DWD's Reviews

Originally published in 1967. Audiobook published in 2004 by Listening Library. Read by Jim Fyfe, Duration: 5 hours, 9 minutes. Unabridged. Listed on BBC's list of 100 Most Inspiring Novels in 2019 . Author is the winner of the inaugural Margaret A. Edwards Award for YA  My synopsis: This is a true YA classic. Some consider this to be the book that invented the YA genre. Written by a high school student in the 1960's, The Outsiders is the story of a group of "greasers" in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Greasers are poor teens who grow up on the tough side of town. Adult supervision is pretty lax and they spend their days smoking, flirting with girls, and working. They join loose gangs and fight among themselves, but they all unite when their biggest enemies come around. Their biggest enemies are the rich kids who cruise the poor side of town looking for a fight. The main character is the oddly-named Ponyboy. Ponyboy's deceased parents like to give their children odd names. Po...

Published in 2017 by Blackstone Audio, Inc. Read by Bahni Turpin. Duration: 5 hours, 17 minutes. Unabridged. My Synopsis Ban This Book is the story of Amy Anne Ollinger, a fourth grade girl who is shocked when she gets to the library and finds out that her favorite book, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler , has been removed from the shelves as part of a book ban. Amy Anne reads all sorts of books (except Captain Underpants books - they're kind of silly) but she loves this book and comes back to it often. She has read it 13 times and wanted to read it again.  Amy Anne is told that a parent has complained to the school board about several books and they skipped the established plan to deal with these sorts of complaints and simply voted to remove them.  Amy Anne's parents buy her a copy of the book and she takes it to school to read when she can during the day. Her friends find out about the book ban, see that she has a copy and ask to read it. In return, they...

The first edition cover Published with the alternate title "The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death." Originally published in 1969. Listed in Time Magazine's 100 Best Novels Since 1923. Slaughterhouse-Five is the most famous, most celebrated, and most controversial novel of Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007.)  My synopsis: The book serves as a memoir to Vonnegut's horrific experiences as a prisoner of war in World War II and as a sci-fi exploration of the concept of time travel.  Vonnegut's very green unit was rotated to the front in December of 1944 in order to give experienced combat troops a break. The weather was bad, the terrain was bad, and the Germans had been retreating regularly. It was presumed that the Germans would be content to settle in to winter quarters, rest, refit, and pick up the fighting in 1945.  Instead, the Germans launched a surprise offensive and what followed was the Battle of the Bulge . Lots of Americans were captured and taken back...

Finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Named to Time Magazine's 100 Best YA Books of All Time. Published by Listening Library in 2017. Read by Kyla Garcia. Duration: 9 hours, 41 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Julia is the daughter of Mexican immigrants to the United States. They live in pretty run down neighborhood in Chicago. She is in high school. Her family doesn't really understand her (basic YA fare) and she really loves writing. She is looking forward to moving on to college - like so many kids she wants nothing more than to get far, far away from where she grew up. There is one presence that looms over everything - her dead sister Olga. Olga was older than Julia and has recently died in a bizarre accident - she stepped off of a city bus and was hit by a semi-truck. Her family is traumatized, of course. To make matters worse, Julia is constantly being compared to Olga - the perfect daughter who only gets more perfect in memory. Julia digs ...

Originally Published in 1983. Read by the author, Sandra Cisneros. Duration: 2 hours, 18 minutes. Unabridged The House on Mango Street is the story of a Hispanic girl named Esperanza who grows up in a little house in a poor neighborhood in Chicago. Her story is told in a series of unrelated vignettes (44 in all) that tell some sort of story about her family life or the neighborhood itself. In some, the main character clearly has no idea of the more adult themes that occur around her, while in others she is very astute and understands the larger implications.  At first, Esperanza's family intends that the house is going to be a temporary stop on their climb towards economic success in America. But, they never quite are able to move out of this troubled neighborhood and the reader is able to see how the neighborhood affects the lives of everyone around Esperanza as she grows up. To be fair, the neighborhood is not all bad, but it is a tough place for children to grow up and keep the...

  Published in 2020 by Scholastic Audio. Read by Alaska Jackson. Duration: 7 hours, 18 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: High School senior Liz Lighty is depending on a $10,000 music scholarship to be able to afford to attend the college she has always wanted to go to.  When she discovers that she doesn't get the scholarship, she's afraid her grandparents will sell their house to pay for her college. Her high school offers a $10,000 scholarship for the winner of the Prom Queen competition. Enthusiastic band member Liz, supported by her outsider group of friends, joins the competition against all cheerleaders, legacies, and the beautiful people... My Review: In a lot of ways, this is a typical high school ugly duckling story - the underdog great kid goes up against the popular clique. But, there are some additional nuances that make this more interesting.  The book is set in the Indianapolis area (Indianapolis is my adopted hometown) and the high school in the book (Campbell)...

  Originally published in serial form in Raw magazine from 1980-1991. Originally published in book form in 1991 by Pantheon Books. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Years ago, the high school where I used to teach had a daily silent reading time. We were encouraged to build a classroom library and I had a great one. Two stand alone shelves (one tall, one short) and a little rug in the corner with a chair. I had a lot of books from a lot of different genres but the star books were Of Mice and Men and the two volume paperback version of  Maus . Kids kept on stealing Of Mice and Men (If a kid likes it so much that he doesn't want to return it - fine by me) but so many students read Maus that the paperback binding broke and the pages fell out. It was held together with binder clips and big rubber bands.  What I remember about that book is that every student reverently took off that ridiculous clip and the big rubber band, spread the pages out and just read. Students wh...

  Originally published as a book in 1947. Graphic novel e-book edition published in 2018 by Pantheon. Adapted into a graphic novel by Ari Folman. The Diary of Anne Frank is certainly one of the most famous pieces of literature published in the last 100 years. The book the true diary of a young teen Jewish girl that was written as her family lived in a hidden apartment with two other families in an attempt to hide from the Nazi genocide. Before the war ended someone betrayed the families and Anne and almost everyone else in the apartment died in concentration camps shortly before the Nazi surrender. A page where Anne compares herself unfavorably to her sister. Ari Folman adapted the diary into a graphic novel. In the afterword he notes that this was harder than one might expect. This graphic novel is 160 pages, but if he had simply illustrated the entire text of the diary it would have ended up being more than 3,000 pages! The challenge was to maintain the spirit of the print book ...

  Originally published in 2006. Published by Listening Library in 2019. Read by Jeff Woodman. Duration: 6 hours, 47 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Colin Singleton is a child prodigy who has recently stopped being a child. He has graduated from high school, is preparing to go to a great college but he is unsettled by a couple of things. Number one: being a child prodigy means that you are potentially an important adult. Colin is aware that it is now time for potential to turn into something - anything - meaningful. Number two: Colin just got dumped - again. He has dated 19 different girls and all are named Katherine. Technically it is 18 different girls because Katherine 1 is also Katherine 19, but the point is pretty much the same. So, Colin is wallowing in self-pity when his best friend, a slacker named Hassan, comes to him and suggests that they need to go on a road trip. They head south through Indiana and eventually end up in Gutshot, Tennessee where Colin meets a girl nam...

  Illustrated by the author. Published in 2021 by Graphix. Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Comic/Graphic Novel (2022) Synopsis: Morgan Kwon's parents have recently divorced. 15 year old Morgan, her annoying little brother and her mom have moved away from the city to an island just off of mainland Canada. Morgan seems to be doing pretty well. After all, she has a great group of friends. But, there are struggles. Her little brother has become extra annoying, she misses her dad and she can't wait to get off of this island and go to college and be her true self.  You see, Morgan has a secret that she is afraid to share with anyone - she's gay and she's afraid her friends and family will reject her if they find out. It all comes to a head when she meets a very cute girl while swimming one day. There is a more than a spark of romance, but it turns out that this new girl has a secret that dwarfs Morgan's secret! My review: This is an absolutely enjoyable comin...

  Book edition originally published in 2006. Audiobook published in 2019 by Listening Library. Read by Asmeret Ghebremichael. Duration: 3 hours, 0 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: This short piece of historical fiction focuses on a slave family in Georgia in the 1790s. The main character is Sally. She has a brother, a mother and a father. The one thing that this family has going for them is that their owners have a policy of not breaking apart families. That is the policy until relatives of the owners find themselves struggling financially. In a couple of days, Sally and her brother and 3 other slaves are going to be sent to the other plantation to help it get back on its feet again.  The family decides to run away together rather than be split apart. After some discussion with a friendly house slave who has done some traveling with the family, they decide not to head north. They haven't seen a map but they know that the trip across northern Georgia, South Carolina, North Caroli...

  Published by Listening Library in 2017. Read by Dion Graham, Duration: 4 hours, 32 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Justyce is a African-American scholarship boarding school student originally from a rough neighborhood.  He attends an elite, almost entirely white prep school in Atlanta. He is a senior and a fantastic student who is clearly headed to a top university once he graduates. Everything isn't perfect, but it is going very, very well. One evening Justyce gets a phone call from an on-again-off-again girlfriend. She is clearly drunk and is talking about driving home. She's not too far away so he walks to her car, gets into an argument with her and struggles with her a bit for the keys while maneuvering her into the backseat where she pukes and passes out. While he is buckling her in to take her home a police officer pulls up and completely misinterprets the scene for a carjacking and a kidnapping.  From the officer's point of view, it looks suspicious if you go with...

Published in 2014 by HarperAudio. Read by the author, Amy Poehler. Duration: 7 hours, 31 minutes. Unabridged. Amy Poehler tells about her life in this memoir. She is best known for her work on Saturday Night Live and her starring role in the NBC series Parks and Recreation . I love Parks and Rec so I decided to give her memoir a listen. She starts with her early life, her first jobs, college and finally discusses her pre- SNL career. From time to time she has guest readers come along and contribute audiobook-only material. Seth Meyers was no surprise, but Kathleen Turner, Patrick Stewart and Carol Burnett were. Her parents each read their own short chapters. It gave the audiobook a bit of a podcast feel. Most of the book was quite enjoyable, but there were too many instances of TMI (too much information.) For example, I now know Amy Poehler's feelings about men performing oral sex on her. I didn't need to know that.  The section about SNL was fun. The chapter on  Parks and...

  Published in 2015 by Listening Library. Read by multiple actors from the 2022 movie adaption of this book. Duration: 6 hours, 9 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Greg is a senior in high school. His plan has been to get along with everyone, be welcomed by every group but avoid being a part of any of them. So far, that has worked out.  His only friend is a kid named Earl. Earl is a rough sort of guy. Greg and Earl don't have a lot in common - they don't even hang out together in school. But, they do share a love of moviemaking. They watch movies, dissect them and even make their own movies.  One day, Greg's mom comes and tells him about a girl he knew in middle school. She had developed leukemia. It's a particularly tough form of leukemia and she is unlikely to live more than a few months. She wants him to befriend Rachel (without really realizing how big of an "ask" this is) and Earl comes along... My review: The author, Jesse Andrews I picked this book based o...

Originally published in 2008. Synopsis: D anny is spending the  summer in San Diego living with his father's family - his grandmother, his uncles, his aunts, and his cousins. He dreams of visiting his father in Mexico and is disdainful of his mother who is spending the summer in San Francisco with her very serious boyfriend. What complicates the matter is that Danny's mom is white and Danny basically speaks no Spanish. He feels out of place when he is with his mom in her neighborhood because of his Mexican heritage. He feels out of place with his father's family because of his white heritage. He also knows there are family secrets that they are hiding from him. What Danny has going for him is baseball. He can do it all, but he is a brilliant young pitcher. He finds another ball player named Uno. Uno is half black and half Mexican and understands how Danny feels out of place everywhere he goes. Together, Danny and Uno come up with a plan to leverage their baseball skills... ...

  Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2003. Read by the author, Khaled Hosseni. Duration: 12 hours, 1 minute. Unabridged. This book was published about 20 years ago and I just got around to reading it. This is not an uncommon thing for me - I did the same with the   Harry Potte r  books and The Handmaid's Tale , also.  I was motivated to read this for the same reason I was motivated to read The Handmaid's Tale - it was permanently placed on a banned book list in Idaho  in May of 2022. There are three parts to the story. The first part is a long description of the life of Amir, a boy who is growing up in Afghanistan in the 1970s. Amir had his problems, but he had a pretty decent life. He and his father fled to the United States when the chaos think of as "Afghanistan" began - the Communist Revolution of 1978. The author, Khaled Hosseni The second part of the book is the story of how Amir and his father adapt to life in the United States, including the re-bu...

  Originally published in 1982. Originally published in completed form in 1988 by DC Vertigo. This iconic graphic novel has been on my to-be-read list for a long while. I tried watching the movie, but it had been a long week and I soon fell asleep. I assumed that the movie missed some of the pizazz of the graphic novel. I decided to go ahead and read the book when I noticed it was on t he list of some 850 books that a Republican Texas state legislator wanted to ban from all Texas schools.  V for VENDETTA is the story of a masked vigilante who decides to stand up against the fascist government of an alternative history version of the United Kingdom. The masked character has become the single most recognizable feature of the book and the face of the "anonymous" movement that swept over social media a few years ago. Many people assume that it was put on the censorship list because it features a character that fights back against a repressive government. They assume that Texas ...