Changers Book One: Drew by T. Cooper & Allison Glock-Cooper

An ARC (Advance Review Copy) of this book arrived at my house on January 9th. I finished it January 10. Now, some of this may be attributed to my freakish reading speed, but the other part is that I couldn't put it down. I even read it in the dark. Probably not the best idea since my vision is already bad. But hey! good books deserve sacrifices. 

The first book in the Changers series is about a young boy named Ethan who is just starting high school in a new town. When he wakes up on the first day, he's not really Ethan anymore. He's Drew. Drew is small and blonde. She's also a girl. And so begins the journey as Ethan finds out that he's part of a race called Changers: beings that are a different person for every year of high school, devoted to spreading good.

The first thing I really liked is that the Changing takes place during high school. I think that high school really molds a person, and it was interesting how the authors chose to take that to an extreme. The authors really portrayed how it must feel to wake up in the morning and be someone else, but still have the memories and thoughts of who you once were. Here's an excerpt that I think illustrates that.

My eyes are barely slitted as my head pops through the neckhole, and I catch a flicker of somebody in the full length mirror behind the door---WHAT THE? Someone else is in the room with me. I manage to pry both eyes open. Hel-lo there. I pull my shirt all the way down and step a little closer to the mirror. She's wearing the identical Slayer shirt, faded, with holes in exactly the same places. That blows; it was supposed to be one of a kind. 
Wait, is this what my parents were fussing about? Some long-lost cousin or something? Some hillbilly relative?....Her name is probably "Brittney" or "Sunflower" or something innocent and dirty at the same time. This could be sweet. 
I raise a hand, attempt a wave. She does the same. I rub my eyes like they do in cartoons, and look again. Cousin Brittney is kind of a babe, if I can say that in reference to a cousin without being too incesty about it. Long, straight, white-blond hair--the kind that doesn't come in a bottle--and wide, wild green eyes, a nice body. A little shorter than me. She's also...wearing my skull-and-crossbones boxers. That's weird.

 Okay, I get it.  This is a dream, the weirdest freaking dream I've ever had. And it's still going on. Duh, of course, because I was obsessing over getting a girlfriend before I fell asleep, now I've conjured myself an imaginary dream girl. Pathetic, sure. But hey, I'll go with it. I reach out to touch her, and she reaches out to touch me. We get closer. My eyes float down to her chest. My fingertips touch her fingertips in the mirror, and then for some reason my hands do a U-turn and land on my own chest. I look down, start lifting up my  collar to peek inside.
Holy...
"MOOOOM!!" I scream in a high voice that startles me. My mom is in my room in seconds, takes one look at me, and commences jumping up and down like a three-year-old at a birthday party. She squeals over her shoulder to Dad, "It's a girl!"

As you can see, the authors portray the excitement of parents as contrasting with the confusion of the teenager in a comedic way. Ethan goes on to start "liking" (as, in middle school, like-like) two people: one, a fellow Changer boy named Chase, and the other, a regular girl named Audrey.  It was cool to read about how Ethan adjusted to romance from a girl's perspective. The thing that defines a good YA book for me is how real it feels--how many things go wrong. It has to have a good balance of good and bad, otherwise it becomes too fantastical for me. Changers did that perfectly. None of the romances were predictable--you never knew who was going to "get the girl (or boy)".

I think that this book deals with almost every issue that a teenager will encounter, and serves as a reference for almost every mold-able young adult out there. The book takes on important problems that affect teens everyday--from being too short or too tall to being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, as well as being biracial or foreign. think that everyone should read this book and the rest of the series that will follow. It gives you a glimpse into what everyone else is thinking. 

P.S. Here is the official Changers site!  http://wearechangers.org/

P.P.S. The book comes out in February 2014.

Winter Break Mash-Up

Ahhhhh. Winter Break. For some (like me), this means Christmas. For others in that category (also like me), this means.......BOOOOOOOOKKKKKKSSSSSSS!!!!! Yes, I did receive many books for Christmas. I have also read most of them in the week that followed, earning me the title of "book freak" from many in my family. I'm going to do a quick review of all of the ones that I have read so far.

Paper Towns by John Green
Once, as we were leaving a stage combat class, my friend said, " Oh my god, that was so much fun. Like, I was about to die from all the fun." This was the sensation I experienced reading this book. The story is that Q (short for Quentin), has been in love with his neighbor, Margo, since he was a kid. One night, she climbs into his room and employs him as an assistant in her various acts of vengeance and kindness around town. Some include: leaving a rotten fish and vandalizing her former boyfriend's house and the house of her best friend, whom he was cheating on her with, going into a closed skyscraper in the middle of town to see the city, and breaking into Sea World, as it is the only theme park in her area that she hasn't broken into. The next day, Margo disappears, leaving small clues for Q on how to find her. You get caught up in the mystery and find yourself trying to decode Margo's messages before Q does. The book has a powerful ending while still being fun and exciting. I really loved the way that Green incorporated the normalcy of "teenager-dom" into a VERY un-normal (for lack of a better term) situation. Although someone like Margo is one in a thousand, you feel like she could be anywhere. 

The Dark Unwinding by Sharon Cameron
This book is more along the lines of a YA fantasy. However, while still very easily sliding under that label, I don't think that it has completely succumbed to the stereotypes of its genre. The book has a very imaginative storyline. It takes place around 1850 in England. Seventeen-year-old Katherine is send to her uncle, where she is supposed to send him to a lunatic asylum. She then discovers that he is a wonderful old man and has many beautiful inventions. She also befriends a young mute boy named Davy and her uncle's apprentice, Lane, whom she soon begins to develop feelings for. As you can see, the book sounds pretty generic. I think that the writing is what stood out to me. Cameron artfully creates a world that you can imagine yourself in, and she has very good character development. You can really feel what Katharine is feeling. 

The Wicked and the Just by J. Anderson Coats
I don't know how I can not have heard of this author before. She is an amazing writer. This story is about a (very bratty) girl named Cecily is more or less kicked out of her estate and forced to live in "occupied Wales". Her father becomes one of the English "occupiers" and she ascends the social ladder. Her servant, Gwenhwyfar, a Welsh girl, has a deep hatred for the English, with good reason. The Welsh soon start to overtake the English, and "the brat", as Gwen calls her, gets a look at her life from the opposite side. Coats has amazing characters. The way that she writes correctly portrays every feeling that her two main characters go through with such detail that you can feel what they feel surprisingly accurately. The plot is also good--the whole book is very well written historical fiction overall. I love reading historical fiction that isn't just fact after fact after fact after fact after fact. Its a hard task, and I think that J. Anderson Coats does it extremely well. 

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan
The tagline on the cover of this book: "If you're lost, you might need to swim against the tide." Ugh. Before reading this, I thought this would be a corny feel-good book. So it was a pleasant surprise when I discovered characters that I related to, an unconventional plot, and overall, the opposite of what I was expecting. The story is about a 12-year-old girl named Willow Chance, adopted at birth and evolved into nothing less than a prodigy. In her twelfth year, both of her parents are killed in a car accident. She is taken in by new friends and a school counselor who hates his job. I know that the plot sounds pretty simple, but all the little details that Sloan slips in are what makes it special. The book is written in broken sentence/list format sometimes, which I liked. It conveyed the rushing-ness of the human thought.

That's it, everybody. I hoped that you enjoyed and HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY YAY THIS IS MY LAST POST EVER OF 2013 AUSPICIOUS MOMENTS.

5 Questions with Lois Lowry

A while ago, I had the incredible chance to have an (email) chat with none other than Lois Lowry! I asked her a couple of questions about her Giver series, and she provided me with some eloquent answers. Here they are! I've also provided the links to the individual books of the quartet at the bottom.

HF: I feel that the Young-Adult-Dystopian genre seems to be inspired by The Giver series--it certainly was my first glance into that world. When you wrote The Giver, were you looking to find a new audience or access your existing audience in a different way?

LL:No, I never think about the audience when I am writing. I simply tell the story that is appearing in my head. I had no thoughts at all about dystopia, or science fiction, or fantasy. I was thinking about memory…how it works, how it affects us…when the boy appeared, with a story to tell.

HF: I was struck by the way Claire and her child were handled by the society in the novel Son. Does this reflect on your views about how circumstances could inform a woman's ability to keep her child or give him/her away?

LL: I had four children before I was 26, back in the late 50s and early 60s, so I know a great deal from experience of what a woman's/mother's role was thought to be at that time. And I have lived a long life since then, so I have watched cultural attitudes shift and change.  SON doesn't deal with a woman's right to keep or relinquish a child, but rather with loss….and what it night do to a woman to have a child wrested away. It ponders the question of state control over reproduction, and how that might affect the basic instincts of most women.

HF: When I read the part in The Giver about how the society rid the world of pain, war, discrimination and such, but at the same time taking away color, light, and real feelings, I felt that it was your way of saying evil is also part of human life. Do you think that this is true, and if so, is it a message that you think that young people will be able to hear?

LL: I think the juxtaposition of good/bad in the world is something that kids know and are familiar with from the time they are very young. Throughout history, art and music and literature have all arisen form  deep pain But there are parents, i think, who try very hard to keep that knowledge from children…hence, the challenging and banning of books that some parents find too "dark" or "troubling."  Yet fairy tales from earliest times deal with the existence of evil in the world.  Reading about things that frighten us is a way of preparing our responses…rehearsing, in a way.

HF: Your books in The Giver series are all about how children taking on roles that should really be done by adults. ( i.e. Jonas taking on the memories of the world, Kira holding the past of the world, Matty being a messenger for an entire network of villages, Claire being a mother at 14, etc. ) do you think that the children of this generation are growing up too fast?

LL: The world has become very complex and today's kids must prepare to enter it armed, more now than when i was young. And many political leaders of today—I suppose this has perhaps always been true—are self-absorbed and corrupt. In contrast, young people tend to be idealistic and uncorrupted. In these books, each of the protagonists you mention has a genuine desire to save and heal the world. I like the idea of the young uncorrupted hero/heroine taking on that challenge, and even the burdens that come with it.

HF: If you could recommend 3-5 books that young people should reads before they graduate from high school, which books would you pick?

LL: I would change my mind many times. But right now? I think every young person should read A Fort of Nine Towers, by Qais Akbar Omar, a memoir of growing up in Afghanistan which gives a  passionate and detailed portrait of  a culture we do not adequately understand.  Also: The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien  ("a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling")  My Antonia, by Willa Cather.  Dreams from my Father, by Barack Obama. and Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder.

The Giver: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3636.The_Giver

Gathering Blue: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12936.Gathering_Blue

Messenger: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12930.Messenger

Son: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13324841-son

The Giver by Lois Lowry

The Giver. Everyone knows it. It's one of the most famous books of our generation. An amazing world of ethics and control is created by the talented Lois Lowry. This well-crafted story is one of my favorites, so I'd like to review it here.
       I first read this in the third grade, when I asked my then 14-year-old sister to give me a really good book, and she handed me this one. I started reading this book and I didn't stop until I was finished. (I mean, except to eat dinner, because everyone knows how hard that would be.) I even sat on the floor of our bathroom and read it when I was supposed to be brushing my teeth--maybe that's why I have braces. WHY DID YOU HAVE TO WRITE SUCH A GOOD BOOK, MS. LOWRY? But seriously. 
      For those of you who don't know, The Giver is about a future world where life is so controlled that people's partners, jobs, and even kids are chosen for them. Jonas, the main character is chosen to have all of the world's memories taken upon his shoulders. The story is about how he chooses to deal with this.    
      I recently re-read this book last year, when our whole grade was required to read it. (Since I had already read it in the bathroom earlier, I got to read #3 in the quartet, Messenger) I was amazed how well Lowry brought the character of Jonas together. He was so well written: just the right portrayal of that 12-year-old feeling of wanting to be older, but not really. I think that Ms. Lowry captured the way that a person on the cusp of "teenagerhood,"--a place where people will start to expect more of you--may feel, in a very interesting way. She created a complex world around that feeling. Jonas' job is to be the person who guides the leaders of his society with the memories of the entire world, so no one else has to have the negative effects of remembering things like war, pain, or even sunburn. But with this seemingly effective solution, comes the forgetting of things like climate, colors, love, or a boat sailing on a still lake. I don't want to ruin the ending for any young (or old, don't want to be prejudiced here) readers that still haven't read it, but I just want to say--you won't look at the world the same way after reading this book.

In Commemoration of A Parting

This is a piece I wrote in school, and I'm publishing it here in commemoration of my grandmother, who passed away four years ago yesterday. 

I had been wearing black. It was kind of ironic, actually, that I was already clothed in the cheerless color. But that day, as I entered my third grade classroom, the clothes weren’t worn sadly, at least not yet. I had dressed up in my older sister’s hand me fuzzy black sweater and my favorite yoga pants. I must have thought I looked cool, like a spy or something. I vividly remember sitting there on the carpet at the end of the day, tall and proud in my “slick” outfit as our teacher read to us.

          I boarded the bus, and as we screeched to a halt and the driver opened the doors with the trademark hiss, I felt something was wrong. My father was standing there, still in his work clothes. That was extremely unusual, as he worked until 5:30 pm and it was only 4. But my younger sister didn’t seem to think much of it, so for a while, neither did I. He probably came home for lunch or something. As we entered the house, my younger sister’s mindless, shrieking chatter still echoing in my ears (as her LOUD shrieks often did), my father cleared his throat.

          “I have some very sad news,” he said.

Oh no. I knew it. Our cat had been getting older and slower. But before I could start shrieking, my father had some more news to deliver.

“Ammi-Ammi (my grandmother) has passed away.”

Looking back on it, it had sounded like he was reading from a script. But how do you really explain the concept of “parting from this world” to those who are only beginning to understand it?

My head began to spin. Dead? My sister and I wore matching expressions of confusion, then, all at once, everything clicked. I dropped my bag down on the floor and walked slowly up to my room, closed the door, and folded up in my red desk chair.

I hope that I will never sob the way I did that day. Ammi-Ammi, my maternal grandmother, was dear to me. She was soft and cuddly, the way all grandmothers are. She was delicate, with small feet and a love for things like flowers, violet perfumes, and fragrant powders. She was feisty and endearingly silly at times. All these things came flooding back to me, and I was suddenly hateful of my black outfit. Why? Whywhywhywhywhy was the question I repeated to myself as I sobbed. After I had cried myself dry, I just sat there. And that is the worst kind of sorrow. When you cry, you at least have something to focus on. But when those tears are dry, you have to face the reason.

After I had collected myself into a reasonable heap of misery, I plonked downstairs and sat in my father’s lap. Just then, my mother came rushing out of her closet. And I will only say one thing: I have only ever been able to put a face to anguish once, and it is hers.

 

Whether They're Designer or Hand-Me-Downs, Walk In Them

      At our school, we recently sat together as a student body and listened to a motivational speaker by the name of Dr. Michael Fowlin, also known as Mykee. He left us with the phrase, "Don't do what you should do--do what you need to do." He bowed toward us, hands clasped, pleading that we would walk away with something after this performance. As we were leaving the auditorium, I remarked to my friend, "I don't think that they probably took anything away from that," nodding toward the giggly group of crop-top and "short-short" clad girls. If anyone else heard that, they most likely would think that I didn't either. 
     Although I don't consider myself at the bottom of the wretched social ladder that divides middle-school, I am most certainly far from the top. But even so, does that automatically make my remarks upon the groups above me "non-nasty" or something to be agreed with, whereas if they said the same sentence, it would be considered snarky or spiteful? Although I know that I am not mean (or at least I hope that I'm not), I sometimes wish I could take away those casual remarks that fall from my lips as judgements that I know I wouldn't want to be at the recieving end of.
     So let's talk about this "other" species. Yes, they may have more money than I do, or more friends, and yes, they can be mean. But I don't think that makes them any better or worse than me. Neither of us has the right to pass judgements on the other. After all, we were all born as slippery, wailing babies, weren't we? (Unless you're like me, and was born with a pitful, pathetic mewl rather than a robust roar.) We all have differences. We should all respect those differences. 
     I am not trying to justify people being able to bully others because of their social status. I am simply sending out a request as Dr. Mykee did--"Don't judge me," the phrase that is added jokingly by all people after revealing something strange that they do, has a deeper meaning. I write this as an apology to all those I have passed judgements against and as a hopeful message to others that they will not do the same. Walk a mile in somebody else's shoes. Whether they are designer 3-inch platforms and really hurt your feet, or the most torn up sneakers you've ever seen, retain judgement until you do.

 

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

It is rare that you see a young-adult novel that is simply about people. Even if this kind of novel does make it's way into the dystopian-fantasy-dominated YA shelves, it is usually pushed to the side to make way for fantasy books like Matched, Uglies, and Twilight. (Don't get me wrong, these are good books, too. They are just catering more to what teens want, instead of branching out.) So I was surprised to see the round yellow sticker on the front of The Fault in Our Stars, (Dutton Books, 2012) announcing that this book was a #1 New York Times Bestseller. It didn't have a flashy picture on the cover--instead, two simple clouds announced the title and author. But what was inside was pure gold.

This novel is about a girl named Hazel Grace Lancaster, diagnosed at the age of thirteen with a thyroid cancer that spread to her lungs.  She is hooked up to an oxygen tank almost all of the time that helps her breathe.  Then she meets Augustus Waters, who lost his leg to osteosarcoma. They befriend each other and soon fall in love, before everything falls apart. 

Now, in any one of the novels I mentioned before, both characters would be beautiful/handsome, completely fit and healthy, and then they would fall in love and go through all of these hardships to be able to be in love. (ex. Bella Swan and Edward Cullen of Twilight.) Not one of those people would be hooked up to an oxygen tank or one-legged, because that isn't what appeals to the public. People like reading about these perfect people because they themselves aren't perfect. We like things without flaws. But reading about other people who have faults and imperfections just like us is so much more interesting. And it is those faults that make Augustus and Hazel Grace so much more beautiful than Bella and Edward and their perfect little daughter. This book was honest in a way that I've never seen before. It included the corny things that normal people would say, instead of the perfect way that characters talk in other YA novels. An example:

"As the seats around the gate began to fill, Augustus said, "I'm gonna get a hamburger before we leave. Can I get you anything?"
     "No," I said, 'but I really appreciate your refusal to give in to breakfasty social conventions."
He tilted his head at me, confused. "Hazel has developed an issue with the ghettoization of scrambled eggs," Mom said.
     "It's embarrassing that we all just walk through life blindly accepting that scrambled eggs are fundamentally associated with mornings."
     " I want to talk about this more," Augustus said. "But I am starving. I'll be right back."

These little bits and pieces are what make this novel perfectly human. It shows all sides of people, love, happiness, "corny-ness", heartbreak, and utter sorrow. We all experience this in ways that only a simply human person can. And so, I close this with one simple message. Humans, however much they don't care to admit it, will always relate more to a normal, not particularly special character than some fantastical creature. And that is why The Fault in Our Stars is so successful. It is a book with a simple yet powerful message about what goes on between humans.