Books and Sensibility

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Diverse Reads

The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

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  • Release Date: March 1, 2013
  • Pages: 289
  • Genre: Science Fiction
  • Publisher: Arthur A. Levine (Scholastic)

June Costa is the best artist in Palmares Três, the lush futuristic pyramid city built a midst a post post-apocalyptic South America. June’s art has always been about expressing herself and the things she loves, but her street art takes on new heights when she teams up with Enki, the 17-year-old reigning summer king of Palarmes Três who, as dictated by tradition, will be sacrificed at the end of the year. 

The Summer Prince is a fairly complex novel, there is just so much going on in this world and society I don’t even know where to begin. The world building can be a bit tough to get into, especially for someone like me coming from a Western world. Johnson’s  world  is so far from anything analogous to American society. The driving force of this novel is the tradition of the summer king; Palmares Três matriarchal society elects one boy to serve as the summer king alongside the Queen and he is sacrificed at the end of the year. The reasoning behind this tradition is a little fuzzy in the book, but this is based on some ancient South American traditions.

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#WeNeedDiverseBooks !

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Conversations on diversity are happening all over the bookternet, but they all come down to one thing; we need more diverse books. The numbers in YA and kidlit are especially embarrassing, check out the numbers in this editorial from Walter Dean Meyers in the New York Times.Media does not exist in a vacuum and representation matters. And not just so readers can see themselves in books, but so readers can have experiences outside of their world view.

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Days of David Levithan: Lover’s Dictionary and Realm of Possibility

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Between 2013-2014 I attempt to read a large selection of David Levithan novels.
 See the full list here

We are kind of skipping around in publication order because I think these two Levithan novels have a lot in common as they are both love stories written in nontraditional prose.

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Wide Awake and Love is the Higher Law by David Levithan

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Between 2013-2014 I attempt to read a large selection of David Levithan novels. See the full list here

I’m reviewing these books together because they are both pretty short and deal with the theme of young people who become part of something bigger than themselves.

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Mini Reviews : New Adult Novels

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New Adult or NA novels seem to be taking over! Every week it seems like more and more are being released and this week I take a peek at two NA novels.

The Space Between by Victoria H. Smith

This New Adult novel follows the relationship of a pair of 19-year-olds from two different sides of Chicago; Derek, the privileged adopted son of a Senator and Lacey, a struggling opera prodigy from the wrong side of the tracks with a mother dying of cancer. When these to meet in a blaze of passion, they have to overcome racism, class and their own family to be together. Seeing a romance that focuses on a biracial girl and Korean guy was definitely a first for me and I liked that Victoria wrote about this type of relationship. The plot relies a lot on insta-lust and I was kind of annoyed of how Lacey is constantly described as desert with chocolate eyes and caramel skin. Falling on the steamier side of NA, so there are quite a few scandalous scenes. This is the first in a series, so I’ll be interested to get the other ones if I stumble across them. Also how great is this cover !-  ★★★



If You Stay by Courtney Cole

Pax Tate is a selfish, trust fund baby with an addictive personality and Mila Hill is an orphaned artist living a quiet life with her sister. Their first encounter is anything but romantic when Mila discovers Pax overdosing in his car. This gruesome meeting unravels into a NA story that is the rather standard good girl meets broken bad boy with a fair share of steamy moments. The story packs on the melodrama and angst with everyone having dark secrets. After about the third revelation it started to feel a bit… soap-operatic ? This book also has healthy a bit of slut-shaming, which I think I’m just getting used to in YA/NA fiction at this point. I don’t know if this is done to create foils for the main female characters, but if you are an openly sexually active female, chances are bad things will happen to you. If you want an angsty, steamy romance this may be your kind of book. I think this story had  a lot of potential in the beginning, but if you’ve read any kind of NA before this story will seem generic. Also,a  month after reading it, I barely remember anything about it. –  ★★ + .5

 

Book Review: Marly’s Ghost by David Levithan

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Join Kat as she reads and reviews the works of David Levithan 

from his debut novel to his National Book Award longlisted novel, Two Boys Kissing

 

  • Pages: 176
  • Genre: Adaptation/ Paranormal
  • Publisher: Dial (Penguin)
  • Publication Date: December 1, 2006

In Marly’s Ghost, David Levithan collaborates with illustrator and author Brian Selznick who is best known for his book The Invention of Hugo Cabaret. Together the authors remix the story and illustrations of  Charles Dickens’ classic novella, A Christmas Carol into a modern day Valentine’s Day tale.

 

This novel is a little different from most Levithan novels because it is essentially a packaged novel.  In the back of the book Levithan discusses how this novel came about because he was approached by two Penguin editors to write a Valentine’s Day spin on A Christmas Carol. Once he had a theme down, he describes how he sat down with the text of the original and worked piece by piece to create Marly’s Ghost. Because this novel sticks so close to the source material and borrows much of the language from it  has a different feel than Levithan’s previous books. …

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