around the back of my neck making escape impossible . . . Acting on instinct, I let my hands drop to my side, and shut down. I opened my eyes and didn’t fight, didn’t feel . . . It worked. The anger seemed to evaporate, and he pulled back to look at me. He pressed his lips softly to mine again, once, twice . . . a third time. I pretended I was a statue and waited.”
  • Edward and Bella make out in bed. “His hand curved around my elbow, moving slowly down my arm, across my ribs, and over my waist, tracing along my hip and down my leg, around my knee. He paused there, his hand curling around my calf. He pulled my leg up suddenly, hitching it around his hip . . . he rolled to the side, pulling me on top of him.”
  • Bella wants to sleep with Edward, but he insists they be married first.
  • Bella kisses Jacob twice. The first time, “my lips were moving with his in strange, confusing ways they’d never moved before – because I didn’t have to be careful with Jacob, and he certainly wasn’t being careful with me.” Then, Jacob’s “hands were soft on my face and his warm lips were gentle, unexpectedly hesitant. It was brief, and very, very sweet.”

Violence

  • Two vampires, Victoria and Riley, attack Bella. Edward and Seth, a werewolf, defend her. “Riley was on his feet again, looking misshapen and haggard, but he was able to fling a vicious kick into Seth’s shoulder. I heard the bone crunch . . . Riley took a swipe at him with one mangled hand . . . Riley bellowed and launched a massive backhanded blow that caught Seth full in his broad chest. Seth’s huge body soared ten feet and crashed into the rocky wall over my head with a force that seemed to shake the whole peak.” The fight takes place over eight pages.
  • Edward and Seth dismember and burn the bodies of the two vampires that attacked them. “Swift and coolly businesslike, [Edward] dismembered the headless corpse . . . I didn’t have time to recover before both he and Seth were back . . . Seth was carrying a large chunk – the torso – in his mouth.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Rosalie tells a story about her former fiancé. “I’d never seen him drink before. A toast, now and then, at a party. He’d told me he didn’t like champagne. I hadn’t realized that he preferred something much stronger.”

Language

  • Damn is used several times. When Bella discovers her friend Jacob isn’t aging, she says “Damn it! What kind of world is this?” Another time, when Jacob hurts himself he says, “Damn it! Ouch!”
  • Crap is used several times. Bella tells Edward, “Screw the protecting me crap, please.”
  • Hell is used a few times. Once, Bella demands, “What the hell is all this?” Later when Jasper is telling a story, he says, “All hell broke loose.”
  • Pissed is used once. Jacob thinks, “Pissed as I was, I still felt guilty when I watched the spasm of pain shoot across her face.”

Supernatural

  • Edward and his family are vampires, and Bella meets other vampires that pass through Forks. Unlike most vampires, Edward and his family survive off the blood of animals, so they do not have to murder people.
  • Some vampires have special abilities. Edward can read minds; his brother Jasper can control the emotions of those around him; his sister Alice can see bits and pieces of the future.
  • Jacob and his tribe can transform into giant wolves. “With another sharp tearing sound, Jacob exploded, too. He burst out of his skin—one second it was Jacob diving into the air, and then it was the gigantic, russet brown wolf—so enormous that I couldn’t make sense of its mass somehow fitting inside Jacob.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Morgan Lynn

The Spinner Prince

Prince Leo is next in line for the throne of Singara, a land ruled by super-evolved felines. As a thirteen-year-old, Leo is small for his age. But like all thirteen-year-olds, Leo must prove his worth by hunting a deadly beast called a slaycon. If Leo kills the beast, he will still face many obstacles, including keeping his uncle from taking the thrown. Leo’s uncle will stop at nothing to gain power and control. And once he does, he will invade the neighboring pride.

In Singara, all fiction is outlawed and anyone who tells a story is exiled. Leo must hide the fact that he is a Spinner. Leo has been taught that, “Spinners are cursed with a dangerous disease officially known as the fiction affliction or story sickness, which causes them to spew fiction without warning.” When Leo tells stories, they come alive in visions. After Leo tells a story, one character is left behind. Leo can make the character disappear or he can bring them into his world. Each character wants to help Leo, but Leo just wants them to go away.

The future of Singara is in Leo’s hands. Can he conceal his curse, claim the throne, and protect his realm? Or will he embrace his power and discover a far greater destiny?

Leo’s adventure will take readers into an interesting world where felines consider fiction to be poisonous to the mind. The pride values strength, tradition, and science. Even though Leo’s grandfather has declared Leo the heir to the throne, some of the pride believe Leo’s uncle should be king because Leo’s father is unknown. Much like the Lion King, The Spinner Prince is a story about political unrest, friendship, and fighting evil.

Leo tells his own story which allows readers to understand his fears and concerns. While Leo has a good heart, he often makes unwise decisions. However, along the way, Leo learns the importance of relying on and trusting others. Each member of Leo’s group must work together if they are to succeed in stopping the war.

The Spinner Prince isn’t only a story about Leo. Because Leo is a Spinner, he often recites stories that are based on folktales from many cultures and traditions. However, readers who are familiar with the Bible will recognize the parallels. Each chapter begins with Sayings of the Ancients, which give a piece of wisdom, such as, “You make yourself by the choices you make.”

The Spinner Prince is full of action, intrigue, and interesting characters. Both Leo and the reader will wonder who can be trusted. Although the story is interesting, the complicated plot and large cast of characters make The Spinner Prince best for strong readers. As Leo learns untold truths, he will begin questioning his societies’ beliefs. A wise shepherd tells Leo, “It is hard to be a Spinner. It is much worse to hate yourself for it. We have been raised to view ourselves as afflicted instead of gifted, but that is just another lie we Singas tell.”

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Leo is hiding the fact that he is a Spinner because “if the disease is proven, Spinners get banished and live among the exiles on the other side of the Great Mountain, right after having their tongues cut out of their heads and nailed to a post in the city.”
  • As a rite of passage, Leo must kill a slaycon before the slaycon kills him. The hunt is described over 17 pages.
  • When Leo sees the slaycon, Storm, he uses a slingshot to throw a stone. “The stone sails across the water and pounds the brute in the snout. . . Storm recoils and whimpers with the impact. He shakes his head, snarls, and charges straight into the river.”
  • Strom struggles to cross the river. Leo believes he can slay Storm, but when he approaches the slaycon, “His tail blurs and I’m knocked off my feet. The blade flies from my hand. I hit the ground and roll away while Storm springs to his feet. . .” Leo runs and Strom falls behind.
  • Leo pretends to be injured and writhes. When Storm pounces, Leo loops “the bag over his head, yanking it all the way up to their ears, and pulling the drawstring. . .I reach for my dagger as Storm’s tail sweeps the ground and flings my legs out from under me. . . I land in a heap and scamper on all fours like a panicky insect to my blade.”
  • While Storm’s head is caught in the bag, Leo hesitates to kill him. When Storm gets the bag off of his head, he “charges, preparing to bite. I [Leo] dodge and my blade lands behind his head, lopping off an ear as I roll to the ground. . . Strom howls, spins, and leaps. I dive under him and land a decent slice to his underside and another to his right back foot. Blood squirts into my face and torso.” Then, Leo climbs into a tree.
  • Leo uses his sling to shoot at Storm. “The pellet vanishes into the tunnel of Storm’s throat. However, Storm is too focused on my foot to notice or care. His mouth does not close. Instead it reaches higher, mouth agape, pushing himself on his tail. His jaws snap, and I feel teeth puncturing my right leg.” Leo goes numb and falls from the tree.
  • During a meal to celebrate Leo as the official heir to the throne, his cousin Tamir makes a scene. A soldier, Kayden, “hisses and thumps Tamir on the side of the head, raking his face with extended claws. Tamir makes no effort to defend himself, and the blow sends him staggering to his knees. . . Kayden hits him again with such force, I want to look away. Another blow follows. And another.” Leo’s grandfather orders Tamir to be killed, but Leo steps in. Tamir’s tail is cut off and he is thrown in prison.
  • When Leo gets to the academy, he must walk in the middle of two lines of cadets. As Leo walks, a cadet “huffs a little roar and thrust her blade at my head. I instinctively dodge the attack, and a cadet from the opposite line sweeps my leg, sending me crashing to the ground. . . The next cadet comes at me with his blade, this time a jab to my ribs. I bend my body around the blade, and a different cadet from the opposite line once again sweeps my leg and drops me.” After being hit, Leo closes his eyes and continues the walk. He can feel “a breeze pass over my muzzle. With another step, a blade whistles behind my head and down my back.” He makes it through the line uninjured.
  • During a practice battle, “Zoya and 10-2 square off. The brawny 10-2 surges forward, plowing into Zoya’s middle and forcing her down. He backflips over Zoya, but Zoya locks her hind legs around 10-2’s waist and uses their combined momentum to launch herself upright and on top of 10-2. Zoya slams 10-2 to the ground, sits on his torso, and bashes him in the head with one fist, knocking him momentarily senseless.” Leo steps in to help and conjures Rukan, who “snatches me up in his great mouth. With a flick of his head, Rukan launches me into the crowd. . . Rukan snatches her [Amara] in midair between his teeth and flings her aside. She too crashes into the crowd.” The cadets attack Rukan, who runs away. The scene is described over eight pages.
  • During feeding time, Leo’s cousin, Amara, approaches Leo. “Her claws sink into my pelt, causing me to wince and tremble.” Zoya sticks up for Leo and “tackles Amara, and pulls her to the floor. Amara kicks and screeches, but without success. Zoya has her pinned to the floor. . .Then we are all on our feet, lashing out like wild animals defending their last scrap of territory.” Leo’s friends are getting “pummeled.” The cadets fight until the Alpha stops them. The scene is described over three pages.
  • While leaving the academy, Leo and his squadron are taken through a mountain tunnel, where giant leeches live. “The slimy wretches circle around Stick’s and Zoya’s feet, then latch on to the legs of my karkadann. He rears up and kicks.” Anjali tries to hack off the leeches and “drives a blade point into the head of a leech. . . the skewered creature squeals and twists under the blade.”
  • In order to repel the leeches, Leo rubs their blood over his pelt. Someone “snatches the tail end of the nearest one, lifts it high with one hand, and plunges her blade deep into its wriggling body.” The leeches are held over Leo’s head and, “Hot sticky blood spills onto my head and shoulders.” The leech scene is described over three pages.
  • A group of soldiers surrounds Leo and his friends. In order to escape, Leo summons a draycon, who “leaps at the soldiers and knocks five of them off their feet with one swat of his tail.” Leo and his friends flee, but they tell the draycon, “Make sure those soldiers stay far away from here.”
  • While riding in a carriage, soldiers try to take Leo and his grandfather hostage. Leo uses a trap door to get out of the carriage. When the soldiers see him, they shoot arrows. “The first arrow zings harmlessly overhead. The second implants itself in the rump of one Karkadann. He screeches and quickens his pace, forcing his partner to keep up.” Leo is the only one that escapes.

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Someone gave Leo a pellet that would mask Leo’s scent. Leo discovers that the pellet was poison.

Language

  • Someone calls Leo a “royal bastard” because no one knows how his father is.
  • One of the cadets tells Leo, “Prince of not, you have to watch your step with Jakal and Alpha. If you cross them, they will put a foot so far up your dirt hole, you will cough out a big toe.”

Supernatural

  • Being a Spinner is considered a disease. A Spinner is compelled to tell stories. When they are telling the story, a vision appears that only the Spinner can see. When the story ends, “a character or creature is always left behind when the disease hits me. These beings are faded, ghostly, and freakish.” Leo tries to hide the fact that he is a Spinner, but he often has these visions. When a character from the vision appears, Leo can talk to them.
  • Leo learns that Spinners “are gateways to and from another world. The fictions are gifts from Alayah, sent through Spinners, gifts of wisdom and truth. For a few powerful Spinners, beings from the stories are pulled into our world to protect and serve the one who brought them here.”
  • Leo has a vision of a great hunter. He describes it as a “three-sixty waking dream.” The story of a hunter is described over two pages. When the story ends, the hunter is “in the halfway state: ghostly, phantasmal. I can almost look through him. . .”
  • Leo can summon the characters from his stories. During the slaycon hunt, Leo summons a hunter, Oreyon. “When Oreyon appears, he is no longer a phantom, a quasi-physical apparition. He is real. Vivid. Solid. Completely in the world.” Oreyon gives Leo advice on how to win the hunt.
  • When Leo is bitten by the slaycon, he dies. Leo meets Daviyah the “Eleventh Skahyah in your world.” While there, Leo thinks, “We Singas don’t believe anything goes on after death. When you die, that’s it. You’re done.” Daviyah explains, “What you call death is only a door. You have crossed the threshold of that door, but you cannot stay.” When Leo returns to his body, Daviyah tells him, “I am always with you.”
  • During a story, a sage appears and “wraps her hands around my [Leo’s] wound and mumbles strange words. I tremble. . .” Because of the sage, Leo’s wound heals quickly.
  • Grandfather tells Leo about the great war. One of the Maguar was “in some sort of a trance, and yet he spoke with a commanding voice. . .As he spoke, a horde of beasts appeared, slaycon and draycon, giant wolves and bears, serpents as wide as this carriage, and other horrible monsters unknown to the earth.” The creatures attacked the Singa and the “battlefield was awash in blood and covered with bodies of Singas and Maguar alike, though the casualties were heavier on our side. We lost many, many fine warriors in the effort. . .”
  • When Zoya breaks her leg, Leo conjures up a healer. “Instantly, Vishna appears at my side. Without glancing at me, the strange elder squats down and lays her hands on Zoya’s damaged leg. She mutters something in the Old Language.” After healing Zoya’s leg, Vishna leaves.
  • Leo sends the characters from his stories back to where they came from. “Where I would normally find my chest and stomach, there is a patch of blue sky and that glorious light spinning over an infinite sea. Countless winged beings soar and swirl around the light, singing with joy.” One by one, the fictions walk into Leo “disappearing in a flash of light. . . Each creature departs with a flash as it dives into me.” Once every fiction has returned, Daviyah says, “I am proud of you. Alayah is pleased with you.” The scene is described over five pages.

Spiritual Content

  • The Singa and the Maguar are enemies. Leo has never met a Maguar, but he has been told, “They are a superstitious breed, head so full of stories and fantasies about their gods, they wouldn’t recognize a scientific fact if it bit them on the nose . . . Consider the sun. The Maguar believe the sun is a servant of their god, which flies around our planet every day. What nonsense!”
  • The Singa find a hole in a border fence. Leo’s grandfather is afraid that the Maguar will attack. Leo’s grandfather says, “Perhaps their make-believe god has spoken or they have invented a new fiction about the future.”
  • Leo meets a shepherd who can speak the “Old Language.” The shepherd sings “a song of praise to Alayah, blessed be the name.” The shepherd explains the song, “Alayah is known by many different titles. . . One of them is the Lord of Lights. . . We come from the light and we return to the light. A beautiful image, don’t you think?”
  • Leo learns the meaning of faith. An elder tells him, “Faith is a special kind of knowing outside of the evidence, sometimes even contrary to the evidence.”
  • A shepherd tells a story about when humans ruled the earth. Humans “were violent. Greed, bloodshed, and war were common. In time, all the spilled blood flowed like rivers and formed one big pool. Drawn to the scent of salty blood, the great and horrible sea demon, Hasatamara, rose up with a mighty wave and flooded the land to claim it for himself. . . But Alayah, blessed be thy name, punished the sea demon Hasatamara and sealed him into the heart of the mountain.” Alayah saved two humans, who were changed into a new species.
  • The firewing is a messenger of Alayah.
  • The shepherd sings “a prayer of thanks to Alayah for the return of the sun.”

Serious Moonlight

Birdie has been raised in isolation and homeschooled by strict grandparents. With no friends, Birdie spent her time reading mystery books. Birdie’s overactive imagination keeps her entertained. When her grandmother dies, Birdie’s world expands. She takes a job working the graveyard shift at a historic Seattle hotel.

Birdie hopes that her new job will give her the opportunity to be brave and solve a mystery. When her cute coworker, Daniel Aoki, has a mystery to solve, he wants Birdie’s help. The two come together to investigate a hotel guest, who they think is a famous reclusive writer. Together they embark on an adventure to uncover the writer’s identity. As the two try to solve the mystery, Birdie must also try to understand her growing feelings for Daniel.

With a wide variety of unique characters, Serious Moonlight delves into the complications that come with relationships. Both Daniel and Birdie are connected by their love of mystery as well as the fact that their fathers are not present in their lives. Birdie struggles with understanding her feelings for Daniel, especially since the first time they met they had sex. Like many teens, Birdie has questions about sex, relationships, and her own motives.

Told from Birdie’s point of view, readers can understand Birdie’s insecurities, worries, and confusion. Many teens will relate to Birdie because she is a likable character who is just trying to figure out what adulthood looks like. Birdie has a positive relationship with her grandfather and her aunt, who want to help her navigate life’s difficulties. By the end of the story, Birdie learns that “Missing people is hard. Letting new people inside is harder. But the reward for making the effort was greater than I could have imagined… It took me a long time to figure out that not everyone in my life was meant to stay. But using that armor didn’t shield me from future heartache. And even heartache felt is a million times better than running away.”

While Serious Moonlight has some light, humorous moments, it is not a Hallmark romance. The story hits on several difficult topics, including grief, sexual relationships, and having a child out of wedlock. The descriptive sexual content and the profane language may surprise many readers. The ending of the story has a few surprises, but Birdie’s conflicts are neatly wrapped up in a way that is not necessarily realistic.

In the end, Serious Moonlight is an entertaining, suspenseful story best suited for mature readers. Readers who are looking for an entertaining, but tamer teen romance should read Somewhere Only We Know by Maurene Goo or What Light by Jay Asher.

Sexual Content

  • Birdie doesn’t know who her father is because her mother “got knocked up by an unknown boy when she was a rebellious seventeen-year-old.”
  • Birdie loses her virginity to a boy she just met. They have sex in the back of his car. Birdie wasn’t thinking “because once we got back there and clothes started getting unbuttoned and unzipped, it all happened so fast… So when it was over, I bolted.”
  • Birdie reads Seattle’s local alt-weekly city paper. When she reads the ads, “a few were just begging for kinky hookups.”
  • When Birdie tells her aunt about having sex, her aunt says, “Do you know how much weird sex I’ve had in my life… Sometimes it’s good; sometimes it’s awkward. Sometimes it’s just plain bad. It’s never the same.” Their conversation lasts for two pages.
  • Daniel tells Birdie about his father. “My dad didn’t want to have anything to do with me, so he basically gave my mom a big hunk of cash for an abortion, washed his hands, and said adios.”
  • Birdie thinks back to when she had sex. “I was transported back into his car, and my hands were in his hair, and he was kissing me into a wobbly, weak pulp.”
  • While driving a customer, Daniel “heard some Amazon bigwig order two male prostitutes on his phone.”
  • Birdie has a fling with one of her friend’s brothers. After basketball practice, “he kissed me by the fence. Then again, two days later, for much longer. Secret basketball make-out sessions became a regular thing for a few weeks.”
  • Daniel tells Birdie that it was a mistake to have sex because it was “pretty awful.”
  • While at a party, Birdie and Daniel are in character. They pretend to be teachers. When they talk about who their characters are, Daniel says, “We have ten [kids]… You couldn’t stay away from me. I tried to resist, but the smell of chalk dust and blackboards excited you, so we were constantly having sex in the classroom where we taught.”
  • While at the party, Birdie and Daniel are alone when Birdie kisses him. “Oh God, did he kiss me back. His mouth was on mine. Warm. Open. Eager. He kissed me like he meant it…” They were interrupted by other guests.
  • Birdie goes into a store and buys condoms. She’s surprised by the variety: “Fiery ice. Studded. Sensitive. Extra sensitive… Armor of the Gods.”
  • Daniel tells Birdie that he had sex with “someone I had a crush on.”
  • When Daniel tells Birdie that he loves her, they kiss. “We kissed like we were desperate, separated for years and had only minutes to spare until the world ended, rushing, breathless, all roaming hands-teeth-tongue…”
  • Birdie and Daniel kiss. Birdie “Kissed him back without thinking. His lips were soft and warm… Pleasure flooded my limbs. Then he was pulling away…” Daniel gives Birdie oral sex. At first, Birdie “nearly blacked out. First from embarrassment, then from pleasure.” The scene is described over two pages.
  • Daniel’s friend teases him about his good mood. His friend joked “about me having a look on my face as if I’d spent the weekend in Las Vegas with a bunch of male hookers and a bag of cocaine.”
  • While at work, Daniel and Birdie “may have taken advantage of our working situation and made use of an unbooked hotel room on our lunch break.”
  • Birdie’s aunt becomes pregnant after spending time with her ex-boyfriend. She says, “We’d been texting. One thing led to another, and we spent the weekend together in Scottsdale.”
  • Birdie’s mother died because of complications from a pregnancy. Birdie finds out that her mother “didn’t know who the father was, and she wasn’t planning on keeping it.”
  • Birdie and Daniel kiss, and “his mouth came down on mine. He kissed me quickly—small, desperate kisses all over my mouth, until I flung my arms around him and kiss him back.”

Violence

  • In the past, Daniel tried to kill himself. He “tried to overdose and was found in the school library by a janitor.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Birdie’s grandfather was in an accident, which “made him dependent upon mild opiates.”
  • When Birdie falls asleep on the ferry, an employee wakes her up. Birdie was “worried he thought I might be a drunkard or a heroin addict.”
  • During a dinner party, the adults have champagne. One of the guests gets drunk.
  • Birdie goes with her aunt to an art dealer’s house, where he has a “tray of vodka bottles.”
  • Birdie gets high when she accidentally eats gummy worms that are medicated with cannabis.
  • Daniel and Birdie go to an opera where “patrons cluster around a cocktail bar, drinking and chatting.”

Language

  • Profanity is used often. Profanity includes asshole, crap, bastard, damn, fuck, hell, jackass, piss, and shit. For example after they have sex, Daniel tells Birdie that, “I feel like an asshole, and I wish I had a time machine so that I could go back and change everything.”
  • Jesus, Christ, God, Oh My God and oh God are used as an exclamation occasionally.
  • When Birdie was ten, her aunt taught her “a dozen words that contained the word ‘cock.’”
  • Birdie’s aunt tells her, “your mother was a goddess. Not a whore. Not a sinner. You know this.”
  • Birdie says “GD” instead of saying “Goddammit.”
  • Daniel tells Birdie a story about a man who was “a real prick.”
  • Daniel calls someone “a total dick.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Birdie’s “grandmother had been religious. However, Grandpa veered toward angel sighting and UFOs and people communicating with their long-lost Aunt Margie from Topeka.”
  • When her aunt embarrasses her, Birdie thinks, “If there were an all-powerful being that ruled the universe, it would have surely heard my desperate prayer to please, oh please, have mercy and strike me down. I needed a natural disaster pronto—earthquake, tornado, tsunami. Anything.”
  • Birdie is confused about Daniel and thinks, “I wished someone could tell me what to do about Daniel. I wished I believed in something, so I could ask for a sign. Fate. God. Myself. Elvis.”

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Vol 2

When Link travels to the Twilight Realm to save Ilia, he is transformed into a wolf and is quickly captured. A Twilight imp named Minda takes a liking to Link and helps him escape. Minda introduces Link to Princess Zelda, who explains how the King of Shadows has cast the kingdom of Hyrule into perpetual twilight. The King of Shadows seeks to rule everything under the light and dark. Princess Zelda is powerless to stop him. She prays every day that the gods will save her people. Is Link the prayed-for hero?

But as a wolf, what can Link do? He can talk to animals in his wolf form, but he cannot communicate with his friends or wield a weapon. As Minda leads Link on a quest, it is unclear to readers and to Link himself whether Minda is helping Link save his people or tricking him for her own gain. While this graphic novel has more action than the first book, video gamers who have played Twilight Princess may become bored, as this graphic novel follows the game so closely that it begins to feel like a recap. For readers unfamiliar with the games, this installment may be more interesting.

Link is a relatable character that readers will root for, but the other characters in the story remain two-dimensional, leaving much to be desired. This story has several battle scenes scattered throughout, but there are only a few violent images where Link is shown slashing monsters with his sword or attacking in his wolf-form. The images are not gory. The theme of Twilight Princess Vol 2 follows Link’s struggle to find his inner strength in order to protect his loved ones.

Twilight Princess Vol 2 is darker than the video game. However, the story will appeal to reluctant readers because the Manga-style illustrations tell the story through pictures and uses a limited amount of words. Each page contains 1-6 simple sentences, which appear in thought bubbles. Similar to the original Batman comics, Twilight Princess’s battle scenes use onomatopoeia words, such as “Bwommm” and “gyaaah.” Overall, Link fans may be better off sticking with the video game and skipping the graphic novels altogether.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • A “demon thief” is banished to the Twilight Realm. He is stabbed with a sword, and the flesh melts from his face before he is sucked into the Twilight Realm.
  • When Princess Zelda tells the story of her kingdom being attacked, the illustrations depict an explosion and a monster slowly crushing a guard to death.
  • Link battles a shadow monster and eventually kills it. The fight is illustrated over six pages.
  • A demon monkey lashes out with fire, burning the forest and killing several animals, who are drawn terrified, aflame, and wounded.
  • Link fights the demon monkey. Their first battle takes place over three pages. Their second battle takes place over five pages.
  • Link battles a giant plant monster and slays it. This battle takes place over nine pages.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • Link lives in a world with magic, shadow beasts, and demons. When people from the land of light are engulfed by the Twilight Realm, they turn into lost souls.
  • When Link travels to the Twilight Realm, he is transformed into a giant wolf. While in his wolf form, Link can communicate with animals.
  • Link meets an alpha monkey who “absorbed the power of shadow… He was originally a monkey, but now he’s a demon. He can’t tell friend from foe.”
  • When Link unlocks his instinctive wolf senses, he’s able to see the insects that are “the true form of the shadow demons.” One of the insects is controlling the monkey demon, making him act cruelly.
  • Link finds a boomerang, which speaks to him. It says, “I am the fairy of winds that inhabits the boomerang. You freed me from an evil force, so I can reclaim my true power… Please, use the boomerang in which my power resides.”

Spiritual Content

  • There is a legend that when evil people tried to use magic to take over the land, “the goddesses grew angry at this affront and sent four spirits of light to seal the upstarts’ magical power away in the shadow crystal. Furthermore, the mirror of shadow prevented these wizards from entering the world of light. They were exiled to the twilight realm.”
  • Link meets a light spirit who tells him, “By orders of the gods, I am one of the four spirits of light who protect Hyrule.” The spirit asks Link for his help in saving the land from darkness.

by Morgan Lynn

Tears of a Tiger

After the basketball game, Andy and his friends just wanted to have a little fun. When they pile into Andy’s car and begin drinking beer, they think Andy’s swerving is funny. The fun ends when Andy plows into a wall, killing Rob, Andy’s best friend and the captain of the Hazelwood High Tigers. No one blames Andy for Rob’s death and soon everyone, except Andy, is moving on.

Andy is consumed with guilt. He can’t forget that one horrifying moment or the desperate screams of his friend’s last cries for help. Andy stops doing his school work. He begins acting out, but everyone thinks that Andy is fine – after all, he’s seeing a psychologist. Will Andy be able to move forward or will this one accident claim the futures of not one Tiger, but two?

Andy is consumed by guilt over Rob’s death. Even though he’s in pain, his friends, his family, and his psychologist think he needs to get over the guilt and get on with life. Andy’s psychologist tells him, “the answer is life, Andy, not death.” Andy begins acting out and crying for help. He thinks, “My heart is bloody, and my soul is on ice… Nobody cares.”

Tears of a Tiger tells the heart-wrenching story of Andy and his friends as they deal with Rob’s death. The story unfolds through conversations, English assignments, diary entries, and prayers. While these mediums give a unique perspective, at first the format is confusing. Through various mediums, the readers will come to understand Andy’s guilt, grief, and depression. Even though Andy desperately needs help, no one is there to bolster him up. In the end, the pain of losing Rob causes Andy to commit suicide.

Tears of a Tiger tackles some heavy topics such as death, depression, drinking and driving, as well as racism. The story will resonate with teenagers, especially those who have ever faced a difficult situation. Even though readers will understand the reasons Andy commits suicide, solutions are never discussed, which ends the story with a hopeless tone. The devastation of both Rob’s and Andy’s death will remain with readers for a long time. Tears of a Tiger is an engaging story that will leave readers questioning life and death, and they’ll be wondering if anything could have prevented Andy’s suicide.

Sexual Content

  • Rob brags that colleges will be, “Knockin’ on my door…to instruct the women in the dorms of the finer points of—shall we say—‘scorin’ and to teach skinny little farm boys what it is, what it is!”
  • Andy’s girlfriend calls a friend to ask about Andy. The friend replies, “I bet he’s in the backseat of his car, kissin’ all over some real sexy mama!!”
  • Rhonda writes a letter to her best friend saying, “Girl, that Tyrone can really kiss!!!!! Makes me want to stand up and shout Hallelujah!” In another letter, Rhonda writes about Tyrone, “That boy turns me on!”
  • When Andy gets out of high school, he plans to “use my lips for kissin’ beautiful women, not the soles of some bald-headed white man’s feet.”
  • When Gerald’s English teacher collects a poetry project, Gerald says, “Yeah, just like an English teacher—poetry turns her on.”
  • Andy’s brother goes to Andy’s grave and talks to him. “And how am I ever going to figure out girls? Do you know some girl tried to kiss me for my birthday? Gross!”

Violence

  • Rob was killed in a “fiery automobile accident.” Rob’s feet “stickin’ through the windshield. His legs was cut and bleedin’ really bad.” Rob was “screamin’ and hollerin’, stuck inside.” Rob’s friends tried to get him out of the car, but “The whole car is in flames, and Rob is still stuck inside, and we can hear him screamin’, ‘Andy! Andy! Help me—Help me—Oh God, please don’t let me die like this! Andy!’ He screamed for what seemed like a long time. Then it was real quiet.”
  • On the first day of junior high, Andy asked Rob a question. “He slowly put the pick in his back pocket, slowly looked at me, and then proceeded to beat the snot out of me. We’ve been tight ever since.”
  • Gerald’s stepdad is abusive. Someone says, “My friend Gerald—his dad beats him—he’s got this big scar on his face from when he had to get stitches when his dad knocked him against a radiator.”
  • Andy thinks about jumping off an overpass, but his girlfriend stops him. Afterward, he said, “‘Thanks.’ Then I kissed her real lightly on the lips and went home.”
  • Andy kills himself. Andy’s blood soaked through the ceiling, which caused his mother to run to his room. “Mrs. Jackson went to her son’s bedroom where Andrew’s body was found with a fatal gunshot wound to the head.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Before the basketball game, Andy put four six-packs in the trunk of his car.
  • Gerald writes an essay saying he would get rid of five-dollar bills. “With a five-dollar bill, somebody’s stepfather can buy a bottle of whiskey, a nickel bag of pot, or a rock or crack. He smokes it, or drinks it, and goes home and knocks his kids around, or his wife… Andy and the guys bought a six-pack of beer. They ended up buying five dollars worth of death.”
  • Andy says that he and his friends would go into stores and bother the white sales clerk because they thought, “we’re all drug dealers.”

Language

  • Crap is used three times. After the accident, Andy felt like “a piece of crap.”
  • When Keisha finds out about her boyfriend’s accident, she says, “Oh my God, Rhonda, I’ve got to go. I’ll get my mom to drive me to the hospital.”
  • After Andy dies, Gerald writes, “You know what really pisses me off? You! You’re a coward and a sellout!”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • After the accident, B.J. prays to God. “Is it my fault that Robbie is dead? I wasn’t drivin’… I don’t sleep at night. I keep seein’ the fire and hearin’ his screams and feelin’ so helpless… Was all this done to teach us kids a lesson?” The prayer is said over two pages.
  • B.J. writes a poem praying to “the lord…to send me a lady—someone to love.” The poem is one page.
  • Tyron writes a letter saying that “we didn’t’ die in that accident for a reason. B.J. says it’s because the Lord needed Robbie up there and he needed us down here.”
  • Keisha writes, “Some people say…that killing yourself is a sin and you’ll go to hell for it because you can never ask for forgiveness for that… I hope God is forgiving. I hope God understands that your heart was good, but your pain was so powerful.”
  • B.J. prays and wonders, “Will stupid keep him (Andy) out of Heaven? He never learned the power and hope that comes from Your forgiveness.” The prayer goes on for one and a half pages.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Hermione Winters doesn’t want people’s prayers. She’s used to the labels: a Palermo Height’s cheerleader, captain of her team, one of the most popular girls at her school, and Leo’s girlfriend. When someone slips something into her drink one night, she also becomes Hermione Winters, “that raped girl.” With her support system, Hermione must wade through the aftermath of her trauma. Exit, Pursued by a Bear presents the aftermath of a rape through the eyes of a leader who learns more about her inner strength and the strength of her friendships in ways she never could have imagined.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear touches upon sensitive topics including rape and abortion. Johnston handles these topics with seriousness and dignity. Hermione’s experiences with these topics are not universal, but Johnston gives Hermione the tools necessary to come out of these situations in the best way possible. Some readers might be troubled by the fact that Hermione’s situation leaves out some of the nastier aspects. The story focuses more on the good people supporting Hermione and her recovery. The negative reactions from the community towards rape victims exist as barriers occasionally, but Hermione overcomes most of these experiences. Because the story focuses on Hermione reclaiming the good in her life after her trauma, some readers may feel this narrative is too light or too feel-good for the content.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear is powerful because it diverges from the standard commentary about the failures of the justice system and the negative reaction of the community when someone is raped. Instead, the story focuses more on the victim’s reclamation of life. Hermione has a strong voice, is an intelligent leader on her cheer team, and her teammates respect her level head. Although she suffers after a terrible event, she runs on an inner monologue of refusal—she will not stop attending class, she will not quit cheerleading, and she will not be beaten down.

Without her incredible support system, Hermione would have encountered more difficulties. Her best friend Polly, her parents, her teammates, and her coach stand by her with unwavering support in all her decisions. When Hermione finds out that she is pregnant as a result of the rape, her parents and Polly help her proceed with an abortion. When Hermione’s triggers threaten to overtake her, Polly is there to give her the help that she needs. Despite the traumas that Hermione faces, her friends and family stand by her and aid Hermione’s slow return to normalcy.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear tells a different type of narrative about a rape victim, and Johnston succeeds in showing Hermione’s recovery process. Although this story may not be a universal experience, it presents a story where life continues, and the heroine isn’t stuck with being “that raped girl.” Hermione Winters, a future university student, will not have anyone’s judgment but her own. Exit, Pursued by a Bear is a must-read because its displays the strength of heart and mind, and the inspirational spirit that encourages Hermione to never give up the fight.

Sexual Content

  • At cheer camp, Leo, Hermione’s boyfriend, “in his esteemed wisdom, has given [her] a box of condoms.”
  • After she was raped, Hermione finds out that she is pregnant and decides to have an abortion. There are descriptions of her going to the clinic and describing the procedure, though it is somewhat vague. Hermione says, “The collection bag isn’t see-through, exactly, but I can tell there’s a mass inside it that wasn’t there before.” The scene is described over several pages.
  • Polly admits that she and Amy, a cheerleader at another school, have been dating. Polly tells Hermione, “We’ve been doing the long-distance thing since camp, mostly, though I went to see her over Thanksgiving.”
  • Of Hermione and Leo’s former relationship, Hermione says that they “hadn’t done much in the way of fooling around.”
  • In a conversation with Hermione, Polly says, “Um, I may have looked up some of [the ‘rules’] when I was wondering if having sex with another girl would mean I wasn’t a virgin anymore.”
  • Hermione starts to have lustful thoughts about Dion, one of her male teammates. After the Halloween dance, Dion helps her out of the gym. Hermione thinks that “awkward thoughts about Dion [are] floating around my head… If I can still feel, then maybe someday I’ll be able to have sex with someone I like and it won’t be a problem.”
  • Dion asks Hermione out, and he then kisses her. She describes the kiss. Dion “kisses me. Not like I’ll break, but not forcefully either… One hand is on my hip and the other is on my neck, tangling my ponytail.”
  • At nationals, Amy wanders into the cheer team’s cabin, and Polly “pulls Amy right down into her lap.”
  • Hermione gives a speech about the “curse” upon Palermo Heights Secondary School. She says, “Every year one of the girls at PHSS gets pregnant.”

Violence

  • At cheer camp, Hermione is drugged, raped, and left in the lake. Twelve hours later, she wakes up in a hospital bed. Because the book is from Hermione’s perspective and she has no memory of that night, Polly gives the details to Hermione. While Hermione is in the hospital, Polly tells her, “They found you in the lake… You were still in your dress, but your underwear was gone, and you were up to your waist in water, lying on the rocks… Someone spiked your drink at the dance. And then he got you alone and took you down by the water. And you couldn’t stop him, because the bastard drugged you. And then he raped you.” Hermione mentions that she has bruises and is in pain for some time after. The scene is described over a couple of pages.
  • After she’s raped, Leo treats Hermione like a pariah, and she hears that he’s most likely spreading rumors about her. Weeks later during chemistry class, Hermione finally sees him in person. She walks up to him, “slap[s] him across the face as hard as [she] can, and stalk[s] out of the room.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At a dance, someone slips a date-rape drug into Hermione’s drink. She narrates right before she loses consciousness, “There’s something wrong. I wasn’t this tired until right this second… There’s a moment when I know that I should scream. But screaming would be hard. And blackness would be easy. Black picks me.”
  • According to Hermione, the other part of the “curse” upon Palermo Heights is that “Every single class at Palermo Heights since 2006 has lost at least one student to a drunk driver.”

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently. Profanity includes shit, damn, bitch, bastard, hell, and ass.
  • Throughout the book, Hermione’s best friend Polly verbally threatens people, sometimes playfully and sometimes with serious intent. However, she never makes good on her promises. For example, when Hermione and Polly are competing against each other, Polly says playfully, “Damn straight. I’m going to kick your ass all weekend.”
  • When Leo verbally accosts Hermione, Polly says to him, “Get your ass to your cabin before you get caught, and if I ever hear you talk like that about any girl, alive or dead, I will skin you.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Hermione runs into the church she and her dad used to attend and asks Pastor Rob for a favor, saying, “Please don’t ask people to pray for me.”
  • Pastor Robs tells Hermione, “I’ll leave the specifics to God, and pray for your peace of mind.”
  • Pastor Rob and Hermione talk about her abortion. He tells her, “If someone starts throwing around stupid words like ‘It’s a gift,’ or ‘It’s in God’s plan,’ you come right here, and I’ll find you ten ways in which it isn’t.”
  • Hermione says of the nurse in the abortion clinic, “I’m now convinced that God put her on this earth to do exactly this job, and I hope she gets one heck of a karmic payoff for it later.”
  • Several women sit in the recovery room of the abortion clinic. One woman says the fetus “didn’t look like a person. Not even a little bit. Not like those religious people say. I did the right thing.”

by Alli Kestler

I’m Ok

Ok’s life takes a dramatic turn for the worse when his father dies. His mother works three jobs, yet barely makes ends meet. Ok feels that as the man of the house, he should help pay the bills. As a twelve-year-old, he has little opportunity to make money. He hopes he can win the cash prize at the school talent contest, but he can’t sing or dance, and he has no magic up his sleeves. With no talent, he has to come up with another business.

Soon, Ok is braiding hair for the girls at school, but the girls can’t pay him much. His braiding business makes Mickey McDonald notice him. The girl, with a larger-than-life personality, wants to be his friend. Ok is used to being by himself, and he doesn’t want to be friends with Mickey, who will distract him from his mission—making money.

Life gets worse when the pushy deacon at their Korean church starts wooing Ok’s mom. Ok doesn’t want his mom spending time with the deacon. His mom is so caught up in the deacon that she doesn’t even notice Ok anymore. Feeling lost and confused, Ok comes up with an exit strategy. Will being totally alone, give Ok the peace he needs?

I’m Ok deals with the difficult topics of grief, poverty, racism, and friendship. Even though the story highlights the importance of friends, Ok’s story is often dark and depressing. At school, Ok is bullied and made fun of because he’s Korean. He reluctantly becomes friends with Mickey, who is self-assured but also ignored by many of the students. The two team up to win the school talent contest, and Mickey begins teaching Ok to skate. Mickey spends time with Ok, gives him a pair of skates, and is kind to him. Despite this, the only thing Ok cares about is winning the contest’s money. At one point, Ok even steals from Mickey’s mother. While Ok’s homelife is understandably difficult, his negative reaction to all events and his self-centered, mean personality make it difficult to feel compassion for him.

Ok spends time reminiscing about his father, who he clearly misses. Even though Ok grieves for his father, most of Ok’s memories of his father are negative. His father treated both Ok and his mother terribly. For example, Ok’s father would talk under his breath, “loud enough that I could hear, but soft enough so I felt guilty about eavesdropping, ‘When’s this idiot going to be human?’” Ok’s father isn’t shown to have many positive aspects other than financially supporting the family.

I’m Ok shows the difficulties many Korean immigrants face. However, the story’s conclusion leaves several threads untied. Plus, for the entire story, the deacon is portrayed in such a negative light that it is difficult to understand why Ok’s mother marries him. Even though Ok and several of the supporting characters are well-developed, readers may struggle to relate to Ok, who often treats those who care about him poorly. If you’re looking for a book that tackles racism and/or poverty, you may want to leave I’m Ok on the library shelf. However, Katherine Applegate excellently tackles both issues in her books Crenshaw and Wishtree.

Sexual Content

  • While braiding each other’s hair, the girls discuss a variety of topics. For example, “Jaehnia is in love with Asa, and Asa is not at all interested in her in that way ’cause he’s not into desperate girls… Kym’s parents are getting a divorce… Claudio got caught sneaking around under the back staircase looking up girls’ skirts.”

Violence

  • Several times Ok thinks about his father’s death. When Ok makes a mistake, he thinks his dad would have called him stupid. Ok thinks, “At least I didn’t trip while working on a roof and come tumbling down and land so hard and wrong on concrete that my neck broke.”
  • Ok’s mother accidentally “ran into a parked car, smashing its headlight. My father called her an idiot, yelled at her, took over the wheel, and raced out of there like it was a getaway… He told her to shut up. I crouched on the floor of the backseat, scared my mother would get kicked out of the country.”
  • Asa and Ok wrestle, and Ok “bite[s] his finger, grab[s] his shirt, and stretch[es] it over his face. . . He punches me in the stomach. I cough and punch him back. . . We tumble around some more, no longer really hitting each other, holding and rolling disguised as fighting.” A neighbor tells them to stop and they do.
  • Ok steals $10 out of Mickey’s mom’s purse. The next day, Mickey shows up at school with “a bruise on her cheek.” Mickey says, “Ain’t you ever seen a bruise before? If you gotta know, Ma did it.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Ok’s father would play cards with his friends and drink beer. Ok thinks back to a time when his father “let me take a sip of his beer. When I grimaced at the taste, he laughed.”
  • Ok’s father often had a Johnnie Walker in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Language

  • After Ok’s father dies, a woman tells him that he will need strength to get through this hard time. “What a senseless mess. Makes you want to kick some idiot’s butt, she says, shaking her head…”
  • Pissed is used five times. When Ok is called to the principal’s office, he tells the principal he has to go to the bathroom and “pressing my knees together and making the I’m going to piss right here, right now face.”
  • A kid in Ok’s class makes fun of him, calling him “Okie Dorkie” and “Wong-chung-chung.”
  • Oh my god is used as an exclamation six times. For example, when Ok tells a girl that he saved a puppy’s life, she says, “Oh my God, you’re the bravest.”
  • Mickey McDonald uses “Oh my Lord Jesus Christ” once and “Oh my Lordy” as an exclamation seven times. For example, Ok accidently goes into the girls’ bathroom. When Mickey McDonald sees him, she says, “Oh my Lord, what on God’s green earth are you doing in the girls’ bathroom?” She then calls Ok a “perv.” Later, she calls Ok a “snothead.”
  • A kid calls a girl a moron.
  • Ok calls a kid a jerk; later, he thinks the deacon is a jerk.
  • A kid teases Mickey, calling her “Old McD. White Trish-Trash. Mick the Hick. Mickey Gives Hickeys… Mickey McDonald looks like Miss Piggy and a troll doll had a baby.”
  • Ok thinks the deacon is a jackass.
  • Badass is used once, and hell is used three times. For example, a woman tells Ok, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
  • Ok tells Asa, “Aren’t you glad yo’ mama could spell? Otherwise yo’ name be like Ass… I’m calling you Ass ’cause you look like one, smell like one, and God knows you read and write like one.” Later, Ok calls Asa a butt-face and moron.
  • Ok calls Asa stupid and a nincompoop.
  • Ok tells Mickey that a classmate is a pervert.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Ok and his mother attend the First Korean Full Gospel Church. After a service, some of the women “moan and babble because the Holy Spirit has a hold on them.” Ok wishes “the Holy Spirit would get a hold of me so I could wail my sadness too.”
  • After his father dies, a woman from church tells him “to be good and strong for my mother and have faith in God’s will, because I’m the man of the house now. God works in mysterious ways.”
  • After his father dies, Ok’s mother tells him, “I’m not worried. God will take care of us. We just need to do our part and believe he loves us.”
  • When a classmate is mean to Ok, he “prayed I wouldn’t piss my pants, prayed I wouldn’t get beat up because I looked like one of those kids you couldn’t help but beat up.”
  • During church service, the pastor asks the congregation to pray. Ok closes his eyes and prays, “telling God that I need a talent for the talent show so I can win a hundred dollars…”
  • When a girl sees Ok writing in a library book, Ok “pray[s] hard that she doesn’t walk away and tell on me.”
  • After Ok earns some money, he wonders what to do with it. “I could offer the money to God tomorrow, drop my coins onto the plate… What blessing can $11.68 buy me?”
  • The deacon tells Ok’s mother, “Do not worry. What does the Bible say? Worrying is a waste of your time and energy. It is a sign of your lack of faith. Obey our Lord and don’t worry… All things work for the good of those who have faith in God.”
  • When Ok’s mother hurts her ankle, Ok prayed “that I had nothing to do with my mother slipping on some ice that had spilled out of a tub full of mackerel.” Ok wonders if God allowed his mother to get hurt because he stole something, then he blames God for allowing his mother to get hurt.
  • The deacon tells Ok, “God is in math. Oh sure. The concept of infinity. That is God.”
  • Many of the characters pray. For example, after making kimchi, Ok’s mother prays, “thanking God for her abilities, for our kitchen, and for me… She asks God to bless the kimchi, bless anyone who eats it, make the person strong and good and faithful.”
  • At church, the preacher told the congregation, “if we felt sad, we should count our blessings. Make a list of all the things we were grateful for. Not focus on what we lost.”
  • When the deacon is trying to teach Ok to swim, he says, “The Bible says that if you build a house on sand, that house will collapse, so you must build your house on stone, so it can withstand wind and storms.”
  • When the deacon clears his throat, Ok thinks, “here we go with the sermon about how God created the universe, the moon, and the stars, and how he created me in his image and loves me so much he killed his only son for the forgiveness of sins.”

Running Full Tilt

Summer is ending, which means Leo is about to start at a new high school. His family just moved from a neighborhood to a more secluded house because of his older brother, Caleb. Caleb has autism and cognitive delays, which have gotten him into trouble a few times, like when he broke into his neighbor’s house and started asking them random questions. While Leo’s family’s move may have left the neighbors with more peaceful lives, Leo’s life is anything but serene. Caleb has taken to attacking Leo in the middle of the night, and Leo can’t figure out why. To escape these fits and calm his anger, Leo goes for long runs.

Subsequently, this newfound talent for long-distance running lands Leo a spot on the cross-country team where he meets Curtis, the fastest runner in school. Seeing Leo’s potential, Curtis takes him under his wing. He devises running strategies for each meet, and he and Leo climb to the top of the state ranks. Leo also meets and eventually dates Mary, an artistic girl with piercing green eyes. Throughout the year, Leo’s relationships with Curtis and Mary grow, and they help him appreciate his brother. Caleb even picks up running and, with Leo’s help, runs a half marathon.

One day Leo comes home elated after qualifying for state at a track meet. His celebration is short-lived though, as his parents have tragic news. Caleb drowned in a community pool. Leo can no longer run away from his problems with his brother; he has to find a way to cope.

Running Full Tilt is told in the first person from Leo’s point of view, which will help readers connect with him. Readers will watch Leo grow as a brother, boyfriend, and friend. Although he isn’t always the best boyfriend, Mary teaches him it’s okay to confide in others. Curtis becomes a big brother to Leo, helping him be a stronger runner and person. Curtis, Leo, and Mary are very witty; readers will enjoy reading their playful banter. Runners will appreciate Currinder’s vivid depictions of races, strategies, and maybe even pick up a few tips.

In addition to being an excellent book for runners, Running Full Tilt also deals with the implications of having a family member with cognitive issues. Mary tells Leo she thought Caleb looked “normal,” causing Leo to jump to Caleb’s defense: “Who’s to say what’s normal?” Leo feels guilty for “always being a step ahead” of Caleb when he is the younger brother, which he suspects is the reason for Caleb’s outbursts. Leo’s parents are unhappily married (it’s hinted that both are having an affair) and deal with Caleb’s behavior in different ways. Leo and Caleb have their fights, but Leo learns not to dwell on them and appreciate the good days. Running Full Tilt is a good book if readers want to be invested in the characters. They are flawed yet endearing, and readers will relate to them. It is a fast-paced, entertaining story that will both break and warm readers’ hearts.

Sexual Content

  • Leo hears a guy called Itchy and thinks, “I figured Itchy was probably just some dude from their football team with ringworm or a bad case of jock itch.”
  • Stuper, one of the guys on the track team, was absent because he was at the hospital. His friend Rosenthal explains, “He’s got a bad case of poison ivy… he ducked into the woods to go to the bathroom. He wiped himself with it… At first he wouldn’t tell his parents. He thought it was herpes because he’d just seen pictures of it in health class… we reminded him that the only way you can get herpes is through sexual contact.” The guys laugh, suggesting Stuper has never had any sexual contact.
  • At the end of their first date, Leo and Mary kiss. Leo “slowly leaned toward her and closed my eyes, then felt our lips touch. I felt her hands gently moving up to my biceps… I just couldn’t believe how sweet her skin smelled and how soft her lips felt.” When they get back to Leo’s house they kiss again, but the kiss is not described. Leo thinks, “I probably should have kissed her longer.”
  • Leo sees his mom at the movie theater holding hands with a man who is not his dad. This upsets him because his parents are still married. Mary suggests his mom is having an “emotional affair.” Leo thinks, “I fought hard to block the images forming in my mind.” He asks Mary, “Like friends with benefits friends?” Mary answers, “No, it’s not like that. It’s like having some huge crush on someone but not really acting on it.”
  • At a Halloween party, a guy has “a potato dangling out of his fly from something that resembled a coat hanger.” He explains he is dressed up as a “dicktater.”
  • After Curtis tells Leo to “grow some balls” and rescue Mary from the guy who is flirting with her, Leo says, “screw you.” Curtis replies, “Leo, that’s fine by me. I’m not on that team, but I’m an enlightened individual. I’ve got no problem if you are.”
  • Leo says that he and Mary are “acting like old people, the kind who never get off their porches to do anything. That was, until Mary’s mother began dating some new guy. Then we started getting to know each other in new ways.”
  • Leo talks about how cold it is to run in the winter and how it affects his body. “Winter training included running in temperatures so frigid that even after a warm shower I didn’t see portions of my anatomy that had recently become very important to me for six hours. When I considered Mary in the equation, I wondered if it was all worth it.”
  • After running a race in the sleet, Curtis tells Leo, “If I don’t get under a hot shower soon, there’s a serious chance I’ll never see my testicles again.”
  • Leo’s family goes to the Special Olympics in Ford Leonard Wood. Leo asks his dad why there are so many massage parlors. His dad answers, “There are about ten thousand young men on that military base. And very few women. Do I have to give you a lesson on the birds and the bees, Leo?” Leo assures his dad, “I think I get it.”

Violence

  • Leo describes what it’s like being a distance runner in a race. “They run in packs, with steel spikes sharp as steak knives attached to their feet. Inside a tight pack moving at close to four-minute-mile pace, the spikes like barracuda teeth slashing at calves and shins from front and back, elbows and fists box for position.”
  • Leo witnesses a freshman being bullied. “The ringleader, a burly guy wearing a football jersey with the name Glusker plastered over numbers, had his victim down on his knees, hands behind his back, pushing a tiny peanut across the tile floor with his nose. Glusker guided the kid by nudging his ass with the tip of his Timberland boot along a parade route lined by laughing upperclassmen.”
  • Caleb is angry because Leo gets a higher allowance. Leo notices Caleb is getting agitated, and finally Caleb “smashed into me from behind. I smacked my head against an end table and collided with the wall… He slapped my head with one open hand and started pounding the other side of my face with his fist. Then he grasped my throat with his right hand and started trying to jab his left thumb into my eye… I fought to grab a handful of his hair with one hand and his ear with my other, and I pinched and pulled with everything I had before he finally screamed and released me.”
  • While Leo folds laundry, Caleb attacks. “He took me by surprise when he jumped me, but I managed to pull his hair, knee him in the groin, and take off running.”
  • Caleb attacks Leo in the middle of the night. Caleb “had trouble pinning me with his knees in the darkness, but he managed to slap my head a couple of times before going for my eyes. I got a knee into his crotch, pulled his hair, slipped out from under him.”
  • When Caleb attacks Leo in the middle of the night, Leo usually “smacked him on his back a couple of times [with a Little League bat], he usually rolled off me, and if that didn’t work, I pinched and pulled his ears and hair.”
  • Leo finds Caleb having a seizure. “Caleb was on the floor thrashing and writhing. His eyes were rolled back in the sockets, eyelids fluttering, and he was making this terrible wheezing sound like he couldn’t breathe. Both arms were stiff and extended, and his head lifted and thudded against the tile floor… His lips and face began to turn a strange bluish gray.” Leo and his parents bring Caleb to the hospital, and Caleb is okay a few days later.
  • At a Halloween party, Glusker mistakes Curtis for a guy who is dating his ex-girlfriend and beats him up. “Glusker came barreling across the lawn and blindsided Curtis, rolling him onto his back and pummeling his head with his fists… Curtis’s nose was gushing.”
  • Leo and Curtis are running on a golf course when they see a buck dart out from the forest. “The buck was in mid-stride when it suddenly stopped and fell to its side. The shaft and quill of an arrow were plunged deeply inside its heart… I looked at the fallen buck, its torso still rising and falling slowly, its legs still clawing at the earth as it clung to life.” Two men with bows emerged from the forest, and one “pulled a pistol from his pack, ready to finish off the job.”
  • Caleb was in a bad mood all day, so Leo was ready for him to attack that night. Caleb “came at me quick and had my shoulders pinned with his knees and both hands around my neck in seconds. I thrashed and kicked. He went for my eyes with one hand, pushing two fingers deep into my left socket… I grabbed the baseball bat tucked beside my mattress and smacked his shoulder blades sharply three times before he rolled off me.”

 

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Leo’s dad comes home late, and “he had a sheepish grin on his face like he’d already had a few.” Leo’s mom is upset with her husband for coming home late and for drinking. To try to make amends, Leo’s dad “grabbed two glasses from the cabinet. He snatched some ice cubes from the freezer and poured some vodka. When he set a glass next to Mom… she nudged it away with the tip of her knife.”
  • Leo goes to a Halloween party, and there is “a birdbath filled with ice and beer in the corner of the yard.” Leo and Curtis don’t drink because they have a race coming up.
  • Leo and his friends watch a guy flirt with a girl, then lead her away from the party. Curtis complains, “Why can’t I do that?” His friend responds, “I think she’s already had a few.”
  • Mary is drinking at a party. Angry with Leo for not calling her, she takes “another sip of liquid courage” and fusses at Leo. She says she waited all week for him to call and even drove past his house a few times. After she confesses this, she is ashamed and says, “I can’t believe I just told you all that crap.”
  • While Leo and Curtis are running on a golf course, they see two hunters “toting a couple of Budweisers.”
  • After visiting Caleb at the hospital, his dad “came into the kitchen, went directly to the cabinet, and poured himself a drink.”

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently. Profanity includes: damn, crap, holy crap, ass, jackass, smartass, shit, holy shit, chickenshit, bullshit, shit-eating, dipshit, shitload, shitting, frickin’, freakin’, hell, bitching, pissed, and prick.
  • “Christ,” “for Christ’s sake,” “Jesus,” “God,” and “Geezuz” are frequently used as exclamations.
  • After witnessing some guys bully a school janitor, Leo asks Mary, “Did you see what those morons were doing to the guy?” Mary responds, “What those idiots were doing was wrong on so many levels.”
  • Curtis tells Leo to “sit his butt down” when he calls Mary over to their lunch table.
  • When Leo sees a guy flirting with Mary, Curtis tells him to “grow some balls” and go rescue her. Leo replies, “screw you” and gives him “the one-finger salute.”
  • After Curtis yells at a man for killing a buck, the man tells him, “Why don’t you and your little faggot friend just run along.”
  • Leo’s maternal grandmother and his dad dislike each other. Leo’s grandmother frequently calls his dad “Flat Ass,” and his dad frequently calls her “Bubble Butt.”
  • When the track coach tells the track team they will be practicing inside due to the cold weather, Curtis complains, “Only wusses run indoors.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Caleb keeps talking to Leo even though it’s late, and Leo “wished to God my older brother would stop talking nonsense and just close his eyes and go back to sleep.”
  • Caleb frequently asks Leo riddles that only make sense to himself. Caleb asks Leo what kind of car God drives and when Leo can’t answer, Caleb shouts, “God drive brown Thunderbird Ford!”
  • Every night, Caleb tells Leo, “Good night, Leo. God love you.” Leo wonders what Caleb means. “Did God love me, or him?”
  • After planting a nickel in a bully’s sandwich, Leo feels a hand touch his shoulder. He is scared, but turns around to see it’s a girl. He thinks, “Thank God.”
  • After going for a run, Leo finds Caleb sitting in the grass. Caleb “smiled and laughed as he talked about God and the Thunderbird Ford.”
  • Leo takes Caleb to the pool. In the car ride, Leo “spent the twenty-minute drive listening to Caleb laugh and chatter away about God and rocky road ice cream.”
  • Leo’s mom asks if Leo wants fish sticks or cheese pizza for dinner. He explains, “Our family abandoned the church a couple of years ago, but Mom still harbored some residual Catholic guilt and clung to a few traditions like no meat on Fridays.”
  • Leo invites Curtis over for dinner. Caleb insists they pray before eating dinner. In response, Leo whispers, “Amen!” to himself, and Curtis mouths, “Jesus!”
  • Caleb prays “his unique version” of grace: “Blessed our Lord, for these our gifts, about to receive, from my bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
  • After Caleb attacks Leo, Caleb asks him, “God not punish you?” and, “Jesus love you?” Leo answers no, God will not punish him, and yes, Jesus loves him.
  • Every time Caleb attacks Leo, he asks, “God not punish you, Leo?” Leo wonders what Caleb means and assumes when Caleb says “you,” Caleb means himself. Leo thinks, “‘For some reason he seemed to have a fear of God – even after we stopped attending church. How did someone like Caleb, who often struggled to understand the world around him, become so concerned about God—some abstract, invisible force that we barely mentioned in this house?” Every time, Leo assures Caleb God will not punish him.
  • Caleb’s dad threatens Caleb with committing him to the hospital after finding out Caleb has been attacking Leo at night. His dad gets frustrated and screams, “Jesus!” Caleb yells, “Make God angry!” His dad responds, “You’re making God and me freakin’ angry,” and Caleb apologizes, “Sorry God!”
  • Leo overdid it during track practice. “I spent the next two minutes bent over, clutching my knees, praying I wouldn’t throw up lunch.”
  • While Leo and his mom wait for Caleb in the emergency room, Leo thinks, “I couldn’t tell if her lips were trembling or if she was mumbling prayers.”
  • When Leo and Mary talk on the phone, there is a long silence that is finally broken by Mary. Leo thinks, “Thank God she was the one who finally spoke.”
  • Mary and Leo go to the movie theater but can’t find a parking spot until “the parking gods made a spot miraculously appear right in front of the theater.”
  • During a date, Leo wonders, “how in God’s name I’d scored a date with this girl.”
  • When they arrive at a party, Curtis tells Leo they are not drinking because they have a race coming up. Leo replies, “As you said, we shall treat our bodies as holy temples, Curtis, until our mission is completed next Saturday.”
  • During a race, Leo hopes he will have enough energy to overtake the lead runner. “I opened my stride on the downhill, breathed deeply, and said a quick prayer that I would have enough strength for when it was time to do the real work.”
  • While driving, Mary asks Leo for his life story. Leo thinks, “May the traffic gods be with me.” He hopes they’ll arrive at their destination soon because he doesn’t want to tell her about his life.
  • Leo asks Curtis why he runs, and Curtis responds, “I run to keep my demons at bay.”
  • Before Caleb participates in the Special Olympics race, he tells Leo, “Poke Leo’s eyeballs out middle of the night!” Leo says to not talk about that right now. Caleb says, “Sorry, Leo! What sorry mean?” Leo responds, “Sorry means God not punish you.”
  • When Caleb requests Long John Silver’s for dinner, his dad tells Leo, “Start praying that damn restaurant is still open.” Leo “starts praying.”
  • Mary asks Leo why Caleb makes little piles of grass in their yard. Leo jokes, “Our family belongs to a pagan cult that worships the moles that reside in the underworld. Our winter-solstice ceremony is fast approaching. Caleb has been commissioned by the high priest to create the burial mounds where we will make sacrifices.”
  • Caleb drowns in a swimming pool. Leo’s mom starts to say, “You know, Niles, I was the one who said-” Leo’s dad assumes she is starting to say it’s his fault Caleb drowned, and he explodes: “Oh no, Elise. You think I haven’t thought about letting him go swimming by himself? I hope to God you’re-” He is interrupted by Leo telling his parents to pull themselves together.
  • Leo approaches Caleb in his casket. He whispers to him, “Peace, brother. God love you.”
  • After seeing Caleb in the casket, Leo sobs. He composes himself and “stared blankly at a picture of Christ with his arms raised, thinking about all the times I had assured Caleb that God loved him.”
  • Curtis asks Leo why Caleb’s funeral is open-casket, and Leo says, “I think it’s a Catholic thing.”
  • Leo’s grandfather tells him he’s going to teach him how to play cards. Leo’s grandmother disapproves, saying, “For the love of God, let go of the past, Bernard.”

by Jill Johnson

The Princess and the Fangirl

Everyone knows that Jessica Stone hates everything to do with the beloved sci-fi franchise Starfield. When she signed on to play the beloved Princess Amara, Jess was expecting to use the role as a springboard into bigger and better films. But being an actress in a sci-fi universe comes with an overwhelming amount of criticism. Jess can barely handle the hatred she gets from fans on the internet, and she certainly isn’t looking forward to being surrounded by them at the annual ExcelsiCon.

Starfield fangirl, Imogen Lovelace, practically grew up on the convention floor. Every year her family runs a booth at ExcelsiCon, but this year Imogen has her own mission. She wants to #SaveAmara from being killed off, and she’s got thousands of signatures on an online petition to prove she’s not the only one. When an unfortunate case of mistaken identity leaves Imogen onstage at a panel in Jessica’s place, Imogen takes the opportunity to speak out in favor of saving the Princess.

Jessica is furious, telling Imogen she will ruin her if she even attempts such a thing again. But when an incredibly confidential script to the Starfield sequel leaks online, and Jessica’s script is nowhere to be found, she’s afraid the blame will fall to her. Jess needs to expose the real culprit before the end of the Con or risk losing her career. The solution? Trade places with Imogen so she can scope out the Con herself, a plan that turns out to be much easier said than done.

The Princess and the Fangirl is a modern-day Prince and the Pauper with a fandom twist. Both Jessica and Imogen think they can gain something by stepping into each other’s shoes, but they both end up with an unexpected perspective. Jess is longing for anonymity and an escape from the harsh gaze of the Starfield fandom. She finds herself dropped right into the middle of it all, getting a first-hand look at how the stories she always viewed as inconsequential can bring people together. Meanwhile, Imogen, who is searching for a sense of purpose, is eager to use her newfound influence to right a few wrongs. But her peek behind the scenes reveals a disturbing darker side of Starfield that only Jessica Stone gets to see.

This story is technically a sequel to Geekerella, bringing readers back to ExcelsiCon one year later. There are a few cameos from familiar faces, but Geekerella can still stand on its own. Fans of romance will enjoy the fact that each of the girls has an adorable love interest, while the mystery of the leaked script will keep readers on their toes. Both Jessica and Imogen struggle with self-image issues that teen readers will find very relatable. And, like in Geekerella, Poston’s commentary on fandom is clever and meaningful: behind every Princess, there is a normal girl.

Sexual Content

  • Jess contemplates her role as Princess Amara, thinking about how she’d accepted the role expecting it to launch her career into more meaningful roles that wouldn’t require her to look “hot in a suffocating dress while running in heels.”
  • Imogen makes several sci-fi references, including a mention of “sexy David Tennant,” the actor who played the Tenth Doctor on the television series Doctor Who.
  • While onstage next to Darien, the actor who plays Prince Carmindor in the Starfield movie, Imogen thinks of him as “the love of [her] Tumblr life.”
  • Jess is jealous of how the Starfield fandom has grown to love Darien while they continue to harass her. “Darien sort of got the same blowback when he was announced to play Federation Prince Carmindor—which is how he met his girlfriend, btw—but it died off as the fandom embraced him. Now they write love letters about his inky-black eyelashes and immaculate abs while I get dissertations on how the small mole on the left side of my mouth has ruined the beauty of Princess Amara.”
  • Imogen tosses a #SaveAmara pin to a cosplayer in a “sexy Xenomorph” costume.
  • When one of Imogen’s moms asks the other to put a Captain America figurine on the top shelf of their display, she makes a joke that could be taken sexually. She says, “I could’ve sworn he belonged on the bottom.”
  • Imogen says that her little brother met his boyfriend in the astronomy lab. Although she thinks they probably “spent more time studying each other’s astrological compatibility than learning solar physics.”
  • Imogen doesn’t look like either of her moms. Imogen says, “…although Kathy carried both Milo and me. I look like the sperm donor apparently.”
  • Ethan, Jessica’s best friend, changes his shirt in front of her. Jessica thinks, “Sure he’s pretty cute, but my eyes don’t really linger. He’d be a catch if someone burns all of his nerd shirts and puts him in some jeans that actually show he has a butt.”
  • When Jessica looks through the comments on her social media, they include, “I can tell her where she can put those pretty lips” and “fixed her chest with small kitties lol [censored photo].”
  • Imogen literally runs into Ethan, spilling coffee all over him. Before she recognizes him as Jessica Stone’s rude assistant, she thinks that he’s hot. “He’s very very Hot like I-want-to-be-stuck-in-an-elevator-with-you hot, not we-are-now-mortal-enemies-because-I-just-spilled-my-coffee-on-you-while-not-paying-attention hot.”
  • Before trading places, Jessica makes a list of rules for Imogen to follow. Rule number four is, “Don’t flirt with anyone.”
  • Jessica doesn’t give her number out freely because someone “put it on an unsavory message board.”
  • Imogen thinks that contact lenses feel like “condoms for [her] eyeballs.”
  • Harper, Imogen’s friend, is selling her fan art out of a booth next to someone “hawking sexy pin ups of burly men.”
  • When Jess first sees Harper, her mind blanks because Harper “is very pretty, with delicate features, brown skin, and natural hair pulled into twin puffs on the sides of her head.”
  • Harper’s artwork is displayed on a board in the boot. Jessica describes it as a “copious amount of fan art of Princess Amara in the arms of various characters—men and women.”
  • Actor Vance Reigns is introduced as the villain for the Starfield Imogen finds him very attractive. “He is face meltingly hot. His shoulders and chest are broad, his torso tapers down to thin hips and sturdy legs. I mean, not that his legs wouldn’t be sturdy, but you know the kind of legs where you just know, under the molten-golden trousers, that he can basically smash watermelons between them? Yeah that’s the kind of thighs I’m picturing, and I think my knees have gone numb and dear god he’s too close.”
  • When Jess sees a picture of Princess Amara embracing a female Starfield character, she says, “I can’t help but blush seeing a girl with my likeness kissing the likeness of Fiona Oro who plays Zorine.”
  • Imogen notices that Ethan is wearing Captain America-themed shoes, “And then I’m just thinking of Ethan punching Nazis, and that’s kinda hot, actually.”
  • When Ethan heads off to watch a panel, Imogen says, “Have fun with the tres horny bois.”
  • Imogen thinks she can tell that Ethan likes Jess “by the way I caught him looking at me while I was posing for pictures with a seven-year-old Carmindor, the softness of his gaze, the curl of his lips upward ever so slightly. He must’ve forgotten for a second that I wasn’t the real Jess. Those looks are probably only for her.”
  • At the Stellar party, Jess sees two girls kiss goodbye. She thinks, “I don’t mean to stare but their kiss is so simple and easy, like saying see you later, that I don’t think any thought was put into it, I wish I knew what that was like.”
  • Harper and Jess tell each other about their first kisses. Harper says, “My first kiss was a seven-minutes-in-heaven thing. I was at a birthday party in middle school. It was…terrible.” Jess’s first kiss was on a movie set. Jess says, “He was older and I was, like, fifteen. His stubble was scratchy and it gave me a rash—and he smelled like weed. He’d been smoking all day.”
  • Jess realizes she has feelings for Harper. Jess thinks, “I have a crush on this girl with curly dark hair and ink smudges on her brown fingers and trouble tucked into her maroon-colored lips.”
  • Imogen, overwhelmed by her feelings, jumps on Ethan in the pool. “Turns out he’s a lot heavier than I thought, especially for a beanpole. And his torso is very solid. Are those abs I feel? Oh sweet baby Daleks, please don’t tell me Ethan actually has a nice bod.”
  • While in the pool, Imogen and Ethan are very close. Imogen thinks, “I have to remind myself that I can’t like him, but it’s hard when a droplet of water beads at the end of a lock of raven hair in front of his face, and falls on his cheek, and rolls down his cheek slowly, languidly, like I want to run my finger down his jawline. It’s like there’s no one else but us in the world, and his eyes navigate steadily to my lips.” They almost kiss, but Imogen pulls away at the last second.
  • After having spent the night talking to Harper, Jess thinks, “I am not a serial dater. I simply never cared… I’m not built to take a random person into a bedroom, I’m not wired to want those things, and so it made all those dates and chaste kisses with celebrities so easy.”
  • Jess dislikes the internet because it makes it easy for fans to forget about the people behind the characters. “Your hot take shouldn’t dehumanize me, or tell me that I’m wrong, or that I’m worthless, or a slut who slept on some casting couch for the role.”
  • Imogen’s ex-boyfriend shows up at a meet-and-greet. When they hug, “his hands slip low.”
  • While at dinner with Vance Reign, Imogen (disguised as Jess) discovers Vince has been trying to get the real Jess to go on a publicity date with him for a long time. He tries to kiss her, but she pushes him away.
  • Jess crashes the final Starfield panel. When she starts to leave, the director asks her where she’s going. Jess responds, “The horizon is wide, and I have a girl to kiss.”
  • Jess apologizes to Harper very publicly, and when the two of them are reunited, they kiss. Jessica says, “I give her the Starfield salute—You and I are made of stars—and I hope that’s enough. She smiles and presses her hands to mine in the same pose, and then slowly, finger by finger, they fall together—And she kisses me.” The description of the kiss is about half a page.
  • Imogen kisses Ethan. She takes “his face in my hands and pull him down to kiss me. He tastes like Cheerwine, his hands rising to cup the sides of my face.” The description lasts about half a page.
  • Jess and Harper meet to get coffee and kiss again. Jessica says, “I kiss her in front of the entire world, the first word on the first page of the rest of my life.”

Violence

  • When Jess discovers Imogen has taken her place on stage, she has some murderous thoughts. “I am going to kill her. I don’t even know her name but I don’t need her name to put her in an unmarked grave. I am going to chop her up into so many pieces that when alien archeologists find her bones in a thousand years they won’t even realize she was once human.”
  • Imogen’s younger brother calls her an embarrassing nickname. She tells him, “If you weren’t my brother and I didn’t love you, I’d strangle you with your own jockstrap.”
  • In a leaked scene from the Starfield sequel script, “A group of soldiers push CARMINDOR, tied up and beaten, into the middle of the council. CARMINDOR stumbles and collapses onto the dais. Blood drips from his mouth where he has been punched repeatedly.”
  • Imogen tells Ethan a story. “When I had to debate a guy over women’s reproduction he told me that women are too fragile to have control over their own bodies. I got kicked out of the club for kneeing him in the nards.”
  • Imogen’s ex-boyfriend, Jasper, shows up at a Jessica Stone meet and greet, causing trouble. Ethan steps in to get him to leave. “Jasper whirls around, fists clinched, ready to swing. I don’t have time to shout to Ethan that a punch is coming before he raises a hand and deflects the blow with his lower arm, grabbing Jasper by the shirt and pull-throwing him out through the nearest curtain.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Imogen claims to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time, like “delivering someone’s homework to a frat party when the cops show up.”
  • Harper invites Jess to join her at the Stellar Party, a space-themed party that her friends throw every year, where they “drink a little, sing some karaoke, stuff like that.”
  • In the hotel room where the Stellar Party is held, “on the kitchenette bar is a wall of liquor bottles and sodas.”
  • There is a drink at the Stellar Party called “Oh No.” Harper says, “Oh No is way more vodka than common sense.”
  • Imogen hugs her brother and notices that he smells like Stellar Party, “vape juice and Oh No.”

Language

  • Imogen uses the phrase “Starflame” in place of curse words frequently. “‘Starflame!’ I curse. ‘I’m so sorry.’”
  • When Imogen and Ethan run into each other a third time, she calls him a “nerfherder,” an insult from the Star Wars “‘He is possibly the worst nerfherder in the—’ I say, while at the same time he says, ‘She’s that monster of a girl I was telling you—’ We both stop mid-sentence.”
  • When Imogen puts on a wig in order to pass as Jess, she thinks “the whole bit about long hair being more feminine is Noxballs.”
  • Ethan gets upset at Imogen and calls her a “Rapscallion look-alike.”
  • After the incident with her ex-boyfriend, Imogen appreciates that the remaining fans in line are decent people, but she thinks, “I hate that some of the dickwads in their midst are not.”
  • Natalia Ford, the actress who originally played Amara, rescues Jess from a crowd of angry fans. Jess notices that she’s wearing a shirt “covered in a pattern of tiny, artistically rendered middle-fingers.”
  • Right before the final panel, the director is looking for Darien, who is busy helping enact the girl’s plan to reveal who stole the script. Imogen tells him, “He went to take a piss.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • When Imogen runs into her ex-boyfriend, she asks herself, “God why do I feel so horrible?”

by Evalyn Harper

 

The Sorcerer of the North

Will is finally a full-fledged Ranger, who has his own fief to look after. Will is just getting used to the sleepy fief when he is called away on a secret mission. Lord Syron, who is a master of a castle far in the north, is struck down by a mysterious illness. Some believe that Lord Syron has been struck down by an ancient enemy who is using dark magic. One thing is known for sure: many do not respect Lord Syron’s son, Orman. Will Orman be able to guide the fief during his father’s illness?

As Will is trying to determine who is loyal to Lord Syron, Alyss shows up disguised as a noblewoman. The two hope to discover who is to blame for Lord Syron’s illness. As Will battles growing hysteria, traitors, and most of all, time, Alyss is taken hostage and Will is forced to make a desperate choice between his mission and his friend.

The Sorcerer of the North has a slow start as Will travels to his new fief. Unfortunately, Will is called away almost immediately. During the first part of the book, Halt, Alyss, and several other known characters make a short appearance. Even though their appearance sets up the book’s conflict, the action is slow. Readers who have read the previous Ranger’s Apprentice books will continue reading because they are familiar with Will and the other characters; however, those who have not read the previous books in the series will not want to start with this one.

In The Sorcerer of the North, Will spends too much time traveling to meet different people in attempt to learn about Lord Syron’s kingdom. Instead of being interesting, the reader may quickly become bored. Once Will travels to Syron’s castle, he still spends much of his time collecting information. It isn’t until the end of the book that the action picks up, ending in a cliffhanger that will lead readers to pick up the next book in the series, The Siege of Macindaw.

Even though The Sorcerer of the North isn’t as entertaining as the previous books, readers will enjoy seeing Will become more confident as a Ranger. As Will investigates Lord Syron’s fief, he learns that things are not always what they seem. However, the story has few surprises, too little action, and an easily solved mystery. In addition, readers will miss Halt, Horace, and Evenlyn, who were prominently featured in the previous books. Despite this, readers will want to continue to read The Sorcerer of the North because they know that Will’s next exciting adventure is just around the corner.

Sexual Content

  • Will is happy to see Alyss, who “sensed his need for warmth and feminine company and affection and had been more than glad to supply all three. It hadn’t progressed past some tentative embraces and kisses in the moonlight. . .”
  • As Alyss leaves Will’s house, “she leaned forward and her lips touched his—light as butterfly wings and amazingly soft to the touch. They remained so for many seconds, then Alyss finally stepped back.”

Violence

  • Will catches a man spying on him. When the man tries to sneak into Will’s house, “Will moved quickly, grabbing the man by the wrist with his right hand and pivoting to jerk him forward into the room. At the same time, he let the pivot movement throw his left leg across the doorway as a barrier, so the outsider was jerked forward and tripped over the outstretched leg. . .” The man recovers and aims a war spear at Will, “the razor-sharp head weaving slightly as if to mesmerize his enemy.”
  • When the spy, Buttle, sneaks into Will’s house, Alyss tries to help by pointing a dagger toward the man. “Buttle swung instantly toward her, dropping into a defensive crouch, the spear ready to thrust. . . ” Will cuts the tip off of Buttle’s spear. Then, Will “brought the brass pommel of the saxe thudding into his temple.” Buttle is knocked unconscious and sold into slavery.
  • As Will and two other men try to leave the castle, guards shoot at them. “Will saw movement on the battlements ahead of them, and heard a crossbow bolt strike, skidding, on the stones in front of Tug. Without conscious thought, seemingly without aiming, he shot again and a figure tumbled from the parapet into the courtyard, his crossbow clattering on the stones beside him.” The men were able to escape.
  • When men follow Will out of the castle, Will shoots an arrow at one of them. “Instead of striking home into Buttle’s upper body, it came out of nowhere and slammed into his thigh, tearing through the fleshy part of the leg and pinning it to the hard leather of the saddle.”
  • Will tries to get Alyss out of the castle, but he is unable to. When he flees the castle, a sergeant recognizes Will and “lunged clumsily with the halbert. Will’s saxe knife was in his hand and he deflected the heavy ax head to one side. Grabbing the sergeant’s arm, turning and crouching in one movement, he threw him over his shoulder to the flagstone of the courtyard. The sergeant’s head slammed into the hard stone. His helmet rolled on one side and he lay stunned.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Will asks a stranger about an injured dog. The man replies, “John Buttle has a shepherd like that one. And he’d be the kind to injure a dog and leave it that way. Has a nasty temper, John does, particularly when he’s in the drink.”
  • The Scandians needed to raid a fief in order to get supplies, including wine.
  • Will invites the Scandians to a feast. He tells a man, “But don’t try to match them drink for drink. You’ll never manage it.”
  • Will goes into a tavern where the patrons were “tapping their wine mugs on the table” and singing along with a song. One of the songs is about a “drunken witch,” and another song talks about “the drunken king of Angledart.”
  • Will goes into the barracks rooms because he knew “nothing lessened men’s tongues like an evening of music and wine.” He gives the men “a large flagon of apple brandy to help the night along.”
  • Someone poisons Orman. Later, Will finds out the poison was “a particularly nasty toxin called corocore. It’s very obscure—not listed in any of the major texts on herbs and poisons. It takes about a week to take effect, so it was probably slipped into Orman’s food or drink sometime in the last ten days.”
  • Alyss, disguised as a noblewoman, asks for someone to bring her and her guest “the good Gallic white” wine.

Language

  • A man talks about his injured dog. He says, “little bitch tried to bite me so I taught her.”
  • Damn is used occasionally. For example, Will tells a Scandian that a man “made a damn nuisance of himself around here. . .”
  • “My God” is used as an exclamation twice. For example, when someone shows Will a weapon, Will says, “My God.”
  • “Oh God” is used as an exclamation three times. “Good God” is used as an exclamation once.
  • Alyss is working undercover as Lady Gwendolyn. She tells Will, “Now we can talk, while any eavesdroppers will hear the jongleur serenading that stuck-up twit, Lady Gwendolyn.”
  • Hell is used once. Will says, “Then we ride like hell for the gate.”
  • Someone calls a guard an idiot.

Supernatural

  • While in a forest at night, Will sees an apparition. “. . . A giant figure loomed out of the mist, towering high above the mere, seemingly to rise from the black water itself. One moment there was nothing. Then, in the blink of an eye, the figure was there, fully formed. . . This was no mortal figure he knew. This was something from the other side, from the dark world of sorcery and spells.” When the apparition tells Will to leave, Will quickly exits the forest.
  • Alyss is hypnotized.

Spiritual Content

  • As he was walking across the courtyard, Will “Breathed a silent prayer that they wouldn’t encounter Buttle on his way out.”
  • Will’s dog approaches a man. When the man begins petting the dog, Will’s friend says, “Thank God you didn’t shoot him.”

Spin

Spin centers around the murder of Paris Secord, an up-and-coming musician whose stage name was DJ ParSec. After finding fame and fortune on SoundCloud and YouTube, Paris begins to clash with some of the friends who helped her on her way to the top. When Paris is found dead on top of her signature turntables, her childhood best friend Kya and social media guru Fatimah (“Fuse”) find themselves suspects in the investigation. To clear their name, they set out to solve the murder themselves.

Kya and Fuse are the two main narrators of the story, which switches between their first-person perspectives. As Kya and Fuse delve deeper into Paris’s past, they must come to terms with the bitter fallings-out they had with Paris before she died. While Kya and Fuse start as enemies, they soon bond in their shared efforts to bring justice to Paris. As they investigate, the two encounter a conspiracy involving crazed fans who will do anything to prove themselves loyal members of the ParSec Nation. As Kya and Fuse unravel the mystery, some chapters flash back to Paris’s perspective, which reveals crucial details and reveals how she coped with fame.

 Spin is a fast-paced mystery that introduces readers to music industry concepts, such as ill-intentioned managers and nosy journalists. The story honestly portrays contemporary music culture and rabid fandom. While some of this portrayal comes across as well-researched and genuine, other parts feel forced. Readers might find the narrative’s dialects and buzzwords unnatural. For example, the book often shows tweets from rabid fans, but the style and syntax of the tweets is disingenuous and awkward.

Spin succeeds in its earnest portrayal of class tensions. Kya, Fuse, and Paris all must deal with their families’ financial situations and how their circumstances have shaped their worldviews. For example, Paris set up a bank account for her newfound wealth while trying to keep her grandmother from being evicted. “I learned quickly,” Paris says, “that black-folks rich and rich-rich aren’t the same thing.”

Spin delivers no central lesson about racial injustice. However, Spin is a diverse story set across a backdrop that shows readers how black music and culture evolve. From seeing Paris in the studio to seeing her fans’ blogs and bedrooms, readers will get a close-up look of how people of color influence and lead in the music scene. Readers will also see the anxieties Kya and Fuse experience while dealing with the police, because they are wary that, as people of color, they may become victims of police brutality.

Overall, Spin feels fairly one-dimensional, and readers may guess the ending before the murderer is revealed. The story is strongest in its theme of friendship, and readers will enjoy seeing Kya and Fuse bond as they begin to heal from Paris’s death. Equally important is the way art and culture bring people together, even as fame pushes artists to their breaking points.

Sexual Content

  • An internet troll asks Fuse, “If I hooked jumper cables to a car battery and clamped them onto your fingers and toes…would you blow?”
  • In a flashback, Paris narrates how she meets her boyfriend Shameik, who was “a CUTE-cute boy from my grade. Suddenly him invading my personal space wasn’t such a big deal.”
  • Paris’s boyfriend Shameik “kissed my neck again. It tickled, but I didn’t giggle because I liked acting as if those kisses didn’t affect me so he’d keep trying.”
  • Shameik and Fuse kissed once. It isn’t a big deal to Paris and is never described in detail, but the kiss keeps being brought up.
  • A character says, “If you made me leave so [Shameik and Fuse] could make out, I’m going to need some gas money.”

Violence

  • On the night of Paris’s murder, Kya punches Fuse in the face. “Her punch connected with my left eye. A solid POP! A white explosion of pain that washed out the room for a hot second.”
  • While questioning Fuse about the murder, a police officer “holds his hands at chest level, fingers curled, ready to grab” Fuse. Another cop grabs Fuse “so all I could do was kick, then he lifted me so those kicks only hit air.”
  • Fuse remembers finding Paris’s body. “That sheet of sticky, dark blood over half of ParSec’s [Paris’s] face. How she’d been a rag doll, arms spread wide, across the turntables…Her eyes bulged, the right one deep red where white should be, like something in that side of her head had exploded.”
  • A ParSec fan at school shoves Kya into a locker.
  • Fuse says, “Beyoncé could start the Purge with a tweet if she wanted.” (The Purge is a film about an anarchic period of unhinged murder and violence; the saying “The Purge” has become shorthand for such an event.)
  • Dedicated ParSec fans kidnap Kya and Fuse, zip-tie their hands and ankles together, and put them in the back of a van. Kya’s “turned—too late—to see two [people] rushing at me, duct tape stretched and ready. The first strip pressed hard against my lips while one of my assailants wrapped me [Kya] in a bear hug, pinning my arms.” During the attack a person in a mask “slammed a palm into my [Fuse’s] chest, pushing me back against the van wall.”
  • While they are captive in the van, Fuse is “angry enough to tear a chunk out of Kya” and aims “a two-heeled kick towards Kya’s chest.”
  • Someone tells Kya, “You should calm down. You’ll bust a blood vessel.” Kya responds, “I’ll bust your blood vessels!”
  • Devoted ParSec fans threaten to cut off Kya’s pinkie with garden shears. Later, they claim they were joking.
  • When they find the murderer, a group of ParSec fans deliver him to the police, “tied, gagged, and slightly bruised.” The fans have cut off his pinkie. The murderer’s hand “was heavily bandaged. A splotch of red seeped through.”
  • Fuse threatens Paris’s manager with a stun gun, but never uses it.
  • Fuse’s mother had the stun gun because “these days she preferred pepper spray and the spiked keychain her self-defense teacher gave her.”
  • When confronting a suspect, Fuse expects Kya “to kick the door in, snap this woman’s neck like Jessica Jones, and tear [her] out the house through a load-bearing wall.”
  • Paris’s narration reveals that her murder was an accident. She recounts, “His forearm grazed my chin, and I bit into his denim jacket sleeve. There were layers between my teeth and his flesh…I bit down with all the force in my jaws. He howled, tried to fling me off. He succeeded… The stand my laptop sat on was made of heavy aluminum… the corners were sharp… My temple connected with all the force generated from me and [the murderer]’s combined pain. A solid thunk, then my legs wouldn’t work.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • A popular rapper smells “strongly of weed and cologne.”
  • Paris’s boyfriend, Shameik, finds beer bottles in Paris’s apartment and says, “Who was over here drinking beer?” Paris admits to sharing beers with a popular rap group. Shameik says, “My girlfriend’s alone with some drunk old guys, and I’m not supposed to be concerned?”

Language

  • “God,” “crap,” and “Jesus” are used infrequently.
  • “God!” and “Jesus!” are used as an exclamation occasionally.
  • Fuse says that ParSec fans view Paris as “their god.”
  • Paris says that Kanye West is “one of the gods.”
  • Paris’s grandmother sometimes says, “Lord.”
  • Paris says, “I promptly lost my ish [sic]” when she gets 8,000 plays on her SoundCloud.
  • Paris’s manager calls Fuse a “strumpet.”
  • Fuse says, “Screw it,” once.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Kya’s mother thanks God for Kya’s safety.
  • Kya attends Paris’s funeral and observes that “The Fifth Street Baptist Church choir should’ve been here. That was [Paris’s grandmother]’s church…where Paris got dragged every Sunday before she could call shots. There was no ‘Amazing Grace,’ no ‘His Eye Is on the Sparrow.’”
  • A music journalist finding a lead looks “like someone told him Christmas Eve got rescheduled to today.”

by Caroline Galdi

Let Sleeping Dragons Lie

Odo and Eleanor are excited to be knights. The only problem is that nothing ever happens in their sleepy little village. While Odo is happy to wait for some action to come his way, Eleanor is eager to go on the next adventure. Both knights know they are prepared to go on a quest, especially since they have their trusted and talkative enchanted swords.

When bilewolves attack the village, two strangers show up to dispatch the evil creatures. The strangers, Edga, and Hundred, are determined to prevent an unbearable imposter from taking the crown. Odo, Eleanor, and their swords join the quest. They will wander through unfamiliar lands, fight unseen enemies, and prepare for an epic battle.

The second installment of the Have Sword, Will Travel Series loses its humor and lacks a lot of the charm of the first book. When Odo and Eleanor join the quest, they meet two new characters, Edga and Hundred. Unfortunately, neither of these characters is relatable. Years ago Edga abdicated the thrown, and now he believes Kyndryk should be king. However, Kyndryk rarely appears. When he does, none of his actions prove he is worthy of becoming king.

Several new characters appear in book two. However, a bat that has been taught to recite letters in order to deliver messages is the most interesting character. All of the new characters are one-dimensional. Even though their quest is admirable, their personalities do not pop off the page. As the group travels to stop the coronation, the action lags. When the group finally makes it to their destination, a dragon appears, but his appearance is anticlimactic. Instead of adding an interesting element, the dragon does nothing to add to the story’s plot.

Readers who fell in love with Odo and Eleanor in Have Sword, Will Travel will be slightly disappointed in the sequel, Let Sleeping Dragons Lie. The simple plot, the slow pace, and the lack of enchanted sword action all add up to a mediocre sequel. If you’re looking for an excellent fantasy series, the Riders of the Realm Series by Jennifer Lynn Alvarez and the Max Tilt Series by Peter Lerangis both take readers on an adventurous journey full of wonder.

  Sexual Content

  • None

 Violence

  • “Four enormous, shaggy, wolf like creatures, each the size of a small horse” attack two people—Hundred and Edga. The man’s weapon “was a blur, leaping out to punch one bilewolf’s snout, then jab another’s forefoot. The woman was equally as adept, though she wielded a curved sword, the blade moving swiftly…”
  • When Odo and Eleanor see the fighting, they also notice “three villagers lay dead or seriously wounded, their torn and jagged clothes still smoking from the bilewolves’ acid-spewing jaws.”
  • During the battle against the bilewolves, Sir Halfdan rides his warhorse towards a bilewolf. “A bilewolf turned towards the galloping horse and charged, leaping at the last moment to avoid Sir Halfdan’s lowering lance…” Sir Halfdan “flicked the point up, taking the beast in the shoulder, the steel point punching deep. Bilewolf shrieked, the lance snapped, and then horse, knight, and dying bilewolf collided and went flying.” Sir Halfdan dies. Three other villagers are killed, but their deaths are not described.
  • During the battle, a “bilewolf bunched itself to leap up at Odo…but Runnel’s sharp point cut through its leg even as it sprang. It fell sideways, yelping and Biter came down to separate its massive head from its body…” At the end of the battle, all the bilewolves are “slain, one with a crushed skull and the other with a sliced-open throat. All four carcasses lay steaming, the grass beneath them turning black and smoking…” The above battle takes place over six pages.
  • Edga, Hundred, and some of the villagers sneak into the village’s manor house to take some men prisoner. Hundred “brought down the guard with one hand across her mouth and a forearm tight against her throat. The guard struggled for a minute, then fell unconscious.”
  • The group sneaks into the manner when all of the men are sleeping. The group seizes the sleeping men, “swiftly trussing them up like livestock, wrist tied to ankles.”
  • While the group is herding the men out of the manor, “the front door burst in, admitting the single remaining guard… Hundred tripped the guard and Odo fell on him, one knee pinning him to the ground…and they both tied him up.” No one is injured. The scene is described over three pages.
  • Someone uses a craft-fire to have birds attack Edga’s group. “With a furious flapping of wings, a dozen black shapes converged on them from all sides, claws and beaks reaching for their eyes… Edga spun his staff overhead, knocking a raven to the ground. Hundred produced a whip and cracked it twice. Three birds fell dead, instantly slain.” Everyone is able to escape without injury.
  • A hooded figure appears and when he gestures, “tiny darts hissed out of the trees, striking them each in the throat. Odo felt a string of pain, followed by a rushing, clouding sensation as darkness swept over him once more.” Everyone in the group becomes unconscious, but they wake up safely.
  • When traveling into the urthkin’s tunnels, “something moved behind her [Eleanor] and she felt a tiny pinprick at the neck. ‘Move, tall one, and I will spill your lifeblood to the dirt,’ said the urthkin holding the curved knife to her throat.”
  • Someone uses craft-fire to make birds and bugs attack Edga’s group. “An eagle and dozens of sparrows…swarmed from the sky. Scorpion, spiders, and ants issued from cracks in rocks…” The humans were able to run and escape the attack.
  • When trying to stop Edga’s sister from becoming king, Edga’s group “attacked the backs of the watching Instruments. Two fell with throwing knives buried deep in their shoulders. Another two dropped with tendons cut in their ankles.”
  • During the battle, “Odo lowered the shield from his face long enough to block a wicked slash to his ribs from a skinny woman… The blow jarred every joint in the left side of his body.”
  • In order to stop the attacking birds, “Hundred’s blades caught the craft-worker. The bearded man went down with a cry, and his green-flamed torch went out. The animals were instantly released.”
  • Hundred tries to stop Lord Deor. Hundred “threw a knife that glanced off his shoulder without doing any harm… The third bit into his neck, and he turned with a snarl.” The fighting is described over seven and a half pages.
  • Trying to capture Lord Deor, Odo continues the fight. “Blood still flowed freely down his [Odo’s] side, and his smile was looking forced.”
  • The huge rock where the fight took place began to crumble, and Lord Deor “with a cry, he fell into a fiery crack and disappeared. There came a sound like giant jaws crunching and he was gone.”
  • As Edga’s sister tried to run, the dragon caught her and wrapped her in “his lightning-fast tongue. The dragon held her like that for a few seconds, then whipped his tongue back, sending the regents spinning dizzily away until she fell over a stone and lay there, sobbing angrily.”
  • In the epilogue, an enchanted sword “lunged, killing the peasant with a single stab to the throat.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • Edga asks Hundred to sing. “Give us a round of ‘Drunk Eyes Fair See What Fair Might Not Be.”
  • While traveling, Edga’s group stops for the night. As they talk to other travelers, they “passed around a flask of warming spirits that made Odo’s eyes water, just sniffing it.”
  • Someone uses poison darts to put Edga’s group “to sleep.”

Language

  • Eleanor calls someone a “slimy cumberwold.”
  • Edga’s sister says he is a “dullard.”
  • Eleanor tells Odo, “don’t be such a lubberwort.”
  • Kyndryk’s grandmother calls him a fool.
  • Edga’s sister says, “You’re supposed to be dead, you old fool!”

Supernatural

  • Biter and his sister sword are enchanted swords that are able to talk and control their movements.
  • Someone uses a craft-fire to deliberately call the bilewolves.
  • Some people believe that “the dead were dead and likely to stay that way—unless talked about too much.”
  • In order to help Edga grieve the loss of his friends, Odo built a grave. Hundred explains, “These are twigs and berries—an old Karnickan ritual, I believe. A stick for the body, a seed for the soul? To put grief to rest and let the happy memories thrive?” The group buries the stick and seed to represent the dead.
  • Urthkin, “pale-skinned, reed-slender demi-humans” that have “paws like a mole’s, with digging claws,” only come out at night because light hurts their eyes. Edga’s group asks for permission to use the Urthkin’s tunnels.
  • Edga and his group are taken to a forge that is able to create enchanted swords. Odo’s sword, Biter, asks a smith to repair a nick in his sword. Biter is “washed in sweet oils, bathed in three fires, hammered by a master smith.” Afterward, Biter’s memory comes back.
  • Kyndryk paints a mural of a dragon. He chants, “Dragon, dragon, heed our call. Come to aid us, one and all. From a cruel and dreadful fate, save us now, ere it’s too late.” After Kyndryk says the chant several times, the dragon comes alive. “But the dragon was flying too low. The broad wings flapped almost carelessly a third and final time. Then, with a soundless crash that somehow made the stone quiver faintly underfoot, it struck the vertical cliff face and became a mural once more.”

Spiritual Content

  • While trying to sneak past sentries, Odo “kept his face carefully neutral, praying his relief was perfectly concealed.”

Like a Love Story

Like a Love Story takes place in New York City in the late 1980s. The AIDS crisis is devastating gay communities, and activists are protesting the government’s reluctance to extend research or support to those affected. The narration rotates between three teenagers: Reza, Art, and Judy.

Reza is new in town, having recently immigrated to New York from Iran, where his family escaped a violent revolution. In the closet with a nearly hypochondriac fear of AIDS, Reza starts at a new school and soon meets Judy and Art, who have been best friends since childhood. Both Judy and Art are committed to gay culture and gay activism under the tutelage of Judy’s uncle Stephen, an AIDS patient and well-known member of the gay community. Art is an out-and-proud gay teenager, who is assertive and upfront about his identity. Brash and unafraid, Art is full of anger at the injustice of the AIDS crisis. Judy, a straight girl who shares Art’s love of Madonna and fashion, supports him in everything and shares his love of fashion and film.

A romance develops between Reza and Judy. But Reza, a closeted gay, knows he can only hold out for so long before his secret comes out. The first two acts of the novel largely concern their false relationship, eventual falling-out, and then the ensuing romance between Reza and Art. Each of the three narrators has a fairly equal stake in the plot, and each brings their own narration, perspective, and personality to the story. Like a Love Story is largely a coming-of-age story, but it is really three coming-of-age stories as each character grapples with their sexuality, their future, and their imminent emergence into the adult world.

Like a Love Story is essential reading for anyone who wants to learn about the AIDS crisis or the origins of the modern gay rights movement. Without preaching or lecturing, the narrative paints a rich and engaging portrait of the political climate through its three narrators. Each character in Like a Love Story has a completely unique voice; readers can open the book to any page and immediately know who is speaking.

Regardless of their own identities, readers will see themselves in the characters because of how authentically they are portrayed. Each character has uncertainty about their place in the world, an imperfect relationship with their parents, a faulty understanding of how the world works, and a yearning to belong—and readers get to see them grow as the story progresses.

 Like a Love Story has some of the most compelling adult figures in a genre where adults are often one-dimensional and cast to the side. The relationship that each teen has with their parents is complicated and imperfect, but masterfully written. It is genuinely heart-wrenching to see Art’s interactions with his homophobic parents, and it is genuinely moving to see Judy’s conversations with her mother evolve throughout the story.

Like a Love Story does not shy away from sexual content and depictions of sex acts, but it’s one of the few books that feels justified in its usage. Characters frequently talk of condoms and bodily fluids. The mechanics of AIDS transmission and the effects of the disease are explained as Uncle Stephen succumbs to infections. Readers who pick up this book in 2020 will already know the ending to some extent. Thanks to modern medicine, many people today can live full lives with HIV and new pharmaceuticals can help prevent transmission. However, the characters don’t know this, and they can only grieve the dead and dying members of their community while fighting for rights and recognition. The story highlights the importance of community, activism, and love.

Sexual Content

  • When asked how he knew he was gay, Art says, “I had a wet dream about Morrisey.”
  • During a make-out session, Judy tries to find out if Reza is aroused. “As nonchalant as I can, I move my hand down, feeling his crotch. I feel something hard. Is it him, or is it his zipper? I can’t even tell. I’ve never felt a hard-on before.”
  • Judy thinks, “Art told me once that the subway was the hottest place in the city, as in sexual heat, not physical temperature. He said that all those bodies rubbing against each other basically made it a clothed, co-ed bathhouse.”
  • Reza sees a naked male mannequin in a store window and thinks, “I look at the mannequin’s body and find myself getting a little hard. I cover my crotch with my hands. I imagine that Art is the mannequin, standing in the store window naked. How sick do you have to be to be turned on by a piece of plastic?”
  • After Reza sees a photo of Art, Reza thinks, “I need to stop thinking about him, and I know there’s only one way to do that. I lie back on my bed, close my eyes, and unzip my pants. I see Bartholomew Emerson Grant VI come to life, enter my room, climb into bed with me. He kisses me, undresses me, tells me not to be scared. But then he’s gone, and all I see are images of dying men with lesions.”
  • A big part of the second half of the plot is Reza’s shame and paranoia surrounding his sexual desires. Stephen teaches Art and Reza about safe sex and about how to use condoms safely. Stephen tells them, “If you want a tutorial, we can go home and practice with bananas. . . Lube is lubricant. Men need it, because we don’t naturally get wet down there . . . the jury is out on whether oral sex is safe or not, but my advice is to use a condom for that too.”
  • Stephen says, “The straight world has defined losing your virginity as intercourse. That’s their thing. But we get to define it for ourselves. And you never, ever have to do anything you don’t want to.”
  • Reza thinks, “I hate those words. Oral. Anal. I hate how graphic they are, how hostile they feel.”
  • In a photography darkroom, Art takes off his clothes for Reza. “There’s only one thing to take off. My boxer briefs. I remove them. I stand in front of him, exposed.” They kiss, but don’t do anything else.
  • Judy has an intimate moment with Reza’s brother, Saadi. As Judy makes out him, “It’s furious. Our tongues explore each other. Then his hands are all over me… his breath is heavy, and his hips are thrusting urgently. I feel what I never felt when Reza and I kissed, an erection. Saadi is so hard. He sits up and takes his polo off.” They don’t go all the way. “He wants to have sex, but I tell him I’m not ready.”
  • Art says, “The first time I read porn, I was twelve. I found my dad’s stash of Penthouse and Playboy magazines in the back of his closet. But Penthouse has these sex stories in them, and they were very hot because there were men in them.”
  • The characters all go to a Madonna performance wherein she masturbates onstage. The act is not described in detail.
  • When Art and Reza finally consummate their relationship, they use condoms and lube. Reza wraps “my legs around him, pulling him closer to me, or deeper into me, because he’s in me now. We thrust and grunt and sweat until we almost fall off the bed.” The scene takes up about three pages, but it is mostly dialogue and doesn’t go into more physical detail.

Violence

  • While attending a protest, Art hears bystanders say, “Hose those faggots down. They like that.”
  • During a protest, police officers “yank Art away and handcuff him.” The other police officer “pushes Reza to the ground.”
  • Some bullies begin to taunt Art, and he reacts violently. “My fingers tense into a fist. Before I know it, I leap out of my seat and tackle Darryl to the ground, taking him down like I’m one of the gorgeous ladies of wrestling. ‘Go to hell, you fucking ASSHOLE!’ I scream as he writhes below me, his scared, beefy body stronger than mine but unable to overpower the force of my rage. ‘Get off me, fag!’ he yells. ‘Not until I give you AIDS,’ I say, and I spit on his face.” Art describes later, “I pull Darryl’s foot toward my face. He pushes his leg up, kicking my chin hard in the process. My teeth hit my lips. My head doubles back, hits the wall with a thud… My eyes flicker with the shock of pain. When I open them, I see blood on my hand and on my shirt.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At a party with some kids from school, Judy gets “drunk on fruit punch.” Her friend tells her, “You don’t want your parents to see you like this.”
  • When Uncle Stephen is on his deathbed, he asks for a glass of wine. Judy’s mom pours wine for him and a small glass for Judy.
  • Uncle Stephen has been taking morphine for his pain; by the time he dies, his bottle of morphine is empty.

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently. Profanity includes: fuck, shit, hell, ass, and damn.
  • “Oh my God” is often used as an exclamation.
  • Art is determined to reclaim the words “faggot” and “fag,” which is a recurring point throughout the story. Judy’s mom asks Art not to use the word because “I heard that word hissed at my brother like a dagger throughout his childhood, and I don’t want to hear it ever again.” They eventually agree to disagree.
  • After coming out, Reza has “heard every possible word a homosexual could be called . . . Faggot. Pansy. Mary. Butt pirate. Fruit. Turd burglar. Flamer. Nancy. Queen.”

Supernatural

  • Art can see “auras.” Readers might recognize them as a condition called synesthesia, but to Art they take on a spiritual and artistic significance. Art doesn’t “snap a photo unless I see its energy. I know they’re all black-and-white, but they have colors to me. Auras.”

Spiritual Content

  • Art says, “I think that if it weren’t for all the bullshit rules of Catholicism, then there would be no Madonna, because what is she if not a rebellion against all of this?”
  • In a church, Art thinks, “I don’t want to burn this place to the ground. What I want is to make them see that I AM HOLY. These thoughts of me and Reza, they are holy.”
  • A priest’s homily “makes multiple references to protecting ‘the unborn.’” Art thinks, “It’s amazing how gung-ho he is about saving the lives of fetuses, but then he turns a blind eye to all the actual humans DYING right in front of him.”
  • Art lights prayer candles in a church and thinks, “I know that I don’t believe in a God who can grant wishes, but if there’s even a chance that such a God exists, then I have some wishes I’d like granted.” He wishes for AIDS to be cured.

by Caroline Galdi

 

Many Waters

When identical twins Dennis and Sandy accidentally mess with their father’s scientific experiment on faster-than-light travel, they are transported to a desert wasteland. Stranded and confused, the two boys meet the locals—dark-skinned people who are only four feet tall. Between the strange people, the miniature mammoths, unicorns, and manticores, Sandy and Dennis are convinced they’re on a strange planet on the other side of the universe. After nearly dying from heatstroke, they are taken in by Grandfather Lameck. When they meet Grandfather Lameck’s son, Noah, the twins realize they have been thrown back in time and are on Earth in the time right before the Great Flood. But the flood is coming—will the twins find a way home before the rain starts to fall?

To make matters more complicated, humans are not the only intelligent beings to deal with. There are seraphim, a tall and beautiful winged people who know many things—maybe even how to get the twins home—but the seraphim do not like to interfere with the lives of men. Then, there are the nephilim, just as tall and beautiful as the seraphim, but they spend their time seducing women with worldly pleasures and extravagant treasures. The nephilim are suspicious of the twins’ sudden appearance, and they will do anything to find out what they are up to.

Once again, L’Engle spins a magical tale that centers on the battle between good and evil. Yalith and Jephath, two of Noah’s children, are kind people that do all they can to help the twins. But most people who live in the oasis are corrupt and evil, abandoning tradition to pursue pleasure and to get ahead in life. The twins and Yalith are all tempted to give in to worldly pleasures. While conflicted, all three reject temptation in exchange for kindness, unicorns, and listening to the stars.

While there are good and bad characters, several members of Noah’s family and Noah himself are more ambiguous, showing that even godly people are not perfect. While God is mentioned several times as “El,” the story centers more around the twins as they adapt to the time period and try to find a way home. The seraphim and the nephilim are revealed to be angels and fallen angels, respectively. They add intrigue and excitement to the story. Overall, Many Waters is a fun tale with a unique twist on the story of Noah’s Ark that will leave readers satisfied.

Sexual Content

  • In Noah’s time, bothmen and women only wore loincloths. Therefore, Sandy and Dennis see several women’s breasts, but none are described graphically. When meeting Yalith, Sandy notes “the girl, who wore only a loincloth . . . was gently curved, with small rosy breasts.”
  • Yalith kisses Aariel, a seraph, much as a child kisses a parent. “Like a child, she held her face up for a kiss, and Aariel leaned down and pressed his lips gently against hers.”
  • Yalith sees her sister with a nephilim. Her sister was “gazing up at him adoringly, leaning against him so that her rosy breasts touched his pale flesh.”
  • Japheth kisses his wife several times. Once, “Japheth leaned to her and kissed her on the lips. Dennis . . . thought that it was a nice kiss. It was the kind of kiss he had seen his father give his mother. A real kiss. If he lived through this, he would like to kiss someone like that.” Another time, Japheth’s wife “bent toward him to kiss him.”
  • A girl from the oasis flirts with Sandy. She “bent closer and brushed her lips against his.” Later, she tries to seduce him. “He was not prepared to have the light suddenly darkened by Tiglah’s face as she pressed her lips against his . . . he knew what she wanted, and he wanted it, too; he was ready, but not, despite her gorgeousness, with Tiglah . . . her breathing mingled with his. He knew if he did not break this off, he would not be able to. With a deep inward sigh, he pulled away.”
  • Sandy thinks about taking Yalith to the future with him. Sandy “looked at Yalith’s small and perfect body, barely covered by the loincloth, her breasts delicate and rosy, and had a moment’s absurd vision of her in one of the classrooms at the regional high school.”
  • When saying goodbye, “Yalith nodded, then reached up to Sandy and kissed him on the lips. Then Dennis. Full, long kisses.”

Violence

  • Sandy is kidnapped. “He tried to wriggle out of the clutch of whoever was carrying him, and a fish crashed into his belly, winding him, and something sharp pricked his arm.”
  • When Japheth tries to rescue Sandy, “the older man swooped on him with the spear, and despite Japheth’s quick reflex, the spear cut across his ribs, and a trickle of blood slid down his side.”
  • Japheth comes home with “an ugly bruise on his cheek where an angrily thrown stone had hit him.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Noah has the “largest and best vineyards on the oasis . . . the fame of his wine had spread to many other oases round about.”
  • A man is sick from drinking too much. Afterward, “the smell of Ham’s sickness mingled with the smell of wine, of meat form the stewpot, of the skins of the tent.”
  • Yalith remembers how her sister had a wedding with “far too much wine, inferior, at that.”
  • When Noah reconciles with his father, he “handed his father a small wineskin. . . The old man held the wineskin to his lips, then smacked them in appreciation.” Sandy also takes a small sip.

Language

  • When a woman’s family kidnaps him, Sandy thinks, “you slut.”
  • An angry man says, “Auk’s nuts to you.”

Supernatural

  • Sandy and Dennis accidentally mess up their father’s scientific experiment and are sent back in time. “Dennis groped through a pervasive mist, his hands touching nothing. Came a great sonic boom. Then absolute silence.”
  • In the past, there were miniature mammoths. “From behind the outcropping of rock came something grey and sinuous which the twins at first thought was a snake. But it was followed by a head with small, bright, black eyes, and great fans of ears, and a chunky body covered with shaggy grey hair.”
  • There are manticores in the past, which try to eat the mammoths several times. The manticore had a “man’s face with filthy hair. . . From the mat of hair came two horns, curved downward, with sharp points like boar’s teeth. . . The rest of the creature pushed into the tent. The head did not belong to a man’s body but to a lion’s . . . the lion did not have a lion’s tail but a scorpion’s.” The manticores can only say the word “hungry!”
  • There are unicorns that flicker in and out of existence. They can flicker out of existence in one place, then be called into existence miles away instantaneously. “On the horizon to the far left, moving toward them, appeared a creature which shimmered in and out of their vision, silvery in color, as large as a goat or a pony, with light flickering out from its forehead.”
  • There are seraphim (angels) and nephilim (fallen angels). Both have “Great wings. Much long hair. . . The seraphim are golden and the nephilim are white, whiter than sand.”
  • Both the seraphim and the nephilim can turn into animals; each has their own animal they transform into. One of the seraphim is a scarab beetle. “Grandfather Lameck took it on his palm, a scarab beetle, glinting bronze in the lamplight. The old man stroked it gently with a trembling forefinger, and closed his palm. Then came a vivid flash of light, similar to that of the unicorn’s horn, and a tall presence stood in the tent, smiling at the old man…Hair the color of wheat with the sun on it, brightly gold, long, and tied back, falling so that it almost concealed tightly furled wings.” One of the nephilim is a giant desert lizard. “As the lizard neared her, it rose straight upward to a height of at least six feet, and suddenly [its] arms were outstretched above the head; the tail forked into two legs, and a man came running toward her, a man of extraordinary beauty, with alabaster-white skin and wings of brilliant purple.”
  • Yalith shows Dennis how to listen to the stars. “He listened, listened, focusing on one bright pattern of stars. Closed his eyes. Listened. Seemed to hear a delicate, crystal chiming. Words. Hush. Heal. Rest. Make peace. Fear not. He laughed in excitement. Opened his eyes to twinkling diamonds.”

Spiritual Content

  • A woman tells the twins, “We don’t have any men on the oasis who are as tall and like gods as you are.”
  • The twins discover that Grandfather Lameck’s son is Noah, from the biblical story of Noah and the Arc.
  • Yalith recounts her family lineage, which includes the biblical figures Methuselah and Enoch. “Methuselah, my great-grandfather, lived for nine hundred and sixty-nine years. And his father was Enoch, who walked with El, and lived three hundred and sixty and five years, and then El took him.”
  • The people in Noah’s time call God “El” and El sometimes speaks to them, though his words are never shared directly in the story. Noah says, “Yesterday, when I was working in the vineyard, the Voice spoke to me. El told me that I must find wives for you.”
  • Japheth mentions a curse on the land. “When our forebears had to leave the Garden, they were told, Accursed shall the ground be on your account. It will grow thorns and thistles for you. You shall gain your bread by the sweat of your brow.”
  • The seraphim mention the pattern. They say the twins “are part of the pattern,” but “the pattern is not set. . . It is fluid, and constantly changing.” They always maintain that the pattern “will be worked out in beauty in the end.”

by Morgan Lynn

New Moon

Bella always knew Edward was too good to be true, and her worst fears come to fruition when he tells her that he is leaving Forks—and he doesn’t want her to come with him. He promises it will be “like he never existed.” But the hold he has on her heart isn’t something that fades with time. As the months stretch out without Edward, Bella succumbs to a mind-numbing depression where time passes, but she doesn’t really live.

Bella doesn’t expect things will ever change until she runs into Jacob, an old friend from the nearby reservation. Jacob becomes her best friend. He is so warm and kind that she begins to think of Jacob as her own personal sun, burning away the dark clouds that have surrounded Bella for so long. Bella knows that Jacob longs for their relationship to move forward, but is her damaged heart even capable of that kind of healing? To make matters worse, there’s a cult on the reservation that’s sucking in many of the teenage boys. When Jacob suddenly vanished from her life and starts hanging around with the very people he had been scared of before, Bella decides she has to help her friend break free. But the bonds that tie Jacob may be deeper and more permanent than Bella could possibly imagine.

In New Moon, Bella struggles to move on after losing her one true love. At first, she wallows in depression, trying to put on a brave face for the world outside, but eventually she learns that she isn’t fooling anyone. Once Jacob enters her life, she begins to heal, but she also clings to the memory of Edward. Her inability to let go of the past prevents her from moving forward as she grapples with questions such as, is it possible to have more than one love in one lifetime? And is it right to give herself to Jacob, when a part of her still mourns for Edward?

The second installment of the Twilight series takes a shocking turn, but it will not disappoint. Readers need not worry that Edward’s absence for most of the novel will detract from its entertainment factor. Bella’s trauma over the loss of Edward, his family, and her life as a vampire keeps that storyline very much alive, as does the reappearance of an old enemy. Jacob, his father Billy, and Jacob’s friends on the reservation breathe life into the story, bringing new, lovable characters into the mix. These characters are well-developed, and Jacob will steal the heart of all but the strongest Edward supporters. The end of New Moon comes in an exhilarating rush that will either leave readers rejoicing or will break their hearts. Either way, make sure to have the next book, Eclipse, nearby!

Sexual Content

  • Bella and Edward kiss several times. “He leaned closer and pressed his icy lips against mine . . . His mouth lingered on mine, cold and smooth and gentle, until I wrapped my arms around his neck and threw myself into the kiss with a little too much enthusiasm.” Another time, “he sighed, and leaned down to touch his lips to mine. I reached up on my toes to make the kiss last longer when he pulled away.”
  • While in bed, Edward and Bella make out. “The kiss began much the same as usual . . . And then something seemed to change. Suddenly his lips became much more urgent, his free hand twisted into my hair and held my face securely to his . . . His body was cold through the thin quilt, but I crushed myself against him eagerly.”

Violence

  • Bella gets pushed into a table and falls into a pile of broken crystal. “Only now did I feel the searing, stinging pain…Dazed and disoriented, I looked up from the bright red blood pulsing out of my arm.”
  • When Jacob tells Bella that he helped kill “the bloodsucker who was going to kill you,” he says, “I don’t count that towards the whole murder thing . . . Vampires don’t count as people.”
  • Bella gets injured several times while learning to ride a motorcycle.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Hell is used several times. Once, Bell says, “How the hell did Mike Newton end up in this conversation?”
  • Crap is used several times. Bella says, “I did drown. Crap, crap, crap! This is gonna kill Charlie.”
  • Pissed off and damn are used a few times. While drowning, Bella hears Edward’s voice yell, “Damn it, Bella, keep fighting.”

Supernatural

  • Edward and his family are vampires, though they choose to survive on animal blood rather than human blood. They are super strong, fast, and several of them have special abilities like Edward’s ability to hear peoples’ thoughts.
  • Jacob and his friends can transform into giant wolves. “With another sharp tearing sound, Jacob exploded, too. He burst out of his skin—one second it was Jacob diving into the air, and then it was the gigantic, russet brown wolf—so enormous that I couldn’t make sense of its mass somehow fitting inside Jacob.”

Spiritual Content

  • Carlisle says, “Never, in the nearly four hundred years now since I was born, have I ever seen anything to make me doubt whether God exists in some form or the other.” Meanwhile, Edward thinks “God and heaven exist . . . and so does hell. But he doesn’t believe there is an afterlife” for vampires. “You see, he thinks we’ve lost our souls.”
  • When Jacob agrees to help Bella, she thinks, “Jacob was a gift from the gods.”
  • When Edward sees Bella, who he thinks has died, he thinks he is dead also. “Maybe this is hell. I don’t care.”

by Morgan Lynn

Tumbling

Tumbling takes place over the course of a two-day gymnastics meet, but it’s not just any meet—this meet determines who will represent the United States at the Olympics. The story is told from the perspectives of five different girls, each of whom deals with her own struggles.

Leigh is a closeted lesbian and worries about the implications if her secret gets out. Grace has a distorted view of what a perfect gymnast is and ends up paying the price. Monica is a nobody and feels she isn’t good enough to be there. Wilhelmina’s shot at the Olympics was taken from her four years ago because of a rule change, and now she is determined to prove she deserves to go more than anyone else. Camille was injured four years ago in a car crash and is making a comeback to gymnastics, but she can’t decide if this is what she truly wants. Is the Olympics worth sacrificing her boyfriend and her happiness?

Although each girl’s problem is unique, they all struggle with the complexity of competing against friends. Everyone is paranoid; no one’s words can be trusted. Tumbling explores the enormous pressures that come with gymnastics—on bodies, mental states, friendships, and relationships.

Tumbling is an intense book with routines so detailed that readers will hold their breaths as they read them. Readers will cheer when the girls land their routines perfectly and ache when they make mistakes. Readers who know nothing about gymnastics will be able to understand Tumbling, but there is a glossary in the back of the book to help with the gymnastics terminology if needed. Rather than focusing on the intricacy of the sport, the story focuses more on the girls’ struggles. Readers will relate to the girls’ problems, which include sexuality, eating disorders, confidence, family relationships, and boyfriends.

The characters invoke sympathy, but none of them are truly likable. They are petty and constantly play mind games with each other. Because the story takes place over two days, there isn’t enough time for the girls to develop. The book ends abruptly and leaves the reader with many unanswered questions. Overall, Tumbling is best suited for those looking to read an entertaining book. Readers who want a mix of spots, teenage drama, and intense competition will enjoy Tumbling.

 Sexual Content

  • Leigh has a crush on Camille and fantasizes about her a couple of times. Leigh is distracted at the meet and thinks about “Camille’s cushy lips.” Camille comes to Leigh’s room with the other gymnasts to watch an interview. “It wasn’t going to be like it had been in Leigh’s fantasies last night. When Camille had sat down with Leigh on her bed and told her she was dumping her boyfriend because she’d realized she thought Leigh was so much hotter. And then had laid down next to her and. . . ”
  • After Leigh performs a perfect floor routine, she hugs teammate after teammate until eventually, Camille hugs her. “Camille was hugging her, actually pressed against her body, like Leigh had imagined so many times in the privacy of her own head.”
  • Dylan Patrick, a member of a famous boy band, messages Grace and says she’s “hot.” He, Grace, and Leigh send flirty messages throughout the book, such as, “It means a lot to know someone is watching me. Especially someone as cute as you.”
  • Monica flashes back to when she got waxed “down there.” She describes how “…the wax job from a few days ago had replaced her pubic hair with angry red welts.” She remembers she lay “half-naked” and “her crotch burned like any other fifteen-year-olds.”
  • During the meet, Monica is uncomfortable being “basically naked” and having “every line on her body on display.”
  • A doctor asks Camille, who is sixteen, if she menstruates.
  • Camille lists the things that were different about her before she met her boyfriend. “Different height. Different weight. Different voice. Virgin.”
  • Camille talks about how she has grown since she took a break from gymnastics by saying, “…a woman of five feet and one inch with breasts and hips.”
  • Wilhelmina almost wishes she could be a mean gymnast, someone who would “message Dylan Patrick something suggestive tonight to get under Grace’s skin.”
  • There are several instances of Wilhelmina fantasizing about kissing her boyfriend, such as, “She’d wrap her arms around his and press her lips to his.”
  • Wilhelmina and her boyfriend almost kiss. Wilhelmina’s “lips were just centimeters away from his. She could feel her breath on his mouth.” They don’t kiss because he says he can wait until Wilhelmina is done with the Olympics.
  • Leigh thinks Grace wraps herself in multiple towels because she didn’t want Leigh to see “a bit of skin besides her face and her feet.”

Violence

  • Grace has an eating disorder. She “pared herself down to three hundred or five hundred calories a day just to be a bee to keep up with the skinnies.” She worries Leigh will “see how far my collarbone is sticking out today, afraid you’d notice that my legs are like twigs growing out of the hotel carpet.” She eventually confesses she doesn’t eat to Leigh and Camille, with the intention of confessing to her dad, and promises she will get help.
  • Wilhelmina sees evidence of Grace’s eating disorder a few times throughout the book and is saddened by it, but chooses not to do anything about it. She sees Grace throw away an entire plate of food twice. She notices how skinny her body is a few times. “Wilhelmina swore she could see through Grace’s quadriceps to her femur. Even when Grace was bent over, her hip bones were visible.”
  • In a flashback that takes place four years ago, Camille is ecstatic after making it onto the Olympic team. She is having an out-of-body experience when she gets into a car crash. “…almost like she wasn’t in the car but was instead floating about it, watching and saving the joy for later. And it was good she wasn’t in her body at that moment. Because that’s probably why she didn’t feel her head go through the windshield.” Her doctor says gymnastics caused “‘…the stress fractures in your back that caused it to break in three places during the crash.’”
  • Gymnastics is discussed as being dangerous to your health. Camille’s doctor tells her, “‘It’s gymnastics that almost killed you.’” Camille thinks, “Everyone had some sort of scare when she fell head-first off the bars or whacked her back into the balance beam from three feet in the air.”
  • Grace suggests to the reporters Leigh is a lesbian, and Leigh gets angry. “Leigh was going to slap her. If it weren’t for the cameras still in the vicinity, her hand would be imprinted on Grace’s face.”
  • Grace almost falls off the bar due to her eating disorder. During her routine, “her body almost crumpled off the bar and whacked it before falling 8.2 feet to the floor.”
  • Leigh falls off the beam and gets injured. “A hammer bashed into her forehead just above her right eye. Her body stiffened and her blood was sharp and painful, like razors running through her veins, and her eye was going to fall out and roll on the floor, that floor, which was coming up beneath her limbs much too quickly, and then, thankfully, she blacked out.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Leigh and Grace watch as Monica picks her wedgie. They say she needs to “‘buy better butt glue’” and call her the “Wedgie Queen.” They continue to joke about this a few more times throughout the book.
  • God, Oh God, Oh my God, and For God’s sakes are used frequently as exclamations.
  • Christ is used once as an exclamation.
  • Leigh’s coach calls a reporter an asshole.
  • Leigh worries she is a bitch on the mat.
  • Profanity is used sparingly throughout the book. Profanity includes: shit, bullshit, damn it, damn, badass, freaking, and kick ass.
  • “For the hell of it” is used once.
  • A girl says, “That was some effed-up stuff.”
  • Wilhelmina tells Camille to “cut the crap.”
  • “Get her butt back on the beam” and “Kicking butt” are each used once.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Grace meditates before her beam routine. “It would look like she was praying, but Grace didn’t pray…It was her own body she counted on, not some Great Unknown Creature in the Sky.”
  • Camille made the Olympic team four years ago, but she had to withdraw due to a car accident. She describes her moment of happiness in the car as “this hoped for, prayed for moment was almost otherworldly, almost like she wasn’t in the car but was instead floating above it, watching and saving the joy for later.”
  • Leigh is tired of being mean during the gymnastics meet, so she promises to be nice and still win the meet. “So when Leigh had closed her eyes last night, she had made a promise to the Gods of Gymnastics or the Universe or whoever was in charge out there. Tomorrow, I will be me, and I will still win. I will win while being nice.”
  • After Leigh falls, Grace says, “I think I accidentally prayed for it.”
  • After Leigh falls, Monica tells Grace and Ted, “You aren’t gods.”

by Jill Johnson

 

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Vol 1

Link is a simple boy in a small, peaceful village. However, he lived a very different life before he came to the village less than two years ago. Before, he had been training with the sword to become a border guard. Then, in a tragic accident, Link’s entire town was sucked into the blackness by a Death God and vanished. Link fled in terror and has been hiding ever since, though he hasn’t been able to escape his guilt.

When monsters invade Link’s safe haven, he springs into action to defend his new home. But these strange creatures are nothing like Link has ever seen before. Will he be able to redeem himself and save his new home? Or is Link doomed to watch another town be swallowed by the darkness?

Link himself is an enjoyable and relatable hero. He has a sense of humor despite his tragic past. He tries to be patient with the children of the village, and when he loses his temper, he regrets it later. However, the other supporting characters in the story are undeveloped caricatures.

There are some mild violent and sexual images, though these do not abound. Specifically, the monsters and Death God may be frightening to younger readers, and parents may not appreciate the bikini-clad princess that appears in the first chapter. However, for the 13+ recommended age range, the images in this graphic novel are much less graphic and sexual than other popular teen graphic novels. Still, the graphic novel is noticeably darker than the video game, such as when the Death God is introduced, Link suffers a gruesome injury.

For fans of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess video game, this graphic novel will be an enjoyable read. Though the graphic novel diverges from the video game, there are enough similarities that gamers will recognize and enjoy. Link is given a different backstory in this graphic novel, which provides enough of a difference that it is not simply a repeat of the game. For readers who have not played the video game and are meeting Link for the first time, they may find that the plot drags. While there is plenty of action at the end, the first half of the book meanders around, introducing characters and aspects of Link’s life from the video game. While interesting enough to gamers, there might not be enough action to hook new readers.

Sexual Content

  • The Twilight Princess, who only appears in chapter one, is dressed in a bikini top and sarong skirt that bares most of her legs.
  • When Link gets rammed by a goat, he thinks, “It’s weird for Ordon goats to be so aggressive. Is it mating season?”

Violence

  • The sorcerer Zant attacks the Twilight Princess. There is a giant explosion as he overpowers her.
  • A village girl is shot in the shoulder with an arrow and then kidnapped.
  • Link fights the monster trying to kidnap a village girl. The fight is depicted over 11 pages. At the end of it, Link’s arm is cut off.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • Link lives in a world with magic and monsters.
  • The sorcerer, Zant, turns the people who live in the Twilight Realm into monsters to serve his evil plans.
  • When Link pulls a sword from a stone, his village is sucked into darkness by a terrifying Death God, who appears like a skeleton with glowing eyes.
  • There are drawings of goblins, skeletons, and other monsters that invade the realm and terrify the villagers. Most of this attack is not shown. One of the monsters threatens the people who don’t live in the twilight realm, saying, “I will curse them all.”
  • When Link travels to the Twilight Realm, he is transformed into a giant wolf.

Spiritual Content

  • The villagers speak of the spirits that protect them several times. For instance, a village woman tells Link, “The spirits give strength to all manner of things. They bring light and consciousness to all things.”
  • There is a legend that when evil people tried to use magic to take over the land, “the goddesses grew angry at this affront and sent four spirits of light to seal the upstarts’ magical power away in the shadow crystal. Furthermore, the mirror of shadow prevented these wizards from entering the world of light. They were exiled to the twilight realm.”
  • A spirit of light heals Link’s arm after it is cut off in a battle.

by Morgan Lynn

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