Month: February 2019

The House in Poplar Wood

~ rachelbenzine ~ 1 Comment

Review:

Lee and Felix are brothers who live unusual lives. Their mother is Memory’s apprentice, and their father is Death’s apprentice. Lee helps his mother as she helps Memory, and Felix helps his father as he helps Death. An Agreement set by the two Shades (Memory and Death) binds Lee, Felix, and their parents to the work. Enter Gretchen, a girl who Lee goes to school with. She’s convinced that her classmate, Essie, didn’t die of an accidental death – instead, Gretchen thinks Death overstepped his boundaries and caused Essie to die. Gretchen, Lee, and Felix work together to figure out why and how Essie died, and they hope to break the Agreement in the process.

I got this book as an Advanced Reader’s Copy shortly before its release last fall from the publisher, Chronicle books. I started reading it on a Saturday, and finished it Sunday evening. Ormsbee has one of my favorite writing styles of all time; her series The Water and the Wild is one of my favs, and I’ll have to do a review of it soon. She paints vivid pictures with her words, but with a subtlety that draws you in. The House in Poplar Wood is not overly scary for any kids reading, but there are a couple sections closer to the end that are haunting enough that I wouldn’t recommend this for kids younger than 5th grade or so. It’s absolutely perfect for middle schoolers – and us adults who enjoy beautifully written and unique stories!

Favorite Passage:

But the memories of Love and of People — there was no rule to their labeling. They were equal parts “Remember” and “Forget”. Some precious, to be cherished. Some rotten, to be put away. And they were the only jars Lee was ever asked to relabel. Patients would return, begging to never remember former friends whose memories they once wished to preserve, while others asked to reclaim memories of love they once thought they did not want anymore.
— Chapter 6: Lee

What I Loved Most:

It seems like there aren’t many books coming out nowadays with a completely original premise. Many stories are retellings or tweaks of stories that have already been told. The House in Poplar Wood is absolutely unique. This is a world where Death and Memory aren’t just concepts, but actual beings. I was captivated after reading the Prologue, where  we first meet Lee and Felix and see the different tasks each is assigned. And as a side note, I’m a sucker for a good font, and the Hightower used in my copy of this book is to die for.

Read this book if you like:

Autumn, unusual family structures, spooky stories, mystery

Book Details:

American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

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Review:

Shane Bauer wanted to learn more about the experiences of prisoners in the United States, but he knew that as a journalist, he would face many barriers to getting the real story from people currently in prison. As such, he decided to go undercover at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana as a prison guard. American Prison is part memoir of Bauer’s time as a guard, and part chronicle of the history of U.S. prisons. He does a great job of balancing out his experiences while also sharing the larger context of how we’ve done imprisonment in America throughout our country’s history.

Maybe y’all already knew that for-profit prisons are a thing, but I straight up had no idea that this was a concept until I read this book. I have heard many arguments for privatizing major sectors of governmental service, and this book explores the positive and negative implications of privatization of prison services. Absolutely fascinating, and worth the read.

Favorite Passage:

The United States imprisons a higher portion of its population than any country in the world. In 2017 we had 2.2 million people in prisons and jails, a 500 percent increase over the last forty years. We now have almost 5 percent of the world’s population and nearly a quarter of its prisoners.

What I Loved Most:

Bauer has a unique perspective on prison. As a journalist, he was actually captured and put in prison in Iran for more than two years. It’s fascinating to listen to him reflect on his own experience as a prisoner, and reconcile it with his role of prison guard in America. My undergraduate degree is in Psychology, and I loved hearing his clear cognitive dissonance about the experience – he understood what it was like to have your freedoms stripped from you, but still engaged in regulatory behavior while rationalizing it away. Even though Bauer doesn’t directly point it out, there’s lots of fun psychology and sociology theory and application in this book.

Read this book if you like:

Prison, sociology, undercover exposés, memoirs, history

Book Details:

Color Me In

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Review:

At the beginning of Color Me In, Neveah Levitz is just beginning to understand what life is like with separated parents. She and her mom recently moved to her mom’s family home in Harlem, which seems leagues away from the affluent neighborhood she grew up in. Between taking the subway to her private school back near her old house and learning how to navigate the intricacies of her new neighborhood, Neveah has to figure out how to adjust to her new reality.

Neveah’s mom is African American and Baptist (Christian), and her dad is ethnically and somewhat-religiously Jewish. She has never worked out where exactly that puts her, or how to fit in with either side of her heritage. Her school is mostly white, and she knows she doesn’t fully belong there. However, upon moving in with her darker-skinned relatives, she begins to see the challenges most African American people are confronted with daily – the ones she has avoided as she usually passes as white. To further complicate things, her dad decides she should embrace her Jewish side by having a belated bat mitzvah rather than a sweet sixteen birthday party. This story chronicles Neveah’s struggles to figure out who she really is.

Color Me In is a wonderful story of identity and coming of age and trying to decide who you want to be. Diaz wrote this book semi-autobiographically – she is a multiracial woman who grew up navigating the complexities that come along with having a multicultural identity. As such, the realness and genuineness of this story shine through every word. This would be a great read for high schoolers as they are navigating their own identities, but I also loved it as a twenty-six year old woman. I received an Advanced Reader’s Copy of Color Me In from the publisher, Delacorte Press. This book will be published in August 2019 – make sure to keep your eyes out for it!

**Trigger warning for sexual assault.**

Favorite Passage:

The rage I’ve felt for so long bubbles over, and the avalanche of emotion is almost impossible to withstand. I want her to know that her words don’t disappear when they leave her lips; they create tiny invisible lacerations, reminders that the sum of my parts will never be sufficient. I want to stop being expected to give people the benefit of the doubt as I take a seat at the table I would never have been invited to if I were three shades closer to my mom. I want to stop feeling like an imposter in my own skin, undeserving of my rich blended heritage.
–Chapter 36

What I Loved Most:

I have never read a book written from a perspective of someone who seems to have white privilege while being a person of color. Colorism in our American society allows people who look “more white” to escape much of the discrimination that their darker-skinned peers do. Neveah’s cousin Jordan, who is dark skinned, challenges Neveah to identify the way that her lighter skin affords her privileges that Jordan will never get. In this book, we see Neveah learn that by remaining silent when she sees racism, she is complicit in the continuing oppression of people of color.

Read this book if you like:

Coming of age stories, poetry, searching for identity, multicultural families, calling out white privilege

Book Details:

  • Author: Natasha Diaz
  • Publisher: Delacorte Press
  • Date of Publication: August 20, 2019
  • Age Recommendation: High School
  • Pre-order Color Me In from Amazon if you’d like to own a copy!