First you wonder: Is she real? Then you realize she is. But do the people who come and see the “fish girl” in the show on the boardwalk believe it? Second, you wonder will she be able to escape? And finally, you realize Donna Jo Napoli and David Wiesner are both geniuses. Napoli and Wiesner have created a coming-of-age tale with a tail. She is a real mermaid. The man who claims to be her father, has her in his ocean show and will do […]
“…Let me assure you, Lula – nobody’s normal.”
I was so reluctant to start this book. The cover just screams “twee” and “manic pixie dream girl” but someone here, who knows who, had written a sufficiently glowing review that it made it to my TBR list and well – there are rules. Once it’s on the TBR, I have to at least try it. But believe me, I wouldn’t have otherwise. And man would I have missed out. Weird Girl and What’s His Name is such a sweet, tender, funny book. The pace […]
A buzzing sound began in my brain
This book came to me by way of Amazon Prime’s First Reads program, so it was free, which was the correct price for it. I did keep wanting to love it, but fundamentally I hated it. Here is what it had going for it: it was a very fast read. A Small Revolution is the story of a young Korean-American woman – our narrator, Yoona – who does a program in the summer between high school and college that brings Korean-Americans to South Korea for […]
Childhood favorite revisited, more than holds up.
I must have read this book dozens of times when I was a kid (I think I had an illustrated version as well, but I can’t find it, nor any record of it online, so far all I know I may have made it up?), but I haven’t read it, oh I don’t know, at least since middle school? I also never read any of L.M. Montgomery’s other books. No idea why I did this. Even as a kid, I was all over sequels, a little […]