I used this as a teaching tool with my students. The depth of conversation that this book sparked was fantastic, but some of the tangents made it a bit difficult to teach for true understanding. That said, I look forward to more by Nadja Baer and will happily add more by her to my classroom library.

As always, Barbara Brown Taylor's books never disappoint. I'll have a lot to think over for a long time to come. The concepts she discusses in this series of three related talks or sermons would have been extremely useful to me when I stumbled through faith after leaving the Baptist church. The language she uses to describe sin, repentance, penance, and salvation, are worth reading no matter what your faith is or is not.

This was a good book. I can see it being inspiring to students who want to become journalists. The format of the book was somewhat distracting, as it was not linear but employed a great deal of "flashbacks" or additional information in the middle of chapters. If those extra bits were in between chapters I think I would have felt the writing flowed better. I also wish this book focused either more on her work with the asylum or with her World War I reporting. I felt like it tried to sell a focus on the former, but turned out to be a typical short biography. I'm interested now in reading some of Nellie's published works, so there's that. I also like how the author questions what Nellie might have truly thought and felt during her more famous projects, as we will likely never know for certain.

It has been 11 years since I first read Nathaniel Hawthorne's book The Scarlet Letter. I was so pleased to have the chance to rediscover my favorite classic novel in manga format. This new adaptation of Hawthorne's work should be, in my opinion, in every junior and senior level English literature classroom. Stacy King's adaptation and artwork make this story accessible to a new generation who may struggle with the antiquated language of Hawthorne's original novel. It can also provide an extension of learning for all readers by studying King's choice of characterization as well as her revisions to the original language. If I ever move up to teach high school English, this manga will certainly have a place in my curriculum.

The manga is true to Hester Prynne's story of adultery, although it never uses the word for her crime. (That's another choice that teachers and students can examine!) As I am already familiar with the content of the main plot, I could easily see how the author foreshadowed the twist in the story and I appreciated her efforts in doing so. I do not believe it is as easy to incorporate a subtle foreshadowing in a visual medium as it might be in a written medium. I especially loved the artist's portrayal of Pearl. King captures Pearl's other-worldliness perfectly through a combination of art and original dialogue. The graphic novel adaptation also provides a satisfying conclusion to the story.

I highly recommend that anyone interested in classic literature to take a look at this book as well as the entire series of manga by this publisher. I will be purchasing physical copies of some of these manga adaptations for my classroom in the future.

I'm not sure I was the target audience for this book. It took me a month to parse through this book, but I have greatly enjoyed it. I am not a scientist or historian by trade, but I do teach the Holocaust in my junior high classes. This book gave me great insight into what was lost in communities outside of Poland and Germany. I appreciated the author's perspective and his insistence on not victimizing the dead a second time through our seeking to understand what happened and where.
That said, some parts of this book were a dry read for a layman such as myself. They are worth pushing through. I would have preferred a narrative of Freund's experiences with less focus on the science, but that's not the purpose of this book. Overall, a very informative read. Anyone who teaches the Holocaust at any level of depth should take a look at this book in order to broaden their perspective and see just how widespread the loss beyond the communities typically studied and mentioned. Those who are interested in how science and archaeology intersect will find this book to be an excellent study.

Thank you to NetGalley and Rowman&Littlefield Publishing for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I found this book in the YA section of my local library, but as an almost-30-year-old, it spoke so much more to me now than it would have to me as a teen. I still would have benefited from it then, but I have such a different perspective on life now. Not only does this memoir detail Thi's parents' experiences, but it also teaches that parents are people too, that they have their own lives separate from us that began long before us and continue on both for us and in spite of us. This is a story of a particular time in Vietnamese/American history, and yet it is universal.
I enjoyed this book immensely and read it cover to cover without putting it down.

I feel a bit meh about this. I wanted to love it more. It’s too short to get much character development in, especially to build anguish around Mal’s choice, and it exists in this weird space between the show and the movie, I think? I tend to think of the movie as it’s own separate thing that wouldn’t have connected to the series, ideally. But that’s neither here nor there. It just feels like it isn’t set up well.

I like the idea of the theme of dealing with the trauma of war, but I think this bounces around a bit too quickly for me and that’s a distraction from the emotion.

The art is also not as consistent as I’d like it to be. I couldn’t easily tell River from Inara without dialogue to guide me. It’s like their faces aren’t developed enough? Or perhaps that the chapter pages are detailed to look like the actors from the show/movie, but then the comic book characters don’t continue the look from the more detailed art spreads.

I’ll keep reading the next installment, but I’m going to move to the full novels for my real Firefly fix.