Topic: Discrimination

New Kid

Seventh-grader Jordan Banks loves drawing cartoons about his life. But instead of sending him to the art school of his dreams, his parents enroll him in a prestigious private school known for its academics, where Jordan is one of the few kids of color in his entire grade.

As he makes the daily trip from his Washington Heights apartment to the upscale Riverdale Academy Day School, Jordan soon finds himself torn between two worlds and not really fitting into either one. Can Jordan learn to navigate his new school culture while keeping his neighborhood friends and staying true to himself?

Jordan is an incredibly likable kid who struggles with fitting in at his new school where most of the students are affluent and white. Jordan’s experiences highlight the way privilege, bias, and racism affect people. New Kid tackles racism and colorism without feeling preachy; instead, Jordan and his friend Drew discuss how others treat them differently because they are African American. Both of the boys are frustrated that one of the white teachers doesn’t take the time to learn their names. When the teacher continues to get his name wrong, Jordan thinks it is worse than being called names because “They’re saying that you’re not even worth their time and are insignificant.”

Middle school readers will relate to Jordan’s struggles. Jordan wants to fit in at his new school, but he’s also afraid of losing his neighborhood friends. Readers will understand Jordan’s desire to be nice to a girl who is a bit odd, even though he doesn’t necessarily want to be her friend. Readers will be surprised by the caring way that Jordan solves the problem. Another positive aspect of the story is Jordan’s mother. She clearly loves Jordan, but sometimes her enthusiasm for hugs and taking pictures drives him crazy.

New Kid is an entertaining graphic novel that has brightly colored illustrations that are at times heartwarming and hilarious. Craft does an excellent job making the character’s feelings clear by focusing on the character’s facial expressions. Jordan’s artwork is shown in black and white illustrations, which highlights his feelings about a variety of topics, such as his mother’s picture taking, books written for African American kids, and his teacher. In the end, New Kid will entertain the reader and teach the importance of not judging others based on appearance as well as speaking up for what is right.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Two boys get in an argument at lunch. When they begin pushing each other, one boy drops part of his lunch and steps on an apple. The boy falls, but is not injured.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Someone calls a couple of the sophomores “real jerks.” Jordan’s grandmother told him, “You don’t have to like everyone, but you don’t have to be a jerk about it, either.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

 

With the Fire on High

Emoni, a Philadelphia teenager, has aspirations of being a chef. Through her cooking, she is able to explore her identity as an African-American, as well as her Puerto Rican ancestry. Emoni’s family also forms a central role in her life. Her dad is a Puerto Rican activist and community organizer, but he is often absent. Emoni lives with her Puerto Rican abuela and her two-year-old daughter, who she conceived during her first year of high school. Now a senior, Emoni is learning to juggle her family, her academics, her personal life, her job, and her love of cooking.

At the beginning of the school year, Emoni learns that her school is introducing a culinary arts class. She is unsure if she will be able to balance it with her other commitments, and has a hard time warming up to the chef who teaches the class. Though they get off to a rough start, the chef soon becomes an important mentor for Emoni. She learns the importance of following directions in the kitchen, which is a place where she is used to doing whatever she wants.

Meanwhile, Emoni meets Malachi, a new student. She is hesitant to become friends, but they soon become close. Malachi becomes Emoni’s romantic interest. He is a sensitive boy who respects and cares for Emoni. Their relationship develops slowly through the course of the book. Malachi courts Emoni by showing that he is willing to accommodate her family situation: he is respectful towards her abuela and daughter.

With the Fire on High is heartfelt and expertly written. Readers will relate to Emoni’s struggle to decide whether she will go to college, and what shape her future will take. Readers will quickly find themselves rooting for Emoni and her family. They will cheer at her victories and feel distressed at her losses. The first-person narration paints a vivid picture of Emoni’s culture, her family, her personality, and how food plays an emotional role in her life.

With the Fire on High has mature themes and sexual content, but it is handled maturely. Sex is not glorified or demonized. When Emoni and Malachi become intimate, they do so because both of them feel emotionally ready. Emoni also struggles with the decision to date because of her many responsibilities. Emoni only brings Malachi around her child when she is certain that he’ll be a good influence.

With the Fire on High uses a unique character voice and vivid descriptions of food to draw the readers into the setting. The description of every character is strong, but especially Emoni’s. Her stubborn personality, her love for her daughter, and her unique narration all help her to come alive on the page. Readers will be able to relate to some piece of Emoni, but she is, by and large, her own distinct personality. The lessons she learns throughout the story will resonate with any reader. This is a coming-of-age story, and Emoni’s maturity is marked by her ability to make choices that will let her support her family while still caring for herself.

Sexual Content

  • The main character, Emoni, is a teen mother. She describes her first sexual experience—with her child’s father—as something “a lot more technical” than she expected and indicates that the experience was disappointing and confusing because she wasn’t ready. “When he finally shoved into me, it stung. For a second, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to push him away or pull him closer, and then he was panting and sweating on my chest and apologizing. . . I cleaned my own self up, put on my pants, and left. He didn’t even say goodbye.”
  • The chef encourages the cooking class to “come eat Emoni’s chocolate pudding.” Many of the boys take this as an innuendo and tease Emoni about it, but the double entendre is never explained.
  • When Emoni and Malachi kiss for the first time, “His hand moves down to my butt and curves around it.”
  • Emoni and Malachi make out on a couch and make the decision to be intimate. Emoni’s “legs straddling his lap, arms wound around his back. Kissing him back. . . I never saw what the big deal was about it, outside of how nice it was to be touched. But this is different. . . He keeps kissing my neck. And then my hands are everywhere. I need to touch his skin, his shoulders, his back. I kiss his ear and he moans into my neck. ‘This feels too good.’ And this was new, too. This power of making a boy jump or moan.” The scene continues for about three pages, and while it’s implied that they become sexually intimate, the narration does not describe the rest of their encounter.
  • Emoni’s best friend Angelica, a lesbian, has an anniversary dinner with her girlfriend and is nervous about having sex for the first time. She has had sex with guys before, but “this is less about exploring, and more about expressing.” Emoni tells her, “You don’t have to do anything you aren’t comfortable doing.”

Violence

  • Malachi tells Emoni that his brother “was killed last February. Some beef in the neighborhood back home and he was shot. It’s unclear if it was a stray bullet or meant for him.”
  • In Spain, when a child steals Emoni’s purse, Malachi runs after the child and grabs him “by the back of his coat.” Emoni is concerned that Malachi will hurt the child, but he lets him go.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • During their trip to Spain, Emoni chooses to abstain, but some of her classmates get drunk. This ends in her classmate getting so drunk that she throws up. The next day, the student can’t remember what happened.
  • Emoni makes herself a meal and pours herself a glass of wine. She thinks, “I know [my grandmother will] raise an eyebrow when she sees I had some, but she won’t reprimand me; growing up, she was allowed to drink from the time she was fourteen and she finds the alcohol rules on the mainland excessive.”
  • Malachi jokingly asks a flight attendant for a glass of wine.
  • Emoni cooks with beer; the book includes a recipe for beer bread.

Language

  • Throughout the book, Emoni and her friend Angelica try to curb their language so they won’t be a bad influence on Emoni’s daughter. Slips like “shit—I mean, shoot” and “damn—I mean, darn” are frequent.
  • Emoni’s first-person narration has similar slips: “Tyrone is still being a dick—an ass—a prick. Who uses the word prick?” She later notes about him: “Damn, he smells good as fu—hell… heck.”
  • Damn, hell, and shit are used frequently.
  • Characters occasionally say “Jesus” and “oh my God.”
  • “Ass” is often used as a suffix in phrases such as “grown-ass woman” and “greasy-ass job.”
  • Angelica describes Malachi’s smile “as if you’re choosing to give a sunlit middle finger to this fucked-up world.”
  • Emoni’s classmate gets vulgar when she’s drunk and says “fuck” multiple times, including when she accuses Emoni of “fucking Malachi.”
  • Angelica says that she’s “nervous as fuck.”
  • Leslie’s classmate says the chef she’s working with “sounds like a crackhead.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Emoni’s grandmother is “a soft Catholic. She believes in the teachings of God, but she doesn’t push her religion on people. I went to church with her on Sundays, but she didn’t force me to do communion or confirmation. And she didn’t force me to keep the baby. She just held my hand and told me to think about what it would mean.”
  • Emoni’s grandmother goes to church several times in the book and has a circle of church friends.
  • While dealing with her dishonest boss, Emoni says, “You’re a nice man, Steve. . . I’m going to tell my grandmother to pray for you.” She then thinks, “I hope he can see in my face that I just sprinkled the juju of a spiteful Puerto Rican grandmother all over his life.”
  • Emoni jokingly describes water ice (a frozen treat) as “a direct gift from the gods.”
  • Emoni’s father says that Puerto Rico is “where I’ll die, whenever God decides that should be.”
  • Malachi jokes that “My cuts of jamón ibérico would make you believe in God.”

by Caroline Galdi

Sulwe

Sulwe wants to be like everyone else, but she is darker than everyone in her family. She is darker than anyone in her school. Sulwe believes that because she is darker, she is not beautiful. To be beautiful, she needs to have lighter skin like her mother and sister.

One night, a star appears and takes Sulwe on a magical journey in the night sky. Sulwe is shown the story of two sisters, the Night and the Day. Even though the two were sisters, people didn’t treat them the same. “People gave Night names like ‘Scary’ and ‘Bad’ and ‘Ugly.” She felt hurt every time.” Upset by her treatment, Night left the earth. Because of Night’s absence, people realize they need Night. They learn “Brightness isn’t just for daylight. Light comes in all colors. And some light can only be seen in the dark.”

Night realizes that she does not need to change, she is beautiful just as she is. After hearing Day and Night’s story, Sulwe realizes that “she belongs out in the world! Dark and beautiful, bright and strong.” At the end of the book, the author explains how “it is important to feel good about yourself when you look in the mirror, but what is even more important is working on being beautiful inside. That means being kind to yourself and others. That is the beauty that truly shines through.”

Using language that young readers can understand, Sulwe shows the pain that colorism can cause. Even though the story focuses on colorism, anyone who has ever wanted to look different will understand Sulwe’s pain. Like everyone, Sulwe wants to fit in and make friends. However, she thinks that her problems would be solved if her skin was lighter. At one point, Sulwe tries to remove the darkness from her skin with an eraser. Sulwe’s sadness is shown in her words, her actions, and the illustrations.

The animation-styled illustrations are beautiful and moving. The illustrations show both Sulwe’s family and classmates and show the variations of their skin colors. Characters’ emotions are clearly shown through facial expressions and their actions. The book also has gorgeous images of light and dark that show the beauty in both.

Both Sulwe’s prose and illustrations are beautiful and show the importance of accepting yourself. This important message is one that every child needs to hear. Even though Sulwe is a picture book, the story is intended to be read aloud to a child, rather than for the child to read it for the first time independently. While many of the pages only have one sentence, readers will need assistance with the vocabulary. Sulwe would make an excellent addition to anyone’s library because the story shows that “you are beautiful because you choose to be.”

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • A star came into Sulwe’s bedroom. “Sulwe hoped onto the star and off they went.” The star shows Sulwe the beginning of time and the story of Night and Day.

Spiritual Content

  • Sulwe went to bed and “turned to God for a miracle.” She prays “Please make me as fair as the parents I’m from. I want to be beautiful, not just to pretend.”

 

 

I’m Not Dying with You Tonight

Lena and Campbell aren’t friends.

Lena has her killer style, her awesome boyfriend, and a plan. She knows she’s going to make it big. Campbell, on the other hand, is just trying to keep her head down and get through the year at her new school.

When both girls attend the Friday night football game, what neither expects is for everything to descend into sudden, mass chaos. Chaos born from violence and hate. Chaos that unexpectedly throws them together.

They aren’t friends. They hardly understand the other’s point of view. But none of that matters when the city is up in flames, and they only have each other to rely on if they’re going to survive the night.

Told from both Lena’s and Campbell’s point of view, I’m Not Dying with You Tonight will grab readers’ attention right from the start. The chapters go back and forth between each character, which allows the reader to understand both girls’ prejudices and conflicts. Campbell is completely out of her element and has never taken the time to try to understand the people in her neighborhood. On the other hand, Lena has more layers, but talks in a stereotypical manner. As the girls try to survive the riot, each girl makes assumptions based on each other’s race and learns that their assumptions are often wrong.

The fast-paced story takes a look at white privilege and racism from the girls’ point of view. When the fighting first breaks out, Campbell sees the police as helpful, but Lena is fearful of their presence. In the end, both girls face loss because of the riot. Campbell’s father’s store is completely destroyed by looters, and Lena’s cousin is injured and arrested. Although Campbell cannot understand the rioters’ actions, Lena tries to explain “when you push people to their breaking point, and they ain’t got no power, they’ll find a way to take it.”

I’m Not Dying with You Tonight explores modern conflicts in an action-packed story that will keep teens interested. The authors do not leave the reader with any solutions to the problem, but instead, give them many questions that they will want to discuss. The story will cause readers to ponder racial issues, but they will also see how they should try to get to know people that are different than themselves. The story also highlights the importance of choosing friends well. As Lena’s cousin Marcus says, “He can be an eagle, but if he chooses to flock with pigeons, he gone’ have pigeon ways.”

Sexual Content

  • Lena’s boyfriend kisses her. While saying goodbye, Lena leaned “over to hug him, and he smells as good as I expected. I almost don’t want to let go. I lift my face for him to kiss me and melt into him. His soft lips press against mine, and it feels like sun rays warming my skin.”
  • At the end of the night, Black tries to kiss Lena, but “I turn my head and his lips land on my cheek. I’m not feeling it right now.”

Violence

  • While at a school football game, two men begin fighting and start a riot, which continues until the end of the book. When the fight first begins, “The boys clash, chests bumping together, arm swinging. A boy stumbles, and his knee hits the ground. Fists batter downward, pummeling his head, his shoulders. His mouth is open in a cry I can’t hear.”
  • During the fight, Officer Kersey shows up and tries to stop two guys from fighting. One of the guys, Gabriel, goes to throw a Coke on a kid, but hits the officer instead. “Officer Tate, grabs Gabriel by the back of the shirt and yanks him up until his heels leave the ground. The collar of his shirt pulls on his neck. Gabriel’s flapping around.”
  • An officer “elbows a girl in the chest. I didn’t see what she was doing, other than running in his direction. . . He hits her, though, hard and violent, and she falls to the ground a cries out.”
  • During the fight, someone shoots a gun. A police officer is shot, but it is not described.
  • Two girls begin fighting. “They wrestle until one girl scrambles up, her bright yellow tank top now smeared with dirt. The other girl cowers on the ground. Yellow Tank windmills her arms, battering and snatching until she comes away with a fistful of hair.”
  • A car hits a woman and “she goes flying forward and crashes through a group of people in a line for the club. . . The woman’s on the ground. A few people crouch down by her, and the crowd surges . . . Someone grabs the driver and hauls him from the car, flinging him onto the street.”
  • Lena and Campbell walk into an area where there are bars and shops trying to get away from the riot. But soon a riot breaks out in the streets and “a bottle flies through the air right over me. What the hell? I barely duck in time to keep my head on.”
  • Someone “chucks a liquor bottle that smashes through the window of the SUV. . . Someone done lit a T-shirt on fire and threw it at a car.” A fire starts and soon people are looting.
  • The girls hide in a shop and watch as a man uses a cone to break car windows. “Out in the street, someone comes up behind the cone guy and wallops him. They start pushing and shoving. . . Mostly, this seems like a massive crowd fighting and destroying stuff.” The man throws the cone into a bar and grill. “Instant uproar. Tables topple. The trendy fire pit in the middle of the patio falls over. Something catches, maybe a table cloth, and with a whoosh, flames flicker to life.”
  • As the girls try to find a safe place, “people are running everywhere, getting knocked over. Someone bumps us, and we fall on a pile of people. I land on my back. My elbow drags along the pavement, skin ripping open and collecting gravel.”
  • Lena’s cousin Marcus and her boyfriend Black get in a fight. Black “charges Marcus like a bull, headfirst into Marcus’s belly. They both hit the ground. These fools are rolling around on top of each other in the middle of the street, even though people are stampeding like a game of Jumanji started. . . Marcus accidently punches me in the arm.”
  • A cop hits Marcus with a baton. “I see Marcus’s mouth open in a scream, his arms go up, swinging wildly. The baton comes down again. And again. Marcus’s body falls forward, his forehead cracks against the asphalt, so loud I can hear it over all the other noise.”
  • One of Lena’s boyfriend’s friends pulls a gun and points it at them. Black jumps towards the man with a gun. “A gunshot. Me and Campbell drop to the ground. . . Black goes for the steel. Peanut sticks him in the jaw, but Black is still able to knock the pistol away.” Black’s friends drive off without him.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • One of Lena’s friends doesn’t say goodbye because “that’s the last thing her mom said to her before she passed away from a heroin overdose.”
  • A boy who was in the concession stand was selling weed.
  • Before Campbell moved, she used to “like playing foosball in Megan’s parents’ basement and sneaking cans from her dad’s beer fridge.”
  • Lena’s cousin “went to jail because he got caught with a little weed in his car.”

Language

  • Profanity is used often. Profanity includes: ass, bitch, crap, damn, fuck, hell, holy crap, and piss.
  • “God,” “My God,” and, “Jesus” are used as exclamations occasionally.
  • Lena’s cousin warns her against dating Black. He says, “I don’t like to call a black man a nigga, but that’s a nigga.”
  • Someone calls a man a “damn cracker.”
  • While at a football game, Lena goes to the concession stand and thinks, “I damn near have to crawl over the nasty-ass counter to get the attention of the chick hanging out back there.”
  • While trying to find a ride home, Lena and Campbell pass a group of men “passing joints.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Lena “sends up a quick prayer” that her ride hasn’t left without her.

 

 

Anger is a Gift

Moss Jeffries is anything but an average teenager. Ever since his father was shot by the Oakland police outside their home, Moss has dealt with intense anger issues and constant panic attacks. In addition, Moss has a difficult time going outside because of the kinks of the homosexual community, his popularity amongst protesting groups, and his constant fear of the local police. After meeting Javier on a metro train and falling in love, it seems everything is finally coming together for Moss. He is happy; his friend Esperanza is going to a great school; his mother just received a promotion–life is good.

However, when school starts things begin to change. Due to a lack of school funds and the influence of the local police, Moss and his friends encounter more troubles as they are harassed and berated by the school’s administration. However, after a school cop brutalizes one of Moss’s friends, police-patrolled metal detectors cripple another, and his organized school-wide walkout turns chaotic and deadly, Moss personally takes the fight to the police, gathering a city-wide protest that will change the city, and leave readers with a new sense of community and self-determination.

With its diverse characters, Mark Oshiro paints a brutal yet beautiful picture of problems today’s teens face. The well-developed characters each have their own individual type of problems. Esperanza is adopted and struggles to keep in tune with her own culture. Reg was crippled by a car accident when he was younger. Moss struggles with his anxiety. But Oshiro makes them appear to be real people with their own type of language, jokes, and emotions. Readers will fall in love with these realistic characters and root for them.

Moss has a huge group of friends, and the large cast of supporting characters may confuse some readers. The diverse group of characters gives a wide range of people a voice—the story focuses on minorities and also includes the following: gay characters, non-binary characters, bisexual characters, asexual characters, Muslim characters, undocumented characters, and disabled characters. The one thing that brings these groups together is the social injustice they face.

Anger is a Gift has a rapid and suspenseful plot with a perfect mix of teen society and real-world problems. However, Oshiro pushes the extremes of some of the moral problems today’s young adults face. Told from Moss’s point of view, it allows the reader to get a glimpse of what a person feels when they are faced with PTSD and panic attacks. Moss’s descriptions of his grief and anger, in addition to the brutal descriptions of the senseless acts of violence, can, at times, be hard to read.

Besides detailing the oppression minorities face, Anger is a Gift has a hint of romance. Issues of sexuality, race, ethnicity and class affect each of the characters, while senseless anger and violence threaten them all, killing some and injuring others. This book is not for the faint of heart and is intended for older readers. Nonetheless, Anger is a Gift is a book for those wishing for a new perspective on how police brutality, oppression, and racism affects poor people of color from the author’s perspective. The character development mixed with the book’s brutal, bloody action scenes will leave readers with a different perspective of racism in America.

Sexual Content

  • Ever since they started to date, Javier and Moss make a game out of kissing each other when they see each other. When they see each other, they will peck each other on the cheek. For instance, “Moss kissed him back for just a little bit longer, pushing back against the awkwardness that tried to conquer him. He had never kissed anyone in front of his friends, but he focused on how it made him feel. Warm. Secure. Admired.”
  • Before Moss’s first date with Javier, his mom asks, “You have any condoms?”
  • On their first date at Javier’s apartment, Moss and Javier get intimate. “But Javier pulled Moss to him again, only this time they faced each other, and Javier brought them back down on the couch. He wrapped his leg around Moss’s and squeezed his hand. Moss felt moisture and thought his palms had started sweating again, but it was Javier’s sweat this time. Moss went still, and he could feel Javier’s heart beating against his chest. It was racing even faster than Moss’s was. The two enjoyed the warmth of each other’s bodies. . .” They do not have intercourse.
  • On a brunch date, Moss asks Javier, “Maybe you just wanted me for sex. We’re gay men. That’s not exactly an unbelievable suggestion.”
  • While escaping the chaos after the school walkout, Moss suggests that they escape out the back of the school through the hallway down by the science labs “where the football players always take their girlfriends to make out.”
  • After Javier’s death, Moss remembers him, thinking about how much he loved Javier, “The way you kissed my jaw. The way sweat ran down your chest. The feel of the muscles in your arm, the scent of your breath, the blackness of your hair, the curled smile.”

Violence

  • Wanda tells Moss that she stopped protesting after she saw a cop that had previously threatened her “standing over your father’s body.”
  • After finding drugs in Shawna’s locker, “Hull’s arm shot out, hard, and his forearm hit the spot just below Shawna’s throat, and the man pinned Shawna against a locker, her back hitting the metal so hard that it buckled. Moss dropped his lock on the ground, heard it clatter against the tile, and Shawna tried to yelp.” Shawna is epileptic and falls to the ground, shaking, as students gather around them. This scene takes place over four pages.
  • After the metal detectors are installed in the school, Reg refuses to go through due to the six metallic pins in his knee. One of the officers shoves him through, and “Reg didn’t make it through. His right knee jerked to the side and the metal detector seemed to respond to Reg. Thrum! His body hit the frame hard, hard enough that it made a hollow ringing like a steel drum, and Moss saw that Reg’s breath had been knocked out of him. As his hands went to his chest, Njemile and Kaisha shouted, scrambling to reach their friend as he doubled over, his arms shooting out to the ground to catch himself.” Reg goes to the hospital and has to go through surgery and physical therapy. This scene takes place over eight pages.
  • After their school-wide student walk-out turns chaotic, Moss and his friends seek shelter in a nearby room to plan their escape. A cop finds them and uses the infamous Mosquito weapon – a weaponized sonic sound used to disperse crowds of teenagers. After being blasted by the sound, “Chandra threw up. It was violent, loud, and her wrenching caused Sam to do the same, and it was in their hair, all over the floor.” Moss and some of his friends remain uninjured while Chandra and Sam go unconscious. This scene lasts over two pages.
  • During the same walkout, Javier is shot by Officer James Daley. “The beet-faced cop had a gun trained on Javier. And then he fired. it wasn’t the first time Moss had heard the pop of a gunshot. Nor was it the first time he’d heard the sickening sound of the air leaving someone’s body. The sound that meant the worst. Javier curled into himself; his brown hands jerked up to his chest, and blood squirted out between his fingers. Moss screamed, again and again, and pitched himself forward as Javier crumpled to the ground, the life too quickly draining out of him.” Javier dies, Mr. Jacobs and Moss are beaten, and many of the students are sent to the hospital. This scene takes place over three pages.
  • Moss’s city-wide protest turns chaotic after the militarized Oakland PD uses a Silent Guardian, an infamous heat ray, against the protestors. The narrator describes the Silent Guardian in action saying, “The antenna on the top of the box would move sluggishly, and as soon as it seemed to be pointing at someone, that person would drop to the ground. Hands scraped at skin. People clawed at their faces, into the side of a car, trying to escape the sensation that Martin had described to him, and she lay still on the ground.” Many protestors are sent to the hospital, Haley dies, and Moss’s mother almost dies. Moss and his friends’ wounds are described later. “He watched Kaisha and Reg sit as still as they could, saw the sweat on Reg’s bloody face, felt his own pulse pounding in his head.” This scene takes place over fourteen pages.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • During Shawna’s locker check, Officer Hull finds drugs in her locker. Moss describes the encounter saying, “Hull held a Ziplock bag up in the air, and Moss’s heart dropped. White pills. Lots of them.” They are Shawna’s epilepsy medication.

Language

  • Typically, characters use profanity in the heat of the moment. Profanity is used infrequently but includes phrases like “dickwad,” “piss,” “jerk,” “ass,” every variation of “shit,” derogatory terms, and “assholes.”
  • When Reg is trying to go through the metal detectors for the first time, someone shouts “Hurry up, dickwad!”
  • Before shooting Javier, James Daley snarls, “You little shits never learn.”
  • After Javier’s death, Moss gets angry and yells at Esperanza, “I hate your mother, and if her nosy, white savior ass hadn’t called Mr. Elliot, Javier might be alive today.”
  • During the Oakland Police Department’s press conference at the end, somewhere near the back of the crowd, someone yells out “Bullshit!”
  • Afnan describes Mr. Jacobs when he says, “That man was a smug asshole…I bet no one has ever told him otherwise”.
  • During Moss’s protest, Martin hands him an empty bottle and says, “You’re gonna have to take a mean piss eventually.”
  • After slipping on a canister, James Daley falls and Reg shouts out, “Did you see that jerk hit the ground?”
  • During the discussion amongst friends after Javier’s death, Kaisha suggests, “Do you think the cops aren’t capable of just making shit up?”
  • Moss reflects on his father’s death when he says, “Months of those Piedmont assholes teasing me at school, telling me he deserved it because he was a thug and the streets were cleaner without him.”
  • Racist terms are used throughout the book, and the characters’ skin colors come up a lot. One time during a discussion about what to do about the metal detectors, a man in the audience steps up and says, “You call a spade a spade.” Another time, when thinking about Javier, Moss thought to himself, “Oh god, he thought, that makes me sound so white.”
  • “Oh my god” and “Oh god” are used as exclamations.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Matthew Perkey

Supergifted

Noah Youkilis has never been normal. With an extremely high IQ, this super gifted kid dreams of having an opportunity to fail. After years at the Academy for Scholastic Distinction, Noah dreams of being in remedial classes, being a failure at something, and having some unpredictability in his life. When Noah enrolls in his friend’s school, both of their lives begin to change.

Noah may be super gifted when it comes to school, but he’s not super gifted at making friends. Noah makes enemies out of the cheerleading captain Megan Mercury and lacrosse player “Hashtag” Taggart.  Sticking up for Noah makes Donovan a target, and he’s told to stay away from Hashtag, or else. When a freak accident makes Donovan a hero, he can’t let anyone know. In order to help his friend, Noah steps in and becomes “Superkid.” When the fame goes to Noah’s head, Donovan wonders if the lie may just cause more chaos than telling the truth.

Younger readers will be pulled into the stereotypical life of junior high as they watch Noah go from friendless to popular. One simple lie drives the suspense in the story and will keep readers wondering how Noah will ever keep his secret.

The story is told from a first-person point of view, which allows the readers to understand the different characters’ motivations and feelings. However, the point of view changes between five different characters and becomes confusing. Although the story focuses on Noah, it really is a story about Donovan trying to save his family pet and his friend. The balance between Donovan’s home life and school life adds interest and heart to the story.

Supergifted has many stereotypes—the mean cheerleader, the bully jock, and the smart kid who can’t pick up on social clues. The only character that breaks the stereotypical mold of a junior high student is Donovan. Donovan wants to keep Noah out of trouble and goes to great lengths to keep the bullies from harassing him—the only problem is that Noah doesn’t seem to notice anything that Donovan does for him. And when Noah becomes Superkid, he also becomes a super terrible person. At the end of the story, Noah doesn’t even seem to recognize what a super friend Donovan is.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • A boy goes to the park with the intent of beating up Noah. Donovan sees the boy, who is “hauling Noah up by his shirt . . . He wrestled Noah to the ground and straddled him, a knee pinning each arm.” Donovan tackles the boy. “It hurt like mad when my nose slammed into his shoulder, but not as much as when I slid through the wood chips, picking up splinters over at least half of my body.” The fight ends when a dog bites the bully.
  • Donovan goes to a party he was not invited to. He climbs a tree and falls. “I pictured him dropping from the sky into the middle of my party. . . And I remembered what had happened a few seconds after that—that same Donovan tackling Peter out of the way of a falling tree branch.”
  • At an event, a robot malfunctions and “lurched around the room firing projectiles in all directions. Cries of shock and pain rang out as golf balls bounced off heads and shoulders. People tripped over each other’s feet and ran into one another trying to get out of harm’s way.” Donovan jumps on the robot and turns it off.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Someone calls a person a “jerk” and an “idiot.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Nemesis

The Anvil, an enormous asteroid, threatens the earth is about to devastate the world. But Min has bigger problems. Min has died – again. Every two years since she was eight, a man in a suit finds her and kills her. Where ever she hides, he finds her. After her death, she always wakes up in the same clearing in the forest outside her small Idaho town. When she returns from her disappearances, no one believes her story and there is no evidence. This year when Min is murdered, she goes on a mission to discover why.

Terrifying dreams of death haunt Noah. Anxiety is his only true friend. Noah tries to hide that he is different by blending in, going along with what others say. When Noah discovers that he has been lied to and his dreams were in fact reality, he vows to be brave and search for the truth.

When the military arrives just out of town, Min and her best friend Tack make an uneasy alliance with Noah. Although they do not fully trust each other, they are determined to find out what has been happening to them. They go on a search to discover the answers to the questions that plague them.

Told from both Min’s and Noah’s perspectives, Nemesis starts with a suspenseful story of Min being murdered and coming back to life. The reader is instantly drawn into Min’s mystery. With detailed descriptions of events, the reader can step into Min’s shoes and understand her feelings. Suspense will grip the reader, who will be surprised by the events in the story.

Nemesis brings the stereotypical high school to life, with the typical cliché groups. The language in the book is a bit over the top, with most of the characters constantly spouting a plethora of cuss words. The ending of the book is similar to Lord of the Flies and just as violent. In the end, a computer simulation talks about saving humanity, but the majority of the characters are so unlikeable the reader wonders if humanity should be saved at all.

Sexual Content

  • While with a boy Min imagines, “leaning forward and kissing him.”
  • Min and Noah kiss several times. They fall asleep on a couch and wake up next to each other. Noah, “buried my face in her neck. Our lips met again, and for a while all other thoughts fled.”

Violence

  • Two boys fight at school. Ethan slugged “Tack full in the face. . . Tack dropped to the ground like a boneless chicken breast.”
  • Min and Tack put an oily rag into a Jeep’s gas tank and then set it on fire.
  • Several natural disasters happen throughout the world during a short time period. The events are described on the news.
  • In order to save a boy’s life, the sheriff kills a soldier. “He was lying face down on the ground, a dark puddle spreading beneath him.” As the kids run, shots ring out and they know the sheriff had been shot.
  • A group of men blows up a bridge. When they attempt to surrender, soldiers shoot them. “A line of bullets tore through the liberty men, cutting them in half. They feel in a bloody mass, each body pierced a dozen times.”
  • Tack kicks a soldier “in the crotch. The man dropped, writhing in pain.” The guards wrestle Tack to the ground. “Tack bucking and snarling like a wild animal until one of them struck him on the head with a rifle butt.”
  • Soldiers are rounding up a group of teenagers. Some of the teens resist and there is a scuffle. One of the parents tries to fight the soldiers and they shoot him. “Wendell dropped to his knees, then toppled forward and lay still.”
  • The military sprays a group of teens with a “thin green mist.” The reaction of the teens as they die is mixed. “Classmates writhed on the ground, tears and mucus coating their faces. The agony was unbearable—a burning, stinging horror that tore at the skin.” One of the commanders watching shots himself in the head.
  • When Tack confronts the leader and won’t follow orders, he is stabbed in the heart. Another boy who confronts the leader is killed. “Toby strode to where Benny knelt. Shaking his head, he put a gun to Benny’s temple and pulled the trigger. . . Benny slumped to the ground, a red mess where is head had been . . . Tucker stared at the fistful of hair still clutched in his fingers, then dropped it as if burned.”
  • In order to break Min out of jail, Noah attacks the guard. “Noah kicked him in the face, snapping his head back. Toby crumpled against the wall and lay still.”
  • Hector kills himself by jumping into a canyon. Hector believed he was already dead and was in purgatory.
  • When Min is eight she is murdered. She wanders off with a man, who she thinks is her mom’s friend, and he pushes her into a ravine.
  • A man murders Min multiple times throughout the book. When she is shot, she “tumbled to the floor, struggling to breathe, blood bubbling on my lips as I stared up at the drab fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Pain tingled everything red. . . Liquid was filling my mouth, hot and wet. The hole in my chest burned like a sliver of the sun.”
  • One time when Min was killed, she is chased through the woods. She falls and is barely hanging on the side of a cliff. “A shiny black boot smashed down on my fingers. I gasp in pain as my left hand loses its grip. I swing wildly, on the verge of plummeting to the white water belong. . . A foot stomps on my right hand. Snapping bones. A rush of air. Then I’m underwater, tumbling and spinning. Liquid fills my nose. My mouth. My ears. Something slams into my side, and ropes of agony shoot down my left arm. . . Pain explodes at my temple. I see and feel nothing more.”
  • Another time Min is killed when a man hits her with a car.
  • As Min tries to flee her killer, he finds her on the side of a cliff. He throws rocks at her until she plummets “to the boulders below. I land on my back and something snaps.” He then smashes her with a large stone.
  • Noah is murdered when a man stabs him. “The A spike on agony . . . blood pumps onto the pavement. Slides down the hill. Cold. Blackness. Nothing.”
  • Noah is murdered when a man cracks his skull.  “My head caved in! But I didn’t’ die right away. I struggled, by my arms wouldn’t move. Then he hit me again!”
  • When Noah is in the bathtub, the man puts a black metal rod into the water and electrocutes him.
  • Noah is on the lake in a skiff when a boat hits him. Noah tries to swim but his left leg is missing and he drowns.
  • Noah shoots Min. “There was a smoking hole in my chest. . . Tack was screaming, his clothes spattered in red.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Drinking is mentioned several times, although none of the teens are seen consuming alcohol. One character said the guys would get “Neanderthal drunk.”  Another time, Min talks about someone who, “spends most nights outside by his fire pit, drunk off his ass.”
  • Several of the adults drink alcohol, which is revealed in the descriptions. “Mom had put away the photo albums and washed her scotch glass . . . She rarely drinks, and never more than one. But she’d refilled her glass several times . . . “ ”
  • A character has to step over two adults who drunk themselves into a stupor and then fell asleep by their fire pit.
  • After getting in a fight, tack takes Advil.
  • Tack’s father is a drunk who hits his son.
  • Noah’s father is absent for the entire story. Noah thinks his father is, “busy getting loaded in another hemisphere.” Later in the story, Noah tells his psychiatrist that his dad drank a lot after he divorced his wife.
  • A psychiatrist gives two of the characters “little blue pills” to take daily. Neither character is sure what the pills are for, but when Noah is anxious he, “wanted a blue pill in the worst way.”
  • One of the characters takes his friend’s ADHD medication.

Language

  • Holy crap, crap, damn, ass, hell, prick, jackass, bastard, goddamn, piss
  • When a min shoots Min, she “carefully extended my middle finger” and told him to “go to hell.”
  • When thinking about the man who keeps killing her, Min thinks, “Wouldn’t let the evil bastard’s shadow every moment of my life.”
  • When describing a boy, Min thinks his face, “was gorgeous until you realized what a prick he was.”
  • Tack calls other people names including, “jackass, asshole, douchebag.” He tells one boy, “everyone here thinks you’re dumber than crap, I’m the only one willing to say it. None of these people like you, Ethan. You’re a loser and a fraud, just a redneck piece of trash like me. Kill yourself.”
  • Noah said his dad was a “drunk a-hole.”
  • One of the characters thinks, “Why am I so worthless? God, I hate myself.”
  • A parent spits at a soldier and tells him, “Piss on you and your threats. I know my rights, sunshine soldier.”
  • Someone accuses Noah of hiding behind a “skank’s skirt.”
  • When Min finds the man who has been murdering her, she calls him a “bastard,” and a “son of a bitch.”

Supernatural

  • When the world was destroyed, everyone died. “Though your bodies died, the program successfully preserved sixty-four electro-chemical blueprints. These were uploaded into the mainframe on Day Minus-Four after final measurements were taken. You now exist as autonomous lines of code within the MegaCom master program . . . You still must eat and drink. You must shelter from weather, and avoid hazards. You can be injured. You can be killed”

Spiritual Content

  • When the news is announced that the Earth will not be smashed by an asteroid, Melinda’s mom said “Praise God. . . God is good. Everything is going to be okay.”
  • When the natural disasters begin, Min’s Mom mumbled about “God’s judgement.”
  • Hector, a minor character, is the leader of the youth group. When the students are gassed and come back to life, he thinks he is in purgatory. He explains that purgatory is, “a holding place. Somewhere you’re judged. And tested.” After he jumps off a canyon wall, dies, and comes back to life, Hector said, “God isn’t down with me. It was stupid for me to think I was in control. I won’t defy him again.”

Expelled

Theo Foster’s secret Twitter account just went viral. Now he and three other teens are expelled and Theo is determined to find out who is guilty and who is innocent.

Theo forms an unlikely allegiance with the three others who have been expelled. There is Sasha, the girl he’s been secretly crushing on, Jude, the school mascot and Theo’s best friend, and lastly Parker, the quarterback. Everyone seems to have a secret that they want to hide. Can Theo discover the truth? And will the truth bring these unlikely teens together?

James Paterson creates a first-person narrative that makes the reader fall in love with Theo and his unlikely friends. Although Theo is all about saving himself, he is completely relatable and loveable. The characters in Expelled jump off the page with humor, anger, and an array of teen emotions.

Expelled explores several deep issues include steroid use and incest without going into graphic detail. In the end, the reader will learn that other people’s lives are not as perfect as we imagine them to be.  Despite the engaging story, there are several drawbacks to Expelled. There is frequent and creative use of profanity as well as sexually crude remarks. Because of this, Expelled should be enjoyed by older readers.

Sexual Content

  • Someone posted a picture on social media. The picture was of the quarterback, “drunk and shirtless . . . He’s got a bottle of Jack Daniels in his right hand and the bare breasts of an unidentified female in very close proximity to his left.”
  • Jude is a “sixteen-year-old-bisexual virgin in a Hello Kitty T-shirt.” He is bullied even though his school has a Gay-Straight Alliance club and “the rainbow flag over the counselor’s office.”
  • Parker’s friend has a dog that humps a pink pig stuffed animal. “He’s always horny in the morning,” Jude says. “Also, he and Sex Pig are in love.”
  • Jude wants to go to art school. When talking about it, he tells Parker, “RISD’s school mascot is a giant penis named Scrotie.”
  • Parker asks a computer nerd if his porn isn’t downloading fast enough.
  • When Parker is looking at Sasha’s ears, he has, “an almost overwhelming desire to kiss them.”
  • Sasha said that she has a “dick pic” that the quarterback sent her.
  • Parker kisses Sasha. “Sasha’s mouth is soft and warm, and it opens to mine. I’m going to die of how good this feels. I let go of her with one hand, and twist my fingers into her dark hair, hot and silky in the sun.”
  • Sasha tells Parker that her dad molests her. “. . .he pressed me up against the refrigerator and he kissed me. . .” When her father tries to convince Sasha that incest is okay, he said, “Greek nobles used to kidnap young boys, take them into the forest, and rape them, and no one had any problem with that.”

Violence

  • Parker thinks about someone who killed themselves from jumping off a water tower. “. . . I can’t help wondering how he did it. How he coaxed himself to the edge and then leapt into the air.”
  • Parker’s father committed suicide because he had ALS. Parker thinks of finding the body. “There was still the blood. The gun. The shattered back window of the car.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Someone dressed as the school mascot. When trying to find out who it was, the quarterback said, “I was so drunk it could have been Tinkerbell under that head.” Later the quarterback tells Parker, “I was torn up that night, bro. I did six Jager shots and woke up under the bleachers.”
  • The Shell station is where “you can shoulder-tap for beer if your fake ID sucks.” However, Parker has never tried to use his fake ID.
  • Sasha’s dad is seen drinking whiskey and often seems drunk.
  • Parker has a secret social media account where he likes to post “harmless gossip.” In one post he said someone was, “drunk enough last weekend to introduce self to own dad.”
  • When talking about the picture, Parker asks his friend if he knows who was wearing the mascot head, “and then whoever that was go so wasted he whipped his dick out in front of an iPhone.”
  • Feeling sorry for himself, Parker drinks half a bottle of Knob Creek whiskey.
  • Parker talks about how fishing usually involves beer because all you do is sit and wait for a fish to bite the bait.
  • A computer smart boy tells Parker, that if he wanted to he could, “have six pounds of heroin sent to his mother at her office.” The boy then admits it would be “tricky.”
  • Parker goes to a baseball game and one of his friends is drinking a Michelob Ultra “she bummed off a guy coming out of the 7-Eleven.” Her water bottle is also filled with vodka.
  • Sasha said her mom was into the art scene and would go to, “really fancy restaurants and snort lines off the porcelain in the ladies’ room.”
  • Parker throws a prom for those who are expelled from school. The kids that attend drink. Someone brings a keg to the party. One boy brings a case of Tecate.
  • The quarterback reveals that the coach has been giving steroids to the players. “They shot me full of chemicals like I was a prize-winning steer!” He takes his jeans down, “so I can see half of his left ass cheek, where the skin is puckered and red—a big, angry scar.”

Language

  • Profanity is used often throughout the book. The profanity includes ass, bitch, dick, fuck, goddamn, hell, piss, pussies, shit, and wiseass.
  • Parker thinks waking his friend up early was a “dick move.” He often thinks of other people as a “dick.”
  • Sasha said, “Oh, my God I don’t know why I called you a nerd.”
  • Several times Parker uses Jesus as an exclamation. For example, he said, “Jesus, you scared me!”
  • While at an expulsion hearing, the narrator thinks, “I’ve heard that some kids show up to expulsion hearings with lawyers. Probably, at the very least, they bring a pissed-off parent or two.”
  • Parker is upset that people think he posted the picture, and he would like to “kick the ass of whoever’s trying to make me take the fall for it.” Later he yells that he will “tell my side of the story. And I will make my own goddamn ending!”
  • When Parker starts asking questions about the picture, someone jokes that “Those are my tits in the picture.”
  • Parker’s mom leaves him a note not to eat all the ice cream “or there’ll be hell to pay.”
  • Parker sees graffiti that reads, “fuck school.”
  • When leaving, someone says, “later bitches.”
  • Parker thinks to himself that he is an “asshat.”
  • Parker yells at the quarterback, “You were too much of a pussy to admit you hated it (football).”
  • When Parker tells Mr. Palmieri, the school administrator, about the steroid, Mr. Palmieri says, “God fucking damn it.”

Spiritual Content

  • When talking to his mom, Parker asks her “if she felt hypocritical, seeing as how she’d been a socialist atheist at UCLA.”
  • Sasha, an atheist, tells Parker that, “my grandma used to make prayer shawls . . . with each stitch, she’d say a little prayer for the person she was making it for.”

A Breath of Eyre

Going to an exclusive prep school isn’t a dream for Emma. Instead it’s a lonely existence. With no friends, a father who is distant, and a step-mom who thinks she needs therapy, Emma doesn’t think life can get worse. Emma escapes her dreary life by reading Jane Eyre and dreaming about her crush on her English teacher.

As her sophomore year begins, Emma gets a new roommate, Michelle, who offers friendship and relief from her loneliness. However, when Michelle is accused of setting a barn on fire, Emma must decide if the friendship is worth fighting for.

Then a bolt of lightning hits Emma and sends her into the nineteenth century and the body of Jane Eyre.  As a governess, Emma finds peace and soon finds herself attracted to Mr. Rochester. Soon, Emma isn’t sure if she wants to live in Jane’s world or her own.

A Breath of Eyre has Emma jumping for her prep school to the world of Jayne Erye. The premise behind the book is interesting and will keep the reader wondering what happens next. Although A Breath of Eyre referes the book Jane Eyre, it is not necessary to read it to understand A Breath of Eyre. However, the book may be more enjoyable to those who have read Jane Eyre.

Many of the events in the book are typical of a teen novel. Michelle goes to a prep-school and is an outcast because she is on scholarship. The prep-school girls are vicious, but the teachers are afraid to discipline them because their parents have money. There is also a love triangle.

Mont throws in an interesting twist when Michelle travels between worlds; however, the book still lacks loveable characters that draw a reader into the story. The reader will smile because of the sweet conclusion of the book, but getting there will take some effort.

Sexual Content

  • One of the girls at school talks about her father who was a rich man who “took a liking” to her mother. When the man’s wife found out, the girl’s mother was fired.
  • Emma is at a party when Gray tries to kiss her. “I’d always imagined my first kiss being in the middle of a meadow under starlight . . . Not standing drunk with Gray Newman at the side of a building.”
  • Emma thinks back to when Gray almost kissed her. “The heat from his body had felt like fire. His lips had been inches from mine.” She then thinks, “I would have given anything for him to try to kiss me now.”
  • Emma and Gray talk about the problem with dating someone and then being friends afterwards. Emma wonders if Gray has slept with another girl, and then she imagines him with another girl, “her head on his shoulder, his hands running through her hair, and thoughts of being ‘just friends’ a distant memory for both of them.”
  • When Emma and Gray dance she, “wanted to bury my head in the warm hollow of his neck.  His hands gripped my hips, while his lips grazed my hair . . . I was in intoxicated by the moment, by the promise of something I’d only imagined before.”
  • Gray tells Emma that he slept with a girl who he had been going out with for six months.
  • Emma and Gray are parked in a car when he pulls her towards him. “. . . I was straddled across his legs . . . His shirt was open a little . . . I slipped my hand inside and pressed my palm against his heart, where his pulse beat hard and steady against my fingertips . . . The kiss grew deeper, warmer and wetter and more intense until I wasn’t thinking about anything other than the kiss. Letting myself fall head first into the white-hot madness of it…Other parts of my body began to engage, and I was all heat and light, tugging at his shirt, digging into his back, burrowing myself into the hollow of his neck.”
  • Emma has a daydream where Gray is kissing her and “There is a moment of unbearable tension as we hover mere centimeters from each other—waiting, wanting—and then pure release as our lips collide, sending sparks of heat and light through every limb down to our fingers and toes.”
  • Emma and Gray kiss often throughout the book. The feelings of the kiss are described in detail.  One scene describes it as “blistering hot.”

Violence

  • A man is attacked by a woman. His arm was, “soaked in blood.” The man said, “She tried to suck my blood. She said she’d drain my heart.”
  • In a dream world, Emma’s mother throws herself off of a roof. “I watched as this dark-plumed thing descended, wings outstretched, then shielded my face to avoid seeing her smash against the stones.” The building is then engulfed in flames.
  • Emma’s father talks about when his wife, “came here to this beach and she walked right into the ocean with her nightgown on.” He then tells Emma about how her mother left a suicide note.
  • Gray talks about when he got into a fight and hit his friend in the face.
  • A girl’s mother, “slapped her hard and quick against the cheek.”
  • Gray tries to commit suicide. Emma saves him, but in the process almost drowns.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Emma asks her friend if he stopped lifeguarding because he’s been, “too busy doing keg stands and scoring with the fraternity chicks?”
  • Emma’s grandmother drinks old-fashions and doesn’t like it when her drinks get low.
  • Several of the girls smoke pot in the school’s barn.
  • Emma and Michelle go to a party and, “slurp wine coolers like they were Gatorade.” Other students were, “sniffing out alcohol and drugs.”
  • Emma tells Gray that she is not interested in him because he spends his free time with his “head in a beer bong.”
  • On the way to a dance, Michelle and her friends drink champagne out of the bottle. Michelle encourages the driver to drink because he has to drive, “less than half a mile.”
  • Gray tells Emma about when he went to a party with his best friend’s sister. They both had been drinking, and the girl decided to go skinny dipping. The girl went into the water and never came out. Her body was never found.
  • When Emma is upset, her grandmother gives her a sip of tea with liquor in it.

Language

  • Elise says, “The new girl must be lesbo, because she can’t stop staring at us.”
  • Hell, ass-hole, damn, hell, pissed off, and shit are used in conversation.
  • Two roommates tease each other about getting, “enough Johnson.”
  • Michelle says, ‘I need to get away from these Lockwood bitches.”
  • Emma thinks about going into the hallway but is afraid it is, “occupied by a pissed-off ghost.”
  • A teacher is discussing a book and tells the class, “every once in a while, nature has to kick our ass to show us who’s boss.”
  • Gray is upset that a teacher wiped a tear off of Emma’s face. “He’s a teacher for God’s sake.  What’s he doing touching you? If I was your father, I’d kick his ass.”
  • Michelle ask Emma, “Why are you being so nice to me? I’ve been such a bitch.”

Supernatural

  • After Emma is struck by lightning she becomes Jane Eyre and lives her life for a short period. Later in the book, when Emma is stuck in a burning barn, she again begins to live Jane Eyre’s life.
  • Emma’s grandmother said, “your mother called out to me the night she died. I don’t know how, but somehow, her voice reached me . . . that night I woke up with this panicked feeling, like someone had just taken out a giant chunk of my heart.”

Spiritual Content

  • Emma thinks about her body and lack of curves. She thinks, “Despite nightly pleas to a God I only half believed in, I remained a disappointing five foot three.”
  • One of the characters believes in Voodoo and tells Emma about papa Legba’s vẻvẻ, which is a symbol to attract spirits to earth. Emma has a necklace that looks like a vẻvẻ.
  • Emma uses an incantation and ask Papa Legba to. “open the door for me. Father Legba, open the door to let me pass through.” Emma then goes to a “dream” world where she meets her dead mother.
  • Emma’s friend tells Emma not to mess with voodoo. The friend says she doesn’t believe in it, “but it’s kind of like God. I don’t believe in him either, but he still scares me.”
  • Emma thinks, “I had not been raised in a religious household, although my father did believe in giving thanks and asking forgiveness. Now I said a simple prayer for help. I don’t know who it was intended for—was I praying to a great Christin God to send me a guardian angel?  Was I praying to Papa Legba to guide me back though the door between worlds? Or was I praying to the Universe to help me find the path of my own destiny. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I just knew I couldn’t make it on my own.”

I Am Number Four

John moves around a lot. But not because of his dad’s job—because he’s an alien. He is one of the few survivors of the Loriac, who are being hunted to extinction by the Mogadorians, a race of conquering aliens who have now set their eyes on Earth.

John tries to blend in among the Earthlings, something that isn’t difficult at first. He looks just like you and me. But then his Legacies start to appear.  Glowing hands, fire-proof skin, and more. With the appearance of his Legacies, his life becomes a lot more complicated. Will he have to move again? It has never been a problem before, but now John has a best friend and girlfriend, and refuses to flee when the Mogadorians start to close in.

I Am Number Four is an interesting story. The story is told from John’s mind, which feels like the mind of any normal teenage boy. John learns about the death of his planet, his parents, and his race. At first, he wishes that he could just be human and not have to hide anymore. But as he learns more about his heritage, John begins to realize he is a part of a much bigger battle.

This book is fun, but lacks suspense until the very end. The characters are extremely likable though, and following their lives is enjoyable. I Am Number Four is a good introduction to Lorien series.

Sexual Content

  • John and Sarah kiss several times. “I kiss her good night, a lingering kiss while holding both her hands gently in mine.”
  • “When we get to her room, she closes the door and kisses me. I’m surprised, but thrilled.”
  • Sarah and John make out on his bed. “We fall back on the bed, on our sides…all at once we’re kissing again. Entangled. Meshed. Our arms tightly around the other…Sarah and I fall on the bed kissing each other, falling into each other.”

 Violence

  • A man is killed. “ ‘No,’ the man whispers, and in that instant the blade of a sword, long and gleaming…comes through the door and sinks deeply into the man’s chest . . . The man takes a single breath, and utters one word: ‘Run.’ He falls lifeless to the floor.”
  • John gets into a fight with some bullies. “I bring my knee straight up into his crotch. His breath catches in his throat, and he doubles over.”
  • John sees visions of his planet’s destruction. “People are running everywhere, fighting back. As many Mogadorians as Loric are being killed . . . I turn around and face a beast that must be forty feet tall…[it] takes out dozens of Loric around me.”
  • John sees another vision of his planet. “Mounds of bodies, not all of them intact, not all of them whole. On top of one mound is the man in silver and blue, dead like all the rest.”
  • Sarah is dragged off in the darkness of a hayride. John is attacked but finds Sarah and fights back. “I throw him and he hits the side of a tree twenty feet away . . . I pick him up and lift him a foot off the ground with my hand again around his throat. His legs kick wildly.”
  • John challenges a group of bullies to a fight. “Two of the guys come at me, both bigger than me. One swings but I duck his punch and send one of my own into his gut . . . I shove the second guy and his feet leave the ground. He lands with a thud five feet away.”
  • Sam points a gun at John because he thinks he isn’t human. John talks Sam into putting the gun down, and Sam admits, “it wasn’t actually loaded.”
  • Henri disappears. John goes after him and follows him to a certain address. When he goes in, he is attacked by a man with a bat. “He swings the bat. I duck and it hits the wall with a thud, leaving a large splintered hole in the wood panel.”
  • A man points a gun at John. Later, John points the gun at the man to get him to share information.
  • John is attacked by Mogadorians. “Henri fires the shotgun. The sound is deafening…He cocks the gun again, keeps it aimed. I twist my body to look out. Two fallen scouts are lying in the grass, unmoving.”
  • During the final fight, there is a lot of shooting, fighting, and running away from Mogadorians with swords. “A golden glinting object that speeds through the air with violence. It hits the scout so hard that its skull cracks on impact, and then it falls to the ground and lies motionless…Henri takes Sarah’s knife and thrusts it through its chest, reducing it to a pile of ash.” “Henri cries out in pain. I turn. One of the scouts has thrust a knife into his gut . . . The soldier raises its sword in the air. The blade tastes death, starts glowing in the night sky behind it.”

 Drugs and Alcohol

  • John goes to a party where there is beer.
  • There is a substance that looks like a stone. When placed under a Loriac’s tongue, it dissolves and gives the Loriac strength.

Language

  • Hell, dick, shit, and damn are said many times in daily conversation.
  • Son of a bitch, ass, bitch, asshole, and bullshit are said one or two times.

Supernatural

  • The protagonist of the story is an alien. There are many aliens living on Earth, hailing from two different races and two different planets. One race is trying to drive the other to extinction.
  • John starts developing powers such as being fire-proof and telekinetic. “I put all my power into the pit of my stomach and direct it towards him…he goes flying backward and crashes into the wall.”
  • John’s race of aliens develops a myriad of powers. Some are universal, such as super strength, while some are specialized, such as invisibility. John trains to increase his powers’ strengths.
  • John has visions of his planet’s destruction.
  • On Loriac the animals can change their shapes.
  • The Mogadorians can make people see horrible visions, such as, “My own death, and the deaths of all the people I know and love . . . Not only did I have to witness the deaths, but I could feel them, too . . . then came things I’ve always feared as a kid . . . werewolves. Demonic clowns. Giant spiders. I viewed them all through the eyes of a child, and they absolutely terrified me. And every time one of those things bit into me, I could feel its teeth rip the flesh from my body . . . I couldn’t stop screaming.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

Monument 14

One minute, fourteen kids were on the bus heading towards school. Then the gigantic sized hail began. The bus crashed and everything changed in an instant.

Six high school kids, two eighth-graders, and six little kids are trapped in a chain superstore, while chemicals fill the outside air. They must work together in order to survive. However, the longer they are in the store, the more difficulties they must face—they must keep others out, they must take care of the younger children, they must fight the escalating tension between each other—all the while trying to come up with a plan to survive.

Monument 14 is a suspenseful survival story written from the point of view of one of the teenagers. Although the premise behind the book is interesting, some of the events in the story are farfetched. The narrator describes some graphic fights, including one in which an adult is shot and killed. One of the pre-teen girls is sexually assaulted. Another character raids the pharmacy and is high for most of the story.

Sexual Content

  • When exposed to the chemicals in the air, Brayden thinks, “But I still had some weird stuff happening in my body. What I wanted was Astrid. She looked so good to me that I wanted to take her, in a dark and terrible way.”
  • When one of the children is playing with Barbie toys, the narrator describes it as a “Barbie orgy.”
  • When some of the characters fight, a boy says, “I see. I get it . . . You and your brother want in on Niko’s little gay Scout thing. You guys wish you could be up in the woods, huffing on each other’s campfires . . .”
  • Some of the boys were talking about Astrid. Brayden says, “You don’t even love her. You just want her so you can get your rocks off.”
  • Sahalia helps people wash their hair. The narrator and two other boys watch her. “We can see skin under the leg of her shorts. The creamy skin of her inner, inner thigh . . . Now we see her breast outright, through the material of her shirt. We could see the nipples. Everything about them, we could see . . . But it seemed to me she wanted us to see her body. She wanted to be wanted.”
  • Sahalia is wearing a revealing outfit. When the boys look at Sahalia’s body, another character yells at her, “We get it, okay? You’re sexy and you want to have sex with these guys. We get it. But, honey, it’s not going to happen because you are thirteen.” As the two fight, Sahalia yells, “I know more about sex than you do, you stuck-up bitch!”
  • Astrid finds Sahalia “basically naked” and crying. “She sat on the floor, clutching her nightgown to her chest.” Later Sahalia says, “He (an adult, school employee) said that I should be, like his girlfriend. And I guess I thought I could, you know, do what all he wanted me to do. But then I didn’t want to and . . .”
  • Two of the characters kiss. “Nicko held her to him, encircling her dark shoulders and pulling her into his body . . . She looked up at him and he looked at her and they were kissing.”

Violence

  • When the school bus crashes, the driver is killed. “He was pinned behind the wheel and blood was spilling out of his head like milk out of a carton.”
  • When exposed to the air, the narrator begins attacking Niko. “I started beating him with the mask I was still holding. He wouldn’t let go of my leg and was dragging me down the stairs. I swung at him, wanting him to lose his balance . . . I couldn’t think. Just pummel. Pound. tear. Destroy.”
  • One of the characters talks about how his mother’s boyfriend hits her. In a later scene, he talks about how his aunt’s husband would beat her aunt, but the aunt would always lie about how she got hurt.
  • When Chloe was exposed to the chemicals, she attacks the others. “She had Batiste by the throat, up against the wall . . . He was getting strangled to death . . . His face was blue and his eyes were big and his legs were limp.”
  • When Robbie (an adult, school employee) is found sexually abusing Sahalia, Astrid holds a gun to him. Later, Jake is given the gun and Robbie attacks him. Robbie says, “I told you it wasn’t me. She wanted to be my girlfriend.” Then Robbie, “lashed out and struck Niko across the face with the barrel of the pistol.” Another character shoots Robbie dead.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • One of the kids says that he went to a strip club with his uncle. He said that they serve liquor. “They have these little glasses in all kind of flavors like watermelon and peach passion and hot apple. They taste horrible.”
  • Some of the older kids drink rum. The narrator describes the experience. “I was loose. I felt big, like I could say what I really felt. I was drunk.” In another scene, three of the older kids put alcohol into their slushies and get drunk.
  • After getting in a fight, the narrator takes some pain pills and some steroids. “I was already starting to feel better. More warm and relaxed.”
  • Jake offers the narrator a pill and says, “Let’s get high.” The narrator takes, “one of the EZ-melt pain pills from the day before and one triangular orange mystery pill later, I was flying. I felt relaxed but energized. Loose and happy.”
  • Jake said, “I keep taking these pills. But every time, they’re working less. It’s like I squeezed all the good feelings out of my brain and now I’m out. I drained it all out and I’m done.”

Language

  • Profanity is used often. The profanity includes: holy Christ, hell, son of a bitch, a-hole, crap, and ass.
  • When the group of kids make lunch in the store, one of the kids asks, “What do we do if the people from the store come? They’re going to be pissed?”
  • When watching the news, the narrator notices the anchors messed up make up. “I wondered why no one fixed her makeup. It was CNN, for God’s sake.”
  • When Brayden tells Astrid what to do, she yells, “Screw you, Brayden! You’re the last person I want to be stuck here with!”
  • When Chloe sees Brayden’s beat up face she asks, “Oh my God, what happened to you?”
  • Someone tries to get into the store. The man shouted, “BY THE HAIR OF MY F—CHIN, LET ME IN OR I’LL HUFF AND I’LL BLOW YOUR EFFIN’ GREENWAY DOWN.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • When disaster strikes, Batiste keeps saying it is “the end of days” and that “judgement day was upon us.”
  • When talking about the strip club, Batiste says, “Our church is always trying to get those sinners to repent. But I don’t even know what kind of sinning they’re doing.”
  • A character says, “I thank God he brought us to this place.”

You Go First

Charlotte has had the same best friend since elementary school. Charlotte wants to be a geologist and understand facts. When Charlotte starts middle school, she doesn’t understand why her best friend no longer wants to spend time with her. She doesn’t understand how to fit into middle school.

Ben doesn’t have any friends. He isn’t going to let that stop him from making an impact on his middle school. He’s determined to run for a student body office. But Ben isn’t prepared for a high school bully.  And life only gets worse when his parents announce that they are getting a divorce.

On the outside, Charlotte and Ben’s lives are completely different. Charlotte lives in Pennsylvania. Ben lives in Louisiana. But internally, both are smart, and both are struggling to fit into middle school. An online game of Scrabble brings the two together, but can a game break up their loneliness?

Beautifully written in easy to understand language, You Go First shows the power of having a friend. At first, Charlotte and Ben’s struggle seems stereotypical—smart kids enter junior high and realize they have no one to sit with at lunch. However, the characters are so unique and well-developed that the readers will feel their confusion, pain, and desire for someone to talk to.

Unlike many stories, You Go First looks at not only how mean middle school students can be, but Charlotte also begins to see how she is similar to the mean kids. Through the story, the reader will come to a better understanding of what friendship should look like. You Go First does not end with a happily-ever-after ending; however, the story does show how one friend can make a difference in a person’s life.

Sexual Content

  • Charlotte’s friend said that she “didn’t want to graduate from middle school as the only girl who’d never been kissed.”

Violence

  • A boy shoves Ben’s head against a wall and later smears ketchup on Ben’s shirt.
  • A boy trips Ben in the school hallway. “He did tumble. It just happened to be over Theo Barrett’s sneaker.”
  • Just as Ben is beginning his speech, a group of kids throws firecrackers at him.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Charlotte’s father takes pills for his heart.

Language

  • Two girls are talking about a boy. When he walks in, a girl says, “Oh, God. Speak of the devil.”
  • A girl calls her brother Dorko and tells him, “God, you’re such an idiot.”
  • When Charlotte trips and drops her lunch, someone says, “Well done, Lock-nerd.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Ben was in his bedroom preparing for an oncoming speech. He really wanted his dad to leave the bedroom, and “then the gods gave him an unexpected gift: His phone buzzed. . . ”

 

Wishtree

Red, an oak tree, has watched over his neighborhood for generations. As a “wishtree,” people have been putting their wishes on Red’s branches. Through his time watching and hearing people’s wishes, Red has gained much wisdom. Still, people confuse him.

Red’s best friend, a crow named Bongo, and the animals that live in Red’s hollows give Red’s life a sense of meaning. But when a new family moves into the house across from Red, he wishes that he could do something for the sad little girl who sits at the base of his trunk every night.

Red narrates this beautiful story about the complicated nature of friendship. Red comes alive and shines with personality in Wishtree. The story deals with the complicated issue of people who hate, but the themes are dealt with in a kid-friendly manner. Red’s animal friends come alive and bring a touch of humor to the story. Although Wishtree was written for 10- to 14-year-olds, the story will captivate an older audience as well.

Sexual Content

  • Red explains that he is different than other trees. “Some trees are male. Some trees are female. And some, like me, are both . . . call me she. Call me he. Anything will work.”

Violence

  • A boy carves the words “leave” into Red’s bark. “I couldn’t tell what he was carving, of course. But I could tell from the determined way he moved that it was meant to hurt.”
  • Red talks about some things that happen in his neighborhood. “Someone threw raw eggs at the blue house. One afternoon, a car passed by, filled with angry men yelling angry things, things like ‘Muslims, get out!’”
  • Someone throws raw eggs at Red. “Splat. Splat. Two more times, and the car roared off with a screech of tires.”
  • Bongo leaves a “large deposit” on the boy who carved the words into Red’s trunk.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

Fortune Falls

In Fortune Falls, if you step on a crack you really will hurt your mother’s back. And four-leaf clovers, lucky pennies, and rabbit’s feet really do bring good luck. But twelve-year-old Sadie is used to being on the bad side of luck. When a cat the color of ravens begins following her, Sadie fears that her bad luck is irreversible and may be deadly.

The cat, and bad luck, seemed to be stalking Sadie. Sadie no longer expects to have good luck, but she is still determined to outwit fate. She has too much to lose if she doesn’t.

In just five days, Sadie is going to take the Luck Test, which will determine if she will go to Flourish Academy or be sent away. Her friend Cooper is determined to help Sadie come up with a plan to overcome her bad luck. But when Sadie breaks a mirror, her dog goes missing in a graveyard, and a black cat keeps following her, Sadie isn’t sure she can outwit fate. Is it possible for her to survive her bad luck? And if she survives, will she be sent away from everything she loves?

Sadie is a smart, clumsy, lovable heroine, who uses her wits to overcome obstacles in her life. Throughout the story, Sadie cares for her younger brother. Although their father is dead, his positive influence is shown through Sadie’s thoughts.

Throughout the story, Sadie learns many valuable lessons, including how people (and cats) are often misjudged based on their appearances and that friendships are more important than luck. At one point Sadie thinks about capturing the black cat and trading it for something that would bring her good luck, but she decides, “I wasn’t sure if it was worth being Lucky if it meant betraying who I was.” Because the story is entertaining, full of suspense, and has interesting characters, the book teaches lessons without being preachy. And in the end, the reader sees that “Fortune has very little to do with the charm and everything to do with perception.”

The ending of Fortune Falls doesn’t change Sadie’s clumsy nature. She is still imperfect and messy, but she no longer thinks that she needs luck or perfection. One of the best parts of the book is that Sadie conquers the mean girl without being mean herself. In the process of trying to outwit fate, Sadie leaves the reader with positive lessons as well as a story that will make them smile long after the book is put down.

Sexual Content

  • Sadie goes to a school dance. As she dances with Cooper, she thinks, “My skin tingled where Cooper’s left hand rested on my shoulder, and mine on his side. It felt almost electric where the fingers of our hands joined together, forming their own little tower between us.”

Violence

  • When Sadie thinks about running away, she thinks about the Unluckies who had tried to leave Fortune Falls. “Unluckies gave up on trying long ago—tires always blew at the edge of town, people suffered strokes and heart attacks just as they were about to cross over the city limits—like bad luck, there was no escaping it.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • Sadie and Bessie go to a wishing well to drop in a coin, hoping for luck to help them pass the Luck Test. “Toss a coin into this well,/And the water spirit tell,/ Your deepest wish or favorite spell./ Fate favors those who luck befell.”
  • Sadie goes to the cemetery’s entrance, hoping to find her dog. While she is there she sees “to the left of the mausoleum and the black cat, and close to where I was standing by the fence, something was sticking out from the bushes. Slender, bony white fingers. A skeletal hand, reaching, stretching, grasping for the iron post. This was not the hand of someone who’d been buried in the cemetery. It was the boney remains of someone who’d thought they’d be able to dash in and out while holding their breath. Whoever it was had been wrong. Deadly wrong.
  • There is a field in Fortune Falls where a ghost appears at dusk or barely after dark. The ghost boy beckons people to follow him to the graveyard. “Almost everyone agreed that at some point they found themselves standing at the iron bars of the cemetery, not certain how they got there but feeling compelled to fetch the poor boy’s eternally resting parents. Perhaps that’s what happened to the person who had been reduced to an extending skeletal hand just inside the fence.”
  • Sadie’s brother has an encounter with the ghost, who wants him to go into the cemetery and look for his parents. Sadie’s brother tells the ghost that his father is dead. “Then he got a sad look on his face and ran off.”
  • Sadie scolds her brother for yawning and not covering his mouth. “Yawning without covering your mouth was like breathing inside the cemetery, only worse. Opening your mouth to yawn gave the Devil a gaping hole to slip into and, unlike with wraiths, his strength didn’t wane outside the parameters of the cemetery.” Sadie discovers that the black cat is really a Japanese bobtail and “one of the luckiest charms you could ever hope to encounter . . . no one will buy her for her luck, and she couldn’t hex something to save her life.”
  • Sadie considers buying a voodoo doll to hex a mean girl.

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

The Stone Girl’s Story

Mayka and her stone family have always lived on the mountain. Their father, a stonemason, brought them to life by etching stories onto their bodies. But now that her father is gone, the markings are beginning to fade. Mayka and her two bird friends go in search of a stonemason to recarve the stories.  As she searches, she learns about the complicated history of stone creations. She also must learn which flesh-people can be trusted—because not all humans are good.

Filled with unique, engaging characters—both stone and flesh—The Stone Girl’s Story explores the importance of making your own decisions and writing your own story. With the power of friendship, Mayka helps other stone creations change their stories, and, in the process, they defeat evil. Through her journey, Mayka shows the importance of words; although she lies, she does so for good reason. She also learns the importance of being brave and how to become the heroine in her own story.

Beautiful descriptions bring The Stone Girl’s Story to life. Mayka retells many stories, which makes some of the action less interesting. Although the ending of the story is action-packed and suspenseful, some readers may have a hard time wading through the first half of the book. However, getting to the end of the book is worth the work because of the lessons learned, the exciting climax, and the hopeful resolution.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Mayka comes to a stone wall that was created to protect what lies on the other side of it. When Mayka’s bird friend touches the wall, rocks rolled round his feet. The rocks “rolled together to pin him to the wall. As she dug, the rocks rolled against her too, trying to trap her fingers with the bird.”
  • A stonemason creates a huge stone monster who attacks the city, trying to capture Mayka and her friends. “The monster kicked away the guards, and they sprawled against the building, knocking over fleeing people and capsizing pedestals. The monster charged forward. Each step slammed into the ground and caused the buildings to sway. Tile fell off roofs. Chimneys toppled.” Mayka’s friends attack the monster to distract him while Mayka carves a new story onto his body. The monster then grabs the stonemason that built him and leaves the city, never to return.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • According to the old legends, great dragons created all flesh-and-blood life.
  • Stonemasons can carve creatures out of stone and bring them to life. Most creatures are everyday animals such as horses, oxen, or otters, which are used for labor.

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

Roland Wright: Future Knight

Roland Wright dreams of being a knight, but he knows that dream will never come true. Only sons of noblemen become knights, and his dad is not noble. Then a series of unexpected events happen that bring excitement and hope to Roland. A knight, with a head stuck in his helmet, shows up at his father’s blacksmith shop. The knight has exciting news. Roland’s father’s famous armor saves the king’s life, and then the king offers to take either Roland or Roland’s brother Shelby to the castle to train as a page.

Roland’s father, a quiet and skillful man, must decide which son will become a future knight and which son will become an armor maker. In order to determine which path in life is best for his sons, Mr. Wright comes up with a contest to judge the boy’s skills. In an attempt to win the contest, Roland seeks out the advice of an experienced knight.

Young readers will be instantly captivated by a view of life in the Middle Ages through Roland’s eyes. Not only is Roland humorous, but he also is just like a typical boy—he spends much of his time day-dreaming and he doesn’t have much use for girls. Adding a mouse as a pet, a gallant knight, and a wise and insightful father to the mix makes Roland Wright Future Knight an entertaining story. An added bonus is that the story teaches that winning isn’t the most important part of being a knight (or a young boy).

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • When Roland thinks about the neighbor girl, he knows she’s wrong but, “he didn’t grab his big, spiky steel mace and hit her over the head so hard that her brain shot out her earholes like lengths of rope.”
  • Several times Roland and his brother fight with wooden swords. One time as they are playing, Roland, “lunged and swiped, hitting Shelby’s sword so hard it flew out of his hands.”
  • The boys have a contest where they fight with wooden swords and shields. Shelby hits Roland across his unprotected back. “It felt like a red hot strip of steel had been pressed against Roland’s skin. He fell to the ground face-first in agony. He rolled onto his back, hoping the softness of the grass would stop the pain.” When his father tries to stop the fight, Roland says he can continue, but he ends up yielding to his brother.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

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