Endeavor is delivering a dark-matter hunter to the International Space Station.
That sentence alone sounds epic. Now check out the photo the crew posed for:
NASA did a pretty decent Photoshop to recreate this:
All Photoshopping aside, check out this amazing photo from Stefanie Gordon’s iPhone:
She was in a plane flying by the launch site and snapped a photo. It should be noted that she just gained 1,000+ followers on Twitter.
Earlier this school year, 5923 Quarterly published my short story Hiccup. This past Saturday I wrote a slightly-nerdy poem called “Kobayashi Haiku” (the name is a parody of the dreaded final exam in Star Trek’s Starfleet Academy)(and yes, I am proud to remember the name of the test).
The poem was selected as a featured work on Thin Air Magazine’s Writers’ Challenge site. Go check it out here.
You’ve probably heard that Katniss is going to be played by Jennifer Lawrence. You’ll also be seeing her as a young Mystique in the new X-Men movie coming out later this year.
Gale, Lone Wolf hunter extraordinaire, will be played by Liam Hemsworth, Miley Cyrus’s boyfriend (as of the time of this writing).
Peeta, the lovable baker’s son, will be played by Josh Hutcherson. You might see him in the remake of Red Dawn that comes out later this year. He was in Bridge to Terabithia and The Vampire’s Assistant.
Dystopian stories are popular right now. You would think that would make me excited, the abundance of super-controlling societies being overthrown by the underdog. I love The Giver, Uglies, and all their Fahrenheit 451-esque classic cousins.
But once Hunger Games (another of my favorites) made it big, publishers began taking in Katniss clones like they were loveable wizards vampires zombies.
Matched by Ally Condie does follow some of the genre formula. The utopia promises a perfect existence (utopias are notorious for this) and main character Cassia has to break from what she has always known and forge a new path into the larger world around her.
There is the love triangle. One boy, the one the government matches her with to marry, is a childhood friend and a great guy. The other is an Aberration and is only introduced as a matching glitch. Cassia is torn and spends most of the book sorting this out.
It’s told from first-person perspective and I don’t think it would work any other way. There are not big action scenes. There are no hoverboard fights, crazy sled rides, or rats attached to her face. (The rats? 1984. Read it, kids.) The most physical activity from the protagonist is to go on a hike.
What grabs your attention is the person vs. self conflict. Cassia progressively realizes that the government actually has only a tiny thread of control over society. Even though I love books with cool machines, the technology in Matched is very subtle. Like in The Giver, there are pills for residents to take. Unlike The Giver, residents are given a choice. This adds to the suspense since there are some pills that no one has taken before. Cassia risks swallowing a lethal dosage.
The characterization in Matched is great. The parents are believable and work as a good team. My favorite scene is when Cassia realizes just how human and mortal her parents are. This is a big moment in anyone’s life.
Ally Condie did a great job creating a believable world. If you want a romance story with a tinge of sci-fi, Matched is a good choice. Crossed, book two, comes out this November.
Half-way through I Am Number Four
It turns out it’s James Frey teaming up with Jobie Hughes. Jobie Hughes is just starting out, with no titles out right now on his own (as of the time of this writing according to his website). James Frey is the author of the controversial A Million Little Pieces (controversial since most of the book was fabricated, including his involvement in a real train accident that killed two teens).
That knowledge did influence my reading of the book. Lore’s (I’ll go with the pseudonym) descriptions of high school are, for the most part, realistic. As John Smith, alien Number Four, navigates the hallways of a small school in Ohio. He has to try and blend in so that no one will realize he’s an alien. It’s very Clark Kent/Smallville in its concept. A distraction for me was that the football team/cheerleaders were the mini-antagonists until the bad aliens showed up. In every high school, are all football players jerks? It’s a nitpick, though, because I know it’s a common element in Young Adult fiction.
A fun author reference is when Number Four gets fake IDs. The names are James Hughes and Jobie Frey.
The Mogadorians, the real villains of the story, are an evil race (I’m sure there’s got to be one or two good Mogadorians, right?) of polluters who use nightmares as weapons. They are always one step behind the survivors of Lorien and want to kill Number Four. The cool concept of the book, though, is that a protective spell-ish thing has been set on the Loriens. They can only be killed in order and have a tattoo on their ankle to let them know where they are in line. When Number Four has three burn marks in his tattoo, he realizes he’s next to be hunted.
Henri is his Lorien mentor, fulfilling the Gandalf/Ben Kenobi role seen in other hero stories. Henri instructs him in the ways of the Force Legacies, powers that develop as John/Number Four gets older. Stories that involve this element are a great picture of stepping into the unknown as you mature from child to adult. While we’ve seen many stories use this technique, Lore does it well.
Fans looking for alien fights will have to wait until the very end or be satisfied with quick flashbacks to when the Mogadorians invaded Lorien. I found myself enjoying the high school sequences more than the final boss battle and that may be an indication of James Frey’s influence. He does drama well.
Yes, I do have some complaints, but those do not outweigh my enjoyment of the book. It’s a story we’ve seen before, although I Am Number Four proves that it’s all in how you tell the story.
When you read stories like reporter Dan Harris going undercover to buy a child slave for $150, books like The Limit
Main character Matt lives in a family that spends money faster than they earn it. This is a very realistic problem in the United States right now, since as a nation we owe billions of dollars in credit card debt (that’s different from the national debt). In the novel’s alternate future, the government has set up work houses for children to work as slaves to pay off their family’s debt. The children fight an uphill battle as every single meal they eat, item of clothing they wear, bed they sleep on, are taxed from their paychecks. The facility is hyper-controlled to keep the kids in and working for as long as they can.
It fits that Margaret Peterson Haddix is quoted on the cover. It’s similar to the Shadow Children series in that the children must uncover a deep conspiracy in a mega-organization. Even though it’s a concept we’ve seen before, Landon does a great job with making the children believable. Adding the economic twist was what made the book a winner for me.
It’s another dystopian world, but as long as the real world has injustice we will continue to see these dark warning books that challenge how we live our lives.
The Amulet series stands out as a graphic novel that tells a great story and is also school appropriate. Book one grabbed the emotions of many adult readers as well as students and was a great transition into the weird world Emily and Navin are thrown into. In book two we got to see a big location and gained perspective into why the elves are fighting.
Book three introduces new characters, as expected, but what’s nice is that these new characters stand out and will be remembered. An airship crew has been hired to find Cielis, a missing city that was either ravaged by fire or is now floating in the clouds. It makes sense in the world of Alledia.
Again Kibuishi handles characterization balanced with action masterfully. My same complaint stands: the books are too short. I understand that it takes time to make art, but you can’t force me to be patient.
I realized today that there is no main antagonist in the Leviathan/Behemoth series. It’s straight character vs. self and character vs. society. I wonder if that’s why students don’t quite get into the action. The only complaint I’ve received is that there’s so much focus on the history and not on excitement.
The “focus on history” comment is an interesting one, considering the book is about giant flying whales and steam-powered mechs.
Behemoth is a great sequel to Leviathan. It continues documenting the travels of the airship crew as they delve into the Ottoman Empire. There’s a little bit of airship combat but mostly it’s adventuring in the streets of Istanbul as Alek tries to find help to overthrow the German presence. Real ships and vehicles, like the Goeben and the Orient Express, show up, but in steampunk glory.
There is a cutesy mascot that gets added to the party, in the same vein as Gurgi from the Prydain Chronicles. Lots of babbling, lots of cuteness, and I must admit that, until I knew its true purpose, I sided with Count Volger on killing the thing.
In Behemoth, Westerfeld built up the revolution in Istanbul so that it explodes within the last 50 pages of the book. Students who are looking for battles galore are going to be disappointed that it takes such time to develop. Students who love character interactions and a believable world, though, will enjoy it without a doubt.
I’m marketing this book as an adventure, more like Indiana Jones, where there’s running and crashing and stuff like that alongside witty one-liners. We’ll see how it does in October when it hits the shelf.
Usually I give some plot points in my reviews but I will deviate from that for Mockingjay. I also try to recommend books for librarians to put on their shelves and this is a no-brainer, so we’ll get that recommendation out of the way.
What I will say is that Mockingjay is dark. Kat has always struggled with the isolation of life in a very tangible way. I love that, even though she may fight it, there are people who are willing to do the right thing to help her out. Yet, the sacrifices that have been made and will need to be made for peace compound in the final book of the trilogy, leaving her trying to figure stuff out on her own.
I’m intrigued to hear more reactions from students about the differences in this book from the other two. There’s no more glamor of the Capitol. There’s no “good guy group, bad guy group”. There’s war.
Mockingjay is a good end to the trilogy, maintaining the themes of the fragility of life and the lingering consequences of choices made. Both concepts were building in the first two books and, when added to Collins’ skillful characterization, we have a lot of emotions riding on the ending.
I enjoyed it. It met my expectations. I’m trying to think which one of the trilogy is my favorite.
Oh, yeah, and Kat ends up with… just kidding. No spoilers here.
Lies is the third book in the Gone series. (Check out my thoughts on Gone and Hunger to catch you up to speed.)
The whole series has so many characters already (sometimes I get confused who is Brittney and who is Brianna), but usually Sam is the main focus. In this one, he pulls a Superman and retreats in angst and leaves everyone else to pick up the pieces. We finally start to see Astrid and Albert step up as leaders. The council takes action, but who gives those kids the authority? Great stuff that earns the series the comparison to Lord of the Flies.
The only thing that drives me nuts is the grammar. Usually I’m not too big of a language snob, but some of the sentences run on into ambiguity. I’m still trying to figure out if he does this to match the style of the character or if they’re legitimate errors. Not a big deal, but it’s noticeable.
The action is still there and doesn’t become tired. Grant finds new ways for the kids of Perdido beach to use their powers. A theme that we’ve seen in other novels is humans vs. mutants, freaks vs. normals. It’s done well in Lies and is a logical progression of the chaos.
Like always, the countdown is appreciated and adds to the tension. Lies is definitely a continuation of a series and doesn’t resolve too much, but it’s still an enjoyable read.
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