Even more graphic novels!

Do you think I like graphic novels? I seem to be reading them a lot lately! They are very good, quick reads, so I really enjoy reading them when I am having trouble getting through a longer book. I would like to tell you about three graphic novels in this post, each unique, and each wonderful in its own way.

You might have read or heard about Gene Luen Yang from his critically acclaimed American Born Chinese graphic novel. I read that a couple years ago and loved it. When I saw The Eternal Smile and Level up (I will write about Level Up in a different post), I snatched them up! The Eternal Smile is three separate, very different stories. The only similarity is that they all have HUGE plot twists. The first, called "Duncan's Kingdom" starts in a magical kingdom where a young man has to win the princess's heart by killing the king of the frogs and bringing back his head. This story ends in a very different place than it started and I thought was the best of the three stories. The second story, "Gran'pa Greenbax and the Eternal Smile" is about an old, greedy frog (kind of a Scrooge figure), who is always looking for ways to make more money so when he jumps into his vat of gold, his head won't touch the bottom. This was my least favorite of the three stories, although the ending is somewhat redeaming. The last story, "Urgent Request" is about a young woman who is trying to get a promotion at her job. After being denied, she gets an email from a young prince in Africa, asking to transfer millions of dollars into her bank account. She naively sends all her back account information to him and next time she checks, her back account is empty. She continues email him and send him money, but is she really as naive as we think?

If you have children or have ever read to them, you may recognize the name Jane Yolen from the How Do Dinasaurs Say Goodnight? series. She writes A TON and has even written a graphic novel called Foiled. This was a great story about an NYC teen misfit, Aliera, whose passion is fencing. She doesn't have too many friends, let alone a boyfriend, so when her hot lab partner asks her on a date, she accepts. Meanwhile, her mother is a chronic garage sale shopper and bargained her way into a new practice foil that Aliera needed. The foil has a gaudy ruby superglued to the hilt. Aliera tries to remove it, but can't. When she meets Avery for the date, she discovers a whole new world within the one she knows, and Avery isn't who she thought he was. This was a very interesting story that I really hope continues in the future!

I think that Shaun Tan is one of the most creative people alive today. His stories are so interesting and are all allegorical. He has even made some of his graphic novels into short films, one of which won the Oscar for best short! This Oscar winning short, "The Lost Thing", appears in the book I read last night with my daughter, Zoe. The book is called Lost and Found. The first story in the book is called "The Red Tree" is more of a poem. It is quite beautiful, about bad days. "The Lost Thing" is the second story and is about a boy who is looking for bottle caps to add to his collection. Instead of finding bottle caps he find a thing that is lost. He plays with the thing and ends up taking it home. His parents don't want the thing in the house, so the boy takes it out to the shed. Where do lost things belong? That is what the boy has to figure out. "The Rabbits" is the last story and its words were written by John Marsden and tells a very common story of taking over another's land. Shaun Tan is Australian, so I imagine it is an allegory of the British and Aboriginals, though it is much the same story as the British and the Native Americans. It is really good, but very obvious in what it's about. It is worth reading just for the pictures, as are all of Shaun Tan's stories. He is a truly amazing artist!

Books removed from Bitch Magazine's Feminist Booklist.... I FINALLY FINISHED!

I first learned about these books and the whole controversy when Scott Westerfeld sounded off on his blog, which I got through Goodreads. A magazine out of Perth, Australia (a place I've been to and LOVED) called Bitch Magazine put out a list of the top 100 feminist Young Adult novels. After the list came out, a few people complained about three of the titles, which they claimed were not feminist because they didn't deal well with rape. Scott Westerfeld asked that his books be taken off the list if that was how things were being dealt with. So, naturally, I HAD to read these three books!

The first one is called Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott. This is one of the more difficult books I have ever read, especially considering it's only 170 pages. It is about a girl (Alice, though that is not her real name) who was abducted when she was 10 years old while on a field trip to the aquarium. Almost five years later, she is getting too big for Ray, her abductor. He gives Alice the job of finding her replacement. This book is deeply psychologically and emotionally disturbing, but in the end, I think it fairly accurately portrays what a young girl might go through in similar situations. I can imagine why some people would question this book's place on a feminist booklist, but I can equally come up with a good rationale.

I have to admit that I am at a complete loss for words on why Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce was pulled and replaced by Bitch Magazine. While I figured out the twist LONG before Scarlett and Rosie (the sisters the book is named for) do. As the title suggests, this book is a very unique twist on the Little Red Riding Hood story. At merely eleven years old, Scarlett's grandmother is horribly murdered and eaten by a Fenris (a werewolf). To save her nine year old sister, Rosie, Scarlett takes on the Fenris with only a shard of a mirror. She kills the Fenris, but only after it has taken one of her eyes and left her horribly scared. Now, seven years later, the sisters spend their lives training and luring Fenris to their death. The Fenris of this novel don't just make new Fenris by biting them. There is a secret code that the sisters and their friend Silas have to crack now that the Fenris are congregating in Atlanta to find the new "Potential" Fenris. I really enjoyed reading this book, especially seeing as I was expecting a morally difficult look at "rape culture" and found an action packed, whirlwind of a read! I can't wait for Sweetly to come out this summer! It is a "companion" to Sisters Red!

Ok, so I FINALLY finished Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan! And boy, was it a tough read! The beginning was extraordinarily difficult because of all of the atrocities that befall the main character, Liga. This is actually a retelling of Snow White and Rose Red (of sorts), but starts with their mother, living on the outskirts of an old-world kind of town. Her mother died a few years ago and for a while now, has been taking his liberties with Liga. When she gets pregnant, he visits the local "mudwife", a witch of sorts, and buys some herbs to get rid of the baby. When she gets pregnant again, she hides it from him for as long as she can. He finds out eventually and goes back for more herbs, but gets run over by a carriage on his way back and dies. Liga has the baby and soon after, another atrocity visits her that is so bad, she goes to the cliff, throws her baby over and intends to kill herself. A "moon baby" catches the falling babe and saves her and gives Liga two jewels to plant outside her front door. When she wakes up the next morning, two beautiful bushes have grown where she planted the stones and she is in an alternate universe... the place of her heart's desire. About nine months later, she births another baby girl and raises them in this perfect world. This book deals with healing and moving past bad things that have happened to you. It also deals with letting your children live their own lives and make their own ways in the world. I definitely see why people would want this taken off the booklist, but I can also see why others would want it on. Liga's daughters grow up to be their own women, one a powerful sorceress. I can not really make a straight decision one way or another. This is definitely a book that will stick with me for awhile (and I wasn't entirely thrilled with the way it ended, especially for Liga), but I might have been happier never having read it.

All in all, I'm glad to have read these books, if only for the fact that I might never have happened across Sisters Red or Jackson Pearce. I am looking forward to reading Sweetly, which comes out next week! I may try to read the three that replaced three on the booklist, but it probably won't be for awhile, because I'm waiting for the release of The Power of Six, Sweetly, Goliath, The Death Cure, and Crossed, all of which come out in the next three months! YAY!

More Graphic Novels

I realize it has been awhile since my last post. The end of the school year is always a busy time, plus I was reading one VERY HEAVY book and another rather long one. I will write about those in another post (or posts), leaving this post solely to the four graphic novels I have read recently. Two of them are autobiographical and the other two sci-fi...kind of... you'll see what I mean!

The first graphic novel I will write about is The Shiniest Jewel: A Family Love Story by Marian Henley. This is a great book about adopting from Russia. It goes through the joys, challenges, and sadness-es of the adoption process. If you have gone through or are going through this process now, or if you are thinking of adopting a child internationally, this is an excellent book to read. It really illuminates that adopting is a very intense process and should not be undertaken lightly.

Smile by Raina Telgemeier is about when the author was in middle school. A few months before she is supposed to get braces on, she races her friends to her house, slips, falls, knocks one tooth out and pushes the other up into her gum and damages her jaw bone. The story is primarily about Raina's journey in and out of braces, retainers, fake teeth and the like, but it also deals with friendships in middle school and then high school. I really enjoyed this book and so did my (almost) 8 year old daughter. I think it turned her into a graphic novel enthusiast!

The third graphic novel I will write about is based on one of my favorite books, one which I have read quite a few times. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith is an amusing book, though not necessarily well put together. There were many parts where I snickered at Elizabeth's reactions to Darcy, her mother and her sisters... references to pulling out their still beating hearts, imagining chopping their heads off, etc. There were an equal number of parts that left me scratching my head as half of the transitions were left out! I guess what all this comes down to is that if you are a Pride and Prejudice fan AND a zombie fan, you might like this book. If you're not into either one of these, probably not.

The last graphic novel was a very interesting tale. It was kind of a take-off on The Invisible Man, but updated and (I think) with a different plot. The Nobody by Jeff Lemire starts with a strange man walking into a small town. He is considered strange because he is complete covered in bandages. Rumors run rampant through the town about why the man is there, what he is doing in his motel room and why he is covered in bandages. A 16 year old girl, daughter of the owner of the local diner, befriends him and starts to try to unravel his story. This book was good and worth a read!

I really love reading graphic novels. Sometimes I get myself into a book and I have a hard time finishing it. I get demotivated and reading a graphic novel (or four) really helps. I can finish one in only a few hours, so I can feel accomplished! I hope you enjoy these books as I did!

Different does not even cover it...

The two books I am going to write about could not be any more different. They only have one thing in common, being used...

City of Light by Lauren Belfer takes place in Buffalo right before and during the Pan American Exposition in 1901. Louisa Barrett is the headmistress of a prestigious school for girls. Many of her girls go on to fill traditional roles of wife, mother and hostess, but her greatest hope is for them to break out of these roles and pass the bug on to their children. Belfer's language is beautiful and the book is a nice balance of fact and fiction. I learned (or relearned) a lot about the Niagara Falls power station. Threaded throughout this book are a couple mysteries. One is fairly obvious and can be guessed at as soon as the question comes up. The other is more elusive and surprised me even as the answer was being revealed. I truly believe that reading is more about the journey than the destination, so I enjoyed the book, but the ending wasn't what I had been hoping for. After talking to friends, I decided that the protagonist ended pretty much where she began and that's where our disappointed laid. I would like to read Belfer's second book, A Fierce Radiance, so I'll see if she's gotten better at endings! (I didn't tell you how being used had to do with this book, because it's a major plot twist and I'm not giving it away!)

The second book is ALL about being used. It is called Tricks by Ellen Hopkins. As the title suggests, the books is about turning tricks. More specifically it's about teenagers who end up in situations where they have to turn tricks to survive. It is about five teenagers from five very different families and walks of life. I think I've read all of Ellen Hopkins books and I think this was the hardest to read. I could feel these teenagers getting dragged down and making bad choices without even knowing it, believing in the people who should have their best interest at heart, but don't. All in all, the book left me with hope... and a serious case of NEVER wanting to go to Las Vegas! It is a subject that I have always pondered writing about, because there are so many kids that this really happens to. Eventually, I wanted to explore (in writing) how a teen might end up on this path. After reading this book, I'm not 100% sure I'll be able to, but it's still an idea!

I have one more book to read of those three books that were yanked off the top 100 feminist books for Young Adults. I think after that, I'm going to take a break from reading these tough subjects! Maybe I'll reread Harry Potter in anticipation of the last movie!

Graphic Novels

If you know me, you know I love graphic novels. I like the literary graphic novels more than the Superhero or the anime. I've probably read dozens of them by now. That is one of my purposes in writing this blog - to keep track of all the books I read! I read a lot of books, and unfortunately, my memory doesn't always keep them. I generally finish graphic novels very quickly and they disappear just as quickly from my mind.

Bayou by Jeremy Love is probably one of the most original stories I've read in a while. It takes place in the Bayou during the 1930s when racism and lynchings were rampant. Lee lives with her father on the Westmoreland's land and when the daughter, Lily Westmoreland goes missing, guess who gets blamed? Lee witnessed Lily get eaten by a giant who then disappeared into the Bayou. To save her father, Lee dives in and follows the light under the roots of a tree deep in the Bayou to a strange land of giants and gods. This was just volume one, and I can't wait to read the rest of this strange story.

Think you have a crazy family? Maybe you have issue that you blame on your poor upbringing? Maybe you just have Daddy issues? Let me tell you, most people have nothing on Laurie Sandell! The Imposter's Daughter: A True Memoir tells her story from being a young girl and wondering why her father stops the mail when he goes out of town; to a college kid who gets rejected by credit card companies because her father took out credit cards in her name and charged them up and never paid them off; to a young woman who with attachment issues and addictions to alcohol and ambien. This was a great way to tell a very unique story! I am not usually very big on true stories, but I flew through this book and enjoyed every minute of it!

The last graphic novel I'm going to talk about in this post is a lot different than the other two. Trickster: Native American Tales is a wonderful collection of Native American Legends and Folktales told by a number of different authors and artists. Matt Dembicki did a great job putting this book together! The stories all have a different feel to them. Some of humorous, some are dark, some are serious. Most of them explain why certain things are the way they are today. My favorite story was "Puapualenalena: Wizard Dog of Waipi'o Valley" about a dog who has to go steal a sacred trumpet back from trouble-making spirits in order to save his master. My favorite artwork was the first story, "Coyote and the Pebbles" which tells the story of how the stars got in the sky. I also read this with my daughter Zoe. She enjoyed the more "cartoon-y" looking stories like "Rabbit's Choctaw Tail Tale" and "Mai and the Cliff-Dwelling Birds". This was a great book for adults and very appropriate for kids!

More graphic novels to come!

Crazy Week Amid Disaster

I know it's been over a week, but it's also been crazy here! Last week was Girl Scout week, so we had events EVERY NIGHT (FYI I'm a Brownie leader). Ash Wednesday was last week. A huge earthquake and then tsunami hit Japan and thousands of people died. What an awful event! I'm still not quite able to fathom the damage done. I keep looking at the photos and thinking that maybe the world really is ending... Maybe that's why I keep reading books about Dystopias and and futuristic worlds. They make me think that what we have now is not so bad. Maybe more people need to read them so they can recognize when things are heading the wrong way!

The first book I'm going to write about is not a book about a dystopia. It's called The Shadow of the Wind and is by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It is one of the more beautiful books I have read this year. There are so many "deep thoughts" within the pages, it's hard to remember most of them. The story takes us through the young life of Daniel, the ten year old son of a book seller. His father takes him to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time and he gets to pick out a book to protect. The book he picks is called The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. Daniel reads the book and is so taken with it, he tries to learn more about the author and find more of his books. Throughout the book, we see Daniel go through his adolescence and are swept up with him in unravelling the mystery of Julian Carax's life. This book has everything: romance, mystery, horror, murder, crime, intrigue. This is a book that will stay with me for a long time, while others slip out of my memory.

Matched by Ally Condie is a novel about a dystopia. Not to far in the future, the US has been morphed into The (perfect) Society. Everyone has food that meets their nutritional needs, everyone has a job suited to their abilities, and everyone who chooses to gets matched to a person who they will happy with until they die on their eightieth birthday. Or you can choose to be single for the rest of your life. In this society, everything is done for you, and there is very little choice. Cassia chose to be matched and is amazed to get matched to one of her best friends, when everyone else has been matched to people from other burroughs who they have never met before. Everyone who gets matched gets a microcard with all the information of their match on it. When Cassia views her microcard, she see's her match's picture, but then another face comes on the screen, and the face belongs to another friend of hers. Seeing the other boy's face opens up a world of possibilities for her, one being that The Society is not perfect and makes mistakes. Will she choose to accept her match, or will she chase destiny and see where it takes her? I have to admit that the beginning of this book was not easy for me to read. The writing was kind of mechanical and I didn't really get a feel for Cassia. By the end, I realized that's because she wasn't really a person, yet. She just did what The Society told her to do. As the story progresses, Cassia finds her voice and the writing becomes more emotional and easier to read. I really got caught up in the story and look forward to book two! (Yes, it's another series!)

I'm not even going to try to guess what I might write about next time, but I'm sure they'll be good!

A sad return from Mexico....

I have to admit, returning home from Mexico is one of the more heartbreaking things I've done in a long time. It didn't help that we were leaving 80 degrees of sunny awesomeness and coming home to 20 degrees of cold, gray, snowyness! But I did it, and I'm back. I only finished one book and one play since my last post.

I started reading Ellen Hopkins a couple years ago and quickly ate up the majority of her books. They are all written in stark and visually stimulating poetry. They all tackle very tough subjects, from drug use to mental issues, disfunctional families to molestation. The book I finished this afternoon is called Fallout and is the third in a trilogy based on her own daughter's experiences. Now, these books are largely fictional, but many of the big events actually happened. The first two books, Crank and Glass follow Kristina into her addiction to crystal methamphetamine and how it destroys her life and her self and lands her in jail and with kids she can't support. Fallout introduces us to Kristina's oldest three children and tell their story. This book takes a look into their future, as she wrote them older than they really are, but her purpose was to give voice to the children of addicts. She does that amazingly well. I will continue to read her books as long as she writes them, no matter how tough the subject.

I also read The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. I first read this play in tenth grade for English and remember it as the one I liked the best. I read it again to see if it still held the same appeal. I was highly amused by much of it, but there were definitely things that I didn't find as amusing... like the premise that a woman has to be tamed... or that a man governs when and what a woman eats and are at their beck and call. I understand that I have to take this in it's timeframe, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I still enjoyed reading it, as there are many funny parts, although the whole premise for the play is never finished! At the beginning, a lord has his men take a drunkard up to his room and has them treat him like the lord. Then he has players come in and perform the play. It never goes back to the drunkard!

Finally, I just want to say congratulations to Shaun Tan for his Oscar! I haven't seen the short, The Lost Thing, but I've read a couple of his graphic novels and they are AWESOME! The Arrival is a story in pictures, but it is beautiful and I've always wanted to use it with my students. Tales from Outer Suburbia tells short, odd and interesting tales. They are charming and fun to read. I'll be looking for his other books in the future!