Oops…the motivation for writing reviews has waned significantly. It’s time to get back on the wagon.
The prose flows beautifully in this narrative. That said, I struggled to mat h the prose style with the intended age range. The lyricism would challenge many middle grade readers who have not developed abstract thinking skills. That combined with the likely unfamiliar Indigenous American myths would put this beautiful narrative out of reach for many middle grade students. It definitely still has a tremendous amount of worth. I would recommend this book for advanced middle grade readers as well as any interested young adult or adult readers.
Kwame Alexander never misses. In this book, he teams up with a co-author and a stellar illustrator to create a heartwarming story about three kids, who brainstorm-hence the name of the series-away for one of the kids to earn enough money for a new phone. That kids parents own a bookstore and have been struggling to make ends meet. The story soon turns to this character and his friends trying to come up with enough money to save the store after that character discovers either an eviction or an overdue bill having to do with the bookstore. I look forward to the other books to come in this series.
Unfortunately, I did this book a disservice by reading it with a significant gap between the second installment, and this final installment. I thought that I would remember enough of the story that reading any synopsis would not be necessary. Well, I did remember some of the events that happened in the previous two books, some of the context and realizations/connections that had been made in the previous two books I did not remember.
I struggled to figure out where everyone landed on the various “sides” as well as a few other things that, at the moment of writing the review, I cannot remember. I will not hold that against this book. I think this is a decent middle grade fantasy series and wish that the Rick Riorden presents imprint would start putting books out again.
This is an incredibly odd book. Most of the aspects of this book seemed tailored towards the specified mill grade audience. However, some of the events in the book, especially starting right at the beginning, are incredibly dark for a ported whimsical fairytale type book. Granted, the Grimm’s fairytales that I believe inspired the story were also quite grim in the original, I still would not read those fairytales in the original form to Middle
School students or recommend that they read them. The author also included a lot of subtle foreshadowing and implications of character development that would go right over the head of a lot of middle grade students who have not developed strong abstract, thinking skills. Unfortunately, I do not recommend this book.
While I do not understand how this book got that title, I really enjoyed my read of this book. I have had success with all three books that I have read from this author. The artwork in this graphic novel is absolutely stunning. I also really appreciated the exploration of the sibling/twin dynamic between the two main characters in this story who spend the summer at a highly selective camp for animation at a prestigious art school. These
characters have just finished their eighth grade year and have dreamed since they were quite young about becoming animators. Both have incredible talent for art, but their personalities and how they plan to use their art begin to differ. I do wish, however, that the blatant misogyny of one of the characters had been more directly called out because it absolutely infuriated me. I will definitely continue to read more from this author.
Lavell writes well. She engages the reader in the narrative, the story of her life. I found myself engaged the whole time yet at the end, I questioned the overall purpose of the memoir. This book is incredibly short for a memoir, especially one that covers as much time as this one does and deals with significant issues like chronic, invisible illness and abusive romantic relationships. Lavell leaves a lot out of this narrative which forces the reader to fill in the blanks with little information to do so. This is not a bad book; it’s just not one I would recommend.
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