My local bookstore is really great about making recommendations for books I may otherwise have never known about. (You may remember, this was how I discovered Andrew Smith’s Grasshopper Jungle.) There’s nothing better than popping by the store and checking out what’s new and which employees have left rave reviews for titles and authors I might enjoy. When I dropped by last Friday, I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular. But when I started to browse the SciFic/Fantasy section, I saw a book with a note […]
“So what’s a few plane crashes in the name of a good night’s sleep?”
What if I told you that I just read a great book about a teenaged boy named Ariel? Ariel lives in an unnamed, war-torn country, and has just turned 14. On his 14th birthday, tragedy strikes, and Ariel finds himself the sole survivor in his village. Wouldn’t his tale about his travels with soldiers and regular families, about the horrors of the refuge camp, and about his new, adoptive family in West Virginia sound like something you might want to read? Or how about if […]
In which I decide I’m taking a break from my Cannonball boyfriend. But I’ll be back.
Andrew Smith is pretty much my Cannonball boyfriend. I loved Grasshopper Jungle so, so much. The balance between its absolute insanity and the realness of its characters hooked me quickly and didn’t let me go for the entire story. And Winger? That broke my heart, took it out, and stomped on it…and yet, still left me with a glimmer of hope. I did a little happy dance when I heard it was getting a sequel, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. […]
Andrew Smith is my spirit animal.
My god. This book. This book is 400 pages of ridiculous, teenage boy bravado and sex. It’s hilarious and real and heartwarming. And then the next ten pages are tense and unnerving. And the last ten pages? They made me weep. I’m actually starting to tear up again just thinking about them. Last year, I read the outlandish Grasshopper Jungle. And I knew that Andrew Smith was a writer who understood HOW to write a teenage boy. It wasn’t just that he remembered being a teenage […]