Title: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Author: Suzanne Collins

Genres: YA lit, dystopian literature

When I heard this prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy was written from Coriolanus Snow's perspective I was intrigued. This mode of storytelling from the villain's point of view reminded me of The Testaments. Ballad opens up ten years after the war between Panem and the districts and while the Hunger Games have been implemented as the districts' punishment for the war, the games are nowhere near the glamorous spectacle of the original trilogy. Viewing the Hunger Games is strictly voluntary (and not a lot of people watch), the games are still controversial to some citizens of the Capitol, and the tributes are literally treated like animals, transported from their homes to the Capitol in cattle cars to empty cages in a zoo. The Capitol is still recovering from the war and its citizens are not the vapid, glitzy people we meet in the trilogy. For this tenth version of the Hunger Games, high school students in the Capitol are selected as mentors for the tributes. This is where Coriolanus Snow gets an intimate look and experience with the Hunger Games. He's assigned as the mentor for District 12 and his tributes are Jesup and Lucy Gray. Coriolanus is intrigued by Lucy Gray for various reasons but his incentives to keep Lucy Gray alive center around his needs and goals for the future; Lucy Gray's humanity comes second. 

Coriolanus has not turned into the evil President Snow as we know him, but the reader does see inklings of how his trip to the dark side takes place in small increments. The Snow family has fallen on hard times; Coriolanus lives with his cousin and elderly grandmother in their lavish apartment while practically starving, but the family is determined to keep up appearances. Coriolanus has mild trauma from the war (the Capitol was bombed multiple times by the rebels, his parents died during the war), and those war memories keep him determined to better his and his family's situation. While this is noble, this desperation opens him to grooming by the sadistic Dr. Gaul, who likes to genetically engineer the muttations we'll see later in the trilogy (this mentor/mentee relationship doesn't really blossom until the end of the book). Coriolanus is far from blameless though, he is sneaky, arrogant, and selfish, and these traits are enhanced in the last half of the book when he is sent to District 12 (I won't tell you why, that's a major spoiler). Coriolanus has a love/hate relationship with District 12 and we find out why he hates the mockingjays so much in the original trilogy. The mechanics of the jabberjays is further explained and illuminates how the Capitol was able to surreptitiously spy on Katniss and Gale deep in the forest. The pacing is pretty even throughout the book until the last chapter when Coriolanus undergoes some kind of mental breakdown fueled by paranoia and guilt. 

Inkheart

Title: Inkheart

Author: Cornelai Funke

Genre: middle grade fiction, fantasy, books turned into movies, MountTBRChallenge2020

"Books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them."

Have you ever read a book that was so wonderful and lifelike you wish the characters could leap from the page into the real world? Well, this is what happens in Inkheart and although it sounds wonderful to a bookworm, accidentally inviting fictional characters to our world has serious consequences...

Meggie lives with her father who repairs books for a living; they live a semi-nomadic lifestyle because of Mo's occupation but also for a more sinister reason. When Meggie was three years old, her father was reading aloud to Meggie's mother one night (from a book called Inkheart!) when *BAM* strange men appeared in their living room and Meggie's mother disappeared. That's how Mo discovered his "gift"- he could summon forth fictional characters into our world, but unfortunately, he has no control over who leaves this world and who enters it. After this tragic night, Mo and Meggie were on the run from Capricorn, the most notorious and vicious villain in Inkheart, and his henchmen. Finally, Capricorn catches up to them (no thanks to the fair weather "friend" Dustfinger) and forces Mo to read certain passages from books that will increase Capricorn's material wealth and power. While Dustfinger longs to return to his magical world, Capricorn revels in the wealth and potential power of this world. 

While this is a fantasy and adventure story written for tweens and above, it is also a love letter to books and bookworms that a book nerdy adult would enjoy. I watched the movie a few months ago on Netflix and now that I am teleworking from home and all the local libraries are closed, it was the perfect time to start reading books on my To Be Read pile/bookshelf/mountain. 

Salt to the Sea

Title: Salt to the Sea

Author: Ruta Sepetys

Genre: YA fiction, historical fiction

Salt to the Sea is a YA historical fiction novel based on the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff . Never heard of it? Most people haven't since the end of World War II and the rise of communism throughout Europe overshadowed this tragedy. The Wilhelm Gustloff, former cruise liner turned military ship, was transformed from a German navy vessel to a refugee rescue ship. Normal capacity for this ship was around 1,500 but when the refugees boarded her on January 30, 1945, she held close to 10,000 people (a mixture of naval officers and crew, and refugees). When it sunk, close to 9,000 people died, more than the Titanic and Lusitania combined!

Salt to the Sea is told from the viewpoints of Joana (a Lithuanian nurse), Florian (a mysterious spy), Emilia (a pregnant Polish girl), and Alfred (an arrogant yet germaphobic German soldier, probably a psychopath). Joana is consumed by guilt over her cousin's disappearance and deportation to Siberia, Florian is consumed by revenge, Emilia has a secret, and Alfred is full of himself and Nazi ideology. Joana, Florian, and Emilia meet by accident and grudgingly travel together to Gotenhafen in an effort to secure safe passage to Western Europe and flee the invading Russian army. The perilous journey reveals many secrets and a bit of romance and the atmosphere of the book is tense throughout the text. The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff is told in gruesome, but not too graphic detail. You can read more about the disaster at the Smithsonian Magazine website (here) and the Wilhelm Gustloff Museum site (here). The book also contains the author's research resource list, book discussion questions, interviews with shipwreck divers who have explored the closely guarded wreckage, a journalist who investigated and published a book about the sinking and its aftermath, the curator of the Wilhelm Gustloff online museum, and a Wilhelm Gustloff survivor

The Girl With All The Gifts

Title: The Girl With All The Gifts
Author: M.R. Carey
Genres: dystopian, zombies

Ten-year-old Melanie lives in a maximum-security prison, not for anything she has done, but for what she is – a hungry (a zombie). Melanie has no memories of her parents or her life before the prison compound. Although Melanie is a curious child, loves Greek mythology, and is the smartest student in the school, Melanie and the other children are not the typical hungry/zombie- they look and behave like normal human children, until they smell a normal human. Once they smell a human an uncontrollable urge to feed comes over them, so the adults at the prison shower themselves in a mixture of chemicals to hide their scent.  

Melanie’s favorite adult is her teacher Miss Justineau; Helen Justineau treats the children kindly, reads lots of books to her class, and makes learning fun. Helen’shumane  treatment of the children concerns Eddie Parks (security guard) and Dr Caldwell (research scientist). We later find out that the children will never use what they learn, the classroom setup is basically a giant psychological experiment by the ruthless Dr. Caldwell to research how these special zombie children learn and live. Dr. Caldwell’s sole purpose in life is to find the mode of transmission and a cure for the hungry disease, and she is willing to kill zombie children to do so.  

As if this clash of personalities and moralities wasn’t enough, the compound is attacked by a mob of hungries one day and Melanie, Helen, Eddie, Dr. Caldwell and Private Gallagher flee from the compound to the English countryside seeking the city of Beacon, the rumored safe zone south of London. While on the run they must protect themselves from hungries and junkers (pillaging and violent humans). This journey is the first time that Melanie has been outside of the compound and her first foray into the outside world. As she fights the urge to feed on her fellow travelers, her lessons with Miss Justineau take on new meaning. Eventually there is a showdown and our group finds the answer to the zombie problem but it will change the course of humanity forever.  

*You can view the trailer for the movie adaptation here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4547056/?ref_=vp_back 

The Fountains of Silence

Title: The Fountains of Silence

Author: Ruta Sepetys

Genres: YA fiction, historical fiction

After reading The Fountains of Silence, I am reminded why Ruta Sepetys is one of my favorite YA authors- she takes a little known part of history and turns it into engaging YA historical fiction:
* the Lithuanian experience in Siberia during World War II (Between Shades of Gray)
* 1950s New Orleans (Out of the Easy)
* World War II refugees (Salt to the Sea)

In her latest book The Fountains of Silence, Sepetys introduces readers to life under Franco's Spain. While most of us learned about dead dictators (Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.) in high school and college, life under the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco's Spain was glossed over in American history classes because Franco lived until 1975, the United States constructed trade deals with Spain during Franco's lifetime, and the US and Spanish governments encourages US citizens to spend their tourist dollars in Spain.

Sepetys skillfully weaves together a budding romance between Daniel, a rich American boy pursuing secret dreams of photography despite his father's disapproval, and Ana, a poor Spanish girl who works in the hotel where Daniel's family is staying. Ana suffers from poverty due to the aftereffects of the Spanish Civil War decades before and the death of her parents (Spanish Republicans) by the Francoist government. Rumors of stolen babies and kidnappings are interlaced with the fear ordinary Spaniards lived with for decades.

The book contains multiple points of view and excerpts of oral histories from various politicians and ambassadors involved in American dealings in Spain. A glossary of Spanish terms  and phrases found throughout the book is included along with an extensive research and recommended reading list.

You can read more about Francoist Spain and the stolen babies scandal here:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/27/spains-dictator-is-dead-but-his-popularity-lives-on/

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/17/639226190/how-spanish-women-were-allegedly-targeted-in-stolen-babies-cases-for-decades