Book Review + Book Giveaway: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances by John Green, Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle

Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances is exactly what I needed this week. It's rough, sometimes, reading all sorts of great but disturbing young adult lit and teaching students who often have disturbing things happening in their lives. Sometimes, I need a break. This book was it.

There are very few books that have caused me to laugh out loud. That said, ALL of John Green's books have made me at least chuckle, if not completely bust out and get a little red in the face. Green's novella, "A Cheertastic Christmas Miracle" definitely had me grinning, chuckling, reading parts aloud to my husband, had a couple near-tearworthy moments. He is just so very cool. Love him. I'd read anything that he wrote. He's impossibly talented and witty and just plain good with things like character and plot and dialogue.

The other two stories are good, too. The first, by Maureen Johnson, really started the story in a great, catastrophic way. It's about a Christmas Eve night in a Southern town. Unfortunately for all of the busy travelers and all of the characters in this book, a freakishly huge snowstorm causes major upheaval. Thus begins a wild night of chance meetings, break-ups, confessions, parents getting arrested while Christmas shopping, cheerleaders practicing splits in waffle houses, the antics of a man covered in tinfoil, and lots and lots of other anomalies.

All of three of the stories are interconnected, but each sounds like the author who wrote it. I definitely loved John Green's the most, but the others were good, too. It was lighthearted and silly and warm and full of hope. Kinda how Christmas Eve should be.

I am giving away my (used) copy of this book to one lucky commenter from the US. This giveaway will close on December 14th. If you're interested in winning this book, please leave a comment stating what you love best about winter. Because I love winter and can't wait for lots of snow to come!

Extra Entries

+1 Follower (indicate your followership in your one comment)

**Read as part of the Holiday Reading Challenge from All About {n}**

Book Review: Blood Roses by Francesca Lia Block

I don't know if you've ever read a book by Francesca Lia Block. This is my third. Always, I am left with conflicting emotions after reading one of Block's books. First, I am disturbed. For real. Her writing is the creepiest, bloodiest, grossest that I've ever read. It's like her words are fermenting on the page.

But, it's also lyrical. And beautiful. And passion-filled.

And her stories are always bizarre. Blood Roses is a collection of stories that includes:

• A girl who is so obsessed with an older tattoo artist boy that she starts to grow designs all over her body
• Sisters who escape a pair of sick child predators
• A vampire-like, youth-obsessed mother who feeds on her daughter
• A girl who finds and nurses back to health a boy who's cut off his fairy wings
• A boy who decides to follow his changeling girlfriend into the otherworld because he can't deal with the pain in his world
• A girl who keeps growing and growing and growing
• A girl whose dollhouse was inhabited by Death
• A horse-loving girl who falls for a Centaur/ gang member

Some of the stories are bizarre. Others are less weird and have more of a message to them. Most include scenes or language that makes me hesitate in recommending this book to a teen under the age of 16 or 17. But, there are pieces that are good for all teen girls.  I particularly loved the story of the girl who was "too much". She is the one who could not stop growing. The story leaves off with this quotation:

"What shall we do, all of us? All of us passionate girls who fear crushing the boys we love with our mouths like caverns of teeth, our mushrooming brains, our watermelon hearts?" 

Beautiful.  

Book Review: Free? Stories About Human Rights from Amnesty International

Whenever I go into Barnes and Noble, or some other such bigger bookstore, I make sure to pick up at least one guilty pleasure book and one book that absolves me of guilt altogether. On my last trip to B & N, this book is the one that I just knew would take away any of the guilty pleasures I had enjoyed that day.

It's been awhile since I've done anything to promote awareness about social causes (outside of lessons I teach in the classroom), and it feels good to think about organizations like Amnesty International again. Aside from being a great inspiration, this collection of shorts stories and poetry was a great read. I am not a huge fan of short stories (hence my stalled attempt at finishing Pretty Monsters, which has been collecting dust on my bedside table for months).  But this is more than a group of tales pieced together: It is the story of universal human rights.

In fact, each of the stories in this collection is paired with an actual Article from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There are thirty such articles expressed in this document, but there are millions of people who have lived their lives without enjoying the simple freedoms that this document seeks to protect. 

Here are synopses of my favorite stories/ poems from this collection with the Article from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the story illustrates:

"Klaus Vogel and the Bad Lads" by David Almond: A group of neighborhood boys are bullied into discriminatory acts by the leader of their "gang". It takes a new boy, who has survived unspeakable trauma, to show the boys that peace and truth takes more patience and courage than violence and lies.

Article 1: We are born free and equal. We all have our own thoughts and ideas. We should all be treated in the same way.

"School Slave" by Theresa Brelsin: A young boy named Ryan, always in trouble at school, finds a mysterious message written on a piece of trash on his way home from school. In an act of extreme courage and daring, Ryan finds an illegal sweatshop, where a group of young children have been locked in. This is a thoughtful story that exposes a violent underground movement that uses children as slaves.

Article 4: Nobody has any right to make us a slave. We cannot make anyone else our slave.

"After the Hurricane" by Rita Williams-Garcia: This short story is written in verse. It is about the hours and days directly after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. In this story, a group of boys searches the city for clean drinking water to bring to their families. They find themselves blockaded and kept from the water trucks. Guns are trained on them and police actually open fire when the boys attempt to walk toward the water truck. Incredibly powerful, especially given the brevity and cadence of the lines in this poem.

Article 13: We all have the right to go where we want to in our own country and to travel abroad as we wish.

And this is just the beginning. There are so many more moving stories in this collection. I did not absolutely love every one of the fourteen stories in this book, but I felt an overwhelming sense of purpose when reading it. I think that I need to share these stories and the issues that are raised in this collection with my students in the fall. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in civil and human rights.

Book Review: The Eternal Smile

I finished The Eternal Smile: Three Stories by Gene Luen Yang, Derek Kirk Kim in one sitting, but I have required an extra few days to think about these seemingly simple and straightforward stories before writing this review. Though they seem innocent enough, these stories are filled with meaning and, in my case at least, are not easily forgotten.

Some may poo-poo graphic novels as inflated comic books, but I beg to differ. I think that the combination of language and artistry can reach a whole new level of meaning and significance than can a traditional prose novel. For instance, some of the most powerful panels in this book are ones with no words whatsoever. And, conversely, words become so important in a graphic novel because there are so few of them. There is not room for a lengthy descriptive paragraph, and the reader shouldn't be able to skim. It is like a great haiku in this sense. Everything matters. Nothing is extra.

I found The Eternal Smile to be a blend of great writing, excellent artistry, and dynamic storyline. As the title promises, there are three short stories contained in this book. Each story has its own message or commentary on society. I will not talk about all of them at length, because they are short and I don't want to give too much away.

What I will say is that each of the stories is completely different from the others. Each could stand alone and is important in its own right. My favorite of the three is the last. I could see it being turned into a movie.

I think that boys in particular gravitate toward this genre of writing, but there are several amazing graphic novels that are written for the ladies. This one, in my opinion, is a fairly gender-neutral collection. I've already passed it on to a male student. He read it in one sitting and had a different favorite story than I did. He said that he felt that the story would stay with him for a while. This is a good sign!