105 Ways to Give a Book

Girl, Girl, Girl

I wanted to start making my way through my young adult book pile by reading about girls. If I had tried, I couldn’t have picked up three books that were more different.

The Weight of the SkyThe Weight of the Sky is a book in verse written by Lisa Ann Sandell. Sarah is a high school junior living in Pennsylvania who feels isolated by her religion. When her parents offer her the opportunity to visit Israel to explore her Jewish roots, she accepts after finding a kibbutz is one of the options. At the kibbutz she acclimates to a life of hard farm work and fitting into a new social group. As she looks around a place where she finally feels at home, she finds many new challenges. The tone is serious, but lightened somewhat by her crushes on two of the boys she meets. I don’t think this book will have a huge appeal, but I enjoyed it.

Looking for Lucy BuickNot so with Looking for Lucy Buick, by Rita Murphy. Lucy was found as a baby in the back seat of a Buick her Italian uncles won gambling. She is taken into the family, and is doted on my her aunties, but treated like a commodity by her uncles. An accident allows her to leave the grip of her family and make a new life in the Midwest. The book has some quirky characters — quirkier sounding on the inside cover then in the text itself — and spiritual visits from the dead aunties. The book was strange and unappealing. I didn’t believe in any of characters, nor particularly care what happened to them. I felt like the book was trying too hard to be interesting, but just failing at every turn.

Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in LoveIt is lucky that Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love, by Maryrose Wood, was next on my list to pick me up. The writing is in the style of a ninth-grader, but a smart, sharp, funny, ninth-grader. Felicia and her friends go to the Manhattan Free Children’s School, a free-spirited school, where they learn in their own way and develop crushes on boys. But Felicia takes it to the next level by involving the object of her crush to participate with her on a science fair experiment about love. This book is a light read, and much more innocent then the title would have you believe. However, the title could reel in those teens and get them to actually read the book, which wouldn’t be a bad thing.

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