Recent Read: Before I Fall

Sam Kingston has the life most people at her school dream about: she's pretty, she has a hot boyfriend, and she's about as popular as it gets. Sam has no idea that when she wakes up on the morning of Cupid Day, it will be the last day of her life...but it won't be last time she wakes up. Over and over, Sam relives the last day of her life, and she starts to see her life with different eyes, coming to recognize what really matters.

Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall was so well done. I wasn't sure at the beginning because I so disliked the mean girl protagonist & friends (at one point she asks, "is it really so much worse than what you do?" to which i rolled my eyes and thought, "Yes, It is so much worse than anything I have ever done"), but as the book progresses, I got to know these girls--good and bad--and came to like them in spite of myself. Even better, I got to see Sam grow and transform in a convincing and meaningful way (one of the best character arcs I've read recently). I loved how it highlights both the beautiful things in life we take for granted and the things that actually matter. The teen voice is spot-on. The message/theme is similar to that of 13 Reasons Why, but the book is far, far superior.

Picture This: Green

Click on this to see a high-res photo
that allows you to get a sense of the texture

Green By Laura Vaccaro Seeger 

Each spread of this concept book depicts a different kind of green: lime, green, forest green, and eventually more creative greens: wacky green, slow green, never green. The beautiful, painted illustrations are rich with texture and color. And, as if that weren’t enough, die cuts tie spreads together, transforming green leaves to golden fish with the turn of a page. A contender or the Caldecott? I would think so.

You can watch the book in its entirety below.

Picture This: Boy + Bot

Boy + Boy by Ame Dyckman, illustrated by Dan Yaccarino

Boy meets a robot and the two become friends. When Bot's switch is accidentally turned off, Boy can't figure out what's wrong. He tries to help him by feeding him, reading to him, and putting him to bed, but nothing seems to work. In the night Bot's switch is accidentally turned on. Bot sees Boy asleep and wonders what's wrong. He gives him oil, reads him an instruction manual, and is about to open him up to replace his battery when... I already gave away the best parts, but I might as well refrain from giving away the whole thing. Yaccarino's fun, colorful gouache illustrations and Dyckman's simple prose (kinda independent reader-like) make for a sweet, humorous tale of friendship.

I must say though, every time I read "affirmative," I heard this.

My first trip to Oregon

This past week I traveled to Oregon for the very first time. My closest friends from college (old roommates) decided to get together for a mini-reunion there. We spent the weekend in Cannon Beach, one of Oregon's most well-known resort coastal towns. It was beautiful.

 

While Oregon is known for being rainy, the clouds parted our first day there, and we had a lovely time in the sun (though the water was still icy). It was one of those beaches that stays shallow seemingly forever. The sand was fine and soft, and unlike SoCal, there was beachgrass lining the coast.

One of my friends. It was just as calming as it looks.

Haystack Rock

Tidepools next to Haystack Rock

When we got back I spent about a day in Portland (downtown, anyway). It's fun to see a place in the US that's so different from where you live. Portland lived up to all the stereotypes: hippies, hipsters, sandals with socks, health food, etc. I especially loved the Victorian architecture and the greenery of Portland (and Oregon as a whole). Everything is so green: leafy trees, moss, grass... We also stopped by Moonstruck chocolates. They were very good.

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    She liked the word ineffable because it meant a feeling so big or vast that it could not be expressed in words.

   And yet, Because it could not be expressed in words, people had invented a word to express it, and that made Liesl feel hopeful, somehow.

-Liesl and Po by Lauren Oliver

Recent Read: Feed

"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck," says Titus. But that's before he meets Violet, and it's before some weirdo infects their feeds with a virus that causes them to malfunction. A feed is a device implanted directly into the brain which then connects its owner to an internet-like network (like having a smartphone implanted in your brain). Both Titus and Violet end up in the hospital while their feeds are fixed. Titus learns that Violet is unlike any girl he's ever met: she's smart, she likes to trick and play with the feed, she doesn't like to follow trends, and she thinks for herself. Will Titus see through the feed, with Violet at his side?

M. T. Anderson's Feed was pretty excellent. It's a bit creepy how much more like the world of Feed society is today than when Anderson wrote this in 2002/3. I almost quit a couple of chapters in because the language was annoying the crap out of me. Of course, it's supposed to do that because it's partly a satire of the degeneration of language. Once I got a few chapters into Part 2, I was fine. And then I came to appreciate the humor of it. This is more than a commentary about commercialism, consumerism, language, etc (though it is definitely that, too). It's a story about people. It's a story about Titus and Violet. Titus is definitely a flawed protagonist, and that's why I loved his character. His behavior struck me as so authentically human--especially at the end. His and Violet's relationship is very real in both happy and sad ways. I felt like the book was chock-full of ideas and themes prime for analysis (there's so much more than the advertising internet-in-your-head part) without being didactic or condescending (unlike other books I've read). He tells a story, and lets it speak for itself. It seems like there are things happening somewhat peripherally (b/c that's how Titus would experience them) that aren't fully explained, but I don't think the story is about the technicalities of the world-building so it didn't matter to me. This book is funny, dark, frustrating, heart-breaking, interesting, and illuminating.

Picture This: Extra Yarn

Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen

Annabelle finds a box of colorful yarn. Each time she finishes knitting something, she finds she has extra yarn. Soon the entire town wears sweaters she has made with her never-ending yarn. When she runs out of people to clothe, she moves on to animals, mailboxes, and houses. Word spreads of this wondrous yarn, and an archduke shows up, offering exorbitant sums of money for th e box. And well, maybe I should leave it at that. The folk tale-like story is accompanied by Jon Klassen’s stylized gouache-ink-digital illustrations (the bear may look familiar from his recent book, I Want My Hat Back). One of the best things about this book is the timing and pacing. Klassen and Barnett maximize the humor and dead pan moments of the story with well-placed illustrations and well-phrased text.

For example:

In this scene, Nate makes fun of Annabelle, and she says, "You're just jealous." He replies, "No I'm not,"

 TURN THE PAGE

But it turned out he was.

(Note that my pictures are kind of dull in color/brightness.)