It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

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This book is on our Mock Newbery list.

I was intimidated after hearing another teacher from our school talk about this book. She said it was a book for thinkers and compared it to A Wrinkle in Time (which I have read twice and still don’t like!) But I did pick this book up eventually and... I really enjoyed it! I will say I enjoyed the first half better than the rest. Once they ended up in the south and the torture began and the really far out there fantasy kicked in, I was less into it. Overall, very enjoyable and I’m glad I read it.

Genre: Fantasy

AR level: 6.0

Grade appropriate: 5th and up

RATING BREAKDOWN:

Overall: 4/5

Creativity: 5/5-- Very unusual! Maps of memories. I cannot even imagine how you would come up with this!

Characters: 5/5-- I loved Sophia and Theo. Shadrack was almost too good to be true but I loved him!

Engrossing: 4/5-- It was totally engrossing in the beginning. Like I mentioned earlier, the end got really into really deep fantasy and it wasn’t quite as engaging for me as the beginning was.

Writing: 5/5-- One of my biggest pet peeves about Fantasy is when the author takes a ton of time to explain the world they’ve built. It drives me crazy. While the world in this book was very different from our own I never felt bogged down in explanation. It was handled very naturally!

Appeal to kids: 3/5-- I’m afraid this will only be engaging for our big readers. If a kid has not read fantasy or if they are not an expert reader already they will lose interest.

Appropriate length to tell the story: 4/5-- It did get long...

CONTENT:

Language: none

Sexuality: none

Violence: medium-- The villain is very evil at points in this book. She tortures people with a mask that cuts their faces when they struggle and steals memories by practically drowning people in sand.

Drugs/Alcohol: none