Kate
Well, I liked this book despite thinking I was not going to like it, even through reading it! I'm usually not a fan of YA, especially not a fan of YA with romance, but I love Indiana Jones and dinosaurs and after reading [b:The Nest 23271637 The Nest Kenneth Oppel https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1425076899s/23271637.jpg 42811477] I love Kenneth Oppel. His writing style was so easy and engaging, and I liked the characters. Their romance wasn't too annoying, despite being really quick, because I found them both pretty relatable. The backdrop of a fictionalized Bone Wars was fascinating but also kind of tough for me to read : Even though Samuel and Rachel's dads were assholes, their unfriendly competition stressed me out. I'm always the one in the middle yelling “Why can't we all just get along??”, but also unfairness really irks me so I both wanted them to just start working together because imagine how many more dinosaurs they could have found if they'd become a team? and to get equally terrible comeuppances that meant they couldn't science for the rest of their lives.I started reading and wasn't super into it, and I kept reading it because it was the only book I had with me on the subway, and then I kept reading it because I really needed to know if they'd find the rex, and then I finished it and at that point realized, I guess I did actually like it after all!Also, this: “The deep curve of her waist where I'd gripped tight, the damp hair of her underarms.”Hell. Yes. I always get real excited when any media includes neutral/positive depictions of women with body hair like it's nothing. And I wouldn't even be so jazzed about this if there weren't a few reviews of this book that point to that exact sentence as being gross because I'm reactionary like that. So, thanks Kenneth Oppel!
As much as I love Margaret Atwood, I did not love this. It felt like she was trying to capture the feel of the Golden Age of comics (when she was reading them), but it felt too hokey and contrived to me. People don't talk that way. The art was pretty cool, I enjoyed following the the story through the illustrations, but the story itself was kind of meh. I mean, if I was Margaret Atwood I would definitely write a lame graphic novel to push my pet activism and not give a shit about it, so it doesn't even matter that I'm giving it 2 stars. I like that she keeps experimenting with style and format too, despite this one falling flat for me.
The illustrations are just gorgeous in this book. I stopped on every page to admire what was going on. I really couldn't get behind the story, though. There wasn't any context, it just felt like someone describing a generic fairy tale: the prince was captured while the king and queen were gone, but with the help of his people, managed to get back home. That's basically it, who knows where the king and queen went or why, who came to capture the city and the prince and why it was so dang easy, if the people could have easily risen up against their captors like they did at the end, why didn't they do it first to not let themselves be captured, or anytime in the 4 days that the prince was imprisoned? ANYWAY the pictures are great.
Beautiful and simple. I wanted to include some choice quotes in here but there are just too many of them. What's important to me in feminism right now is the idea that men are harmed by the patriarchy and helped by feminism as well, and Adichie addresses that here. A short and easy read, I finished it on the subway before I even hit my stop.
I enjoyed reading this book - there was a fairy-tale-esque air about it that I really liked. But there's something about translations from East Asian languages that I've noticed is kind of similar and it didn't quite work for me here. I can never tell if it's the translator or the actual style of the writing but it wasn't totally for me...I never wanted to put it down though and I'm glad I read it.
I've definitely gushed about Dan Santat's illustrations before so I don't need to go into detail except to say that they're still lovely.
This story is about a girl in Japan whose science fair project, a giant killer robot, busts through the wall of her school and started rampaging through the town. “I probably shouldn't have given it a superclaw, or a laser eye, or the power to control dogs' minds.”
Amazing.
This book was difficult to read. It is unfathomable to me, as someone born and raised in Canada, that a place could be so unreachable by the rest of the world. Kim's stories of these kids raised to believe that North Korea is the greatest country in the world while eating shitty food and constantly monitoring their own speech were heartbreaking. Her desire to tell them about the world, to let them know that things aren't really as they seem is something I sympathize with and applaud and yet how could you change things? Even if all the boys in her classes started asking more questions and understand more about the regime they're living under, how do you start a revolution in a place like North Korea? It seems impossible.
I'm more and more unnerved by humourous portrayals of North Korea in western media, like South Park or The Interview. It's easy to treat an entire country like a joke because it's so different from what we're used to, it seems like it can't be real. We know so little about the actual people who live there that it feels like the butt of our jokes is always the evil dictator at the top, but it's hard to make these jokes without also inadvertently implying that the people who believe in the regime are idiots. We can laugh at North Korea, picture Kim Jong-Un like a child playing with adult toys he doesn't understand, but the legacy he inherited and props up is built on human suffering and I don't want to forget that. Treating him as silly or stupid diminishes his horror and the pain he causes.
Our protagonist is slightly less psychopathic in this book than in [b:17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore 196092 17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore Jenny Offill https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1437753336s/196092.jpg 189656], and she shows a pretty good grasp of the scientific method. She even uses a control group when trying to find out if plants like Eau La La perfume better than water! She concludes that they do not. I love the endpapers that show her Rube Goldberg setup to put bologna on her sandwich and what actually happened when she tried it out.
I love this book so much!! Old MacDonald and Mrs. MacDonald and their animals are building something - with a dig scoop here, and a dump thump there - and it's going to be TOTALLY BADASS. The illustrations are fab and I love that Old and Mrs. MacDonald are working together equally to build their rad monster truck track.
