The second Spill Zone picks up right where the first one ends, and while we still don't REALLY know the exact cause of the Spill, many questions were answered in this sequel. Addie must save her sister, Lexa, from whatever Verspertine is, while the Koreans want to know more about the Spill in P-Town. This time, though, Vespertine needs to make a choice, and the Koreans need to learn more for the "Brilliant Comrade." With the help of a Korean boy who has also been changed by the Spill, Addie has much bigger problems than just taking pictures.
There is much more action in this book than the first one, and definitely much less confusing. I gave it 5 stars for the action and even more gorgeous drawings this time. While some of the monsters look like they were drawn quickly and hastily, the use of colour was beautiful and something I haven't seen in another graphic novel. I really hope that this isn't the end of the series!
0 Comments
This evening I volunteered at a Scholastic Book Fair and was able to read a few picture books pictured below. They were so fun and refreshing to read! The Pigeon Needs a Bath by Mo Willems stays true to the fun that is the Pigeon. While readers already know that the Pigeon is a stinker, now he really stinks! The reader must convince the Pigeon to take a bath and see how it turns out for him. When he is in the bathtub, pay close attention to see some familiar friends! The Legend of Rock, Paper, Scissors by Drew Dewalt is SO MUCH FUN to read! The three main characters are tired of being victorious in every battle that they enter in to and each go on a quest to find a worthy rival. It is an overall fun story that shows where our tie-breaking game comes from. This Is The Day/Este Es El Dia by Amy Parker is a fun bilingual story about the good that can be found in each day. The english translations rhyme and could be easily made into a song. Love by Matt de la Pena and Loren Long is one that I have been impatiently waiting to read. Love beautifully assures children that no matter their home situation they are loved and no matter where they go, love goes with them. I'm A Frog by Mo Willems is about Piggie taking on a new identity and teaching his best friend, Gerald the Elephant about pretending. (And how adults do it too ;) ) Elephant and Piggie is one of my favorite series to read with little kids. When I taught second grade, my students LOVED them. Thank you Mr. Panda/Gracias Sr. Panda by Steve Antony teaches us the importance of appreciating gifts and "the thought that counts." The Library Book by Tom Chapin and Michael Mark and illustrated by Chuck Groenink is easily my new favorite picture book. It illustrates the wonder and fun that kids can have in a library with their character-friends. This Little Trailblazer: A Girl Power Primer by Joan Holub and Daniel Roode is WONDERFUL! It tells a quick one-sentence summary of the lives and changes that some wonderful women made to our world including Malala Youszafzai and Rosa Parks. Each woman is displayed in a way that young girls will love and relate to.
This graphic novel is awesome! It is Diverse, Inclusive, magical, and fun! Moonstruck is set in a universe where centaurs and lesbian werewolves work together in coffee shops that serve everyone. Two werewolves, Selena and Julie are in the very beginning stages of a relationship and are still getting to know each other when they go on a date that includes Chet, their centaur friend, who ends up becoming human in an evil magic show and loses his horse butt. While funny, the graphic novel does an amazing job of showing how disastrous and emotionally traumatizing this is to him. The girls and their friends have to help find the evil magician that put on the magic show, get Chet’s butt back, and stop him from hurting others all while trying to figure out their feelings and new relationship!
The main character, Julie the werewolf, is pretty whiny and emotional, but she is a great representation of how feelings of others need to be respected and how to be kind. Overall, this was a great book! Clara Shin lives with her dad in L.A and is the class clown. She likes to "stay in the shallow end" of feelings and make jokes of everything, but when she and the class president, Rose, get into a fight at prom and almost burn down the school cafeteria, she is forced to work with Rose in her dad's food truck all summer. As the two work together, Clara learns about having to face your feelings and what real friendship and relationships are like. I loved every second of this book, so much so that I couldn't put it down and finished it in a little under a day. Clara is very real and relatable, her journey from class clown to actual person was easy to follow. I'd love to see a spinoff or novela about her dad and his realtionships being a single dad or her mom's adventures as a social media influencer. The Way You Make Me Feel is another book that I will be reviewing and booktalking in a Junior Library Guild webcast next month! My first book sketchnote in a LOONNGG time! THE LOVE LETTERS OF ABELARD AND LILY is a super sweet romance between a boy on the autism spectrum and a girl with ADHD. I LOVED it so much that I finished it in a day! I also really liked that it was set in Austin so I could actually picture where events were taking place! I used the Apple Pencil and the Doodle Art app, which is why there’s an awkward border on the left. 😂😂. I’ll be booktalking this book and a few others in a Junior Library Guild webinar next month-check back for details!
ALL SUMMER LONG, a graphic novel by Hope Larson (illustrator of the Wrinkle In Time graphic novel) was a fun, quick read. 📚Austin and Bina have been friends their entire lives and spend every summer together. The summer before eighth grade, though, Austin goes away to soccer camp while Bina stays home and learns how to play guitar and indie bands. A really sweet sort of friendship and growing apart while staying friends and growing into who you are.
Shoutout to my librarian bestie, Allie Cornejo, for being featured on the Nerdy Book Club today! You can read her review of Dhonielle Clayon's The Belles below or on Nerdy Book club! Mentally rich and decadent — this is how I would describe The Belles. I listened to The Belles on Audible with Rosie Jones (@rosiejonesactor) as the narrator. She did a wonderful job at her narration, which makes all the difference. Her English accent added such an elegant air to an exquisitely written book. However, I did find her reading pace a bit slow due to her immaculate enunciation, so I sped the audio book up to 1.25x, which was perfect. My 30 minute commute to and from work was something I Iooked forward to everyday, because I was going to listen to The Belles! I enjoyed this book very much! The realization that I really liked it came toward the last third of the book, though. The first two thirds were good, don’t get me wrong, but it didn’t become a real page turner in the last third. What requires the most applause for Dhonielle Clayton’s work was the imagery she used to create this fantasy world of Orleans. She created a world full of color, beauty, and emotion. Words and phrases like “pink and yellow macarons,” “pastel colored dresses,” “complexion of lilies and belle-rose lips,” “drizzles of honey” and the like, are heavily sprinkled throughout this book. If it was possible to read a dessert and be satisfied as if you ate it, this is the book that did just that for me! Dhonielle whisked me away to a beautiful world where the book cover model served as a baseline for the Belle beauty found in the setting of Orleans. Her words drew up a masterpiece of art in my mind. And let me just draw attention to the lovely Belle names… Camellia, Ambrosia, Padma, Edelweiss,..Wow! The story was so unique! Belles having control over making people beautiful, but not really having any power over themselves or their lives was intriguing. The monarchy and the laws suppress their freedoms in the guise of protecting them. Camellia, our protagonist, was a great character laced with ambition, talent, originality, and a hint of rebellion. Her growing contempt for the obsession Orleans has for beauty makes her character strong and admirable. The love she has for her sisters makes her endearing, and the fact that Belles cannot experience a romantic love is heartbreaking and ironic, given their irresistible appearance. Our antagonist, Princess Sofia, is formidable and hate-worthy with the torment she bestows on hr court. Beware of those who defy her. They end up with a pig snout! Yes, she scared the living daylights out of me with her cruelty, and the tension she caused within a simple conversation with Camellia made my palms sweat. Princess Sofia’s dangerous obsession with beauty and utter dominance over the people around her makes this story very entertaining and nerve-racking. The theme of beauty obsession had me reflect constantly on the state of affairs we find ourselves today. What I loved about Camellia, was her preference to always let her patron’s natural features shine. She encouraged curves and shapely figures, and she attempted to convince her patrons that imperfections compliment personality. She warned against unnatural beauty requests because of the harm they caused to the body. I began to research today’s real obsession with beauty and I found the following information to be deeply disturbing: According to the National Institute on Media and Family via the University of Washington, in a survey taken by girls 9 and 10 years old, 40 percent of them have tried to lose weight and by “age thirteen, 53% of American girls are ‘unhappy with their bodies.’ This grows to 78% by the time girls reach seventeen.” Dhonielle has done a phenomenal job of including these disturbing trends of self-disapproval into her novel. Camellia’s patrons desire dangerously small waists and breasts that are too large. She warns them of the risks, but her warnings fall on deaf ears. I am very grateful for the attention the author brings to the very important issue of beauty obsession. Young girls will find an important lesson here. The cliffhanger was fantastic and unbelievably frustrating, as I would give my right arm for book two! I originally thought this was a stand-alone novel, but I’m elated that it will be a trilogy; I am definitely not done with The Belles and the world of Orleans. Hosain, Anna. “Constructed Beauty and Our Obsession With Image.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 19 Feb. 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anna-hosain/constructed-beauty-and-ou_b_4809399.html. Alexandra Cornejo is a high school librarian at a specialty school for future health professionals in the Rio Grande Valley. Her drive is to motivate her students to be passionate readers and responsible digital citizens. She is an enthusiast for young adult literature, education technology, and instructional design, and can often be found on edtech Twitter chats. You can find her on Twitter @allie_cornejo, Instagram @YAlitenthusiast or her YA Review blog https://sites.google.com/view/yalittech/home A good story of an African American boy who was shot and killed by a police officer who mistook a coat hanger for a gun and the events that occur in his neighborhood because of it. It definitely demonstrates how others are affected and how a crowd mindset results from these events.
The illustrations were only in black and white and I thought distracted from the story because I couldn’t keep the characters straight despite the cast list in the beginning. Also, a lot of the dialogue seems to be in rap or mimicking Shakespeare because the students in the story are putting on Hamlet, so it gets confusing. Two stars overall. A graphic novel memoir of growing up in Iraq during the last twenty years. Nothing amazing, but very informational. The drawings though, are superb. Simple but detailed enough for easy understanding.
|
Archives
February 2022
Categories
All
|