Forgotten Country

Forgotten Country

Catherine Chung

Genre: Fiction

Summary (from the publisher):  On the night Janie waits for her sister, Hannah, to be born, her grandmother tells her a story: Since the Japanese occupation of Korea, their family has lost a daughter in every generation, so Janie is charged with keeping Hannah safe. As time passes, Janie hears more stories, while facts remain unspoken. Her father tells tales about numbers, and in his stories everything works out. In her mother's stories, deer explode in fields, frogs bury their loved ones in the ocean, and girls jump from cliffs and fall like flowers into the sea. Within all these stories are warnings.

Years later, when Hannah inexplicably cuts all ties and disappears, Janie embarks on a mission to find her sister and finally uncover the truth beneath her family's silence. To do so, she must confront their history, the reason for her parents' sudden move to America twenty years earlier, and ultimately her conflicted feelings toward her sister and her own role in the betrayal behind their estrangement.

Weaving Korean folklore within a modern narrative of immigration and identity, Forgotten Country is a fierce exploration of the inevitability of loss, the conflict between obligation and freedom, and a family struggling to find its way out of silence and back to one another

Review:  Unfortunately, the summary doesn't reflect what the book was really about; it plays up a mystery that doesn't even exist.  I'd say a more accurate description would be a family struggling to regain connections when the father is diagnosed with terminal cancer.  While I would expect a book that depicts a main character dying of cancer to be tremendously sad (which it was), there were several other unrelated stories that added to the overall bleak feeling I had when I finished the book. 

Janie, the narrator and dutiful daugther, is resentful towards her younger and more free-spirited sister, Hannah.  And Hannah, in turn, seems to have little regard for the other members of her family.  I had hoped that the girls would be brought together by the death of their father, but that didn't seem to happen; they seem remarkably unchanged at the end of the novel.  There were numerous scenes where I wanted to shout out "Stop fighting over the same old thing in front of your dying father and explain how you really feel, and make sure your sister knows you really do love her!" 

The descriptions of rural Korea made it seem lovely, and the Korean folk stories related by the narrator were hauntingly beautiful, although I didn't always see the relevance to the novel.  I enjoyed learning a little more about Korean culture, I just wish the character development had been stronger.

Rating:  3 stars

All the Light There Was

All the Light There Was

Nancy Kricorian

Genre: Historical Fiction

Summary (from the publisher):  All the Light There Was is the story of an Armenian family’s struggle to survive the Nazi occupation of Paris in the 1940s—a lyrical, finely wrought tale of loyalty, love, and the many faces of resistance.

On the day the Nazis march down the rue de Belleville, fourteen-year-old Maral Pegorian is living with her family in Paris; like many other Armenians who survived the genocide in their homeland, they have come to Paris to build a new life. The adults immediately set about gathering food and provisions, bracing for the deprivation they know all too well. But the children—Maral, her brother Missak, and their close friend Zaven—are spurred to action of another sort, finding secret and not-so-secret ways to resist their oppressors. Only when Zaven flees with his brother Barkev to avoid conscription does Maral realize that the Occupation is not simply a temporary outrage to be endured. After many fraught months, just one brother returns, changing the contours of Maral’s world completely.

Like Tatiana de Rosnay’s Sarah’s Key and Jenna Blum’s Those Who Save Us, All the Light There Was is an unforgettable portrait of lives caught in the crosswinds of history.

Review: This book is good, but not fantastic.  I've read quite a few historical fiction novels that take place during WWII, and this one is different because it's about an ordinary girl.  Maral isn't Jewish, but she has friends and neighbors who are Jewish and are rounded up and deported by the Nazis.  She's not active in the Resistance, but she has friends and family members who are.  Maral is an ordinary girl, trying to live an ordinary life, and so we get a glimpse of what Parisian families struggled with during the German occupation - rationing, lack of work and money, fear for friends, uncertainty about the future.  The introduction to Armenian food, culture, religion and history is also interesting, although given the time period, it focuses mostly on eating root vegetables, mourning traditions, the genocide that her parents survived.  I spent a lot of the book feeling sad for Maral and the choices that she feels she has to make, but the ending left me feeling hopeful. 

Rating: 3.5 stars

Ruby Red

Ruby Red

Kerstin Gier

Genre: Young Adult Fiction

Summary (from the publisher):  Gwyneth Shepherd's sophisticated, beautiful cousin Charlotte has been prepared her entire life for traveling through time. But unexpectedly, it is Gwyneth, who in the middle of class takes a sudden spin to a different era!

Gwyneth must now unearth the mystery of why her mother would lie about her birth date to ward off suspicion about her ability, brush up on her history, and work with Gideon--the time traveler from a similarly gifted family that passes the gene through its male line, and whose presence becomes, in time, less insufferable and more essential. Together, Gwyneth and Gideon journey through time to discover who, in the 18th century and in contemporary London, they can trust.

Review: This is the first book in a time travel trilogy, and it didn't feel like it should be a stand alone book; instead, it read very much like it should be the first section in a longer book.  Secrets are mentioned, but not explained; characters are introduced, but not developed; mysteries are hinted at, but not revealed; bad guys seem to about, but are not confirmed to be bad; a simple mission is explained, but not yet started upon... basically there was no conclusion to anything at the end of the book.  I'll read the next books because I want to know what happens, but I think that each book in a trilogy really should stand on its own.

Initially, Gideon seemed handsome and snobbish, but as his character started to open up to Gwyneth, he did become more likable.  Gwyneth herself was a giggly movie-loving non-serious student, with the interesting ability to see and speak to ghosts and gargoyles.  I didn't feel like she grew as a character in this book, but perhaps that happens in the sequels.  My favorite character was Gwyneth's best friend, who was quirky, clever and loyal.  I hope to see more of her in the rest of the books. 

I did enjoy reading this book; it was entertaining and read very quickly.  I liked the time travel premise, and I loved the costume descriptions and the wardrobe mistress.  

Rating:  3 stars

Matched

Matched

Ally Condie

Genre: Young Adult Dystopian Fiction

Summary (from the publisher):  Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate... until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black.

The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.

Review:  This is yet another young adult dystopian novel containing a love triangle, and though it had an interesting summary and a lot of positive reviews, it didn't live up to the hype.  I felt that the three main characters weren't developed enough for me to understand how Cassia could love either one of them, but especially Ky, since she appeared to have no history with him, yet started falling in love with him based solely on seeing his photo.  I spent most of the novel feeling sorry for Xander, who seemed to be a really great guy.  Next I had complaints about the society.  Sure, the society completely controlled everything in the citizens' lives, but the people generally seemed to be pretty happy.  The author didn't provide any history about how the society ended up this way, and the sense that trouble was brewing came kind of out of the blue towards the end of the book.  Finally, hardly anything actually happened in this book; it was very slow paced.  All in all, this felt like a very long introduction to a trilogy where all the action starts in the second book.

So why did I give this three stars, instead of two?  Well, I found the writing to be easy to read with some beautiful passages.  And some of the aspects of the society were thought provoking.  But mostly because it picked up at the end, and now I find myself wanting to see what happens in the second book.

Rating: 3 stars

Code Name Verity

Code Name Verity

Elizabeth Wein

Genre: Young Adult Historical Fiction

Summary (from the publisher):  I have two weeks. You’ll shoot me at the end no matter what I do.

That’s what you do to enemy agents. It’s what we do to enemy agents. But I look at all the dark and twisted roads ahead and cooperation is the easy way out. Possibly the only way out for a girl caught red-handed doing dirty work like mine — and I will do anything, anything, to avoid SS-Hauptsturmführer von Linden interrogating me again.

He has said that I can have as much paper as I need. All I have to do is cough up everything I can remember about the British War Effort. And I’m going to. But the story of how I came to be here starts with my friend Maddie. She is the pilot who flew me into France — an Allied Invasion of Two.

We are a sensational team

Review:  It is going to be very hard to write a review of this book without giving anything away, so I will just say that I loved this book.

Well, okay, I'll say a little more.  If you read the back cover or the first page, you'll realize that the main character has been captured by the Nazis as a spy and is basically sentenced to death.  So there are some disturbing parts that talk about torture or concentration camps, but the main focus of the book is the beautiful friendship that develops between two ordinary British girls who get involved in the war effort in England in a way that is out of the ordinary for women.  I was intrigued by the details of life in Britain during the war and life in the French Resistance, but I was captivated by the bravery, cleverness and strength of the two friends. 

As I was reading, I had a few complaints about the narrative style - it's basically a journal where the writer refers to herself in the third person (which was hard to get used to) and is interrupted frequently by Nazis (which breaks up the story a little) but I ultimately decided that these only served to enhance the story.  I also found the frequent references to Peter Pan a little weird.

I think this could be a good book for a book club, if the members don't mind a few tears while they read.

Rating: 5 stars

Silly Tilly

Silly Tilly

by Eileen Spinelli

illustrated by David Slonim

Genre: Picture Book

Synopsis: Tilly is not an ordinary goose.  She takes her baths in apple juice.  She wears a pancake as a hat.  She tries to ride the farmer's cat.  But is Tilly too silly?  And when she stops having so much fun, what happens to the farm?

From the book jeacket

Review: I loved the rhyming text in this story showing how much of a silly goose Tilly is.  My kids actually giggled throughout the beginning of the story and that is hard to come by.   They don't quite get humor all the time (they are 4) but they got it in this book.  They really thought Tilly was quite silly but also liked to admonish Tilly "we don't do that!!!"  The barnyard animals get tired of Tilly's antics and they tell her to stop being silly.  Then the farm realizes that they haven't laughed in a while and they apologize to Tilly (sorry, I just gave away the ending but I bet you figured it out all ready).  This was a fun book to read and it flowed really well (sometimes I think the meter of rhymes don't work perfectly but this one didn't have that problem).  The illustrations were as silly as the story was.  It's definitely a book I would check out again.

Rating: 5 stars

Tough Chicks

Tough Chicks

by Cece Meng

illustrated by Melissa Suber

Genre: Picture Book

Synopsis:  From the moment Penny, Polly, and Molly hatch from their eggs, the whole farm knows they are truly tough chicks.  They wrestle worms, rope roosters, and are often found under the hood of the tractor.  All the other animals animals, and even the farmer himself, tell Mama Hen to make her chicks good.  "They are good!"  Mama Hen always replies.  But could her chicks be too loud, too independent, and too tough?

Cece Meng and Melissa Suber have created a delightful farmyard romp that's also a resounding endorsement for letting girls be girls-even if they're loud and tough and like to play with tractors.
From the book jaecket

Review: I loved this book and it's message.  I think my kids really liked the book too.  I loved that the little chicks didn't do what other "good little chicks" did like peck the ground for corn, build a nest, and peep.   They ran around the farmyard playing in the mud, checking out the tractor's engine, swinging from the cow's tail, and just being incredibly active.  The Mother Hen learned to be really proud of her chick's actions and tried to ignore the other animals when they told the Mother Hen to make her chicks be good because she already thought they were good.  At the end of the story, the chicks, with their unusual behaviors, save the day.  This book has the message that you don't need to be like everyone else, you can be however you want to be and you should be loved and respected for how you are.  I though the illustrations were quite cute as well.

Rating: 5 stars