Eleanor and Park

             

       Rainbow Rowell's book is a love story told from the alternating perspectives of the main characters, Eleanor and Park.  Eleanor has just moved back home with her mom and abusive stepfather after being kicked out of their home for almost a year when she meets Park on the bus on her first day of school. Although Eleanor is outcasted immediately for looking different, her and Park begin to develop a friendship. When it becomes clear that they have very strong feelings for one another, they have to figure out any way possible to spend time together, because Eleanor's stepfather is adamant that she can't have relationships with boys.
        Eleanor and Park is the kind of book you finish and cannot wait to recommend.  This book is so wonderful.  The relationship between the main characters develops slowly and in such a sweet way and hearing the voices of the alternating narrators makes this book so effective.  Highly recommended!!

I am back! And with a REALLY great book recommendation!

     I am feeling very bad about not blogging for months.  It won't happen again.  This semester I began working on my doctorate at the University of Iowa and it has kept me pretty busy in my time outside of Northwest.  However, I simply cannot let it interfere with my very favorite thing in the whole world: enjoying a good book. So, I am back at blogging and I just finished a book I am very excited to tell you about it.  It is called The Wall by William Sutcliffe.

     This is the story of Joshua, a boy living in the isolated city of Amarias.  This community is enclosed by a wall and guarded by soldiers and checkpoints that Joshua has never questioned until one day he discovers a tunnel to the other side of the wall.  There he meets Leila and her father and sees that life on the other side of the wall is incredibly harsh compared to his life in Amarias.  He feels guilty and agrees to help Leila's father water his orchard in Amarias to keep it from drying up.  However, this gets him in to a lot of trouble with his controlling stepfather, a member of the Amarias army.

     What is most interesting about this book is that the author intends it to be a fictional representation of life living in Israel's West Bank.  For me, the book feels sort of like other dystopian fiction I have read, but when I think about the factual elements and what the author is trying to do, it becomes a whole different book.  If you do not know much about the Israel and Palestine conflict or the wall being built to separate the two, you should check out this short informational video (and the book!).