STHS Media 1_Reading

All the Crooked Saints - Maggie Stiefvater Here is a thing everyone wants: a miracle. Here is a thing everyone fear: what it takes to get one. All the Crooked Saints This week, I read the first eleven chapters of  All the Crooked Saints. It's a story about the Soria family and the tiny Colorado town of Bicho Raro - and the people who live there.  The Soria family has the power to perform miracles. For years, they've helped heal the pilgrims to Bicho Raro, but it's not that easy. Miracles come in sets of two, the first to recognize the darkness inside, and the second to banish it. Because the Sorias are only able to perform the first, they find their town crowded with half-healed pilgrims, all with results of their darkness.  The Sorias don't pay much mind to the pilgrims, and the pilgrims don't pay much mind to the Sorias. All they really need is a visit to the Saint of Bicho Raro, Daniel Lupe Soria, to heal themselves. But when the two younges...

Review This is How It Always Is -  Laurie Frankel      This is How It Always Is,  written by Laurie Frankel, depicts five-year-old Claude Walsh-Adams, a kindergartner with dreams of being a girl. The story, told through the eyes of everyone in the family, helped tell it from the point of view of a grown-up and child alike. The story takes place first in Madison, Wisconsin, then in Seattle, Washington. It shares the fictional story of Claude as he becomes Poppy, and the struggle this family has with covering up the secret, finding who to share it with, and whether this is something anyone really is.  This is How It Always Is  was a fictional but well-written example of real human emotions and the ever-nagging problem of never seeming to be true to yourself. The novel connected to the real world in a way that readers could understand best: through the family. Because the story was told in the setting of the family house and atmosphere, it had...

     In this part of the book, Claude, now turned Poppy, has been on the receiving end of hatred in her community. Her parents, worried about the family's safety, decide to move them somewhere more accepting, so they move away from Wisconsin to Washington in the hopes that Claude can start over as Poppy. Right away, Poppy makes friends with the neighbors' little daughter, nobody even knows about her past. Poppy, though, it still worried that her new life will far apart like her last one.       "Which do you prefer? Should we tell Aggie? She's such a good friend, baby. You could tell her, and then she'd know, and everything would be fine. You could decide to tell other friends too, or if you told Aggie not to tell anyone else, you know she wouldn't."      "What about Nicky?" Barely a whisper.      "Nicky?"      "Remember how Nicky used to be my best friend, and then he found out about me, and he was so grosse...

This is How It Always Is - Laurie Frankel This is how a family keeps a secret... and how that secret ends up keeping them. This is how a family lives a happily ever after... until happily ever after becomes complicated. This is how children change... and then change the world.  This is How It Always Is This week, I read the first thirteen chapters of This is How It Always Is. Author Laurie Frankel builds upon the plot by narrating from the point of view of Rosie and Penn Walsh-Adams, the parents of five boys. Claude, the youngest of their children, struggles with the possibility of being transgender, even at the age of five. Rosie and Penn aren't opposed to Claude's behavior. In fact, they support it. They want him to be whoever he wants to be. But that's just the problem - Claude doesn't know. This is How It Always Is shows Rosie and Penn's struggles with adults and other members of their community, as well as other kids. They support his situation...