And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

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If  A Thousand Splendid Suns shows how the situation of Afghanistan affects women and Kite Runner shows how the situation of Afghanistan affects children, then the more recent book by Khaled Hosseini shows how the situation of Afghanistan affects families. The story moves from a boy who gets separated from his sister and moves from person to person as the story of the boy and his sister continues until the sister is able to meet him again around fifty or sixty years later. However, the stories do not  focus on just this narrative, but also others that show how life affects ourselves- a man who meets another man in love with him, the daughter who does not realize how “good” her life is, a man who meets and becomes friends with a girl whose life was ruined. As we travel from not only Afghanistan and the United States, but also Paris and Greece, we see how lives around the world affect each other.

I usually love novels by Khaled Hosseini; after all, I really did love A Thousand Splendid Suns. However, I will admit that this was not his best novel. Does this mean that it was a terrible novel? No way! Jumping narratives may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if it wasn’t for the fact that the characters knew each other, most of the chapters seem like stand alone ones. However, I do not like the fact that most of the chapters are stand alone, as some of them do not seem to have any kind of resolution. However, they do teach very important lessons that anyone can learn, such as being considerate of others, as everyone has a story.

Despite not being as good – in my opinion- as his other two novels, I would definitely recommend reading this book.

-Megan V

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini is available at the Mission Viejo Library.

 

The Hate U Give By Angie Thomas

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Movie lovers and book fanatics reunite again as Angie Thomas’ best selling book hits the theater on October 19th. The Hate U Give portrays the trials of a black teenage girl living in the ghetto, and how her race is treated. The protagonist, Starr, lives a double life between commuting to a predominately white private school in a privileged area to living in Garden Heights, an economically deprived community rich in black culture. Thomas attempts and succeeds at educating her readers on the mistreatment towards African Americans, and how to rise against it.

For me, I thoroughly enjoyed the read due to how different each character is and how it can potentially relate to almost every one of the readers by the meaningful characters throughout the story and their reactions when Starr becomes an activist. Thomas wastes no time and  starts her book off with the reason Starr raises her voice and stands up. Her long time friend Khalil is shot and killed by a white officer. There was no immediate justice for Khalil, he was quickly becoming forgotten until Starr realizes how this won’t stop unless someone fights for it.

A struggle for Starr was the fact that her double life was beginning to merge into one. This led to drama with her friends, growing family issues, and struggles with her boyfriend. Thomas perfectly describes the average American teenager- except they don’t usually have to fight for justice.

With all the trials and tribulations Starr goes through, she is strong. I am excited for the movie and to watch peoples reactions to not-so-uncommon-things even in this day and age and i look forward to the acknowledgment black individuals deserve.

-Mikayla O.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It can also be downloaded for free from Overdrive. 

Where I Live

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Where I Live by Brenda Rufener tells the story of high schooler Linden Rose. When you read high schooler, you may have pictured someone who has a typical life with friends, homework, and a family. Linden Rose has all of these things, but no family. Homeless for about a year, she lives at school; no one knows about her secret because she does not want anybody to know.  Her two closest friends, Ham and Seung, are under the impression that she lives with her constantly absent Father at a nearby trailer park. Linden works hard in school to keep up her guise in order to have a shot at the future.

Flying under the radar is all she wants to do, and she does just that until she meets Bea. On the surface, Bea is the popular girl everyone admires. However, she comes to school one day with a bloody lip; everyone thinks it is from her boyfriend, but she vehemently denies this. This is hard for Linden to fathom because her place in life is due to domestic violence because of the various men beating up her mother, who eventually died and left Linden to live with her grandma, but she also died. In her gut, Linden knows that she needs to tell Bea’s story, but is unable to do so without revealing some secrets of her own.

This story was an emotional journey, but one thing that the reader will keep doing is rooting for a better life for Linden. Linden is portrayed in a way that she feels to be real, and the reader is able to connect to her. The story was slow-moving, but I do not think there was any other way for the story to be told. By building the story slowly, but surely, the author was able to depict the journey of Linden. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a book that takes on a different about high schoolers.

– Anmol K.

Where I Live by Brenda Rufener is avaiable at the Mission Viejo Library.

Wonder by R. J. Palacio

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Wonder is a book about Auggie Pullman. Auggie was born with Treacher Collins Syndrome which affects bone development.  Because of this, Auggie is always the odd one out. On his first day at Beecher Prep, Auggie’s new middle school he gets a tour of the school with Jack, Julian, and some other kids. Straight away Julian is rude and mean towards Auggie, but Jack is nice. As the year progresses, the students get used to how he looks and befriend Auggie. But shortly after a rumor spreads that touching Auggie will give you the plague. This makes the kids avoid Auggie once again. Then Halloween, Auggie’s favorite holiday, comes around. Auggie decides to dress up as Bloody Scream. As he’s walking into class, he hears Jack say that if he looked like Auggie he would kill himself. Jack had no idea that Auggie heard him. Auggie stops talking to Jack, and so Jack asks Auggie’s new best friend Summer why he’s mad. Summer response is Bloody Scream. Soon Jack realizes that he had seen Auggie in a Bloody Scream costume standing at the door to the class. Jack immediately regrets what he said and apologizes to Auggie. Then one day Julian tells Jack that being friends with Auggie isn’t worth it. This makes Jack angry and so he punches Julian in the face.  Because of that incident, after winter break Julian turns all the boys in their grade against Jack and Auggie, launching some kind of war. After a while however, kids get tired of their little war and become friends with Auggie. The book ends at a three day nature retreat. One day at night Jack and Auggie go into the woods because Jack has to pee. While in the woods, Auggie and Jack run into kids from a different school. The kids make fun of Auggie until three kids from Beecher Prep that normally also make fun of Auggie stand up for him. Then later on back at the school Auggie wins an award for courage and kindness. Everyone wants to be Auggie’s friend now and he’s no longer the odd one out.

– Emilio V.

Wonder by R.J Palacio is available for checkout at the Mission Viejo Libary.

Avengers: Infinity War

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I went into the theatre to watch Infinity War super excited because I honestly just wanted to see how Marvel would finally kill some of its superheroes. And well, overall ways the movie kind of disappointed me. I still enjoyed the movie but after all of the hype, I was just expecting something different.

The entire movie was basically just action. It started with minimal setup and the rest of the movie seemed like action and violence with a small amount of storyline woven in. I just thought that with everything that Marvel had to work with, they could have written a better storyline. It wasn’t a bad storyline it just seemed to be very similar to all the other superhero movies that had been made, just blown up to a larger scale and the special effects were great. But, the amount of action was so overkill that after a while it almost got boring.

To really understand this movie, you really had to watch all the other Marvel movies that had recently came out because there was small pieces of the storyline that were explained in the other movies that the movie makers had expected the audience to know. Which, I think was kind of a good and bad thing. I found it cool that they could tie everything together but, the parts explained in the other movie where so minimal that I feel like it was more of a money grab. It was also kind of hard to remember all these parts because I hadn’t watched some of the other movies in a while which, made some of the storyline kind of confusing. So, I would definitely suggest going back and watching the other Marvel movies before seeing Infinity War.

Now I really liked just seeing all the characters together. I liked seeing how Marvel portrayed having all these different characters together and how they interacted with each other. It was nice seeing some of the more minor characters back in a movie again.

The best part of the movie, for me, was the fact that some of the superheroes finally died. I know that they aren’t probably going to stay dead, but it was about time that Marvel killed some of their superheroes. Though, the way they killed them was kind of disappointing.

Marvel did make us wait a long time for the end credit scene though.

I would still totally recommend this movie especially if you’re into superhero movies.  It was still a good movie and I had a lot of fun watching it.

– Ava G.

October Sky

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This movie follows Homer Hickam and friends in the town of Coalwood, West Virginia around 1957. His father, John Hickam, wants Homer to join him in the mines. However, after seeing Sputnik 1 shoot across the sky, Homer becomes determined to build a rocket of his own. Homer and his friends Quentin, Roy, and O’Dell set off on building this rocket. Though their first couple of rockets are utter failures, they continue trying to build and test out these rockets with the support of their teacher Miss Riley. However, their rocket building endeavors hit a snag when local authorities blame them for causing a forest fire, leading to the group of boys tearing down their launch site and ending further rocket testing. Undeterred, Homer is able to prove through calculations that he and his friends were not the cause of the forest fire and resume building rockets, eventually getting to the state science fair.

This movie was amazing in that it shows the power of passion for whatever may interest you. By putting in their all and never giving up in the face of failure, Homer and his friends were able to completely change the path of their future that washeld for them. The audience may ask themselves, “How is this even reasonable? There’s no way simple interest in rockets and entering a science fair can alter someone’s future this greatly!” However, this was in fact based off of a real story! This movie teaches a great story of following one’s dreams and the importance of family in one’s success. It is a great movie to watch, with an even greater lesson behind it.

-Kobe L.

Demigods and Magicians by Rick Riordan

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This is another amazing book by Rick Riordan!  Rick Riordan writes about many different mythologies such as Greek, Roman, Norse, and Egyptian. This books features Percy and Annabeth, a couple who are involved with Greek mythology and Sadie and Carter Kane, siblings who are involved in Egyptian mythology.  This isn’t a conventional book in that it is composed of three short stories and a sneak peek of one of his books about Norse mythology, The Hidden Oracle. 

The first story is about Percy and Carter meeting and their unusual fight against an enormous petsuchos, the gigantic crocodile son of the Egyptian crocodile god Sobek. The boys fought and were confused when they first meet as they figured out that more than just one mythology was real. They defeated the monster but felt as though they’d opened a door that wouldn’t be closed.

In the second story, Annabeth meets Sadie and they join forces to stop the past, present, and future from joining together so the Egyptian god of the Underworld, Serapis, can rise.  Annabeth eliminates the god’s future so he can’t exist anymore.  The girls exchange cell phone numbers and agree to contact each other only in emergencies.

In the third story, Percy, Annabeth, Carter, and Sadie all fight a long battle against Setne, an Egyptian magician who came back from the dead to try to mix Greek and Egyptian powers to try to turn himself into a god. After the four defeat him, they decide to keep everything to themselves and stay in contact.

I loved reading the sneak peek because it interested me enough to go check out the full book, which I loved.  There are more books in the series and it’s a great read.

All in all I enjoyed this book a lot.  It answers those questions you sometimes think about, like ‘what would happen if the characters in my two favorite book series met?’  I definitely recommend this book; although it helps to read the series about Percy and Annabeth and the series about Sadie and Carter beforehand because they help you understand the characters and their story.

– Kaitlyn S.

Demigods & Magicians by Rick Riordan is available at the Mission Viejo Library

Familiar by Liam Payne and J Balvin

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Now this song is a major Summer 18 banger. If you remember Despacito, this song has a similar vibe, Latin roots etc, yet this one is one hundred times better. Don’t believe me? Have a listen.

So in case you don’t know, Liam Payne is the most successful and most talented (according to vocal range and musical ability) ex-member of One Direction, in fact, he is the only male on the list of “The Only Good Vocalists Born After 1989.” Liam explained numerous times how he wanted all of his fans to have a song of his that they could relate to in a sense, he sang this one for all of his Latin fans. There is a bit of Spanish on this song sung by J Balvin.

This song is just such an upbeat, happy, danceable song. The opening notes just take you to summer and make you want to dance. Here’s a bit of the lyrics from the song.

Can we get famili-famili-famili-familiar? (familiar)
I’m feelin’, I’m feelin’, I’m feelin’, I’m feelin’ ya (familiar)
What’s on your mind for later tonight?
Let me be the one to fill it up
Can we get famili-famili-famili-familiar?
I’m feelin’, I’m feelin’, I’m feelin’, I’m feelin’ ya (feelin’ ya)
What’s on your mind for later tonight?
Let me be the one to fill it up
Can we get

You can just hear how smooth Liam’s voice really is in this song.  So go ahead and give it a listen, so in the Summer when everyone knows it and loves it, you can say you liked it before it was famous.

Plague by Michael Grant

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Image result for plague michael grantImagine a world in which everyday people gain supernatural abilities. A world without any adults or rules. A world where animals are starting to mutate horribly. A world surrounded by an impassable barrier, stopping anyone from entering… or getting out. Welcome to Michael Grant’s FAYZ, or Fallout Alley Youth Zone.

Every human above the age of 15 have disappeared, leaving the kids in a world that’s theirs for the taking. In this fourth installment of the Gone series, Drake has returned, bringing with him a terrifying concept of the perfect killing machine: beetles. They start off as invisible threats, but the true horror begins when you see a small pair of mandibles poking through the inside of your skin. They slowly begin to grow and emerge from your body, secreting a numbing liquid as they do so. When incubation is complete, they burst from inside you and eat your remains.

As if this and Drake weren’t bad enough, kids are coughing up a lung… literally. A plague is wiping out the population of Perdido Beach, a sickness that nothing can heal. Tensions are high as the fight for survival sweeps up some new faces and old, exposing new problems, and new solutions.

-Luke D.

Plague by Michael Grant is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. 

Stress to Service

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Stress:

Google says it’s “a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances”

According to psychology, it’s “uncomfortable emotional experience accompanied by predictable biochemical, physiological and behavioral changes”

And students agree stress is “AP exams, finals, CIF games and oh, those two projects I won’t be starting until the night before”

In the wee hours of the night, students strive to obtain the intense desire for success

And the wee hours of the night cook the perfect atmosphere for boiling stress.

A child, a baby: a mere fifteen, sixteen, seventeen year old

Persisting, working, sweating like a mule until their transcript shows all gold.

Who can expect a student to sleep eight hours a night but juggle five hours of work?

The expectations, I’d say, are more than enough to irk.

Every year the college acceptance rates drastically drop

And little boys and girls suddenly forget what it means to take a break

and just stop.

Tell me why students who sacrifice their health and sleep

Are still expected to be a lively teen and not weep.

Convince me that students are making the right decisions

In cheating on tests, just to get the “A” and fulfill their college envisions.

Persuade me that the education system is treating their students right

and brainwashing us to believe that a score of 5 is what makes us bright.

Let’s start to encourage using our passion and our voices

To stand up and help society make the right choices.

To be politicized and involved while we’re youthful, proud, and loud.

Time is running out, we can’t wait around.

Third world countries await our kindness, shelters demand our service, feminists deserve our support.

In all due respect, that is more important and influential than a chemistry lab report.

-Jessica T.