Reviewed by Kathryn Leonard-Peck
In this hybrid review, Leonard-Peck combines poetry and critical reading to map the emotional landscape of this stunning YA novel, which as a 2019 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection and a 2018 New York Public Library Best Book for Teens. For more reviews that challenge the form, click here.
Continue readingHumbled by where we are in the scheme of things
Human time as opposed to some other kind of time
We are all hostages to time
I listened carefully
Thinking about speed and slowness,
time can feel quick and expansive
I spent a lot of time noticing
tiny, beautifully made arrows of calcium carbonate,
I could hear it eating.
The velocity of the ill, however, is like the velocity of the snail
I am going to withdraw from the world
We so often treat things as other
In a box in a box
This poem was created using quotes from the book and notes from our Drizzle Summer Book Club discussion on The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. It was written collaboratively by Patricia Steckler, Claudine Mininni, Sarena Brown, and Rebecca Valley. You can find the writer bios here. To learn more about the book that inspired the poem, check out our micro review.
How long after he was gone would Yadriel be dreaming
The fullness of the family
they didn’t just take all pain
let people feel grief
it was important
to honor all those who make this community strong
“¡Mi querido!”
mourn
loss of a loved one
Why
Growth isn’t a deviation
growth is more
a sphere instead of a line
This poem was created using quotes from the book and notes from our Drizzle Summer Book Club discussion on The Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas. It was written collaboratively by Ingrid Carabulea, Rey Katz, Tracy Vasquez, Sarena Brown, and Rebecca Valley. You can find the writer bios here. To learn more about the book that inspired the poem, check out our micro review.
Reviewed by Amy Spaughton
With a global pandemic and lock-down looming, I, like many others right now, depend on books to take me elsewhere. Anywhere will do; the past, the future, a completely new world… Books that travel through time and space allow us to understand our current world from a safe distance. Candice Carty-Williams’ Queenie, however, shows us that escapism is not the only way out. This book follows Queenie, a young Black woman in present day South London, as she navigates her relationships to love, race, and mental health.
I’ll admit, I was initially resistant. Being brought firmly back to my hometown of South London and to this particular reality felt harsh. But then the protagonist, Queenie, mentions things like Tumblr and Twix bars and it’s oddly comforting. It feels like reading a diary. Her unyielding and often comic honesty is as refreshing as it is poignant. In honour of this intimacy, I have decided to present my review as a diary.
Continue readingReviewer Madeleine Nowak created this gorgeous visual review as a complement to her written piece on The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper — check out the full piece here!
Reviewed by Bianca Glinskas
Walt Whitman once described a poem as, “a place to enter, and in which to feel.” While reading Kate Partridge’s Ends of the Earth, I experienced this profound sense of transportation, and emotional surrender–the escapism and vulnerability Whitman refers to. Ends of the Earth is a portal which delivers readers into a poet’s imagination: the inventive, intangible tedium of the poet’s inner-workings, which transform attempts to make sense of the world into an art.
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