Sci Fi Friday Double Review: ANIMORPHS #1 & #2, by K.A. Applegate

I've mentioned a few times before, here and in various blogger profiles I've done for other blogs, that I absolutely loved the Animorphs series when I was younger. It's been just about 14 years since I got my first book - Easter Sunday, 1997, I woke up to find a book tucked in amongst the candy in my Easter basket. A red book with a weird picture on the cover of a girl turning into a cat.

I stuck through the whole series for five years, through the ups and (devastatingly terrible) downs that the 62 book series took. I ran a fan website, wrote tons and tons of fan fiction, and made some of the best friends a girl could ever hope to have, all because of these books.

So even though the books didn't go out on the highest note, I was beyond excited when I heard they were getting re-released, with some small updates to correct mistakes and bring the books into the 21st century. And when Cindy asked me if I wanted to check out the galley copies she had, I about had a heart attack from excitement. I still have all of my original books (including that 14 year old copy of The Visitor...as well as a copy of the second print run version and a copy in German) but I wanted to see what had been changed in these new versions. What I was entirely prepared for was a) the huge wave of nostalgia I felt upon reading the opening lines and b) just how awesome these books still are all these years later! Trust me, there's nothing else like Animorphs out there for this age group right now.

The Invasion introduces us to Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie and Marco - five totally ordinary kids who make the fateful decision to walk home one night by cutting through an abandoned construction site. Their leisurely walk home is interrupted by a crashing space ship - and the kids make contact with their first alien, an Andalite called Prince Elfangor-Sirinal-Shamtul. He warns the group, telling them their planet is already being invaded by the Yeerks, slugs that crawl in through a person's ear before wrapping themselves around the brain and taking complete control of the body. Elfangor gives them the only weapon he can to defend their planet: the power to morph, to acquire the DNA of any animal and then change into that animal.

Jake, serious and responsible, quickly slips into the role of the leader of the group. The others all have strongly defined personalities as well: Rachel is fearless, Cassie compassionate, Marco a wiseass with a tragic past, and Tobias is quiet and shy with a good dose of tragedy of his own. Each book is told from a different character's point of view, so these first two give us the deepest looks into Jake and Rachel. If the other characters don't seem the most complex yet, just you wait.

The Visitor is set a short time later. Just long enough for the group to recover after some of the horrors they experienced in the last book before launching into another mission. This time we follow Rachel as she spends most of her time on reconnaissance missions into enemy territory, sneaking into the home of a friend in order to spy on her parents who are Controllers - people who have been taken over by the Yeerks. It's less action packed than The Invasion, but still filled with tension and drama of a different sort.

If you thought The Hunger Games was a little too violent...well, Animorphs isn't much better. It's not kids killing kids, but it does involve aliens being eaten alive by other aliens on a semi-regular basis. And Applegate doesn't pull away from these darker scenes - they're not gratuitous, but are certainly well-described.

K.A. Applegate absolutely doesn't condescend to her audience or pull any punches. I know the books end up dealing with some really serious moral issues, including war, murder/killing, the nature of evil and so on, but I'd kind of forgotten how outright violent they start. And I love it. The theme of the whole series is about war and its affects on people (much like the culmination of The Hunger Games), and you can't adequately explore that without getting into some bleak moments. Like I said, the descriptions aren't gratuitous - there isn't a grisly scene just for the sake of being edgy or dark - but they are definitely there, and are part of what really set these books apart (they're intended for ages 8-12...I was 12 when the series started. omg, I'm so old, and always have been in this fandom!).

There are also lots of little bits of awesome commentary that slip into these books. I immediately identified with Rachel back in the day (and she remains one of my favorite literary characters of all time), not only because she was tough and fierce and tall like I wanted to be, but she has lots of feminist moments, taking jabs at the boys when she thinks they are being unreasonably protective. There are also two characters of color - Marco is Hispanic and Cassie African-American. Their races are only mentioned in passing (until time travelling starts happening much later in the series), but it's there. There's also a bit of class consciousness - Marco's dad is extremely messed up after the death of Marco's mother a few years ago, meaning that money is short and they don't live in the greatest of neighborhoods. Meanwhile Rachel is the daughter of divorced parents but has her own credit card. It gets a little bit into Five Token Band territory (warning: TVTropes link), but as their distinct personalities develop it doesn't feel like lazy stereotyping.

For a 15 year old series (I got into the game a year late), it holds up surprisingly well. There's nothing here that screams mid-90s, and as someone who read these books obsessively, I can also tell you that the updating is quite minimal. The biggest update was changing a major continuity error in the first book (well, it wasn't a continuity error then, but they made a big deal out of the opposite thing happening in subsequent books). Otherwise it was like changing the name of a specific game system to just say "system." When I read the new Babysitter's Club prequel last summer, the writing felt like it definitely could have fit in with the original books...which wasn't the greatest thing. Those books were kind of clunky - like the template of the second chapter of every book detailing the characters. Nothing about these books feel dated, other than the fact that they are designed to be a monthly science fiction series - a genre you don't see at the book store too often anymore.

The Invasion and The Visitor will be released in May. Right now I believe the plans are for the first six books to get re-released over the next two years, so this definitely won't be the snappy pace I got used to back in middle school. Old school Animorph fans won't find much terribly new here - if your original books are still in your parents' basement, you're not missing out on anything if you just stick with those. But if tragedy struck so you don't have them anymore, and now you've got a serious craving for some old school Animorphs, you'll be pleased with these. Though I'm sad the corner morphing flipbook is gone :-( On the other hand: lenticular covers! The original cover style never excited me (that's book #4 to the right), and the new cover style isn't translating well into online images - the background patterns are much richer in real life, and the lenticular action is really quite good!

So, to sum up an incredibly long entry, let me just say this: I am so excited to see these books come back so that a whole new generation can get to know these amazing books.

Reviewed from galley copies. The Invasion and The Visitor will be released in May!

Review: Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang

Found via: Reading in Color


Considering how much historical fiction out right now is about privileged Western European and American girls in the last 150 years or so falling in love with various bad boys, it's refreshing to find a novel that is so completely different. In Daughter of Xanadu, we're talking 14th century Mongolia, and while there's a certain amount of privilege present (our protagonist is a princess), the romantic story arc is relegated to the back burner. Instead, this is a true coming of age story for a young woman trying to find her place in a world that is simultaneously foreign and totally familiar.

Emmajin is the eldest granddaughter of the great Khan Khubilai. While her sister and other women of the palace are content with the life of luxury being royalty brings, Emmajin has one dream: to become a soldier in her grandfather's army. When foreigners from Christendom come to the palace on a trade mission, the Khan asks Emmajin to work as a spy and befriend the foreign man Marco Polo, and report back on everything she's learned. Emmajin agrees, hoping that her compliance, in addition to her amazing archery and horse riding skills, will ensure her entrance into the army.

Marco is utterly foreign to Emmajin. He cannot shoot an arrow or wield a sword - his only defenses are his wit and his storytelling, less than useless to Emmajin. And yet despite her best defenses, Marco's charm begins to work on Emmajin, and even as her dreams are fulfilled she finds herself questioning if the way of the warrior is truly her destiny.

One thing I absolutely loved about this is that Emmajin becomes a warrior on her own terms, rather than having to masquerade as a man. Yes, being a princess helped, but she also recognizes that in order to be accepted by the men she's going to have to be even better than they are - just as modern women often feel they have to be to compete in male-dominated fields.

Every once in awhile, the relationship between Marco and Emmajin made me a little anxious. Christendom (Europe) and Mongolia are often presented as total opposites - and more often than not Emmajin seems to be coming around to the Western view of how things "should be," so at times I was getting vibes of the Western man civilizing the wild savages of the east. Thankfully, Yang is able to thoroughly describe Emmajin's evolving ideas so it becomes clear it's not just Marco's influence. I'd have liked it if we could have seen Marco adapting a bit more to Mongolian ways so it would be more like a true cultural exchange, but the ending is left open enough that maybe Yang can pull together another book out of that!

Like I said in the introduction, above all else this is Emmajin's coming of age story. She's truly learning what it means to be an adult and have to make tough choices and learn new things about herself. Yang has done an excellent job describing 14th century Mongolia, and by including the familiar character of Marco Polo she has a seamless way to weave all of the amazing facts about this setting into the narrative while rarely dragging down the story. A refreshing change of pace from a lot of the historical fiction/romance out there today! (And a brief aside: a book with a wonderful cover! After the whitewashing controversies of the last few years, 2011 is shaping up to be an amazing year for proudly putting the faces of characters of color on covers!)

Review: Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

I know it's only March, but I think we have here our first serious awards contender of 2011. If Between Shades of Gray were a movie, it would be a December-released prestige picture, an obvious ploy for an Oscar win, but one it would surely deserve.

It's 1941, and Lithuanian Lina leads a comfortable life. Her parents dote upon her and her younger brother, she has friends and family and crushes, and amazing skills with pencils and paintbrushes that are opening doors to her future education.

But that idyllic life comes crashing down around Lina late one night, when armed men break into the house and pull Lina, her mother and her brother from their beds without explanation.

And so begins Lina's journey - one that stretches thousands of miles, from the quiet suburbs of Lithuania into the frigid depths north of the Arctic circle, as Lina and her family become victims of Stalin's march in Lithuania and the Baltic states at the outbreak of World War II. Her only comforts are her family, her artwork, and her hope that her furtive sketches and notes will be passed hand to hand until they reach her father and he'll escape from wherever he's being held to come find his family.

Lina's and Lithuania's story was totally new to me. I vaguely knew that Stalin's Soviet Union wasn't a great place to be, but had no real idea about the elimination tactics that he used. It's horrifying to think that in some ways this man was our ally - and yet he was using the same tactics as Hitler. Sepetys does an amazing job portraying the dehumanizing tactics used by the NKVD (the predecessors of the KGB) - it's gut churning and horrifying.

Lina is an amazing artist and Sepetys uses her artistic eye to add some beautiful language to a story of hardship and terror. Lina doesn't draw strictly realistic - she's inspired by Munch - which gives Sepetys many opportunities for perfect metaphors, like the snakes crawling out from the neck of one particularly horrid guard's jacket.

I read this book over the course of just one day - and not even a weekend. Even when I had to take breaks, my mind was still in the book. At one point I paused to eat dinner with my husband, and I felt a bit of guilt sitting down to a full hot meal when part of my brain was still in Altai, the first camp Lina is sentenced to. And then when I could get back to reading and reached the end of the book I was crying - almost sobbing. And I don't easily cry at books.

While on the surface Lina's story isn't terribly different from any other fictional Holocaust account, I still feel it's an important contribution to the genre of WWII titles. The writing alone makes it worth a read, but it's also important to remember that in most any conflict there are indeed shades of gray - that even while we may call someone an ally, that doesn't make them (or even us) perfect examples of our ideals.

Reviewed from an ARC picked up at ALA Annual 2010. Between Shades of Gray is available today!

Nonfiction Monday Review: Sugar Changed the World by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos

Wow, this book has been getting a ton of praise recently - including making the shortlist for the LA Times Book Prize in the YA lit category. So I knew I had to check it out.

Marc Aronson and Maina Budhos both have family connections to the sugar trade - Aronson's family worked with beet sugar in Russia, while Budhos' family, originally from India, worked in Guyana. This personal connection is an early indication that the story of sugar is going to take us around the globe. Aronson and Budhos trace sugar from its probably origins in New Guinea, through the Middle East to Europe, and then spend the bulk of the book looking at how sugar drove the slave trade in South America and the Caribbean. As a USian, for whom the story of slavery was tied to cotton, it was eye opening to see how slavery influenced a different cash crop.

There are also interesting facts about sugar peppered throughout the book. Sugar is the only flavor humans like naturally - we acquire our tastes for salty, bitter, and other flavors. While the story Aronson and Budhos share pretty much ends with slavery in the US (going on just a bit longer to look at the indentured servitude of Indians, as well as the Asians of many countries who were brought in to Hawaii), there are tantalizing hints that the story of sugar isn't over - we've developed high fructose corn syrup as a replacement for cane sugar, and artificial sweeteners like Splenda. I think, rather than spending so much time going over the horrors of slavery again, I would have liked to see more about the modern quest for cheap sweeteners. While slavery is certainly an important part of the story of sugar, since Aronson and Budhos say in their afterword that this is a book intended for high school students I feel like rehashing a lot of the stories of slavery that aren't too different from accounts of life in the United States, with which US students will already be familiar, dragged down parts of the book.

Another small thing that I feel is missing from the book is any account of the Caribbean natives who would have been displaced by these sugar plantations. The way the book is now, it seems like the islands were discovered as empty, pristine places, perfect for growing sugar cane. I know initially native populations were used as slaves for the Europeans - by the time the Europeans got around to growing sugar, had the native populations already been exhausted by other slave work and disease? I certainly don't know - the only mention of natives doesn't even merit a listing in the index, as they are just briefly mentioned as members of the maroon population in Brazil - communities formed outside of the plantations by escaped slaves, natives, and even some white Europeans.

There were also two small passages that dragged down the quality of the book for me, because they are phrased...awkwardly, to put them in the most positive light possible.

First, on page 39:

You might be lucky enough to be trained as a specialist - the person who watched the cane grow and who kept an eye out for when the plants were ripe and ready to be cut. Special knowledge did not make a slave any less a slave - you were neither freed or paid. But perhaps some of the enslaved people had the personal pleasure of realizing that they had knowledge that the plantation owners needed.

I checked to see if there was a note in the back explaining where this notion of pleasure in slavery came from - if there was a slave narrative that had someone taking some form of pleasure in their work, this would be a much more credible statement. But since no such note exists, it seems rather tone deaf to talk about taking pleasure in having knowledge that's going to benefit the person that keeps you as property.

Then again, on page 70:

Africans were at the heart of the great change in the economy, indeed in the lives of people throughout the world. Africans were the true global citizens - adjusting to a new land, a new religion, even to other Africans they would never have et in their homelands. Their labor made the Age of Sugar - the Industrial Age - possible. We should not see the enslaved people simply as victims, but rather as actors - as the heralds of the interconnected world in which we all live today.

I think this one is worse for me than page 39 was. The slaves in the Caribbean had no choice in their situation - they were kidnapped from Africa, and their ability to act freely was removed. The enslaved Africans rarely got to enjoy the fruits of their labor - working in sugar cane was dangerous and claimed so many lives that once the Atlantic slave trade was abolished slaves weren't reproducing fast enough to maintain or increase the slave population numbers, so the sugar workers weren't usually the ones buying their freedom and then going on to be consumers of sugar (or any other goods harvested by the hands of slaves). Edit 3/14/11 at 11pm: Author Marc Aronson has posted a comment further explaining these passages.

This is a worthwhile book for those interested in another aspect of the dark history of slavery - I just had to point out those two instances because they left me feeling uncomfortable. In both instances I get the points that Aronson and Budhos are trying to make - I just think they end up falling a little short of their goal, as both of these passages almost seem to soften the tragedy that slavery is.





This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Chapter Book of the Day. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Nonfiction Monday Review: The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

I'm kind of a bad English major - I've actually never read one of Edith Wharton's novels. So why did I pick up this biography? Because even if I haven't read her work, I'm still fascinated by women who defied social expectations and made a career for themselves - and Edith Wharton was certainly one of those women.

Born into a wealthy New York family, Edith lived a charmed life from an early age, especially as she spent most of her early years in Paris. When she and her family returned to New York, it was at a time of social upheaval, as the old guard of society was clashing with the uppity new money folks, who had made their money off of coal or railroads, rather than inheriting it as Edith's parents had.

While her mother was heavily invested in maintaining the old ways - notably including the notion that a woman's name should appear in print only when she is born, married, or has died - Edith rebels subtly. Obsessed with the written word, Edith writes mostly for herself for years before finally striking out to publish her works publicly - and under her own name.

Wooldridge has put together a fascinating look at this woman who was well ahead of her time. Not only did Wharton not much for social conventions against writing, she also made waves for socializing primarily with men in Parisian literary salons, spurring on the modern interior decorating movement, driving fast cars, and organizing massive relief efforts in Europe during World War I. But despite these trailblazing efforts, we also get glimpses at her weaker moments, too - her self-doubt about the quality of her writing, and the painful deterioration of her marriage and love life. The book is also peppered with plenty of period photographs and copies of Wharton's letters and manuscripts, really bringing the era to life. Living in New York myself now, I'll admit I was entertained to discover that I now work in the same neighborhood that Edith Wharton lived in when she was young - and chuckled at the idea that 59th street was so far up town that her family was worried they wouldn't be able to safely visit a family member that had moved there.

This is a lovely book, and I wouldn't really want to change anything about it, but reading this out in public was a little unwieldy, and it made me realize that almost all YA nonfiction is in a larger format than novels, or even a lot of nonfiction published for adults. Now, some books absolutely require large pages for pictures and for multiple pictures to be included right alongside the text in order to do the subject justice - Frozen Secrets and its amazing panoramas of Antarctica as well as its charts and illustrations of complex scientific facts comes to mind - but why must a biography be in the same oversized format? It makes it more difficult to bring the book along for reading on the go. Anyone out there know why all teen nonfiction falls into this format?




This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Picture Book of the Day. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Review: A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

Thanks to the 21st century constantly-changing news cycle, this seems like old news now, but I picked up this book shortly after Southern Sudan's referendum vote for independence. Auspicious timing, since A Long Walk to Water is about one boy's experiences during the outbreak of the civil war 26 years ago - and how that boy has gone on to influence and improve others' lives.

A Long Walk to Water tells two parallel stories, one in 1985 and the other in 2008. In 1985, Salva, becomes one of Sudan's "lost boys" as fighting breaks out near his school one day and he is forced to run into the bush, not knowing whether any of his family has escaped the terrible fighting. He joins other ragtag groups of refugees, constantly seeking safety and shelter.

In 2008, the fighting doesn't affect Nya, but she has her own hardships. It is her job to fetch water for her family, making the hours-long trek twice daily to try to keep her family supplied with fresh water.

This is a very slim book with spare writing that nevertheless does an impeccable job of conveying the hardships and horrors of living in Sudan in 1985, at the outbreak of their civil war, as well as the difficulties in contemporary Sudan of obtaining a basic need like clean water.

I often say that I most love books where the ending feels like merely an ending to this part of the story, but the characters have lives that go on. I don't think I've found a more powerful example of that than A Long Walk to Water - where Nya's opportunities are about to grow in ways she can barely fathom, all thanks to the installation of a well in her village.

The only downside of the length of the book is that I wanted moremoremore. Sometimes less can be more, but this is such a unique story, especially with the parallel stories of Salva in 1985 and Nya in 2008, that I craved more information about their lives.

What Have I Missed? Review: How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

This is supposed to be my February book...but I ran out of days in February, thanks to my vacation/honeymoon. So here's the anxiously-awaited (if responses to my Goodreads review tweet are any indication!) of 2005 Printz Award winner How I Live Now.

In an attempt to escape her father and her horrible new stepmother, Manhattanite Daisy is spending the summer in rural England with family she hardly knows - her mother's sister and her four children. What is supposed to be a boring and relaxing summer takes a turn for the unexpected when, a day after her aunt has left the country on business, war breaks out in England.

Alone in the countryside, the five kids band together as a family in ways Daisy never imagined possible - from becoming so close they're practically telepathic to the decidedly more than familial love she shares with Edmond. But as the danger moves closer to their secluded outpost, Daisy must draw on reserves of strength she hardly knows she has to try to keep the little family together.

Pretty much every review of this I saw before going in brings up the incest - and now I guess I'm guilty of that too. But all of those reviews made such a big deal out of it I was sure I was going to end up with a romance story with some vaguely dystopian feelings. Let me assure you, that's totally not the case. Really, I'm kind of surprised that cousin-incest really gets people up in arms at this point. Just because you don't want to bang your cousin doesn't mean it's actually the grossest thing in the world. Much grosser: undead boyfriends that watch you sleep and try to control who you can spend time with. Or kidnappers. Abusive relationships of any kind, really. Priorities, people.

What this is, is a survival story. This is about how Daisy finds the strength, through extraordinary circumstances, to stop beating herself up and rediscovering her family and her will to live.

But ultimately, that wasn't quite enough to keep me riveted to the story. I put the book down a couple of times and wandered away to read something else. It may have had something to do with the writing style - it's very postmodern what with its complete absence of quotation marks. Considering the kids are pretty much psychic that makes it very hard to tell what is actually spoken and what is thought. The psychic-abilities were a bit random themselves - the whole of the writing just felt rather unsettling and unjustified.

What I did like was how Rosoff was able to subtly show how Daisy evolves over the course of the novel. There are hardly any moments when these changes are stated outright and instead they're left for the reader to pick up on and contemplate. An excellent example of an author trusting her audience to get it without hitting us over the head with character development or Messages.

Nonfiction Monday Review: Five Thousand Years of Slavery by Marjorie Gann and Janet Willen

So in the rest of the world, it's an exciting day. Clearly it's Valentine's Day, and also the Cybil Award winners are announced today. And what am I posting about? A slavery book. My timing, it's not excellent. Sorry for being a downer!

This is a much more in-depth look at slavery than the books I'm used to. For one, it has a much wider focus - most accounts of slavery I see are focused on the African slave trade and how it relates to US  history - so a relatively short period of time and a geographically focused story. This one, as the title says, covers five thousand years of history, from the ancient Egyptians and the pyramids, to 21st century textile factories in Asia.

This is a heavy book, not just because of the subject matter, but because of the detail as well. This is 160 pages of dense text all about one of the worst aspects of humanity that has followed us across cultures. And even in those 160 pages, stuff gets left out; the examples of slavery are very Western-oriented (accounts of slavery in Asia aren't picked up until European colonization in the 18th and 19th centuries), and some types of abuse are glossed over (not only was rape a constant threat for female slaves, but sex trafficking, a common form of modern slavery even in the United States, is never mentioned). You'd probably need a set of encyclopedias to fully examine the horrific history of slavery, but these two omissions stood out for me. It doesn't detract from the value of what is there, but especially where oppressed groups are concerned we need to keep in mind which stories we aren't reading.

Because of the Western-bias, some of the book starts to feel a little repetitive. British slave traders didn't vary their tactics much, whether the slaves were being transported to the US or Southeast Asia. I can see this being more useful in spurts than as a book to just sit down and read.

I also have to critique one design element. I can't stand sidebars and other pull-outs from the narrative that span multiple pages - in order to get the full anecdote I need to stop reading the main text, flip forward a page to finish reading the sidebar, and then go back to the main text again. This book is filled with sidebars of specific examples of slaves' lives, and that's awesome - except when I have to flip the page to get the rest of the story. And then in the final chapter there's a sidebar that takes up the margins from page 153 until 156. It's an important story (of Iqbal Masih and Craig Kielburger), but the formatting of it was irritating. If your "sidebar" is going to take up four pages, maybe you need to figure out a different format for the story.

I know that seems like a lot of critiques, but I really did find the book worthwhile. I only critique it because it's so good at so much, that I can only wish it went further! Slavery is truly horrifying, and I think it's so important to hit home the point that just because the US had the Emancipation Proclamation doesn't mean the peculiar institution has ever left us, in the US or abroad. Five Thousand Years of Slavery does an excellent job of introducing this fact, but clearly the emphasis on slavery in the past (or away from the US), shielding readers from the uncomfortable knowledge of what often goes on here, right under our noses.



This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Wrapped in Foil. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Review: Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

Two weeks ago I reviewed Donnelly's Printz honor winning A Northern Light as the inaugural book in my What I Missed reading challenge. I chose A Northern Light to go first because I knew Donnelly had another book out that was getting rave reviews, and I figured I might as well read the books in publication order. I am happy I didn't delay any further, because wow, was Revolution ever a trip.

Andi is one angry, troubled young woman. After losing her brother, her father took off and her mother is still having difficulties coping. Andi lashes out at anyone who tries to come close to her and refuses to put any effort into her schoolwork, even as the due date for her thesis approaches. The only thing Andi cares about anymore is her music - and sometimes even that isn't enough to keep the demons away.

Incensed by his daughter's near failure in school, Andi's dad insists she spend Christmas break with him in Paris so she can focus on her schoolwork while he works on a centuries-old mystery: identifying the owner of a heart long said to belong to Louis-Charles, the young prince who was imprisoned during the French Revolution. Though Andi's determined to finish her thesis in record time, she's distracted by the discovery of a diary written by Alex, a young woman who served the royal family right at the height of the Revolution. She is drawn to the diary and can't escape until she reads Alex's chilling final entries. That is, until an ill-fated trip into Paris' famed catacombs leads Andi to re-emerge into Paris in 1795, where everyone seems to think that she's Alex. Is it a bad drug trip, or has Andi actually stepped into the past? And if she's really there, can she change the future?

Wow, is Andi ever a painful person to read about. She is just so angry and hurt by her brother's death and her parents' reactions and Donnelly's writing made her ragged emotions just jump off of the page. Just devastating and heartbreaking. Donnelly also does an excellent job of describing Andi's rapidly declining mental state as Andi relies more and more on anti-depressants to keep her world in focus. Operating under the theory that if one is good, more is better, Andi takes an increasing number of pills throughout the novel and it's never quite clear if some things are happening because she is on too many drugs - or not enough.

It took me to get about halfway through the book before I was totally comfortable with using Alex's diary as our viewpoint into the past. Part of me wanted this to be a straight-up historical novel without all of Andi's angst. Or perhaps the story could have alternated chapters so we were fully immersed in Revolutionary-era France. But as Andi herself became more invested in Alex's story, so did I become invested in Andi as a character and the ways her and Alex's stories complemented and contrasted with each other.

Music fans of multiple stripes will have a lot to love in this book. I was never that great at musical theory, so some of the subtleties of Andi's obsession with the composer Mahlerbeau were lost on me, but this is an extremely musical novel filled with descriptions of both classical and ultra-contemporary music. Bigger music fans than me will probably enjoy sifting out all of the various musical references.

As she proved in A Northern Light, Donnelly has a gift for bringing the past to life through her excellent writing. With much of Revolution set in the 21st century, she proves that she's equally gifted with contemporary characters and problems, but by weaving in elements of history she helps illustrate just how timeless many stories are.

Nonfiction Monday Review: The Girl Who Was on Fire ed. by Leah Wilson

When I got the ARC of this from Smart Pop books, it included a bit of info on the editor - including the name of her degree from Duke University: Culture and Modern Fiction. Um, can I go back to school for that? Seriously, if money (both to go to school and in terms of making a living later) were no option, I would love to get an advanced degree in something like that. Which is probably why the Smart Pop books in general appeal to me so much, as they combine my love of all sorts of bits of popular culture with light academic reading. So when I was asked to look at Smart Pop's April 2011 title, all about The Hunger Games trilogy, I was allllllllllll over it!

13 YA authors tackle The Hunger Games trilogy, looking at topics as varied as the roles of fashion and the media, to politics and PTSD. There is some really serious stuff in here, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone who paid attention to more than the (gag) love triangle in the original books.

I'm clearly going to be partial to any essay titled "Team Katniss" - after all, that's the team I officially supported with a t-shirt at the Mockingjay release party - and Jennifer Lynn Barnes offers an excellent analysis on why Katniss herself is who we should be most concerned with - not being preoccupied with her love life. On a more frivolous level, I really enjoyed Terri Clark's look at Katniss' (and Cinna's) many fashion statements throughout the trilogy, and how Cinna was able to use fashion as a rhetorical device. Reading it made me think that Cinna would have loved to design for Madeleine Albright. Sarah Darer Littman, who is a political columnist when she's not writing novels like Life, After, writes a devastating essay comparing the politics of the trilogy to contemporary US politics - especially some of the rhetoric used during the Bush Administration to justify the war on terror (I can see that essay inspiring a LOT of negative criticism. Littman doesn't pull any punches - but it might be my favorite).

All of the essays here are worthwhile - those are merely my favorites, but each of them has something excellent and worthwhile to add to conversations on The Hunger Games. I wouldn't recommend powering through this book in one sitting, however. Unlike a lot of other Smart Pop books, the authors only had three novels to work with, which leads to some repetitive passages - talking about the bombs in the Capitol in Mockingjay or Katniss' use of the berries in Hunger Games. The essays themselves aren't repetitive, and all of them make unique points from the same set of examples, but reading one essay after another really highlighted for me how little material, in a sense, the authors had to work with in comparison to the Smart Pop book on Harry Potter.

I said in the intro that I consider this "light" academic reading and I want to make it clear that I don't intend that as a slight, but on the other hand only a few of these essays rely upon any sources outside of the three novels. Most of those outside sources are excerpts from interviews Suzanne Collins gave while promoting Mockingjay. This isn't hard hitting collegiate-level literary analysis, but would serve as an excellent introduction and as examples of just how many different ways one book (or set of books) can be analyzed.

The Girl Who Was on Fire goes on sale in April, and I consider it a must-read for any fan of The Hunger Games.

Reviewed from an ARC provided by the publisher




This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Great Kid Books. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Review: Dragon Chica by May Lee Chai

Found via: Forever Young Adult

This is definitely a novel with cross over appeal - I'm pretty sure technically it's written as an adult novel, just because of stylistic quirks that aren't part of the YA tradition, but since it covers Nea's young adulthood (we meet her when she's 11 and follow her through the end of high school), it's definitely accessible to teens as well. I could definitely see this being one of those mother/daughter book club picks.

It's the 1980s and Nea, her mother, older sisters, and three younger siblings, are scraping by in Texas. The only Khmer in the community - the only Asians, really - and not knowing if any of their relatives were also able to escape from the Khmer Rouge regime, Nea feels more isolated than the average 11 year old. So when an aunt and uncle write her mother, saying they now live in Nebraska and run a Chinese restaurant there, Nea's mother promptly packs up the family and their few belongings in their beat up car, and drive from Texas to Nebraska.

Nebraska is not the land of dreams as her aunt and uncle promised, however. While Chinese restaurants were prestigious in Cambodia, Nebraskans haven't developed a taste for Asian cuisine yet. The family spends long hours at the restaurant for little pay off, and eventually Nea's sister Sourdi is set up in an arranged marriage with a much older man who her uncle is in debt to. At 16, Sourdi is suddenly put into the role of a grown woman, and Nea loses the one person in the family she feels she can talk to. Nea spends the rest of her teen years feeling increasingly isolated and angry - at the hicks who shout racial slurs at her family, at the family the demands she works when she should be studying, and at the mother who doesn't understand her Americanized daughter.

While this novel covers ages and experiences that are often part of YA novels, it really brought into focus for me some of the stark contrasts between adult and YA. For one thing, YA novels don't usually last very long - I think covering the course of a single school year is the longest period of time I can think of off hand. More often the novel's events will happen in days or maybe weeks. Dragon Chica covers 7 years in under 300 pages. This isn't a criticism, as Chai does an excellent job of picking out the important events over those 7 years, but merely an observation of one of th major differences between YA and adult novels.

Nea's story is painful to read at times, as her family is the victim of some ugly racism. Her family also has some difficulty adjusting to their places in America - her younger siblings are too young to remember their time in Cambodia so they are excused from acting "American," while Sourdi is old enough that she has extensive memories of Cambodia and wishes in many ways to remain true to that heritage. Nea is truly a child of both worlds, with vague memories of Cambodia but an intense desire to fit in as much as possible with her American schoolmates. While parts of Nea's story are surely unique to the Cambodian immigrant experience, large parts of it also seem like they apply to all immigrants, and will be appreciated by anyone with close ties to another country and culture.

Review: The Dark Game by Paul B. Janeczko

Nominated for the 2011 YALSA award for excellence in nonfiction

I've never been much of a fan of spy/mystery stories. I don't have anything against them, it's just that in the huge number of stories that are published every year, other things pique my interest first. Janeczko says in his introduction that he guesses the reader of the book has an interest in spies that "may run as deeply as [his]." Well that's not the case for me, but I still found this to be an incredibly interesting book.

Janeczko covers spying in America and by Americans from the Revolutionary War through early 2001. He picks out a few individual spies or campaigns for the major wars (plus the cold war) the US has engaged in, as well as highlights some of the evolving technology that's important in spy work (such as cameras, naturally). Some of these stories are absolutely amazing - like the tunnel the US and British dug from West to East Berlin in order to tap into Soviet telegraph cables.

Janeczko definitely has a flair for drama, as often these are tales of agents or governments crossing and double-crossing each other. For example, in the case of the Berlin tunnel, just when you think the story has ended and all is well for the US...Janeczko reveals a major twist in the story, illustrating that even the best laid plans can go awry, and sometimes you won't even know it.

I also have to say I'm really impressed that Janeczko highlights female spies, without ghettoizing them into a "lady spy" section. He covers the glamorous Mata Hari as well as Virginia Hall - a woman with a wooden leg who aided the French Resistance in WWII. Women spies also played important roles in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

Janeczko clearly has a deep interest in the technical side of spying. Not only are advances in technology highlighted in each chapter, but he often goes into detail about various codes that spies use. I'll admit a lot of these codes went over my head, but me and numbers just don't get along (and many of these codes rely on number substitutions), so I'm willing to be that's more of a problem on my part. It's still interesting to see the variety of codes used and how they've changed - with a highlight for me being the Choctaw Code Talkers in WWI, who were able to foil the Germans who were evesdropping on US communications by using an utterly foreign language.

This isn't an exhaustive biography of any one spy - rather this is an overview of how spying has affected US policies by looking at a few of the most influential individuals (both those who spied for the US and those who spied against us). I don't know how well known some of the people and events would be to someone who has a hard core interest in spies - I, for example, knew about the women mentioned in the Civil War from my reading on women's roles during that war - but it's certainly an enlightening and entertaining read for someone totally new to the subject.

Sci Fi Friday Review: Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld

It's no secret to long-time readers of this blog that I have a thing for Scott Westerfeld's writing. I wrote my senior thesis on the Uglies series, for goodness' sake! So it's probably no surprise, given my history with Westerfeld's work and my feelings about last year's Leviathan, that I enjoyed Behemoth. Just wanted to get that out of the way in case the curiosity was killing you.

When we last left the crew of the British airship Leviathan, they had just picked up several Austrian passengers, including the son of the recently-assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Alek - not that any of the British crew know that. Alek's lone friend among the crew is a young airman Dylan, who is actually a young woman, Deryn, disguising herself so she can serve in the air force - not that anyone knows about that. The airship is carrying some precious cargo and distinguished guests, including the granddaughter of Charles Darwin, who has some very special eggs she wants delivered to the ruler of the Ottoman Empire before a great war can break out among the European nations in response to the murder of Alek's parents.

The Ottoman Empire is at a crossroads when the Leviathan docks. They are technically neutral in the burgeoning conflict, but are being courted by both German and British forces for an alliance. And all is not well within the Empire, as the current sultan has only been in power for a few years and already militants are planning a coup to replace the monarchy with a democratic government. Alek and Deryn know that technically they are on opposite sides in this war - Clanker and Darwinist, royalty and commoner - but discover they will have to work together, along with an eclectic mix of allies, if they ever hope to achieve their mutual goal: stop a world war from beginning.

If you haven't read Leviathan yet, you absolutely need to read it before reading Behemoth. The story picks up mere days after the end of Leviathan, and the action starts within just a few pages, leaving precious little time to catch the reader up on what happened in the last book. I really liked the fact that Westerfeld just goes with the assumption that the reader already knows the back story, because that means each and every page can be devoted to developing what happens next.

This is one wild ride both similar to and very different from Leviathan. In the last book, we followed Alek wandering in the wilderness towards safety with his body guards, and Deryn spent much of her story alone among the crew out of need to protect her secret. In Behemoth, less physical ground is covered, as the story stays focused on Istanbul, and the story becomes more of a political thriller as Alek and Deryn become involved in the resistance movement - which introduces my favorite character, the feisty revolutionary Lilit, who has dreams of bringing women's liberation to Istanbul. She also has a huge crush on one of our dashing heroes. Lilit is a young woman destined for greatness and could probably support a whole novel of her own!

As expected, there are more great beasties and machines this time around. The Ottoman Empire is a Clanker nation, but they're more in touch with nature than the Germans or Austrians, as their mechanics are based on animals. My favorite was probably the spider-like machine that worked the great library. On the Darwinist side, we finally get to see what was in those eggs that were so carefully guarded in Leviathan and, of course, there's the title beastie, the Behemoth. It's awesome, in every sense of the word.

Because I feel like it's becoming my trademark, I do have to comment for a moment on the romance element of the book. Deryn is beginning to develop "feelings" for Alek. Maybe this just annoyed me because I read it shortly after The Education of Bet and A Golden Web, two other novels about young women dressing up as men, but I'm getting quite tired of girls putting all of their other goals at risk because of some boy that literally thinks they're just one of the guys. Deryn keeps a handle on herself better than the protagonists of the other two books, and it's really just a small bit of this otherwise giant story, but it still rankled me a bit. I am certain Goliath won't go the way of Mockingjay in terms of focus on relationships, but I can't deny there's a little bit of worry in the back of my head. Hopefully, averting World War I will remain the focus.

Rot & Ruin Giveaway Reminder: I'm going to draw the winner for the Rot & Ruin giveaway at 12 pm Eastern time today! If you still want a chance to win, enter here!

Reviewed from ARC picked up at ALA 2010.

Review: This Means War! by Ellen Wittlinger

The Cold War seems to be the hot topic in YA/MG lit this year. I think Deborah Wiles' Countdown has received the most attention, but there are at least two others I know of that have been published within the last few months. This Means War! is one of those.

Juliet and Lowell have been best friends for as long as Juliet can remember, but their friendship is suddenly at risk when he starts hanging out with a pair of Air-Force-brat brothers who refuse to play with girls. Juliet befriends Patsy, who has also moved to town because of her father's job at the local military base, but her loud and brash ways are no substitute for quiet and sensitive Lowell. When the neighborhood bully worms his way into hanging out with Lowell, and the boys continue to harass Patsy and Juliet, Patsy gets fed up and declares war on the boys. Girls can do anything boys can do, and the two groups of kids (Patsy and Juliet rope in two more girls from school to even out the teams) face off in a series of challenges to prove their superiority.

As tensions escalate among the kids in the neighborhood, life is stressful for the adults as well, as we see through Juliet's eyes. Her parents run the local grocery store that is slowly losing customers to the new supermarket in town. And then of course there's the whole reason new families have been moving to the airbase: the Cold War is in full swing, and what we know as the Cuban Missile Crisis has just begun.

Poor Juliet! Her fear and tension is palpable throughout the book. She's a rather nervous child, but is quite endearing, so I was willing to overlook her nerves. All she wants is her old best friend back and doesn't understand this nonsense over boys and girls not being able to play together. Then her new friend Patsy drags her into this boys vs. girls contest while her family life is getting increasingly stressful and the threat of all-out war is hanging overhead. The nerves are rather understandable in that context, aren't they?

I imagine the boys vs. girls contest will have a lot of resonance with girls who've ever been told we're "not as good" as the boys, and I loved it when the girls decided to turn the tables on the boys and make them compete in traditionally girl-y activities. There's a little bit of gender essentialism going on there, but considering some of the girls excel in the "masculine" activities and some of the boys excel in the "feminine" activities, it's a good counterpoint to what the kids expect will happen.

Nonfiction Monday Review: The War to End All Wars by Russell Freedman

I finished reading my ARC of Scott Westerfeld's Behemoth recently, and figured now would be the perfect time to pick up a book on World War I. The first World War was woefully under-represented in my history classes - I only remember one lesson on it (it was a pretty cool lesson, where we drew country names from a hat and role played being the leaders of those countries to see if the war would turn out any differently. It didn't). Freedman's The War to End All Wars helps correct that glaring deficit in my education.


The book is organized more thematically than chronologically, starting with the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Serbia before backtracking slightly to look at the military buildups and general tension in Europe before fighting broke out. Freeman's writing is excellent in this part, as he made the tension in Europe feel very real, and like this war might have been inevitable, as my high school history class demonstrated.

From there, the sections tend to cover one aspect of the war from the beginning to its conclusion, such as trench warfare and naval battles, with the occasional look at notable battles like the Battle of Verdun, which was a long and bloody battle in France for a tactically insignificant fort that was nevertheless a matter of national pride for the French. Absolutely horrifying.

I wanted to recommend this book for Leviathan fans who want a peak at the real history behind Westerfeld's alternate history, but the book focuses almost entirely on the Western Front, whereas so far the Leviathan series has been more focused on the East (at the end of Leviathan, the great ship is headed for Istanbul, and Behemoth picks up there). While I understand the need to choose something to focus on because the war was so huge, that means that some events are mostly glossed over. For example, can anyone tell me why on Earth Japan declared war on Germany? I've never understood that one. And the communist revolution is covered in three paragraphs. And those are just the questions I recognize I have; I know so little about WWI, who knows what else I'm missing?

On a positive note, the pictures in this book are absolutely fantastic and devastating. Freedman has found some stunning photographs, including action shots that could only have been achieved through luck, like a ship that's just been struck by a shell, or a group of advancing soldiers where one has just been shot but hasn't fallen yet. These aren't pretty pictures, but they do an excellent job of giving the war a human face.

Finally, I found it incredibly interesting in the last chapter where Freedman notes that modern historians often consider WWII an extension of WWI, quoting historian John Keegan saying WWII "is inexplicable except in terms of the rancor and instabilities left by the earlier conflict." Yet I'm sure if you ask the average high school student, they have a much better understanding of what started WWII than WWI. Freedman gives a brief glimpse at how the anger and unresolved tensions of WWI led into Hitler's rise in Germany, but it's clear that whole story would take up a whole other book.




This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Wendie's Wanderings. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles reviewed today!

Thank goodness for fall - after a relatively quiet summer, I've got book events to attend again! Check out my re-cap of yesterday's Books for Teens & Tweens event at Books of wonder.

Sci Fi Friday Review: Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness

Back when I went to ALA, I knew I was going to meet up with Lynn & Cindy at some point, but probably not until Saturday or Sunday. Yet when I got to the convention hall on Friday evening to register, I saw them across the lobby and snuck up on them like the sneaky person I am. And good thing too - while they were off to do important committee stuff, they clued me in that Candlewick had a few ARCs left of Monsters of Men and I should make that my first stop if I wanted to get my hands on this book before September. I then impressed them when we met up again on Sunday to report that I'd already finished the book!

Monsters of Men is the conclusion to the Chaos Walking trilogy, all of which have had slightly unwieldy names (The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer). When we last left Todd and Viola, they were facing the prospect of all out war, with Mayor President Prentiss' army of men and Mistress Coyle's resistance/terrorist cell of women and cast off men ready to kill each other, if the massive army of rebelling Spackle don't kill all of the humans first. Oh, and Viola's people, her fellow colonists, have reached the planet. Monsters of Men drops us right back into the action, with the adults and the Spackle known as 1017 all itching for war. Todd and Viola are once again caught in the middle, and now 1017 is added to the narrative mix, struggling with many of the same issues as the humans - he wants revenge, and is even willing to go against the nominal leader of his people, The Sky, in his quest. Will cooler heads ever prevail?

First of all, I love how Ness writes the animals in these books. There's Manchee, of course, and his lovable enthusiasm, but Angarath was tugging at my heartstrings throughout the entire book. It's great because these animals retain their essential animal-ness, just now it's easier for them to communicate with the humans around them. It's totally a dream come true for someone like me who would love to know what her cat is thinking (I just gave my cats some catnip, so I'm pretty sure their thoughts right now are I'M SO HIGH, but that's just a guess).

I have to say, I was on the edge of my seat for most of the book, but it was written in such a way that I felt a little manipulated. Every few chapters a new emergency arises or someone blows something up, which is pretty much the sole way the plot moves forward for much of the book. Around page 350 I found myself sighing with each new emergency - and at Mistress Coyle and Mayor Prentiss as they constantly bickered, backstabbed, and manipulated their proteges to get Viola and Todd to follow in their footsteps. After reading Mockingjay, I found myself comparing the two books - Ness moves the plot forward by blowing something up, Collins moves Mockingjay forward by having Katniss suffer a traumatic injury. Both are effective in small doses, but repeatedly in one novel is just...repetitive. The pace picked up again in the last 100 pages or so, but part of that may have been me realizing I was so close to the end and desperate to find out what the payoff would be for the series.

Writing the conclusion to a trilogy has to be super stressful for an author. Undoubtedly, it will be impossible to please everybody (as we saw with Mockingjay last month). While I had a few minor problems with Monsters of Men, it is overall a very satisfying conclusion to this story.

Reviewed from ARC picked up at ALA.


BTW: Last night I attended the awesome Zombies Vs. Unicorns debate! Check back here after 1 PM Eastern to see my re-cap of the event!

Nonfiction Monday Review: Anne Frank: The Graphic Biography by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon

Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon are making a career for themselves out of adapting stories to graphic novel form. I first became aware of them with their graphic adaptation of The 9/11 Report. Since then they've looked at the War on Terror and written a biography of Che Guevara. Now, with the blessing of the Anne Frank House, they've put together a biography of the Holocaust's most famous young victim: Anne Frank.

Jacobson and Colon go back to the 1920s, when Anne's parents met, to give Anne's brief life a history and context. Both of Anne's parents were well-to-do members of society, with her father working for the family bank and serving honorably in World War I. The book briefly covers their early lives together and the birth of Anne's sister, Margot, before bringing Anne herself into the story.

Anne had a happy childhood, filled with loving friends and family, that was unfortunately marred by increasing hardship, thanks to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, ultimately leaving the family no choice but to move into the famous Secret Annex.

Jacobson and Colon do an excellent job of putting Anne's life into the context of the greater war that was being waged first in Europe, and then around the world. Periodic "snapshots" take us to important events, giving us a quick synopsis of the events and their aftermath (for example, the new restrictions placed on Jews in German-occupied territories after Kristallnacht). World maps also quickly and clearly identify that allies and axis powers as well as their colonies and territories throughout the world. The visual nature of the graphic novel is really utilized well here.

This biography is also extremely powerful when it comes to illustrating what happened after the family was discovered, grimly detailing the family's days in various concentration and extermination camps. Jacobson and Colon pull in references from other prisoners who knew Anne, some who knew her both before the war and were also imprisoned with her.

The graphic novel format is perfect to bring Anne's story to a wider audience, and one that works for all ages. This could be read by children who are just being introduced to Anne Frank (I think I first read her diary in fourth grade), or older students or adults who are re-visiting the era. The format is used extremely effectively, as I found it easier to understand the timeline of events and to connect Anne's life with what was happening in the rest of the world easier than ever before. It's a quick read and while not the most exhaustive biography of Anne Frank ever, it's a great introduction to a powerful story.



This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Wrapped in Foil. Be sure to stop by and check out all the other great nonfiction books this week!

Double Review: Ashes by Kathryn Lasky and Once by Morris Gleitzman

I have soooooooooooooooo many books to review it's not even funny, folks. Remind me next time I want to start slacking off on my blogging that should be accompanied by a commensurate slacking off on reading. I'm still reviewing books I read in July. Ack!

Ashes is told by precocious 13 year old Gaby Schramm, growing up in 1930s Berlin. Her father is a professor and often works with Albert Einstein. But a growing darkness in Berlin is starting to encroach on Gaby's idyllic life. Public book burnings. Uprisings against Jewish scholars and shopkeepers. A beloved literature teacher pushing Hitler Youth meetings. And her older sister and her boyfriend seem to be harboring a few secrets, too. Gaby watches as the world begins to collapse around her in the prelude to World War II.

Once takes place well into WWII, beginning in Poland in 1942. Felix is 10 years old and was put in a Catholic orphanage over three years ago to wait in safety until his Jewish parents could return. Felix knows little about what's going on outside of the orphanage and, tired of waiting for his parents, runs away with his precious notebook filled with imagined stories of his parents' exploits in tow. As he searches desperately for his parents, Felix is confronted with the full brutality of the Nazis, witnessing murders and mass graves, and rescuing a surly little girl from a burning house where her parents died. When they reach the city, Felix is still valiantly hoping to find his parents, but is instead confronted with the realities of a ghetto, where the few children left must be hidden in basements to protect them from the trains that would otherwise carry them away.

These are two starkly different looks at WWII in Europe, and once again both cover this familiar territory in fresh new ways. Ashes is a somewhat conventional coming of age story, made remarkable by the time it is set. Once is horrific, as it explores the brutality of the war through the eyes of an innocent child, and doesn't pull any punches.

I enjoyed the complexity of the characters in Ashes, as no one, even the Nazi sympathizers, and one-dimensional. I especially liked that Gaby is both a voracious reader and an excellent student of math and science. So often in books characters are reduced to liking one or the other, their love of books or science used as a sort of shorthand for their personalities. The inclusion of Albert Einstein was done very well, and didn't feel stilted or gimmicky like other fictional appearances of real life characters can be.

Once is absolutely beautiful and horrifying. On one level it's a rather simplistic story, as it's told through the uncomprehending eyes of 10 year old Felix, whose naivety is compounded by his isolation in the remote orphanage for almost four years. While Gaby is on the verge of being a young woman at the onset of the war, Felix is still very much a child. Reading his innocent descriptions of what as an adult reader I know were untold atrocities is disconcerting and extremely effective.