Tuck Everlasting

Tuck Everlasting was a book I originally read in my 5th grade class and in all actuality is probably the first chapter book to read in class that I actually enjoyed. I haven't read it for years but I found that I still loved it.

Winnie Foster is a girl who is stuck in the moment of sameness. Nothing changes for her in her life, with no friends because she is to proper, to clean, and practically confined to her yard. The only conversation she gets is from a toad that sticks around her yard. So not much conversation, until a man in a yellow suit comes by and asks about a peculiar family that she doesn't know. One day at the top of summer where it is the most hot and nature stands still from heat exhaustion, she decides to run away. She gains the courage to step outside her fenced yard and starts traveling through the woods her family owns when she stumbles upon a boy drinking from spring near the base of a tree. What she is about to find out is that he's part of a family who can't die. She gets taken away to have the situation explained to her, but wait... did she just get kidnapped.

It's a sweet book about kind people who have found the meaning of death, in a not gory or creepy way. I very much enjoyed the book, even as an adult.

I love the way Natalie Babbitt used cycles and circles to convey the metaphors, morals, and themes throughout her story. They were well done and well thought out. I also very much love the characters and they are all so human. Setting was well done especially for the fact that this books takes place, for the most part, in two days. It was set up well.

I honestly don't have any faults in this story. Any major disheartening or dislikes or major troubles.

It's a good book that deserved its rewards. It also has two movie adaptations (one in 1981 and the other in 2002). I very much enjoyed the portrayal of the book done in 2002, though there are differences for exaggeration, but they were fun concepts that were played with. I'm gonna be watchin' it soon.

Please, read it. Enjoy it. You could probably finish it in a day.

Stitches

Stitches: A Memoir is a graphic novel of David Small and his time growing up, his hardships growing up.

David Small is a Caldecott Award winner for his illustrations for The Gardener, one of my favorite picture books while I was growing up. Everyone should read and enjoy it. He has gotten many other awards for the work that he has done over his 73 years.

Stitches begins with his experiences in hospitals. His father was a radiologist and his mother always seemed to be cranky. He was often sick as a child and because his father worked in the radiology department, he was able to have x-rays done to see what the problem was. As the years went on, as he grew alongside his brother, he found he had a growth on his neck. It grew until his family was finally able to do the surgery. However when he woke up, he found he was unable to speak. The surgeons cut out his thyroid and half of his vocal cords. As, again, years passed he was able to gain a raspy whisper, but his voice, of course, was never the same. He found solace in drawing and later illustrating children's books.

There is far more to the story than simply his voice, though it is a major part. But there are trials when it comes to the crazies of families. Deciding whether or not to continue on in family traditions and conditions or not. His story makes me even more grateful for my own mother. The way he drew his mother and grandmother reminds me of one of my grandmothers, not the temperament but the style. The round glasses and uppy hair. But the way he drew her instantly made her instantly one of those scary old ladies that I was afraid of when I was little. So to have her as a mom, I'd be almost scared my whole life.

I very much enjoyed the book. Very well done.

Princess Academy

If you enjoyed the book Ella Enchanted, you'd enjoy Princess Academy. This is a book I've been told to read since I was in junior high but never really got around to. It was supposedly one of the books that every one is supposed to have read.  It just took me a long time go get to it.

It is about this village of girls high up in the mountains who are suddenly told they need to join this Princess Academy so they they can learn to be a lady who would be suitable for the Prince to marry. These girls are quarry girls who know nothing but the stone they help produce. Well, all except Miri, our main character, who has been told by her father not to be in the quarry and he never tells her why. So being forced to go to this Princess Academy gives her a change of pace and a chance to be with the girls that seem to have ostracized her. The headmistress of this academy is a cruel one where if a girl speaks without having been spoken to first she gets her hands whipped and sent into a dark, rat infested closet for hours on end.

Miri slowly gains friends and enemies throughout her time there while she studies. She learns a lot, not only to be able to read or curtsy, but about economics and histories that can help her little village that is isolated from everywhere else. Over the course of the book she finds purpose and a power she didn't know she had.

This book is an award winning book for a reason. It was very well written with good scenery and setting. The characters, side characters and all, had depth to them and improved as the story went on. My only problem is the slowness of the book toward the beginning and early middle. Simply studying and figuring out this new power of her's took a long time where it felt like nothing was actually going on. It very much picked up toward the end as bandits suddenly lay siege on the academy, so far away from their own village and families. That part was most fun. It even had a good bad guy, with good foreshadowing so then it wasn't something completely out of the blue that happened.

I enjoyed the book and agree that young girls (and boys) would enjoy this as they would Ella Enchanted. It would be a book I would offer as an introduction to most fantasy books for young people if they were hesitant toward dragons and sword fights.