Sunday, October 27, 2024
Six More Months of June, by Daisy Garrison
Thursday, October 24, 2024
On the Bright Side, by Anna Sortino
After a pretty rough introduction on her first day of school, the counselor arranges for chronic overachiever Jackson to help show Ellie around. Ellie resents Jackson's enthusiasm despite his earnest (albeit awkward) attempts to ingratiate himself to her. However, being a romance, it just takes some time and few more awkward incidents for the two of them to find each other and connect. And along the way, we explore the many difficulties of building a relationship between a hearing person and a deaf one.
But there's more to the story. Jackson has been experiencing random loss of motor control and sensation, and bouts of vertigo and nausea. After some misdignosis and a harrowing scene where Ellie has to rescue him, the doctors eventually determine that Jackson has Multiple Sclerosis. Faced with such a complex and terrifying condition, Jackson has to work through his shock, grief, and anger. Ellie tries to help him, but it's a lot for a young love to take on. Never mind that she has her own issues with her family to deal with.
It's a busy story with lots of issues (disability, prejudice, abuse, amongst others) that works surprisingly well and manages to bring up a lot about the experience of being hearing disabled. It helps that the author is deaf and she draws heavily on her own life to bring in fascinating details (like the mistakes that beginners at ASL tend to make or the need to provide good lighting at parties where deaf people are attending) to fill out the story. I enjoyed those little bits while appreciating a satisfying romance that, while not straying too far from form, still delivered an above average novel about two young people struggling with some major difficulties and overcoming them. Eschewing an overly rosy ending, the story's issues and problems are addressed and we are left with a hopeful future for the two protagonists.
Sunday, October 20, 2024
Unstuck, by Barbara Dee
Friday, October 18, 2024
The Wonderful Wishes of B, by Katherin Nolte
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Emmett, by L C Rosen
Sunday, October 13, 2024
Hunger, by Donna Jo Napoli
Wednesday, October 02, 2024
The Color of Sound, by Emily Barth Isler
To get away from her family Rosie explores the property and runs across a peculiar girl her age. Through some time travel magic, the girl turns out to be Rosie's own mother. While Rosie frets a bit about impacting the future by interacting with her past-Mom, she is able to use the experience to learn why her mother is so controlling. At a pivotal moment, she is also able to repair their relationship by solving a crisis in her young Mom's life.
A touching story of family regrets and legacies that is laser focused on being a Mother-Daughter Bookclub read (there are even discussion questions at the end of the book!). I found myself getting annoyed by the way that mom's anxiety is portrayed and excused. I also bristled at the or the heavy handed discussion about social interactions between children of different ages. It felt like a kind of story that someone let Rosie's overbearing mother edit for appropriate content. That made things safe, but not necessarily fun.
Those objections aside, I loved the magical time travel angle and the device of daughter teaching mother in the past (which of course was more famously done in Back to the Future). I also enjoyed the fact that both Rosie and her mother have synthesia and hear music as color, an idea that has been explored in nother middle readers.