TTT: Books I'm Worried Wouldn't Hold Up Under the Scrutiny of a Reread

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I'm worried wouldn't hold up under the scrutiny of a reread

I loved all of these books. I love them so much I don't want to reread them. I want them to remain beloved in my memory.

...

....

......

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Nevermind. I just reviewed six or seven years of my reading lists and I couldn't find a single book I wouldn't consider rereading.

In light of that discovery I decided to think back on my childhood and name a few books I liked then that might be wrecked if I reread them now.

.....

.........

Ta-da!

What childhood favorites do you avoid reading as an adult?

 

Note: WordPress Users, for some reason my account and yours don't match. Though I have tried leaving comments some, but few, have gone through. Know I love you and appreciate you visiting here. I did visit your blogs but you'll never know. Sorry.

-Anne

Review: WHEN WOMEN WERE DRAGONS

Title: When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

Beginning quote: 

I was four years old when I first met a dragon. I never told my mother. I didn't think she'd understand.

Page 56 55 quote: 

Despite my mother's aversion to hard conversations, the nation went through a short, and only somewhat thorough, reckoning of what had occurred. This was difficult, given the assumed femininity of dragons, and the Mass Dragoning's accepted connection to something as private as motherhood.

Summary: In 1955 thousands of American women spontaneously transformed into dragons. This event destroyed everyone's notion of women and their place in the world. The government couldn't explain how or why it happened so instead of studying the large-scale dragoning they made it a forbidden topic that couldn't be mentioned in school let alone studied.

When Alex's Aunt Marla dragonned, her daughter, Beatrice, became her sister. When Alex's mom died from cancer, she was put in charge of Beatrice's care. But from a young age, Beatrice wanted to become a dragon herself. Alex feared she'd be left alone in a world she didn't understand.

Review: My daughter was the person who recommended this book to me. She knew I would love it and she was right. I adored this book with a look at feminism from a different angle. If you are thinking you don't like to read "fantasy" books, don't worry, this book is really a human story about all the indignities women have had to put up with over the ages. And it shows what happens when women rise up (literally) and the value is felt by everyone is society. I laughed, I cringed, I cried. This book really, really spoke to my heart and hey, the hero of the book is a librarian. What's not to love?

I love this book so much I bought a copy for my mother who is turning 95 later this month. In a lot of ways my mom has been a real dragon in my life and has done so much good for her community. I also hope my book club will consider this for a future meeting. Now I am recommending it to you.

(Source: Kirkus Reviews)

-Anne

Review: THE RIVER WE REMEMBER

Title: The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger

Beginning quote:

Friday56 quote:

“Even after the sun had set and the sky had gone from bruised purple to an indigo full of stars, they talked. There beside the silent flow of the Alabaster River, they split open the darkness inside both of them in which too many secrets had lain hidden”

My thoughts from Feb. 9th: I am finishing up my Cybils judging responsibilities this week and I can't publish any reviews for those books until after the winners are announced. So this week you get the benefit of quotes without a review of the book I am listening to now, since I haven't finished an adult books all week.

I really love this author, but I'm not sure what I feel about this one, his most recent book. It is a mystery with a whole town's worth of characters. Set in the 1950s. Relationships are sloppy and the specter of war haunts many folks. What do you think of the quotes? I think the first quote, though a bit boring, is a good way to introduce the setting, a small farming town in the Midwest. The Alabaster River witnesses all kinds of events as it flows through the community and the people's lives. 

Review on March 6th (Circling back after finishing the book): As I said above I really like this author but of the three books I've read by him I like this one the least. It was a good mystery with plenty of red herrings along the way to keep readers guessing but there were few moments of sheer surprise or delight.

I'll be very curious how the book club discussion will go. Mysteries are hard to discuss because by the end one knows the end of the mystery. (How's that for a circular sentence?) So I imagine we'll talk mostly about the characters and about the writing. Here are some discussion questions which seem pretty good. I do hope we focus part of our meeting on the book's themes, especially the theme and the role of the river in the plot. I usually try to locate the title of the book in the book and this one wasn't hard to find since the river is a central character really.

I finished this book on Feb. 13th, less than a month ago and already much of the plot and most of the characters have faded in my mind. I rated the book with 4 stars at the time but would likely rate it lower today knowing it is not a very memorable story. Sigh.

-Anne

TTT: A look back at a decade of March reads

Top Ten Tuesday: A look back at a decade of March reads.

I love the idea of today's proposed topic: to list queries to Google based on what I was reading. I do this all the time, often mid-book, however I just can't remember any of my searches right now. So I am off-the-board today with a look back at a decade of March reads. I've been listing my books on Goodreads for over ten years, so this task is doable right now.

Here is a list of books I was read in March, one per year, for the past decade, along with the rating I gave it at the time on Goodreads:

2024

Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See

This is my current audiobook for an upcoming book club. The book is about the life of women in the 15th Century in China. Of special interest to me is the information about Chinese medicine of the day.

Not finished, no rating yet.

2023

Textbook by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

I learned about this wonderful, unique author earlier in 2023 and devoured everything by her that I could get my hands on. Textbook is a memoir, of sorts, and so fun and unique (there's that word again.) I went into a sort of funk around this time as I learned about her death in 2017 from ovarian cancer. I wanted more books like this one, and its predecessor, Encyclopedia of An Ordinary Life. Sigh.

Rated 5+ stars.

2022

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

March 2022 was a nightmare. My cousin's husband, a deputy sheriff officer, was killed in the line of duty. The whole family spiraled into almost unrecognizable grief and sorrow. I decided to reread Ordinary Grace at this time and it really helped me, and hopefully others as I shared what I gleaned from it. Check out my review if you want to learn more about the book and why it was helpful. (Title is hyperlinked.)

Rated: 5 stars

2021

Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang

The best graphic memoir I've ever read. Yang not only tells his own story but teaches us about basketball as he learns about it from his research and his students. Most of my reviews are read and ignored by about 50 people, I'd say. The review I wrote about Dragon Hoops gets thousands of views per year. If you get discouraged writing reviews for seemingly no one, keep this in mind. Every once in a while one of your reviews may take off. Stick with it.

Rated: 5 stars

2020

The Year of the Monkey by Patty Smith

Remember March 2020? How could anyone forget it? This is the month that the world shut down due to COVID. Just before that infamous event, I read this little gem of a diary/memoir by Smith, my first by this famous author/artist/musician.

Rated: 3 1/2 stars

2019

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

I am a huge Kingsolver fan but Unsheltered isn't my favorite by her. That said, I really appreciated the book and how it helped open up my thinking on topics oft in the news today.

Rated: 4 stars.

2018

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

A modern retelling of the Pride and Prejudice story by Jane Austen. I like the original classic MUCH better but this was fun especially trying to imagine the events of P&P happening today.

Rated: 3 stars.

2017

Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rawley

I cried my way through the end of this short little book. It is about a dog and his owner.

Rated: 4 stars

2016

Quiet: The Power of Introverts In a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

Ms. Cain pulls together all kinds of research on introversion/extroversion. This book gave me a lot of insights into my daughter and several of my past students who are introverts. It lent itself to an excellent book club discussion. Unfortunately, I never published a review of it.

Rated: 5

2015

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

 The Rosie Project was truly a publishing phenomenon, having been picked up by 38 publishers worldwide. It was called the "feel-good-book-of-2013" which was extended to 2014 and 2015 when I read and discussed it in both my book clubs.

Rated: 5 stars.

2014

Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein

Oddly this is the only YA book on the list. I say that since I was a teen librarian until I retired in June of 2017. Rose Under Fire is the sequel to the much admired Code Name Verity by Weir and is the second book in a series of four novels by the author. I loved them all. Rose Under Fire is set in WWII and includes distressing information about the Polish women who were forced to be lab-rats for medical experiments.

Rated: 4 stars.

This was both a fun and an odd activity to complete. I tend to think of my life on a timeline littered with books. Can it really be ten years since I read The Rosie Project? And five years since I was reading The Year of the Monkey when all hell was breaking loose in the world because of COVID?

Do you keep records of the books you've read? What were you reading five years ago when COVID started? Ten years ago? Last year at this time?

-Anne

Six Degrees of Separation: TOM LAKE to...

Six Degrees of Separation

We begin with --

↓ 

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
The title of the book is the name of the summer stock theater company who performs plays every summer at a resort on Tom Lake in Michigan.

↓ 

Our Town by Thornton Wilder
One of the plays the company performed that summer was "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder. And the main character of the play was also the narrator of the book.

↓ 

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chkhov

Patchett clearly wants Tom Lake to be a paean to Our Town and to its playwright, Thornton Wilder. 

In addition, I'd say that Patchett snuck in quite an homage to Anton Chekhov, too. His last two plays were titled "Three Sisters" and "The Cherry Orchard". Hmm. A good deal of the story takes place in a cherry orchard and, of course, there are three sisters. One could almost feel Chekhov hovering nearby. Wilder may have been "driving the tractor" but Chekhov was certainly nearby lending his ideas for stage directions.

↓ 

A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
The subtitle of this book tells you what the book is about: In Which Four Russian Authors Give a Master Class on Writing. One of the four Russians that Saunders highlights is Anton Chekhov, though the work he highlighted wasn't "The Cherry Orchard."

↓ 

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
This is the first book I read by Saunders. Read is a misnomer, as I actually listened to the audiobook. It has 166 unique voice actors reading the parts. Listening to this book was a transfixing experience for me. 

↓ 

His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman
Another transfixing audiobook experience with a large cast of narrators, I immersed myself totally in the story and read all three books in rapid succession.  

↓ 

The Book of Dust series by Philip Pullman
Another series by Philip Pullman where I found myself completely lost inside the story. The only problem, this series is incomplete. The 2nd book, The Secret Commonwealth, was published in 2019. And now I and other fans have to wait for the third book to be published and no publication date has been set. Sigh.

↓ 

That brings us back around to Tom Lake by Ann Patchett.
I don't often pay attention to upcoming books, but I love Ann Patchett so much I am always eagerly await her new books. Thankfully she didn't make us wait five+ years for this book.

I made it full circle. Six degrees from Tom Lake and back again. How'd I do? Did you follow my logic?

-Anne

Review and discussion questions for: THE RABBIT HUTCH by Tess Gunty

This month's book club selection was Tess Gunty's National Book Award winning novel The Rabbit Hutch. It was a unanimous choice at first but then as women started reading the book a few balked, thinking the book was too difficult and contained too many trigger topics. We decided to go ahead with our choice and, boy, am I glad we did.

The Rabbit Hutch weaves together the daily dramas of tenants in a run-down apartment complex in a run-down fictitious town named Vacca Vale, Indiana. The builders, trying to give the apartment complex an air of sophistication named it 'La Lapinière', but the residents just called it the Rabbit Hutch. (Lapinière is the French word for rabbit hutch.) We all are familiar with rabbit hutches but it is odd to think of humans living in one where "walls are so thin, you can hear everyone's lives progress like a radio play." The tenants are all living down-and-out lives in their down-and-out apartments in the #1 Dying City in America. "Set over one sweltering week in July and culminating in a bizarre act of violence that finally changes everything, The Rabbit Hutch is a savagely beautiful and bitingly funny snapshot of contemporary America, a gorgeous and provocative tale of loneliness and longing, entrapment and, ultimately, freedom" (Publisher).

As I read and listened to The Rabbit Hutch I couldn't help but think of the book Lolita by Nabokov. I've always thought of that classic book as the most beautifully written book about a depraved topic. The Rabbit Hutch is stuffed full of trigger worthy topics and themes: child abandonment, the foster care system and shortcomings, sexual abuse of a minors and predator behavior, animal sacrifices, poverty and loneliness. Think of a depraved topic, it is probably addressed in this book. But the writing is brilliant. BRILLIANT! Like Nabokov, Gunty has a beautiful command of the English language and inserts phrases and quips throughout the story which would catch me up so I'd have to stop and think about what was said and the deeper meaning. One gal at book club said the book made her think about herself and her life choices in the face of encountering similar problems with students and neighbors. A book is a wonderful thing if it causes us to stop and change directions toward a more positive future. All this depravity is broken up by humorous situations, which I suppose what made the book bearable.

I am not getting anywhere near to a good summary of the book. I hope you take the chance to read its review in the New York Times. Also take a minute to read the interview Gunty did with the editorial staff at Waterstone, an online magazine. The Rabbit Hutch won the first Waterstone Debut Fiction Award. Both of these sources helped fill out my appreciation of the book.

Now to our book club discussion. The publisher provided no discussion questions and the ones we were able to find online were very basic. I wrote several questions to augment what others were able to find and we ended up having a very robust discussion. To be clear, two of us loved the book, two hated the book, and the rest fell somewhere in the middle. Afterwards all admitted that we had a fantastic discussion, even those who didn't like the book. So don't be afraid to pick this book for your future club meetings.

The Rabbit Hutch Discussion Questions 

(Spoiler alert: Some details of the book will be revealed in the questions.)

1. What did you think was revealed in the opening lines of the book  “On a hot night in Apartment C4, Blandine Watkins exits her body. She is only 18 years old, but she has spent most of her life wishing for this to happen.” And how did this affect your feelings about the book going forward?
2. Why do you think Blandine, the 18-year-old, former foster care 'graduate', is obsessed with Catholic mystics even though she was not religious?
3. Blandine never left Vacca Vale but her whole life she felt like an outsider. How does this happen? Have you ever known anyone in a similar situation? (Our group is made up of teachers, so we could reflect back on past students.)
4. Talk about the characters: Blandine, Moses, Elsie, Joan, Todd/Malik/Jack, James, others. 
5. The theme of "home" is a recurring one. Give some examples of how the characters felt about home.
6. What aspect of "dying cities" have you been aware of where you live? What signs of resurgence?
7. The book highlights how often there is a lack of societal responsibility by its members. Discuss examples of this from the book and in your own community/life.
8. What aspects of the book did you find funny/humorous? (You might need to prompt the group with some you've thought of before the meeting. We found so many funny aspects but of course they were hidden in some awful circumstances. It took us a while to come up with some and then the flood gate was open and we couldn't stop finding new humorous quotes/quips/situations.)
9. How did you react to the chapter of visual illustrations? Did it help you understand the unfolding scene better or not?
10. Todd, Jack, and Malik start sacrificing animals at some point. How does this come to pass and why did they continue it?
11. Late in the book Jack's chapters are written in 1st person. Why do you think the author switched that point-of-view and gave Jack a front row seat? Did you notice it? How did it impact the story?
12. What are your favorite quotes/quips? Here are a few of my favorites:
• "Her voice sounded like a communion wafer -- tasteless and light."
• "He wears his testosterone like a strong cologne."
• "You couldn't go anywhere in this town without bumping into God."
• "It takes Blandine a long time to respond, and when she does, the words seem laborius for her. She lugs them in to the room as though they're pieces of furniture."
13. On the last page of the book Joan wonders what comments people would make to fill the obituary guest book if Blandine died. What comments do you think people would make and who are these people? 
14. What is your reaction to the last few lines of the book summed up as, "I'm awake. Are you?"
15. What growth/positive movement did the characters make by the end of the book?

★Feel free to use these discussion questions for your book club discussion. If you publish the questions for your members or in any other publication, please give me credit. Thank you, Anne@HeadFullofBooks

-Anne

Classic Review: THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

Title: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Book Beginning quote: 

He was an old man who fished alone on a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.

Friday56 quote:

"You're feeling it now, fish," he said, "And so, God knows, am I."

Summary: Hemingway's classic and Pulitzer Prize winning novella, The Old Man and the Sea, is about an old fisherman who goes out fishing alone on day 84 without catching any fish. He manages to hook a huge 18-foot marlin which is so strong it pulls the man and the skiff way out to sea. On day three he finally is able to pull the fish in using all the skills he had learned over his many years as a fisherman. After lashing the fish to the side of the boat, the old man has to figure out how to get back to the harbor. But there are sharks that have other ideas of what to do with the giant fish.

Review: I read this novella the first time in junior high school, I think in 7th grade. The basic story has stayed with me all these years and so has the feeling that it was a good story. It was worth reading. The plot is, you know, man vs. nature, and man wins. Or does he?

On my reread for the Classics Club Spin #36 I was a bit more cognizant of the writing, responding to Hemingway's spare style. The old man's abject poverty and his pride, the boy's love and devotion to the man, and life in the small seaside community all came into focus very quickly. 

In the note about the author at the back of the book, Old Man and the Sea was identified as Hemingway's most popular work. It was originally published in 1952 and won the Pulitzer in 1953. Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 for "his powerful styleforming mastery of the art of narration." No other author had captured the imagination of the American public as Hemingway in the twentieth-century. Yet even though he won all these accolades, he commited suicide in 1961, as a byproduct of his alcoholism and untreated mental disorders. The adage, "Screwed up people make great art" is certainly at play here.

As I closed the book on its 128 pages, I wondered to myself if 7th graders are still required to read The Old Man and the Sea in the schools in my hometown and elsewhere. Have you read it? What are your memories of it? If you haven't read it, it is worth the small effort it takes to complete in a sitting or two. 

-Anne

TTT: Books I've Read with Butterflies on the Cover

Top Ten Tuesday: Books With Butterflies on the Cover

I've read them all, liked some of them (or don't understand what butterflies have to do with the plots) but I confess I've forgotten the details of some others. 😕

1. Flight Behavior by Kingsolver

2. Butterfly: A Photographic Portrait by Marent

3. The Butterfly Clues by Ellison

4. Still Alice by Genova

5. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Conan Doyle

6. Emma by Austen

7. Stolen by Christopher

8. Wings by Pike

9. The Fire Keeper's Daughter by Boulley

10. Arcadia by Groff

11. Private Peaceful by Morpurgo

-Anne

Sunday Salon -- Rainy days

The saga of Fred and George and the new quilt: Top left to right: George settling in on the new quilt; Fred taking a turn. Middle: George hiding in new quilt tent; Fred giving quilt rabbit punches. Bottom: A fight for the quilt erupts between brothers-- Fred up, George down; George seriously snoozing.

Weather: Rain. Rain. Rain. (Go away, come again some other day.) We've even heard the word S-N-O-W on the news but we aren't holding our breath. We are just glad that the mountains are getting some as the snowpack is very low this year.

Home owner: Our youngest daughter bought a townhouse and took ownership of it on Friday. We spent yesterday in IKEA, with the rest of all the people in the Seattle-area, tromping through the store, selecting new furniture. We came home with boxes of parts for a dresser, a bedside table, and a bookshelf. Today Carly and her dad are up at the townhouse putting together the dresser and maybe more depending on time and temperament. I opted out of the building process, letting them have all the "fun" by themselves. My goodness, a visit to IKEA is a unique kind of ordeal isn't it? I'm recovering from it today. Ha!😂

Cats' Quilt: My younger sister gave me a small quilt for my birthday and said that it was perfect to use as a pet quilt. Place it on a chair or couch and then launder it frequently to deal with pet fur, she said. Well, the quilt is a hit with my daughter's cats, Fred and George. They immediately started sleeping on it, playing tent under it, fighting over it. See collage above. 🤣🤣🤣🤣Thank you, Grace, for the perfect gift, says Fred and George.

All of reviews I wrote for the Cybils Nonfiction books have been published. None of them have generated much traffic, understandably, but I thought I'd leave the links for the books just in case you missed one of the reviews and wanted to check it out!

• Impossible Escape (YA winner)... escape from Auschwitz 
• The Mona Lisa Vanishes (MG winner) ... the Mona Lisa is stolen from the Louvre in 1911.
• Jumper (Elementary winner); also reviewed on the same post: Glitter Everywhere, and The Ice Cream Man. A backyard spider; glitter; and the man who invented ice cream.
• Stars of the Night (MG)...Kindertransport from Czech Republic before the start of WWII.
• Three reviews of elementary books in one post: Meet the Bears; Piece by Piece; and Caterpillar Cocoons... eight types of bears; a gift for FDR; and all about caterpillars.
• Plague-busters (MG)...all about the history of the world's worst plagues.
• How It Happened: Sneakers! (MG) ...everything about the invention and evolution of sneakers.
• Two YA reviews: Nearer My Freedom and Spare Parts... a found-verse account of a freed slave, in his own words; and an unlikely winner of a robotics competition.
• Two more YA reviews: Braiding Sweetgrass -Young Adult version and Muzoon...Wisdom from Mother Earth and Indigenous people about how to save our world; and a memoir about a Syrian refugee.
• The Girl Who Heard Music (Elementary)...The story of Mahani Teave who lives on Easter Island and still was able to excel at music and now share this love with others.
• Seen and Unseen (MG) ... Three famous photographers use their craft to document the Japanese Internment experience.

Book Club extremes: This month my first book club (SOTH Ladies) read possibly the most popular choice we've ever selected: The Huntress by Kate Quinn. My second club is reading The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty and I fear it will be thought of as one of our least popular choices. I like it and think it should generate a good discussion but I've heard rumblings that others don't feel the same. We'll see after our club meeting on Wednesday. My review for the Rabbit Hutch is pending but I hope to have it up sometime early this coming week.

Currently reading:

• When Women Were Dragons by Barnhill
• The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway
• Above Ground: Poems by Smith

On TV:

• One Day miniseries on Netflix. I've seen the movie. I've read the book. Now I've consumed, in great big gulps, the miniseries. 
• The Stranger miniseries on Netflix. A murder mystery.
• The Greatest Night in Pop a documentary about the filming of the "We are the World" song by 46 pop artists in 1985. Don't miss it if you have Netflix.

At the movie theater: We watched all the short documentaries nominated for Academy Awards this year in one two-hour session at the theater. I liked "The Last Repair Shop" best but all were good. Click to view trailer.

• The Barber of Little Rock
• The Last Repair Shop
• The Island In Between
• The ABCs of Book Banning
• Nai Nai and Wa'i Po

One funny:

-Anne

Two Nonfiction YA Book Reviews --- Both should be in your library

As I finish up my Cybils judging for nonfiction books I wanted to make sure you all were aware of these two books which should certainly be added to any library collection which services teens.

Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, adapted by Monique Gray Smith, with illustrations by Nicole Neidhardt

Zest Books, Minneapolis. 2022. Target audience: Grades 8-12.

Back in 2015 a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer, published Braiding Sweetgrass, the parent of this young adult version. As a botanist Kimmerer was trained to observe nature through science. As a member of the Potawatomi Nation she knew that plants and animals are some of our oldest and best teachers. In her book she brings together these two types of knowledge to share the ancient wisdom in a way that it even makes sense with science. 

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings―asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass―offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.  

Adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith, this new edition reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth’s oldest the plants around us. With informative sidebars, reflection questions, and art from illustrator Nicole Neidhardt, Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults brings Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the lessons of plant life to a new generation.(Publisher).

Braiding Sweetgrass has been a highly praised book worthy of being read to enhance understanding of our world so we can make changes to help stop the destruction of Mother Earth but also to help see problems and solutions through different lenses. In this edition for teens, Monique Gray Smith streamlines the language and yet stays true to the core concepts of the original but adds sidebars, definitions of words/concepts, and asks probing questions to ignite younger readers' minds. It encourages them to make changes to their action, beliefs, and values.  Illustrations by Nicole Neidhardt also make the text more inviting, allowing readers to linger over concepts as they examine the drawings.

I am so glad I had the opportunity to read this book and contemplate its place in the oeuvre of all literature on solutions to climate change. I love the idea that the earth herself can guide to find the answers that have baffled us for centuries.

My book club will be reading the original, adult version of this book next month and I look forward to seeing for myself how the two editions differ from each other. I'm guessing that his YA edition will win for me in a side by side comparisons. Make sure your public and high school library have a copy available for teens and students. 

My rating: 5 stars.

Muzoon: A Syrian Refugee Speaks Out by Muzoon Almellehan with Wendy Pearlman.  // Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 2023. Target Audience: Grades 6-10

When she was fourteen-years-old Muzoon and her family had to leave their Syrian home and escape to a refugee camp in Jordan. War had broken out in her homeland and it was no longer safe to live among the bombs, raids, and guns on both sides. Her father gave her just a few hours to pack her most important possessions before leaving. Muzoon packed all her textbooks. She didn't want to miss out on a moment of her education, realizing it was her ticket to a more positive future. 

Once she and her family settled into their new reality in the refugee camp, Muzoon started back to school. She discovered that many of the other girls in her classes would be there one day and not the next. When she asked around she discovered that many of these girls didn't understand the importance of education because all they saw in their future was marriage.  Muzoon made it a personal mission to seek out these girls and talk to them about staying in school, explaining how important it would be that everyone have a good education when they were finally able to go back to their country so that they'd never end up in this mess again. She did this so often, her efforts started to be noticed by relief organizations. Periodically Muzoon would be asked to speak on behalf of refugees for these organizations (Save the Children, UNICEF.) One day Malala came to her refugee camp and the two girls met each other. They had to speak through interpreters, but they recognized kindred spirits in each other. Sometimes Muzoon is even called The Syrian Malala. 

Because of her work as an goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, her family was able to secure proper papers to immigrate to Britain where she and her siblings were able to go on to college. She continues today as an advocate for refugees and for the importance of education.

 My rating: 4 stars.

-Anne