SUMMER READING CHALLENGE 2019 Book Reviews

The Poet X by (Young Adult Fiction, Free Verse) ​

“Winner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the Pura Belpre Award! Fans of Jacqueline Woodson, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds will fall hard for this astonishing New York Times-bestselling novel-in-verse by an award-winning slam poet, about an Afro-Latina heroine who tells her story with blazing words and powerful truth. Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers--especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami's determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school's slam poetry club, she doesn't know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can't stop thinking about performing her poems. Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.”---from the publisher, HarperCollins, 2018

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor (Science Fiction/Fantasy) ​

“By now, fans of Laini Taylor know what to expect: beautiful prose, strange and whimsical fantasy worlds, sympathetic monsters, and wrenching, star-crossed romance. Her latest, first in a two-book set, certainly delivers on that, and there’s something quietly magical at play here. Lazlo Strange, an orphaned infant who grew up to be a librarian, has had a quiet first two decades of life. But Lazlo, reader of fairy tales, longs to learn more about a distant, nearly mythical city, called Weep after its true name was stolen. When a group of warriors from that very place come seeking help, Lazlo, never before a man of action, may actually see his dream fulfilled. Weep, though, is a city still reeling from the aftermath of a brutal war, and hidden there is a girl named Sarai and her four companions, all of whom have singular talents and devastating secrets. What follows is the careful unfolding of a plot crafted with origami-like precision. Characters are carefully, exquisitely crafted; the writing is achingly lovely; and the world is utterly real. While a cliffhanger ending will certainly have readers itching for book two, make no mistake—this is a thing to be savored.” (, January 1, 2017)

Circe by Madeline Miller (Contemporary Literature) ​

“In her stirring follow-up to the Orange Prize–winning The Song of Achilles (2011), Miller beautifully voices the experiences of the legendary sorceress Circe. The misfit daughter of the Greek sun god, Helios, her powers are weak and her speech too much like a mortal’s. But her unexpected talents in witchcraft prove threatening to the Titans’ realm, leading to her banishment to the remote island of Aiaia. There she resides, carefully perfecting her herb lore, until her solitude is disrupted by visitors both human and divine. With poetic eloquence (“the days moved slowly, dropping like petals from a blown rose”) and fine dramatic pacing, Miller smoothly knits together the classic stories of the Minotaur, the Scylla, the witch Medea (Circe’s niece), events from Homer’s Odyssey, and more, all reimagined from a strong-minded woman’s viewpoint. Circe’s potential rival, Odysseus’ wife, Penelope, is another memorable character, and the novel speaks to women’s agency, war’s traumatic aftermath, and how strength emerges from emotional growth. This immersive blend of literary fiction and mythological fantasy demonstrates that the Greek myths are still very relevant today.” (Booklist, February 15, 2018)

The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater (Nonfiction) ​ ​ ​

In the fall of 2013, on a bus ride home, a young man sets another student on fire.In a small private high school, Sasha, a white teen with Asperger’s, enjoyed “a tight circle of friends,” “blazed through calculus, linguistics, physics, and computer programming,” and invented languages. Sasha didn’t fall into a neat gender category and considered “the place in-between…a real place.” Encouraged by parents who supported self-expression, Sasha began to use the pronoun they. They wore a skirt for the first time during their school’s annual cross-dressing day and began to identify as genderqueer. On the other side of Oakland, California, Richard, a black teen, was “always goofing around” at a high school where roughly one-third of the students failed to graduate. Within a few short years, his closest friends would be pregnant, in jail, or shot dead, but Richard tried to stay out of real trouble. One fateful day, Sasha was asleep in a “gauzy white skirt” on the 57 bus when a rowdy friend handed Richard a lighter. With a journalist’s eye for overlooked details, Slater does a masterful job debunking the myths of the hate-crime monster and the African-American thug, probing the line between adolescent stupidity and irredeemable depravity. Few readers will traverse this exploration of gender identity, adolescent crime, and penal racism without having a few assumptions challenged. An outstanding book that links the diversity of creed and the impact of impulsive actions to themes of tolerance and forgiveness. (Kirkus Review, August 1, 2017)

A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Teen Refugee’s Incredible Story of Love, Loss and Survival by Melissa Fleming (Nonfiction) ​

“A Syrian refugee’s perilous journey to the West. The subject of an earlier TED talk by Fleming, the head of communications and chief spokesperson for the United High Commissioner for Refugees, Doaa Al Zamel was not yet 20 when she was driven from her homeland by civil war and a brutal government campaign against her rebel region. The numbers, as the author cites them, are daunting and the odds very much against Doaa: more than 5 million Syrians forced to flee abroad, many more than that made internal refugees in their own country. Doaa left with the vaguely formed idea of making her way to asylum in Europe. In the hands of smugglers, beset by rough seas and pirates, she survived a horrific shipwreck, so far among the deadliest in the annals of illegal migration from Africa to Europe, with more than 500 victims. She also saved the life of a toddler, earning awards from humanitarian agencies and calling renewed attention to the plight of refugees from Syria. Finally resettled in Sweden, Doaa’s story is one of the few refugee tales so far to have anything approaching a happy ending, making Fleming’s narrative an aspirational if perhaps unusual one. As for Doaa herself, who closes the book with a brief statement, she aspires ‘one day…to return to Syria so I can breathe again.’” (Kirkus Reviews, December, 15, 2016)