This book has been absolutely mind-boggling for me -- this girl (Henna) leaves her home to find a plant to save her dying father. She has never been away from her little island, hardly ever having contact with the outside world. The theme of sacrifice is prominent in this book! It doesn't even feel like she is burdened by the sacrifice, but that she believes it is the obvious thing to do.

Something I really like about this book is how periods are so plainly discussed. In other books I read, I wonder about how periods would affect a female character‘s life in the plot — the one that comes to mind is “The Hunger Games”. In this book, Manu‘s menstrual cycle is not only considered, but it is also essential to the plot.

Some of the phrases in this book are written completely in Spanish, and many of those are not translated. At first, I was really annoyed with this; however, if English is not someone‘s first language and they are completely immersed in an English-speaking community, this language confusion is what they go through. It made me feel really convicted, and then made me feel grateful that this author was able to show this to me.

As with many of the books we‘ve read so far, I have really enjoyed the authors‘ portrayal of characters‘ lives and circumstances. For example, in this book, the illustrations and dialogue helped the reader infer that Jeri‘s father was abusive. This, along with many other books we‘ve read, can be really helpful when teaching and discussing inferences.

Throughout the book, we can see Omar‘s heart of empathy. His emotions are incredibly shown- anger, sadness, frustration, joy, and longing. Mohamed and Jamieson do a great job at portraying these emotions. Omar is probably one of my favorite characters I‘ve ever read about.

Throughout the beginning of this novel, Dairman adds these sections in parentheses and italics, which highlight the scheduling of certain activities. She doesn‘t come out and say “Henna and her parents have a schedule every day,” but uses her writing to show rather than tell. I am really enjoying Dairman‘s writing.

I love how the authors drop nuggets of information throughout this novel. Now, we know of different motivations Omar has, and it‘s done in a very clever and impactful way.

This book highlights the story of a girl who has lived with her parents on an island for many years, and has hardly had any contact with others. I actually had very little thought about this because the author doesn‘t highlight her isolation much, but here the author does a good job of subtly getting her readers to think about this idea. She hasn‘t had any idea of what other parent-child relationships can look like until now.

I really like the detail Jamieson and Mohamed included in certain parts of this book; for example, the letters “UNHCR” on the tents. I also like how, throughout the book, the author highlights different languages- not just English.

My second choice book is “The Girl from Earth‘s End” by Tara Dairman. I am about 1/4 of the way through, and something I really like so far is the title. It‘s ambiguous enough to keep me guessing about what it‘s about, but intriguing enough that I picked it up off the list.

At the beginning of this book, I wanted to make a post that talked about how I thought this informational chart, referencing friend groups of characters, was helpful. It was going to be pretty superficial. However, now that I have finished the book, I realize just how much friend groups can change; I realized, more importantly, how friend association matters. It matters just how interacting with a post on social media matters. Great book.

I love Slater's poetic creativity here. This poem is formatted and structured in such a way that the lines look like they are forming an hourglass - something that represents time. It demonstrates how much time and intentionality Slater had when doing this project. I also love the mix of poetry and prose throughout the novel - it keeps readers on their toes and makes it interesting for most everyone reading it.

Overall, I really like the writing of this book so far. Here, not only does Slater call out inappropriate stereotypes, she also engages the reader by talking about exactly WHAT those stereotypes are. In the second highlighted section above, Slater describes the “model minority myth“ in language appropriate to the topic. She uses more complicated words because it's a complicated issue.

This part of the book is so interesting because it highlights parts of history we never learned in school. As I mentioned in my previous post, both of the main characters talk about how they didn‘t hear a lot of queer history in their classes, and how they wish that could change. Here, Oliver is giving some of that history to the reader, like he is changing the narrative for the future. Not only does he present a problem but also a solution.

Yasmin consistently reflects on what she previously wrote and continues to summarize. It feels as if she is constantly saying, “Because this… then what about this?” in an if-then pattern. She has an increasing depth of exploration on this topic, which has increased my curiosity as well.

One of the two main characters in this book, Oliver, is fascinated with the American Revolutionary War. He is particularly interested in queer representation in history. When I read the title, “A Million Quiet Revolutions”, I thought of revolutions as cycles. After reading further into the story, I figured out that the author was talking about actual revolutions, like rising up - but quietly. I thought the title was well done.

I love the way Yasmin launched into why stories are important, not only for our brains but also for our worldviews. I was busy learning all about how our brains work, then, all of a sudden, the author pulled me into a very interesting and moving fact about our perspectives and how stories affect them. This is great writing!

“What the Fact?” was published in September of 2022, just a few months before ChatGPT from OpenAI was released to the public. This marked the beginning of easily accessible AI, especially written AI. I wonder what Yasmin would say about information disorder now, after so many people have discovered and are currently learning about AI. This is definitely something that could be used in a classroom regarding artificial intelligence!

My first impression of this book: I usually don‘t love nonfiction, but this nonfiction is very interesting to me so far! Yasmin does a good job of grabbing the reader‘s attention, and I think students would enjoy this - especially those who are not huge fans of nonfiction. I would recommend this!

This book is about the experience of a transgender boy. It‘s written mostly in second person, and the “you” refers to the person he loves. He is also a transgender boy, and they are figuring this journey out together. So far, I‘m enjoying the poetry-style narrative in this book.

I love the way Lo presents history from the perspective of a Chinese American high school senior. Obviously, this is mostly a story about a girl discovering who she is, but the emphasis on timelines and the underlying story of America in the 1950s displays the importance of this history. The mere occasional mention of Communism, especially early on in the book, demonstrates the intensity of which Lily feels her romantic emotions.

I love the way Lo uses parentheses in this novel. Many of the other narrators use it as well as Lily, like Grace and Judy. Not only does it demonstrate the ways Lily is feeling romantically and about the Telegraph Club, but it also shows Grace and Judy's emotional ties to China. This was a very cool aspect to this book, and it makes it clear that these emotions/memories are very strong.

Overall, I really liked this book. I appreciate the way Whimsy personified Sorrow, but also how she and Faerry spoke plainly about their depression. It has great depth of sadness, but also incredible amounts of hope woven throughout. Great book!

Leaves are super important in this novel, and I think this has to do with the tea leaves in Hoodoo. They are used as measurement tools, but as the novel progresses, we see less and less of the leaves being important. We see less of Whimsy‘s metaphorical life and more of her reality. The shift is very interesting to me.

Whimsy uses the number 11 often throughout the book, especially when it makes more sense to use the number 10. For example, she makes several lists of things people say or her thoughts, and always extends the numbered list to 11. She mentions in Chapter 5 that she is “always wishing for October 32”, which is an impossibility. These extended numbers are very interesting to me.

This novel is in a structured in a very poetic format. I really like the way, when there are multiple people in conversation, their dialogue is on different places of the page. Also, the dialogue is not in quotations, but in italics, which is unique. I like the structure!

In “Main Street“, Jacqueline Woodson breaks up these sentences into sections (not just paragraphs). It isn't quite verse, but it gives it a very poetic feeling. She also uses the italics to show quotations, which is also poetic. Her style is abnormal, especially in a short story format, but it highlights the feeling that the main character's emotions are all over the place. Very impactful.

The first two stories in the book, “How to Transform an Everyday, Ordinary Hoop Court into a Place of Higher Learning and You at the Podium” and “The Difficult Path”, both had similar themes. The main characters in both are expected to be someone they aren‘t. The protagonist of the first is expected to NOT be Hispanic if he wants to play basketball with the others, and Lingsi is expected to be a boy for good education. Yet, THEY don‘t waver.

Throughout the memoir, Javier wonders about family. His family in El Salvador, his parents in California, and his fake family in The Six, then The Four. Strangers become family, but what is incredible to me is that those family never become strangers. Even those who he traveled with, with whom he lost touch with - Patricia, Carla, and Chino - he still wants to have a relationship with and thinks of them fondly.

I had no idea what was awaiting Javier in the U.S. At first, I thought the whole point of the book was to tell about his new home with his parents, but Zamora surprised me. I never realized how difficult it is and how long it takes to migrate to another country, and that, I believe, is the one of the reasons Zamora shared his story.

There are several times in this book in which I'm surprised at the style. Zamora is clearly a good writer, as he uses different tools throughout the book, such as multiple sentence structures. In chapter 3, when Zamora is recalling his travel on the boat, he uses very short sentence structure to highlight detail. Not only that, but it also demonstrates his continuously changing moods. He does this also to show his overwhelming emotions.

From Chapter 1

I like the way Zamora combines memories with current feelings. For example, here, he speaks about his mother in a photo. He remembers the way she used to be and the way she seems to be now. This happens throughout the book because all the time, he‘s thinking about his mom and dad. He doesn‘t have much to remember, but he holds on to what he does remember.