Tag Archives: filmmaking

Review: Whale Eyes by James Robinson

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Whale Eyes by James Robinson

Whale Eyes: A Memoir About Seeing and Being Seen
James Robinson
Illustrated by Brian Rea
Penguin Workshop
Published March 18, 2025

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Whale Eyes: A Memoir About Seeing and Being Seen

From Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker James Robinson comes a breathtaking illustrated memoir for middle-grade readers (and adults, too) inspired by the viral, Emmy-nominated short film Whale Eyes.

Told through an experimental mix of intimate anecdotes and interactive visuals, this book immerses readers in James’s point of view, allowing them to see the world through his disabling eye conditions.

Readers will get lost as they chase words. They’ll stare into this book while taking a vision test. They’ll hold it upside down as they practice “pretend-reading”…and they’ll follow an unlikely trail toward discovering the power of words.

With poignant illustrations by Eisner Award-nominated artist Brian Rea, James’s story equips readers of all ages with the tools to confront their discomfort with disability and turn confused, blank stares into powerful connections.

My Review

I loved this book. It’s kind of written in two parts. The first part is really accessible to kids, packed with a lot of illustrations and examples of how James Robinson sees the world. Some of the illustrations show words written upside down or at different angles. One page includes an eye test that readers can perform by folding the page a certain way.

The second half of the book is a little more dense and is where Robinson talks more deeply about his journey with documentary filmmaking. It describes how he began filming about a passion project and then, in college, made a twenty-four-minute video about his visual disability, strabismus. That project led him to collaborate with the New York Times to make a series of videos about different people’s experiences living with disabilities.

Even though this part of the book will appeal more to older readers, I think Robinson relates important reflections about his childhood, what he’s realized about disability, and what he wishes adults had told him about it when he was younger. The writing throughout the book is smart and appealing.

Documentaries Mentioned in the Book

Here are some links and brief descriptions of video documentaries that James Robinson made and released as NYT Opinion pieces. All three are mentioned in the book. These are YouTube links, so they are available to watch for free. I watched all three. They are thoughtful and deeply engaging. I spent the afternoon after I watched them sending the links to friends and family members.

I Have a Visual Disability, And I Want You to Look Me In the Eye NYT Opinion Piece: This is a twelve-minute documentary about James and how he sees the world and how we see him. He writes about filming this video in the book.

I Have Face Blindness. This is How I Recognize You. NYT Opinion Piece: This documentary, also produced by James Robinson, introduces viewers to a man named Paul who has prosopagnosia, or face blindness.

I Stutter. But I Need You to Listen. NYT Opinion Piece: Another documentary produced by Robinson about writer John Hendrickson.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 10 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
References to thoughtless and hurtful comments made by kids or adults about James’s eyes.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Review: Night and Dana by Anya Davidson

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Graphic Novel or Adaptation, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , ,

Night and Dana
Anya Davidson
Graphic Universe
Published September 12, 2023

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Night and Dana

A creative coming-of-age story for the climate-change generation
Dana Drucker fights boredom in her Florida beach town by crafting special-effects makeup―the more gruesome, the better. But when a messy prank with Dana’s best friend Lily gets the wrong kind of attention, the girls have two find a new creative outlet or leave high school without graduating.

To save their shot at diplomas, Dana and Lily join a community college film class. It gives Dana a chance to keep practicing her monster makeup, as she and Lily start work on a horror movie inspired by local ocean warming. And a search for filming locations puts Dana in the path of Daphne Ocean, an activist and self-proclaimed water witch―the perfect kind of inspiring outsider. But when filming starts, Dana finds herself growing apart from Lily, who doesn’t seem to need her closest friend much anymore.

Soon, tempers are flaring, and Dana’s pushing away old friends and her new mentor. But as everything starts going up in flames, Dana also begins to forge her voice. Night and Dana is a creative coming-of-age story for the climate-change era, a graphic novel about making art and growing up when it feels like the world is on fire.

My Review

One of the things I like about this graphic novel is how the story blends Dana’s monster makeup and climate change activism. At first, I wasn’t sure how those two themes would dovetail together, but as the story unfolds, merging those two ideas makes so much sense. I loved how that happened.

I also like the pacing of the story. Some scenes show things happening in real-time. Others feel more like diary entries, with maybe one illustration for reference and a longer block of text describing what happens between scenes. This helped highlight the important moments while briefly showing transitions between them.

The one thing that did not work for me was the illustrations of Dana’s little brother. I don’t know if it’s the art style or the proportions of the illustrations themselves, but he didn’t look like a little kid, so that made some of the scenes kind of weird.

Other than that, I enjoyed reading the book. It’s probably not something I would have been drawn to if I saw it on the shelf, but I am glad I read it.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Representation
Some characters are queer.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used very infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Dana’s best friend begins dating a nonbinary person. A boy and girl kiss. A couple of panels show Dana in her bra. References to sex.

Spiritual Content
One character calls herself a witch and shows Dana a ritual in which she wishes for something (positive) to happen.

Violent Content
Dana and her best friend stage a car accident with makeup to look like a serious eye injury. Protestors stage a “die in” and are arrested. Later, a group of protestors disrupts a parade. References to police using force against unarmed protestors. Red tide leaves fish and other sea creatures dead on the beach.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Review: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

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

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Jesse Andrews
Amulet Books
Published March 1, 2012

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About Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

The New York Times bestselling novel that inspired the hit film!

This is the funniest book you’ll ever read about death.

It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. But on the first day of his senior year, Greg Gaines thinks he’s figured it out. The answer to the basic existential How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad? His strategy: remain at the periphery at all times. Keep an insanely low profile. Make mediocre films with the one person who is even sort of his friend, Earl.

This plan works for exactly eight hours. Then Greg’s mom forces him to become friends with a girl who has cancer. This brings about the destruction of Greg’s entire life.

Fiercely funny, honest, heart-breaking—this is an unforgettable novel from a bright talent, now also a film that critics are calling “a touchstone for its generation” and “an instant classic.”

My Review

The opening chapters of the book were a little hard for me to read. The main character’s harsh judgments of other students, which lean heavily on stereotypes, are kind of off-putting.

As he tells the story, his unspoken grief is palpable, which drew me into the book. It helped me see some of the hurtful comments as a defense or distraction from the hurt this kid was feeling.

At some level, it’s clear to me reading the book that the author uses at least some of those statements on purpose to help readers understand the immaturity and inexperience of the main character. He’s not a great guy; even he will tell you this. (Especially if you try to say something nice about him.) He didn’t even begin either of his friendships for benevolent reasons.

But he cares how people feel and wants desperately to connect with them. He’s the epitome of an awkward teenage boy. Reading this book instantly transported me back to some of the experiences I had with boys in high school.

The story doesn’t romanticize cancer. It doesn’t even romanticize being a teenager. It scrapes away any tendency toward glorifying a teenager’s experience and looks at a simple, reluctant friendship between awkward kids who aren’t amazing at anything.

In fact, the book doesn’t even center the story of the girl with cancer. She’s not even named in the title. While I wish that the story made more space for Rachel’s experience, the narrative does wrestle with that loss. Greg realizes at one point that he barely knows anything about Rachel and that so much of his time has been spent thinking about himself and his own feelings rather than centering hers.

The story does fall prey to using a girl’s death as a vehicle through which the main character learns. It’s true. I wonder how the story would have been different if the author reversed the roles of Earl and Rachel so that Greg and Rachel made movies together and then befriended Earl after a cancer diagnosis. We’ll never know, as that’s a completely different story.

Misogyny in Young Adult Literature

One of the things I find really hard to read is literature in which boys objectify and dehumanize girls. I grew up in a purity culture world that normalized that kind of behavior, effectively considering girls temptresses and objects of lust. So, reading about boys talking that way can get under my skin really fast.

I don’t want us to treat it as an acceptable part of the teen experience. Girls don’t deserve that.

One of the powerful moments in the story comes from a moment in which Earl, Greg’s best friend, confronts him about the way he treats Rachel and the other people around him. He tells Greg to stop obsessing over people who don’t care about him and start thinking about the people who do. It’s a hard-hitting scene that, in at least some way, addresses Greg’s behavior and challenges him to be a better person. I really appreciated that scene and love that this push forward came from another guy his age.

One of the Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2023

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was one of the top ten most challenged books of 2023. Among the reasons I saw cited for the challenges and book bans were that it contains profanity and some misogynistic commentary. Some have described it as “pornographic,” which is, frankly, hilarious since there is no nudity or sexual contact throughout the book. There is, admittedly, one very cringy scene in which the characters make jokes about oral sex. I can’t see how that meets the definition of pornography.

There is a lot of profanity in the book. It’s true. There’s a lot of profanity in a lot of young adult literature in general. While I have some personal feelings about this, I don’t think that a few parents get to decide what everyone else’s kids should be allowed to read. I think the author makes a great point in an article for Deadline that kids who haven’t found books that resonate with them may find that a book in which the characters talk the way they talk might help them connect to literature.

Conclusion

If you made it this far, you can tell I’ve got a lot of thoughts and feelings about this book. I liked it more than I expected, despite its flaws. It presents a powerful story of friendship and how human connection, no matter how mundane, makes a difference in our lives.

It’s weird that this book is among the top ten most challenged books of 2023. I can’t imagine that anyone who regularly reads young adult literature would consider the content of this book vastly different from that of many other books on the shelves for teenagers.

Content Notes for Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Representation
Greg and Rachel are Jewish. Earl is Black.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Lots of profanity. Some crude language.

Romance/Sexual Content
References to sex. Some explicit statements about sex. No sexual contact on scene.

Spiritual Content
Greg references attending Hebrew School with Rachel.

Violent Content
Greg and Earl repeatedly watch a violent movie, but the book doesn’t describe it in any detail. Greg makes some objectifying/misogynistic comments about girls. They’re usually brief. Greg makes some comments using racist stereotypes about other kids at his school. He and another boy make a racist comment about the contents of ethnic food.

Drug Content
Earl smokes cigarettes and is rumored to have used hard drugs before the story began. Greg and Earl accidentally get high when they eat some food they don’t realize has marijuana in it.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. All opinions are my own.

Review: Shooting for Stars by Christine Webb

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

Shooting for Stars
Christine Webb
Peachtree Teen
Published May 21, 2024

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Shooting for Stars

A charming romantic dramedy from the author of The Art of Insanity

High schooler Skyler Davidson spends most of her time with her pet rat, Five. The daughter of scientists, she’s determined to finish her late mother’s research on neutron stars. So she teams up with aspiring videographer, Cooper, to film a submission for a NASA internship—all while keeping it a secret from her dad, who doesn’t expect any trouble from his obviously college-bound daughter.

As Skyler and Cooper grow closer, it turns out that Skyler’s dad has a new love interest as a hot makeup influencer who likes to put her nose where it doesn’t belong. She’ll keep hush on Skyler’s NASA plans, if Skyler agrees to get to know her. Now Skyler’s tangled up in a budding romance, an unexpected friendship, and the stress of having to retake her SATs.

Will Skyler’s dream of stars collapse and explode, or can dad and daughter reconcile and change their trajectory?

My Review

Skylar is one of those characters who has a really niche interest that informs how she thinks about a lot of things. In this case, it’s her interest in chemistry. When she meets someone, she evaluates what element they are based on personality traits and the qualities of the element. For example, the boy she’s attracted to is gold because it’s malleable, and he goes with the flow. Also, it’s quite an attractive element.

At the beginning of the book, Skylar has a pet rat named Five which she tries to think of as a lab rat, but which we know she has deep affection for. I love the relationship between them, and the way the author describes Five doing different things is so cute and engaging. I had such a great time reading the scenes with the two of them.

Skylar and Cooper’s relationship is also amazing. While he’s much more easygoing than she is, they don’t have a “boy teaches sheltered girl about relationships” kind of experience, which I very much appreciated. It felt like a more balanced connection, where she has some big blind spots, but he does, too. They challenge one another sometimes, but at other times, they just interact as they are. It felt natural and realistic.

Skylar also has an unexpected friendship with Cooper’s sister and her dad’s new girlfriend, Charli. I liked the way both of those relationships impacted the story. Neither was perfect, but both are meaningful.

There’s a point in the book where a lot of things come together, and it made me realize how well those pieces had been set up in the first place. I enjoyed the book up until that point, but when I hit this coming-together moment, it had a huge emotional impact, which I think is exactly what the author was going for. And it worked!

Content Notes for Shooting for Stars

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Representation
Skylar might be neurodiverse, but if so, she doesn’t share a formal diagnosis.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
At one point, something scary happens, and Skylar comments that she doesn’t believe in God, but this scary moment makes her pray anyway, just in case.

Violent Content
References to Skylar’s mom’s death. References to a car accident caused by cell phone use in which a girl is injured. A girl goes missing overnight. A character arrives home to emergency vehicles in their driveway and learns there was a fire.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.