Review: Full Cicada Moon

Full Cicada Moon written by Marilyn Hilton

wow!! I cannot believe how much I loved this book! It is very different to what I normally read! I picked it based on its tag line

Change can start with one brave voice.

Mostly I read it over a couple of days in my 15 minutes of reading with my year 11s.

The book is written in poetry, which normally frustrates me a little bit, but just works perfectly for this book.

I love the ideas in this book. It is set in 1969, and Mimi is half her mum and half her dad and all her. The problem is her dad is African American and her mum is Japanese. And in a place where this is not what they are used to seeing they struggle to accept Mimi as American.

I love so many parts of this book. The metaphor of a tap that they use throughout for making change, often Mimi thinks

Drip, drip, drip

A reminder that slowly water can carve through anything.

Mimi deals with going against gender norms, wanting to take shop not just Home ec. However she also is very courageous in a soft and gently way. When her principal says

You are a credit to your race

She understands he thinks this is a compliment, however when she says it to him at the end of the meeting it is very powerful!

Such an amazing powerful book about change caused my ripples and how important it is to be that one brave voice!

I really can’t recommend this book enough, for all levels!

Mrs K

Genre: adolescent fiction, poetry, historical fiction,

Review: Crush

Crush written by Eve Ainsworth

It’s been a long time in between reviews. Much longer than there normally is. The problem was I started two books – and while there was nothing wrong with either book, I lost the urgency to finish them. I also started back at work – our summer holidays were

over and I suddenly had to work 8 hours a day, rather than lounge around and read!

Anyway, the drought is over, one of my classes is doing 15 minutes of reading a day, and because I believe in modeling it means I too get 15 minutes of reading a day. This book I picked up off the shelves based solely on how it looked. The high contrast of red and black appealed to me.

I enjoyed the story, I thought it was well paced and well written. I liked the little bit of intrigue as you tried to figure out what Will’s story was, but I also liked the way that the control happened, and you saw the spiral, initially feeling special, and then slowly starting to doubt things.

It was nice too – to see strong female characters succumb and then realise that they are strong, and have always been strong. I also thought that the book, while primarily

 

focused on the relationship also dealt with broken families and absentee parents and the importance of finding who you are and mental health.

Certainly the book packed a lot into a small space. It probably could have fleshed out characters a little bit more, but I was satisfied with what there was.

The book definitely reminded me of “Breathing Underwater”. Breathing Underwater though looks much more at the males point of view, and his slow realization of what she was doing, there were far less consequences in this book for the male protagonist, apart from a slight fall from grace.

I would recommend this for year 10/11 students, although it probably does need to come with a trigger warning about emotional and physical abuse.

Mrs K

Genre: Adolescent Fiction, Teenage fiction, Romance, drama, contemporary, fiction.