Category Archives: By Age Range

Review: Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr

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Once Was Lost by Sara ZarrOnce Was Lost
Sara Zarr
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published on October 1, 2009

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About Once Was Lost
Samara Taylor used to believe in miracles. But her mother is in rehab, and her father seems more interested in his congregation than his family. And when a young girl in her small town is kidnapped, her already-worn thread of faith begins to unravel.

Samara Taylor used to believe in miracles. She used to believe in a lot of things. As a pastor’s kid, it’s hard not to buy in to the idea of the perfect family, a loving God, and amazing grace. But lately, Sam has a lot of reason to doubt. Her mother lands in rehab after a DUI and her father seems more interested in his congregation than his family. When a young girl in her small town is kidnapped, the local tragedy overlaps with Sam’s personal one, and the already-worn thread of faith holding her together begins to unravel.

In her third novel, acclaimed author Sara Zarr examines the coexistence of affliction and hope, and what happens when everything you thought you believed—about God, about your family, about yourself—is transformed.

My Review
Once Was Lost has been on my reading list for years. I kind of have no excuse for taking so long to get to it, because it’s not a long book, and it’s exactly the kind of story I love—someone in a difficult place desperately trying to do the right thing anyway. I loved that about Sam. She makes some choices that get her into trouble, but I never doubted that her heart was good and never wavered in wanting to know how her story ended.

Perhaps it’s a little unexpected to find a book in mainstream literature with such strong spiritual themes. I loved the way Zarr handled the descriptions of the small town and the church people. She made them real and gave them real problems without vilifying them. I also loved the way she let us into Sam’s struggles about her faith and her disappointment about what youth group was like. Sam expected this joyous, close-knit community, and instead, she felt distant from the other participants. That war between appearances and genuine connection totally resonated with me thinking back to my own youth group days. It felt so very right on.

All in all, I loved this book. I think it’s a great read for Christian kids who may be facing the same kinds of struggles Sam is but also for kids who don’t share Sam’s upbringing or faith. It’s a great window into what church life can be like with its ups and downs. And ultimately, this story is about self-discovery and personal growth and healing. You don’t need to have faith for those messages to matter. I highly recommend this one.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Major characters are white. The story takes place in a small California town.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
One instance of mild profanity.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief kissing between a boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
As pastor’s daughter, Sam and her family feel a lot of pressure to behave in certain ways. Sam feels like she can’t be honest about doubts she’s having, and when others have significant spiritual experiences, they expect her to be as thrilled about them as they are. Sam wrestles with her faith in a genuine, sensitive way. The church is depicted as a group of well-meaning, even if sometimes hurtful, people. While Sam’s faith isn’t the focal point of the story, her wrestling with doubts does have a meaningful resolution.

Violent Content
While Jody is missing, people speculate about what may have happened to her. The story doesn’t give any details about what goes on during her captivity, but it obviously traumatized her.

Drug Content
Sam’s mom spends much of the book in a rehab program for alcoholics. Sam remembers different events where her mom’s alcoholism interfered with family life or caused other problems. Sam knows her two best friends have gone out with other kids to have a beer at a party, but she’s never invited along, and they don’t tell her about it directly.

 

Review: Love and First Sight by Josh Sundquist

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , ,

Love and First Sight
Josh Sundquist
Little Brown Books for Young Readers
Published January 3rd, 2017

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About Love and First Sight

Love is more than meets the eye.

On his first day at a new school, blind sixteen-year-old Will Porter accidentally groped a girl on the stairs, sat on another student in the cafeteria, and somehow drove a classmate to tears. High school can only go up from here, right?

As Will starts to find his footing, he develops a crush on a sweet but shy girl named Cecily. And despite his fear that having a girlfriend will make him inherently dependent on someone sighted, the two of them grow closer and closer. Then an unprecedented opportunity arises: an experimental surgery that could give Will eyesight for the first time in his life. But learning to see is more difficult than Will ever imagined, and he soon discovers that the sighted world has been keeping secrets. It turns out Cecily doesn’t meet traditional definitions of beauty—in fact, everything he’d heard about her appearance was a lie engineered by their so-called friends to get the two of them together. Does it matter what Cecily looks like? No, not really. But then why does Will feel so betrayed?

My Review

Love and First Sight was a fast read for me. I loved getting to view the world through Will’s senses, and get a feeling for what it might be like to be blind from birth. It was amazing how the author described Will’s surroundings and how his day went without ever using sight vocabulary. And when Will eventually gains eyesight, it blew my mind to discover how much of sight we take for granted–for example, learning depth perception and perspective, or what colors are. It was such a unique perspective to read from, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Another aspect of the book I liked was how Will viewed concepts like racism, or beauty. When Will finally gets to see his African-American friend for the first time, he comments that “for all the attention race gets, for all the wars that have been fought over it, all the atrocities committed and hatred based on differences in skin tone over the centuries of human history, I would honestly have expected something…more. The contrast is obvious, yes, but the difference is marginal….What’s the fuss about?” He had similar views about beauty, commenting on how silly it is we base our idea of beauty on the changeable opinion of society.

All in all, I thought Love and First Sight was a great read. While I felt like it did lack a bit of character development, it tackled some issues that are especially relevant to YA readers, and carried them off beautifully. I’m rating this book 4 out of 5 stars (minus 1 for some inappropriate jokes), and recommending it to fans of Kasie West and Amy Clipston.


Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Cultural Elements
Most of the characters are described as white. Whitford is African-American. Cecily has a birthmark on her face that most consider to be disfiguring. Will is blind for the first part of the book.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
A character curses once, but the actual words are not given. Characters say “Oh my God!”

Romance/Sexual Content
One kiss, not described in depth. Jokes about homosexuality, and both male and female body parts. Some pictures the characters run across are described as being X-rated. Will accidentally gropes a girl. 

Spiritual Content
Brief joke about a chicken nugget resembling Jesus.

Violent Content
Will tries to defend someone by beating up a bully, but ends up hurting himself instead. Will breaks stuff and punches things in his bedroom in a fit of a despair.

Drug Content
Anesthesia and immunosuppressant drugs are used.

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Review: Here Lies Daniel Tate by Cristin Terrill

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , ,

Here Lies Daniel Tate
Cristin Terrill
Simon & Schuster
Published on June 6, 2017

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About Here Lies Daniel Tate
When ten-year-old Daniel Tate went missing from one of California’s most elite communities, he left no trace. He simply vanished.

Six years later, when he resurfaces on a snowy street in Vancouver, he’s no longer the same boy. His sandy hair is darker, the freckles are gone, and he’s initially too traumatized to speak, but he’s alive. His overjoyed family brings him home to a world of luxury and comfort he can barely remember. In time, they assure him, he’ll recover his memories; all that matters now is they’re together again.

It’s perfect. A miracle. Except for one thing.

He isn’t Daniel Tate.

He’s a petty con artist who accidentally stumbled into the scam of a lifetime, and he soon learns he’s not the only one in the Tate household with something to hide. The family has as many secrets as they have millions in the bank, and one of them might be ready to kill to keep the worst one buried.

My Review
The premise of this book pretty much hooked me before I even had a chance to read a word. I’d read another book a little bit like this, but not from the point-of-view of the kidnapping victim, so I was really interested to see a story told from inside that person’s mind, as Daniel’s is.

Daniel warns us right off the bat that he’s a liar, and yet I kept getting sucked into believing everything he said. I felt like the tug-of-war balance between those two ideas made this one of the most unique books I’ve ever read. I love unreliable narrators, but I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything where the narrator leads so point-blank with the fact that he’s a liar.

I liked the way the story messed with his emotions, too. In the beginning, he only wants to survive, but as he gets to know the family, he finds himself invested in relationships with them and even contemplating staying long-term and living as Daniel.

The end was strange. I won’t give it away, and I feel like considering the premise, I shouldn’t have been as surprised by it. I don’t know. I liked that it left a lot of questions unanswered—Daniel’s character seemed incapable of anything else—but it also confused me. Did the family ever get any kind of justice? It seemed like the party most responsible kind of got off without consequence.

On the whole, I’m really glad I read the book. I loved Terrill’s debut, All Our Yesterdays, and was really excited about another suspenseful story from her. I got a lot of what I hoped for, even if the ending wasn’t as satisfying as I wished for.

If you liked The Tension of Opposites by Kristina McBride or Lost and Found by Cat Clarke, you will want to grab a copy of Here Lies Daniel Tate.

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Cultural Elements
Daniel and his family are a white, upper class group. He meets and is attracted to an Asian girl at school named Ren. Daniel’s brother Nicholas is gay.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used frequently. I think because of the emotional intensity of some of the scenes, the swearing feels a little more prevalent than it actually is.

Romance/Sexual Content
A couple instances of kissing between a boy and girl. In one scene it’s unclear how far the romance progresses—it begins with kissing and jumps to later, when the couple is curled in bed watching a movie (apparently still clothed).

A couple scenes show Nicholas and his boyfriend briefly kiss on the mouth.

A reference to an incest relationship.

Spiritual Content
The closest instance is the fact that the protagonist, who poses as Daniel, sometimes feels guilty thinking about how the actual Daniel, who is likely dead, might feel about the imposter taking over his life.

Violent Content
Daniel learns that one member of his family has a violent past. He ends up in a violent altercation with one family member. Someone is shot, perhaps fatally.

Drug Content
Jessica Tate is an alcoholic who sometimes drives drunk. Lex drinks wine and has a history of addiction to pills. Ren tells Daniel about her cousin’s pot-smoking habit. He also hears rumors that Patrick used to sell pot at school.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

 

Review: The Prince Warriors by Priscilla Shirer with Gina Detwiler

Book Review and Content, Christian World-View, Clean Fiction, Middle Grade 8-12, , , , ,

The Prince Warriors (The Prince Warriors #1)
Priscilla Shirer with Gina Detwiler
Broadman & Holman Publishers
Published on April 27, 2016

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About The Prince Warriors
The battle is real.

As brothers, Xavier and Evan are used to battling each other. But now they’re discovering that there is a much bigger battle going on all around them. And it’s their turn to fight. Based on Ephesians 6:10–18, The Prince Warriors is the first book in Priscilla Shirer’s epic new series that brings to life the invisible struggle ensuing in the spiritual realm. Xavier, Evan, and their friends have typical lives until they enter a mysterious land called Ahoratos. There they meet their guide, Ruwach, who offers wisdom and direction as the kids’ initial adventure begins—an adventure filled with armor and danger and a very real enemy.

Written by New York Times Best-Selling author Priscilla Shirer, The Prince Warriors series was created for middle-grade readers and will include the fiction trilogy as well as Unseen: The 365 Prince Warriors Devotional and the Unseen app.

My Review
I liked the imaginative way the author used elements of the story to talk about spiritual warfare. I also thought it worked well to have a cast of four central characters on the quest. Brianna was my favorite, and her relationship with Levi might have been one of my favorite parts of the story.

The plot pacing was a little strange for me. The last part of this three-part book felt more like the beginning of a new quest rather than a conclusion to the story as a whole. That said, I liked the setup for future novels and the way that even though an adult becomes involved, the kids have to solve their own problems through the course of the story.

The Prince Warriors will probably appeal most to younger middle grade readers who enjoy doorway to fantasy type books. Fans of Jaimie Engle’s Clifton Chase and the Arrow of Light will probably enjoy this series.

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.

Cultural Elements
No racial details given in the story.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
When characters step into the world of Ahoratos, they put on armor which has some magical abilities as well as protects them from enemies. They encounter evil creatures (metal monsters and poisonous butterflies for example) and fight them using the wisdom from Ruwach and their armor.

Ruwach shares some scriptures with them as wisdom for battle. The scriptures aren’t identified by biblical reference, but some will be recognizable. The kids learn Ahoratos has been created by the Source (which seems to be a reference to God) and they must fight an enemy who opposes them and will try to capture them.

These elements create a parallel for Christian spiritual warfare without direct explanation or reference to the bible.

Violent Content
Battle scenes contain no gore or fatalities.

Drug Content
None.

 

Review: Elsie Mae Has Something to Say by Nancy Cavanaugh

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Christian World-View, Clean Fiction, Coming of Age, Historical, Middle Grade 8-12, , , , , ,

Elsie Mae Has Something to Say
Nancy Cavanaugh
Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Published on September 5, 2017

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About Elsie Mae Has Something to Say

Elsie Mae is determined to save her beloved Okefenokee Swamp, but is she willing to accept the unexpected?

Elsie Mae has long treasured summers with her grandparents in the Okefenokee Swamp, so she is devastated to hear that a shipping company plans to build a canal right through it. What will that mean for the people and animals that call the swamp home?

So she writes a letter directly to President Franklin Roosevelt himself and sets off to enjoy what may be her last happy summer there with her new dog, Huck. But when she arrives, she discovers a team of hog bandits who have been stealing from the swamper families.

When her cousin Henry James, who dreams of one day becoming a traveling preacher like his daddy, shows up, Elsie doesn’t think things could get worse. But she devises a plan to use Henry and his “Hallelujahs” to help stop the thieves—and maybe just make enough noise to gain Roosevelt’s attention…

My Review

This might be my new favorite book.

Okay, so favorite book is more of an entire bookshelf than, like, one title, but seriously. Elsie Mae Has Something to Say blew me away.

I immediately fell in love with the earthy swamp folk and the relationship they have with the Okefenokee Swamp. Elsie’s the kind of character who takes you along with her, sharing her big vision for catching the hog thieves and saving the swamp. I loved watching the development of her relationship with other characters, especially Henry James. At first, she resents him taking up space in her summer, but she comes to value him as a friend and confidant. It reminded me a lot of the kind of relationship Scout and Dell had in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

The Deep South setting comes through the page so rich and vibrantly you’d almost feel like you can hear the buzz of mosquitos and the slosh of the water. Every dinner scene made me crave good southern food and long for the combination of sweet tea on a hot afternoon.

If you like southern fiction, you seriously need to put this book on your list. There’s definitely a strong Christian theme running through the book, but it’s much more the way PEACE LIKE A RIVER has that sense of spiritualism but without any preachiness. It felt very genuine and personal to the characters.

Fans of THREE TIMES LUCKY by Sheila Turnage or A SNICKER OF MAGIC by Natalie Lloyd need to get a copy of this book quick. It’s technically a middle grade book, but just like THREE TIMES LUCKY, I think it has huge crossover appeal to other age groups. Check it out and let me know how much you like it!

Recommended for Ages 8 up.

Cultural Elements
Major characters are all southern white people—down to earth swamp folk.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Elsie mentions that the men arrested for stealing hogs swear so much she even hears a word she’d never heard before. She doesn’t specify further.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
Henry James, the son of a preacher comes to stay with Elsie’s grandparents. He quotes bible verses and prays. Elsie even agrees to let him baptize her “for practice”.

At one point Henry cautions Elsie that pride comes before a fall. At first, she refuses to give up her pride or agree that it may get her into trouble. She learns, though, through some painful experiences, that Henry is right and pride only causes harm to Elsie and her plans.

Violent Content
Elsie worries about gators in the water possibly attacking her when she and Henry get out of the boat in the middle of the swamp. At one point, two unidentified men fire a gun in Elsie and Henry’s direction.

Drug Content
The sheriff arrests men (strangers to Elsie) for running moonshine. Two men (strangers to Elsie) get drunk and have to sleep it off.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Review: The Time Machine by H. G. Wells Graphic Novel Adaptation by Terry Davis

Book Review and Content, Clean Fiction, Fantasy, Middle Grade 8-12, , , , , ,

The Time Machine (Graphic Novel Retelling)
Retold by Terry Davis
Illustrated by José Alfonso Ocampo Ruiz
Stone Arch Books
Published on September 1, 2007

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About the Original Story, The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
So begins the Time Traveller’s astonishing firsthand account of his journey 800,000 years beyond his own era—and the story that launched H.G. Wells’s successful career and earned him his reputation as the father of science fiction. With a speculative leap that still fires the imagination, Wells sends his brave explorer to face a future burdened with our greatest hopes…and our darkest fears. A pull of the Time Machine’s lever propels him to the age of a slowly dying Earth.

There he discovers two bizarre races—the ethereal Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks—who not only symbolize the duality of human nature, but offer a terrifying portrait of the men of tomorrow as well.  Published in 1895, this masterpiece of invention captivated readers on the threshold of a new century. Thanks to Wells’s expert storytelling and provocative insight, The Time Machine will continue to enthrall readers for generations to come.

My Review of The Time Machine Graphic Novel Adaptation
I should first confess that I read the graphic novel adaptation before actually going back and reading the original version of the story. I’m not sure if that colors my review or not, but that’s the way it happened.

The classic version of course is a lot meatier than the graphic novel version. I definitely think younger or reluctant readers would prefer the graphic novel for its simplicity and streamlined storytelling. I was impressed by how much of the tale is conveyed through the illustrations themselves—they really capture a sense of action and intensity far beyond what I expected from still images, if that makes sense.

The graphic novel version definitely loses a lot of the nuance and complexity of the original story. A lot of the inner workings of the Time Traveler’s thoughts simply don’t appear in the graphic novel version, which I feel like is a significant loss, since that’s what gave the story so much depth. The graphic novel also glosses over what happens to the character Weena, which I found sad. It’s also worth noting that the illustrations show the Eloi as darker skinned people. The original describes them as pale and fair. (Not a bad thing, just a difference I noticed.)

Younger readers looking to explore the science fiction genre may find this to be a perfect entry point as the story is accessible and action-packed, though spare in its telling.

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12 for the graphic novel version. The original story is better suited to readers 12 and up.

Cultural Elements
The original story describes all characters as white. The graphic novel depicts the Eloi as darker-skinned people.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
In the original story, the Time Traveler has to fight through many enemies who try to paw at him and capture him. He kills some and wounds others, though the descriptions are brief.

In both stories, he learns of a group that eats humans.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

 

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