GIRLS SURVIVE Series Part 9

Fumiko's book is set during the 1923 earthquake that levelled Tokyo. I had never heard of this incident, which is why I love this series. It's not afraid to be realistic in that not everyone always makes it, but it's also very good at finding things I'd either never heard of or don't know much about. 

Fumiko and her older brother both want different lives than what they're likely going to get, but their entire world changes when the earthquake hits Tokyo. The earthquake itself doesn't do the most damage. It's the fact that it hits during lunch, so all these hibachis fall over and start fires. As the giant fire rages out of control, Fumiko, her brother and their mother struggle to get across the bridge to the fish market where Father is, only to find out that he's likely back on the original side, as he had to do deliveries. 

Eventually, they do find him in a makeshift hospital and though they've lost everything, they're at least all alive. I enjoyed this one a lot. It's full of action and all the characters are likeable. 

Now we jump to New York City in 1969. 

Flor is a half-Black, half-Puerto Rican trans girl living in Manhattan. Her grandmother catches her looking at her deceased mother's jewelry and scarf, and yells at her for being disrespectful. Flor flees in the night, bringing basically only her sketchbook. Girl, you packed a bag. Why would you not stuff it with a few changes of clothes, some toiletries, and snacks? I found that part really unbelievable. The grandmother was sound asleep. Flor could have packed a little better.

Flor soon meets Tami, a fellow trans girl who teaches her the ways of being a trans female runaway in New York City. 

Soon, they find themselves at the Stonewall Inn with the plan to use Flor's art skills to make a little money. Their drag queen friend Jackie is there to help and has invited the girls to stay at her place that night. 

The initial riot happens that night and the three barely escape. Tami is even in police custody when the confusion allows Flor to get her away from the cops. That night, Flor draws what she saw and, in the morning, Jackie has an idea to turn Flor's art into a flyer that they use to recruit people to come to the follow-up protests. 

This series is short, simple books, but I almost always learn something. I had no idea that even in 1969, it was illegal to serve alcohol to gay and lesbian people. That trans girls could be arrested for wearing feminine clothing in public. We've come a way since then, but is it really a long way? There's sadly still so much farther to go. 

I enjoyed this one a lot, thanks to the excellent characters. Reading also took me back to my city. I used to walk down Christopher Street all the time. 

Disney's Twisted Tales: Part of Your World Graphic Novel

A Twisted Tale turns to the world of graphic novels and they picked one of the best to begin with. This is the story of Queen Ariel of Atlantica, set five years after the events of the movie, only in this version, Ursula won. 

This is one of my favorite books in the series and this adaptation did it epic justice. Mostly. The art is splendid. The gist of the story is there. My main disappointment is that Jona the seagull barely had a role, and they eliminated Argent and Vareet entirely. 

I hope to see them tackle more from A Twisted Tale in this style. I know they're doing Valentino's Villain series as graphic novels, but I got enough of that in the books, so I haven't bought any. Especially because one is Cruella and I HATE that book. 

If you're a Little Mermaid fan, I recommend picking this up. Ariel and the Curse of the Sea Witches is another good one. I never reviewed it, but it's set after the movie. All of these prove that I really only dislike Ariel as a character within the confines of her own movie. Every other thing I've read that takes place before or after or in a twisted version, I've really liked her. 

Maizy Chen's Last Chance

Maizy Chen and her mother are off to Last Chance, Minnesota to visit Maizy's maternal grandparents. Her grandfather isn't doing well. 

This book covers a lot of issues. 

Oma and Maizy's mom have a lot of fights and drama. 

Opa tells great stories, so about a third of the book is him telling Maizy stories about her ancestor who travelled from China to the US during the gold rush. 

Maizy learns that her words for grandpa and grandma are actually German, not Chinese. And there's an interesting story why. 

Maizy tries to repair the relationship between Opa and his old friend Werner. 

Maizy experiences small white town racism. She and her family are the only Asians. They might be the only non-white people. I don't remember anyone else standing out as not white. 

There's a mystery afoot, too. 

Oh, and Maizy's mom was artificially inseminated. She doesn't know her dad and can't learn anything more about him til she's eighteen. Very unique family structure there. 

This book was really fun. I think it could have been fleshed out in places, particularly with characters like Riley and Logan, but it still worked as it was. 

AMERICAN GIRL: Claudie Book 2

My review for this book is essentially the same as the first one. I love the characters and the author does a great job with characterization and plot considering the length, but again, the book is WAY TOO SHORT. 

In this one, Claudie is one her way to Georgia to visit her maternal grandmother for the first time. 

She faces the biggest difference between the north and the south during this time period: the blatant racism and danger of the south. 

Most of her time in Georgia is spent dealing with racism, climbing trees a couple times, and learning a bit more about her mother and why she's a reporter. 

Back in Harlem, Claudie has finally found the inspiration for her skit, and she begins work on the variety show immediately. She works hard as the director to bring everything together and do a lot of advertising to boot. And it works! Her skit comes last and Gwen the painter comes up to her backstage right before it to tell her that she saved the boardinghouse. Claudie is so happy that she's almost not nervous onstage. 

Claudie spends a lot of both books thinking about her talent and what it could be. She finally realizes some people are just good at multiple things and not everyone needs a singular skill to make them talented. But she also learns she wants to be a writer and continue to tell her stories. 

I would love to see a third book about Claudie. I wish they were still doing the longer mysteries that BeForever got so we could spend more time in her world. They really screwed her over when it comes to writing. And her collection is pretty small, too. Ugh. Stupid Mattel. I applaud the author for doing such a great job with the short length she worked within. She made me want the doll, which I plan to order sometime this year, along with Dizzy Dot and two outfit sets. 

AMERICAN GIRL: Julie

JULIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I'm a big Julie fan. I cannot reiterate enough how wild it is that I let these reviews go unfinished for so long. But I am glad that my last brand new AG historical mystery reading experience is going to be with Julie, because her newest mystery is one I never read. I really wish they kept up with the mysteries. I miss the historical cast. 

Julie was the ninth historical character released. I remember very fondly seeing her in AGPNY for the first time. I picked out Ivy as my first doll in 2007 and it took me until 2009 to finally get Julie. I bought a lot in between. I'm not sure why it took me so long to finally cave on her, but she remains one of my big faves. 

Just for fun, this is the picture I took in AGPNY in 2007 when I first saw her and it was this look that made me want the doll. 

Julie's first three books are mostly about her dealing with changes in her life. Her parents are divorced and she, her older sister Tracy and their mother move to a new apartment above the store their mother has opened. Julie is upset to be moving away from her father, her pet rabbit (the new apartment is no pets) and her best friend Ivy, who lives across the street. She's also changing schools, so she has to try to make new friends. She meets a boy, TJ, who plays basketball with her, and she figures she can try out for the team, but the coach says no girls on the boys' team. Yet there is no girls' team, so by the new Title IX, she should be allowed to play. The coach remains difficult, so Julie gets 150 signatures on a petition. He throws it out in front of her and later, she and TJ dig it out of the trash. She takes it to the principal, and he brings it to the school board. Julie is then allowed to play on the team. (I thought that a bit odd, because she should have at least had to try out. What if she sucked?) 

In her second book, Julie has an autobiographical class project that she struggles with, because she doesn't want to talk about the divorce as the worst thing that ever happened to her. She breaks her finger in a big basketball game and initially talks about that in her tape-recorded project, but in the end, she tells the class about the divorce. 

The holiday third book is about the new differences Julie and Tracy deal with as Divorced Kids (as Kristy Thomas would call them). Julie handles herself much better than teenage Tracy, though Tracy finally reconciles with their father. Julie spends a lot of time with Ivy and we learn about 1970s Chinese New Year celebrations in Chinatown. 

The fourth book finds us in spring and Julie and Ivy discover a baby owl in the park. They bring it to a wildlife rescue where it's sent on to a vet. While there, Julie sees a pair of bald eagles who lost their home due to housing development. They have two babies but they're not doing well in captivity, and one ends up dying. Julie fights to get money for the eagles to be rehabbed outside and slowly integrated back into nature. She celebrates her birthday on the same day the eagles are released. 

Julie finds herself celebrating the Bicentennial in her fifth book. Her dad flies her and Tracy out to Pittsburgh, where they join this huge wagon train that's travelled west to east, aiming for Valley Forge. They ride in the wagon with their aunt, uncle and cousin April. Julie loves the Little House books, which she even brought with her, and she wants to try riding a horse, but her first experience doesn't go well. She's riding bareback and April lets go of the rope so the horse bolts and Julie is thrown into a river. She could have been seriously hurt but none of the adults take this seriously. Then she's mad at her cousin (rightfully) and scared of the horse (less rightfully, as it was her cousin's fault, not the horse's) for a bit. She finally just gets over it, but this was the stupidest thing in her books. So unrealistic. Then the wagon gets stuck and they have to leave some of their stuff behind. Also unrealistic that it's made it the entire way across the country only to have weight issues now. Then Julie and her cousin ride the horse ten miles away and ten miles back to collect the signature of the oldest man in Pennsylvania. They've made up and Julie is over her horse fear. The scroll with his signature is stolen and of course Julie is the one to get it back, so she gets to shake hands with President Ford at the end. Definitely by far the weakest of Julie's books. She goes too heroic and the adult reaction to her falling off the horse was highly unrealistic. 

In her sixth book, Julie is back in school and now in the fifth grade. She's made a new friend, a deaf girl named Joy that's the new girl this year. Sadly, a lot of the other students are too afraid of her to befriend her. When Julie and Joy are unfairly sent to detention and have to write sentences, Julie realizes detention is useless. She and Joy decide to run for president and vice president, even though it's always been a sixth grader who's won. The only other candidate is sixth grade's most popular boy, who's as useless as writing sentences in detention. Though the girls struggle with sexism and ableism, Julie and Joy come out on top, even winning over the Water Fountain Girls, who like the sign language Julie taught them and finally see Joy as a person. I enjoyed this one. There's regular human drama, but it's not the family drama of the first three books. My only real criticism is that the teacher never sees that she was wrong for giving the two girls detention when Joy was just asking Julie to explain something she couldn't lip read. You try lip reading "Sacajawea," Mrs. Duncan. 

Julie is best when she's at home dealing with her family and friends. That's when she shines the most. The eagles were an okay departure, but the wagon train book was pretty horrible. She's still a very loveable addition to the historical cast and it was nice to see the 70s included in the line. Ivy is also one of my faves of the best friend cast and Joy is great, too. As is TJ really. He's no Stirling, but he's a good guy. 

Ivy's book is great. She's having minor issues with her family. Her mom is in law school and her dad works two jobs, so they get food from the grandparents' restaurant a lot and Ivy is tired of Chinese food. She misses when her mom cooked and had time to talk to her. Same with her dad. She's got a family project for Chinese school and neither of her parents makes time to talk to her. She's also envious of her brother and how well he does in everything. 

Then she's got a gymnastics tournament coming up and she's weak on the beam, because she fell last time and has lost her confidence. 

A new conflict comes up when she realizes her family reunion is the same day as her tournament. Her dad basically demands she go to the reunion because he apparently pays zero attention to her and knows nothing about her life. Her mom sticks up for her and says how hard Ivy worked, how she's part of a team and that this is the all-city tournament so it's kind of a big deal. Yeah, law school Mom still pays attention. Ivy's dad kinda sucks and doesn't really redeem himself. He says he realizes how important it is and stops pressuring her to pick the reunion but still. 

Ivy chooses her tournament and then skips the pizza party after so she can come to the reunion. Duh. How come nobody figured that out before? She kicks butt in the tournament, wins medals, and the team gets second place overall, so she finally gets some confidence. And at the reunion, she sees what a great family she has and appreciates them. 

I liked everyone in Ivy's book except for her dad. I wish he'd had a scene to redeem himself a bit and show that he is involved in his daughter's life, but it didn't happen. 

Julie's first mystery is a good book, but a fairly simple mystery. There's a new girl in class named Carla and it's quickly obvious that she's been telling lies. She talks about having a big family, living in one of the famous Painted Lady houses, having a really smart dog, and working with her doctor/detective father on a case. 

Julie takes a little too long to fully confront Carla and get the truth out of her. I would have done it much faster. Turns out Carla's dad abandoned his family, they're poor because her mother is trying to go to school and work, and she has one older brother who is a wounded Vietnam vet. 

Julie doesn't forgive Carla immediately, but she does invite her and her mother to the Thanksgiving gathering Hank and Julie's mom are planning, which includes more of the wounded vets. Julie gets Todd, Carla's brother there, and even thinks of a plan to help the family, though it isn't realized in the book itself. 

It's a good book but only an okay mystery. Like I said, it's super obvious that Carla is lying. The mystery is the why.

I'll be including the Beforever covers for these because they're pretty. 

The original cover has a confused Julie leaving Carla in her Painted Lady house, which isn't actually hers. 

The Beforever cover features Julie looking at her "pet" spider. She really wants a dog but can't have one and she misses Nutmeg, so she adopts a spider living outside her window. I love the row of Painted Ladies at the bottom. 

This one is so great. Julie finds an old note written in Chinese in some clothes donated from Chinatown by Ivy's grandmother. When she brings the note with her to dinner at the Happy Panda, Ivy's grandmother is overjoyed and tells her story. She came over from China in 1919 and was held at Angel Island, where a lot of Chinese immigrants were detained. They were questioned incredibly thoroughly, even very young children, to prove they had relatives in the US, as the immigration policies were becoming stricter and only relatives were allowed in. The note was a coaching note written by Ivy's grandmother's mother, who never made it to the US and died while Ivy's grandmother was still being detained. She's thrilled to have some piece of her mother returned to her. She'd thought she lost the note and never saw it, not realizing it slipped into the lining of the jacket Julie found it in. 

Then the mystery comes in. There are lines in the note about a doll precious to Ivy's grandmother, saying she sleeps with it every night and she should give it to her father when she gets to the US. Ivy's grandma says there wasn't a precious doll, as she was too old for dolls, but a simple rag doll made by one of the village women to accompany her. 

That night, Ivy's grandparents' place is robbed and the only things taken are Julie and Ivy's dolls. They find Ivy's with her head popped off in the trash behind the restaurant. Julie's is found later in the trash by Ivy's Chinese school.

Smart Julie realizes the thief thinks something special is inside a doll. She remembers Ivy's grandmother was supposed to bring a valuable jade necklace that was her father's so he could sell it and get money they needed in the US. But without the coaching note, Ivy's grandmother never saw those lines about the doll and she left it with her orphan friend from the journey over. Julie realizes the jade necklace was inside the doll.

So the search for Mei Meng, Ivy's grandmother's friend, is on. Julie and Ivy eventually find her, but the thief gets to her house before they do. He isn't able to steal anything though, because Mei has brought the doll with her to the hospital, where she's recovering from a fall. They open the doll and find the necklace. 

Julie finally figures out who the thief is and confronts him. There were a couple decent red herrings and it isn't super obvious right away who it is. 

A good mystery with some great history on Angel Island and the struggles of being a Chinese immigrant in the early 20th century. 

This cover isn't nearly as good as the orignal. Julie's making a weird face and there isn't even anything doll-related on it. 

This one is not my favorite. During a benefit auction, TJ gets a job working for the rich people who are holding the auction. That's the big WTF of the book right there. Mrs. Vernon may be Julie's mother's friend, but why would rich people who have a huge, expensive collection of rare objects pick a random kid to have access to their house just to feed their cat? 

TJ's interested in the silver guitar owned by his favorite, now-deceased guitar player, so he takes it down to hold it, the cat jumps on him, and it breaks. When he and Julie go to get it fixed, the music store owner is pissed because it's clearly not a real guitar. So now Julie and TJ are on the hunt for the thieves. 

They have their usual suspects: the lazy nephew who lives with the Vernons, the housekeeper who lied about why she had to go out of town, the busybody neighbor, the kid from the music store who wants his own guitar and has been following them, and even the Vernons themselves. But no, those are all wrong. It was Julie's former upstairs neighbors, photographers who were in the house taking photos for the next auction catalog. They get hired to take photos of rare items, figure out what they can most profit from, make fake replicas, swap them out, and then sell the real things and move on to their next victims. 

It's just not as good as the other mysteries. It was mostly on the boring side.

Lost in the City has Julie parrot-sitting over spring break. Ivy's uncle has given the Lings his African Gray parrot, Lucy. He's not happy about it, but it's what his soon-to-be wife wants. After seeing how Lucy bonded with Julie, the uncle asks her to pet sit, while the rest of the family is off to get him married. Julie happily agrees. 

On the second day, Julie finds the window and cage open and Lucy is nowhere to be found. She starts searching and soon has a decent list of suspects. 

First, there's the older couple who are staying on the lower floor of the Lings house while the wife recovers from...surgery, I think? The husband is kinda rude and says something to make him a suspect. 

Then there's Julie's vegetarian, vaguely hippie aunt, who's staying with Julie's dad while she looks for an apartment near her new job. 

Finally, there's Gordon, a former classmate of Ivy's who's moved nearby. He's unhappy because his parents are getting divorced. His biggest red flag is that he needed a new jacket and commented that it would take a long time to save for one, then suddenly he turns up in a super expensive leather jacket. Julie thinks he sold Lucy for the jacket money. 

It's not a bad mystery, but it's no Paper Daughter. 

I'm finally going to read the last Julie mystery! As mentioned, I have never read this. It's my final unread AG historical book featuring the older characters. Sigh. 

Paper Daughter is still my favorite Julie mystery, but this one is an easy second. 

Julie and her mom are off to a commune near Sonoma that was started by Julie's aunt Nadine and her husband David. They learn David lives in town now, thanks to an injury from Vietnam. Nadine wasn't happy he went to war, so they're hovering around a divorce, leaving their son Raymond, who's around Julie's age, very unhappy. 

The commune is struggling with money. The only other kid around Julie and Raymond's age is Dolores. She's older, but I can't remember by how much. But she's working at a cafe in town. David has a job in town and an apartment. Raymond sadly doesn't see his dad as much as he wants to. 

There are two mysteries. The first is all the random weird happenings around the commune. The chickens get out. The clean laundry hits the ground. The calf goes missing. 

The second is the mystery of the nearby mine. Raymond and Julie hear tapping in there, and Julie finds a red bottle with a message inside that looks quite old. 

There are several suspects, but I had it figured out pretty early on. Doesn't mean it's not a good story though! 

And that wraps up Julie Albright, I'm sorry to say. I really love Julie. I've got Claudie's second book that I'm going to read next and then I'm done with AG historicals until Isabel and Nicki's book comes out in a few months. Wah. I want more historical stuff. 

The Meg

I never expect action movies to be books. Like some of them you know about. I always knew Jaws was a book. Jurassic Park. Duh. Bourne Identity. Everyone knows that, right? Die Hard is based on a book and I didn't know that for ages. The Relic is based on a book that's actually only the beginning of an interesting (and lengthy) series I need to get back to. But The Meg? Would anyone have guessed that was a book unless they knew about it? (It was originally written in 1997, after all.) 

So when one of my favorite people mentioned it was a book series, I had to check it out. Unlike other books that got turned into movies, this one feels like it was meant to always be a movie. The edition I read is the revised one. I'm not sure what was changed from the original, though I did read reviews that said the revised is better. 

It's a fast read that could still use a better editor, but like action movies, it's fun and I'm not exactly expecting great literature here. I kept turning the pages, wanting to see what would happen next. 

If you have seen the movie and want something similar, however, this is a completely different story. 

My biggest criticism is that it lacks a lot of character development. The female characters in particular suffer. Alten doesn't write as horribly about women as some do, but both his female leads are on the ballbusting side and not in good ways. The romance between Jonas and Terry comes literally out of nowhere and doesn't feel natural at all. Although honestly, that makes it even more like an actual action movie, so in that way, it works. There's one sentence where Jonas's soon to be ex-wife Maggie and his new love interest Terry are described as "the blonde reporter and the Asian beauty." For literally zero reason. That entire chunk of the sentence could have been left out and the sentence would have had the same meaning. I would have also ditched some of the descriptive stuff for the Japanese cast in the revision, just like the BSC did with constant mentions of Claudia's almond-shaped eyes. What people didn't bat an eye at in the 80s and 90s doesn't work now. 

Overall, it's a fun read, but some things are dated and others just show that this is the author's first work. I'm hoping his character development, especially for the women, improves as I read more of the series. In a weird way, the flaws do work for the book though, because they lend to the action movie feel. 

The revised edition includes a prequel at the end, which was written in 2011. It tells Jonas's backstory, though you already know most of it from the book itself. The most important takeaway is that there are more prehistoric things still alive than just megs. 

Grim Horizons

After finishing Head Like a Hole, I wanted to try the author's other books. First, I ordered this short story collection. 

I'm gonna give it an "it was okay." 

Most of the stories were just okay, nothing special. There was only one I actively disliked. The novella that's the second story in the book was one of the best pieces. It dragged a bit in places, but I liked the format and the idea behind it. I wasn't sure if I was going to keep the book or put it on Paperback Swap, but it was the final story that convinced me to keep it. I liked that one quite a lot. 

I wouldn't necessarily say this one was worth reading, but if you liked Head Like a Hole, then maybe. I feel like he's developed as an author and these stories kinda show that. None of them are even close to Head Like a Hole, so I'm glad that he's improved over time.