Book Reviews Archives | North of Something

Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea | Book Review

27/05/2018 by Jamie 2 Comments

NARWHAL: UNICORN OF THE SEA by Ben Clanton is a fun read for ages 6-9. It’s the first book in the “Narwhal and Jelly Book” series.

With lots of talk about waffles and parties, this graphic novel/chapter book is focused on silliness and friendship. What’s not to love?!

I’m going to be honest here: I did not know narwhals were actually a real thing until about a month ago when I finally broke down and googled it. Turns out they’re real. So there ya go.

This kind of graphic novel for kids is a fun combo of picture book meets chapter book. Obviously kids still love pictures, but don’t always want to read the illustrated books meant for younger kids. This is a great book for a young reader to enjoy all by themselves (depending on reading level).

Get your own copy from Amazon or anywhere else books are sold!

Disclosure: The link below is an affiliate link, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Kid’s Travel Book Review: Scavenger Hunt Adventures

09/03/2015 by Jamie 40 Comments

My friend Laurie from World Traveling Military Family recently introduced me to Scavenger Hunt Adventures, a Kid’s Book Series for the traveling family. Scavenger Hunt Adventures is a family-owned, family-operated enterprise and the author, Catherine, offered to send me a copy of MISSION Rome to check out for myself. And now we are having a giveaway for 3 lucky winners to win a book of their choice from the 5 titles available!

Here’s some info from their website:

The Scavenger Hunt Adventures series takes young travellers through the famous sights of cities, engaging them with exciting scavenger hunt activities as you explore famous landmarks together.

Say “adiós/au revoir/arrivederci/good-bye” to trips filled with the stress of keeping everyone entertained. Instead, say “hola/bonjour/buongiorno/hello” to memorable vacations, with your kids excited to explore the sights with you!

The missions ensure fun trips for everyone with captivating, spy-theme scavenger hunts packed with fun activities and the fascinating stories behind city landmarks.

The books are available from Amazon as hard copy or e-book depending on your preference. Here are some sample pages of MISSION Rome!

I also LOVE that your kid can get a “Special Agent Certificate” from Scavenger Hunt Adventures once he or she completes the mission!

The series currently includes London, Paris, Barcelona, Rome, and Washington D.C., with New York, Amsterdam, and Florence coming soon.

Check out the website: www.ScavengerHuntAdventures.com and Facebook Fan Page to stay up to date with the newest info. And don’t forget to enter the giveaway below – there will be 3 lucky winners to win a book of your choice from the titles below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Naema – Whereabouts Unknown | Kids in the War Zone

04/02/2015 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Naema Whereabouts Unknown

With so many dark things happening in the world right now, especially in regards to war, I wanted to share a book review that highlights the experience of children in war zones. It’s hard enough to hear about acts of war that cause human suffering, and it’s worse still to think about the kids that are affected in so many ways.

In the short story “Naema—Whereabouts Unknown,” Mohammed Dib paints a picture of a man and his children in the midst of the Algerian War for Independence. The story is in a diary format that allows the reader to experience first-hand what the narrator is feeling.

The narrator is a good man who is surviving the war while taking care of his children, and also not knowing the whereabouts of his wife. His seven-year-old boy, Rahim, asks him questions that break his heart: “You mustn’t dawdle, Daddy, must you, when you throw a grenade?” (16). As the narrator struggles with how the war is affecting himself and his children, Dib highlights what a horrible position the child is in. The boy has apparently lived through three years of war already, and he has eerily childlike solutions: “Kill the lot. Keep throwing bombs” (16). These chilling words are meant to shock those that read them. The boy’s anger is a representation of the anger of all the Arabs that were resisting the French in the occupation. He encompasses the violence and hate that Dib feared would consume the next generation of Palestinians.

The war and death that surrounds the children in this story is not unique to this family alone. Dib tells a story that is familiar to anyone who has raised a family in a combat zone during wartime. As the Arab nationalists fight against the French colonialists, the narrator begins to reveal his own concerns not only for his country’s future, but his children’s future as well. He laments the fact that a high price has been paid already by the people of his country. He wonders, “How will those who survive the war adapt themselves to life? … How will they manage to give it a human face again?” (19).

These concerns affect not only the people of the narrator’s generation, but even more so the generation that was born into the war. For the children who grew up hearing grenades and bombs going off in the streets, who saw women and other children gunned down with machine guns, they won’t even know what peacetime is like. Dib presents a difficult problem when he conspicuously places children in this piece—the children represent the future of Algeria. They are children without a home and without the knowledge of peace.

This story took place in the 1950s during the French occupation of Algeria, but sadly, there are many children around the world today who are still affected by war, terrorism, occupations, and violence. It’s not a very uplifting read, but it’s interesting to think about the world from the viewpoint of a kid in a war zone and wonder, like Dib, “How will those who survive the war adapt themselves to life? How will they manage to give it a human face?”

Other Works by Mohammed Dib

If you liked “Naema – Whereabouts Unknown,” you might also like other works by Mohammed Dib, one of the most popular North African authors on the Twentieth Century.

Please note: the following list includes affiliate links, which means if you purchase an item from my link I will get a (very) small percentage of the purchase. Full disclosure statement can be found here. Thank you!

Tlemcen or Places of Writing by Mohammed Dib

This book is part memoir, part rumination on writing, and full of photographs that Dib took in his younger years in Tlemcen.

The Savage Night by Mohammed Dib

This is a collection of short stories that highlight the violence and brutality that many people (including children) deal with on a daily basis.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Book Review)

08/12/2014 by Jamie 33 Comments

I just finished Cheryl Strayed’s Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail for my winter grad class and I LOVED it. Plus it just came out as a movie featuring Reese Witherspoon, so I will definitely have to see it!

The story begins on a somber note with the death of Strayed’s mother. A woman she initially writes about with almost saintly narration, but reveals her few weaknesses and moments of humanity as well. Among my favorite: “She was optimistic and serene, except a few times when she lost her temper and spanked us with a wooden spoon. Or the one time when she screamed F#CK and broke down crying because we wouldn’t clean our room” (14).

As her mother goes through the medical steps that often come before death, Strayed realizes at 21 that she was going to be alone. “I almost choked to death on what I knew before I knew. I was going to live the rest of my life without my mother” (11). The sorrow that she is thrown into after that death brought years of dangerous, self-loathing living that her estranged husband tries to save her from. On a whim she picks up a book about the Pacific Crest Trail, and ultimately decides that her salvation is in those mountains.

Besides a few trips to REI to buy stuff, she begins her journey virtually unprepared, with a backpack she can barely lift. “I’d set out to hike the trail so that I could reflect upon my life, to think about everything that had broken me and make myself whole again. But the truth was, at least so far, I was consumed only with my most immediate and physical suffering” (84). While her body was hard at work, her mind finally had the luxury of resting. Perhaps for the first time since her mother’s death. A couple days before she made that statement, she made the realization: “Every part of my body hurt. Except my heart” (70).

Throughout the memoir there are touches of an existential theme. When her boot goes cascading down the rocky cliff, she has the feeling that someone was playing a joke on her. “But no one laughed. No one would. The universe, I’d learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back” (209). Many of the animals she met on the trail were happy enough to part ways with her, especially the deer and the fox, who both seemed to ignore her very existence, seeing her as blended into the landscape. And as much as she had enjoyed becoming one with the nature around her, I think being ignored made her long to be seen. Then, when she loses her Vietnam War bracelet and tries to think of a positive symbol for its disappearance, she comes up dry: “The universe had simply taken it into its hungry, ruthless maw” (238).

But I think the strongest theme of all in this story is the very opposite of existentialism – a mother’s love. “‘I’ve given you everything,’ she insisted again and again in her last days… She did. She’d come at us with maximum maternal velocity. She hadn’t held back a thing, not a single lick of her love. ‘I’ll always be with you, no matter what,’ she said” (268). As Strayed nears the end of her journey, she kneels at a river after crossing it. “Where is my mother? I wondered, I’d carried her so long, staggering beneath her weight. On the other side of the river, I let myself think. And something inside of me released” (306). This reminded me of the River Styx of Greek mythology, which separates the world of the living from the afterlife. By going on her journey, Strayed confronts her own wide range of emotions about her mother, and finally releases her to be at peace.

Ultimately it’s her mother’s love blended with her love/hate relationship with the universe and nature in general, that heals her. She finishes her quest with the feeling of wholeness for perhaps the first time in her life. She comes to terms with the unknowable about this world and her place in it all. “It was my life—like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be” (311).

Here’s the movie preview!

Have you ever been hiking? Are you going to see the movie?