4/14/2016
"Once Upon A Cloud" by Claire Keane
Copyright 2015, 40 pages
Fantasy

Image taken from Goodreads

So Claire Keane is the visual development artist behind our beloved Disney movies Tangled, Frozen, and Wreck-it-Ralph. I don't love Frozen, I enjoy Wreck-it-Ralph, but Tangled I'm especially in love with. While Keane was responsible for visual development for the entire movie, her direct work can be seen in Rapunzel's mural in her tower home (http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Claire_Keane). After reading that fact, I decided that I must live to see the person who pulled the strings behind my favorite Disney movie whipping up a children's book. And so, meet Once Upon A Cloud.

Right off the bat, we can immediately see that this picture book is Disney-flavored. They don't even attempt to hide the iconic castle behind the word "cloud". Fortunately, "Disney-flavored" means beautiful illustrations with a blend of the most gorgeous colors. Unfortunately, "Disney-flavored" can also mean a minimal story line. There really is no depth in the story whatsoever. Celeste wants to find the perfect gift for her mom, and she had a dream of meeting the Star (who are princesses), the Moon (who reads a lot), and the Sun (who is also a princess). And then she woke up and decided that the "perfect gift" are three kinds of wild flowers bound together with a hair tie. Because each one, apparently, represented the celestial objects she met in her dreams. How heart-warming.

In Goodreads, this book mostly receives mixed reviews. Those who give positive reviews highlighted the illustrations (and they ARE gorgeous), while those who give negative reviews condemned the emptiness of the plot. In all honesty I cannot decide which way to go. I love the illustrations. There's so much color going on. Vibrant, pastel colors that are still bright even if it's supposed to illustrate a pitch black night sky. Perhaps because it's a happy dream. Perhaps because it's a dream - and unless we see glitters and sparkles flying about we won't ever guess. And then the Sun comes about, and the whole light pink-dark purple color scheme (oh, what else) switches to a burning orange. I just love it. There's very little way to not get enchanted by the pictures. Oh and of course, that little nameless yellow Chihuahua always made me squeal.

On the other hand however, as I already pointed out, there really is nothing valuable within the text. It's a book worth looking at, not one worth reading. Does that mean this is a good book? Honestly, I don't know. I did not find this book in the Disney Wikia page I linked above. A friend of mine sat next to a ten-year old girl in a supermarket. She (my friend) knew that I was looking for book titles to read and review, so she asked the young girl if she has a favorite book. She does. It's Once Upon A Cloud. With that, I don't feel justified to drop the verdict. I can certainly see why that young lady found this book appealing. However, if someone asked me which book would I want to read to my young cousins back home, I would pick anything but this one.

4/14/2016
"Finding Winnie: The True Story of The World's Most Famous Bear" by Lindsay Mattick
Copyright 2015, 56 pages
Nonfiction, biography

Image taken from Goodreads

The moment I saw this picture book I know I want to read it. Winnie-the-Pooh is one of the first characters that taught me English. I grew up reading and watching the tales of the Hundred Acres Wood. If there was no Winnie-the-Pooh, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this blog today. If there was no Winnie, there will never be Winnie-the-Pooh. And so, naturally, I must know about this little baby black bear.

First off, I noticed that people made a huge fuss about how Winnie was a female. Truth be told, I never pictured Winnie-the-Pooh to be a male or female character. The character design and clothing was pretty gender-neutral to me. So is the adorable, unique voice. But in A. A Milne's first Winnie-the-Pooh book, I noticed that Christopher Robin initially named his stuffed toy "Edward Bear". And so when the name changes, I suppose people don't presume the gender changes as well. Either way, I care little whether Winnie-the-Pooh is a he or a she. The sudden confirmation that "he" is supposedly (?) a "she" did not alter the world-famous series one bit. Boy or girl, Pooh would still love eating honey, and say "oh, bother" every so often. Boy or girl, Pooh would still be that one figure that taught me how to not spell "honey". End of story.

Second off, I like how we had no clue that Mattick was Harry Colebourn's great-granddaughter right until the end. I like surprises. I'm pretty easy to please. Just give me an adorable little bear with big ears, a quote about future occupation from a young child ("that's what I will maybe be when I'm big!"), a reference to my first non-human English teacher, a little twist in the story - and you've got me. I will now shower this book with praises.

As I already noted, Winnie's illustration is so very adorable. I love her round big ears, and her two little eyes. She also grew slightly larger from page to page, barely noticeable, until finally we see Christopher Robin riding on her back. I always love it when artists give a lot of attention to detail. Partly because I can't draw, and partly because I know it must be a lot of work. I also like Mattick's approach in narration. She italicized the parts where she's conversing with Cole - zooming out of the tale for a short while - and left the rest of the story in normal font. It's different. I also find it as an invitation for parents to read the book aloud to (or together with) their children - which is always good.

4/14/2016
"Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes
Copyright 1966, 311 pages
Realistic Fiction

Image taken from Goodreads

I'll be honest: I ran out of titles. So I opened a thread in one of my online communities asking for young adult book suggestions. Out of all the titles thrown at me, I just randomly pick one that: A) I haven't read yet, and B) sounds interesting. The fact that I ended up with Flowers for Algernon probably shows the demographic of the people I hang out with.

Anyway.

Despite being a beloved classic, I have genuinely never even heard of this title until someone brought it up. I'm drawn to any book that has something to do with psychology, mental illness or depression. Plus, this one has a cute little white mouse. So Flowers it is. I'm glad I picked up this book. I didn't expect much of it when I first started reading, honestly. But as the story goes by, I realize that there's a whole lot of attention to detail from Keyes. I don't know if other people notice, but I definitely notice how all the spelling mistakes Charlie made at the first page he also made on the last page. At the same time, the way Charlie s-l-o-w-l-y climbed up his pyramid of intelligence is the exact same way he climbed down. I love all the subtle changes. So subtle, sometimes I didn't even catch that Charlie has progressed or regressed (again).

I'm not in Special Education. So I can't make too many comments on Charlie's condition and how he's supposed to be educated. But I have been in several Special Ed schools or classrooms. All the crude, hurtful terms used in the book and how everyone - including the honorable scientists in the convention, for goodness sake - treated Charlie as if he's a mindless lab rat made me pull out a comparison chart in my head. Have we improved?

Surely, we don't tolerate calling people with intellectual disability "morons" or "dumb" anymore. But have we treated them differently? Sure, there's Least Restrictive Environment going on. Sure, there's such thing as a Special Education teachers. But have we stopped staring two seconds longer than we should? Have we stopped laughing? Have we stopped demanding them to be someone they're not?

I swear I thought Charlie would discuss whether or not he feels his experiment is moral or "right". But he didn't, and it annoyed me a whole lot. We did see, however, that he developed a brand new research so a better experiment can one day take place. His goal was to "smart-ify" thousands upon thousands of others with intellectual disability. But was that the right thing to do? Do we really need to surgically increase brain function on all these people to the point of ingenuity? Alright, maybe not to the point of an 185 IQ (which is off the charts, by the way, because "genius" is 160+). But the question stands: how moral is it to cut open someone's head and just make them "smart" - because there is no place for challenged people in the world. What about non challenged people, then? Non challenged people with the "average" 100-114 IQ. Do they need surgery too? Because all those thousands upon thousands are geniuses now? How important is intelligence really? How do we know that above average IQ is a good thing anyway? There are three quotients now - IQ, EQ, and SQ. Do we need an off-the-charts score for all three, too?

I think Charlie answered us by showing his short-lived affair with Fay and Alice. It doesn't matter that he has all the knowledge in the world if he doesn't have anyone to love and love him back. But like I said: I swear I thought Charlie would discuss whether or not his experiment was right. I feel like that part of the novel was just evading the hard question - or just the question I'm interested in. There was also this brief discussion about God's existence - which Charlie also artfully evaded. He glossed over it a little bit, but then never brought it  up again. It annoyed me. The last page left this itch to know what does Charlie think about all these questions.

But other than that, if it's not yet obvious, I love this book. I always love books that make you think twice, or shows you how does a world look like from someone else's eyes. Someone else whose opinion you never thought to be important until now. Flowers is totally that book.

4/13/2016
"On The Trail with Lewis and Clark" by Judy Lechner
Copyright 2004, 16 pages
Informational

Image taken from Goodreads

I found this book in the Maths section in the library. But as the title shows, this book helps children learn more than just Maths. I don't know if the sub-header is a little too small on the cover photo, but in case it is, it says: "learning to use line graphs". And that's what this book is technically all about. Every other page we convert a chunk of Lewis and Clark's story (the number of days they spent on a certain place, etc) into a line graph - with minimal data for easier reading. Under the ready-made line graph we see one or two short questions that invite children to learn decoding the line graph. Since this is about Lewis and Clark, there's no avoiding history in this book. We learn about Sacagawea, who exactly are these Lewis and Clark, what are they doing walking around Louisiana and why. What I did not expect, however, is the fact that some big words - non Math words like decision - were highlighted and listed on the back. So there's reason to argue that readers learn a little bit of Language-Arts as well. While this three-in-one approach is not at all bad, I do think it left the meat of the lesson (the line graphs) a little out of focus. I don't know if I'm expecting too much out of this book's intended audience, but if we're already talking about reading line graphs, shouldn't we talk about drawing one as well? The practice questions should get repetitive over time in the eyes of a nine-year old. After a while they'll just focus more on the story and skip the line graph pages altogether. What about - by page 5 or so - we leave them a blank line graph template and a set of data? And then by the last page, we leave them a completely blank page with a data set and a reminder to flip back if they forgot something. What about that? That's more "line graph"-y doesn't it? Even further: what about introducing them a little bit about what goes into the X axis and what goes into the Y axis? Which one is the X axis and which one is the Y axis? What about bringing these graphs a little closer to the Math world - by showing them the full-on Cartesian diagram? Students don't need to interact with the graph at all, of course, but at least they know what it looks like and what it's called. I found this book in the library of a K-3 school so I do assume this book is meant for that age group. But still, I feel like there's so much more we can do with line graphs than just showing a finished graph and asking them to find a point.

4/9/2016
"We Wanted You" by Liz Rosenberg
Copyright 2002, 32 pages
Realistic Fiction

Image taken from Goodreads

I didn't know what this book was all about until I picked it up. The title was pretty discreet, and you can't really tell it's about adopting a child from a different ethnicity until you actually start reading. I do love this book, though. I love how it shows how adoptive parents love their children just as much as biological parents do, without overglorifying the fact that this is about adopting a non-white child. We see nothing in the text that says things like: "we picked you up from (insert country name) and brought you to (insert country name)" or "you are (ethnicity name) and we are (ethnicity name) but it doesn't matter!". Instead, in the illustrations, we see a birthday banner that says: "Happy Birthday, Enriqué!" - implying that the child is probably Latino. Also by illustrations, we see that the parents are white. Those are about the only clues we have regarding race and ethnicity. No text in the book made a big deal out of it.

Another thing I like is the illustration. There's so many intricate details. Even on the cover page alone, we can assume that the dad is planning to surprise Enriqué with the soccer ball behind his back. Judging by Enrique's clothes, it seems like he does like soccer quite a bit. I also like how there are so many layers to each color in the picture. The shadows on the walls indicate that they're standing in a cool porch on a bright, sunny day. The wooden walls remind me of a holiday cottage, further enforcing the "relaxed, carefree" feel. Even the antique-shaped house number on the left gave off that feel: a happy little family in a happy little house.

4/9/2016
"The Patchwork Quilt" by Valerie Flournoy
Copyright 1985, 32 pages
Realistic Fiction

Picture taken from Scholastic

I chose this book because I recognized the illustrator. Jerry Pinkney makes the most realistic-looking watercolor paintings. I love, love how the quilt looked. It must be a lot of work to make different patterns in each little box that all must blend together. I like how the people turned out, too. Tanya didn't look overly short to show her age, and her clothing aren't super childish either. On the cover she's wearing a long blue jeans, and a yellow polo shirt. We don't see her wearing a pink ruffled dress with flowers all over, or a big red bow on her hair. I don't know how little girls dress in 1985, but she looks pretty modern to me. Grandma is the same way. Yes, her hair is gray, and yes, we see some facial features that indicate age. But her hair is not comically white as if someone bleached it, and she doesn't have scary droopy eyes or crumbling teeth like the evil witch in Snow White (and I mean the original 1937 version, not Charlize Theron). Aside from physical features, I also like how Grandma wasn't depicted to be frail, confused or helpless. She's actually a strong figure that still decides things for herself. I was worried if the story is going to spin to a tear-jerker when Grandma fell ill, but I'm glad she recovered. I can almost feel how close Tanya's family is through this story, so I'm glad they got a happy ending.

As for the quilt itself, I like how Tanya's mom changed her opinion from considering it trash at first, to a collage of memories. There's also a sense of "appreciate little things" in the story, which in my opinion is an important lesson. I don't know how many grandmas - or anyone - still make quilts these days. But it sounds like it makes a great, meaningful gift. Maybe I should pick it up sometime.

4/9/2016
"The Nowhere Box" by Sam Zuppardi
Copyright 2013,
Realistic Fiction

Image taken from Google

I don't have two little brothers, but I do have one. Growing up, I certainly remember him following me around like a duckling. I don't remember anymore if I ever got as annoyed as George, but I can sympathize with his attempt to "run away". I think it's great that we have a book about playing alone as well as playing with siblings (or friends). Books I read seem to like to depict kids who play alone as kids who are lonely, sad, or lacking social skills. But sometimes, especially when your little brothers are driving you up the wall, alone time is what you need. All it takes is a random object, a boat load of imagination, and off to Nowhere you go. However, midway through the book, we see that George actually missed his brothers. And then he time-traveled back home to find them - until the next time he needs to go Nowhere again.

I feel like this is one of those books most can easily relate to - children and adults alike. Even the drawing style is relate-able. The thin, rubber-like arms, the three-fingered hands, the stick-like legs, the humongous mouth, the dot-shaped eyes... I don't know about you guys, but that's my drawing when I was seven. Not that much has changed now. The buttons in the washing machine box are also very "realistic". In the sense that it's scrawly, sloppy, and none of the circles are actually round. Point is: the design makes it look like a fellow seven-year old is illustrating the book. The colors may be a little more complicated with all those shades and layers, but I like how it's bold, vibrant, and mostly involves the basic red-blue-yellow-green scheme instead of soft pastel colors. I also like how all the pictures are outlined in a thin, gray line (looks like a pencil) instead of a bold, black, formal, professional one. In my eyes, it gives off a stronger "this is a children's work" feel that way.

4/4/2016
"Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog" by John Grogan
Copyright 2005, 291 pages
Nonfiction, memoir

Picture taken from Goodreads

One word: classic. I mainly chose this book because there's no way I would ever forget about it. With other books, even ones I enjoyed just as much, after the years go by the little details would begin to blend and blur. Sometimes even the plot would start missing some pieces in memory. There's no way I'd be able to sit down and talk about those other books without re-reading it from start to finish. With Marley & Me, I don't even think it's possible to forget. I can still even recite Marley's antiques from jumping, walking in two legs on the pavement with his two other legs inside the car, swallowing a gold necklace, dragging a restaurant table across the street and... you get the point. I read this book back in 2008 or so, and it burned at the back of my mind. But then again, I'm a huge animal lover. I dedicated five years - now six - to study, research, observe and discuss canine behavior, psychology and training. I spoke to and learn from breeders, behaviorists and regular owners around the world. I'm also pretty involved in animal welfare movements, and always made sure to donate a little something to local shelters at least every year. Oh and on top of all: I'm a proud dog mama.

In short: I'm either you, or someone you know.

ASPCA estimates that 37-47% of American households have dogs. That's somewhere between 70-80 million dogs - excluding the ones still waiting to be bought or adopted. Do these people love their dogs as much as The Grogans love Marley, there's no measure of that. But my point is: this book is right up the alley to a whole lot of people (at least in America). That's probably a huge - if not the only - reason why it's a big hit. Don't get me wrong: I love Grogan's writing. You can tell he's a talented author. I love his detailed retelling of each one event in his life with Marley. To his credit, this book did make me laugh, reminisce, nod in sympathy, and - at the very end - cry my eyes out. But now that I step back and think about it, it's sort of an "empty" book. Like those teenage novels about having a crush who's way more popular than you, and then ending up with a childhood friend instead. I mean, it's a beautiful tribute to a wonderful companion, but I did not learn anything reading it. If there's even any message to take away, readers have to really dig deep and think it through. Same goes with those teenage novels I stuffed my brain with when I was thirteen. It's not 100% void of meaning or life lessons, but it's not exactly teaching me anything valuable either. It's a story that I can relate to. Period. But still, Grogan's writing is not half bad. So we all came to some sort of an unspoken, unanimous agreement that "everyone loves Marley & Me". And all is well.

Until the movie came out.

In 2008, David Frankel released a movie adaptation with the exact same title on Christmas day. The movie set a record for the largest Christmas day box office "ever" with $14.75 million in ticket sales (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marley_%26_Me_%28film%29). So it seems like people really do love Marley. However, I suppose as we all know, they don't like the movie. As reflected in its reviews and ratings, Marley & Me didn't gather as much praise as the novel did. The highest rating it got was 7.1/10 in IMDb, and that's already generous seeing as Rotten Tomatoes only gave it 63% - an average of 6/10 rating from 138 reviews. If I could borrow a movie critic's words, Todd McCarthy from Variety - in my opinion - sums it all up real well: "as broad and obvious as it could be, but delivers on its own terms thanks to sparky chemistry between its sunny blond stars, Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, and the unabashed emotion-milking of the final reel. Fox has a winner here, likely to be irresistible to almost everyone but cats". I watched the movie twice myself. Once in 2009, once more in around 2012. I adopted my dog in 2010. When I watched it the first time, I walked away from the TV screen completely puzzled. "That is not at all the novel I read!" I thought. But then, I realize that it is. I hated the movie because it is exactly the novel: word by word, chapter to chapter. When we remove the imagery, word choice, attention to detail and writing style, all that's left is a chain of things that simply happened. Not things that bring light into important unpopular topics, things that broke a common misconception or stereotype, or even things that made us step back and think. They simply happened. They also simply happened in the book, but there were a lot more to it when there are words to paint the picture. In a motion picture, again, it simply happened.

The scene where Marley got an entire beach closed down was an example. In the book, we get a great detail from John's perspective. About how he was just sitting there enjoying the scenery when another dog owner near him yelled: "HEY! Watch your dog!" and he saw Marley squatting right in the middle of the water. There was this tickling description of how Marley looked up, "as if he's saying a prayer", as John raced from his end of the beach to the shallow waters. And as John finally stood next to his dog, poop bag in his hands, he found that Marley had diarrhea. He apologized, under the pressure of a ton of displeased dog owners, and the beach was closed off. I still giggle writing that, as I did reading that years and years ago. In the movie, that same scene was very dry. The sun is shining, the waters calm, and a girl in bikini half-heartedly yelled the "watch your dog" part. John sprung up from where he's sitting and raced to the water, yelling out "Marley! Marley!", and then there's this loud comical fart noise. The people leave, John collected Marley, and he left too. That's all. I can also write a lengthy paragraph about the dog training class scene, but it's basically the same thing: there's no thrill left to it in motion picture.

However, when the same movie came up on TV in 2012, I had to leave nearing the last scene. I already know what the last scene is like, and I know *this time* I'm surely gonna cry. I still hate the movie. But watching it as a dog owner, I became emotionally invested. I might even tolerate the plot's dryness a little bit just because the scenes made me nod a little more, smile a little more, and cry a little more. Not because I'm seeing good cinematography. I'm just seeing myself, and that's kind of what I want to see in movies. All in all, I would still recommend the novel to friends if they're looking for a light, fun read. But if anyone asks, I would still say it should have never been made into a movie. 

4/1/2016
"Last Stop of Market Street" by Matt de la Peña
Copyright 2016, 32 pages
Realistic Fiction

Cover image taken from Goodreads

First of all, the illustrations are adorable. I love the simple shapes, the bright colors, and the cartoonish-but-still-human-like characters. I also like how it represents quite a bit of underrepresented people. My favorite is the guy with tattoos in the bus. We totally don't see a lot of those in children's books even if in real life we see tattooed people in a daily basis. There's also the blind man with his guide dog. How many of these people we see in children's books? Matt's story-telling is also beautiful. It's a simple read, but still poetic. I'm one of those people that would fail to appreciate a children's book if they're more of a practice material than a written motion picture. Not that I don't believe we don't need basal books, but still. I suppose I'm too adult by now.

Anyway. As I browsed through the web to find this book's cover image, I stumbled across about a thousand other reviews. One that stood out to me reads something like: "Nana is teaching CJ to put on a rosy-colored glass, silver-lining the fact that they're poor and live in a dumpster. CJ should learn to pick up that trash instead of walking on it". In a way, I can't disagree. There's indeed a little bit (okay, a lot) of silver-lining going on. But I suppose that reviewer missed one crucial point: neither CJ nor Nana chose to live where they live now. Knowing how things are in the real world, they probably can't move to a suburban house at the snap of a finger either. In fact, they probably don't have much option beside staying. Nana never said "don't ever leave this neighborhood" or "this is the best place on Earth". Her point is that while they're there, in that moment, let's not complain about not having a car or a fancy iPod. Let's not complain about why everything always looks "so dirty". Just because they don't have a brand new car, a manicured lawn or a white picket fence, doesn't mean they have to sit there and be miserable. Life can be beautiful wherever you live if you adjust your lenses just right. Is that silver-lining? Maybe. Is it bad? Maybe. But either or, there's no bad thing about learning how to shift your perspective so the world is what you make of it.

4/1/2016
"Challenger Deep" by Neal Shusterman
Copyright 2012, 320 pages
Realistic fiction

Image taken from Goodreads

Challenger Deep is one of those few novels that linger in your thoughts long, long after the last page. I love the cover design. It pretty much captures the book as a whole. I love the strewn, jumbled up yarn up top, the blue that grows darker, and Caden - making a lone descent towards the bottom of the Mariana trench. I think it captures the blend between fantasy and reality in Caden's eyes and how detached he felt from the rest of the world. As for the content itself, I like how Shusterman highlighted a lot of issues regarding the mentally ill and how society treats them while still telling Caden's story. There was a discussion about the famous mentally ill people - Vincent van Gogh and Michelangelo, to name a few - that put them under a very different light. Sometimes when people don't act the way society defines "people", we forgot they're still people. This novel would certainly help reminding readers that they still are. I feel like this book showed me a whole new perspective of the world - from the eyes of the mentally ill. Ones that we have, and still do, sweep under the rug.

About Shusterman's writing itself, I can only say that he deserves every last bit of that 2015 National Book Awards medal. The narration really did put us inside Caden's head. Early at the beginning of the book, all we see are life on 'the ship'. All we hear are Caden making very much sense of all the illogical things he did, said or believed. Later when Caden started taking medications, we see pages where the ship and the hospital setting blends into one. For example, there is one part that begins with Caden approaching Carlyle when he was mopping the deck, but then midway through we read that Carlyle "closed his laptop". We also see some sort of a retelling of what happened on the ship in its real life equivalent - showing that Caden has developed an awareness of his real-life surroundings. One thing that I love the most though, is how Shusterman led us to figuring out who is who. It is not until much later in the book that we found out "the captain" has no real life human equivalent. I was very confused - as I probably should be - if Dr. Poirot is the parrot or the captain. At the point where Caden shot the parrot - followed by an interaction at the hospital which prompted Caden to say: "Poirot is dead to me", I realized that the parrot is Dr. Poirot. But who's the captain then?

Honestly even until the very end of the book I'm not entirely sure who - or what - the captain is supposed to represent. Sure, he was a copy of the homeless man Caden met in his holiday in New York, but what is he representing exactly? If we want to say "Caden's mental illness", then what about the Abyssal Serpent? Isn't that what's supposed to represent the schizophrenia? Or is the Serpent schizophrenia, and the captain mental illness as a whole? I don't know if Shusterman meant it to be open-ended like that, or if I just missed an obvious clue. Either ways, this book is a must read. Not only do we see a great author in action, but we also learn something valuable that most of us probably would never learn elsewhere.