Monday Reading - Old and New to Know!

   

      Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they and others have been reading! Your TBR lists will grow! I finished that very long book and now I miss it! And, I'm sharing three graphic novels this week, one new and two that were donated to the bookstore! I have a bunch of picture books to read and share, but they will wait until next week. After the hard, hard week last week, thinking of all who have been affected by Hurricane Helene and Milton, wishing it weren't so, and hoping for better for them every day! 

         After several weeks and nearly 600 pages, I finished this amazing story, filled with love, heartbreak, trauma, life-saving and life-breaking. Only some of those "colors of the dark" feel revealed. It's hard to let go when there is a story conceived of both main and perhaps lesser, but also memorable, characters. I admire Chris Whitaker for knitting the story with innovation and empathy for the people who never stopped living as good people and revealing the horror that also lives in some. This is a book I will ponder and remember for a long while. 

         There is talk in numerous places about teens in crisis. Ash is one who can't understand why their family doesn't seem to care about environmental issues. They try to put up posters at school, only to be ripped down because they don't have the proper permission. Now, instead of going to the family ranch for the annual trip, it's been decided the family's going to Disneyland. The only person who felt as if he understood Ash was their Grandpa Edwin, who was also believed to have built a small cabin somewhere, a secret hideaway. Ash gets permission to go to the ranch without family, and an older cousin is going, too. But the family doesn't know that the cousin is going off partying, leaving Ash to do what they really want to do, survive in the wild looking for that cabin. It's an adventure of a teen finding what matters, learning that they might need more than being left alone, and trying to figure it out. Ash has their dog along with them, which sometimes has its own set of problems. Jen Wang has managed to give both an internal and external adventure of a young teen trying hard to do what they believe is right! Illustrations bring Ash's story to us readers with emotion and heart through text but numerous pages that show only action! It's terrific! 

           It's 20 years old, yet it has kept some hilarious parallels! Duck moves UP the political ladder until he wonders why! This cute book might be fun to discuss with young readers!

          This is an excerpt of Surviving The Fatherland by Annette Oppenlander, a brief published novelette that tells of the two boys who chose to run away when Hitler called for 15 and 16-year-olds to be drafted. It was near the end of World War II, and he was losing and desperate. What they did and how they survived, sometimes roasting a dead wild bird, roasting and eating that small thing just to keep going, often sleeping in freezing weather, shows their incredible determination to escape war and survive. It's quick but certainly memorable.

        A graphic novel about a gang killing, yet mixed into it is the sad life of a boy caught in the mix. Is he a bully, a killer, or a victim of his circumstances? You'll need to read this true story and try to figure it out. Whatever readers decide, it's sad that young ones are caught up in a life they cannot escape, at least until they manage to grow some years older. A narrator tells the story of this real boy, Robert, "Yummy" Sandifer. Look him up if you'd like to learn more! 

      It's a graphic, science-fiction, story of a virus gone very wrong. The underlying science feels scary, and just like the pandemic we experienced, some seemed immune and were left with a "start-over," which is hard to imagine! The story is bleak, illustrations only in black and white. If you like this kind of dystopian story, you'll love it! 

Now Reading:  Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell