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Tag Archives: young adult
A Swiftly Tilting Planet / Madeleine L’Engle
18 November 2008 – 7:48 am
I re-read A Wrinkle in Time and didn’t think it was as good as I remembered. And I re-read A Wind in the Door and thought it was completely awful. Now I am on to A Swiftly Tilting Planet, which I was predisposed to hate after the previous two. I write that to warn you that, while I often nit-pick my reading to death, I probably noticed far more things that irritated me than even my normal. That being written, the third installment of the Time Quintet is not as bad as the second. (…)
Hero / Perry Moore
7 November 2008 – 1:49 am
My friend Kim attended WisCon this year. WisCon is a feminist S.F. convention. As steady followers of this blog may have picked up, feminism has been a minor theme of mine this year. Kim returned from the conference with a recommendation to read Perry Moore’s Hero. Kim read it, then lent her copy to me so that she could get my opinion. At no point has Kim told me what she thought of it, I presume so that my impressions would not be tainted.
So here’s the summary. (…)
A Wind in the Door / Madeleine L’Engle
21 October 2008 – 7:06 pm
Since I already own the entire series I’ll probably re-read the whole set, but man am I bummed about it. A Wrinkle in Time did not hold up on re-reading, and A Wind in the DOor positively fell apart.
The book returns to the Murry family, again conveniently without father. This time he’s merely away on government business, not kidnapped while away on government business. Charles Wallace is deathly ill, and it might be his mitochondria and farandolae. Meg must save him. (…)
Zahrah the Windseeker / Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
17 September 2008 – 11:00 am
I vowed in April (or maybe May) to read five of the top ten obscure S.F. works that deserve more attention as selected by Feminist SF. Well, they took their time getting the list out, but they did and I’ve got five of them in hand. I won’t be reading them all in a row. Instead my plan is to alternate them with other books. The first was Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu’s young adult fantasy Zahrah the Windseeker. (…)
A Wrinkle In Time / Madeleine L’Engle
17 August 2008 – 12:07 am
Quick note: I won’t be doing a Free Books roundup for 17 August. Didn’t have time today.
I’m not sure exactly when I first read Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time. Even though I purchased this paperback copy in 1999, I’m pretty sure I didn’t re-read it when I bought it or after, until today. Very quickly, it all came back. But it didn’t hold up as well as I thought it would. (…)
Sounder / William H. Armstrong
22 July 2008 – 8:39 pm
A quick review of a young adult book, Sounder. I can’t recall if I actually read this growing up or not. I read a lot of the Newbery Award books in my youth, but I got no sense of deja vu as I read this, so perhaps I didn’t.
The story is that of a young black boy, the son of a sharecropper in the south. His family lives in a small shack with him, his parents, two siblings, and Sounder their redbone hound/bulldog mix. (…)
Little Brother / Cory Doctorow
25 May 2008 – 6:22 pm
This book reminds me a lot of the movie Pump Up The Volume. The only real common plot element is a teen working underground inspires a rebellion among fellow youth against unjust authority. But the main similarity I think is more the feel of the work: wishful thinking. I agree with the politics. I think kids need to rebel, not for their sake, but for society’s. But I still think the book is wishful thinking.
Marcus Yallow is a teen geek. (…)
Wild Jack / John Christopher
6 April 2008 – 1:51 pm
One of my first introductions to science fiction was the young adult series known as The Tripods. John Christopher’s tale of alien invasion and subjugation is not well remembered generally, though it is still in print. But I’ll wager most science fiction fans of my generation think back fondly on that series. He also wrote a post-apocalyptic Prince in Waiting series, which was brutal. I’ll have to re-read those and put up a review some day. (…)
City of the Beasts / Isabel Allende
3 February 2008 – 11:25 pm
For today’s Sunday Salon I decided I would knock off the book that I started nearly a month ago, Isabel Allende’s City of the Beasts. My intention at the start of the month was to read this on my weekly trips to Seattle. But after the first day I was getting annoyed with the book and put it down. Although I had 320 pages or so left, it’s classified young adult and is a bit easier reading. (…)
The Last Battle / C. S. Lewis
19 December 2007 – 8:42 pm
I think this installment in the Chronicles of Narnia is my least favorite of the series. The reason? While the entire series is chock full of Christian allegory, for the most part the Narnia stories are parables similar to Aesop’s. But this volume dispenses with allegory almost completely. Before, Lewis’ tales had morals to them. Christian morals, of course. The Last Battle is a retelling the the Christian end times with the name Aslan substituted for God. (…)
