Since I had recently read ROSE UNDER FIRE, I went back and read CODE NAME VERITY, which comes first (though it can be a stand alone book). This is an extraordinary depiction of a friendship during WWII, told from the writings of a British female POW, held by Germans for spying, and then from the perspective of her friend, the female pilot who flew them there. Their story is heart-breaking and haunting, and stayed with me long after I finished reading.
An intense read, I’d recommend it to older YA readers and definitely to adults who enjoy historical fiction of the WWII era.
I can’t say more without giving it all away. I’ve debated for weeks how to even write this review, and settled on this very short blurb!
I recently was subbing in a nearby middle school and the students were reading MAUS by Art Spiegelman. I had never seen this book (though it won a Pulitzer and is widely known). After my day teaching, I found the book, THE COMPLETE MAUS, in the library so that I could continue the story. Maus is an early graphic novel (originally published in 1991). It is told entirely in comic strip form. The first part is “A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History” and leads up to Spiegelman’s parents being sent to Auschwitz, while the second part, “And Here My Troubles Began”, focuses on his father’s experience in the concentration camp and after the war for his parents.
MAUS depicts the story of Spiegelman’s father’s survival of the Holocaust in Europe, as he relays it to his son. A Polish Jew, Vladek Spiegelman marries his wife Anja and they are wealthy and successful business owners. WWII is creeping across Europe, however, and antisemitism is on the rise. Vladek relays when they first see a Nazi flag, when their first friends lose their businesses, when people begin to disappear. Slowly you see their world deteriorating, yet through it all, Vladek’s resiliency and resourcefulness shine through. He protects his wife first and foremost, and tries to save her parents as well. They have their young son go to live with friends so that he will be safe (he ends up dying though). Their main goal becomes to survive and make it through to the other side of WWII. The stories become more and more disturbing as the war progresses, and are made all the more disturbing as you know this is a true story.
I know I’m a little late to the party here as this book has been around for a while, but I am so thankful that I came across it and read it. Spiegelman’s depictions of the Nazi’s as cats and the Jews as mice is very clever (the Americans are dogs), and this book can be a great teaching tool in the classroom, particularly with older students. The graphic novel form makes it both easy to read and yet disturbing. Peppered throughout is Spiegelman’s own relationship with his father, especially in the second volume. You can see him trying to come to grips with their relationship, his father’s seemingly eccentric ways, and his father’s failing health, along with his mother’s death several years earlier. This was a touching and brilliant depiction of a Holocaust survivor which stayed with me long afterwards.
Highly recommended for this genre/time period! I got mine at the library.
I received HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS AND MONSTERS from my friends at Zondervan and gave it to my 4th grader to read. Here’s the blurb from Amazon on it:
Some Friends Are Just Worth Making For Howard Boward, science genius, making friends in middle school is hard. The other kids have more fun creatively expanding Howard’s name than actually hanging out, as in How-weird or How-Lame. . So, why not actually make a friend? A little wonder putty, some DNA, a few accidentally spilled chemicals and—boom!—instant friend. Monster friend, that is. Franklin ends up being cool in middle school, and he helps Howard climb the uber-popular ladder, becoming How-Cool. But the new fame and friendship isn’t exactly everything Howard hoped. Turns out real friendship might not be so simple, even when you create your own friends from scratch.
Mini Me says that the theme of this book is it’s hard to be a new kid. Overall, she says it is really funny and fun to read. It had some hard words, but not too many. At 352 pages, she was fine with it, but it may seem like a long book to some. We made sure we got a copy for our school library!
My friends at Booktrope contacted me to see if I wanted to review this middle grade book. I thought Charis’ story sounded a bit like a female Percy Jackson and I was interested, so I said yes.
I just loved this story about thirteen year old Charis, chosen by the gods (Greek ones that is!) to find and save Pandora’s jar with its last true hope inside. Charis is a pretty typical teen, with typical teen problems with peers and schoolwork, but she is destined to be a great hero. Along with her buddy Gabe, and her love of Greek mythology, Charis has to face down some pretty powerful and scary opponents in order to save the world.
I just loved the character of Charis! She was strong and smart, but not perfect. Her relationships with her family and her friend Gabe were realistic. Charis is a great role model for tweens and teens, and I’ll be giving my daughter this book to read.
While the viewpoint changes throughout this story, from Charis to the gods and back again, it was not overly confusing. I think kids who like a good fantasy/adventure would enjoy this story, girls and boys alike.
I saw MARIE ANTOINETTE, SERIAL KILLER at the YA session at BEA but quite frankly, I walked past it. Marie Antoinette – serial killer?? It sounded rather absurd, plus the cover had a costumed girl with blood on her – ick (just a note here: looks like the blood didn’t make it to the final cover). However, when they were doing the session, they mentioned it as a good example of the “mash up” genre: part mystery, part historical fiction, part horror, part supernatural, part contemporary. The speaker recommended it, so I immediately slipped back to the table and grabbed a (free) copy. I have to say – I really enjoyed reading it!
MARIE ANTOINETTE, SERIAL KILLER starts with high schooler Colette Iselin preparing for a class trip to France. She is struggling with her parents recent break up and the family’s new, strained, financial situation. She can’t wait to get away with her (rather mindless and not very nice) friends, to explore the place where her family has its roots. Colette’s school group has barely gotten their feet on terra firma when they hear about a serial killer running loose – beheading victims, all of whom are from long-standing French/Parisian families. Colette sees a costumed young woman and realizes she is seeing Marie Antoinette’s ghost. As you might guess, Colette realizes she may be the next victim and needs to figure out the how and why of the murders in order to stop them. Along the way she is helped by their friendly teen tour guide (insert romance!), and she comes to realize that perhaps she has been spending too much time focusing on the things that don’t matter and less time on the things that do.
All in all, this was an enjoyable read and cleverly plotted. I’m a big fan of all things French, so I love reading about people strolling through Paris and seeing the places I love.
If you read me regularly, you know I loved the first book in the Enchanted Attic series, “Facing the Hunchback of Notre Dame” (see review here: https://drbethnolan.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/review-facing-the-hunchback-of-notre-dame-the-enchanted-attic-series-1-by-l-l-samson/). Recently, Zondervan sent me two more books in the series: “Saving Moby Dick” and “Wrestling with Tom Sawyer”. (There’s also “Dueling with the Three Musketeers”!). In these books, the adventures continue as twins Linus and Ophelia and their friend Walter meet and have to help the book characters that have come to life and appeared in the attic of their aunt and uncle’s house. Whether they are trying to help a morose and moody Captain Ahab, or trying to keep a rambunctious Tom Sawyer under control, the kids face their adventures with intelligence and humor. I particularly like the voice of the narrator in this series, which lends itself quite well to read-aloud.
Thank you Zonderkidz Publishing for my review copies!
I found ROSE UNDER FIRE on Net Galley and thought it sounded intriguing. While presented as a YA read, this book was quite intense emotionally and I thought could be enjoyed by adults as well. In ROSE UNDER FIRE, WWII courier pilot Rose Justice finds herself downed by Nazi aircraft into German territory. Terrified, she realizes that they don’t intent to harm her, per say, but keep her in a work camp. That camp turns out to be Ravensbrück, the notorious women’s concentration camp. Rose spends several months there, through the winter, before she is liberated in a harrowing escape.
I could not put this book down. While it was suspenseful and “exciting” (notice quotes), it was haunting and disturbing, and really painted such a vivid picture of Ravensbrück that I had nightmares (full disclosure: I’m a pretty sensitive person). The book starts with Rose’s daily diary of events. She’s a courier, an American actually, working for the British. Her life has been pretty innocent up until the war. She is only nineteen. She flies to Paris on a job and has a wonderful day there, including “buzzing” the Eiffel Tower. She is scheduled to fly back to England the next day, but then we realize that Rose is classified as “missing”. Family and friends try to be hopeful but presume she is most probably killed. The book then is Rose’s writings of her memoir of the time spent in camp as she stays at the Ritz in Paris to recuperate. The end of the book is in Rose’s present time, as the war ends in Europe.
Before reading this book, I had little knowledge of Ravensbrück. I knew it was a concentration camp and I thought it was for women. The portrayal of the camp in this book is really remarkable. I could see it so vividly. As with a lot of WWII literature, the resiliency of the prisoners to stay alive was incredible and awe-inspiring. I know it’s fiction, but people experienced what these women did, and it is both fascinating and horrible. A large portion of the book centers on the Polish girls in the camp who were used for experiments by the Nazi’s. Called “the rabbits”, they were experimented on so that the Germans could figure out how best to treat war wounds and infections. Wish I could say Ms. Wein made this up, but she didn’t. Wein is the author of CODE NAME VERITY, which I have not read, but which I purchased so that I could.
Highly recommended if you are a reader of this genre, but be prepared. YA doesn’t mean this book is just for the kids. In fact, I would hope that if young people were reading this book (which would be an excellent hs classroom choice) that adults are talking to them about it and discussing it with them.
Thanks, Net Galley and Miramax Publishing, for my copy!
I downloaded the YA novel RIPPED from Net Galley before our recent trip to Hawaii. In this fast-paced and riveting story, teenager Katie Lennox discovers she can travel through time from present day London to the time of Jack the Ripper using the “London Stone”. Katie takes on the task of thwarting Jack the Ripper before he can do his evil deeds. She also holds in her heart the secret desire to see her deceased parents again. What Katie discovers is that changing history is no easy feat, and small events can have big consequences. The theme of “be careful what you wish for” is oft-repeated in this story.
I really enjoyed reading this novel! I see that it has won several awards, which is not surprising as it is well-written and well researched. I love historical fiction and mixing it up with time travel just makes me love it more! It is a bit lengthy (over 500 pages in print), but eager readers should have no problem plowing through it.
I look forward to more novels from Ms. Carr, and I see she lives locally, so perhaps our paths will cross.
Thanks, Net Galley and New Book Partners Publishing, for my copy!
I grabbed this book on a whim off Net Galley. If you read me you know I love YA and I have a special spot in my reader’s heart for stories that take place in boarding schools. I’m rather critical of these story lines since I’ve worked in independent schools since the 80’s, and quite honestly, if the administrators were as clueless/useless/evil/unavailable as they usually are portrayed, well, they’d all have gone out of business long ago! I was prepared to not really like this book – to be honest the title put me off – so I was surprised by how much I really enjoyed reading it!
PREP SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL, which is the first in a series, starts with protagonist Anne Dowling getting expelled from her toney Manhattan private school for (accidentally) setting a fire. She is shipped off to a New England boarding school in the Boston suburbs where her first order of business is to rearrange the pecking order and get herself to the top of the social hierarchy. Anne’s a tough nut to crack – she’s feisty, tough, and fearless. At the same time, though, she’s sincere and has integrity (which is more that can be said about some other characters). She quickly forms her friends and enemies. Then her roommate goes missing and is found murdered. Anne seems to care more than the administration does about finding Isabella’s killer, so she starts her own “investigation” to figure out how and why Isabella was killed.
I’m a tad embarrassed to admit it, but I couldn’t put this book down. I thought the mystery was cleverly plotted and I liked the character of Anne. I often laughed out loud at her sarcasm and humor. I would have absolutely loved this book when I was in high school. I think Ms. Taylor did well with her independent school portrayal, and I wonder if she maybe attended a school very like Wheatley in real life!
I’m looking forward to the next book in this series which will be out in 2014.
Thanks, Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for my copy.
Another Net Galley find, TWERP is the story of Julian Twerski: a boy growing up in NYC (Queens) in 1969. Julian’s made a major error in judgment and has gotten suspended for bullying another kid (eventually revealed through the story). When he returns to school, his English teacher suggests that he keep a diary of his life and events and tell the story of what happened through his own words (and if he does the journal, he gets out of writing a report on Shakespeare!). Through Julian’s diary we get to know him, his pack of friends, his family, and what life is like for him. He’s a typical sixth grader with a slightly annoying but sometimes helpful older sister. His friends are a garden variety of boys who get into scrapes. He has a crush on a girl in his class (but so does his friend!). He even holds the title of “fastest kid in sixth grade”, but is finding that he might lose that honor this year. All in all, this book made for a great kids’ read: sometimes serious but often funny. I’d happily get it for our school library for our 4th-6th graders. I haven’t read Mr. Goldblatt’s other books (which are for adults) but you can tell he put his heart – and a piece of himself – into Julian’s story.
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