Convinced an experimental surgery will solve her problems, Tina drags her sister on a wild journey from Nova Scotia to Boston. Along the way, Tina finds a gem of a boxer and convinces him to let her operate as his manager. Though skeptical at first, Jesse Mankiller begins to respect Tina’s unorthodox style. Together they hope to prove they have what it takes to win the big fight.
Like its protagonist, Tina MacKenzie, this is definitely one of those books that you might overlook at first. But while the cover won’t reach out and grab you, the story certainly will. Whip-quick narrative and dynamic characters make this novel a one-sitting read and one of the best I’ve read this year. It’s not often that an author assembles the perfect mixture of heroism and flaw in her characters, but Stellings really does it this time. It’s absolutely fabulous. Sports fans will love the journey of an unknown fighter going for a major title and readers looking for a heartwarming tale will fall in love with Tina’s sharp mouth and soft heart. It’s a beautiful story.
Profanity and Crude Language Content
Mild profanity, moderate frequency.
Sexual Content References to sexual behavior, but no details. Brief nudity.
Spiritual Content None.
Violence Descriptions of boxing matches. Limited details about injuries, etc. A character is threatened at gunpoint by mafia thugs.
Drug Content
None.
Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Update – 1/15/15 The Manager by Caroline Stellings has just been honored with the 2015 Hamilton Literary Award for fiction. The novel is also a finalist for the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction at the 2014 TD Canadian Children’s Literature Awards.
Rose finds comfort in two things: homonyms and her dog Rain. When a fierce storm rips through her sleepy northern town, her dog disappears. Rose enacts a plan to find her missing companion, but along the way she learns about empathy for others in her community who’ve lost homes and family in the hurricane.
It’s difficult not to compare this novel with others with a similar narrator. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime particularly came to mind. Martin’s tale is a lot more kid friendly. The plot is simpler but its characters remain complex and layered.
Through the endearing behavior of her protagonist, Martin encourages readers to develop empathy and explore a way of thinking which may be foreign to many of us. We begin to experience Rose simply as a girl who loves a dog. We see past her diagnosis into her heart, and this is the greatest triumph an author can hope to impart to her readers. This is a great story for middle or upper elementary-aged students.
Profanity and Crude Language Content
Just a couple instances of mild profanity from Rose’s father.
Sexual Content None.
Spiritual Content None.
Violence None.
Drug Content
Rose’s father regularly comes home drunk. She finds it best to leave him alone when he’s in this condition, but still sometimes he says unkind things to her.
Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Teen adventurer Kitty Hawk’s dreams come true when she receives funding which allows her a chance to study the behavior and habits of humpback whales in waters off the coast of Alaska. Aboard her trusty De Havilland Beaver, Kitty observes and documents information about the whales from the air. The altitude gives her more than a bird’s eye view of the whales, though. When she spots a suspicious boat she fears may be carrying stolen Yukon gold, she stops to investigate – and gets swept away in a conspiracy stretching all the way back to the gold rush itself.
The story begins a bit slowly – Kitty’s whale-watching venture, while fascinating, doesn’t translate to text with a lot of power and excitement. The early chapters are peppered with flashbacks, which also slowed the story and muddled the timeline. Once Kitty becomes involved in the gold theft scheme, the author’s ability to lace history and fact in with the story becomes a lot more engrossing. As Kitty traverses the territory so long ago walked by hopeful miners, she learns a bit of the area’s history from an unlikely source.
The timing during which I read this book couldn’t have been more perfect. I read the last page aboard a cruise ship sailing the inner passage on my way to Juneau. Like Kitty, I saw humpback whales (from a boat rather than plane, though) and later had the pleasure of taking a train up through White Pass. I enjoyed having some background and a little bit of fantasy about the area on my visit. Young readers interested in Alaska and the history of the gold rush would enjoy the balance of history and fiction in the story.
Profanity and Crude Language Content
Mild profanity throughout, moderate frequency.
Sexual Content None.
Spiritual Content None.
Violence A man threatens others at gun point. No shots are fired.
Drug Content
Men drink beer around a campfire.
Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Popular and notorious Margo Roth Spiegelman shocks Quinten out of his low-key, rule-abiding existence when she drags him along with her on a night of pranks and misadventures. When Margo disappears the following morning, Quinten believes she left clues to her whereabouts behind, hoping he will find her. As he searches for clues, he realizes there’s much more to Margo than the queen bee people perceive her to be. Through the Whitman poem she leaves behind and the abandoned hideaway Quinten discovers, he learns about seeing past the faux exterior to knowing someone as they are and the importance of building a genuine interconnected community.
Quinten and his pals Ben and Radar team up to unlock the mystery of Margo’s disappearance. Radar’s parents’ odd collection provides that quirky humor classic to Green’s novels, though Ben’s constant trilling about girls becomes repetitive and obnoxious. The transformation of Quinten’s view of Margo is a bit predictable, though it’s deepened by the exploration of “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman and the story’s metaphor centered around “paper towns,” a reference first made by Margo herself.
As a native Central-Floridian, many moments in the story’s setting really resonated, calling to mind specific memories of drives down Florida’s roads and highways. It was fun reading something set in places so familiar.
While this was a fascinating story, it’s hard to compare it to Green’s other novels. The Fault in Our Stars in particular is a tough act to beat. Readers may enjoy this one more by reading it before devouring TFIOS.
Profanity and Crude Language Content
Extreme word choice, moderate frequency.
Sexual Content Quinten’s best friend is pretty much obsessed with girls, whom he refers to as Honey Bunnies. While he has limited success, his comments can be crass and repetitive. Quinten looks through an open doorway at a couple having sex, hoping for a glimpse of the girl topless. One of Quinten’s friends plans to lose his virginity with his girlfriend on graduation night.
Spiritual Content Margo briefly mentions her Jewish heritage.
Violence A bully picks on Quinten and his friends.
Drug Content
Quinten goes to a party as the designated driver and witnesses his friends and other teens drinking alcohol and being generally and ridiculously drunk.
Chirp begins fifth grade looking forward to another year of beloved family traditions: dancing with her mother, bird-watching hikes, and impromptu performances with her older sister Rachel. But something is different in the Orenstein house. Rachel hushes Chirp when she asks questions or wants to show her mother some new dance steps. Chirp can’t understand how these things could make her mother sad like Rachel says.
Then comes her mother’s devastating diagnosis. There will be no more dancing. As her mother’s health deteriorates, Chirp’s family unravels. Even her father’s ever-positive, talk-about-it outlook can make this okay. Nothing will be okay again.
Chirp struggles to understand the new roles her family members adopt in the crisis and to interpret the behavior of the temperamental boy who lives in her neighborhood. This is a story about grief, about the way life doesn’t stay the same, but morphs into something new when we least expect it.
Each wonderful character brings a story of his or her own, and though the reader is limited to Chirp’s version of events, it’s easy to imagine the tales that fill the space between each line. As a young bird-watcher, Chirp often relates her experiences and emotions through the birds around her. Nest is filled with a rich emotional landscape, one that transcends words, just as its narrator’s emotions would lie beyond the capacity of an eleven year-old child to explain. It’s brilliantly done. Truly a great story.
Profanity and CrudeLanguage Content
One brief instance of mild profanity.
Sexual Content A couple very oblique, brief references to sex. (A girl worries that someone might think she’s a “lezzie;” school children ask their teacher if she’s going to teach them sex education.)
Spiritual Content Chirp’s family celebrates her Jewish heritage and does not observe Christian holidays. Sometimes other kids make fun of her family for this. One girl comments to Chirp that even if her family doesn’t ask Jesus into their hearts, surely God will still let them into heaven.
Violence A boy bears a bruise on his face following an unexplained home situation.
Drug Content
Chirp goes with her sister to a party at which the adults smoke marijuana. She is frightened and goes home.
Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Palmer, Hannah, Claire and Kat begin the spring semester ready for any challenge. Kinda. Palmer wants to be among the elite writers of the university magazine, but she can’t seem to break into the group. That is, without a glass of Moscato in her hand. After years of being the supportive best friend to the girl who could have any guy, Hannah finally has a boyfriend of her own. When a chance to see Germany with her guy arises, Hannah really wants to go, even if it means missing the spring break beach trip with her roomies. Surely Palmer, of all people, will understand?
Claire and Kat almost have their own secret code. After the trauma Claire endured in France and Kat’s unexpected loss, they seem to sense the things that trigger the other’s grief. Counseling has helped Claire make progress toward healing, but when her mom flakes out and forgets to pay for, well, everything, Claire is stuck. Trying to break through her mom’s hyper haze isn’t working and though Palmer offers to pay for everything, Claire doesn’t want to be a charity project.
Running is the only salve to Kat’s wounds. Everything seems to remind her of her brother, but he’s gone. With pressure to perform on the soccer team building around her, Kat’s only escape is to work out until she’s too tired to feel anything. More and more, though, she finds herself alienated from those she loves most.
Smith really captures the beat of college living and the relationships between the girls and other students on campus. Hannah’s first-boyfriend experience will resonate with many as will her battle for balance in her relationships with her new love and her old friends. Palmer’s personal drive and her vulnerability to alcohol are well-explored without glorifying what she’s doing. Consequences follow her choices to drink.
Claire’s story offers a whole different perspective. As the functional one in her relationship with her mother, Claire struggles to maintain a healthy distance from her mother’s unhealthy behavior, something she’s never managed to do in the past. Her friends rally around her as a supportive community and a great message of hope.
Smith has been hailed as a brave voice, telling it like it is, and fearlessly digging through some of early adulthood’s tough issues. In the third novel in her Status Updates series, she lives up to that reputation, peeling back layers of denial and revealing hurting hearts and soothing them with the balm of hope in God.
Profanity and Crude Language Content
No profanity.
Sexual Content Brief references to making out. A boy spends the night in one of the girls’ rooms, though she insists they simply fell asleep talking.
Spiritual Content Through their experiences with addictive behaviors, the girls realize they need more than personal strength and determination to achieve their goals, whether social or academic. They realize their needs for mutual support they receive from one another and, even more, spiritual support from faith and relationship with God.
Violence None.
Drug Content
Palmer uses wine to loosen up socially. Her friends notice what she does not: that more and more she turns to alcohol to relax and connect with others, and it’s getting out of hand. Claire battles her mother’s neglect from a distance, worrying when her mother’s behavior indicates she may be using (or overusing) some sort of pharmaceutical stimulants.
Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
