All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team

This book was mesmerizing and riveting and very informative. Christina Soontornvat takes a huge media story that I feel like most people probably heard about and makes it seem like an entirely new, fresh, nail-biting mystery. I mean, the very title makes it pretty obvious that all thirteen boys are going to make it out alive, but I still was nervous that it would actually happen until it did! That's good non-fiction story-telling right there. I also appreciate that the author tried to highlight everyone who contributed, especially those (mostly Thais) who didn't take the spotlight and do the daring cave scuba-diving but who provided materials, food, vehicles, prayers and days of endless service to make everything happen. Christina for the double-win in 2020!! (She is the first author, by the way, to win two honors in the same year for a fiction and a non-fiction book. And both were really good.)

Read it! Even if you watched the news coverage while it was happening, I promise you will be shocked by everything you didn't know.

When You Trap a Tiger

 I did not enjoy When You Trap a Tiger. I thought it was slow and confusing and I never felt connected to any of the characters (Ricky was okay, I guess). It was honestly a bit of drudgery just to finish it. Apparently, the book's genre is "magical realism," which I discovered while reading reviews on goodreads to figure out why people liked it. Basically, the main character (Lily) is totally convinced that she sees and talks to a giant tiger and that doing what the tiger says (specifically, releasing stories from bottles) will save her halmoni (Korean grandma) from the brain cancer that is killing her. I kept thinking, "Wait, is she actually going down into the basement at 2 am to talk to a nonexistent tiger? Is she going to wake up and realize it's a dream to help her cope with grief and loss and her mom and sister mistreating her?" But she never wakes up, folks. She just talks to a giant, magical tiger the whole book long and then her halmoni dies and somehow the tiger helped her through it (the tiger is connected to the Korean folktales her halmoni told her growing up, but nothing was ever clear to me). 

Ok, things that didn't make sense:

1. The giant magical tiger Lily talks to.

2. How Lily's mom could uproot the entire family to move to a new state and NOT tell her kids that they're moving because her mom is dying of brain cancer. Like, why would she not have shared that with them? So confused.

3. Sam, Lily's teenaged sister, is a pessimistic jerk, but then hooks up with a super nice friendly cool girl over a period of 3 days (the entire duration of the book is about a week and Sam doesn't meet Jensen until day 4) and she sneaks out in the middle of the night to hang out with her and NOBODY has a problem with it, which makes me feel like the book is pushing an agenda.

4. Sam is mean to Lily and her mom all the time and that really never gets resolved.

5. Seriously, the tiger. What? Is Lily actually seeing a tiger or not? And if she is, WHAT?? And if she isn't, WHAT??

A Wish in the Dark

My favorite character in all of literature is the Bishop from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables (Ella from Ella Enchanted is a close second 😏). His compassion completely unravels me and his act of Godlike mercy in Jean Valjean's life has helped me understand Christ's love more than any other fictional character. So, when Father Chan first enters Pong's life, I was totally hooked on A Wish in the Dark. "He's just like the Bishop!" I thought. "Come to think of it, Pong is a lot like Valjean," I so cleverly observed. Then the moment when Pong is debating whether to release Nok from the barn jail cell, I was like, "Wait a friggin' second. This IS Les Mis! Did anyone else notice this? Am I the first to discover this amazing connection? Is the author sneaking in these hidden Hugo gems only for true Mizzies?" At this point, for the first time, I decided to read the blurb on the inside of the book's dust jacket . . . yep, it says her book is a twist on Les Mis. So every single person who reads the book knows this fact before they even start reading and I really did think I was so clever. 🤦

Also, though not to the same irresponsible degree, I thought I may be unique in noticing all the Thailand imagery and geography. On the first page when she describes the Chattana River, I immediately pictured the Chao Phraya river. When she calls the temple Wat Singh, though, I knew I had not discovered any kind of secret. Sure enough, the dust jacket blurb also reveals that this is a "Thai-inspired fantasy world." 

But what a combination, right? A modernish fantasy Les Mis story with non-suicidal tweener protagonists set in Thailand? Can you even imagine a lovelier premise? 

It really was as magical as it sounds.

Box: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom

 

I don't know how I've never before heard the story of Henry "Box" Brown who crammed himself into a box in Virginia and had his friend ship the box to the anti-slavery office in Philadelphia AND IT WORKED! I told my husband about his journey (during which he is placed upside down TWICE!) and he told me that being crammed into a teeny space and put upside down for hours at a time would be his worst nightmare. I thought that was an interesting sentiment because I felt very differently while reading this book. Slavery sounds much, much worse. Losing my spouse and kids because a slave-owner didn't keep his promise and sold them to a place I will never be able to find them would be a much greater nightmare. Taking a cramped and painful ride in a box for a few days actually sounds like a cake walk compared to the rest of Henry's life. 

The text of this very short book was written in "sixains" - poems with six lines - to represent the six sides of a box. While I appreciate the geometry connection, I didn't find the text particularly engaging and actually thought the poems made the story hard to follow.

Final Feeling: I am so glad that Henry Brown successfully escaped slavery through his own ingenuity and inspiration from God. But the fact that he never sees his wife Nancy and his four kids again makes this story a tragedy for me. 

Fighting Words

 You know that part in the book when Naveah recommends a book to Della about a family that has to live in their car and she reads it and thinks it's meh and tells that to Naveah and Naveah gets a little upset because it meant so much to her? I *think* that's how 11-year-old me would have reacted had Della recommended her story to me. Like, I don't think she (me) would have been able to relate to the story enough that it would have resonated. And I know 11-year-old me would have been absolutely horrified, scandalized, mortified by Della's and Suki's experience with Clifton. These, of course, are only conjectures based on what I remember of myself 25 years ago. I can tell you that 36-year-old me thought this book was important and could be very useful to kids & adults everywhere. I am still disgusted by any story of sexual abuse, but I have (sadly, sadly) grown accustomed to them. 

I was very impressed by the way Della stands up to Trevor near the end and tells him with eloquence and assertiveness not to touch her when she doesn't give permission. Honestly, I was left wondering, "But could an 11-year-old even DO that?" I literally couldn't do that as a 20-something. I still remember the first time I actually used my words to say no. I was 27. Want to hear the story? It's short. I was at a friend's house during a snowstorm playing games with several people. A guy there made fun of me for something and I got fake mad (I was a little annoyed, but not mad) and approached him to respond. He was sitting on the couch and I was wearing a knee-length pencil skirt. I tripped and, due to limited mobility caused by my skirt, I landed face-first on the couch with my stomach on this guy's lap. Almost as an instinct, he spanked me. I got up, grabbed him by the lapels (literally) and screamed, "Don't you EVER touch my butt again. Don't you DARE touch my butt." He covered his face with his hands and said, "I'm sorry" over and over again until I stopped screaming. So, yeah, I found my voice. Eventually. As an 11-year-old, though? Not a chance.  But maybe, just maybe, if I had read this book at that age, I could have. 

P.S. Della using versions of "snow" for swear words was absolutely hilarious.

P.P.S. I have had foster-parent thoughts running through my head the last 48 hours since I finished this. Could I do it? A part of me wants to.

We Dream of Space

I am slightly ashamed to admit that I did not connect the space shuttle launch they talked about the ENTIRE book to the Challenger disaster until the very end (even though they called it the Challenger the whole time and the date January 1986 is literally written at the top of every page). I think I actually enjoyed the book more in my ignorance, though, because the climax of the book was a total shock to me (my actual thoughts: "The space shuttle exploded?! No way! Poor Bird. Wait, is this an actual occurrence in history? Oh my goodness, the Challenger!" *face palm*).

We Dream of Space was a good read. I did feel anxious for a large part of the novel because Cash and Fitch's situations seemed so bleak and their parents' discord was so potent. But their baby steps toward progress in the final chapters was just enough to feel totally hopeful for their ultimate redemption.

Back to the Challenger. I read about Judith Resnik after finishing the novel and she really was so cool. What a tragedy this shuttle explosion was . . . and I never mourned it until now. I thought it was fascinating to learn in the author's notes how few people actually watched this tragedy unfold live. No social media, cable news was rare and most people were at work. The one major exception was American children! NASA had arranged for schools to have satellite broadcast set up so students could watch the first teacher launch into space. That was honestly probably very jarring, very traumatic for many kids (I guess if they understood what was happening). Erin Entrada Kelly showed that well through Bird's reaction. 

Biggest Takeaway: I want to be a better parent.