When the Sea Turned to Silver - Grace Lin

Pinmei's gentle, loving grandmother always has the most exciting tales for her granddaughter and the other villagers. However, the peace is shattered one night when soldiers of the Emperor arrive and kidnap the storyteller.

Everyone knows that the Emperor wants something called the Luminous Stone That Lights the Night. Determined to have her grandmother returned, Pinmei embarks on a journey to find the Luminous Stone alongside her friend Yishan, a mysterious boy who seems to have his own secrets to hide. Together, the two must face obstacles usually found only in legends to find the Luminous Stone and save Pinmei's grandmother--before it's too late.

This National Book Award Finalist is an incredible book, weaving together stories told by various characters and creating a narrative of incredible depth and complexity. Lin's text is magical from start to finish, examining the ways that storytelling informs, entertains, and also contains grains of truth. As Pinmei and Yishan adventure further and further into the lore and the land, Pinmei learns about her own history as well as the secrets of the world in which she lives, including immortals, dragon horses, half-fish princesses, and underwater kingdoms. I love the incorporation of the folk tales with the main narrative and really appreciate the way that each tale further informs Pinmei's perspective on her grandmother, the kingdom, and Yishan himself.

I can definitely see why the NBA jury decided to shortlist this book for the 2016 award, and I would not be the least bit surprised to see it win! Highly Recommended!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Living - Matt De La Peña

Image
The Living  recently received an Honor from the Pura Belpré committee. The award recognizes of a work which best portrays the Latino cultural experience in a work of literature for children or youth. As I was at the awards announcements, and having known people who served on the committee in the past, I was intrigued. I had read the winning title and the other honor titles, and was impressed with the choices. So here's my review of The Living : The novel begins with Shy, a young guy working for a snazzy cruise line, offering water to people on the Lido Deck of the ship to combat the heat. Everything is going pretty well until an older gentleman comes out and starts spouting of weird, disconcerting phrases: "You have seen the face of evil."Shy doesn't quite know what to think, so he moves on to a couple of ladies on the other side of the deck. Just as he's handing them their water bottles, he sees movement out of the corner of his eye and realizes the old guy h...
Read more

The Music of What Happens - Bill Konigsberg

Image
Max: Chill. Sports. Video games. Gay and not a big deal, not to him, not to his mom, not to his buddies. And a secret: An encounter with an older kid that makes it hard to breathe, one that he doesn't want to think about, ever. Jordan: The opposite of chill. Poetry. His "wives" and the Chandler Mall. Never been kissed and searching for Mr. Right, who probably won't like him anyway. And a secret: A spiraling out of control mother, and the knowledge that he's the only one who can keep the family from falling apart. Over the course of one summer, two boys will have to face their biggest fears and decide what they're willing to risk -- to get the thing they want the most. This is a phenomenal book, in my humble opinion. There aren't too many books dealing with male sexual abuse, particularly in YA. Sex and sexuality are messy parts of young adulthood, but what this book does really well is discuss consent and the ways in which physical cues can be misinte...
Read more

Girls Like Us - Gail Giles

Image
I have now gone out and made sure that I have all of the books longlisted for the National Book Award. I read and reviewed a number of these previously, so now I have five left to read and review. This is one of those five (but would I expect anything less from the fabulous team at Candlewick?) Girls Like Us  is a unique novel in a number of respects, most notably in the fact that both protagonists are identified (and self-identified) as mentally disabled in some way. Biddy has a learning disability that she was born with, while Quincy is a young girl who is disabled due to the fact that her mother's boyfriend hit her in the head with a brick, disfiguring her and damaging her brain. Once the two girls graduate from school, they move into a house together, becoming caregivers for both each other and an older woman, Elizabeth. The two must rely on each other for comfort, knowledge, and emotional strength, and Elizabeth manages to help them along the way. While I had moments of wo...
Read more