Review of the year part 3

 

Top Kidlit & YA books read in 2021

Despite everything that was thrown at us all in 2021 Kentishbookboy and I have continued to share books with each other and there's nothing more I like than getting a message from him (or his mum) saying how much they love a book, and although only a couple of shared reads have made my final top 10 all of the books he suggested were great and I think that we are living in another golden age of children's literature.

The books that made my list in alphabetical order are:

• Medusa by Jessie Burton
• Darwin's Dragons by Lindsay Galvin
• Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargreve & Tom de Freston
• How to Be Brave by Daisy May Johnson
• Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Melinda Lo
• The Swallows' Flight by Hilary McKay
• Wishyouwas by Alexandra Page
• Arctic Star by Tom Palmer
• Swarm Rising by Tim Peake & Steve Cole
• Amarantha by Elena Traina

World Book Night 2021: Book Fourteen

 

 We Are All Made of Molecules - Susan Nielsen   (Andersen Press)

 Own eBook

Warning there are spoilers in this review

I don't know where to start with this one, it made me so cross on so many levels. My first gripe is why does this 2nd YA fiction book have to be North American? Surely we have a plethora of great YA writers who are British?

The other gripes are to do with style and content. This book is very much in the vein of Wonder but comes no where near the brilliance of that book. There are so many issues in this book and off the top of my head here are just a few of them: death of a parent (from long illness), divorce of parents because father is gay, blended families, intelligent child but with no social awareness, child obsessed with fashion and friendship but not academic, bullying, peer presssure - oh and yes the biggie attempted date rape.

Phew, once all those are covered there wasn't much room for the writing, which may have been just as well because the style was all over the place. With themes as outlined above you'd think that this was a read for older teen, but in style and language this was pretty much a middle grade/upper primary  - way too junior for the content.

Oh and as for the content - by the end they basically all live happily ever after. I could handle that with the blended family coming together but the way the sexual assault was dealt with is shameful - as an adult reading this I could see that something was building but I never dreamt it would go as far as it did nor that there were no repercussions for either the victim  (and indeed it could be read that she was victim shamed) nor for her attacker.

I feel that I read this book so you don't have to and so far I think it is the worst book I've read for this project. 

World Book Night 2021: Book Five

 "I will not be erased" Edited by gal-dem (Walker Books)

Borrowed from the library eBook catalogue

A book that I really doesn't see me as the target reader but one that I loved never the less.

This is another essay collection but this time written by women and non binary authors of colour. Most start with the authors writing to their younger selves about an incident from their childhood.

The essays cover all types of topics, some are universal to many of our adolescent memories and others are far more specific to being non-white in our society. Some are funny, some shocking and some incredibly moving but there wasn't one that I wanted to skip over which is pretty incredible.

I really don't think that I've come across a book that I think should be handed to every high school student - regardless of gender or colour - for a long time.

The message of the book really is that it will get better, you are perfect as you are and no, your school days really aren't necessarily the best time of your life.

November Reading Round Up

For a variety of reasons in November I did a lot of rereading, one was to compare book and film (Andre Aciman's Call Me By Your Name) and others were Girls' Own type stories.

There were some new reads however mixed in and I enjoyed four of these enough to mention here.

Princess and the Suffragette by Holly Webb.
Back in 2015 I was very excited by Webb's updated sequel to A Secret Garden and I'm really pleased to say that she's done it again! This is a follow on to another Hodgson Burnett story (A Little Princess) and follows the lives of the girls left at Miss Minchin's seminary after Sara left. As stated in the title it is about the women's suffrage movement and I found it gripping - one that really should get lots and lots of attention next year as we mark 100 years of women getting the (limited) vote.

Wonder by R. J. Palaccio

I'm not sure how I've missed this book for so long, I know that colleagues have loved it and recommended it to me but somehow it just never rose to the top of the pile.  However Mr Norfolkbookworm went to a preview of the film adaptation and was really impressed so I read the book.  It is powerful and moving, as being a good tale. It borders on being didactic, saccharine and predictable but through beautiful writing and clever narration it stays just the right side of these line (for me) and was just a wonderful book that did make me cry.

Why Mummy Drinks by Gill Simms

I love reading Simms posts on Facebook where she chronicles her chaotic life in the form of spoof Peter and Jane tales.  I expected that this book was going to be just a collection of these social media posts but instead it was a full novel, told in diary form, using the same style as the posts. I laughed a lot.

White Chrysanthemum - Mary Lynn Bracht

This book was a proof thanks to Net Galley and is set in Korea starting in the Second World War. It deals with the Japanese occupation and atrocities, then the internal problems caused by the politics post war which ultimately led to the Korean War, the ramifications of these two conflicts then echo down the generations to the modern day.  I knew a little of the history here, especially regarding the Japanese history but what came next horrified me. 

In following the lives of two sisters we get up close and personal to this history and it isn't easy reading at all, at times it is horrific. However I feel that this is an important part of history all too often glossed over in the name of reconciliation and rehabilitation - there are a lot of lost stories in this part of the world that need to be told, whether in history books or in fantastic fiction like this.