Running Loose - Chris Crutcher

Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

CATEGORY: REQUIRED

Running Loose is about a teenage boy who has everything, a girlfriend and a spot on the football team that will hopefully get him a scholarship for college. And while everything is going great, one other football team is challenging their undefeated status. In order to win, their coach encourages them to injure the other team's star player. Louis tries to argue with his coach but is thrown onto the field anyway. His other teammates go ahead and injure the star player and Louis leaves the game. After accusing the coach of setting that up and then being told that he was lying, he decided to quit the football team. Shortly after, his girlfriend dies in a car accident. Eventually as a way to deal with his loss, he joins the track team.

As a sports novel it delicately deals with racism and loss. The protagonist uses his sports as a way to learn and to grow, and most importantly to heal. There's a really interesting image at one point in this novel; the protagonist and an older man are playing a game of checkers and discussing religion at the same time. Louis is upset with God and when Louis gets bored with the game, the old man explains this sport analogy to him saying that if life was easy, we'd get bored and we wouldn't want to do it. Life needs to be messy, and hard, and complicated because that makes it worth it.

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We Were Here - Matt de la Peña

We Were Here by Matt de la Pena
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

CATEGORY: REQUIRED AUTHOR

We Were Here is the story of a half-Mexican, half-American kid who gets into trouble. The story follows this coming-of-age novel as the protagonist, Miguel, experiences juvi and then a group home. In both of these places he makes unexpected allies. The three of them break out of the group home and begin on their adventure south towards the Mexican border. The intention is to start anew in Mexico, away from their troubled pasts. The novel is written as the journal entries that the judge required of Miguel as part of his sentence and we don't find out what he did to get stuck in a group home until the very end of the novel. The novel follows these three boys as they travel down California. And as they go they learn new things about each other, making friends in the most unexpected places, and develop a crucial understanding of their lives and the reasons for what they did.

We Were Here was a beautiful coming-of-age novel that shows the healing process of grief. De le Peña does a good job of writing his characters realistically and giving them a sense of depth that is difficult to do in YA literature. The novel itself sometimes felt kind of slow going but that meant that as a reader you were able to sit and process what you read. It was different from other YA lit, in a good way.

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All the Truth That's in Me - Julie Berry

All the Truth That's in Me by Julie Berry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

CATEGORY: REQUIRED AUTHOR

Berry's All the Truth That's in Me is about a young girl who was kidnapped and then returned home with her tongue cut out. I'm assuming that the novel is set in recently colonised America, at least that's the vibe I got as a reader. However, that fact is never fully revealed. The novel is all about Judith's struggle in readjusting to life at home. The town outcasts her because of her inability to speak but Judith, through the help of Maria, finds the ability to talk again. The book is written from the point-of-view of Judith but directed at her childhood friend, now turned love interest. As this develops so does Judith's will to share the truth of what happened in regards to her kidnapping and her friend's murder.

I have to admit that for the longest time I avoided reading this book. My roommate had suggested it to me previously but I judged it by its cover! When we had to read a Julie Berry novel for my YA lit class I finally caved in and read it. And I really liked it. The novel is totally what you wouldn't expect and very unique in the YA world. And although it has the cliché romance element to it, the romance is nuanced and the novel focuses more on Judith's growth and development with the entire town in her endeavour to tell the truth.

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The Sea of Trolls

The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

CATEGORY: REQUIRED AUTHOR, FANTASY

The Sea of Trolls is much different from Nancy Farmer's more well known fantasy novel, House of the Scorpion. While both are fantasy, Farmer shows her ability to write from a wide range of sources. The Sea of Trolls follows the adventures of a young saxon boy, Jack, who is kidnapped by vikings, or the Beserkers, who have the ability to descend into a wolf-like madness. Jack saves the thrall lives of himself and sister by proving that he has the abilities of a bard, magic. Once he finally reaches his Viking captors home, he causes problems my accidentally magicking the half-troll queen's hair to fall off. Jack, and his frenemy, Thorgil, must travel to Jotunheim, the land of the trolls, battle dragons, and talk to crows, in order to reach a well that supposedly has the power to grant Jack the magic he needs to fix the half-troll viking queen's hair and save his little sister Lucy.

I was surprised at how easily Farmer was able to write believable fantasy from multiple cultures. House of the Scorpion is set in a futuristic Mexico while The Sea of Trolls cleverly employs old English and Viking lore to tell a story that seems much more like the typical fantasy adventure. And although it may appear to be typical fantasy literature, Farmer does a good job of reinventing the quest story. Her characters while battling dragons and giant spiders, also struggle with gender equality, insanity, serious viking anger issues and contrasting religions and cultures. Farmer does an excellent job of portraying good and evil as a grey area, her characters are people and not heroes and villains. I would say that the novel is epic fantasy for a younger audience.

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Got this baby in the mail today courtesy of Goodreads First Reads. Nothing quite makes my day like a book in the mail, especially when it's free. :D

This is The Revelation of Gabriel Adam, by S. L. Duncan. It's supposed to be a whole new take on the whole angel theme that seems to be gaining popularity in the world of YA. And I'm actually excited to read this one. So, I might count it towards the bjillion YA books I have to read for school this semestre. That way I will actually right a review in a timely manner.

Here is the Goodreads link in case you're interested.

Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World

Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World: The Extraordinary True Story of Shackleton and the Endurance by Jennifer Armstrong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World, by Jennifer Armstrong, really is the extraordinary true story of Shackleton and the Endurance. The non-fiction book tells the story of one man's dream to trek across the Antarctic. Right before World War I, the crew set out on their adventure and despite the rumours of war they were told to carry on and continue their journey. However, the adventure they had planned never worked out and they were forced to suffer through another, more dangerous, one. Due to thicker ice than expected their ship, the Endurance, eventually was frozen into the ice and the men had to disembark and begin their journey, dragging lifeboats, by foot. This book tells of the struggles of their journey as their group slowly split up until only Shackleton and two others reached their initial starting point on South Georgia Island. Shackleton then sent rescue boats back for his remaining crew in two different locations. All of them miraculously survived this treacherous trek across the frozen ocean.

I really enjoyed this book. Armstrong did well in combining the facts she had researched and gathered with a healthy narrative making the story entertaining and hard to put down. She included random quotes from other books about the Endurance and this trip as well as conversation quoted directly from Shackleton's own diaries recording their misfortunes but amazing luck. This combined with original photos demonstrating the men's experiences was a clever way to make the story seem real and simultaneously something you would want to read and know more about.

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Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Eleanor is the eldest of five children and lives with all of them in a single room while her abusive step father intimidatingly rules the home. Park is from a well off family whose parents are still very much in love. The two high school students meet untowardly on the bus to school and for a while ignore each other completely keeping a healthy six inches between them. Eleanor soon becomes the reject in school, struggling with all sorts of bullying whereas Park is respected, although he would have you believe that's only so because he dated the right people in middle school. However, Eleanor begins to read Park's comics over his shoulder and then starts their relationship. As the two misfits spend more and more time with each other they fall more deeply in love sharing aspects of each other that wouldn't have dreamed sharing with others. Park becomes really defensive and for a while manages to subside the bullying that Eleanor is struggling with. However, they can't seem to figure out who keeps writing the awful phrases that keep appearing on Eleanor's notebooks. After coming home one day Eleanor discovers that the culprit is her abusive step father and with the help of Park and some other unexpected friends, including Park's father, they manage to help Eleanor run away to her uncle's house in another state.

Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park creates the most unexpected love story between two unassuming people. There was a good depth to her characters and the events that occurred in her novel are very probable and because of these two aspects the reality of this book kept me interested. However, the romance seemed kind of unrealistic. At first, it felt right. The hand touching and stealing glances at each other when they were sure the other one wasn't looking. That was all very reminiscent of middle and high school relationships but the speed at which is developed from that to Park declaring his love for Eleanor felt wrong and almost like a move to increase the drama and keep the plot moving. Every other thing about their relationship felt right. Even after Eleanor had left, the reactions that both protagonists had to the situation worked well.

I really enjoyed the way Rowell wrote the novel alternating between the two protagonist's/lover's perspective that worked really well, but I think I like her other novel, Fangirl more.

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The Outsiders

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Ponyboy Curtis is a 14 year old orphan living with his two older brothers in the poorer neighbourhood of their town. They find a sort of extended family with the other boys in the neighbourhood and take the name of 'greasers.' As greasers, with long hair and switchblades for show hidden in their pockets they become a sort of inbetween. They are not quite hoods but always find themselves at blows with the upper social class, the 'socs.' In a rumble between Ponyboy, Johnny, and some socs, Johnny stabs one of the socs. Now on the run, the boys get to know each other better and soon come to more deeply understand the personalities and relationships of their brothers. As well as the personalities of the socs. After an incident in which the church burns down, Johnny and Pony find themselves heroes of the community despite being greasers. However, this doesn't last long and one death follows another until ridden with post-traumatic stress, Ponyboy's teacher asks him to write an essay in which he theoretically writes the whole novel.

The first time I ever read this novel, I can't have been more than fourteen myself. So, it's been a while since the first time I sat down to read this book. Previously, I had it rated with only three stars because it had been so long that I had forgotten what really went on in S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. It was nice reading it again after so many years, it felt like I was reunited with an old friend and although the story was familiar I had read it long enough ago that I had forgotten what happened. I really didn't like the ending. It felt like a cop-out and not a cleverly written one at that. However, despite the ending, S.E. Hinton did a good job of writing a story that was and could be relatable throughout the years that it has been on the market. She wrote her characters really well, in that they felt real. They felt three-dimensional.

Reminiscent of Peter Pan in staying gold and never growing up.

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