The Hardships of Teen Love

The past two books that I finished definitely seem to have a theme to them. They are both very focused on teenage romantic relationships, especially those between straight and gay characters, and they kind of presented two sides of one coin, and it was interesting to read them back to back.

The first book I read was Love Drugged by James Klise. Love Drugged follows the story of 15-year-old Jamie, who, as a freshman in high school, just wants to fit in with everyone else. And in his mind, that means not being gay. When one of his fellow classmates finds out his secret, Jamie throws himself into hiding who he really is, which means hanging out with the beautiful Celia Gamez, and stealing a new drug that is supposed to "cure" homosexuality. But as Jamie continues to take the drug, and his relationship with Celia starts to become serious, he's not so sure if hiding his true self was the right thing to do in the first place.

The second book was Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger. This book follows the story of John, a junior in high school who has seemed emotionally detached from the world since his parents' divorce when he was younger. He never really felt a connection with anyone, until he met Marisol, a fellow zine writer and "Puerto Rican Cuban Yankee Lesbian." They connect over their writing, their dysfunctional families, and dreams of escape, but John mistakes their growing closeness for love. Through his relationship with Marisol, John comes to find out how hard love can actually be.

First of all, I enjoyed both of these books, probably Hard Love more so than Love Drugged just because I thought it was a little better written. And I thought that they both portrayed things that actually happen to teens, especially teens struggling with their sexuality. They also did a good job of showing that LGBTQ people struggle with the same sorts of things that heterosexual people do, relationship wise, and I think that is good for teens to see.

While there wasn't much that I didn't like about Hard Love, there was one thing that bothered me about Love Drugged. I think the portrayal of gay characters in Love Drugged was a little stereotypical, and I wish that the author would have worked a little harder at the end to disprove the myth that being homosexual is a disease that needs curing. While the reader generally gets that idea at the end of the novel, I thought it could have been done a little better.People who are gay don't need to be cured, they need to be accepted, and I think the author could have worked a little harder to really get that point across to readers.

Overall, if you're looking for straight/gay relationship stories, I think these two books would be a good place to start. They definitely both do a pretty decent job at exploring the different things that can happen to straight and gay friends, and I would definitely recommend them to anyone looking to read a good LGBTQ novel. Until next time, happy reading! :)

The Gone Series

Back in 2008, I first started reading the Gone series, not realizing that it would still keep me hooked 5 books later. Since the last book came out just a few weeks ago, I decided to re-read the whole series, so I could better remember everything that had happened. Re-reading the books reminded me why I was hooked on the series in the first place.

Gone begins with everyone over the age of fourteen suddenly disappearing. At first, all of the kids are glad the adults are gone. But then strange things start to happen. Kids start to develop powers, weird creatures begin to appear, and worst of all, they all seemed to be trapped in a giant dome, something the kids name the FAYZ. The series follows, with Hunger, Lies, Plague, Fear, and finally Light. Each novel presents a different difficulty for the kids, a new challenge that they have to overcome. Will they all make it out of the FAYZ? That is up to them.

At first, this series is quite unassuming. It just seems like a young adult superhero story. But I think Michael Grant makes it much more than that. As each novel progresses, things get darker and darker, and Grant creates twists that the reader never sees coming. Every time you think you know what's going to happen next, something completely different happens. That is what kept me hooked in the series. That, and I wanted to know what created the FAYZ. Grant also did a decent job at including a diverse audience within the series. There were representations from almost every race, gender, and sexual orientation. Any young adults could easily find a representation of themselves within the novel.

The one thing I think threw me off about the novel was the age of the children, which I think was the point. Often, while you're reading, you will forget that all of these people doing these horrible acts of violence, these things that any "rational" human being would do, are all being done by kids who are fourteen or under. This might be me over-analyzing the novel, but I thought of this as Grant possibly making a comment on childhood, either that we grow up too quickly now, or that anyone in a situation like that (life or death) is forced to grow up more quickly than we think is acceptable. It is an interesting perspective to look at the series as a whole.

Overall, if you're looking for an exciting, action packed summer read, I would definitely give this a try. The action is basically non-stop, and you won't be disappointed. Until next time, happy reading! :)

Leverage

Leverage

This whole finishing a book a week thing for my young adult literature class is actually kind of satisfying. I get to read books that I've wanted to read for a while, with the added plus of doing homework! Being an English major is an absolutely wonderful thing. :)

So I just finished Leverage by Joshua Cohen. Leverage follows the story of Danny and Kurt, who are both high school athletes at Oregrove High School. Danny may be a rising gymnastics star, but to the rest of the school, he is just the runt that gets picked on. He, and his other teammates, are the constant target of the school's football stars. The two teams engage in a prank war that escalates and escalates until something horrific happens to one of Danny's teammates. However, Kurt, one of the new recruits for the football team, comes to their rescue and becomes an unlikely ally. Told from the alternating points of view of Danny and Kurt, Leverage paints a realistic and difficult to digest picture of high school sports, one that isn't often talked about.

Usually, I don't read sports novels, and this one took me a little bit to get into. It was a little slow moving at the beginning, in my opinion, and I wasn't really sure where the novel as a whole was headed. However, once I got to the middle of the book, I started getting into it, because I had learned more about the characters and cared more about them. Plus, the middle of the book is really where the action started to pick up. The main thing I didn't like about the novel was the way the author kept referring to Kurt's horrible background, and took forever to actually come out and say what happened. While sometimes this works in novels, I think this aspect could have been handled in a better way. As a whole, the novel was generally a pretty fast paced read, once things started to really happen. Once things start to happen, everything keeps escalating, keeping readers right on the edge of their seat. If you're a fan of sports novels, Leverage is definitely worth a look.

Next up for me for my class is The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily Danforth. It shall be an interesting adventure! Until next time, happy reading! :)

I am the Messenger

I am the Messenger

Finished another lovely book for my young adult literature class, I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak. I love this class because I am able to read pretty much whatever I want, despite the fact that it is very education based and a lot of the people are learning how to teach the types of things that we are reading. But it shall be an interesting experience for me.


Ed Kennedy is a cab driver who doesn't see his life changing any time soon. No one really expects much of him, not even his own mother. His live isn't a very exciting one, until one day he stops a bank robbery. Then, the cards start coming. Each card, an ace, include a message that Ed is supposed to deliver. Some of them good, some of them bad, but the messages send Ed on a journey that will change him forever. He makes his way through messages, until there is only one thing left to figure out. Who is the one sending the messages?


This book is also one that I have been wanting to read for a while, especially after reading The Book Thief a few years ago. Markus Zusak is a beautiful writer, and he has a way of creating characters that makes them seem completely real. The characters are probably what I enjoyed most about the book, just because they are all so unique and all have their own stories. I could see them existing in real life. I must say, I was a little surprised that this book was classified as a young adult novel, just because of the age of the characters in the book. Usually, in young adult literature, the characters are around middle or high school age, and this book, I feel, would be more appropriate for a college-aged audience. That being said, this book is still beautifully written, and there wasn't anything that I found fault with when I was reading. I flew through it, just because I was so engrossed in Ed's story, and I loved the way that it all came together in the end. 

There were  a lot of beautiful, quotable moments in the book, and I also loved that Zusak showed both the good and bad side of humanity through the things that Ed had to accomplish. I would definitely recommend giving I am the Messenger a try, because it is a book that will stick with you once you are done reading it. Beautiful. Until next time, happy reading! :)

Every Day

Every Day

It's been awhile since I've posted, but since I will be reviewing books for a class this semester, I should be able to post more often! Yay! I'm really excited for this class, since it's a young adult literature class, and I've been wanting to take it for a while. It should be fun!

That being said, this isn't a book I read for class, it's one I read over break, but still worth posting about! You know those books that you pick up and you absolutely can't put it down? It's been a while since I read one of those books, but this was one! Every Day by David Levithan caught my eye when I first saw it in Barnes and Noble, and when I got it for Christmas, I finally got the chance to read it. And I am definitely glad that I did.

Every Day follows the story of A, a being that wakes up in a different body every day. For the sake of my review, I am going to use male pronouns to describe A, however he is given no gender in the books. Anyway, one day he wakes up and meets this girl, Rhiannon. From the moment he meets her, A knows that she is different, and that he must find a way to get back to her. Throwing all of his carefully made rules out the window, A makes it his quest to find Rhiannon every day, even if it seems impossible. A has finally found someone that he wants to spend the rest of his life with. But he doesn't know if it can ever happen.

From the moment I started this book, I was engrossed in it. Not only is David Levithan's writing absolutely beautiful, the story line is fascinating to me. It is something I've never thought of before, something unique and original. One of the things I also liked about it is the fact that A is never assigned a gender. He's been in love with boys, and he's been in love with girls, he has been in female bodies, and he has been in male bodies. He can, quite literally, morph into whatever he wants to be. His gender doesn't get in the way of his feelings. I find this refreshing, especially because our society is so focused on gender, that there are only two options. Male and female. However, gender is a lot more complicated than that, and embodies many different aspects of a personality, and I think Levithan deals with this in a very interesting way.

I would definitely recommend this book to everyone. I think this has turned into one of my favorite novels, and I definitely want to read it again. Until next time, happy reading! :)

Pink

Pink

In general, the majority of people associate the color pink with feminine things. Pink is girly. When someone is having a baby, and you find out it's a girl, you give them pink things. Why? What decided this fact about society? While finding that out would take some research, it is something interesting to think about. And something that is dealt with in the book Pink by Lili Wilkinson.

Pink starts out with Ava, a girl who is a lesbian, has a girlfriend, and very supportive parents, is getting ready to attend a new school. A new, private school, at that. She wants to challenge herself, and she wasn't getting that at her public school. In addition to wanting this academic challenge, Ava wants to experiment. At her old school, she was the goth-lesbian girl who everyone thought was weird. Ava wants to reinvent her image at her new school. So she dyes her hair, pulls out the pink sweater, and attempts to fit in. But it isn't as easy as she thought. And not only does Ava have to figure out how to fit with the in crowd, she's also trying to figure out her own sexual identity.

What I like about this book is that it's a kind of reversal of what I see as the typical young adult LGBTQ novel. Ava starts out as a lesbian, and ends up trying to figure out if she's straight or not. She experiments with guys, instead of experimenting with girls. Now, I may be completely crazy, but in other young adult novels dealing with this theme, it's the other way around. The girl has to deal with some sort of struggle with coming out, figuring out if she's a lesbian, all that kind of stuff. But Ava doesn't have those issues. Her parents completely accept who she is, she doesn't have any struggles where that's concerned. Her problem lies in figuring out if being a lesbian is what makes her happy. 

I also liked how this book explored the fact that people don't have to fit into one box when it comes to sexuality. People can be attracted to guys and girls, gender doesn't matter to them when it comes to having that attraction with a person. I don't think there are enough young adult books out there at the moment that deal with this issue. Sure, there are more LGBTQ books in general, but how many of them deal with bisexuality? They're people too, and I think they deserve just as much recognition as anyone else.

Okay, now for the negatives. As much as I liked Ava, she really got on my nerves sometimes, espcially when she was so focused on being a part of the popular crowd. The group she ended up hanging out with most of the time (the Screws) were all awesome people, and I just really wanted her to see that and get over the whole trying to be popular thing. She was definitely one of those characters that you just wanted to point out her faults to so she could fix them and move on with her life. Other than that, Pink is a pretty awesome book that I think many people would enjoy! I'm not exactly sure what I'll be reading next, seeing as school is keeping me pretty busy, but hopefully it will be something good. Until next time, happy reading! :)

An Important Story

As sad as it is, the issue of bullying has become very prevalent in our society. Why? Because people don't know how to handle it. At least, that's my opinion. Parents don't know what to do when their child is being bullied at school, principals and teachers just turn a blind eye to it (though I think this is beginning to happen less), and the children who are actually doing the bullying don't realize how much it hurts the victims. I think the key to fixing all of this is to make people aware of what actually goes on. Jodee Blanco did this with her memoir Please Stop Laughing at Me...One Woman's Inspirational Story, and I'm sure many others have as well. But reading books like this gives people an idea of what it's actually like to be constantly bullied. And how kids don't realize how hurtful it can actually be.

Jodee started being picked on in Elementary school, when she stood up for something she believed in, but the other kids didn't agree with. It started something that would last all the way until the end of her high school career; she would never fit in with the other kids. And Jodee's classmates wouldn't stop at just taunting her with words. They would physically abuse her, and it got to the point that Jodee was afraid to go to any adult because it would just mean more abuse. Her whole story was absolutely heart-breaking. But it was beautifully written, and once you finish reading the book, it makes you want to go out and do something to stop bullying. I guess she achieved her goal. :)

I would highly recommend if you're going into teaching, or any type of education, that you read this book. The way some of Jodee's teachers acted just astounded me. Most people assume that the teachers would be the ones that would step in the way, that would help Jodee. But in some cases, they actually add to the abuse that Jodee endured at school. Not to repeat myself, but I think this is because more schools need to work on creating training programs for teachers so they know how to handle situations like this. With this issue, education is key. And perhaps with more education, for teachers, principals, parents, and students, the issue of bullying will stop being so prominent in our society. It would be amazing if no child was afraid to go to school. That would be the ideal world.

So, in light of the topic of this post, I thought I would provide some of the resources that Jodee has in the back of the book (and some of my own that I've found during my own research, which are a little more LGBTQ based, but still work) in case anyone is interested in finding out more about the topic. Here are some excellent websites:

KidsPeace National Centers for Kids in Crisis: www.kidspeace.org
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP): www.AFSP.org
The Bully Project: www.thebullyproject.com
GLSEN (The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network) www.glsen.org

These are just a few of the many resources you can find online to try and help out with this issue. Well, now I'm probably going to start reading things for class, so good bye to leisure reading for a while. Until next time, happy reading! :)