Picture Book Review: One Love by Cedella Marley

Sometimes the smiles on an illustration can make your own face light up.  I found that was definitely the case with "One Love".  Bob Marley's oldest daughter, Cedella Marley takes the basic lyrics of her father's well-known song and puts together a short and endearing little book.

Little C, a happy little brown girl with dreadlock pigtails, is joining her family and neighborhood to build "One Love Park", while she remarks on how she finds love throughout her world. Small nods to Bob Marley are found within the pages as his likeness is found on coffee mugs, t-shirts and posters.

YA Review: Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

You know how there's those books that everyone LOVES, and you feel as though you most certainly have to try them out and take part in the collective euphoria?  Your heart palpitates when you are finally able to check it out from your local library, and you get goosebumps as you start the first chapter...then somewhere during the fourth or fifth, you realize that you aren't having nearly as much fun as everyone else claimed to have had?
This was my experience with Uglies.

I really wanted to jump all over this book.  According to every must-read YA list, Scott Westerfeld's Ugly series was one to leave you chomping at the bit for more.  While I do agree that the storyline is captivating and extremely frightening, I have to admit that I'm not exactly salivating to complete the series. But that being said, it was worth the read.

Uglies takes place some time in the future, after our current generations, referred to as Rusties by our descendants, are extinct.  The powers that be of the future have decided that most of our societal ills are a result of our differences. To avoid having their civilization meet the same hate-filled fate as ours, they decide that all people at age 16 must undergo mandatory plastic surgery and become Pretty by modifying skin tones, facial and body features, even hair. With everyone looking the same, and life becoming a party, who has time to start wars and conflicts?

YA Review: Life As We Knew It

Perhaps the most frightening thing about this story, as with M.T. Anderson's Feed, is that it could possibly be more accurate than even the author is aware. Chilling.

After the first twenty pages, you will never look at the moon the same again. Author Susan Beth Pfeffer, bravely takes on the topic of environmental apocalypse with a freshness and somehow comfortable humor that is all but infectious upon reading. Set in modern times, seventeen-year-old Miranda is more concerned with the amount of homework she has to complete, not being asked to the prom yet, and the news of her stepmother's pregnancy than the thought of the asteroid that is set to collide with the moon.

Not too long after it does make contact, Miranda, along with the rest of the world realizes all too soon that the crash is more of a tragedy than once believed, as it tilts the moon and leads to cataclysmic events happening worldwide.