SMITHSONIAN HISTORICAL FICTION Part 1

The Smithsonian has released a new children's historical fiction series. These are done by the same publisher as the Girls Survive series, so they're using some of the same authors and following the same pattern of releasing four books at a time. 

The Smithsonian series is shorter at around 63 pages each and has more illustrations. Each book has a different illustrator. 

As I tend to do, I read them in chronological order. Archie's book is set in 1898. He and his guardian, his uncle Harold, are travelling musicians who got bit by the gold bug. But they see the problems and dangers of mining and end up leaving to return to their old life. 

This one is the weakest of the four. The story goes by extremely quickly and you never get to know Val, the blonde girl on the cover, very well and I found her the most interesting character. 

 

Li's book was my second favorite of the set. She, her older brother and their mother are immigrating to the US in 1921, during a time when immigration for the Chinese was extremely strict. People could be held for months on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, enduring endless questioning about their lives to prove they were actually who they said they were. 

This is a topic I never knew anything about. I knew Chinese immigrants didn't have the best time of it, but I had no idea there was such a thing as the Chinese Exclusion Act, which I believe was also mentioned in one of the Girls Survive books. And that act wasn't repealed until 1943! Even then, only 105 Chinese immigrants were allowed per year from 1943 until 1965. I really wish Dear America had covered this one. I think it's quite important. 

This one takes place during the 1936 Olympics, which were held in Berlin. The main character is a young black boy with asthma, going along with his father, who's a newspaper founder and reporter. 

This is another story I wish had the Dear America (or rather, My Name Is America) treatment, because it deserves to be longer. The idea of a black reporter covering the Olympics attended by Hitler is fascinating. Add in the Jesse Owens factor and you've got great historical storytelling here. I really like Matthew as a character and how he dreams he can be like Jesse, despite his asthma. 

I actually think this one is a better story than Li's book, but I gave Li's second place in my little mini ranking here, because her book taught me something I hadn't known, which is always a thing I love. Despite knowing more of the history behind this book, I still want more of it! 

Ah, girls in science. One of my weaknesses. This was my favorite of the four, because Audrey wants to work for NASA, where her father works, and she struggles against sexist attitudes throughout the entire book, yet comes out on top in the end. I liked all the characters in it, even her dad, who initially tries to discourage her ambitions, because he knows how hard it will be for a female in this specific scientific world. A little conflicting, because Audrey's mother is a former science teacher. I was surprised there was never a scene where she stood up for Audrey more. 

The ending is a little bit farfetched, but I still enjoyed this book a lot. 

I'm looking forward to more from this series!

BSC Covers: Spanish Edition

I was just checking Amazon to see if there were any new BSC listings and I stumbled across the amazing Spanish covers.

Seriously, look at Stacey. She looks 25.

Even Kristy, who looks the youngest, still looks like 15 or 16.

This is cute, but she still doesn't look 13.

And here's bombshell Stacey again.

Gah, Charlotte is adorable.

Ah, yes, Mary Anne taking the temperature of the happiest child with a super high fever.

Also, that's way too casual for Jenny Prezzioso.

And here's Dawn giving Stacey a run for her money. I think she actually looks sexier than Stacey. Maybe it's the off the shoulder top. Not sure why that's paired with almost Mom jeans, but she somehow makes it work.

Here's a bookmark with some great name changes. I don't think these stuck, because I did the "look inside" thing on Amazon and they seemed to have the correct names.

Lucy McDouglas, y'all.

Mallory apparently had the only completely acceptable name.

Kristy

She's really, really cute. Just looks a couple years too old.

Mary Anne


She looks younger here than on the covers, but still too old.

Claudia


CUTE.

Stacey


Definitely in her 20s.

Dawn

Also too old, but not quite as bad as Stacey. Dawn could be like 18, 19.

Mallory

IS ADORABLE.

OMG, so cute. Not eleven, by any means, but this is definitely believable as like 15-year-old Mal.

Jessi

And her fabulous hair. She's older-looking than Mallory. More on par with Dawn. 17, 18. somewhere in there.

Man, these are great. Kinda makes me wish these were for graphic novels, but they're just Spanish-language versions of the books.

Derby Girl/Whip it

I absolutely love the movie Whip It and when I learned it came from a book, I devoured the book. Both are good, but the book is slightly better.

Sadly, author Shauna Cross has apparently never written anything else. Shame because I really like her writing style.

If you like the movie, definitely check out the book, but don't be surprised that there are several differences.

Bliss and her family are mostly the same, except Bliss has her blue hair for most of the book. Her little sister Shania (AKA: Sweet Pea) is younger in the book at only 4. I'm not sure how old she's supposed to be in the movie, but definitely older than 4. Bliss herself is 16 in the book and 17 in the movie.

Pash is quite a bit different. This is the one thing I really regret that they changed for the movie. Don't get me wrong. I like Alia Shawkat and she did an amazing job, but Pash Amini is supposed to be Middle Eastern. Alia is half-Iraqi, but Pash isn't supposed to be white-passing. I think that was a big missed opportunity that could have gone to a young Middle Eastern actress.

Oliver in the movie looks nothing like Oliver in the book. I'm sorry, but Movie Oliver is not hot one iota. Not even a little.

And if you're looking for Iron Maven, Maggie Mayhem, Bloody Holly and Smashley Simpson in the book, they're not there. Very few of the derby names used in the book made it to the movie.

Maggie Mayhem in the book is Malice in Wonderland, a blonde with blue streaks in her hair. She's a college student, not a single mom.

Iron Maven is Dinah Might. They're equally bitchy, but Dinah in the book actually does rat out Bliss. Maven in the movie does not. They also changed the minimum age to be a derby girl from 18 to 21 for the movie.

The Hurl Scouts did better in the book, too. They win the championship. I'm wondering if this was altered due to Iron Maven's character. She's an antagonist, but she turns out to be more of a sympathetic one, so her winning in the movie is more palatable.

Oliver is more of a dick in the book. There's more than one photo of him with the blonde girl and in one, they're making out. So Bliss was cheated on and there's no "but you didn't call" like there was in the movie. He's also written as having more personality, so the betrayal is harsher, because you actually got to like him more as a character than you do in the movie. He's okay in the movie, but he's just so goofy-looking that I was never persuaded to like him.

So yeah, if you like Whip It the movie, definitely read the book. It was originally called Derby Girl, as seen in this photo here, so you can find it under either name. I've actually reread it several times, but just realized today that I never gave it the review it needed!

CAVE CLUB 1

The first volume of the Cave Club graphic novel series released and my copy came today.

This volume contains two stories. The first, "Meet the Cave Club," is the founding of the first club and the invention of friendship, and the second shows what happens on the first birthday.

The stories are cute and pretty well-written. The art is done by several people, some slightly better than others.

You've actually seen the art if you've watched the videos. They tend to take the art from the comics and turn it into slightly moving images to fit the stories in the videos.

We meet Emberly first. She's the main character of both stories, though others play very prominent roles.

We learn that she invented fire, amongst other things. She's a risk-taker and therefore, a bit bold and reckless.

The second character introduced is actually one that doesn't have a doll yet. This is Ruly. She's described as "more polished" and she likes the "finer things in life." She's also credited with inventing the world's first fashion statement.

Ruly is only in the first story and doesn't really display much by way of personality, but my guess is that they're setting her up to be a Rarity type.

Her hair is a blend of pale yellow and that melon color you see in the art there.

Then we get to the other characters.

Tella is an oracle, who's very easily distracted.

Roaralai was raised by sabretooth tigers, so she's the wild, uncultured one.

Fernessa is the plant and animal lover, who invented agriculture. "Eventually, Fernessa will try and make her family the world's first vegans...it will not go well." Heh.

Then there's Slate, Tella's twin. He also has visions, but he turns his into paintings.

The second story is called "An EGG-cellent Adventure" and it's about Emberly insisting upon celebrating Fernessa's birthday. Emberly brings Fernessa a series of failed gifts, a sequence which hey used in the fourth webisode.

The actual adventure starts when Tella has a vision of a cake, so she, Emberly and Roaralai go in search of the giant egg from the vision, leaving Slate to distract Fernessa.

There are subtle hints at something between Slate and Fernessa. Perhaps more on his part than hers. She seems annoyed they left him with her.

So Tella, Emberly and Roaralai cross a river, which they used in the third webisode. Then they get caught by a giant man-eating plant, which Emberly's dad has warned her about since she was little. So who has to save them?

Yep, the birthday girl herself.

Fernessa is really awesome in this story. She's smart and brave, which actually made me like her a lot. She might be my second fave after Roaralai. I hardly ever like the nature character, so it's a little surprise, but perhaps not, because when I left off watching Winx, it was Flora who had become my favorite fairy.

The four girls continue on their adventure, end up in the cave with the giant egg, but hey, it's actually a dinosaur egg and the dino family isn't happy. But then the cave starts to collapse, so Emberly takes the egg and runs with it to make the dinos follow her and the other girls outside to safety. The egg hatches, the baby dino is safe and the dinos go off on their own. Emberly is disappointed there will be no cake, but Fernessa says this was the best birthday ever.

At the end of the story, it flashes to present day, where a tour guide is telling the tale. These are the kids in the crowd, so it's a cute vision of a modern day Cave Club.

I really enjoyed these stories. They're way better than the webisodes, I think. I just hope we see more of Ruly, so we can get to know her, as well as focus on characters other than Emberly as the catalyst.

Nostalgia #2

I can't remember when I first read this, but I'm guessing around the same time as the last review. It's a similar-sized, similar age group book. This one was written in 1985 though, so a bit earlier.

Buddies is the story of Dinah Feeney, a girl so kind she can't say no to anyone. She gets hand-me-downs from the entire neighborhood dumped on her. Just take them to the friggin' thrift shop or something. One of the other characters talks about her crappy camp projects being donated, so it's not like that isn't a thing.

Dinah decides a trip to camp might help her reinvent herself and she is thrilled to find she's cabinmates with two girls destined to be some of the most popular at camp.

Marilyn Powers is the granddaughter of the guy who put up the money to build the camp. So she's been stuck going there since she was six and she hates it. She's bold, sarcastic, loud and hilarious. I've always liked Marilyn a lot.

Cassandra Barnhill is your run of the mill popular girl. She dresses like she has money, acts as adult as she can, and is definitely your pretty, prim and proper type. She's got an emotional side, so she does come across as more likable than not, despite her flaws.

Dinah's problem is that a destined to be UNpopular girl met her in the bus parking lot before leaving for camp and has latched herself onto Dinah. Fern is one of the least likable, least sympathetic and most downright gross characters I've ever read in a book meant for kids. Aside from people meant to be villains and bullies, of course. The entire book is like a catalog of Fern's poor hygiene. Dinah tries to tell her multiple times that she should go make some new friends and she just doesn't get it. The other girls are clearly giving signs that she's pestering them to death and they're all about to lose it, but she's so socially backward that she misses every single cue.

Which means it's time for something drastic.

Dinah ends up pushing her out of a canoe when they're switching places so Fern can paddle. Then the next several chapters are Dinah beating herself up for it, getting angry at everyone about it, using said anger to forget about Fern and enjoy herself, and then trying to make up with her not once but twice, both of which end up as ridiculously over the top painful incidents.

By the time she's home, I think Dinah realizes she'll likely never forget what she did to Fern in exchange for a couple weeks of friendship and popularity with girls she'll likely never speak to again. I'm not convinced she's learned how to not be a complete pushover, but maybe she'll start doing more for herself and less for others in the future.

The real lesson here is don't be afraid to tell people how you feel, even if it is a hard conversation. Fern was obnoxious as fuck, but she deserved to be told so in a way that finally reached her, not pushed out of a canoe because things finally got to that level. Although she hopefully learned some lessons as well, because knowing when you're not wanted is a pretty valuable one.

Two covers exist for this book. The first one up at the top is my own photo of my book. This one on the right I found via Google.

I like both of them, but these are seriously ambiguous.

Fern isn't on the first one at all and she's obviously the girl in the pot in the second.

Cassandra with her auburn hair is also obvious on both. On the first, she's the one in blue. On the second, she's the cannibal in the center.

Now Dinah and Marilyn are where the problem comes in. All we know about Dinah is that she has brown hair and blue eyes. Marilyn is only described as "tall and tan" and she wears funny tees. Well, none of these girls is wearing a funny tee.

For the first cover, I've always thought Marilyn was in the red and Dinah was in the light colors on the right. Marilyn is a casual goofball and I just can't picture her with the long side-ponytail in that nice an outfit. That girl has a kind, sweet face, which is much more fitting for Dinah. And the one in red is more sassy, which works for Marilyn.

On the second cover, I'd say Dinah has the short dark hair on the left, while Marilyn is sprawling blonde on the right. But it's completely ambiguous.

The book is another enjoyable, quick read. There's something fun about it, even though Dinah tortures herself waaaaaaaaaaaay too much.

Nostalgia #1

I made the mistake of talking about a nostalgia book the other day and that's opened the door to rereading it and a couple others.

These are like staples on my nostalgia bookshelf. They're always out, always accessible.

I don't remember who gave me this book, but someone did. It's written in the front. 

This was published in October 1988, so I would have just turned 10. Heh. Not sure when exactly I got it, but there's some life context for no real reason.

The author is Ann Reit, who looks to have done some other romance stuff, but I never looked for any of it. And I'm not going to now. At 133 pages, this is a very fast read.

The basic premise is that two 14-year-old best friends date the same guy and it completely changes their relationship.

There's a lot going on in here though.

Phoebe, the blue-eyed blonde, feels plain next to Eve. A bit unusual for the time, because it was typically the blondes that were the glam ones and the brown-eyed brunettes that felt plain. Eve is the bubbly, friendly, outgoing yet also pretty superficial one. Phoebe is the Smart One. Not nerd-level smart, but you can tell this is the distinction between them and it's kept up through the entire book. Each girl has moments of wanting to be more like the other one. Phoebe wants Eve's family, especially her older sister. Because the book is from Phoebe's point of view, you don't know what Eve thinks about Phoebe's family, but she definitely doesn't have as good as relationship with her sister as Phoebe does. Phoebe thinks her mother is a neglectful scatterbrain. She's definitely a scatterbrain, but she proves by the end how much she does pay attention. She thinks her parents fight all the time, but that's explained by her mother as just their odd way of showing love. Her mother says Phoebe is the only one her father openly shows how much he loves. It's Phoebe who grows throughout the book, coming out of her place in Eve's shadow, making new friends and seeing her family in a new light. It's even recognized in the text that she realizes it's she who's different and not Eve.

Eve isn't an unlikable character. She's simply different than Phoebe and because we don't get into her head, we don't get to know her very well. Her presentation as shallow is compounded by this.

So these two girls are super close. They're obsessed with Gone with the Wind and reference it constantly. They wear the same colors to parties, only in reverse.

"Okay," I said. "I'll wear the gray short skirt, my red sweater, and those printed red tights. Now you."

"You picked good, for a change. I'll wear my red pleated skirt, the gray fuzzy sweater, and those crazy gray stockings your mother gave me last Christmas."

You've got to be besties to pull that shit.

Until a boy comes along.

The relationship is a bit odd. A new boy comes to town and decides to date both Eve and Phoebe. They take turns. It's not clear if he's dating other girls, too, though it's quite possible. It feels like a lot of time passes, but it really doesn't. It's October in Chapter 2 and Christmas in Chapter 10. Phoebe says "the weeks went by" in Chapter 11, which is the final one. So maybe it's spring?

The odd dating system goes on for a while, with people commenting about how weird it is that the girls aren't jealous of each other. They say everything is fine, until suddenly it isn't. It's Phoebe who falls for Quentin, the guy, first, but Eve is close behind. And it doesn't take Phoebe long to realize Quentin has fallen for Eve. Then it's only a brief matter of time before Quent and Eve are an exclusive couple, Phoebe and Eve drift apart, and Phoebe discovers she's got to figure things out on her own.

It's annoying to watch one idiot boy, because there's not anything especially likable about Quentin, tear apart these two friends. Phoebe's not comfortable around Eve because she feels rejected, hurt and jealous. Eve isn't comfortable around Phoebe because she feels guilty. So Eve and Quent disappear into couples land, while Phoebe makes new friends, gets over everything, still misses Eve, and eventually gives another boy a chance, only to realize they're meant to be friends only. But she does get a neat friend out of it. I like Ernie.

So what happens with a boy like Quentin? A boy like Quentin moves on. One day, Phoebe sees a messed up Eve in the cafeteria, obviously upset, so the two ditch school and Phoebe takes Eve home to talk. They end up mending fences in the end and Phoebe realizes that nothing is ever going to go back to being the same, because she's changed, but she's okay with that.

The scene on the cover is from the very last page of the text, where Eve is washing out some bleach or whatnot she put in her hair because she wants a blonde streak. She jumps in the shower with her clothes on and Phoebe goes in with her. "Ernie wouldn't understand this, and Carrie probably wouldn't either. But I did. And Eve did."

If this was written in modern times, I think we may have gotten the ending we deserved: the girls end up a couple. Throughout the book, Phoebe doesn't seem that into kissing boys. It doesn't take her long to dismiss Ernie from possible boyfriend status to just a friend. And her descriptions of Eve are...well...

I watched Eve sitting on her bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, and her head bent toward her feet. She was carefully painting small white dots on top of the bright purple polish already on her toes. The tip of her tongue was sticking out of her mouth and she was barely breathing. Suddenly, she let a huge noisy burst of air out of the corner of her mouth, trying to move a dark brown curl of hair away from her eyes. That was like Eve. She could do a totally graceless thing and look good doing it.

And...

Her eyes filled with excitement and confidence. Her cheeks flushed with a sweet, pale pink and a mist of perspiration on her forehead that just made her look dewy, not sweaty. I knew he saw the way her dark hair curled around her face and head, and how she was biting her lower lip, making her teeth look whiter against the pink of her mouth.

Even when she realizes she really likes Quent, she doesn't describe him with an ounce of the force she uses to describe Eve.

I've always been disappointed in the cover for this reason. I want to see the Eve that Phoebe sees, not her with wet hair (that in no way could have been as curly as the book describes) and her eyes closed. Where is this captivating Eve?

I don't know what it is about this book that it's something I've always come back to, but there's just something there. It's not the best written thing. It's certainly not very long. I'd love to see it redone with a version from Eve's point of view, too. Not intertwined, but the same story from her point of view in a completely separate book, but the two books are sold in one copy.

The World of NIGHTSCHOOL

The original run of Nightschool was from 2008-2010, but in anticipation for the release of a new book set in the same world, all four volumes were recently collected into two bigger volumes.

Nightschool is the creation of Svetlana Chmakova, who is one of my current favorite creators. She's the brilliant mind behind the Berrybrook world: Awkward, Brave, Crush and Diary. (An E book is slated for next year. Yay!)

You don't really see much of Berrybrook Chmakova in Nightschool. It reads more like a typical manga that could have been written by anyone. The characters are interesting, but there are a lot of them and sadly, the short run only just touches upon them, which is its largest failing.

The world of Nightschool shows how supernatural creatures, which are simply called "night things" (boring), get their education. There's a human school that transforms at night to become Nightschool. There are vampires, werewolves and other "shifters," demons, mermaids, and weirns, which are a distinct type of witch that has a demon bound to them from birth. These demons are called Astrals and you can see Alex's Astral in the upper right on the cover there. 

I have no idea how to pronounce "weirn," which drives me nuts. My German-focused mind says something like vie-ern. (Sort of like "iron" with a V in front.) But it's probably really something simple, like "weird" with an N.

The story in Nightschool is quite complex. Alex's older sister is the night guardian, who basically makes sure the school looks presentable before it becomes a human school again in the morning. Why they don't just have their own school is beyond me. Seems like it would be easier. But anyway, her sister goes missing to the point that no one knows who she is except for a handful of select people. Alex goes to school to investigate and the book is mostly about her trying to find her sister while all these other complex storylines weave around it. I don't want to give too much away, so I won't go into detail. I also don't want to try to write it all out because there's a lot!

Seems like a good place for a photo of the second collected volume.

Anyway, I'll touch briefly on some of the character groups.

Alex is the main character, a weirn girl. She's not very likeable, but she's written that way on purpose. She was cursed and if she shows affection towards anything, bad things happen to it. So she's very, very cold and distant.

Of the students, you mainly see one older clique of three (Ronee, Sion and Remy) plus Ronee's younger sister Rochelle, who is Alex's age. Ronee, Sion and Rochelle are all weirns. Remy is a demon. (I liked Remy a lot.) Rochelle is more bubbly and likeable, but she has to be. She's like a foil of Alex, who has to remain distant. Rochelle's thing is apparently a bloodline curse. If she becomes upset it causes actual physical pain to her older sister, Ronee. Weird. Ronee is one of the few people who remembers Alex's sister, so they work together in the second volume.

Then there are the Hunters, a group that protects humans from night things. You meet many of them, though three are sidelined at their first appearance, which annoyed me because the character with by far the coolest design is one of them. Their leader, Daemon, is extremely powerful and pretty awesome.

Mr. Roi is one of the Nightschool teachers and he's crazy powerful, too, as is the principal. These two characters and Daemon are all Night Lords or Nereshai.

There's a young seer character named Marina who's instrumental to the story. She's not a Hunter, but connected to them.

Nightschool was written more for an older audience. The characters are mostly older and the plotlines and actions are, too. I feel like the length is what caused the problems I have with this. There's a lot of world-building, but it leaves you with more questions than answers. There are a lot of characters that leave you wanting to understand them better. This needed to be a longer, more drawn out, way more in-depth series.

So Chmakova moved on to do the Berrybrook world and at some point, she must have thought "I can  combine these!" And so she did.

The Weirn Books is basically Berrybrook set in the Nightschool world. The characters are younger and more developed in one volume than the Nightschool cast throughout the entire run. Like Berrybrook, it's aimed at middle-grade readers.

The main cast are weirns. Ailis is on the right there, alongside her cousin Na'ya. They're kind of outcasts at school. Ailis is a bit awkward. Na'ya is obsessed with dragons and wants to be one. I have no idea how to pronounce Ailis, but her nickname is Leesh, so I'm thinking it's like Alicia without the "ia." Aleesh. With a short "a" or long "a" maybe. Ay-leesh. Hang on. Research time. Okay, it seems to be Irish, yet that's pronounced "Ay-lish" so the nickname for that would not be Leesh.

Seriously, authors, if you give your characters unusual names, put something in there about pronunciation. It's such a pet peeve of mine. It's easy to do a scene where another character is dragging out that name for some reason and that's a great place to stick in pronunciation. "Ayyyyy-leeeeeeeeshhhh."

Anyway. Other characters include the girls' grandmother, Na'ya's younger brother (D'esh), the werewolf boy Ailis has a crush on (Russ), the weird boy from next door named Jasper (he likes Na'ya), and the mean weirn girl at school (Patricia).

The plot is pretty simple. There's a spooky house in the woods and the girls learn it used to be a weirn school their grandmother and her twin brother attended. Grandma faked sick to stay home one day and that day turned out to be the one where all the kids and the teacher went missing. She never saw her brother after that. So shortly after learning this story, Patricia starts acting weird at school and the cousins are suspicious. Is this connected to what happened decades ago? Of course it is. But you'll have to read the book to find out how.

I absolutely loved this. Not on the level of Berrybrook, but it's not far behind. You don't need to read Nightschool to enjoy this new book at all. Nightschool is fun reading, so I do recommend it, even though I had issues with it, but it's definitely not necessary if you want to skip right to Weirn Books.