Perhaps our colleague suffers from a disease where she doesn’t recognize faces (sounds familiar) when she said she couldn’t meet with other people from her school. Walk towards our voice Arlene! Or maybe she was stuck in a tree and couldn’t see us behind the bear. We don’t judge, well, maybe we do.
Dia and I thought we agreed with Arlene but came to the opposite conclusion. We can give Bottle Creek to lots of reluctant readers but it doesn’t make it the better book! For years I’ve told young writers to have their characters solve their own problems realistically. Turns out that is not advice Cort ever got. Once you are swimming in a hurricane away from a boar vs. snake epic battle realism is out the window.
However, I liked that all characters in Holding Up the Universe had flaws. Libby who has the most visible flaw seemed to be able to confront it more easily than Jack who believed hiding his flaw was the better alternative. Dia has used parts of this book in her class for quick writes and found the discussion they brought up (thinking fat girl rodeo and Jack’s brother’s purse) to be strong and thoughtful. She ranks this as a 5/5 read. For these reasons we both vote Universe. That means with a vote of 3 to 1 and Tammy letting us know she couldn’t even finish Bottle Creek. The Universe moves on!
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