Stolen Voices: Young People’s War Diaries, from World War I to Iraq, Zlata Filipovic and Melanie Challenger We had to read Zlata’s Diary in ninth grade, and I remember thinking, Sheesh, if I were Zlata as a grown-up, I would really wish these diaries weren’t out there. They are just like the diaries I kept at that age, lots of Oh why is this happening to me, and How can these trivial things make me happy when there is so much darkness in my life? – the difference being, of course, that she actually had bad stuff happening to me;…
2 CommentsReading the End Posts
You know what my favorite thing about this book was? And don’t think I’m saying this in an anti-Rebel-Angels way at all, because I’m not and I loved Parlabane even though his (spoilers, I guess?) farewell letter was silly. My favorite thing about this book is that the main character (I think I can call her that), Maria, has a mum that reads Tarot cards, and she reads the Five of Coins (our Pentacles) to mean a loss, but a far greater gain is coming. The very next day, I was doing a reading for my sister, and I realized…
4 CommentsWoohoo! Between-the-wars-in-England stories are my favorite kind! Plus, this is a mystery (I sometimes like mysteries), and although I read the end, I didn’t need to read the end necessarily, because the killer’s identity is known to the reader for most of the book. Lovely. Only way to do it. See, the suspense then wasn’t about who done it, but whether he would do it again! (I will just tell you – he would.) In River of Darkness, Inspector John Madden, a copper scarred by his time in the trenches in the recently-over World War I, is called in on…
4 CommentsCensoring an Iranian Love Story is all about an Iranian writer who’s tired of writing books about oppression and misery in Iran, and he wants to write a love story, maybe not one with a Hollywood ending, but one that will be a true love story, and will not make its readers never want to love. However, because of the censorship in Iran, he keeps crossing out pieces of the story that would not get past the censors. The lovers, Sara and Dara, must act very chaste, never talk about political oppression, and not say or do anything that might…
11 CommentsMy graphic novel experiments continue! I checked this out because I opened it up and I liked some of the things the artist did with panels. I still do actually – there’s a page I remember, where the whole page is the character’s face, and it’s broken up into panels with dialogue across it. It’s a good effect, how the dialogue washes across the character as he’s deep in thought. Maybe it’s because I read Scott McCloud’s books, or maybe it’s because there were some rather flashy art choices (not flashy in a bad way!), but I noticed panel divisions…
2 CommentsSo when I was about thirteen, I thought these books, Sister Light, Sister Dark and White Jenna were just about the best thing in the entire world. I got them from the library after my sister gave me Dragon’s Blood for my birthday, and then I wanted to get more Jane Yolen books, and seriously, I totally loved them. My sister made me a white sweatshirt that said Jo-an-enna in black letters, and she had a black sweatshirt that said Skada in white letters, and that’s how much I loved those books. They are all about a girl called Jenna…
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