This is a redesigned book cover for the book. I put my favorite quote from the book in the background, and just reformatted the lettering.

I’ve always wondered what the hype was about this John Green guy. I’m a regular on tumblr a blogging website. The links and ravings about his books and the author himself were just flooding my dashboard a mile a minute. This wasn’t the first time something had blown up on the website like this, especially something about books. Of course with the majority of Tumblr being avid readers, there was bound to be one or more book reviews. But this was alarming, the amount of praise this guy got. The book I saw the most buzz about was The Fault in Our Stars. So of course when it came time to pick a choice book, I had something to look forward to.

The Fault in Our Stars, or TFIOS for short, is about the life of a girl who has lung cancer. She can’t attend school because of her sickness so her friends soon become obsolete. She has to attend this meeting/group with other kids who have cancer. There she meets a boy who had his leg amputated because of bone cancer. Soon they become friends and then fall in love, the standard plot for a young adult novel. But the way the author went about it was captivating and completely different from what I have ever read before.

With most reviews I read about The Fault in Our Stars, a lot of people mentioned that this wasn’t John Green’s story to write. It would of made more sense for a cancer survivor to be talking about being a teenager and dealing with the harsh realities of cancer. But I did some research and found that he actually worked in a hospital for sick children. This inspired him to become an author, and those experiences formed the The Fault in Our Stars. This made me have so much more of a love for this book since it was unbiased and came from actual experiences, seeing how these kids lived with one foot in the grave.

Overall the book was beautifully written, keeping me interested through the ups and downs of the plot. It’s hard for a book to keep me interested for so long; that’s why I don’t tend to read things unless it’s a short story or a news article. But this book surprised me completely, with it’s complex characters and realities that aren’t saccharine. What really kept me reading was the limited amount of description. I tend to doze off when I read three chunky paragraphs about how the wind affects the trees. The outside description was kept minimal and focused more on human interaction and inner monologues, which I tend to appreciate more.

I especially loved the characters in this book. For teenagers, they were complex and interesting, their personalities and quirks not seen in most teenagers. Usually young adult novels about teenagers depict them as hormonal, unintelligent beings that live off of drama and the media, influenced by absolutely anything. To be honest, it’s not that far from the truth, but only a small population of teenagers are actually like that. Most of us are actually smart and have a lot more common sense than what we’re credited with. But here, the teenagers were actually decently intelligent and acted like mature people. As a fellow teenager, I really appreciated this and felt like we as a whole were being respected as human beings. However, they only thing that threw me off was the amount of complex and poetic conversation that was going on. We may be intelligent, but we don’t use poetic and novel references. Let’s be honest here: none of us talk like that at all. Yes, we have serious conversations that might dwell into some bigger issues and actually come out with an epiphany about the human race and society. But that doesn’t happen during every single conversation, especially to other teenagers. However, the romance that blossomed between the two main characters felt pretty realistic. Most teenage romance is full of awkward glances and awkward times together. But these two had a special connection: they both had cancer. I’m sure that connection made their romance a bit different, but strong than the standard teen romance.

What really made me love this book was that the reality of cancer was real. I’ve personally never knew anyone with cancer. It’s always been diabetes and heart problems for me, since both run in my family quite frequently. The deaths feel the same, since the death of anyone no matter the way the went feels horrible. But what I find different with cancer (or what I’ve heard about it) is that you can just see the person deteriorating from the inside out. They look absolutely fine one day, but then they get deathly sick the next, their cancer coming back to haunt them once more. In this novel, the threat of dying was always felt and was completely real. Most novels about sickness and disease tend to downplay this, focusing on how strong and happy the characters are, like their lives wouldn’t end at any moment. The characters in this book however always recognize that their lives can end at any moment, and live accordingly. They don’t ever talk about hope, in fact they’ve stated that they are hopeless and always expect to die at some point. They weren’t strong, they were real.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes young adult novels with a  twist, especially a grim one. I think this book would suit teenagers and adults alike. For teenagers it would be a relief to see that someone actually treats us with respect and depicts us somewhat realistically. For adults it would be nice to show that kids can be intelligent human beings with complex emotions that have meaning behind them. The twist and turns will keep anyone interested for a long enough time to finish the book and crave more. Similarly, Green’s Looking for Alaska is amazing as well, with the same complexity revisited. Honestly all of Green’s novels are amazing, and great for anyone to read.

Title: The Fault in Our Stars

Author : John Green

Publisher: Dutton Books

Publication : 10 January 2012

# of pages : 313

Genre : Young Adult

There have been many retellings of Snow White. In fact, there have been so many retellings of it, that it’s hard to choose which one to read. Some retellings aren’t that much of a retell of the original story, and some are based loosely on it. Snow by Tracy Lynn is in between that.  Tracy Lynn is the author of many young adult novels. Before she wrote young adult novels, she published adult horror stories under her real name, Liz Braswell. Although she is known as Liz Braswell, her full name is Elizabeth J. Braswell. She chose the name “Tracy Lynn” for her young adult novels. She also produced many video games. A few years later, she published The Nine Lives of Chloe King series under a second faux name, Celia Thomson. Liz Braswell was born in Birmingham, England. She graduated from Brown University, and she earned a degree in Egyptology. She is currently married, and she lives in East Village. Her books, The Stolen, and The Fallen won the ALA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. The Fallen also won the NYPL Books for the Teen Age award.

Tracy’s book, Snow, gives the same scenario of the real Snow White; Mother dies, father raises child all by himself until he marries, the woman he marries turns out to be an evil witch, the witch wants to eat Snow’s heart, etc., but it adds a twist. The storyline goes like this: There once was Duke and Duchess, who needed an heir to the throne, preferably a son. And so, the duchess had a child, and unfortunately she died from the childbirth. Instead of a baby boy, this left the Duke alone with a baby girl who he was not happy about. Wanting to have nothing to do with her, her father ignored Jessica for almost her entire life, leaving Jessica under the care of her maids. Like Snow White, Jessica is very fond of small animals, and found comfort in them. Soon after, Jessica’s father finds a beautiful duchess to marry, but looks can be deceiving. The duchess has some evil plans of her own, and is willing to threaten Jessica’s life to achieve them. This story takes place in Wales, which is a country that is apart of the United Kingdom, and it also takes place in London. The Author uses languages that has a mixture between English and Scottish accents in the book,”...Ah, a girl, Gwen. It’s a long story. A lass from the pub the next town over.” Her use of language gave me a really good idea of how the characters sounded. “... “What, this?” With a violence unnatural to him, Alan viciously kicked the bag, scattering the coins all over the floor. “I cannae make songs out of this rubbish!”...”

One of the major themes that the Author focused on in the book is how society views women. In the book, the evil stepmother’s main focus is being the most beautiful woman of the land, and maintaining her youth. During a conversation with Jessica (Snow), she shared her thoughts on what women were only wanted for in society, “....Society only has two uses for women, remember that. Beautiful young girls and mothers.”..... “Be one or the other, or both, but not neither. No one wants an old hag. Or a trollop.” What she is saying is that society will only accept you if you fit into their criteria. I admired how the Author used a real world issue, and placed it in a fairytale. This made the book connect easily to the real world even though it’s fiction.

Honestly, what sparked my interest in even getting a Snow White book was seeing the movie, Snow White and the Huntsman. The movie was so good that I developed this Snow White addiction. So, I went book hunting on Amazon for a Snow White book, and that’s when I came across the book Snow. I didn’t know what to expect from the book, but I did want an action packed-thriller, a lot like Snow White and the Huntsman. It didn’t quite meet that criteria, but I enjoyed it anyway. The last thing the book had was violence. The way Snow White was portrayed in Snow White and the Huntsman, was not the way Liz portrayed the Snow in this book. The Snow White in Snow White and the Huntsman stood up to the queen, and fought her. The Snow in the book ran away from the queen when she discovered that the queen was going to murder her. “...What if the duchess tried to kill her again? Snow panicked for a moment at what she had begun, images of the tall and frightening duchess looming over her with knives and candy-sweet smiles.” Instead, the book had a quirkiness to it, and that’s what intrigued me the most about Snow. “Her fingers entwined in his hair and fathers, and she remembered the ravens she used to watch from her window...”

I recommend this book to anyone of any age, who enjoys fantasy. Whether you are someone who is looking for a fun, quick read, or if you just need a book for school. Liz does a fantastic job by engaging you in the book, and making you feel like you are on the adventure with the main character, Jessica. Snow will not disappoint you. It will take you back to a victorian aged world, full of magical surprises, a little twist, and a bit of romance.

            Snow By Tracy Lynn, Simon Pulse, 2003, 259 pages, Fantasy

When looking for this book you will mostly find it in the fiction collections, Either you are at the library or the store. The book is a short novel that will inspire you in many ways. The first thing that might come to mind might be, why is there an upside down dog on the cover, The upside down dog happens to be the most popular cover for the book. The author has many different covers for the book. He has one with a garden fork going through a bloody dog. You might do what we all call “Judging a book by it’s cover”. That’s okay but this book is worth more than the cover. You will only understand the cover if you take out the time to read this book. If you love mystery novel, then you will love this book. Just because the book is called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time doesn’t mean that it is all about a dog, It’s more than just a book about a dog, This book teach you how “Acceptance of others helps one find self-acceptance as well, problems can be an opportunity to learn and grow, a person can turn a weakness into a strength” and this all depends on how you interpret the book, one might say that they get a different message, and that is totally fine. It’s all about how you can turn the story into your own life experiences.The book is for adults, But if you think that you can handle it then you are more than welcome to read it. I promise that it will be one of the best book you have ever read.

The author of this book is named Mark Haddon. Mark Haddon is 51 years old, and was born 26 September 1962 in Northampton England. He went to a school called Uppingham School and studied English. After college Mark Haddon was occupied with many different jobs. One  the jobs included working with disabled people, and creating illustrations and cartoon for magazine and Newspaper companies. Mark Haddon also worked with autistic individuals as a young man. After many years mark decided to write his first children's book, which was called Gilbert’s Gobstopper. After writing this book he also wrote a several other children's book. He also wrote some Screen plays for BBC television. In 2003 He won the “Whitbread Book of the Year Award” One of his best selling book called  “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.” He won many awards after that as well. One of the things that made Mark such a sensational writer was because he wasn’t only a writer, He was an artist. So therefore his work was very catchy. He try to fit his own personal life, and personal experiences  into the stories that he wrote. You will definitely see that as you read his work.

Mark Haddon have a very unique style of writing. One example is while reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I notice that the book Christopher was writing is the book that we actually have in our hands. Well it will be in your’s if you decide to read this Amazing book. Since the novel that I read was the novel Christopher was writing, it made me feel closer to him. For same that reason, I felt like I was looking at the world from his perspective. The fact that we are  positioned in his shoes make it easy for the reader to understand the Novel.

I personally enjoyed reading this book because I believe that no matter what your conditions are you should still be treated “normal.” I mean is “normal” even normal, how do we know what’s normal and what’s not. Is there such thing called “Normal” This book got me thinking otherwise, Now I have a different perspective on how we look at people that have disabilities. I believe that no one can tell you what you are capable of. Christopher had autism so therefore he got treated differently. Christopher is someone you can look up to, because no matter what he didn’t let his obstacles get in the way of his success. I highly recommend this book. If you like  Daniel Isn't Talking, or  When I Was 5 I Killed Myself you will definitely enjoy this book, and even if you haven’t read the two book listed above you can still enjoy reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

These are some quotes that I really liked. My mind personally works like this sometimes.“But in life you have to take lots of decisions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do. So it is good to have a reason why you hate some things and you like others.” My other favorite quote was “I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.” Read this book, and you will find many more amazing quotes like the one above. To finish up, I want to introduce you to a quote by one of my favorite writers, ― Mahatma Gandhi “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

The Awkward Type

‘Eleanor and Park’ By Rainbow Rowell

When I first began reading the book Eleanor and Park, I expected it to be a story about love and music. I never expected the rest. I bought the book because my teacher rated it five stars. So it must be great. She was right. I am not one to read stories about teenage love. Most of my book choices are about people with psychological issues. Reading about teenage love always felt so cliché. Every little girl wants to fall in love and have a perfect life, but I never believed in love like this book made me believe. This book truly captured the imperfect side of love. Where it is unintentional, straining, and very awkward.

Eleanor and Park is a fictional novel written by Rainbow Rowell. This is Rainbow Rowell’s first novel for young adults. It is a story with love, misfits, and great music references.

and the most incredible descriptions of how love truly is. The book is set in 1986, and spans from September and through the school year.

Eleanor is the main character. Eleanor has bright red hair. She is chubby and pasty white with freckles all over. She is also made fun of by the popular kids in school for her hair, being visibly poor, dressing like a boy, and because she is a bigger girl, but not fat, more curvy. Eleanor has three brothers and one sister. They are all younger than her. Her stepfather is Richie. This book begins when she is moving back to her mother’s house because her stepfather kicked her out a year before. This man is the antagonist. He is scary, but in a deadbeat, always drunk, cursing at small children for wetting the bed and screaming at his wife who is crying because she is just afraid, type of scary. None of them can get away though.

Park was a very innocent character. His examples of love were so powerful, unlike Eleanor’s examples. His mother is from Korea and his father was stationed in Korea after the Vietnam War. They fell in love and he brought her back to America. Park’s parents are still in love and they are just always happy with each other. Rainbow Rowell does an excellent way of showing all of the different “types” of love that can be. Park is the weird kid on the bus, who wears black clothes and listens to punk music. He isn’t made fun of for being different because he has lived in the neighborhood his whole life and in the 6th grade he dated the popular girl.

Eleanor and Park meet on the school bus. She was lost and nobody wanted to sit next to the new girl that had fake pearls on and patched up jeans. Park just curses at her to sit down though. It takes months for them to have any type of conversation. They sit quietly and try so hard to not make eye contact. One day, Park realizes that Eleanor is reading his comics over his shoulder. He starts bringing her other comics to read. He gives her stacks and she always brings them back smelling like a field of roses. On the day that Park forgets to grab the stack of comics for her is the first day they say anything to each other. They begin talking about music.

“You can be Han Solo," he said, kissing her throat. "And I'll be Boba Fett. I'll cross the sky for you.” This is a quote from the book. I want to explain my reaction to just this line. I read this quote before I got to where it was in the book because of a website called ‘Goodreads.’ I was reading a review and I knew that I needed to read this book because of this line. The way that Rowell writes this line made me so excited. The reference is from Star Wars. A few times during the book, Eleanor and Park talk about Star Wars, and how they’re love is like that. I knew that I needed to read this book because this “nerd love” is the best kind of relationship to me. I fell in love before I began reading. This book is stocked full of these very graphic descriptions. Most are about the love story and I swooned at every one. Rowell gave the same power in her descriptions of everything that you didn’t know could scare you or make you want to cry.

This book was just incredible to me. I felt everything that both characters were feeling. I cried when the book ended because all I wanted to do was read more and have their story live on forever. Everytime Park had to remind Eleanor how he felt about her, I fell in love and wished I could find this fictional character and have him love me. These two characters are very awkward. They aren’t outgoing and they try to stay invisible, or just be. When they meet, sit together, and finally speak, they are noticed by everyone. The hand-holding between Eleanor and Park is written so intense. Park says, “Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.” Rainbow Rowell did an incredible job of writing about this type of love and the only part of the book that fell short was how it ends. I won’t give it away though. I just wanted the book to go on forever.

In the New York Times, John Greene wrote in his review, “Eleanor & Park reminded me not just what it’s like to be young and in love with a girl, but also what it’s like to be young and in love with a book.” I am young, and I don’t have a very good understanding of what love will be like when I find it, but I know exactly what it is like to fall in love with a book, and I can’t wait to reread this book and fall in love all over again. Mark Twain once said, “Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.” This quote spoke true while I was reading Eleanor and Park. Rainbow Rowell creates an excellent picture that engages the reader so deeply that they forget about the real world and their life is in this novel.

The day after I finished reading Eleanor & Park, I immediately began reading her book ‘Attachments’. I am not very far into the book, I know that it is a struggle to get into this book because it isn’t much like Eleanor and Park besides also being a love story. Being a teenager, I find it so much easier to read about people my own age. It gives me a better connection so I can feel like I am in the book and this is my other life.

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell.

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press.

Published: February 2013.

328 pages.

The author of this splendid book is Philip Pullman. He is an excellent author who won awards for his series trilogy of “His Dark Materials”. He was born in the town of Norwich, England in 1946. He taught english at Oxford Middle Schools for a while until he went on to teach at Westminster College. He tries to write stories that can grab readers attention, but most of his reader are pre-teen and teen. Philip Pullman also wrote other fantastic stories like book 2 and 3 of his trilogy of His Dark Material, Puss in Boots, The Broken Bridge, and The Butterfly Tattoo. The book that I’m doing this book review on is his first book from his award winning series. The Golden Compass is a book that takes you back to the era similar to the Victorian Era that occurred in England; an era where the church rules everything and there are scholars and students who attend Universities. Lyra, a young girl who lives in the university with her daemon, Pantalaimon, likes to lurk around the university and nearby towns. One day, her uncle, an important man, has came to the university to talk to the headmaster and other scholars about a discovery that he had uncovered in this journey in the great North. Then Lyra saved her uncle from being killed by an attempted assassination. Saving her uncle was just the beginning of the chains of many tortuous and dangerous events that Lyra will experience later in the book.  She went through many hardships during some events and also found herself in danger. Events like getting abducted by a lady that commits hideous acts, traveling to the great north with Egyptians to save children from being severed, or risking her life to save her friend’s life. During this grand journey, Lyra has found her talent and unique qualities, qualities that she would soon use to unlock key information that relates to the rescue of these children. Lyra, who is intelligent, brave, and adventurous, has gone through a journey that will change and influenced her life.  

The structure of this book is like any other book, the story has an uphill part which leads to the climax, and then the downhill. The Golden Compass did a great job of grabbing the readers attention on the very first page. Throughout the book, the author used lots of figurative language and adjectives that gives off lots of imagery, which grabs readers attention and makes books more interesting to read. The type of speech that he included in this book caught my attention as well. The speech matches the context of the story and its plot. Since this book has a setting similar to the Victorian Era, the author has carefully set this type of language back into the story to help the readers be aware of the time period that the setting is in. The idea that this book explored was the idea of mixing the Victorian Era and its complex language with a genre like science fiction. This kind of mixture for an idea of book is difficult. Something that happened in the past is really difficult to mix with the idea of futuristic and fantasy ideas (just thinking about it is impossible) but somehow this book had succeed on something that I  assumed to be impossible. This book includes description of the past, but adds futuristic things in its context. For example, a city in the aurora borealis is an example of science fiction that exist in this book. Philip Pullman did a fantastic job writing this book because he has fused two different kinds of genre into one book that’s enjoyable to pre-teens and teens.

The areas in the book where expectations were exceeded was how descriptive it is. While writing this book, the author did a stupendous job being descriptive with all of the action that is occurring in the book. One example was the in the beginning, when Lyra and Pantalaimon was sneaking around the Master’s meeting room. He gave us a very illustrative description that makes us have the feeling of actually being there with Lyra sneaking in the room with her. Other than being descriptive, the book exceeds my expectations by not making the introduction into the setting of the story long. In other books that I have read they took time describing the world that the story takes place. Meanwhile, this book provides us with little context of where the setting of the story is, and instead went straight into the rich details of the action that occurred in the book. The part in the book that fell short of my expectations is at the very end. At the end of the book they left us with a question that I felt remained unanswered. This question I think is not going to be answered until the second book. This question is about the relationship between Lord Asriel (Lyra’s “uncle”) and Miss Coulter (random woman).  The author made a mistake of not being descriptive enough when explaining about the relationship of Lord Asriel and Miss Coulter. There has to be something important about their relationship that Philip Pullman did not describe enough to let me understand why that would lead to the event in the story. The age groups that I think would love this book are kids ages 11-16 because kids at this age would like to read something that is fantasized into a world where there is danger because they love books that have danger, suspense and drama. The reason why older adults wouldn’t like this book is because this illustrates fantasized characters that exists in books for little kids. Characters like witches and talking animals are considered to be little kids favorite characters. But Philip Pullman does such a superb job in coordinating these fantasized characters into a book where it is enjoyed by pre-teen and teenage kids.

• Book Title: The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials: Book 1)

• Author: Philip Pullman

• Publisher: Yearling

• Date of Publication: May 2001

• Number of Pages: 399 pages

• Genre: Science Fiction