Amina's story may be fictional, but all the separate pieces of it are true and have been lived by thousands of real people.

In 2013 Amina's home is destroyed in an explosion. Her beloved country of Syria is in the midst of a lengthy civil war and it finally reached Aleppo. Although only one panel makes it clear and the loss is never mentioned or dealt with,

Spoiler

Amina's grandfather is killed.

The book could have made this more clear and I wish the family would have been given the space to acknowledge this part of their tragedy.

Eventually Amina's family is resettled, as is evidenced on the very first page. But resettlement doesn't mean an end to all their troubles or that they don't feel an ache for Syria, their homeland.

The last spread of pages is a bit confusing. There are some situations that should have been given space to breathe but weren't. Overall, I think this book would have benefitted from at least an additional 20 pages. Perhaps that's the publisher's fault. I felt like the story just left off in the middle because of those last few panels with Amina's father and his phone. Without those the story would have felt complete. Still, this book humanizes the story of resettled refugees. It's a must read for those who learn well from graphic novels or who want an entryway into understanding the global refugee crisis.

The book had me in the first chapter.

"But I learned young, you do not speak of the dying as if they are already dead. You do not call bad spirits into the room, & you do not smudge a person’s dignity by pretending they are not still alive, & right in front of you, & perhaps about to receive a miracle. You do not let your words stunt unknown possibilities."

As a chaplain who has anointed bodies of still living, still breathing human beings for death, this quote resonates with me. I nearly cried right there. Acevedo always has such a way to say a world of wisdom with a just a few words.

Clap When You Land is the story of two girls, connected only by a lost father. Camino's father died on Flight 1112 and Yahaira's father died on Flight 1112. Camino's father and Yahaira's father just happened to be the same man. Each sister was separate and secret from the other. Camino grew up poor in the Dominican Republic. Yahaira grew up middle class in New York City. But these two girls who have led such different lives are more similar than they might seem.

This is a story of strength, of fierceness and forgiveness hand-in-hand.

This story was inspired by the real crash of Flight AA587 in 2001. There were 260 people on that flight, most of whom were from the Dominican Republic. The American and international media largely ignored the crash and what it meant for the people of the Dominican Republic. I was just barely 11 and this event was still overshadowed by 9/11. Even though I lived in this time, I had no idea of this tragedy. But that's the way of tragedies. There are too many of them for us to know them all. A plane crash like this is just another in an endless sea of tragedy unless it's your Papi on that plane.

This book will assail you with grief and empathy and hope in your fellow humans. Don't let the YA label fool you. This book is full of things we all should ponder.

I was first introduced to the Thorn Birds by my grandmother when I was in middle school. This was probably her favorite book and the miniseries staring Richard Chamberlain was one of her two favorite shows to watch. When I was in middle school she never allowed me to see the episodes beyond the death of Mary Carson, so I always thought of the characters as young and the story as something frozen in time. I have come to love the story in its entirety on my own and yet still I am tempted to think of the characters only as they were when they were young and together and mostly happy; a temptation that I find extends beyond fiction and into reality. I am an utterly nostalgic creature that sometimes longs to forget that there is a present, much less a nebulous and changing future beyond.

I watched the entirety of the miniseries in high school, once I inherited the DVDs from my grandmother. I began reading the book during my sophomore year of high school. I got at least three quarters of the way through the book before I lost my copy somewhere at school. I remember not really relating to any of the characters but loving them anyway. The setting itself, the land, called to me where the characters could not yet reach me. There is something about being claimed by the land, of being a part of the physical world around us, that called to me, even at sixteen.

Now, as a thirty year old woman and as a priest myself (albeit in the Episcopal church) I find I can relate to most of the characters, if not all of them in smaller ways, and that makes this decades old work of fiction something that still lives and breathes. The characters, especially Ralph and Meggie, are complex and their inner musings and observations on life are both thought provoking and ruggedly beautiful. I love these characters not so much for their romance, but for their ambition and how it intertwines with their complex web of suppressed emotions as they react to the difficulties life brings their way.

I believe I'm drawn most to Ralph and to Justine; Ralph because I am a priest who longs to be a better priest, who experiences both God and doubt in much the same fashion and frequency as him, and Justine because I am 30 as well and waited until later to get married and seem to chase after challenging careers and those people that "give me a run for my money".

This book has led me into deeper thinking about what is a sacrament and for that I am grateful. I wonder what lessons it will teach me and how I will relate to this story as time marches on. I'll be sure to read it again in when I feel I have reached another stage of life.

Firstly, this is not a graphic novel that can be picked up and read with half of your attention. It takes a good deal of concentration to tell what all is happening and who is who. That said, the attention is worth the payoff. If you read this book and have trouble following it, this review will be helpful.

goodreads.com/review/show/2315559715?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1

The beauty of this book comes from the setting. In this story the house is just as much a character as the children, parents, and servants who sequester inside it for a deadly winter expected to be three years long. The story follows Lars, a sickly boy, who can no longer walk the halls of the palace, so he has a giant cat named Nemo to help him continue to experience life as much as he can. Can anyone facing impending doom move past the reckoning with their own mortality to enjoy what time is left? It's a harrowing question for anyone, especially for a child.

The story is dark and haunting. I won't get into all of the details of the plot here. I will say there are some significant content warnings with this story, so if you have recently experienced a significant loss, I might wait to read this one. The story isn't particularly hopeful, but I feel the point is to explore moments when we can't find hope - and that is not a journey to be ignored.

I went into this book with no knowledge of what was to come. That made the first few chapters confusing as the main character alternated between his absolutely mundane life in the suburbs to telling chapters about life on a strange pirate ship with a one-eyed captain and a one-eyed parrot. I thought that perhaps the main character was writing a story or telling it in his head and we'd find out later. But it was much more than that. The main character was experiencing delusions.

This story is a painful, difficult to read at times, exhausting journey through mental illness. The main character experiences multiple realities that all blend into one confusing conglomerate full of symbolism, anxiety, beauty, and personal strength. Schizoaffective disorder affects more people than we probably know because no one talks about it. We may have developed more humane treatments than imprisonment and asylum "hospitals" but we are often no kinder than our ancestors in how we treat those with mental illness. This story brings a face and a personality to mental disorder and I was left with such an empathy and compassion for the main character. His diagnosis will never go away and he will always feel both muted and at risk of relapsing into his visions again, but he is also not without hope.

It's a beautiful story because it is a difficult one.

This entire review contains brief spoilers for the beginning of the book.

I found this on Kindle Unlimited in March, at the start of our current Covid-19 pandemic. I intended to read it then, but my better mental health angels prevailed and I waited. This book was published in 2014, and so, is not about our current pandemic, but about a fictional H5N1 virus that has an incubation period of only a few short hours with rapid onset of symptoms. Like the Spanish Flu, the disease is worst in those in their late teens to 50s.

This books follows the character of Lilianna, or "Lil" as she's called by those who know her. She is the typical YA female protagonist, and not in the best of ways. She's Good with a CAPITAL G. She organizes community food drives and wins awards for her Goodness. She's just that Good.

But now she's a bit neurotic, thanks to a sexual assault from a now former teacher at her school. Now Lil wears black and smokes and has a strange obsession for being prepared for everything form terrorist attacks to storms to infectious diseases. She's still Good, of course. She just fills the spare closet with cans of beans. At least she pays for them herself, with her own job of stocking shelves as the local grocery store, which is mentioned exactly once and then promptly forgotten about when Shit Hits The Fan.

Lil's backstory serves only as a plot device to get extra cans of beans into the house and to create some tension between Lil and her former friend, Kayla. Given Lil's dad's wacky job of writing for an infectious disease magazine, it would make sense for Dad to stock the pandemic supplies and for Lil to be a happy beneficiary. But, it's not an unforgivable plot point and it is handled decently - although it's never truly discussed that it's NOT HER FAULT. Lil ponders once why her teacher chose to assault her when there were prettier girls around, but it's never made clear that she was the perfect target. Lil has the typical YA novel absentee parents, she's an only child and not riding to school with others, and she's so Good that she's bound to internalize the incident as her fault and not tell anyone, right? For parents that pretend to be so concerned with Lil's increasing neurosis, they seem to schedule work trips at exactly the same time and don't plan for anyone to stay with their easily spazzed-out child.

But, I digress.

A couple of other brief issues:
- Senior citizens are older, not enfeebled or stupid or less altruistic or focused on only baking ten thousand cookies in the midst of a pandemic. I understand that our teenage protagonist need to take the stage, but GOOD GRAVY.
- There are some practical issues not considered, like water and sewage problems as a possibility in a prolonged electrical outage.
- That ending. FLUFFY.

The story itself is interesting enough. For the intended audience of teen girls, it's a good fit. The male characters, both Ethan and Jay are apparently swoon-worthy enough - until Ethan is a huge selfish jerk when Lil faces a devastating loss. None of the characters are described in too much detail physically, so it's easy for readers to layer the faces of their own crushes onto the characters. In fact, not too much of anything is described in detail. This is a book completely without flowery prose or poetry. It is entirely concrete with nothing abstract in its scope or sequence. This makes it a perfect high interest read for lower grade-level readers. Someone at a middle 4th grade reading level wouldn't have a problem with this book. Despite it's 392 page length, it's not intimidating in the least.

I'll be adding it to my classroom library shelf because it will fit the interest and needs of my readers.

Logan and Cade's History of World Government class has one of the best teachers in the country, or so they think. He was Maryland's teacher of the year before coming to their school. He makes history come to life and despises textbook readings and multiple choice tests. His assignments push students to learn the why behind history and to understand how it impacts our lives today.

So when he gives an assignment for students to reenact the Wannsee Conference from the point of view of the Nazi SS Officers and to support what they feel is the best strategy for the murder and disposal of Europe's 11 million Jews, Logan and Cade are left shell-shocked and devastated.

Immediately they realize there is no debate about murder, no debate about the Holocaust. They may not be Jewish, but they don't have to be to know this assignment is morally bankrupt.

So they decide to stop the debate and try to get the assignment cancelled in favor of more appropriate learning and discussion.

This is a book about standing up for what is right, about friendship, what ties us together as humans, and about the need for both safety and identity - how it can tear a person apart to have to choose one over the other.

Each character in this book, from the heroes to the villains, from the side characters to the main duo are well rounded and realistic, full of flaws and lovable aspects alike. The book shows the ease with which hatred can slide into our lives and flourish and the cost and ultimate worth of standing up to that hate.

All teachers should read this book. All high school students should read this book. I can't image it as anything other than a modern classic in the making. I can't wait to share this one with my students.

This was a hard book to rate. I hate only giving it three stars. But, three stars means "I liked it". I didn't "love it".

Obama starts this book off with a very heartfelt discussion of running for public office for the first time, of the strain politics put on his marriage. He discusses moving from state politics to national politics and how he eventually learned better ways to focus his time on his family as well as the work he needed to do. That was the most interesting part of the book to me. I could connect to President Obama's drive as well as his struggle to balance a demanding work life with life at home. Both he and Michelle felt like people I could sit and have a conversation with with and I enjoyed how present their personalities were in the book.

Once the presidential campaign settled into full swing the book started to lose my attention. I found some sections riveting and some sections absolutely and devastatingly dull. The former president was at his best when describing the battle for healthcare, the give and take required to get any kind of bill passed, despite a Democratic majority in Congress. However, Obama mentioned that in his youth he tended to drone on, to over-describe and to also delve into technical aspects of issues that others didn't find as gripping as he did. Unfortunately he slips back into that style of writing a few times in the latter two thirds of this book. I wound up a little lost in the timeline, especially involving the Middle East. I had to go back and pick up the train of thought a few times.

Overall, it was a good look at the first couple of years of the Obama Whitehouse and the road to get there. This volume of Obama's presidential memoir ended with the death of Osama Bin Laden. I'm interested to see where the next one will start. Despite my slight disappointment, I'll always read anything President Obama writes. I want to understand this time period better because it's when I shifted from Republican (to impress some of my family members and my church) to Democrat (because it aligned with my ideals and what I discovered of the world in college).

This was beautiful.

I am not a scientist. I have never wanted to be a scientist.

But this story, although told through the lens of science, is not about science. It is about life.

Although I can't qualify or quantify what I've learned about plants, friendships, and family from this book - I know I've learned something. I feel validated through this book for dedicating myself to work and to waiting to "start" a family. This is simply my journey. I feel like it's a good one most days and I think whatever it is I took from this book will make me feel like my journey is a good one on a few more days than I otherwise might.

And that is indeed something amazing to be gifted from a book.

This was cute. It was meant to be a nice holiday escape and it was.

The family dynamics are cutesy, with just a enough small tension built in to be mostly believable, but not too much as to take away from the escape of holiday paradise.

The characters are smoothed around the edges and all the tension is actually within Mae herself, not in the family, or even in the time loop she experiences.

It's just meant to be cute and fun. And it was.