Showing posts with label family relationships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family relationships. Show all posts

Perfect You Review

Perfect You
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Perfect You ReviewKate's life has never been perfect, but it used to be fairly okay: She grew up with a best friend, Anna, who knew everything about her, and vice-versa. She had a roof over her head, two parents with stable jobs, and no big conflicts with her older brother. She got decent grades in school and had a decent freshman year.
But now she's a sophomore, and Kate's life is so far from perfect that it's in another state. When Anna came back from her summer vacation, she looked like a different person. Newly thin and blonde, Anna starts hanging out with the popular crowd at school and stops speaking to Kate. Kate's father abruptly quit his job to sell Perfect You infomercial vitamins in a booth at the local mall. Kate is expected to work there after school, and she doesn't get paid for it. In fact, sometimes, she's the only person manning the booth, as her father is prone to wander off to play video games or solicit customers from other stores. Due to her less-than-stellar driving tests, Kate isn't allowed to get a car yet, so she has to rely on her family members to cart her around. Her brother obtained a college degree, then moved back home. Instead of actually getting a job, he sits on the couch and decides he wants to be an actor. Of course, he changes his dream job as often as he changes his socks, so Kate doubts he's serious. To top it all off, a guy at school named Will with a reputation for flirting and leading girls on keeps bugging her.
Kate is conflicted, to say the least. Her first-person narration relates her ups-and-downs with Will, Anna, and her family members. She doesn't want to admit that she likes Will and she certainly doesn't want to get hurt, but she starts to see him anyway. She restricts their time together to mall breaks, not wanting people at school to know about them, and she refuses to let things become serious. She doesn't even know if Will honestly likes her or is just using her like he's used all of the other girls, and she pretends as though she doesn't care either way. She desperately wants to repair her friendship with Anna but isn't sure what it will take to do that. Kate is mortified by her father's antics at the mall, but she suffers these little indignities quietly, not wanting to stir up trouble. She can sense that her parents' relationship, once fun-loving, is starting to get strained. Kate's maternal grandmother comes to visit and ends up staying indefinitely. After taking a second job to make ends meet, Kate's mother is stressed enough, and the addition of her own mother to the household only causes more problems.
Sometimes, all it takes is a good or bad conversation, even one that's ten seconds long, to change your mind and your feelings. Elizabeth Scott (Bloom) writes dialogue that sounds very true to life and very true to teens - remarkably, with minimal swearing and slang. A quick exchange of words with Anna and Kate thinks they are friends again, then a blatant snub in the hallway makes her heart sink. It's hard to have a friend "outgrow" you or otherwise leave you behind. I like that they drifted apart due to their own changes (well, Anna wanting something more and changing herself) rather than being torn apart by some devastating, earth-shattering event. Nevertheless, it still felt devastating to Kate.
By the end of the book, things in Kate's home have changed yet again, and her relationships with Anna and Will are totally different than they were at the beginning of the school year. Kate has to decide whether to hang on or move on.Perfect You Overview

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Countdown Review

Countdown
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Countdown ReviewIt's not just that Ms. Wiles so evidently has done her homework, and so clearly recalls personal feelings of that time; it is her absolute gift for recounting those dreadful tween feelings, of change, insecurity, and peer pressure, with that hideous Missile Crisis as a backdrop!
I first "discovered" her when I picked up EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS. That one helped me through the death of a close friend, and I never put it down till I was finished. Then, as now, I cried, I laughed, and I felt as if I had just had some sort of magical catharsis happen to me, through a children's book! I am a children's librarian, so I believe EVERYONE should read children's books--they are so life-facilitating, and one never outgrows them--but if you are only going to read ONE children's book this year, COUNTDOWN is the one.
I feel as if I have waited a very long time for this book; after I voraciously read, and made sure our library owned, everything Ms. Wiles has published, I could not bear that there were no more. Trite as this sounds, it was so worth the wait. Now, I have to settle down to anticipation of Book Two of this trilogy!
Give this book to the discerning upper-elementary/tween reader. That child will see himself/herself in every chapter. My fifth birthday was the day JFK was killed, so most of these echoes are very dim for me, yet I also saw myself.
Ms. Wiles, you are a gift to every reader and librarian everywhere.Countdown Overview

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Ten Thousand Saints: A Novel Review

Ten Thousand Saints: A Novel
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Ten Thousand Saints: A Novel ReviewThe new novel TEN THOUSAND SAINTS is certainly interesting and to me at least quite original. The book begins on New Year's Eve 1987 in fictional college town Lintonburg,VT (um if you notice Lintonburg contains the exact same letters as Burlington the home of the University of Vermont and the fictional and real cities have many similarities). Two young teenagers, Teddy and Jude, are out partying with their new friend Eliza from Manhattan and tragically Teddy is found dead the next morning after among other things huffing Freon and snorting cocaine. Both Jude and Eliza feel very guilty because Jude pressed the Freon on him and Eliza supplied the cocaine. Actually Eliza offered Teddy more than cocaine that night and she soon discovers she is pregnant from her one time encounter with the now deceased teenager. Eliza, Jude and Teddy's older half brother Johnny form a family of sorts who hope to raise Teddy's baby.
Adults are as important to the story as the teenagers and the effects of parents' actions on their children is a major theme of the book. Jude and his sister Prudence's divorced parents both make their living from marijuana as their dad Les is a prosperous grower and dealer while their artist mother Harriet, perhaps the most stable parent in the novel, makes her living from blowing glass bongs and pipes. Eliza's mom who at the beginning of the story is also Les's girlfriend is a self absorbed ballerina while Teddy and Johnny's mom is an aging hippie known for disappearing when ever things get uncomfortable. Johnny's dad is a prison inmate and Teddy's dad is an unknown man of Asian Indian descent who turns up toward the end of the book and is not what this reader at least expected.
The teenagers turn to Straight Edge music with the accompanying austere lifestyle strongly influenced by Hare Krishna beliefs. It is implied that this is a reaction against their parents' hedonistic ways. Johnny who is a musician and tattoo artist living in the Tompkins Square Park area of Manhattan's alphabet city marries Eliza in hopes of giving his dead brother's baby a chance to stay under his influence even though he has no romantic interest in women. Johnny seems to epitomize the Straight Edge lifestyle and is known as Mr. Clean because of his shaved head and vegan habits.
TEN THOUSAND SAINTS is a novel well worth reading. AIDS, homelessness, gentrification, parenthood, adoption, and drug use are among the many topics incorporated in the book. The author does a great job of bringing the late 1980's in the East Village to detailed life and the choices of the kids and parents in the book will linger in the reader's memory.And the book ends with a very appropriate and effective postscript from 2006 on the last night the famed punk venue CBGB's was open.
Ten Thousand Saints: A Novel Overview

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