"My Name is Not Easy" by Debby Dahl Edwardson

I am really torn on my feelings about this book. The premise is very interesting and captured my attention, but overall I found the writing to be a little weak. Luke's name is not really Luke, but his actual name is too complicated for those at his new boarding school to pronounce (hence the title, My Name is Not Easy). He and his brothers are about to travel to Sacred Heart School, a Catholic boarding school in Alaska. He and the other students are not allowed to speak their native languages and have to learn to adjust to new rules as well as form new eating habits. He will soon realize that everything is not as it seems and that things are going to change more than he ever could have imagined.

I thought that the concept for this book was really interesting. I live in an area of the country where many students live in remote areas and either have to be bussed in to town from very far away or they have to attend a boarding school. Even though this is a common thing in my area, I never put much thought into it on a historical level. The whole process would have been completely different in the 1960s when rules and regulations were not the same as they are today. Some of the decisions made by the adults in this book angered me as I know that it could never be acceptable today for teachers to make such these decisions without first consulting a parent. It was a strange experience to realize at this time, it was perfectly acceptable and probably more common than I could imagine.

Despite liking this book, there are some things that could have been better. The novel is rather short but covers quite a bit of time. It spans over several years and doesn't always do the best job with pacing. I also thought that there were a few too many characters. Edwardson tries to cram an awful lot into too short of a novel.

I think that this is an important book. It has a lot of information that I didn't know so I'm sure that others could learn from it. In addition, I think it raises some interesting questions about the way the world worked in the 1960s which can also bring up how the world works today. I definitely see this being an excellent book to be used for high school students and wish that I could have read something like this when I was a high school student. I feel that I could have anaylized it much more effectively than most of the books I had to read then.



Happy Reading!
-Melly 

"Looking for Alaska" by John Green

Fabulous, amazing, memorizing! I don't know if these words are enough to sum up how much I enjoyed John Green's Looking For Alaska. I listened to it on audiobook on a recent trip and the time just flew by. At one point we stopped for lunch and I had to wait a few moments because I was almost at the end of a disc and had to know what happened next.

Miles has just started at boarding school, the same school his father attended as a teen. He knows that his life is going to change, but I don't think he realizes just by how much. Obsessed with the last words of the dead, he is searching for his "Great Perhaps" when he meets The Colonel and then Alaska. Nicknamed "Pudge" he starts to fall into The Colonel's and Alaska's habits; smoking in his dorm room, sneaking off to drink, and helping with pranks. Now before you judge, realize that you need to read this book to get Pudge's entire story arc. He certainly doesn't make the best decisions and neither do his friends, but they learn so much from their actions and you will finish this book knowing that they will be better people for it.

I hate that I have read so little by John Green, but I the same time, I like that I get the opportunity to savor his writing. What I have read, is pure awesome! In addition to his writing, he has some pretty entertaining (and educational) videos out there on the interwebz as well. Trust me, if you are studying something that he has done a "Crash Course" video for, then you must watch it! There's a part of me that is constantly telling myself to get check out all of Green's work right now this very minute (assuming any of his books are checked in, a rarity at my library- and for a good reason), but another part of me is holding off so I can enjoy each book separately so that the enjoyment lasts just a little bit longer. Yeah, I'm crazy, I know.

Happy Reading!

-Melly

"Balto and the Great Race" by Elizabeth Cody Kimme

I was rather young when I first saw the movie Balto.  Like many of kids my age, I became rather obsessed with the movie.  What can I say, I am a dog person (on my desk I have several photos.  One is of my boyfriend.  Three are of my dog. Enough said).  It wasn’t too much longer that I found out that the movie is based (based) on true events.  I never did much research into those events until recently.  I came across Elizabeth Cody Kimmel’s Balto and the Great Race while looking for something to read on my Kindle.   This is a beginning reading book so of course it was a very simple read, but in a good way.  It covered the facts of the famous dogs’ journey to Nome, Alaska to deliver antitoxin serum to children sick with diphtheria.  It acknowledged that there were many people and dogs involved and not just Balto.  I appreciated that it was very upfront with the information and didn’t try to spin it in a way that made Balto the only hero.  I didn’t become interested in history until I was in middle school but I think that had I read more books like this one, I would have become interested in such subjects at a much earlier age.  I like that this book is aimed at young readers without being dumbed down.   

 I think that it would be very interesting to introduce this to a young reader and have them watch the movie as well.  This would start a conversation comparing the two mediums and get constructive thinking started at an early age.  Though I was certainly not the intended audience for this book, I enjoyed it quite a bit and highly recommend it!

Happy Reading!

-Melly