Author: ladante

Will is struggling with what to do after his brother was shot down in the street like a dog, in his head the same sentence repeats, follow the rules. Will’s brother, Shawn, was one of the only family he had left, and he was prepared to do as his brother always said, follow the Riles, Rule #1, no crying, no matter what, Rule #2, no snitching, you saw nothing, rule #3, always get revenge. Will was certain he knew who killed his brother, the man that once claimed to be his friend, so Will prepares to follow the rules Shawn told him, but he finds himself discovering things about his past, about his family, about the rules.

Long Way Down is a wonderful novel with hidden details and surprises, with nothing seeming as it is first presented. I really enjoyed reading this book and discovering small details that makes everything make sense, the characters are really well down, with none being like the other, each having there own unique problems. This book shines an interesting light of the lives of a gang members and their family. I didn’t really enjoy the way things went down, but every word of the book is essential for story and lesson learned. There were and still are parts of the book I struggle to understand but that makes the book a little more enjoyable/entertaining. This book is a easy, quick read, but it also contains little mysteries that need to be unravled and some of which is not given the answer to. This book can be easily enjoyed by any group of people, but I feel like it would be much more popular around the late teen groups.

Holes is a wonderful novel Written about a young boy named Stanley Yelnats who is wrongfully accused of stealing a pair of sneakers and sent to a Juvenile Detention Center called Camp Green Lake. Stanley is an overweight teen that doesn’t have many friends, and because his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grand-father didn’t keep his promise to the one-legged Gypsie Madame Zeroni his family is thought to be cursed. Camp Green Lake is a detention center where they have the teens rehabilitated by having them dig one 5×5 hole in the dessert everyday. What the Government didn’t know was that the lady that ran the place, Warden Walker, was only after a treasure that a outlaw buried there a long time ago.

Stanley goes through hell, figuratively and literally, with being tormented by the Wardens assistant, Mr. Sir, and having to spend all day outside in the sun digging a hole big enough for a grave. A camper called Zero seemed to like Stanley, with only really communicating with him. Stanley and them become friends and they strike up a deal, since Zero couldn’t read or write Stanley would teach him if Zero helped mdig his hole. As Zero and Stanley both love their arrangement the other campers find it to be unfair because they had to dig the whole of their hole while Stanley got help, with all the hostility from the others they both end up leaving Green lake and unintentally unknots the mistakes of their past.

I really enjoyed this book, it is told in both the story of Stanley and his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grand-father so we learn a lot from his and another campers past. There are so many surprises in the novel so it isnt so predictable and it keeps the reader laughing. I feel this book is great for any reader, is has a very interesting storyline and it is a very funny novel. Its not a very complicated book so it may not be read by a lot of high level readers, but it is also just a good night time novel to relax and enjoy.

Aint Burned All the Bright is quite a fascinating book, it talks about the life of a black family living through the beginning of the pandemic and the significant BLM movement. It’s hard to summarize a book like this in such a way since if you wrote all the words down you would get a page, and the sentences all seem coded. Even though parts are hard to understand I feel that’s what adds to the look into the struggles of a black life, you try to explain these experiences through your eyes, but your audience doesn’t understand a thing because they haven’t gone through it themselves, it’s like reading in a different language. I personally would have to say I love this book, being a man of color I feel like I have a real connection with the book, it reaches out to me in a way the news can’t do, it doesn’t just tell a story it tells a library of them. I feel not many would enjoy the book because of the way it is written and the story being told, so instead of an age group liking it I feel it would take a particular type of person to really grab what this book is trying to say.

In this article, Kelly Jensen dives deep into the lives of our gen Z activists fighting for our environmental health. The main focus isn’t on climate change itself but rather on the people who take charge in the fight against plastic being sent overseas. The two people she focuses on are Hannah Testa and Jamie Margolin, each young girls in their late teens who takes a look at what is happening around the world and decide change is necessary. The author seems to enjoy what these ladies are doing for our environment because she goes on to talk about Youth to Power, a book about Moglins life growing up and fighting these things.

I have a similar look on this issue that’s presented, I do think that it is important to bring change to how we do things in order to help our environment. With climate change and global warming, Earth will be unrecognizable within a matter of decades, so it is good to see the new generation trying to make it better for the ones that come after us.

The Hunger Games is a very captivating novel and series, with the book following a girl that volunteered to fight for her life in an arena in order to save her sister. Katniss Everdeen was a poor girl growing up in a failed society in a monarchy, with the worth of people depending on what district you were born into. When a sick game created by her capital threatened to take her sister to a game of death Katniss stood up to protect her. Katniss is one out of 24 children sent to an arena to fight to the death over a span of a couple weeks, with the threat of starvation, dehydration, and mutts (genetically modified creatures) Katniss has to do things no one would dream of to be the one allowed to go home to her family while not letting herself be changed by her evil king and failed society.

I really enjoyed the book myself, there isn’t too much mystery but you never really know what’s coming, the book puts you in the arena with the contestants, with everyone not knowing whether a spear will fly from the bushes or if there is someone behind a tree waiting to water the trees with someone’s blood. Seeing how these games changed all the contestants except for Katniss was wonderful, she showed respect for those that died and gave mercy to those that suffered. Even straight to the end, Katniss showed that the games didn’t control who she was by controlling the games herself. I feel like this book would be highly popular for those in high school and above, children may not like it due to the death and sadness, but those who are more mature would definitely be hooked by the twist and turns of everything that happens.

Veronica Roth writes Insurgent, an action-packed novel continuing from the book Divergent. Following the Character Tris (Beatrice) Prior, Roth takes us through a roller coaster of emotional and informal loops, teaching lessons and keeping the reader engaged. She shows how people who are different aren’t always different in a bad way when Tris fights her entire corrupted government to show that her being different is what everyone really needs.

I am personally a big fan of Roth’s Divergent series, but Insurgent is my personal favorite, the way Roth portrays Tris and the other Divegents throughout the novel is perfect, it shows how they are different from everyone and yet so similar, showing that just because someone is different doesn’t mean they can’t be like everyone else. Tris’s character is always learning and improving from every single point of the book, from jumping off the train in the beginning the revealing the shocking truth about Divergents at the end, which makes me like her character so much more, it separates her from everyone else, including her fellow Divergents. Roth writes in such a way that you cant quite put together the whole story until you read the last page, always leaving a mystery and questions.

I think anyone can really enjoy the book, since there isn’t one clear genre you can put this in the hands of anyone. There is romance, action, mystery, survival, and a lot more, there’s very little to not like about this book. I do think teens would enjoy this book, and the series, the most though, with it following two teens doing things every high schooler has dreamt of at least once it is a great book to read to escape from the world.