Polar: The Titanic Bear by Daisy Corning Stone Spedden

From Goodreads,

"Written by American heiress Daisy Corning Stone Spedden for her son Douglas--as a Christmas present the year after they escaped the doomed Titanic--this charming and intriguing story gives an enthralling account of the disaster as seen through the eyes of Stephen's teddy bear. Illustrated with evocative watercolors, family photos, postcards, and keepsakes."

Goodreads - Polar: The Titanic Bear

Awards and Nominations:

• Books I Loved Best Yearly (BILBY) Awards for Younger Readers (1998)

When I was in second grade I fell in love with a Titanic book that was in our classroom library.  There happened to be another person in my class who also loved the book.  She ended up becoming my best friend and we like to say we bonded over the Titanic.  Needless to say the Titanic and everything surrounding it absolutely fascinates me.  I love the movie, the documentaries, the books, the museums.  All of it.  Over spring break I went on a mini vacation to the Titanic Museum in Branson.  I was in my element and wanted to read and listen to absolutely everything.  Unfortunately I didn't due to time.  At the end of the museum is a gift shop.  I shopped around and checked out the books.  This book was there and I wanted to purchase it, but decided the Titanic ship piggy bank I wanted took priority.  Luckily I found this book in good condition at a resale shop.  I immediately pounced on it and devoured it. 

Polar: The Titanic Bear is about a Steiff bear that belongs to a very fortunate little boy.  The story is told from the perspective of the bear from the beginning to the end.  The boy is referred to as Master by the bear.  We see the two become best friends and endure hardships and journeys.  Eventually they end up on the grandest ship of them all.  We all know how that story ends, but the real story lies in what happens to the boy and his bear.  

I absolutely loved this book!  The first big thing is that this is based on a true story.  There are first hand accounts written into this book which makes it all more genuine.  There are pictures of the actual people integrated into the pages and story.  I really like how there are pieces of historical events in this book.  We see the boy and bear endure the measles and enjoy the Panama Canal.  There are pictures of all of these memorable moments throughout the book.  Of course we eventually reach the story of the Titanic.  We find that the entire family got off safely, but we also find out how they felt and their reactions.  For example, the little boy clung to his bear and slept.  I love the entire historical integration that was in this book, especially at the end.  The epilogue was wonderfully written and was full of details of the family throughout the years and what happened to them after the sinking.  

I think that many of my students who find interest in the Titanic would find interest in this book.  I recommend this to all Titanic lovers.  I give this 5 stars!

Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner

From Goodreads,

"What if you could spend one last day with someone you lost?

One day Carver Briggs had it all—three best friends, a supportive family, and a reputation as a talented writer at his high school, Nashville Academy for the Arts.

The next day he lost it all when he sent a simple text to his friend Mars, right before Mars, Eli, and Blake were killed in a car crash.

Now Carver can’t stop blaming himself for the accident, and he’s not the only one. Eli’s twin sister is trying to freeze him out of school with her death-ray stare. And Mars’s father, a powerful judge, is pressuring the district attorney to open a criminal investigation into Carver’s actions.

Luckily, Carver has some unexpected allies: Eli’s girlfriend, the only person to stand by him at school; Dr. Mendez, his new therapist; and Blake’s grandmother, who asks Carver to spend a Goodbye Day with her to share their memories and say a proper goodbye to his friend.

Soon the other families are asking for a Goodbye Day with Carver, but he’s unsure of their motives. Will they all be able to make peace with their losses, or will these Goodbye Days bring Carver one step closer to a complete breakdown or—even worse—prison?"

Goodreads - Goodbye Days

Awards and Nominations:

• Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Young Adult Fiction (2017)
• AML Award for Best Young Adult Novel (2017)
• Lincoln Award Nominee (2019)

Everyone has a cell phone, including young kids.  It has become a part of our body.  We take it with us to the bathroom, we have it nearby when we eat dinner, and we most definitely have it within arms reach while we are driving.  Everyone will admit that texting and driving is wrong, but alas we still do it.  The phone buzzes and we reach for it to see who it is.  We will send a "quick text" while we are stopped at a stoplight, because we aren't technically driving at that moment.  Texting and driving is so dangerous, and thankfully this informative book tells the story of a texting and driving accident through the eyes of a teenager.  

Carver is a typical teenager with three best friends: Mars, Blake, and Eli.  Carver's three friends were on their way to pick him up when Carver sent a text to Mars who was driving.  Mars tried to respond and ended up crashing the car which fatally killed all three passengers.  In the days following the aftermath Carver must figure out if he is guilty or not.  While Carver is trying to figure out how to live again, Blake's grandma reaches out about doing a goodbye day to have closure and peace to what happened.  Together they spend the day doing all of Blake's favorite things.  One by one, Carver has a goodbye day with each of the families to help them get closure, and to help himself get closure on what happened.  

Favorite quote from Goodbye Days: 

"Night descends as a falling blanket.  The city is a constellation of lights, each one representing a hand that turned the lightbulb.  A hand attached to a mind containing a universe of memories and myths; a natural history of loves and wounds."

This book was perfect in every single way.  The biggest and obvious message in this book is to not text and drive and to not text people when you know they are driving.  I absolutely hate when I tell someone that I'm leaving and driving to X location and a few minutes later they will text me.  It's irritating and distracting.  I should probably turn my phone to silent to help alleviate this distraction, but like many people I know, I don't.  This book sends such a strong message about not texting and driving.  Carver texted his friend who was driving and that resulted in him looking at his phone and the car crashed.  Carver had to deal with the guilt he felt over what had happened.  I think for many young people they can picture themselves and their friends in this book.  Carver went from being a member of a group of four to being the only one left.  He was all alone because of one text message.  I think this book should be a required read for everyone when they get their learner's permit or their driver's license.  Young people (and adults!) need to know the dangers of texting and driving.  It takes one simple glance at a phone to end your life or someone else's.

"For the most part, you don't hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house.  Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone."

I loved the quote above because it really made me think about the people I care about and cherish.  Carver, like many people, took his friends for granted.  He didn't realize what he had until it was gone.  People live their day to day life and don't think about people and the way they have impacted us.  I know that when I was in high school I was one member of a group of eight.  We were a very close group and we have many memories together.  The last time all eight of us were together was at graduation.  I honestly thought we would all keep in touch and continue to be friends, but we didn't.  We have drifted apart.  I still keep in touch will some of the girls, but there are others that I haven't heard from in a while.  I will forever hold these girls close to my heart because as the quote above says, "They saved me in a million quiet and perfect ways from being alone."  If we hadn't all become friends we would have been alone throughout the ups and downs of high school.  I honestly didn't know what I had until graduation was over and we had all parted ways.  Unlike Carver, all of my friends are still alive and well, and I miss each and every one of them every single day.

I absolutely loved this book and think that all teenagers should have to read it.  It was so moving and kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time wondering what was going to happen with the investigation and during all of the goodbye days.  It was wonderfully written by Zentner and it made extremely excited to read some of his other work.  I give this a solid 5 out of 5 stars! 

Bionic by Suzanne Weyn

From Goodreads,

"Mira has always almost had it all... until it all crashes and burns. She's hurt in a horrible car accident, and the only way the doctors can help is to try experimental prosthetics and chips that are implanted directly into her brain. It's a huge risk, but after months of testing and therapy, Mira is back, and better than ever.But soon her friends turn against her as their parents call her on unfair advantages and get her cut from lacrosse and the scholarships she was depending on for college. And with her enhanced hearing, she knows how many people in her school and her town are calling her a robot, a cyborg.Is that true? Is Mira human, or is she somehow something other? How can she overcome the ways people see her and just be herself... especially if she's not really sure who that is anymore?Suzanne Weyn is always at the cutting edge when it comes to new tech and the questions it raises about the world we live in."

Goodreads - Bionic

People always say, "Don't judge a book by its cover."  Which is a great saying and all, but doesn't the cover usually have some kind of connection with the story itself?  The cover of this book mesmerized me.  There was something about the way the blue faded into the pink that caught my attention.  Plus there was the appearance of wiring and hardware that appeared on top of the photo.  The cover of this book had me sold.  After reading the book I realized that the cover, the summary, and the actual story didn't entirely line up.

This book follows Mira who was an excellent lacrosse player and was in a band.  Then one night the band is in a car accident which results in her losing limbs and being severely injured.  Mira gets the newest prosthetics and gets a chip implanted in her brain that responds to her new limbs.  She now feels like she is at the top of her game all the time, but at what point does she stop having feelings at all.

This book was definitely strange, but I loved the whole concept of advanced technology helping us.  In the book Mira is fortunate enough to receive prosthetics that can respond to a chip that is implanted in her head.  Scary, I know.  But think of how amazing it would be to have a chip implanted that can now respond to your prosthetic.  If you lost a limb then you would be able to resume a fairly normal life all thanks to a chip.  This could help veterans who lost limbs during war or help victims of bombings and accidents gain their life back.  I'm glad that Weyn really centered her book around the technological advancements, both the good and the bad.  I think that having this kind of positive outlook on technology really helps spark interests to go into STEM careers.  Somewhere out there is a kid who read this book, they connected with it on a personal level, and they are going to want to go into a career to help make advancements like this happen.

I really enjoyed the technology theme in the book, but I did not like how the book was written.  It was really choppy.  The first chapter was written as if Mira was in and out of consciousness, which I guess technically she was.  I thought that once she was out of it the book would resume a normal chapter schedule, but it didn't.  The book had some chapters labeled with months, or there would be a new month in the middle of a chapter.  It was a very confusing structure.  I would have enjoyed the book more if Chapter 1 had been a month, then Chapter 2 the next month.  But unfortunately Weyn took a strange approach, and I think it took away from the book a little.

Another thing that was bothersome was that the cover, the summary, and the actual book didn't exactly line up.  The summary that I read indicated that someone was going to start controlling Mira.  The cover gave the impression that it was about a girl and technology.  The book however was about a girl having a copper chip and prosthetics and learning how to live a normal life again.  I was so disappointed that the three did not line up.  From the summary itself I was totally looking forward to a girl having prosthetics and a copper chip that would later be controlled by the government.  I was definitely excited about the government or some bad guy stepping in and controlling her until she eventually had enough.  Unfortunately that didn't happen and I was let down. 

I think that this book is best fit for teenagers.  I expect that teens who have lost a limb or know someone who has would find the most joy out of this book.  I personally did not connect with any of the characters.  I give this 3 stars out of 5.

Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

From Goodreads,

"Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese-American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill. kira-kira (kee' ra kee' ra): glittering; shining Glittering. That's how Katie Takeshima's sister, Lynn, makes everything seem. The sky is kira-kira because its color is deep but see-through at the same time. The sea is kira-kira for the same reason. And so are people's eyes. When Katie and her family move from a Japanese community in Iowa to the Deep South of Georgia, it's Lynn who explains to her why people stop them on the street to stare. And it's Lynn who, with her special way of viewing the world, teaches Katie to look beyond tomorrow. But when Lynn becomes desperately ill, and the whole family begins to fall apart, it is up to Katie to find a way to remind them all that there is always something glittering -- kira-kira -- in the future. Luminous in its persistence of love and hope, Kira-Kira is Cynthia Kadohata's stunning debut in middle-grade fiction."

Goodreads - Kira-Kira

Awards and Nominations:

• Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature for Youth Literature (2005)
• Newbery Medal (2005)
• Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award Nominee (2006)

My boyfriend and I decided to read all the books that had been awarded the Newbery Medal Award.  We started at the top of the list with the 2017 winner The Girl Who Drank The Moon.  I quickly devoured the book while he slowly trudged through it.  He eventually stopped reading it and never finished it.  I guess you can't force a gamer to become a book nerd.  But I figured it had been a while since I had read and reviewed a Newbery Medal book that it was time to get another one crossed off the list.  

Kira-Kira is told from the perspective of Katie, a young Japanese-American girl who is the middle child of three.  She adores her older sister Lynn, and her younger brother Sam adores her.  Her sister taught her about kira-kira which means glittering in Japanese.  When they were younger they would use the phrase carelessly talking about all the things they thought were kira-kira.  Katie goes through life as her parents work constantly to care for her and her siblings.  Over time her sister started to grow up, but she also started to grow sick.  Katie learns the true meaning of kira-kira as the book comes to a close. 

When I first started this book I was trying to figure out why it was awarded the Newbery Medal Award.  The book seemed to be moving slowly with nothing truly interesting happening.  But there was some pivotal point in the book where I started to realize why it was awarded the Newbery Medal.  As I read I realized some of the hardships that Japanese-Americans faced during the 1950s.  Their work conditions were absolutely horrendous.  In the book they all worked at hatcheries or at chicken plants.  That was the only job opportunities that they were given.  They were seen as outcasts in the towns they lived in.  The book states that they didn't have friends outside of their circle of people because people looked down on them.  Katie in the book continues to talk about how hard her parents are working and how tired they are.  Every time Katie talked about her parents working or how tired they were, I saw them in a different light.  Her parents were treated differently and had fewer opportunities, but they still worked hard and had hope that things would get better.  I don't feel that a child or even a young adult would be able to pull this theme of hope out of the book, but I did.  Hope became even more vital once we found out what was truly wrong with Lynn.  Everyone in the family had hope that Lynn would get better even though they could all see her deteriorating and getting worse.  Hope became a major player in this book, and what is initially kept the book and everyone in it moving forward. 

While this book had a strong thread of hope weaved into it, it was overall very dull.  There were only a couple of exciting things that happened, and they all happened toward the end of the book.  There was nothing in the beginning that made me get excited to turn the page.  The entire time I felt like I was forcing myself to keep reading.  I knew this book was on my Newbery Medal list so I had to read it.  There were a couple of things in the first couple of chapters that I got excited about because I felt like something big was going to happen, but then it didn't.  It was a very plain book with very little excitement, much like the lives of Katie and her family.

This book wasn't what I was expecting it to be.  I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.  If you are planning to read all the Newbery Medal winners then you'll have to read this book.  I don't think that my students would enjoy this book.  Many would say it was boring just after the first long chapter.  

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

From Goodreads,

"Will Grayson meets Will Grayson. One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two strangers are about to cross paths. From that moment on, their world will collide and lives intertwine.

It's not that far from Evanston to Naperville, but Chicago suburbanites Will Grayson and Will Grayson might as well live on different planets. When fate delivers them both to the same surprising crossroads, the Will Graysons find their lives overlapping and hurtling in new and unexpected directions. With a push from friends new and old - including the massive, and massively fabulous, Tiny Cooper, offensive lineman and musical theater auteur extraordinaire - Will and Will begin building toward respective romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history's most awesome high school musical."

Goodreads - Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Awards:

• Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award Nominee for Best Young Adult Novel (2010)
• The Inky Awards Nominee for Silver Inky (2010)
• The Inky Awards Shortlist for Silver Inky (2010)
• Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Young Adult Fiction (2010)
• Odyssey Award Nominee (2011)
• Milwaukee County Teen Book Award (2011)
• Stonewall Book Award Nominee for Children's and Young Adult Literature (2011)
• Children's Choice Book Award for Teen Choice Book of the Year (2011)
• Lincoln Award Nominee (2013)

A few years ago I read the wonderful book The Fault in our Stars by John Green.  I kind of fell in love like everyone else did.  Suddenly it was like John Green was on the forefront of young adult books when a sudden flood of his work hit shelves.  I quickly devoured Paper Towns and John Green quickly moved his way up my favorite authors list.  So while scouring Scholastic for books I found this book by John Green and purchased it.  However, once I sat down to read the book I realized that the name David Levithan was familiar too.  That's when I realized that he wrote Boy Meets Boy.  My excitement for this book went down a little because I absolutely hated the writing style in the book Boy Meets Boy.  Nonetheless I started reading the book in hopes I could find a middle ground in this book written by one author I enjoyed and by one I didn't.  

This book is told by two boys, both named Will Grayson.  One Will Grayson lives a life in the shadow of his best friend Tiny, while the other Will Grayson is struggling with depression and trying to keep his sexuality a secret.  Their stories alternate chapters until they cross paths for a brief moment in time.  This brief moment that will intertwine their friends and stories in ways they never imagined.

Favorite Quote from Will Grayson, Will Grayson:

"I think about how much depends upon a best friend.  When you wake up in the morning you swing your legs out of bed and you put your feet on the ground and you stand up.  You don't scoot to the edge of the bed and look down to make sure the floor is there.  The floor is always there.  Until it's not."

One of my favorite things about this book was the whole theme of friendship, and I honestly think that is why I loved the quote above so much.  Both Will Graysons in this book had to endure some kind of hardship with their friends.  For one Will Grayson he was constantly living in the shadow of his gay best friend Tiny.  He actually didn't classify him as his best friend because they just happened to be friends who were stuck together.  But things changed and he lost his best friend Tiny.  He then had the quote I mentioned above about how friend are always there.  And then there was the other Will Grayson who was burned by one of his friends when she pretended to be someone else online.  Over time he realized that he needed to somewhat mend things with her and move on from that part in life.  But the events that happened led him to a new friend and a new relationship.  Either way the message of the importance of friends was huge in this book.  I think that many of us take our friends for granted.  My best friend lives eight hours away from me in Austin.  We have had our fair share of fights over the phone.  And almost immediately I feel horrible for whatever has happened because I know that I took advantage of our friendship.  I do know that no matter the distance or events happening in life, that she will always have my back.  I know this is true because she called me from Europe when my dog passed away.  She talked with me for an extended period of time to make sure I was okay and had calmed down from the hyperventilating crying state she had first found me in.  Friends are everything in life.  You can have lots of them surrounding you, but you have to have one that you call a best friend.  Find him or her and never let them go.

While I loved the ties of friendship in this book, I really didn't like the way the book was written in an alternating format.  The even chapters were told by one Will Grayson and the odd chapters were told in lowercase by the depressed Will Grayson.  This made it easy to distinguish who was telling which part of the story.  John Green wrote from the perspective of the Will Grayson who was friends with Tiny, while David Levithan wrote from the lowercase perspective of Will Grayson.  I really hated having to bounce between two writing styles.  Thus far I have enjoyed works written by John Green, but I haven't enjoyed work by David Levithan.  I find his work dull and boring and it was no different in his chapters in this book.  I just didn't like jumping between the two opposite writing styles.  I felt like I was on a roller coaster that was a constant up and down.  I honestly could have read just John Green's chapters of this book and been completely satisfied.

All in all I enjoyed the friendship theme in this book, but really disliked how it was written.  I have come to accept I am not a fan of David Levithan's work.  I can't love all authors and their work.  I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.  This is definitely a young adult book and will be enjoyed by fans of John Green or David Levithan.