Graphic Novel Review: Sea Sirens

Sea Sirens: A Trot & Cap’n Bill Adventure (#1) by Amy Chu and Janet K. Lee, with lettering by Jimmy Gownley.
Viking, Penguin Random House, New York, 2019.
Middle grade graphic novel, 144 pages.
Lexile: 240L .
AR Level: 2.5 (worth 1.0 points) .

Vietnamese American Trot and her cranky one-eyed rescue cat spend a lot of time surfing at the beach where they mutually babysit her grandpa (he has dementia, she’s not quite old enough to be left alone yet). One day, she sneaks out to catch a wave and wipes out so badly they end up in an underwater world. At first she’s happy to avoid her mother’s rules, but after landing in an undersea war, will Trot and Cap’n Bill ever get home again?

Sea Sirens (Trot & Cap’n Bill Adventure #1) by Amy Chu, illustrated by Janet K. Lee, with lettering by Jimmy Gownley.

I had no clue what to expect when we first got these. Even the blurb does little to explain the awesomeness of Cap’n Bill (turns out cats can talk, we just don’t listen well). The realistic part of the story is also hard-hitting; Trot and Grandpa are grounded because one day she forgot to keep an eye out while surfing and he wandered away from his fishing resulting in a Silver Alert.

Review: Aristotle and Dante

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz.
Simon & Schuster BFYR, New York, 2014 (originally published 2012).
YA novel, 360 pages.
Lexile: HL380L ( What does HL mean in Lexile? )
AR Level: 2.9 (worth 8.0 points) .
NOTE: This book is intended for mature teens despite the reading level.

Two loner Mexican-American boys meet at the local swimming pool and strike up a friendship in the late 1980s. Dante is secure, if not always happy, in who he is, and has many talents while Aristole (or Ari) is struggling with the secrets and silence in his family – including those around his brother in prison and those he’s keeping himself. This novel takes place over two years.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz.

I’ve owned this book for at least five years now. It came highly recommended and has won many awards. The majority of reviews rave about it, yet I DNF’d it over and over. Finally read it all the way through… and still didn’t love it. So the poor thing went on my shelf of books that have been read but will be reread, reviewed, and generally dealt with later. Well “later” in this case is 2022, since clearing off that shelf is one of my main goals for the year.

So I had to reread it with an eye for why possibly this wasn’t the book for me, even if it was so clearly beloved by many other readers. Perhaps then a review could be useful even for those who adored this story. As there is already so much written about this novel elsewhere, I’m going to break from my usual formats somewhat and focus mainly on how this particular novel very much didn’t work for me – as perhaps that might help some people decide if it might be a good fit for them or not.

Review: City of Islands

City of Islands by Kali Wallace.
Katherine Tegen imprint, HarperCollins, New York, 2018.
MG fantasy, 328 pages.
Lexile:  not leveled
AR Level:  5.8 (worth 12.0 points)  .

Mara has been orphaned twice over – once when she survived her family’s shipwreck, and again when the bone mage who raised her was killed by a rival.  Now she’s a diver for the Lady of the Tides, but worried about finding herself homeless again if they keep coming up empty-handed.  A chance tip has her trying a new location where she finds a pile of strange spelled bones that don’t make sense.  Her dream is to study magic with the Lady, but instead she’s rewarded with a challenge – find a way to break in to the impregnable Winter Blade fortress island.

City of Islands by Kali Wallace.

Before I finished this book and started to write this review and checked the back flap of the book cover and got around to looking the author up, I knew that she would be white.  By the time I was halfway through the book it was obvious, and here’s why – the hair.  Wallace’s heroine, Mara, is a diver by profession.  She lives on a small island in an archipelago where most everyone grows up swimming and boating and generally transitioning from water to not with ease.