The Answer Is...: Reflections on My Life

When Alex Trebek passed away recently, I saw he had written an autobiography type book—The Answer Is…: Reflections on My Life—and got it from the library. The book is full of little vignettes from Alex Trebek’s life—childhood, various adult jobs, time on jeopardy, cancer diagnosis, etc.

I really enjoyed this book. We watch Jeopardy with my grandma whenever we visit her in California, and Emmeline particularly loves it. I liked Alex Trebek as the host but didn’t really know much more about him and so found the book interesting, especially the parts about Jeopardy (less so the parts about his younger years). The book did have quite a bit of bad language, so that was the only downside.

Rating: * * (2/3 = Liked it)

City of Orphans

Emmeline read City of Orphans by Avi for her book club at school and highly recommended it to me. It’s the story of 13-year-old newsie named Maks who lives in New York in 1893. Maks’s family—immigrants from Denmark—are tight on money and rely on Maks to earn a share each day. When the Plug Ugly gang start going after him, a girl named Willa helps him fight—and the two become friends just as a new crisis comes to his family: His sister Emma, who works at the Waldorf Hotel, was accused of stealing and put in prison. It’s up to Maks to find a way to find a way to save Emma.

This was a great read. I was engaged from the start, but once I got further into it, I couldn’t stop reading and had to stay up to finish. It was a captivating story with great characters. Emmeline considered the book one of the top books she’s ever read.

Rating: * * * (3/3 = Loved it)

The Breadwinner

Emmeline’s teacher was reading her class The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis, so Emmeline recommended it to me. I  read it and then also read the three sequels—Parvana’s Journey, Mud City, and My Name is Parvana. Because I’m playing catchup on the blog, I won’t write separate posts for each book but just kind of group them all here. The Breadwinner is about 11-year-old Parvana who lives in Kabul, Afghanistan with her family. War and Taliban rule has taken away many things from her family, and when Parvana’s dad gets arrested for having a foreign education, they are left with only one option—Parvana dressing as a boy and becoming the breadwinner.

This was a great book and series. Especially as the series goes on, it has some pretty heavy, sad stuff, and it’s just so heartbreaking what children have to go through in these war-torn countries. I think it’s great Emmeline’s teacher is reading The Breadwinner with the class, but I told Emmeline I thought the rest of the books were a little much for her. (She doesn’t handle death well, and there are some hard deaths.) The books were engaging stories, and I always wanted to keep reading the next book. I also think it was really meaningful to learn about how children and families live in war-ridden countries and refugee camps and to remember how blessed we are to have the lives we have in America. It reminded me to seek out opportunities to help those less fortunate.

Rating: * * (2/3 = Liked it)

The Red Pencil

I had The Red Pencil by Andrea Davis Pinkney on my to-read list for awhile and got it from the library. Amira lives in a village in Sudan that is attacked by the Janjaweed, and she has to escape—making a long journey to a refugee camp.

This was a great read. It was written in verse, which I always love, and told a pretty heart-wrenching story. I read this a couple months ago so can’t remember much else but still wanted to document that I read it.

Rating: * * (2/3 = Liked it)

Betty Before X

I got Betty Before X by Ilyasah Shabazz and Renee Watson from the library after seeing it on a list somewhere. The book caught my attention because it’s the fictionalized story of Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X’s wife, as a child, written by their daughter and co-written by Renee Watson, an author I’ve enjoyed in the past. The story follows Betty, an 11-year-old in Detroit in 1945, through her journey to finding love and purpose.

This is another book I read a couple months ago, so I don’t remember tons about it anymore thanks to my terrible memory, but it was definitely an engaging story that kept me reading. I kept expecting it to tie into Malcolm X somehow, but the story just did a few years of her childhood/teen years and then ended before making the connection to her later years. But I really enjoyed the characters and story and liked getting a glimpse of this period of history.

Rating: * * (2/3 = Liked it)