I am posting for Jay who is off to England with our kids for Spring Break.
Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly is really two stories combined. The mystery of the key is interwoven to reveal life at the time of the French Revolution and maintains its importance right to the end. However, the love life component seems quite contrived. At times, the author tries hard to elevate the emotional welfare of the protagonist in hopes of connecting them to the past, but they just don’t work that well. Overall, this novel was a good read for grade 9 students.
Every You, Every Me by David Levithan is an unusual photographic novel where pictures (apparently worth a thousand lies) are used throughout to promote a mystery. Sometimes they even warrant their own alphabetical subsection within a chapter. For example, in Chapter 9 the pictures 9J, 9K, 9L, and 9M are sequential elements of the chapter. On each page, lines of text are crossed out which may or may not (you may get used to it) impact the flow of your reading. The question in this novel is how well do we really know the people we interact with on a daily basis. It is unbalanced in style, probably not a popular read for many students, and somewhat disturbing.
I pick Revolution to go forward.
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