"Eleanor & Park" Literary Review

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A best seller that has had rave reviews by the likes of John Green, Gayle Forman and students in Miss Foor's English 11... With free time on Thanksgiving, why not give it a shot?

Eleanor and Park are two misfits who happen to ride the same bus, but slowly develop an acquaintance through comic books and punk mixtapes, then later a romance. Both are infatuated with the other one's weirdness, but is the obsession with holding hands and tugging on wisps of hair enough for the romance through an 80's high school?

Particular things I liked:
1. The portrayal of an abusive household showed the true terror and fright that young children can face, furthermore shows possible outlets that they try to "escape" to.

2. The wittiness...Both characters have a sarcastic vat of comments that just oozes remarks that would make one smile with cleverness. This was what was most enjoyable to read.

3. It's quite easy to get into the characters heads with the distinguishable naming of sections within the book. Easy peasy.

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"Boy Toy" Literary Review

Boy Toy by Barry Lyga
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a disturbing read that provokes human thought and interaction... Josh is an eighteen year old baseball player who just wants to graduate from high school and go to college. The only problem is that he's being haunted by Eve, his seventh grade history teacher who molested him, and the scandal that has somehow turned him into a social pariah.
The message is that Josh wants to be normal, but furthermore, understood teenager. Baseball, girls and straight A's take up most of his time. However, when a controversy involves you and puts pressure on you, it's hard to deal with.

As a teacher reading this, it was more like a horror story considering the molestation factor, but Lyga presents the book in a way that makes it a disturbing, upsetting read in which the reader doesn't want to put it down. I even gave up sleep to finish this page-turner. However, I have concerns letting young adults (especially my own students)read this for the events and content involved, for the simple fear of possible controversy.

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"Ship Breaker"- Literary Review

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For fans of futuristic and dystopic literature, here's one that you'll enjoy! I won't even say that it's anything similar to The Hunger Games, other than it is geared towards Young Adults, simply because it can hold its own in this genre.

Nailer is a teen who is scraping for metal in deserted ships in the Gulf Coast region. He works dawn to dusk crawling in tight places for copper wire and signs of oil, and his only refuge is in the loyalty that he tries to foster with his crewmates. When he and a fellow crew member find a shipwrecked schooner off the coast of their island, Nailer wants nothing more than to find a way to escape his life and abusive drug addict of a father. However, he never expected to find Nita.

Nita is a swank, aka rich girl, who is a pawn in corporate trading to gain monopoly over the known world. She finds Nailer and promises him an escape to paradise if he can help her return to her father. Nailer, despite every instinct to say no, accepts. They are chased by bounty hunters, greedy corporate assassins and pirates, and even Nailer's father, Richard, in an adventure that I would consider exciting on an epic scale.

Adventure stories are not often well constructed, but with a dystopia, there's a lot of room to create a "new world". Bacigalupi does this with perfection; he constructs a desolate world, connects it to his teenage protagonist, which furthermore allows a young adult reader to connect with it. The aspect of abusive parent also plays in well, because despite pirates, disease and danger lurking around every corner, it's worse when it exists at home within your own family.

As a teacher, I would recommend this title to students as a great coming of age story, as well as an interesting and engaging read.

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"Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe" Book Review

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a refreshing read into the psyche of young adults who are coming of age and struggling to figure out how the world works and what is expected of them. Aristotle (Ari for short) and Dante are two young Mexican American teenagers who, through course of events find themselves forming a relationship.... as a reader, once I found out that Dante really (really!) liked Ari, I was rooting for them the entire time.

Related to an earlier book club discussion, I was impressed with the presence of the parental figures that are within the book. Often you find parents in YA literature to be more in the background while the teen "does their thing", but that isn't realistic. Parents influence their children in many ways and their presence needs to be accounted for in YA lit more often.

The writing style was also very interesting and I found that the shortened, two page chapters were also more realistic. As a teen, I only had a couple of pages written in my diary before a friend called to bug me or worse (!), my sister needed something. I felt like I could really connect with this style.

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