Lisa here! Welcome to another one of my reviews, but as you can probably tell from the title, this isn’t just any stinkin’ review, no! But instead, I’m reviewing two books in one… that’s a lot of “reviews” in one sentence, but any-who, the books are…
The Darlings Are Forever (Book #1), by Melissa Kantor.
“Jane. Victoria. Natalya. Together, they are the Darlings. Best friends forever. They have matching necklaces, their own table at Ga Ga Noodle, and even a shared motto: “May you always do what you’re afraid of doing.”
When the friends begin freshman year at three different high schools in distant corners of New York City, they promise to live by their motto and stay as close as ever. The Darlings know they can get through anything as long as they have each other. But doing scary new things is a lot easier with your friends beside you. And now that the girls aren’t spending all their time together, everything they took for granted about their friendship starts to feel less certain. They can’t help but wonder, will they really be the Darlings forever?
Now in paperback, this exciting new series by bestselling author Melissa Kantor, The Darlings Are Forever will speak to any girl who has ever had a best friend.”
Jane, Natalya, and Victoria are three best friends, also known as The Darlings, with a motto they each share, “May you do what you are afraid of doing.” Spending almost all of their time together, usually at their own table, at their favorite restaurant Ga Ga Noodles, the girls are worried about starting high school, each at a different school. They promise to make time for one another and never to forget their friendship.
Natalya is accepted into a private school (which her sister also went to), and becomes friends with the most popular girl’s in school, but for all the wrong reasons.
Jane attends a performing arts school, and wants to pursue acting. Until she starts crushing on her director!
And Victoria, who is innocent and perfect in her parents eyes, starts doing things she would never have imagined doing before.
Sticking together through good, and many bads (such as sneaking out to a party, pictures exposed online, and a few other things that could put Victoria’s Dad’s chances of becoming Senator in danger) the girls come out at the end of the tunnel, as best friends, and as the Darlings.
And Darlings In Love (Book #2), also by Melissa Kantor.
“The Darlings have just begun their second semester of ninth grade, and love is in the air.
Victoria: The sweetheart Jack: The irresistible songwriter…but is he writing off Victoria?
Natalya: The overachiever Colin: The perfect match, if only the game were less complicated
Jane: The drama queen Simon: The Greek god… of mixed signals
In the face of both joy and heartbreak, the Darlings know that they’ll always have each other. Boys come and go, but the Darlings are still forever.”
This second book continues with the three best friends. This time, each learns how to love.
Victoria has a boyfriend named Jack (who we meet in the first book) and loves spending every minute with him; things just keep getting better and better. Natalya is starting to crush on her ex-boyfriend Colin (who we also meet in the other book!) when he challenges Natalya to a online chess game. And Jane is dealing with loneliness but meets a cute boy named Simon in the theater.
Things seem to be going great for the Darlings, that is until Valentine’s Day goes wrong for Victoria. Natalya finds out that Colin is hiding something from her, and things may be to good to be true for Jane.
In Darlings in Love, the three girls, learn that boys come and go, but friends last forever.
(*Thanks you Goodreads, and Barnes and Noble, for the book summaries!)
It’s not every day you come across someone who strives to make a difference in the world, ‘Just like Mother Teresa’. To be honest I doubt there are many people who remember who Mother Teresa was and her selfless acts and achievements. So, a name I would like people to brand into their memories is Moira Kelly.
She was born in Melbourne on January 31st in 1964. At age 8, saw a documentary about Mother Teresa and decided then and there she wanted to get involved with humanitarian work. As with every journey she began small, jumping the fence to help feed the special needs kids in the special school next door to her own primary school.
She left school after completing grade 10 and in the years following, she trained to become a teaching assistant, a lay missionary, and a probation officer. With that knowledge under her belt and years of experience she moved to Western Australia to help with the Aboriginal Mission.
Unbeknownst to her parents, Moira sold her car when she returned to Melbourne, just so she could afford to travel to Calcutta in India to work alongside Mother Teresa in her mission for the full six weeks until her visa ran out. She returned to India in 1987 and a year later was awarded the Australian Bicentenary Young Woman of the Year for her work in community services and the Advance Australia Ambassador.
Since then Moira has done humanitarian work in the Bronx, Bosnia and Herzegovina and has started many aid programs, including Nobody’s Children and Children First. She opened a farm in conjunction with Children First called the Open Door Rotary Farm, where the children who are brought to Australia for medical treatment are homed and cared for.
Her awards are numerous and well and truly earned with hard work, blood, sweat and tears. To get an idea of just how she struggles to make the world better, you can look for A Compassionate Rage, a 2001 documentary film by Film Australia and Alan Lindsay following Kelly for 18 months on her missions overseas as she tries to organise medical treatment for sick and injured children.
Four of the children Moira has been able to help have been making headlines in the last few years, and it is debatable as to who makes us smile more. Trishna and Krishna are the conjoined twins from Bangladesh, who were successfully separated by the incredible surgeons at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital. Emmanuel Kelly you may have seen on the last season of X Factor, singing Imagine and making us all do the ugly cry with his angelic voice. Ahmed Mustafa is a quadruple amputee who will be representing Australia in the 2012 London Paralympics as part of our stellar swim team. The boys have come a long way from their humble beginnings in Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Baghdad.
Moira Kelly is certainly living a large life and her kindness will hopefully inspire generations to come.
http://www.childrenfirstfoundation.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moira_Kelly_(humanitarian)
High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a world that is a strange reflection of his own — populated by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book, The Book of Lost Things.
Despite having never heard of this title prior to a single recommendation from a trusted book reviewer, I quickly became eager to pick up The Book of Lost Things the moment I heard of its fairy tale elements. Said element proved to be very much present and accounted for, but ultimately it supported an even more engaging and original tale of loss, mourning and coming-of-age.
Known predominantly for his crime fiction, John Connelly effectively created his own fairy tale narrative within this novel and inserted it with a very realistic and very tangible amount of violence, brutality, cynicism and bittersweet truth. While this may deter some readers, and certainly had me feeling incredibly uncomfortable and emotionally drained much of the time, it was ultimately a very effective means of conveying the stark nature and often indirect moral compass of the original fairy tale/folk lore format.
Our twelve year-old protagonist, David, was really put through his paces in this novel; the poor boy had to deal with taunting visions of his dead mother, sudden and unexplained fainting fits that left him bleeding and incoherent, several gruesome and unnerving encounters with a number of truly despicable beings, and the constant threat posed by the Crooked Man (who remains one of the most unforgiving villains I have ever encountered.) David handles all of his challenges with a mix of bravery, recklessness and fear that was very telling and true of his age and upbringing. Additionally, Connelly’s decision to place the fantasy action alongside the ‘real world’ setting of war-time London was also a wise move, with much of David’s home-grown fear of German invasion and destruction feeding into his imaginings.
Although there are not many ‘light’ moments within the novel, and they appear fleetingly, it is important to note the two elements that really made this work enjoyable for me: the twists on known fairy tales, and the sheer love and affection conveyed for the written word and the act of reading. David’s avid love and almost palpable connection to books is evident from the first page, and the sensation this creates forms an active metaphor for the transformative experience of reading, especially at a young age. Also, the inclusion of Connelly’s own retellings of known tales such Snow White are both amusing and unsettling.
While both the US and UK covers for this novel might suggest a middle-grade audience, I would certainly not be recommending it to readers under the age of 15, due to the mature and violent content. However, I do sincerely believe that older readers will find something truly engaging and memorable in David’s fantastical and harrowing journey.
The Book of Lost Things – John Connelly
Atria Books
ISBN – 0743298853
339 pages
November 7th 2006
