Poor shy Jeremy lives on the top floor of a three-story apartment building.  Every day he looks down at the other boys and girls playing ball.  But he never goes outside.  One day, Jeremy takes out his fancy blue ball- point pen and draws a monster.  But his monster ends up to be pretty demanding and rude asking Jeremy to draw him a sandwich, a toaster, a record player, a checkerboard, a comfortable chair, a television, a hot tog, a telephone, and a piece of cake.  When the monster asks for a  hat so he can go out, Jeremy thinks with relief that he may be gone for good.

But the monster returns later that night and takes over Jeremy’s bed.  Jeremy’s a smart kid and the next morning draws the monster a bus ticket and a suitcase and helps him get out of town.  But once he puts the monster on the bus, he’s not in his room anymore.  He’s outside!  So . . . he plays ball with the neighbor kids.

I liked this one.  The illustrations are really cute.  I loved the pen and ink line quality to the blue monster.  I loved that the monster wasn’t scary.  Just very demanding.   I liked shy Jeremy and his problem solving skills.  My boys have casually looked through the pages of this one with interest although I haven’t sat down with them yet to read it cover to cover.  My four-year old is the perfect age for the short text.  The book has that special feel to it.  You just know it when you see it.

Links of interest: Peter McCarty website, more book blogger reviews, Travis at 100 Scope Notes has a much more eloquent review of this book than I do.
Genre: Fiction Picture Book, approx ages 4-8.
Publisher: Henry Holt & Co. September 1, 2009
Hardcover, 40 pages. ISBN 0805069348
Jeremy Draws a Monster is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

I have a fun video for you of us reading Leonardo the Terrible Monster together.  At one point, it gets most rambunctious.  Another book that we will be sad to return to the library and will be added to boys permanent wish list.

Links of interest:  Mo Willems website and blog, more book blogger reviews.
Genre: Fiction Picture Book, approx ages 4-8.
Publisher: Hyperion Book. August 23, 2005
Hardcover, 48 pages. ISBN 0786852941
Leonardo the Terrible Monster is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

I Am a Star is the juvenile non-fiction account of  Inge Auerbacher, who at the age of seven in 1942 was sent with her parents to a concentration camp.  She spend her next three birthdays there.

The book begins,

Of fifteen thousand children imprisoned in the Eterazin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia between 1941 and 1945, about one hundred survived.  I am one of them.  At least one a nd a half million children were killed in the Nazi Holocaust.  The reason most of those children died is that they were Jewish.

Why should one remember these dreadful events? The death of one innocent child is a catastrophe; the loss of such numbers in unimaginable.  Their silent voices must be heard today.  This is why I feel compelled to trace the historical events that made this great evil possible and to tell my own story.

Auerbacher’s story is horrifying and she does give a really good background about the history of the Holocaust so that a child who knows nothing about World War II would learn and understand what happened.  The question that will never be answered though is why?  We know what happened, but we will never truly understand why.

Interspered between the text is a collection of poems written by Auerbacher.  Or I assume that they were written by Auerbacher – there was never really an acknowledgement or explanation of the poems – which is partly why I found the format of I Am a Star a bit disconcerting.  They seemed randomly placed throughout the book.   They did relate to the text though, so I am assuming they were written by Auerbacher.  It’s almost as though the book wanted to be a non-fiction narrative written in verse and also written formally.  I liked both, but maybe they needed to be placed into the book a bit better.

I  enjoyed the photos that accompanied the text.  I always enjoy photos in memoirs, and this was no exception.  I like to visualize what’s going on.  There were a fair number of illustrations.  Again, I’m not sure if these were Auerbacher’s or not.

I really liked I Am a Star and learning about Auerbacher’s story.  If I could recommend only one non-fiction book to read about a child in the Holocaust though, this one would probably not be it.  I just didn’t feel that gut-wrenching horror that I usually feel when I read books about the Holocaust.  I felt removed from the story.  And to tell you the truth, I imagine that the author had to remove herself from her own story just to get past the emotion of bringing it all back to the forefront of her memory.

Overall, I’m glad I read it but it’s not on the best Holocaust memoirs that I’ve read.  I’d recommend something along the lines of I Have Lived a Thousand Years by Livia Button Jackson at about the same reading level.  But don’t discount I Am a Star. Each memoir written about the Holocaust should be valued and their stories heard.  We are losing the survivors to old age, pretty soon we will have nobody left and only their words will be left behind.

Links of interest: Inge Auerbacher website, more book blogger reviews.
Genre:  Memoir for ages 9-12.
Publisher:  Puffin.  February 1, 1993
Paperback, 96 pages.  ISBN:  0140364013
I Am a Star, Child of the Holocaust is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Observing my continual gushing and geeking out when I met Woodson at the LA Times Festival of Books, Amy at My Friend Amy decided to try her out and fell in love with Woodson’s writing and story (how could anybody not?).  When Amy reviewed I Hadn’t Mean to Tell You This by Jacqueline Woodson, a title that I hadn’t read yet, and sobbed her way through it, I put a hold on it at the library immediately.  Yes, something about people sobbing through books attracts me a great deal.

And thus we come circle.  I love turning readers onto new authors who then turn me onto titles from said author that I haven’t read yet.  I love that blogging about books makes reading books a social activity.   So it’s my hope that for all those who have yet to pick up a Woodson title (despite the fact that I keep reviewing them here!) will do so.

Jacqueline Woodson’s writing is incredibly beautiful and I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This is no exception.  But while the writing is beautiful, the subject matter certainly is not.   It is unbelievably sad and gut-wrenching.  Marie is twelve-years-old and lives well off in a black suburb.  She never wants for money, nice clothes, or friends.  Her father is a college professor and she’s got a full ride scholarship in her future.  But what is missing in her life is her mother.  A mother who was so depressed with her life that she leaves both Marie and her father behind in favor of living her life by seeing the world.

Lena, a new white girl moves to Marie’s school and it’s fairly clear that she’s what everybody, including her father, calls white trash.  She doesn’t take care of herself, she’s dirty, and her clothes are old, baggy and clearly hand-outs.  Despite their differences the two girls are drawn to each other and Lena desperately wants to be her friend.

Marie soon comes to know that Lena has also lost a mother.  Through this common bond, Lena shares a secret so deep that Marie doesn’t know what to do.  Does  her silence help Lena or will reaching out be able to save her from a nightmarish home?

I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This is a short 114 pages.  It can easily be read in under an hour and a half.  But it’s that short hour and a half that will stay with you forever.  As a fair warning to both teens and their parents, the subject matter of this book is about sexual abuse of a child.  It’s a subject that’s never easy to read but it’s books like this that bring it out into the open to be discussed.  And on top of that, Woodson effectivally explores the themes of child abandonment from a parent and also the death of a parent.

It’s a heavy handed book for sure but yet Woodson leaves you with a glimmer of hope and the knowledge that you have just experienced a beautiful book that seems almost effortless to achieve.  I’ll leave you with the same quote that Amy chose in her recent review:

Yes, of course I wanted to fly. I wanted to cast off, feel the ground droop slowly out from beneath me. “What is air, Mama?” I asked when I was five. Caressing the back of my neck with her hand, my mother waited a moment before she answered. “Air,” she said, “is something there isn’t enough of here.”

Links of interest:  Jacqueline Woodson website, more book blogger reviews, Maw Book reviews of other Woodson title’s including  Show Way, Feathers, If You Come Softly, Behind You, Peace Locomotion, Locomotion, and Miracle’s Boys.  My experience meeting Woodson at LA Times Festival of Books.
Genre:  Young Adult fiction.
Publisher:  Speak.  June 8, 2006.  First edition 1994.
Paperback 128 pages.  ISBN 0142405558
I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Pure. Unplanned.  Perfect.

That’s exactly what Nick, a popular and good looking guy, wanted from summer.  And it started out that way when he hooked up with Dani and they have a casual relationship.  What I would call ‘friends with benefits.’  He’s simply having fun without the commitment.

Pure.  Unplanned.  Perfect.

But then he meets Sasha and she’s different.  He surprises himself when they get really serious, he even thinks that he’s in love.  After losing their virginity with each other (they’re sixteen) and having a grand old time, they have a moment in bed where they realize just how serious being sexually active is.  And it scares Sasha so much that she breaks off the relationship.

Nick is devastated.  As if the break up is hard enough, he is dealing with his divorced parents and his best friend since childhood coming out of the closet.   But it’s not long before Sasha reenters his life, only this time it’s on Christmas Eve and it’s to tell him that she’s pregnant.

Nick is reeling.  And understandably so.  Neither knows quite what to do about the situation but Sasha insists that she does not want to get back together.  She’ll “figure something out.”

I Know It’s Over is ultimately about teen pregnancy, teen culture, teen sexuality, first love, family relationships, sexual orientation, friendship, actions, decisions, and consequences of ones actions.

What I did like:

1. I thought that the sex scenes could have gotten extremely explicit.   Nick’s happiest when he’s having sex.  They are in bed a lot.  I’m not one to read books with a lot of sex and I’m not one for extreme details and luckily this book did not provide them as much as it could have.  I was expecting worse so was surprised that details were glossed over.
2. The fact that it was a teen pregnancy story told from the point of view from the guy.

What I didn’t like was lots and lots of assumptions and beliefs that are not once challenged or expanded on.  For example:

1. It’s totally great to have a sexual relationship at the age of 16.  Absolutely nothing wrong with it.  In fact, Nick’s dad gives him condom money.    I would have liked to seen more conversation based around the pros/cons and the responsibility one has entering into a sexual relationship.  Yes, she got pregnant but it seemed as though having sex when so young was presented as a totally okay thing.  I needed the book to explore the morals a bit more and perhaps the characters would have had more depth if that was the case.
2. Drugs and alcohol.  If you get caught, you get a slap on your hand.  But who cares.  They make you feel better and that’s what matters.  I would have liked to see some consequences from their use.
3. Homosexuality.  I mention this because to tell you the truth, I’m not 100% sure why this storyline was in the book.  Likely it was included because it furthered the exploration of  teen sexuality, but the book already had so many other issues regarding teen pregnancies that it’s inclusion made the book go over the top.
4. Abortion.  Not a single person has a second thought about abortion.  Including the parents.   Everybody was an advocate with no dissenting voices.  Nick keeps saying, “It’s not really a baby yet.”  To tell you the truth, I was bothered with this statement simply because nobody offered up the opinion that it was a baby.  I needed opposing voices.  No other options besides abortion were ever discussed.  Adoption?  Nope.  Keeping the baby? What and ruin their future?  Abortion was naturally the only solution.  I would have liked to see some deeper decision making on this one and a further exploration of the issues.
5. When somebody has a problem, you run to your friends house to “clear your head” for a while.  I thought it was odd how many times the characters would run off to a friends house to hide out instead of facing the problems head on.  Yes, friends are great.  I couldn’t have survived high school myself without them.  But everybody seemed to be hiding out half the time.
6. The parents reactions to the pregnancy are so unbelievable to me that I had a really hard time buying it.  Nick tells his father about the pregnancy the same night that he finds out about it.  His father tells him, “Let me know if there is anything I can do”  and then basically turns around and goes back home!  He calls in occasionally for updates but he does not get involved in any type of decision making, offers no counseling.  Nothing.  His kid is sixteen!  He’s not an adult and therefore incapable of making adult decisions.  Nick does not tell his mother at all, nor does his father.  She can tell something is up, but doesn’t push it.  He decides to wait until after the abortion and when he does, it’s literally a three minute conversation that goes something like, “What?  Your ex-girlfriend had an abortion today?  Oh, wow. That’s tough . . . so what  would you like for dinner?”
7. No consequences for their actions.  You would think that getting your teen girlfriend pregnant at the age of sixteen would get you in trouble. Emotionally they were hurting, but no consequences from their family.
8. What is love exactly?  The characters did not feel like they were in love to me, either.  Besides the sex, I could see nothing holding them together.  What exactly did they find so appealing about each other?  I was never really sure.

I think that there is huge teen appeal in this book and that teen readers will really like it.  But everything in that list above bothered me so much that it sometimes pained me to turn the pages to see what exactly was going to happen next.  But I did want to turn the pages.  I really wanted to know how Nick and Sasha were going to handle their situation and then got mad because things didn’t go my way.

Hmm . . . so, I’m ambiguous on I Know It’s Over.  Will teens like it?  Absolutely yes.  Did I like it?  Not as much as the teens will.  Dang it, I’m getting old and cranky.

Links of interest:  C.K Kelly Martin website.  More blogger book reviews.
Genre:  Young Adult Fiction
Publisher: Random House. September 23, 2008
Hardcover, 256 pages. ISBN: 978-0375845666
I Know It’s Over is available from your local independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.
I Know It’s Over is competing in the Nerds Heart YA book tournament and is paired up against Feathered by Laura Kasischke in which I’m the judge.  I’ll be posting my decision today.

Our main character, Jill Parker is an American artist who has moved to Japan as a means to escape a broken heart, a place where she will not be reminded at every street corner of her ex-boyfriend.  Jill fully intends to immerse herself in the entire culture and Toyko is to big, to busy, and has to many foreigners.  She finds a smaller seaside town and settles in.  She mets an American man who introduces her to many friends, gets a job as a hostess in a bar and even finds herself beginning to paint again.  Yusuke, an art gallery owner likes her paintings and puts together a show for her.  Jill and Yusuke discover that their shared interest isn’t just in the paintings but rather for each other.

Jill and Yusuke marry and it’s not long before Jill begins to realize exactly what the role of a wife should be in Japan.  Living with Yusuke’s mother isn’t easy as she is harsh, cold, and tradition bound in the sense where they serve the men in the house with no thought for themselves.  Jill is expected to conceive an heir to the house, a boy named Kei, and when she does she still feels small and insignificant.  She decides divorce is the only way out but she soon discovers that doing so means that she must give up custody of her son Kei.  In Japan, foreigners have no rights to their children, she is expected to go back home and leave her little boy with her ex-husband’s family.

Jill won’t give up easily and doesn’t go home.  Instead, she sneaks around trying to catch glimpses of him from time and time, stalks her mother in-law’s house and convinces the babysitter to meet them at the playground.  Jill has only one option left and that’s to kidnap her own son and try to take him back to America with her.  But trying to do so means risking everything, even Kei himself.

Losing Kei is about love lost, love discovered, cultural expectations and misunderstanding and how far one will go to gain back that which they’ve lost.  I was fascinated with the Japanese custody laws and truly felt sorry for all those who have made families in Japan only to have them ripped apart by laws that make no sense.

This particular passage tells the story of what Jill is fighting against really well:

I called my mother a couple of days after the divorce.

“What do you mean you lost Kei?”  She demanded.  “What on earth did you do?”

“Nothing.”

[. . . ]

“You must have done something.  Did you have an affair?”

I hadn’t heard that tone in at least ten years, not since she’d found a joint in my windbreaker pocket.  What did I have to do earn her sympathy?

“I did not have an affair,” I said, getting a little bit testy.  “If I did anything wrong, it was being born in another country.  They won’t let me have him because they’re afraid that I would take him out of Japan.  He’s the heir of the house of Yamashiro.  The only one.”

My lack of income and lodging, my desertion – all of those were nothing compared to this fact of heredity.  On top of that,the Yamashiro family had connections.  I did not.  For all I knew, they were paying off the judge.

I could hear my mother’s intake of breathe, could envision her adjusting the cardigan at her shoulders.  “You’ll see him on weekends, won’t you?” Her reasonable voice.  ” And during the holidays.”

“That will be up to Yusuke and his mother,” I said.  “There is no such thing as joint custody in this country.”

The silence that followed lasted so long that I thought she’d hung up.

“Mom?  Are you there?”

I thought I heard a sniffle.

“Are you telling me, Jill, that I might not be able to see my grandson again?”

Losing Kei is told in alternating time lines from when Suzanne is fighting for her child in 1997 and when she first arrived in 1989, a technique which I think works well for this type of story.  Suzanne writes in a beautiful straightforward manner and it’s a book which I would recommend.

Like I mentioned earlier, Losing Kei felt very believable to me probably because Suzanne Kamata has lived in Japan with her native husband and their two children for the past twenty-one years!  Suzanne was gracious enough to participate in an author interview and share with us some great insight into Japanese custody laws, what it’s like to live in a foreign country and raise multi-cultural children.  I especially enjoyed the insight into differences in literacy between Japan and the United States.  I will have that interview up for you tomorrow so make sure you don’t miss it!

So what would you do if you found yourself in a foreign land unable to gain custody of your child?  Would you go back home empty handed, stay and try to fight, or like Jill, risk it all and try to kidnap your own child?  Tough questions.  What would you do?

Links of interest:  Suzanne Kamata website.
Genre:  Fiction
Publisher: Leapfrog Press.  January 1, 2008
Paperback, 216 pages.  ISBN: 0972898492
Losing Kei is available from your local independent bookstore, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.

It’s been a while since I read the book (simply because my husband and I trying to do this joint review which seemed to take forever!) so I’m not sure I could do a plot summary justice.   At the heart of The Little Giant of Aberdeen County is a story of two sisters.  One beautiful, petite sister, Serena Jane, whom everybody adores and then there’s Truly, who came into this world at the cost of the death of her mother.  She’s plain looking and abnormally large.  Their father does his best to raise them but ultimately fails and both sisters are split and live in different homes.

Truly narrates this beautiful story as they grow into adulthood and their lives take very different paths.  Also, at the heart of this story is Robert Morgan, the town doctor and Serena’s husband.  When Serena Jane abandons her family, Truly steps in to relieve the burden and take care of her nephew.

The story is so simple but yet so deep.  Although big on the outside, Truly has a heart to match and I found myself wishing and hoping that she’d gain everything she loved and desired.  Including true love and her long lost sister.

There is so much more to this story than that very, very basic story line.  You just have to read it.  It was nothing short of amazing.  I loved it.  It’s the type of book that I look at sitting on my bookshelf, and saying, oh yes, I enjoyed reading that book (the book on the bookshelf, not me sitting on the bookshelf!).

It’s very rare for my husband and I to read the same book but he finished reading The Little Giant of Aberdeen County before I even started.  He was thoroughly engrossed with this book and quickly finished it.  In fact, with the exception of Twilight (that’s a whole other story) and Harry Potter, I’ve never really seen him so involved.  I’m taking advantage of the situation and bringing to you my very first joint review with my husband.

Our Conversation About The Little Giant of Aberdeen County

Natasha:  So you normally don’t read these type of books, why did you pick this book up?

Taylor: Because it was sitting on the floor.

Me:  Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that you have to read it.

Taylor: Because of the nice cover.  And this first line was really good, “The day I laid Robert Morgan to rest was remarkable for two reasons.  First, even though it was August, the sky overhead was as rough and cold as a January lake; and second, it was the day I started to shrink.”  I kept reading it and the rest of it was just as good as the first line.  And I just kept on reading until it was all done.  I liked the style of the writing, the way the words sounded together.

Natasha:  I really liked the cover too.  That’s the first thing that I was drawn to about this book.

Taylor: Her words are just so cool, I haven’t read anything like it before.  ” . . . his spindly fingers gnarled together in a knot over his heart, awaiting judgment.”  There was another sentence in here, I really liked, “Amelia and I ate together alone on the big rock shaped like a turtle, peeling the waxed paper off of our sandwiches silently and eating glumly, hunkered into our own separate miseries.”  Also,

The morning my sister left him, Bob Bob woke up and knew it without opening his eyes.  It was the absence of the usual odors in the house – the cottony scent of her breath captured in hollow of the pillow next to him, the slightly acrid aroma of coffee wafting up the stairs, followed by the grease of bacon frying.  He lay perfectly still in the bed, his nose twitching, but there was nothing.*

So, what did you like about this book?

Natasha:  That’s too general of a question.

Taylor: What did you find intriguing about the characters?

Natasha:  I really like how the author never told us exactly how big she was.

Taylor:  And you like that because it’s audience participation.  You fill in the blanks and you become part of the story.

[So we Googled the condition that Truly has (and if I can find the official name again, I'll edit it in) and apparently as a giant you can either grow vertically or laterally.  The images that we found were fascinating.]

[long, long silence from Taylor]

Natasha:  Do you have anything else to say about how big she is?

Taylor: No.  I can’t think of anything.

Natasha:  This is going to be the most boring review ever.  You’ve got to work with me here.

Taylor: How can we make it funny?

[nobody speaks for about five minutes . . . I'm waiting him out]

Taylor: I’m drawing a blank.  Wait!  Don’t put that in there.

Natasha:  Well, it has been a while since we read the book because it’s been hard to get us to sit down.

Taylor: It’s one of my favorite books I’ve read. And I was really surprised because there wasn’t time travel in this story . . . or werewolves.  It was a simple story but it was so well written, I enjoyed it.

Natasha:  What did you think of the doctor?  Do you think that by treating Truly he had good intentions?

Taylor: That’s giving to much away!

Natasha:  No, it’s not.

Taylor: It seemed like he didn’t, but I think it’s left up to the reader to decide.  I can imagine that guy as a cross between William Defoe and Crispin Glover.

Natasha:  William Defoe.  I don’t even know who that is.

Taylor: The green goblin in Spiderman.  And there’s this girl at Trax [our light rail system] that reminds me of Truly.

Natasha:  Why?  Is she really big?

Taylor: Yep.

Natasha:  Do you think this is more of a women’s book?

Taylor: Yes.  It’s about relationships.  And because the main character is a woman. 

Natasha: Would . .  [gets cut off]

Taylor: Unless the main character is Angelina Jolie then it’s probably a woman’s book.

Natasha:  Would you recommend it to your all male book club?

Taylor: I would.  Right now we are reading The Thirteenth Tale.

Natasha:  Have you started that one yet?

Taylor: Not yet.  Still trying to finish Mistborn 2. I definitely would like to read whatever book she writes next.  The story was so simple, I wonder if she wrote a fantasy book, or a more complex book, if it would work with her style.

Natasha:  I don’t think that a book needs to be fantasy to be complex.

Taylor: Take that line out.  Are you taking it out?

Natasha:  No.

Taylor: Hey!

Natasha:  We aren’t getting very deep.

Taylor: You’re not erasing stuff.  You’re typing everything I say.  Usually, when I ask you about a book you say that you liked it and that’s all you say.

Natasha:  Well, ask me a deep question.

Taylor: What’s a deep question?

Natasha:  You’re not giving me much to go on. This is really boring.

Taylor: Well, you’ve got to edit!  That’s all I had to say about the book.

Natasha:  Okay, then I think we’re done.

[argument takes place about how awful this whole thing went]

Go forth and read.  It was beautiful.

Links of interest:  Tiffany Baker website and blog.
Genre:  Literary Fiction
Published:  Grand Central Publishing, January 8, 2009.
Hardcover, 341 pages.  ISBN 978-0446194204
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker is available from your local independent bookstore, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.
*Quotes taken from an Advance Reading Copy and may not reflect bound copy.

Kabul Beauty School is the memoir of Deborah Rodriguez, a hairdresser, who shortly after 9/11 joined a humanitarian organization which ultimately took her to  Kabul, Afghanistan.  Leaving her two young sons with her mother (which was a huge discussion point in our book club – how does one just pick up and leave their family), and putting distance between herself and an abusive husband, Debbie soon found herself in a home with other humanitarian workers but unsure of exactly what role she was supposed to play.

After playing hairdresser to Westerners and a trip back to the U.S., Debbie sought sponsorship from beauty companies to start her own beauty training school for Afghan women.  In a country where women are undervalued, at the mercy of their husbands, rarely hold jobs, have little to no income, going to beauty school to train and open their own salons opens up opportunities and freedom previously unknown to them.  Debbie recounts the many girls and women that she became friends with and their heartbreaking stories.  She also shows how the beauty school was a much needed refuge and safe haven for the women where they could feel free to be themselves and free their inhibitions.  

To tell you the truth, I’m totally shocked that Debbie didn’t get herself killed while she was there.  She has a very loud, abrasive personality which in a country where women are not to draw attention to themselves, she was like a bull in a china shop.  I was surprised at what should have been a very tense political situation and a dangerous time in the country that she seemed to have very little fear or concern for her personal safety.  I’m sure she really did but it didnt feel that way in the writing.  She often yelled at the men, taunted her neighbors, and even once gave a ride to her arrested neighbor to the police station.  And she was the one pressing charges!  I couldn’t believe some of the things that she did.

I was also shocked when she agreed to be married in an arranged marriage to an Afghan whom she couldn’t even talk to because they spoke a different language.  And he already had another wife.  She was shocked that this other wife became pregnant with his child while she was married to him.  Somebody at our book club mentioned that one reason she left the country was because her husband was going to kidnap her son for and hold him for ransom (more details).  At this point, I’d definitely think that the different culture thing didn’t work out for them.  Can you just imagine sitting down to lunch with this author?  The stories she could tell!

Kabul Beauty School could have been edited better.  It felt as though she just sat down and began a rambling of her experience in Afghanistan, breaking off here and there to tell different stories or backgrounds.  But luckily, those stories were fascinating.  I particularly liked hearing about the women she taught and would like to have heard their voices even more.  From the woman whom Debbie helped fake her virginity, to the 12 year-old used to pay off her families debt, her crazy housekeeper who seemed to be on drugs half the time, to the woman who continued her training despite the beatings from her Taliban husband; these are the stories that I wanted to read about.   From what I understand, many of these girls are now in danger because of this book.  You can read more about that in this NPR article and you can watch Rodriguez talk about her book as well.

Overall, I liked this memoir.  It’s not the best that I’ve read but it is fascinating to learn about the Afghan women and the steps that they are taking to gain back their personal freedoms.

Locomotion is the story of Lonnie Collins Motion who at the age of seven, his parents die in a tragic house fire, while he and his sister are on an overnight outing,  He is forever changed.  After spending some time in a children’s home, Lonnie and his sister are separated and put in two different foster homes.  Now at the age of eleven, Lonnie has turned to poetry to help him sift through his feelings as he transitions from his stable home to one of uncertainty.

Lonnie writes:

But when Miss Edna’s voice comes one, the ideas in my
head go out like a candle and all you see left is this little
string of smoke that disappears real quick
before I even have a chance to find out
what it’s trying to say.

So this whole book’s a poem because poetry’s short and

this whole book’s a poem ’cause Ms. Marcus says
write it down before it leaves your brain.
I tell her about the smoke and she says
Good, Lonnie, write that.
Not a whole lot of people be saying Good, Lonnie to me
so I write the string-of-smoke thing down real fast.
Ms. Marcus says We’ll worry about line breaks later.

Write fast, Lonnie, Ms. Marcus says.
And I’m thinking Yeah, I better write fast before Miss
Edna’s voice comes on and blows my candle idea out.

Locomotion is an excellent book for readers of all readers, especially middles readers to introduce them to the fact that poetry isn’t hard to write nor understand.  I must admit that I am not a huge poetry fan.  It’s usually not what I read in my leisure time, but I will admit that I am loving all the free verse novels I’ve read this past year.  Woodson creates the perfect characters and the perfect backdrop of words for them to live in.  I truly loved them all.  A simply beautiful book.

Other books I’ve reviewed by Jacqueline Woodson:  Show Way, Feathers,  If You Come Softly and Behind You.  Jacqueline Woodson’s website.

Do you read free verse novels?  Do you have any favorites that I should read?

Like the title suggests, Lunch with Lenin, is an anthology of ten short stories connected by how the lives of teens are affected directory or indirectly by drugs.  It’s a worldwide problem and as such Ellis takes us from the Philippines, where young Ramon is just trying to take care of his mother and siblings, to Afghanistan, where for Tahmina, harvesting opium is their families only livelihood, to the United States where a babysitter must protect the children from their with out of control alcoholic parents.  The stories are engaging and thought provoking but not preachy.  Ellis just presents the facts as they are and leaves us to ponder upon the choices that each character has made.

Deborah Ellis has proven yet again that she’s a writer for young readers who can always be relied upon to give us stories where are attention is most needed.  Deborah Ellis’ page on the Fitzhenry and Whiteside site.  Other books I’ve reviewed by Deborah Ellis: The Breadwinner, Parvana’s Journey, Mud City (a series), and The Heaven Shop.