They'll Bleed You Dry: Book Review of Cutting Teeth

 

Cutting Teeth by Chandler Baker

Gratitude

Thank you to Goodreads Giveaways and Flatiron Books for the review copy of Cutting Teeth by Chandler Baker.

Description

There are many unglamorous things about motherhood, including so many things that have to do with bodies: breastfeeding, changing diapers, potty training, etc., etc., etc. In Cutting Teeth Chandler Baker takes it next level with a preschool class afflicted with Renfield’s syndrome, the term used for people who feel compelled to drink blood. For the fours class at Little Academy, it is the blood of their parents, particularly their mothers, that they crave.

Amidst the drama of the parents as they struggle with their children’s needs, their preschool teacher is murdered. For Rhea, Darby, and Mary Beth, who all have children in the class, the drama is just beginning.

The book alternates between the points of view of the three as they struggle to make it through the days. Rhea is a single mother struggling to launch her business, Darby is racked by second-guessing herself, and Mary Beth is the powerhouse room mom and fundraiser for her church who takes care of everyone’s needs but her own.

Cutting Teeth is really about the sacrifices, fears, and resentment that accompany motherhood. It highlights how mothers still tend to be the primary caregivers and fathers have more social freedom. The literal draining of blood is a metaphor of the expectations and responsibilities placed on mothers to the point of great mental and emotional strain. To that degree, the book does depict how the stress and obligations can feel as though parts of you are being taken away. 

Would I Teach This Book?

Would I teach this book? I can see myself teaching Cutting Teeth in a literature class that focuses on gender or a contemporary literature class. It would be interesting to teach a class on depictions of mothers in literature or attitudes toward motherhood in literature. Cutting Teeth depicts some of the difficulties of motherhood and the almost compulsive desire to protect our children. The point of the book is not to give a balanced view of the experience of being a modern mother, but to highlight how much is asked of mothers and how terribly draining daily life can be. As it is still difficult to explain the difficulties of motherhood and people can be especially judgy about mothers discussing how sometimes we have moments of actual distaste or dislike for motherhood. It would be interesting to explore how literature treats these themes in a class or book club.

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Teen Boy Vibes Like a Bottle of Axe: Book Review of Ready Player One

 

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Description

In Ready Player One, Wade wasn’t born into a life full of glitter and confetti. He’s an orphan and his aunt, who is supposed to be his guardian, takes his food vouchers and lets him fend for himself. The entire world has crumbled—the natural resources have been used up, leaving pollution and poverty. He was so unpopular at his school, he switched to virtual school. But in virtual reality, inside the OASIS, a place where humanity now goes to escape the scarred real world, Wade is Perzival, and there he is free to geek out and spend his time searching for the “egg.”

When the creator of the OASIS died, he left behind a quest, and the first person to complete the quest and find the egg will inherit his kingdom—both the OASIS and his real life fortune. After five years of the world puzzling over the first clue, Wade has caught a break. With the break comes fame, danger, and the possibility of romance.

All About the 80s

Much of the book centers around the characters searching through the dead man’s book of his obsessions, and then searching through his obsessions for clues. His obsessions, and now the characters’ obsessions, revolve around 1980s pop culture. There are references to movies, music, books, and many, many, many video games. The book is largely a love letter to 80s pop culture--it is strange to imagine such a widespread obsession with the past that the current trends are left mostly for new technology and not the creation of art.

For a person not well-versed in the 80s, the book might not be as interesting. It would be much harder to accept endless references to Family Ties, Rush, and Black Tiger if a person did not have a clue about any of it. With the exception of the video game titles, with which I was unfamiliar with most, I recognized and could follow a lot of the references, though I imagine for a younger crowd it would be like reading an alien version of People magazine.

Would I Teach This Book?

Would I teach this book? Ready Player One has some pretty intense teen boy energy, not just in the choice of geeky stuff, but also in the vibes towards the love interest. The references to sexuality and male and female bodies also fall into this vibe. I found the book a bit off-putting, compared to other dystopian novels I have read. The book also feels a bit longer than it needed to be--I think a good editor could shave at least fifty pages off.

I can see the appeal for people who grew up in and around the 1980s, but most current students in any stage of their education will probably not be familiar with that lore. It could make for good discussions about first books and how to handle pop culture in literature, but there are other books that would do the job of both better.

The book is a solid meh, and unless students expressed their own interest in the book, it would not be my first choice.


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Shipping Out: Review of Namesake

 

Namesake by Adrienne Young

Gratitude

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and Goodreads Giveaways for the Fable trilogy, of which Namesake is the second. I am enjoying reading my way through!

Description

In Namesake, Adrienne Young starts us off where Fable left off, following up on the cliffhanger ending. We soon learn that Fable has a grandmother and her grandmother, Holland, is the cornerstone of the gem trade in the Unnamed Sea, where she holds court in the most affluent city. Fable’s grandmother wants to pull Fable off of her ship, the Marigold, and use her for her own purposes.

Fable lives in a world governed by sea trade and poverty. Many are cutthroat, sometimes literally, because that is what they need to do to survive. After being abandoned by her father on the most dangerous island of all, Fable has finally found a family in the crew of the Marigold, including West, with whom she had built a passionate relationship. She will do whatever she can to keep her place on the Marigold.

Will Fable’s father come through and help her? Is West the man she thinks he is or is he the man that everyone else says he is? Will Fable be able to scheme her way from treacherous Holland?

If you enjoyed Fable, you will likely enjoy the Namesake.

Would I Teach This Book?

Would I teach this book? Sequels are not easy to teach without the books that come before. While reading Fable is not a requirement for reading Namesake it certainly helps. It might work for a class on the YA genre or YA fantasy. To teach it in middle school might be difficult because of some mild spicy content—certainly it would depend on the school.

Overall, I would be more likely to teach Fable than Namesake. The series relies, in part, on our love for Fable and our rooting for her to come from the bottom up. Somehow, now that Fable has worked herself up a bit from the bottom, she is not quite as compelling. She does not seem terribly bothered by her problematic power moves—certainly, she cares about what her crew will think, but less about how her choices will impact other people. I am all for girl bosses, but with the questions that are brought up against her father and West, what moral questions does she have for herself?

To be fair, the business deals that Fable sets up are not so violent as West’s or her father’s—but I am wondering about the lack of any moral culpability, beyond the concerns that Fable has for the Marigold’s crew.

The plot also relies on a few moments when Fable is wrong about other characters’ intentions. The turnaround feels cheap, and Fable’s reactions do not seem to equal what the emotional fallout felt like it should be.


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Come on Baby, Don't Light That Fire: Book Review of Firestarter

 

Firestarter by Stephen King

Gratitude

Thank you to Montgomery County Public Libraries for making Firestarter by Stephen King readily available to the public absolutely free. 

Description

In the Stephen King classic Firestarter, Andy is on the run with his young daughter, trying to escape the clutches of the Shop, a government agency created to investigate psychic abilities. Both Andy and his daughter Charlie are able to do things with their minds that sound impossible—Andy can manipulate people’s thoughts and Charlie can start fires. While Andy’s abilities are small, Charlie’s are tremendous, so great that the Shop will stop at nothing to capture her.

And Andy will stop at nothing to save her.

Firestarter focuses mostly on Andy’s point of view and goes into an extended flashback to explain the government tests that forever altered Andy and Vicky, the woman he would later marry and who would also become Charlie’s mother. The experience is wild and somehow more difficult to accept than Charlie’s abilities to start fires--perhaps because the government is a known entity and that kind of cover up would be difficult to imagine.

A Product of Its Time

The plot relies heavily on the existence of the Shop, an organization within the government which seems to be simultaneously above the law and beholden to government budgets and restrictions. The belief that the government would experiment unethically on its citizens is one that has at least some support in history. It is interesting how we, as a country, trust and distrust the machinations of our government. We pride ourselves on our liberty and also assume the government is up to no good, often acting contrary to the interests of the people. Firestarter was first published in 1980, long before Q-Anon and all the fears of how the Covid pandemic was handled, but not that distant from the Vietnam War and the unsettling reticence to accept the changes demanded during the Civil Rights Movement. How would Firestarter be received during the current political climate, I wonder?

As the only character noted for his ethnicity, it is disturbing that John Rainbird is the villain of the book. Rainbird is a Native American who was scarred during the Vietnam War, including having lost an eye. He's also a hired assassin who is especially interested in helping with Charlie’s capture. No other character’s ethnicity is noted in the entirety of the book, and the edition I read is close to 500 pages. This is not the first time, nor the last time, that King has used ethnic or racial identity in a questionable way.

Would I Teach This Book?

Would I teach this book? I could make a case for teaching Firestarter in a class on science fiction or a themed class on super powers or the Stephen King course I am building in my brain, waiting for the opportunity to teach it. Firestarter is entertaining and has some adrenaline to it, so it is certainly a good choice for a leisure read. And again, I am also curious about the commentary on the secret and ominous workings of the government, which can only be imagined by the common folk who will never know the truth. 

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Were You Team Jordan or Team Joey? Book Review of Pretending to Dance

 

Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain

Description

Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain brings us the story of Molly, a thirty-eight year old lawyer who has not been able to have a child. While Molly thinks of her marriage as loving and honest, she has some big secrets from her childhood that she hasn’t shared with her husband, including that her mother murdered her father. As the couple begins the process to adopt a baby, memories rush back to Molly, especially the summer she was fourteen, the summer when her father died. Her cousin’s emails pop up in her inbox, adding to the weight of the memories and the pain of the betrayal that made her leave her family behind.

Molly’s story unfolds in both the past and the present with chapter titles that signal where they take place, San Diego for the present and Morrison Ridge for the past. The transitions are clear and Chamberlain does a good job of making the voice feel authentic for both the Molly of the past and the Molly of the present.

Pretending to Dance focuses on Molly’s emotional journey, and not just facing her past, but facing her present, as well. She and her husband are seeking an open adoption, an arrangement that makes Molly anxious. When she and her husband adopt a baby, will the baby love the birth mother more than her? Will jealousy haunt her relationship with her child? When Molly communicates her fears with her husband, it seems that they are not in perfect harmony about how they want the adoption to go. Her concerns about the adoption feel realistic, as does her anxiety over the past.

Would I teach this book? 

Would I teach this book? Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain was a recent pick for the book club I just joined. More of the conversation focused on past Molly and her experiences as a teenager than adult Molly. It is easy to feel sympathy for little Molly and all the things she was helpless over or didn’t understand. Adult Molly seems a bit less mature for her age and her story is not quite as compelling. I wonder whether another structure may have served the story better, even though the telling is already clean and consistent.

It was a decent choice for a book club, but I don’t think that I would use it in my classroom. The story feels a bit bloated, like at least fifty pages could be pruned back in order to give it its full emotional blooming.

The nostalgia, though, was strong, and being brought back to the days of New Kids on the Block and the intense crushing on Joey McIntyre and listening to the album Step by Step ad nauseum. I was never a Johnny Depp kind of girl like Molly, but it was understandable, at the time.     

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My Body, My Choice: Book Review of Looking for Jane

 

Looking for Jane: A Novel by Heather Marshall

Description

In Looking for Jane, Heather Marshall takes on the history of reproductive rights in Canada. The book alternates between the stories of three women:

Evelyn did not choose to be in a home for pregnant, unwed women. When her fiancé died before they were married, neither of them knew that Evelyn was already pregnant. Without any discussion with her, Evelyn's parents abandon her at the maternity home, where she has no rights and no way to protect herself. Or her baby.

Angela wants a baby. She has been undergoing fertility treatments and recently miscarried, a devastating loss from which she is trying to come back from so that she can try again. With each cycle, she tells herself that this will be the one.

Nancy goes with her cousin to support her as she has a back alley abortion, an experience that will change the course of her life.

As their stories unfold, the complexities of women being prevented from making choices about their own bodies is illuminated. Marshall has clearly spent time researching the subject in order to discover the various ways in which people protested the previous ban on abortion in Canada.

 

A Relevant Story 

Of course, the subject in the United States feels especially relevant, as women in several states currently lack reproductive rights. How surreal it is to think about how many years backward we have traveled with the repealing of Roe V. Wade. Looking for Jane is the October read for my book club, and I look forward to discussing it. The issues involved set up the possibility of good conversation, as most women will identify with at least some part of the story.

Would I Teach This Book?

Would I teach Looking for Jane? It would be a good pick for a contemporary fiction class, reading politics in literature, or a gender or queer studies literature course. It would fit right in with a Women’s Lit course I took in college that included books like The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler and Wit by Margaret Edson. I remember that course fondly, and the rousing discussions we had. One of the great values of a literature course or a book club is that to the readers, one book becomes a conversation with another. And you know what? Readers love that kind of talk.

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First Slowly, Then All at Once: Book Review of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

 

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba

Description

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer is William’s story of how he not only built a windmill, but was able to bring power, in more ways than one, to his home country of Malawi.

William loved to go to school. School was a great privilege, as it was costly. His parents did everything they could to pay for his education—until they couldn’t. When a famine hit his home, there was no money, not even for food. As William describes it, the famine was as terrifying and deadly as a tornado or other natural disaster, but the famine took longer to kill people. Eventually, the famine ended, but the consequences lingered, including the economic impact. With no monetary reserves left, and the family only beginning to have enough food, there is not enough money for William to go to school.

He tries to sneak in, but it is eventually detected. He tries to learn from a friend who is still in school, but it is not enough. Eventually, with the hope that he will not fall too far behind his peers, William goes to the library. It is a small library, with only a few shelves, but William finds books that he can read. As he is reading, he gets the idea to build a windmill.

Most of the book focuses on William’s journey to build the windmill. There are many steps in building it, beginning with a dynamo, which allows William to create electricity from another form of energy. At first, it is through pedaling a bicycle. Over time, William gathers parts as he can find them--mostly discarded pieces, but there are times when he must scratch up the money for something that can only be bought. Through imagination, experimentation, and perseverance, he is able to create a working windmill.

Eventually, word of William’s windmill gets out. Journalists come to interview him and to take pictures of his windmill. A blogger hears about it, and writes an article, which spreads word of him further. William becomes a TED fellow. From there, people and groups help him so that he is able to gain more education and knowledge.

It is an incredible story, but also frustrating. Why can’t help come from within? Why does the money have to come from outside of Malawi, even outside of Africa? The disparity in wealth and resources is unconscionable.

Would I Teach This Book?

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a choice book for a non-fiction unit I teach. Students chose it, but it was not nearly as popular as the sports choices.

Those who did choose the book did not seem nearly as inspired as the book is meant to be. To think that someone would work so hard to achieve such a goal is something I find amazing--but an American middle school student might find this further outside the bounds of their imagination. With such blessings as running water, electricity, and education, it is hard to fathom what life might be without these things. However, even if a book cannot bring the understanding entirely home when they are an adolescent, it may plant an idea that they will return to later and it might inspire them to do good things.


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