Review: Boys Without Names by Kashmira Sheth

Title: Boys Without Names
Author(s): Kashmira Sheth
Genre: MG Contemporary, India, Child slavery
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Balzer + Bray

I received an Uncorrected Proof copy from Edi
The Summary:For eleven-year-old Gopal and his family, life in their rural Indian village is over. We stay, we starve, his baba has warned. So they flee to the big city of Mumbai in hopes of finding work and a brighter future. Goal is eager to help support his struggling family until school starts, so when a stranger approaches him with the promise of a factor job, he jumps at the offer...

-Summary taken from 1st paragraph of Backcover

The Review: After reading Boys Without Names, I do believe that Kashmira Sheth is now firmly solidified as my new must-read MG author. She reminds me of Cynthia Kadohata, actually, and that is no small praise on my part because I practically worship the ground Kadohata walks on. Except, you know, Sheth would be a South Asian version, and her stories more… uplifting in tone. Less painful moments wherein I feel like my heart is being wrenched out of my chest as I stare desolately at the page with the text blurring as my eyes well up. I wouldn’t say happier because the two books I’ve read by Sheth (Keeping Corner and this book, respectively) deal with serious matters, but I can trust that unlike Kadohata’s works, no one is going to die, no one is going to have to be severed permanently from a loved one – in short, at the end of the Sheth novel, I probably won’t be a sobbing mess. If I’m crying, I’m crying tears of joy over the triumph of our beloved protagonists. They’re very similar in style (close 1st person narration, simple free-of-flowery-language and evocative lines that cut straight to the matter and grab you by the heart, but Kadohata has a stronger voice whereas Sheth’s narration is cleaner and almost lyrical in its simplicity) but diverge more drastically on their tone (Kadohata – sadder, Sheth – happier). I don’t prefer one style over the other, just that I find the comparison interesting and that now I know which MG author to go to if I want to read about a charming protagonist going through life’s hardships, but do not want to cry my eyes out.

Anyhow, on the actual novel itself, I am simply in love with Sheth’s writing style. It’s just so clean. When you take a sentence out of the context, they are almost deceptively dull and simplistic, a basic noun-and-verb sentence construction with the occasional adjective. But put her sentence structures together and then you see Sheth’s full mastery of the English language, how her words are carefully chosen to make the most out of what she wants to say. I felt like there was not a word used that was wasted, that her phrases were carefully weighed to produce the fullest effect possible. Everything was just so smooth and clean and flowed so nicely, you can’t help but sink into the story, time passing you by as you leaf your way through the pages.

Review: A Million Shades of Grey by Cynthia Kadohata

Title: A Million Shades of Grey
Author(s): Cynthia Kadohata
Genre: MG Historical, War
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Disclosure: I received this review copy from Book Chick City
The Summary: Y'Tin wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with Lady, his elephant, and become a elephant handler. But the Vietnam War looms closer and closer into his tribe's every day life. As the Americans leave and the North Vietnamese army marches closer and closer, Y'Tin seeks a way to live and stay with Lady - no matter what it takes.

The Review: Some confessions I must make before I proceed with the review: I love Cynthia Kadohata's works. From the momemt I read the first page of Weedflower back in the cold wintery day of January last year, I fell in love. Kadohata has this wonderful way of capturing her protagonists' voice, and her stories are so intimate, so personal, like the protagonist is speaking to me, and her stories break my heart in all the right places.

Now, despite this love, I was also somewhat apprehensive about this novel. For one thing, as much as I love Weedflower, Kira-Kira, and Cracker: The Best Dog in Vietnam, I did not care for Outside Beauty at all, which was her latest work just before A Million Shades of Grey came out. It utterly failed to impress me. That was the first time I felt that the voice of the protagonist was unconvincing, and voice is the best aspect of Kadohata's writing. I, well, I admit to wondering if maybe Kadohata might be losing her touch. That coupled with the fact that this will be the first novel I read by her with a male protagonist, and I was weary in wondering whether she could pull off a male's voice.

Well, this book just blew all my apprehensions out of the water, and taught me that I should just never doubt Cynthia Kadohata's mastery in writing ever again (I'll just chalk Outside Beauty as an anomaly). It was amazing. Brilliant! It is actually the saddest Kadohata story I've read, and if anyone's familiar with any of her other titles, you know I'm really saying something here.

Y'Tin was a brilliant protagonist. Kadohata proved to me that not only can she completely charm me with her portrayal of a young boy's voice, but capture the child perspective of the war around him in the most convincing fashion. I was in Y'Tin's head the whole way through, and every laugh, every heartbreak Y'Tin went through, I not only sympathized, I felt it inside with him. His heartrendering relationship with Lady, the elephant he trained, was one of the most beautiful animal companion relationships I've ever seen, and I'm saying this as a person who is normally skeptical of animal companionship tales. Y'Tin tells us he cares about Lady more than anything in the world, and you just - you really believe it, and that's why when the events of the novel unravel, it just breaks you - there.

And the story! Wow, what a story. Like all of Kadohata's work, the ride is slow but sure, as she draws you into the lives of her characters then slowly builds up the events, one at a time to a breathtaking climax, and an ending that will tear your heart out. If anyone was worried about this book not being able to pull off the grittiness and ravages of a war setting - since, well, as much as I loved Cracker, Kadohata gave us a very sanitized version of the Vietnam War in that particular book - no need to worry about that here, the horrors of war are shown in all its traumatizing glory! I may or may not have completely embarrassed myself at a dinner party as people saw me bawling in public, book in hand. I like how Kadohata decided to show the war from the Montagnards' perspective, an indigenous tribe living out in the jungle of Vietnam. It offers us a perspective that's outside of the usual Vietcong or American GI perspective, yet still very much a part of the war. Y'Tin's family helped out the Americans, and it was fascinating to see the effects towards the end of the war for this decision, as the Americans left them to their fate and the Vietcongs come closing in. I was reading a review of this book by The Bookbag which argued that it idealized the American GIs way too much and vilified the Vietcongs. Which is a valid interpretation, and I do see shades of that in the story, but I think the reason why it worked for me, this portrayal of the Montagnards helping the GIs is that the Montagnards do not benefit from this aid. The Americans were not at all their knights in shining armour coming to their rescue - it was quite the opposite. The whole story is set around the time when the Montagnards were to fend for themselves, and explores the broken promises of protection made by the Americans, and it was very sad, and very painful to see. We see the slow change in which Y'Tin's peers reacted around him, as the people within his tribe blamed his family for helping the Americans and it's a credit to Kadohata's fantastic writing abilities that she is able to render these moments heartwrenching without overwrought writing.

It's worth noting however that while there were some positive portrayals of the Americans, by contrast there were absolutely none of that when we see portrayals of the Vietnamese people. If they weren't calling the Montagnard savages, they were attacking their villages. I am not too 100% sure of Thorat's ethnicity, who was character portrayed sympathetically, but even so, he was a sympathetic teacher teaching French, a colonial language. (Oh! Sidenote: the French here is all grammatically correct! I say this because I often get annoyed when I find books that don't bother checking their grammar when they decide to have the characters spreaking French in the story.) Hopefully Cynthia Kadohata would consider writing another novel set in Vietnam that gives the side of the Vietnamese more justice.

The Verdict: This is decidedly the best work by Cynthia Kadohata so far, and most definitely my favourite. Clear, crisp writing, a charming protagonist, a sweet animal companion tale, and a war-ridden setting that shatters your heart. After reading this novel, I couldn't get the story out of my head for weeks. This book will make you smile, laugh, cry, and leaves you with a sad, yet hopeful at the end. What more can we want out of a novel, really? This book deserves to be up there and known with the other amazingly wrought war stories such as Markus Zusak's The Book Thief and the like. Run, don't walk, to get a copy of this novel. You won't regret it.

Rating: 4/5
Enjoyment: 100%

Title and Cover Discussion: The title is passable, I suppose. However, the title doesn't give me an immediate connection to what I've read in the story. Which is too bad, since all her other titles (Kira-Kira, Outside Beauty, Cracker, Weedflower) did this so well. But I think it hints at the layers of war being explored, that the side to the story isn't all just black and white, that there's the people not on either sides. Of course, I could be wrong, and those who've read the novel can feel free to share the title thoughts they have about this with me here. I'm all ears! I do love the cover. It's not exactly shiny or anything but it has Y'Tin AND Lady being all BFF there! How can I not love it? ♥ And I passed by the hardcover of this book a while back in the bookstore and the inside of the cover is beautifullll. It is the pattern of the jungle leaves we see on the top of the cover. But I'm not really a fan of the cover for the hardback... What's the difference, you ask? Well, they photoshopped in the 'Asian' hat. Not only does Y'Tin never actually wear that hat in the story, but I get the sense that the hat was pasted on to hint and the ~*exotic*~ Asian-ness. This is not the first time this happened with Kadohata's covers, but they make me sigh. lol, but w/e my version doesn't have the hat on it so YAY HAPPINESS. ♥

Title: B
Cover: A

This counts for the POC reading challenge.

Review: 8th Grade Superzero

Title: 8th Grade Superzero
Author(s): Olubgemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
Genre: MG Contemporary Coming-of-Age
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books

The Summary: For middle schooler Reggie McKnight, being called “Pukey” is the least of his problems. School elections are coming up, but he’s as far away from being school President as he is from shutting down his enemy Donovan or meeting up with the beautiful Mialonie. His friends Ruthie and Joe C. have his back, but let’s face it: Reggie can only be a superhero on the pages of his graphic novel, Night Man.

Then Reggie gets involved with a local homeless shelter, the Olive Branch. Haunted by two of the clients there -- George, a once proud man now living on the streets, and five-year-old Charlie, who becomes his official “Little Buddy” -- he begins to think about making a difference, both in the world and at school.

-- from goodreads, though I omitted the last sentence, as it was spoilery.

The Review: I basically inhaled this novel between the hours from the time I had breakfast to lunch. It was adorable! I wasn’t even put off by the superhero stuff! (Note: Not a fan of superhero genre.) Reggie was lovable, and I really liked how he makes mistakes that not ONLY are acknowledged within the text, but he owns up to his mistakes and apologizes to the wronged party later. It’s nice to see our protagonists not being Always Right. I also liked how Rhuday-Perkovic handled Reggie volunteering at Olive Branch and the homeless residents, how helping out became gradually more and more important to him. And it was tres cool that there were a number of kids in the cast who were concerned with social and/or global issues. It wasn’t done in such a way that I thought these middle graders were acting too old for their age, and also I can see how giving this book to a middle grader can make them think about these issues at hand.

But my favourite part of this novel was Reggie’s relationships with the significant people in his life. I think, out of all of them, Reggie’s buddy relationship with Charlie was the sweetest. (Dora shoes!! ♥) I loved the every changing perceptions of each other, and how their actions influenced each other in good or bad ways. Reggie and Ruthie’s relationship was adorable too. Childhood friendships are the best!! Their love is trueeeeeeeee. (Who’s Mialonie again? =P) I even liked the sibling antagonisms between Reggie and Monica! These moments are always the ones that get me to switch sides from sympathizing with our protagonist Reggie to wholeheartedly supporting Monica. I love Reggie but he’s so clueless about girls. (And also, being a sister, with sibling arguments, I firmly believe that the sister ALWAYS wins. Natch.) Reggie and Monica’s talk was one of my favourite scenes in the whole novel. It was awkward, and loving in the only way squabbling siblings can be, and I love it. I loved seeing how, with siblings, you can be very cruel to one another, but when it comes down to it, you care, even when you don’t show it. I just wish there were more Reggie and Monica scenes. There is just not enough sibling interactions in MG/YA fiction.

If I have to complain about anything though, it’d be the villains. I know it’s from Reggie’s perspective, but Donovan’s villainy was a bit too 2D for me. We got a tiny glimpse of another side to his character, but it was never really developed so that we see Donovan is a character that went beyond his mean bully role. Vicky wasn’t quite as bad in comparison, but still, not as developed as I’d like. Also, while I knew Reggie’s mom was there, her presence wasn’t very strong, especially next to his father and sister. But these are just minor quibbles. The cast more or less satisfies me. I particularly appreciate how there were lots of minor characters around that, while we don’t see a lot of their background, we get just enough of them to feel like they have whole and separate lives beyond Reggie and not like, stock minor characters. =D

I liked the pacing. It was steady and gradual, building up to a good climax and finale. My favourite aspect was the fact that not everything stayed the same, and how we see people and people’s relationship with one another change over the course of the story. I also liked how multicultural the people in the story were, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY how, while their ethnic background is a factor of their identity, it is NOT the dominant driving force of the story. It’s so rare to find POC protagonists with stories that aren’t all about their racial identity, so I reallyyyyyy like that.

The Verdict: If you haven’t read this awesome debut yet you should definitely plan to. Reggie is a wonderful protagonist and it’s cute and funny and FUN and I am already forcing my youngest brother to read this, and basically this book comes highly recommended by me. READ IT!

Rating: 4/5
Enjoyment: 100%

Title and Cover Discussion: The title is absolutely PERFECT. I also am charmed by the cover. I love the colours and the yellow with the dark skyline and silhouette. It's very colour designed oriented, as oppose to, you know, the usual photo stock images or even illustrated covers, so it sticks out for me. I kinda wish the shoes at the top were Dora though. But that's really nothing to kibble over.

Title: A+!
Cover: A

Thank you Zetta, for mailing this to me!
This counts for POC and Debut 2010 reading challenge

Review: Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge (Revised)

(Original Post here)
Okay so normally I wouldn't repost old reviews, but I was feeling awful for only doing 1 review so far this month and besides, this is basically my favourite novel of 2009, I wanted to pimp it as much as possible. Also added content to make myself feel like I'm not just posting the same old thing.



Title: Gullstruck Island aka The Lost Conspiracy (US)
Author(s): Frances Hardinge
Genre: MG Post-Colonial Fantasy
Page Count: 512
Publisher: MacMillan

The Summary: On an island of sandy beaches, dense jungles, and slumbering volcanoes, colonists seek to apply archaic laws to a new land, bounty-hunters stalk the living for the ashes of their funerary pyres, and a smiling tribe is despised by all as traitorous murders. It is here, in the midst of ancient tensions and new calamity, that two sisters are caught in a deadly web of deceits.

Arilou is proclaimed a beautiful prophetess—one of the island’s precious oracles: a Lost. Hathin, her junior, is her nearly invisible attendant. But neither Arilou nor Hathin is exactly what she seems, and they live a lie that is carefully constructed, and jealously guarded.

When the sisters are unknowingly drawn into a sinister, island-wide conspiracy, quiet, unobtrusive Hathin must journey beyond all she has ever known of her world—and of herself—in a desperate attempt to save them both. As the stakes mount and falsehoods unravel, she discovers the only thing more dangerous than the secret she hides is the truth she must uncover.

--From Author's Website.

The Review: First things first: I love Frances Hardinge (and hence cannot talk about her current work without random pimpage of her previous novels). There's always the risk of finding the later works by your favourite author disappointing, but not in the case of Hardinge. From the moment I saw the first page of her debut novel Fly by Night on the bargain shelves, I was a goner. It was love at first sight, pure and true, and with this latest addition to Hardinge's reportoire I feel like my little gold mine I plucked out of the bargain section oh so many years ago struck true. Frances Hardinge really let herself go with this novel. Her amazing wordplay seems to have taken on a new stage in this novel. I remember Fly by Night as the novel with such intoxicating words that you could just drown happily into them, forgetting the very premise of the story and lose yourself in words, words, beautiful words, the laughter and high rollicking fun. And Verdigris Deep showed a more serious side, with the same trademark wordplay still grabbing at you, but in a sticking out, unsettling sort of way, a prickling, itchy crawling at your skin that just fits beautifully with the horror genre that novel reflected. However, with Gullstruck Island, the words do not seek to grab your attention in a showy way, but settle around you, like dust, like our protagonist Hathin, quiet and unremarkable and glowing with inner zeal that can push mountains. Hardinge employed a restraint on her wordplay, letting the story shine through instead. And this more controlled, maturing writing is simply gorgeous and proves Hardinge to be a master of the art in English prose.

AND THE WORLDBUILDING. Homg the worldbuilding. (It had to be caps locked, it was just THAT GOOD.) Volcanoes mythology and folklore and intricate details of the geology and society in Gullstruck Island, not a thing missed, from the way language is used and the interaction between the different races and the Lost and the history and the layout of the land, and homg I could just die of happiness. Best post-colonial fantasy I’ve EVER read, even better than (…dare I say it?) Terry Pratchett’s Nation. And, you guys, I love Nation and Terry Pratchett. I didn’t think I’d come across something that’d top that novel in its genre but then Frances Hardinge comes along and I’m blown.

The cast in this novel is amazing in ways I can't even begin to describe. It's large and sprawling and everyone is distinct and unique and larger than life and my heart, be still. *.* The protagonists are lively, the villains are deliciously wicked, and the people who walk in the gray are well-rounded and have their own distinct voice and lives and I fell in love with each and every single one of them.

I love how tightly woven the plot was and the pacing was immaculate. Considering all these factors, I think it's safe to say that Gullstruck Island is easily Hardinge's best work yet, and easily my favourite novel of 2009.

And if my rambling and fangirling didn’t convince anyone, I’ll let the book do the talking and quote one of my favourite descriptions in this novel of volcano activity:

There was a hush-half-second like a gasp, a sense of something tiny but momentous change, of something cracking silently like a heart. The next instant, through that hidden crack beneath the surface, an oozing, millennia-old fire met dark, lucid water. And in that meeting, water and fire loved each other to destruction.

The Verdict: Best post-colonial fantasy novel I've ever read, also my favourite novel of 2009. Why have you not bought this book yet?

Rating: 100000000000000000000++++++++++++/5
Enjoyment Level: 10000000000000000000000000++++++++++++% AKA It is Perfection unto itself.

Title and Cover Discussion: Since I can't be talking about Gullstruck Island without comparing it to the US version, let's go there. First of all I love the title Gullstruck Island. It rings of those good old Island adventure stories like "Treasure Island". And the cover evokes that feel too. And um, when I see the US version, all I can think is, "I'm SO GLAD Canada got the UK copy." Skipping out on ratings 'cause I get the feeling that I'm being distinctly biased in all this comparison between UK and US cover and I don't want to give Gullstruck Island good marks solely because I'm hating on the US version.

Triple Snapshot Saturday - Legend of Tarik, I Wanna Be Your Shoebox, Bound By Your Touch

(Idea inspired by Hyper-Parfait's now defunct Triple Delights)

In which I discuss three novels at the end of the week (Saturday) in quick paragraph snapshots on my general impressions and reactions.

The Legend of Tarik by Walter Dean Myers
You know, I think I just read this book at the wrong time. I can see objectively that it is a very well written book, and for what the story tries to do, it does it well. It’s a whole fantasy quest story to avenge his father, with one little subversion: the hero is black. Now, I do appreciate this subversion, but it doesn’t satisfy me. I mean, yay black hero that actually wins the day in a magical quest story, that’s a storyline that you don’t come across every day. But my tiff with this book is that it didn’t subvert enough for me. Why not go all the way, I thought to myself. Subvert the wise old men who trains the hero prodigy! Subvert the role of women! Subvert the whole object troupe! Hell, challenge the stereotypical villainous characters as well!! But alas, this book didn’t do that. Basically I wanted a bigger challenge to the whole typical magical quest story and it didn’t do it for me. The role of Stria, the hero’s woman companion, particularly disappointed me, not because Myers didn’t attempt at subversion (he did! She had personality! She was his partner to fight the bad guy as oppose to being the weak love interest!) but because I just wanted more. I wanted to see why she couldn’t be the hero of the day, and the best we got was that it’s because she had anger problems, and that plus the whole hysterical aka way-too-emotional woman type characters often found in fiction made me frown.

This frustration wanting more subversion for other aspects of the novel besides the black hero/white villain thing stopped me from appreciating the novel as much as I would have, if I read this back when I was a bit more enamoured with the fantasy quest story line and only needed a little bit of subversion to be happy. But I’m mostly jaded on these quest things and it takes a lot more reversals of the typical quest storyline for me to be invested. Sadly, The Legend of Tarik didn’t do it for me. I do recommend this to people who love the magical quest storyline and want just a slightly different twist on the formula. I can guarantee that the writing is spot-on and will appeal to the lovers of this genre.

I Wanna Be Your Shoebox by Cristina Garcia
Omg soooooo much fun to read!! Our main character, Yumi, is a girl that cannot be easily confined to a checklist of what she should be. I like this aspect a lot, because I think it shows the endless possibilities of Yumi’s bright future. I also liked the intertwined storyline between Yumi and her grandfather, Saul. It isn’t my favourite use of this device, but I thought they worked well together. And the portrayals of Yumi’s relationship with her family and friends and classmates were vivid and a great joy to read about. I think the biggest theme of the whole novel is hope, a bright, endless hope of the future, that there’s always a possibility of great things to come and experience. That’s not to say that there aren’t any “serious” themes to this story, there’s death and divorce featured in this MG novel as well. But this novel is not a problem novel and about dealing with such conflicts. It’s more about facing the future, of the good and bad and making the most of it. And the book convinces you of this hopeful message by being written with such gusto and spirit. It’s the kind of book that makes you smile every time you remember reading it. Highly recommended.

Bound by your Touch by Meredith Duran
The book I would have never read if it weren’t for Sarah Rees Brennan’s recommendation! It was lots of fun, and I love the romance aspect. However, the historical part was not as good as it could have been. I mean, it more or less sticks to how 19th Century England works, but it doesn’t exactly make you feel like you’re there in that past, or challenging the notions of the time period. Then again, this is a novel marketed as romance and if the “historical” side to the romance was not as good as it could have been (not that I remember ever reading historical romances that actually did the historical side justice… I suppose I have to look into straight historical novels for that), it balances out by having a lovely romance that subverts stock romance troupes. The spinster gets the young rake! And other spoilery stuff I shouldn’t reveal about various family members that have interesting subversions. I was rather irked by the whole Egyptology thing being used as the driving plot of the story though. I mean, it has that feel of exotic foreign dead artifacts being used to further along the European story and that always nudges me the wrong way. Perhaps I could have reconciled with this if there was a prominent Egyptian character in the story but they were nowhere to be found. I did enjoy this novel very much though. Not enough to feel like buying my own copy of the novel, but it was a fun read.

Throwback Thursday: I Want to Go Home by Gordon Korman

whut 2 posts in one day?! the world's surely gonna end...

In which I will talk about one of my childhood novels and my reaction rereading them. (Idea from Taste Life Twice)

Blast from the Past: I was in Grade 5 and we had one of those Independent Study Units things where you pick from a select booklist a novel to read and do write-ups for. I can no longer remember the reason why I was late in choosing the books, but by the time I got there, all that was left was these old, yellowing books called I Want To Go Home by Gordon Korman, with a crumbling cover so faded I could barely make out the cover image. I was distraught. Here I was, stuck with the ugly novel no one wanted. In my mind, there was no conceivable way this sorry state of a novel could possibly be good. (And man, was my Gr. 5 self proven wrong.)

Anyhow, filled with pessimism, I cracked over the yellowing pages and decided to get my ISU done and over with. One chapter into the novel and I could not be parted from its yellowing pages. It was so funny. I was hooked by the time Rudy wrote his letter of typhoid and being chased by bears and various other outrageous lies about his camping experience. To this day I thank the heavens that I was late into the book choosing and wound up with this diamond in the rough. Every time I remember this book I find myself smiling in happiness.

The Re-visiting Experience: Wandering around a secondhand book store, I stumbled upon a copy of this novel. Needless to say, I bought it up. Childhood happiness for about the price of a toonie. I could have died happy. And rereading this novel was just as fun as it was when I was twee. The jokes were still laugh out loud funny and I had to actually pause midway through the book because I’d be losing my breath from too much laughter. And I still enjoy reading about Rudy very much. Thinking back, Rudy may have been one of my many influences in getting all attached to snarky characters causing chaos wherever they went, with a touch of sullenness. ♥

However, some other things that I was completely blindsided to when I was a child:

1. Wow, this novel comes off as very white. If the cover doesn’t tip off this impression then the very Anglo-type names of all the cast would probably do the trick. Skin colour is rarely described, but if mentioned at all it’s always “pale” or “white” , and other times they’d go red from angry or being sunburnt, etc etc. Basically, white is clearly default and in case we readers get any different ideas, our cover of All-White Campers will be there to remind us of our mistake. I mean, I suppose this isn’t shocking since this is a Canadian children’s novel and Canada is our Great and Forever White North. (bossymarmalade has a post about this if anyone’s interested.) It’s just, I look back, at all the Canadian Kid’s lit books I was given back in elementary school, and wonder how much I must have absorbed from them, a Canada that had no place for someone who looked like me.


2. This is very much a Boy’s Book that has no place for girls. If we are there, we’re the fretting mothers, or the girls keeping Rudy down and foiling his escape routes, the party poopers. When described we’re “petite blue-eyed”, the classic European Standard of Beauty for women/girls, the date, the love interest, the accessory. Basically, another book to the string of Boy’s Adventure books that have no place for girls and girl cooties.

That being said, I honestly did enjoy my reread. It was quirky and laugh-out-loud fun, and I’ll quote the letter bit under the cut, because the comedy was sincerely one of my favourite aspects of this novel.