YA Review: Displacement by Thalia Chaltas

Title: Displacement

Author: Thalia Chaltas

# of Pages: 364

Publisher: Viking Juvenille

Publication Date: June 9th 2011

Source: Library

Level: Young Adult

Rating: 3 Hearts

Synopsis

Home is supposed to be a place you belong. It's supposed to be parents who are there and siblings who bug you and a life that feels comfortable. It's not supposed to be an absentee mother or a drowned sister. But that's Vera's reality, and she can't stand it anymore. So she runs. She ends up in an old mining town in the middle of the California desert. It's hot, it's dusty, and it's as isolated as Vera feels. As she goes about setting up her life, she also unwittingly starts the process of healing and-eventually- figuring out what home might really mean for her.

My Verdict

Having read Chalta's first book, Because I Am Furniture, I was a little worried this would be another heavy-subject story, beautifully written but upsetting. While Displacement does tackle the heavy subject of losing ones sibling it was not as emotionally upsetting as I was expecting. 

How often do you meet a main character who's a seventeen year old girl, studying geology, who runs away from home to the desert because she's excited about the geological possibilities? Vera was such a refreshing MC, super smart, honest, hot-headed at times but usually for good cause. 

Along with the dessert setting came some very unique characters; Milo, Pearl, Dempsey, and Tilly. Only one of them was a main-ish character so while the others weren't fully developed, they played their role of odd small town characters. The way Tilly talked was SUPER annoying, here's a short example of what I mean.

          "Thet down, hawney. I'll gitchyou thome tea." 

           OR

          "What kind of job you think we got in thith plate?" 

I really can't tolerate slang, dialect, and accents in books. I just can't, but luckily Tilly doesn't appear often.

Overall, this was refreshingly unique and totally unpredictable. The verse format lent itself perfectly to Vera's story of loss, family, friends, and ultimately how to move on after the death of a loved one. I look forward to whatever subject Chaltas decides to tackle in her next book!

YA Review: Audacious by Gabrielle Prendergast

Title: Audacious

Author: Gabrielle Prendergast

# of Pages: 

Publisher: Orca

Publication Date: October 1st 2013

Source: Provided by author in exchange for honest review

Level: Young Adult

Rating: 2.5 Hearts

Synopsis

Sixteen year old Raphaelle is that girl who says the wrong thing, who crosses the wrong person, who has the wrong hair, the wrong body, the wrong attitude, the totally wrong clothes. She can’t do anything right, except draw, but she draws the wrong pictures. When her father moves the family to a small prairie city, Raphaelle wants to leave behind the misfit rebel, the outcast, the vengeful trouble-maker she was. Reborn as “Ella,” she plans fit in at her new school, while her perfect younger sister goes to the Catholic girls’ school and her emotionally fragile mother looks for a job.

But Ella might just be a different kind of misfit. She’s drawn to a brooding boy in her art class, Samir, and expresses her confused feelings in an explicit artwork. When a classmate texts a photo of Ella’s art to a younger friend, the horrendous fallout spreads though Ella’s life like an uncontrollable disease. Ella is expelled from school and faces pornography charges, her mother is hospitalized, her sister fails all her classes, and her distant father finally notices something is wrong.

My Verdict

I don't know if you guys remember or if you followed my blog back then, but I actually interviewed author, Gabrielle Prendergast last year as part of my Novels In Verse Reading Challenge (which can be read here). Point being, I have been waiting for this book to come out for a long time! I'm so grateful to Gabrielle for providing me with an ARC for review purposes.

Being an artist myself, I thought it would be easy for me to connect with and understand Ella. Unfortunately, this didn't happen. I just couldn't see where she was coming from at all. Including a naked picture of herself in a school art show and frankly, not caring what happened in response. The thing is, it seemed like this wasn't the first time Ella had done something like that. I got the impression that her artwork had caused problems before. I feel like she just wanted the attention, whether good or bad and didn't really think of how her decisions affected others.

Her love interest, Samir, is also an artist but again, I just wasn't able to connect with him either. For a main character, he felt really distant to me throughout the whole book.

Religion is also a large topic in this story. Ella's family is Catholic, while  Samir's family is Muslim. Both characters are struggling with their faith, what they believe, who they believe in, or if they even believe anything at all. Personally, I didn't like the way religion was portrayed as this burden that both characters were trying to escape from. However, I respected the fact that the author didn't shy away from religion like most YA books do.

While this book wasn't a good match for me, I do think a lot of others will enjoy it. Especially fans of Ellen Hopkins and other books with heavier, more controversial subject matter.

Book Review: Nelson Mandela

Title: Nelson Mandela

Author: Kadir Nelson

# Of Pages: 40

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Publication Date: January 2^nd, 2013

Source: Library

Level: Children’s (Pre-School - 4^th Grade)

Rating: 4 Hearts

Synopsis

(From Goodreads)

One day when Nelson Mandela was nine years old, his father died and he was sent from his village to a school far away from home, to another part of South Africa. In Johannesburg, the country's capital, Mandela saw fellow Africans who were poor and powerless. He decided then that he would work to protect them. When the government began to keep people apart based on the color of their skin, Mandela spoke out against the law and vowed to fight hard in order to make his country a place that belonged to all South Africans.

Kadir Nelson tells the story of Mandela, a global icon, in poignant verse and glorious illustrations. It is the story of a young boy's determination to change South Africa and of the struggles of a man who eventually became the president of his country by believing in equality for people of all colors. Readers will be inspired by Mandela's triumph and his lifelong quest to create a more just world.

My Verdict

I know I don't usually review children's books on here but since this one was told in verse, I made an exception =) 

The biography of Nelson Mandela and his role in Apartheid is brought to life by author and illustrator, Kadir Nelson, through free verse and beautiful paintings that are rich in color and large in scale. A fellow blogger reviewed this book and when I heard it was told in verse I knew I absolutely HAD to read it!

It’s very unique to have a biography written in free verse but I think it worked really well and will help to keep kids interested. This book is a great resource for kids to learn about an important time in history but also one that I think they will thoroughly enjoy reading as well.

“Nelson stood proudly

with the wind at his back

and spoke to a colorful sea of people.

‘We must forget our terrible past

and build a better future for South Africa,

Let us continue to fight for justice

and walk the last mile to freedom.’ "