MY STORY: Wrapping Up the 1800s

Zulu War is a really interesting addition to this series. Another of the better war books, like Indian Mutiny.

Jabulani's a great character and the entire book is loaded with other good characters.

It's one of those that I enjoyed, but don't have much to say about.

I feel like I could buy myself a nice meal if I had a dollar for every time I read the words "phossy jaw" between this book, Sweep's Boy and Victorian Workhouse.

This one's another during that same time period, only from the perspective of a poorer girl, not a poor boy or rich girl.

She works in a match factory, although not with the phosphorus, and gets caught up in the strike. The biggest difference between this and a lot of the other books is that she's a bit older and has romantic dalliances with her somewhat dreary boyfriend and a dashing reporter.

I enjoyed this book, because Flora's an awesome character and her grandmother is even more awesome. Her older sister's a stupid bitch though. I don't care for that uppity girl.

Flora is interested in creating "moving pictures," which she's fascinated by and she agrees with her grandmother's progressive viewpoints on suffrage and the treatment of "colonial peoples." A lot of the other characters are disturbingly racist, even though it's appropriate for them to be written that way for time.

It's a good book because it doesn't delve too much into suffrage, unlike the next one.

I think this is one of my most disliked historical books. It continues Flora's story, sort of. At the beginning, her grandmother has just died and it's come to light that she took in a ward. The young girl is the daughter of a woman that made a brief but memorable appearance in Flora's book.

While I like the character of Flora a lot, I couldn't bring myself to get much farther than a few diary entries in this. This represents the violent side of the suffrage movement and frankly, that just bores me. I don't care about vandalism or force-feeding or abuse on the picket lines. I remember it took me a long time to suffer through it on my first read and I wasn't going to do it again.

I included this one in my final 1800s write up, because the entire rest of the series is WWI and WWII. I need to get a couple more books for the WWII section, but I opted to just take another break from this line and switch to the American Girl History Mysteries for awhile. War books. *groan*

MY STORY: 1800s Part 2

I took a break from my My Story reread awhile back and did American Diaries in its place. Now with those books finished, it's time to return to the UK's answer to Dear America.

I started Crystal Palace before the break, got a few entries in and was done. I reread the early entries, then made myself finish the book this time. I don't care for this one, because it's not very historical. There are some details about the building of the Crystal Palace in there, but most of it is drama amongst one household of a wealthy family and their staff. I could only take so much of the son being a complete douche.

Crimea is interesting as the war books go, because it goes into the training for a drummer/bugler and it doesn't actually spend too much time on the details of fighting. Everything is seen more at a distance and a good chunk is devoted to just how shitty conditions were for these poor guys. I liked the bit about the Charge of the Light Brigade. I mean, the poem's better, of course, but it was nice to see the historical context behind it in more detail.

I think this is one of the best boys' books. It's so nice to get out of Europe for a change! Lots of action in this one, lots of spying and lots of politics. It's a really interesting read and I recommend it. The Rani of Jhansi was badass and amazing.

I feel like Sweep's Boy is a deceptive title, because he works as a chimney sweep for like three chapters. Then he's a thief. Then he escapes from prison. Then he's with a band of kids living on their own on a rooftop. Then he's a Barnardo boy. It's a good exciting story, but another title would have been better for the story.

The diary of an upper class girl going with her mother to the local workhouse, because her mom's on the Board of Guardians. Edith's a bit naive and spoiled, but she's still very likeable. The other characters are good, too. I like Rosie a lot. Well-written and a nice change of pace from the very fast-paced, action-packed previous two.

AMERICAN DIARIES Part 5

If you like standing in line, this is the book for you! Possibly the least exciting book in the entire series. Nell's mom's kind of a judgy asshole, so that's not fun. Her grandmother's become forgetful and sees her dead husband everywhere, making Nell worry that she'll be sent back to Ireland and Nell will have to go with her. Her little sister is beyond old enough to stand, but gets toted around everywhere. There's a bit of interesting stuff at the beginning, but then they stand in line to get off the ship, they stand in line in the freezing cold waiting for the ferry, they stand on the ferry waiting to get off at Ellis Island, then they stand around Ellis Island for all the inspections. It's boring. It's also sad because they introduced a nice man only to have him fucking freeze to death. Nice going, Duey. Apparently, that was the only way she felt she could liven up her story of Standing in Fucking Lines Forever. 

Thankfully, Francesca's got a much better story. She's from a wealthy DC family. The mom does a lot of charity work. And this is the only book where the subject is suffrage that I've ever actually quite liked. The characters are interesting and the story moves along at a good pace. Not much standing around in this one! 

Janey's another white girl's point of view of Pearl Harbor, so ho hum there, but she's accompanied for most of the book by Akiko, who lives across the street from her and is a Japanese girl her age. As for Pearl Harbor stories though, this feels too short. I wanted more details, but that's the problem of trying to make these books last only the span of one day.

Zellie finishes off the series. She's a free black girl whose grandmother just died, leaving her on her own at age twelve. She walks to another town and finds work in a boardinghouse for mill girls, but the woman running it wants her to spy on them. There's some pretty good intrigue in this one and Zellie's a very likeable character. I could have read a longer book about her. 

So that finishes off American Diaries. I'm going to switch back to My Story, though I'm not sure just when yet. I might work on something else first.

AMERICAN DIARIES Part 4

Josie's the WWII homefront girl. There's a theft on her farm, her older brother's acting weird and hasn't enlisted, and Josie spends far too much time trying to come up with something that will make her look awesome so people can see that their family contributed to the war effort after all.

This one's got a mystery, but that really doesn't make it any more interesting. It's just sort of blah.

Poor Rosa is being forced to audition for part after part by her mother, who's obsessed with making her a child star. The problem is she's too old to be a child star. After enduring getting a perm, Rosa successfully makes it through an audition and gets an extra role, which will help support her and her mother for another few weeks.

Her mother's a shitty character who's too afraid to audition herself and becomes Stage Momzilla because of that. She also constantly calls Rosa "sweeties," which drives me absolutely insane because it's a fucking plural word.

Rosa comes out on top in the end and learns what her true dream really is. She's a good character, but putting up with her mother was a strain that kept me from finishing this book for weeks.

This is the third pro-South Civil War book. Didn't Kathleen Duey get the concept of there being two sides to the Civil War?

Maddie isn't for slavery, but she comes from a family that owns slaves.

However, her entire book is spent selfishly trying to keep her horse out of Yankee hands as opposed to helping her mother and the others hide food so they don't all starve.

She helps out a wounded Yankee in the end and learns to be a little more selfless, but it's a little too late for me. She still reads as a spoiled brat.

Only four more of these to go! I figured I'd make this the section of three and the final section the remaining four, because I haven't completely forgotten Josie's plot yet. Although I do plan on knocking these other four out over the next couple days.

AMERICAN GIRL: GotY 2018 LUCIANA VEGA

I was thrilled to see the new American Girl books on the shelves in Booksamillion tonight. I grabbed Luciana's pair right away, then flipped through the "Real Stories from My Time" pair. These are stories from the same time periods in history as the historical characters. I wondered how they were going to do these and they're basically like tiny history books, but every few pages there are some lines from Samantha or Addy or whoever matches the time period. I'm not sure I want to pay to read these, as they're far beneath my reading level and I'm not sure I like how they made the stories fit each girl. I didn't read enough of Addy's to catch her plot, but for Samantha, they've actually got Cornelia, Bridget and Nellie ON THE FRIGGIN' TITANIC. I mean, they survive, but still. That's a bit much for me. Although I will probably cave at some point and get them from the library. Or buy them if my library doesn't get them. I'm just a sucker for the historicals.

ANYWAY.

The book I left behind aside from those two was the new Like Sisters. I was already spending enough money, as I bought three Hellboy plush dolls. I will get it eventually though.

So Luciana Vega. Luciana lives in Virginia. It sounds like it's coastal Virginia, though I don't remember any city name mentioned. Luciana's parents are both from Chile and all of her extended family lives there. She's eleven and she wants to be an astronaut or more specifically, the first girl on Mars.

Luciana's first book is about her six days at Space Camp. This was the far weaker of the two books. I do like Luciana's character a lot. More than any other recent GotY. I honestly don't think I've liked a GotY this much since...maybe even all the way back to Jess? But in the first book, she suffers from bad plot points. I'll explain, so expect spoilers.

Luciana's roommates are two sisters (Ella and Meg, who's only 9), their cousin Charlotte and a German girl named Johanna. Ella's really into space stuff like Luciana, but she is possibly the most insufferable know-it-all mean girl I've seen in AG. She's just a nasty, unpleasant girl who isn't happy unless she's the leader and everyone is following her ideas. Little Meg seems too young to be at Space Camp. She's scared of everything and makes a huge mistake that leads to the girls' robot team being disqualified. Charlotte is nice and tries to keep Ella in line. She's into programming. Johanna is my fave after Luciana. She's really smart, randomly speaks German all the time, and likes engineering.

Their days are divided up into basic Space Camp stuff and then working on their robot rovers for the competition at the end of camp. Ella clashes with Luciana, who won the right to be leader in a contest, and Ella has a constant battle going on with James, who's the leader of the boys' team and basically a male Ella.

The first major problem is that I find it flat out impossible to believe that Luciana, who is obsessed with being an astronaut, did not read every single piece of her orientation packet a million times over before coming to camp. Ella keeps lording it over her that she knows more than Luci does, and Luci makes several mistakes that she wouldn't have if she'd read the material. But I think this is a very weak and out of character plotline. If you want to be an astronaut and you're going to Space Camp, why would you not read everything they send you? The author needed to find a way to make Luci screw up and put their entire team behind, but she should have figured out something that didn't go this out of character.

The second major problem is that this book has not one but THREE mean characters. Ella and James are insufferable know-it-all control freaks. Noah is just a dick.

The third major problem is the missing part incident. Luciana has Meg, who again is NINE, take the most important part of their robot and put it in their box. Then they can't find it and end up getting disqualified after they sneak to the lab after lights out to check the boys' box, because Luci thinks they stole it. Ella ends up accidentally breaking the boys' robot and that plus the sneaking out equals disqualification. But it turns out the part wasn't stolen. Meg stuck it in box 8 instead of 18. Why didn't they think to check the unused boxes or ask Meg to get it from the box she put it in? It's played off by Meg saying "You SAID it was stolen!" and she assumed they looked in the #8 box, but...she was right there. How did she not see that they didn't touch that box? I really disliked Meg. She never did anything useful and acts awfully young for nine. Definitely far too immature to be on this trip.

The fourth and final major problem is that Space Camp does not make for a good book. You can describe things until the sun goes down, but I don't understand programming, I don't understand what a bunch of parts look like, and I only have the vaguest idea of their other activities and that's mostly thanks to that Hallmark Channel movie about the special needs kids who go to Space Camp.

All of this makes it sound like I hated the book. I hated the plot that surrounded Luciana, but I loved Luciana. Her family wants to adopt a Chilean orphan baby and she spends a good bit of her time wondering how that's going. She's overly concerned with being a good big sister and that's the part of her that I like. She's also feisty, but she keeps it mostly on the inside and only lets it out under more extreme circumstances. She's ballsy and she is a leader albeit a flawed one. But she's eleven. She's learning. She's a good character stuck in a bad book. So is Johanna. She was awesome.

At the end of the first book, Luci learns that her family is adopting Baby Isadora, but she's very sick with a heart condition. They're speeding up the adoption to get her to the US so she can have treatment.

The second book has Luci as one of only six kids chosen to be in the two-week CETUS program, where they will train for several days before going on a mission to the underwater CETUS facility. I liked this one a lot better, because Luci stayed in character and the plot points were believable.

Ella returns from the first book and she's mostly a much better character. But when the daughter of some big space inventor guy arrives, she goes all starstruck and latches onto her, supporting whatever she does, despite Luci's misgivings.

Claire is said daughter and she's a bunch of lies and bragging. They have to take three main tests before three of the six are chosen to dive to CETUS, leaving the other three as mission control. She sabotages one of Ella's tests, though she ends up passing and being on the dive team. Then she endangers Luciana's life. Yep, she was actually that bad. For that, she's made mission control and she joins a boy nicknamed Buzz, who's an excellent swimmer but discovered he was terrified of scuba diving. Luci and Ella's fellow dive team member is a kid so smart he's already in college. He was my second favorite character after Luci this time. The other boy doesn't get much characterization.

Luci struggles with three main problems in this book.

The first is Claire. She doesn't like her, Ella does. Claire tried to sabotage Luci first during one of the scuba tests, but she failed to succeed. Then she sabotaged Ella's treading water retest and Luci accused her of it. That made everyone not like Luci. But when she left Luci at the bottom of a 25-foot pool when she was trapped in a storage closet, everyone saw what she really was. She even admitted to sabotaging Ella at the end of the book when she got minorly redeemed.

The second problem is her worry about her little sister. Isadora has an operation scheduled shortly after Luci will get back from camp, but it gets moved up and she's 30 feet underwater during it.

The third problem is her minor claustrophobia, which was made worse by being shut in a closet underwater. She has a panic attack after awhile on CETUS and it's actually Claire that calms her and helps her stay the night there, although she's quick to return to the surface in the morning.

This book worked a lot better than the first, because despite the life endangerment, the plots were actually believable. It wasn't as confusing either. I could visualize and understand what they were doing the entire time.

Oh, little Isadora makes it through her surgery just fine.

Luciana's third book also sounds quite interesting with Claire making a return appearance.

So in short, the first book isn't very good, but Luci's character is, and the second is quite good. Both of these have me excited for the doll, who I'm definitely planning on buying now.

SUPERFAIRIES

I was wandering around Target's book section tonight and a pink book with fairies on the cover jumped out at me. It was a bind-up of four short chapter books about the Superfairies.

The Superfairies are a diverse foursome of fairies whose job it is to protect the forest animals. There's an alarm the animals can sound that summons them, and they have a strawberry-shaped computer that tells them what the problem is. Then they fly off in their helicopter (yes, really, but it still manages to be cute) to save the day.

Each fairy also has a special power. Rose has healing kisses, Berry has super eyesight (and as such is the pilot), Silk can spin strong webs that she usually makes ladders out of, and Star creates light.

Each of the four books in the bind-up is about a different season. The spring book has them rescuing a baby bear. The summer one features a wild pony that ran away because she lost confidence in her dancing ability and the big Summer Fair is that day. She always wins the dance contest and basically the pressure got to her. The autumn book was my favorite because it had the gorgeous Autumn Fairy in it. She caused a huge storm that had the animals suffering so the Superfairies took them all to their cherry blossom tree to stay the night, while they dressed up and went off to have a chat with the Autumn Fairy about maybe taking it down a notch. The winter book was more like the spring one, just a simple rescue of an animal that had done something reckless.

The art in the book is absolutely precious. I'm a sucker for fairies and there are some elements of Disney Fairies and Pixie Hollow here, as well as some Flower Fairies. Even though the stories are quite simple (5-8 years, grades 1-3), I enjoyed them.

The bind-up is a great deal on Amazon at $6.32 right now. There are also two more books that came out in August 2016 and two more coming out on January 1st, but I'm waiting for the second bind-up that will have all four of those. It comes out on March 1st.

Definitely a cute series if you like fairies!

RAMONA Reread

It has been far too long since my last Ramona Quimby series reread.

I don't have reviews for these books. They are wonderful classics that everyone should read.

But I thought I'd do a little write-up, discussing my favorite chapter from each book.

BEEZUS & RAMONA: The first book in the series is from Beezus' point of view. Beezus has always been too sensible for me. She's uncomfortable with things that are even a little outside the box, even things as simple as anthropomorphized vehicles. While I'm not as wild as Ramona, I'm a definite blend of the two. Therefore, my obvious choice for favorite chapter in this book is "Beezus and Her Imagination." Beezus attends a regular Friday afternoon art class, while Ramona is supposed to play in the sand pile in the park outside. Well, we've got Beezus bemoaning her lack of imagination while Ramona barges in on the class and causes chaos. After she's sent back out to the sand pile, Beezus ends up creating an awesome painting, proving that she does have plenty of imagination.

RAMONA THE PEST: Ramona takes over as the PoV character just in time for her first weeks in kindergarten. Each of the eight chapters centers around events that take place at school. We've got Ramona's first day, her first show & tell experience, in-class work drawing and learning letters, Ramona's first experience with a substitute teacher, rainy day adventures, a Halloween parade, a loose tooth, misadventures in hair-pulling, and Ramona's brief stint as a kindergarten dropout. My favorite chapter is "Ramona's Engagement Ring." Upset about having to wear Howie's hand-me-down brown boots, which are "for boys," Ramona distracts everyone by winding a worm around her finger, then running around saying it's her engagement ring. Then during a trip to the shoe store for new regular shoes, she ends up with her precious red boots, only to have too much fun wearing them a couple days later, getting stuck ankle deep in mud and having to be rescued by Henry Huggins. The original illustrations for this book were excellent and really brought it to life.

Unfortunately, I can't find the worm ring picture, which has been the one stuck in my head since childhood, along with the bedraggled stuffed bunny Ramona loans Howie for show & tell. Couldn't find that one either! But I did find Ramona and Howie fighting over the ribbon their teacher put on said stuffed bunny. Classic.

Ramona the Pest was my first experience with Ramona. I didn't read Beezus and Ramona until later on, so this one's definitely one of my faves from the entire series for that reason.

RAMONA THE BRAVE: I think this one was one of the last I read of the series back in childhood. It somehow escaped me for quite awhile. It's like Ramona the Pest and the chapters center on school with the biggest event outside school being Mrs. Quimby going back to work and the family deciding to add a room onto their home, so each of the girls can have their own. Ramona faces problems with a copycat, a teacher that doesn't seem to like her, Howie's annoying need for accuracy, and a fear of the dark. I've never cared for the copycat incident, because I feel Ramona is right. Not in destroying Susan's owl, but in the fact that she was copied and Susan shouldn't have been praised for it. If Ramona had to apologize, so should she. Same with Howie and his not supporting Ramona when she said there was a hole "chopped" in their house. Yes, her terminology was wrong, but he let her look bad in front of everyone when he could have simply clarified her story. Ramona doesn't get an apology or even a resolution there, because she never gets to explain what she meant. The incident is forgotten by the class, but I still dislike unresolved things and I didn't like them when I was a kid either, so this has always been my least favorite of the entire series. The best chapter is the last one, "Mr. Quimby's Spunky Gal," where Ramona tries walking to school one street over and has to face off with a large German shepherd. Not easy for a first grader! She loses her shoe and her efforts in making a paper slipper have always amused me. I like the character of Mr. Cardoza, too. He's a breath of fresh air after nice but inexperienced Miss Binney and dull Mrs. Griggs.

RAMONA & HER FATHER: This is a welcome change from the school-centric books. This one is decidedly family-centered. Mr. Quimby loses his job thanks to a larger company buying his small one out and he spends most of the book looking for work. Ramona practices being in commercials until she has the burr incident, then crusades with Beezus to stop their father from smoking. Honestly, nothing too major happens. The book has a nice resolution chapter with Mr. Quimby finding work and Ramona playing a sheep in the church Christmas show. Not one chapter really stands out though. I like specific incidents, like the girls dividing the gummy bears and eavesdropping, the pumpkin carving, and Ramona and her father drawing the "longest picture in the world." If I had to choose, I'd go with the final chapter, "Ramona and the Three Wise Persons," mostly due to the resolution and the amusement of the wisepersons.

RAMONA & HER MOTHER: Like the previous book, this one is also more family-centric. Ramona gets into some of her best messes like having to pick up an entire box of Kleenex pulled out sheet by sheet by spoiled Willa Jean, squeezing out an entire tube of toothpaste, and falling into water loaded with bluing. Similar to Ramona and Her Father, there isn't really one standout chapter here. It's more about the incidents. I always liked The Great Hair Argument, because for once, Beezus was the one being difficult.

RAMONA QUIMBY, AGE 8: Oh, man, this is tied with Ramona Forever as my fave of the entire series. It's awesome. Every single chapter is pure gold. Ramona starts third grade, meets Danny (AKA Yard Ape) who becomes her crush, has a blunder with a hard-boiled egg fad, thinks her teacher has called her a nuisance, cooks dinner with Beezus, gets sick and really feels like a nuisance after she throws up in school, does a TV commercial-inspired book report, and finally, has a family dinner at her beloved Whopperburger. If I was absolutely forced to choose a favorite chapter, it's gotta be "Extra Good Sunday," where she and Beezus are forced to make dinner after they complained about being served tongue the night before. I love their rather inventive recipes and cooking methods, and it's nice to see them work together. But I've also always loved the chapters where she's recovering from her illness, because they bring back the comforting, safe feeling of being taken care of when I was sick. The coolness of the sheets and the pillows when you first get into bed, drinking 7-Up or Sprite, passing out in sheer sickness oblivion, watching crappy daytime TV from a makeshift bed on the couch. All things I definitely experienced. And the Whopperburger chapter is great, too, because it's again the comfort of a rainy day meal with your family and Cleary does excellent food descriptions. I think of "crispy on the outside, mealy on the inside" whenever I eat fries. You know, if I had to pick one single favorite of the entire series, I think this is it. Ramona Forever was the only one I owned in childhood and the one I read the most often, but I think chapter for chapter, this one is the best.

RAMONA FOREVER: Yeah, confirming what I thought above. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 is the best of the series from cover to cover. I do still love this one a lot and I've read it more than any of the others, because I never had to take it out from the library. All the chapters are good, just not quite Age 8-level good. My favorite is "The Chain of Command" where Ramona, Beezus, Howie and Willa Jean head off to the mall to buy wedding stuff with Uncle Hobart. I've always liked Uncle Hobart a lot. The wedding chapter is also great and I love the parts in "It" with all the baby names. Picky-Picky's death is always rather poignant, too, because I think it captures a young child dealing with the death of a pet in an honest manner. And I like that they finally deal with something that annoys me throughout the series: the fact that Howie's grandmother is paid to watch Ramona, yet constantly makes her responsible for Willa Jean. She's kind of an asshole to poor Ramona until the end of the wedding. I will always prefer the original artist for these books, too, even though the one that did the more recent editions has had some great pics. They fail at details sometimes though and I have to wonder "Did they read the books?" Because Ramona and Beezus have WHITE slippers that they've outgrown (and eventually get tied to Aunt Bea and Uncle Hobart's bumper) yet the artist illustrates them as black. Miss Whaley has short hair in Age 8, yet her picture shows a woman with a ponytail. Not a long one, but hair able to be put into any ponytail is not short. The art has a certain charm, but not like either of the earlier artists.

RAMONA'S WORLD: This was the book Ramona fans never thought was coming. At least I didn't. Ramona Forever came out in 1984 and Ramona's World did not follow until 15 years later. It is the last Ramona book and the last book by Beverly Cleary, who said that writers need to know when to stop. I think Ramona, having just turned ten at the end of the book, stops at the perfect age. Beezus already represented some of the teen issues, so we didn't need to follow Ramona any further. She's perfect the way she is. Ramona's World places our heroine in fourth grade, where she meets a new best friend, her first ever female best friend. Daisy Kidd is pretty awesome. My favorite chapter is "At Daisy's House," because it's interesting to see how another family lives in Ramona's World. (Aside from the Kemps, who you really don't see because Howie's parents are rarely present.) Ramona struggles with spelling in this book and I feel that part of it goes on a little too long. Ramona's not stupid and I think she'd grasp spelling faster than this. I actually think she spelled better in the earlier books and this was a bit of a retcon. Part of her problem is her stubbornness, but I think she would have given up being stubborn long before that part of the story finally finishes. Perhaps it's just the age difference. Ramona's World is the only Ramona book I read solely as an adult and not a kid. (I was 6 when Ramona Forever came out, though I didn't read it until later. For Ramona's World, I was 21. Pretty big difference.) I love Daisy's interactions with Ramona. And I will forever wonder what Yard Ape wrote to her in that note that got confiscated. Susan is one of the other oddities in this book, because she's also been retconned. Now Ramona's mother and Susan's are friends and the two girls have been forced into social situations together a lot. Um, no, they haven't. That was never mentioned until now. Susan's also gone from having reddish-brown hair (mentioned in Ramona the Pest) to blonde. Still curly though! I didn't find this storyline necessary at all, because it involved a huge retcon just to make what point? That Susan's mother is kind of shitty and that's why Susan's the way she is? So what? I never cared about Susan. I cared more about poor little Davy, who clearly has a learning disability and needs extra help that he never seems to get (except semi-help from Ramona). I did enjoy this book, but it's not quite a good as the others with the exception of Daisy and a few moments with Yard Ape.

Ah, that was fun. I do love me some Ramona.