Book Review: Roomies by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando

Posted on by

Roomies cover imageWhen Elizabeth gets the notice giving contact information for her college roommate, she sends off an email right away with the basics: who’s bringing the microwave, who’s bringing the fridge, etc. There are a lot of reasons she can’t wait to leave New Jersey for Berkeley, California. She’s thinking of breaking up with her boyfriend, her single mom is acting like she’ll be glad to see Elizabeth go, and on the West Coast she’ll be close to the dad who left her long ago.

Lauren is less than excited to get Elizabeth’s email. She lives in San Francisco with her parents and five much younger siblings. Hoping for a bit of space of her own, she requested a single. Plus, as a scholarship recipient with little money to spend on other supplies, she’s not even sure how much she can contribute to common dorm room supplies.

Roomies by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando is a great book for older teens on the cusp of graduating from high school and going on to college. One of the biggest worries in the months leading up to the start of college is “How will I get along with my roommate?”

Email, phone and social media make it easier to get an idea of who a roommate is in advance of a personal meeting, but as Roomies shows, electronic communication isn’t usually very good at portraying the story behind the messages. It’s easy to make judgments about someone that you wouldn’t make if you knew the whole story.

That’s the case with Elizabeth and Lauren. As the two correspond over the summer, they find themselves entrusting secrets they don’t feel comfortable revealing at home, sharing their hopes for the future, going through misunderstandings and more before they even hear each other’s voices let alone meet face to face.

Told in alternating chapters by the authors, Roomies shows how the girls may be very different from each other while exploring the possibility that they will find common ground and be able to share close quarters in the months ahead. I recommend it for ages 16 and up.

The publisher gave me a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Book Review: Sneaky Art: Crafty Surprises to Hide in Plain Sight by Marthe Jocelyn

Posted on by

Sneaky Art cover imageYesterday I featured a post by author Marthe Jocelyn with instructions for creating easy collage art. That post also features a giveaway of a Rainy Day Art pack to someone who comments. Today, I’m reviewing Jocelyn’s book Sneaky Art: Crafty Surprises to Hide in Plain Sight. Sneaky Art provide inspiration for simple art projects that can brighten the day of someone you love or even a total stranger. The sneaky referred to in the title refers to how the art is displayed. For instance, the instructions for Lucky Penny talk about how to use cut-out letters, stickers, colored index cards, glue and tape to create little pieces of art with a penny attached. The lettering says something like “pick me up.” The trick after making the art is to place the pennies where someone walking along on a sidewalk or some other path will find them.

Each project is simple to execute and fun to contemplate how it will be received. There’s even a certain amount of pleasure to be derived from figuring out how to be sneaky about leaving the work to be found. One of my favorite projects in the book is for Painted Stones, which are rocks that can be painted with white correction fluid and placed in a field of other rocks. This is a great project for kids to take on and place their creations amongst other rocks in a garden path or in some other easily visible spot where the whole family can enjoy them.

Its spiral-bound format makes Sneaky Art easy to follow along with, as the instruction pages lay flat on a counter or floor as you work with the materials suggested. In particular, I like the idea that each suggestion for a sneaky piece of art is sure to inspire you to think of spin-offs, other projects that are fun to plan and execute. Since most of the materials are things commonly found in most homes, it’s easy to get started on making your own creations and sneaking art into all kinds of situations.

The time commitment is all yours to determine. You can decide whether to spend your time planning and creating sneaky art during the whole of a rainy afternoon or whip something up in a short amount of time. Either way it’s sure to be fun.

The publisher gave me a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Easy Collage Art Instructions and Rainy Day Art Pack Giveaway

Posted on by

Today I’m taking part in the WOW! Blog tour for author Marthe Jocelyn, who has written a book on how to turn everyday objects and experiences into opportunities to add art into your family’s life. The book is called Sneaky Art: Crafty Surprises to Hide in Plain Sight, and I’ll be featuring a full review of it tomorrow. As part of the tour, I’m giving away a Rainy Day Art Pack to one person who leaves a comment about art in the comment section below. Talk about why you feel creative or maybe reasons you’d like to feel creative if you don’t think you are. Anything about your experience with art is fine, just be sure to leave your comment by midnight (PST), Wednesday, January 22. (U.S. and Canadian residents only please.) Please note: The giveaway is closed. Congratulations to BN100 on winning.

Here’s a little bit more about the author: Marthe Jocelyn spent her childhood in Toronto reading books and putting on plays and circuses in her backyard. Marthe has a long string of jobs: theatre usher, cookie seller, waitress, photo stylist, even toy designer before she finally settled on writer. Marthe lives in Ontario with her daughters Nell and Hannah. Visit her at www.marthejocelyn.com.

For more on Jocelyn’s blog tour, visit WOW’s page kicking it off. And here’s her essay on why collage is such a great form of art to inspire creativity along with instructions on how to do it.

Marthe Jocelyn photoCollage is a No-Fail Medium

Along with the sneaky art projects that I have made over the years, I have also illustrated ten picture books using the medium of collage. I am completely self-taught as an artist and not particularly able or confident when it comes to handling a paintbrush or even a pencil. My human and animal figures are awkward and disproportioned. When I included painted sketches of the Hannah character with my first hopeful picture book text submission, the art director was diplomatic but firm in her rejection. I was simply not an illustrator. Luckily, she had seen some of my toy designs; little people and creatures stitched out of patterned fabrics with simple embroidered faces.

“If you could capture the feeling of your toys in your pictures…”

I went home and cut a girl-like shape out of paper, about 18 inches high. I glued on a fringe of brown felt hair and a green-checkered flannel dress with big pockets. I made tiny dots for eyes and a single thin line for a mouth. I put her on a green paisley floor against a green corduroy wall. I carried her back to the art director who, amazingly, took a leap of faith and let me proceed as the illustrator for my own book.

This is maybe more intro than you need, but I want to make the point that collage works for those who do not consider themselves artists as well as for those with more experience and confidence. Kids are especially thrilled to make stuff using glue. The word ‘colle’ in French means ‘glue’ and glue is the key. You can even get away without using scissors, if you know how to tear paper or find bits and bobs that don’t require cutting. The best part about collage is that there are truly no rules – other than Try to Keep the Glue off the Furniture.

Even with no rules, however, it can help—when introducing primary-age kids to collage—to provide guidelines. I often suggest starting with a large oval, either cut or drawn, and let the first project be a face. Everyone knows what goes on a face; there is no moment of nervous despair facing a blank page. I highly recommend that every grownup involved also make a picture alongside the young artists (or even the night before in the case of a teacher in a busy classroom).

Move on from the face to dressing a body or designing a house or presenting a meal—familiar ideas that will become extraordinary and unique in the hands of each artist.

Below is a list of materials that are wonderful to have on hand when beginning to work in collage. Offering a wide range allows for the magpie glee of discovery—a red button amongst brown ones, an inch of striped ribbon, a scrap of paper the perfect shade of green. But if a feast of options is not possible, it can be enormously effective to make an entire picture using only the pages of a magazine or a single newspaper. Older kids will have plenty of ideas of their own.

After nearly two decades of classroom visiting, I have many observations about the approach to art and work habits of very young children all the way up to teens and adults, and plenty of thoughts about how gender affects the process too—worth more than a couple of sentences in a blog post. One thing that collage can teach girls—something that boys often know without knowing—that straying outside the lines makes for good art.

Get out the glue!

Technical tips:

Use a backing sturdy enough to hold the extra weight of applied layers. Even cardstock is better than paper. Cardboard is good and so is foamcore.

If you’re making a landscape or something with a background, apply that first, with smaller focal images on top.

Use less glue than you think you need, applied in dots for small things and spread evenly and right to the edges for larger pieces.

List of Materials for your collage box:

(I do not recommend glitter or precut decals or stickers!)

Wallpaper samples, magazine cut-outs, newspapers, old greeting cards, calendars, pages of discarded books, wrappers, receipts, maps, handwritten notes, tickets, photocopies of family photos, coloured paper of any kind, like origami or wrapping paper, brown craft paper, fabric scraps, doilies, netting, buttons, beads, trim, ribbon, lace, ribbon, braid, ric-rac, feathers, tassels, shells, twigs, pebbles, seeds, small craft sticks, toothpicks, yarn, string, embroidery thread, dental floss

Remember that collage is about making choices—and there are no wrong ones.

Book Review: Godless by Pete Hautman

Posted on by

Godless cover imageIf Henry Stagg would not have hit him, Jason Bock would not have been lying on his back staring up at his town’s water tower. And if he would not have looked up at the water tower, he may never have gotten the idea to create a new religion built around his newly created god, the Ten-Legged One. But when he does, he recruits a strange mix into the fold—his buddy Shin, a collector of snails and other gastropods, cute Magda Price, the preacher’s son Dan, and the bully Henry.

The five of them create an uneasy alliance that reflects their general restlessness and willingness to embrace a radical idea just to shake things up. Jason in particular is questioning his belief in God, especially as his dad has an unwavering faith and requires Jason to attend teen classes at their church. He wonders that with all the religions in the world how anyone can know that theirs is right. It’s the next leap he takes—that it’s better to make up your own—that get’s the ball rolling for creating sacraments, commandments and converts. Soon, they are all taking the risk of climbing to the top of the tower to worship their new god.

Jason realizes that he is no longer in control of what he has created. Shin in particular seems to be caught up in the fervor of it all as he writes out a scripture for the new church, and tension builds between the members. Can their issues be resolved without anyone getting hurt?

Godless by Pete Hautman is a thoughtful book that examines religious belief, the sway that peer pressure and suggestion holds over teens, and the risky behavior they may undertake because of that pressure. Readers will be inspired to look at their own beliefs about God and religion and think about why they hold those beliefs. It’s a bold subject for mother-daughter book clubs to take on, but those that do may find possibilities for rich discussion. I recommend Godless for groups with girls aged 14 and up.

Holidays Great Time for Telling Family Stories

Posted on by

Reading books may be a large path to literacy but the path is wider when it’s supported by other paths leading into it. Music is one of those and so is storytelling. A recent article in The Atlantic talks about why it’s a good thing that parents tell their kids stories about the times they were growing up and adventures about their extended family. The article draws on research conducted in the last couple of decades and talks about the benefits to children.

It’s easy to forget that storytelling was the main way history and knowledge was passed along before books were in wide circulation. Even though we may no longer need to get information important to our physical survival that way, family stories can provide emotional support, as evidenced by the researchers’ cited findings that “adolescents with a stronger knowledge of family history have more robust identities, better coping skills, and lower rates of depression and anxiety.”

You may already be telling family stories to your kids on a regular basis, but the holidays, with their focus on tradition, can provide a good starting point to begin talking about events from the past or find new opportunities to do so. With older kids, you can even tell stories about the past they remember. Look at family videos and photos for inspiration and see where the conversation takes you. Sometimes you’ll even be surprised to find that you children place importance to details that didn’t even get your attention from family events in the past. Stories of any kind, whether fictional from a book or real from memory have the power to provide connection and conversation.

Book Review: When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Posted on by

When You Reach Me cover imageMiranda lives with her mom in a New York City apartment. In sixth grade, she and her friend Sal, who lives below her, have earned their parents trust enough to navigate their neighborhood on their own. Together they learn to avoid the group of boys that hang out in front of the old garage and the mentally ill homeless man who habituates the corner by their homes.

That’s where When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead starts, but from there the narrative builds into a puzzle, where Miranda gets notes from someone who seems to know a lot about her and her friends. The notes ask her to write down a story, to be delivered at some point in the future. They say the story hasn’t happened yet, but she’ll know when it does.

Miranda can feel change in the air. Her first inkling of it was when her friend Sal got punched by a kid for an unknown reason, and then Sal started to withdraw from their friendship. Another clue was her budding friendship with Colin and Annemarie, who she starts to hang out with at lunch. The three of them work together at a local deli to earn sandwiches. Then Miranda gets to know Marcus, the kid who punched Sal. He’s older and really nice other than the punch, and he seems fascinated with the possibility of time travel, a topic that confuses her.

As the puzzle of the notes builds, Miranda learns a lot about making and keeping friends and speaking up when there’s a problem to be solved. It’s difficult to say too much about When You Reach Me without giving away the mystery of the notes, but I felt Miranda’s story reveals a lot about the tenacity of the human spirit, the tenderness of love, and the timelessness of friendship. This small book unfolds seamlessly while giving readers a lot to think about. By the end, you may find yourself rereading passages that contained clues along the way to get the full impact. I highly recommend it for mother-daughter book club with girls ages 9 to 13.

Save

Book Review: Blank Confession by Pete Hautman

Posted on by

Blank Confession cover imageTeenager Shayne Blank walks into the local police station with a confession: he has killed someone. Detective Rawls is skeptical, but agrees to take his statement. The story unfolds through chapters that tell what Rawls hears, and others told by Mikey, Shayne’s friend and frequent target of school bully and drug dealer Jon Brande.

When Shayne and Mikey first meet Shayne is new to school, and his story about his background keeps changing. One day his parents have both died and he lives with an aunt, another his parents are both part of high-security intelligence teams and Shayne stays safe by living away from them. Despite his shifting story Mikey likes him, and Shayne acts as his protector, one who can hold his own in a fight. But Jon doesn’t like being taken down a notch, and he doesn’t plan to play fair when getting back at Shayne.

Pete Hautman has a way of asking readers to look at uncomfortable issues brought to light by flawed characters, and in Blank Confession, he takes on the issue of violence and drug use among teens. Adults don’t know how to uncover the truth of the problem, or influence it significantly, so they often stand helplessly by as the dramas play out and teens figure things out for themselves.

The mystery in Blank Confession unfolds in two ways: the story of Shayne’s unknown background and the story that leads up to his confession. Mikey as a narrator is funny and upfront about the insecurities he feels because he is short and is often mistaken for a Mexican, though he is of Haitian descent. Having Detective Rawls as a filter for Shayne’s story also lets readers see some of the background that took place years before Shayne and Mikey’s story started to play out. It’s a fascinating blend that Hautman weaves together expertly to keep readers entranced and guessing until the end. I recommend it for readers aged 14 and up.

Adults Can Find Plenty to Love in Books for Children/Teens

Posted on by

I recently read an article from MacLean’s about adults turning to children’s books for comfort when they they face challenges in life. The article got me thinking about adults enjoying books written for children for many reasons, not just during trying times.

I have to admit that I was surprised when I started reading books with my daughters for book club more than a decade ago at how much I genuinely liked the books. This was no chore, or something that I thought I should do as a bonding experience for my daughters and me. Instead I found myself appreciating children’s literature in a new way.

It’s easy to assume that kids books have simple plots and offer older readers no opportunity for introspection. That’s why people often ask me if I get bored reading books to recommend here for mother-daughter book clubs. But I find the opposite to be true in many cases. Kids understand complex emotions, maybe even better than adults, because they’re still close to raw emotional expressions. The best writers for kids get that, and they don’t pull punches when it comes time to write nuanced stories that make readers of all ages think.

Another thing to consider is that kids are experts at spotting lectures coming from adults, so books that they want to read must weave a message seamlessly in with the story. Plus, timeless stories for children often hold up to second or third or fourth readings or more because the message has layers, meaning that as children get older they will find more meaning as they understand more about the world about them. Adults may be more likely to grasp the whole meaning on a first reading, but that doesn’t mean they enjoy the story less.

Here’s a  short list of some of my old and new favorites with appeal to kids in different age groups. I hope these titles inspire you to pick up a book and enjoy reading it with your child, or even just to discover the joy of reading books for children with classic staying power.

Elementary school readers ages 9 and 10

  • Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
  • Matilda by Roald Dahl
  • Laugh With the Moon by Shana Burg
  • Tortilla Sun by Jennifer Cervantes
  • Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling
  • Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

Middle school readers ages 11 to 13

  • Millions by Frank Cottrell Boyce
  • The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkein
  • Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
  • The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
  • The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

High school readers ages 14+

  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  • Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  • I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
  • A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
  • The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Want more suggestions? Take a look at List Challenge’s Top 100 Children’s Novels. All the books on the list are great for adults to read too.

 

 

 

 

 

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...