The Bees Knees

KEYWORDS: Historical Fiction, Yellow Fever, E pidemic When I first found this book in the library, it reminded me of multiple things: Yellow fever? Hmm that sounds like Covid 19; Oppressive mother? Hmm that sounds like Eugene, the female version; Fourteen-year-old ambitious, adventurous Mattie Cook? Hmm that sounds like that little delightful girl from Anne of the Green Gables.  In short, Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson circles around Mattie, a teenage girl living in Philadelphia, the capital of the new United States, fighting to survive one of the deadliest epidemic outbreaks in US history – yellow fever.  This book vividly reminded me of COVID-19 (POV: I read this book while feeling miserable from my booster shot). While today, with all the technologies and the astute scientists, it still took 3 years, and the world still hasn't completely eradicated the virus yet. It is interesting, however also almost daunting to see how people of the 18th century fought against their ...

by Sophia Chen As teens, we can be quick to criticize our parents. They're unempathetic, they're cruel, they don't even make an effort to understand us. I mean, yeah, parenting is hard, but surely they should be better at this after, oh, a decade and a half? But we often don't realize is that many of our parents simply raise us the way they were raised. They may even have experienced their own difficulties as a result of their upbringing, but they perpetuate it for their children because it's the only parenting style they know. The book Don't Cry for Me  by Daniel Black is an apology letter from father to son for just this. Though fictional, the book is heavily inspired by the author's own experience of rejection from his father and his lack of closure after his father developed Alzheimer's Disease and lost all memories of his and his son's difficult relationship. Black, in his introductory author's note, says that Don't Cry for Me  is the cl...

     To finish off the trilogy of the Moon Base Alpha (MBA) series, which began with Space Case and Spaced Out , I decided to review the third and last book: Waste of Space . Instead of continuing this series, Stuart Gibbs (the author) marked Waste of Space as the end of the MBA series to focus on other works by him. This saddened me, as the MBA series was truly distinct from other books Gibbs wrote.        To give background context, the MBA series focuses on the life of twelve-year-old Dash and his family being part of the first settlement on the moon. A major issue is discovered shortly after their arrival. Moon Base Alpha, the name of the moon base, is absolutely bereft of anything that makes it an “absolutely amazing blast on the moon,” which was a summary of what NASA used to convince the Moonies to go to MBA. If I were to ask you this question, “If you ever visited the moon, what would be the first thing you do,” how wou...

      While Thanksgiving break isn't for a few weeks, I thought it would be okay to go ahead and give my recommendations in case you want to get the books before the break.  Now, these recommendations will be for book series that are on the shorter side since Thanksgiving break is on the shorter side. BLUE FLAG - KAITO Blue Flag is definitely one of the longest books on this list, having about 8 volumes (each volume having about 225 pages each). This manga has the tropes of Unrequited Love, Love Triangles, and Childhood Friends. It's about four teenagers who all happen to fall for one another in their friend circle. When they all try to pursue these love interests, they learn that it might not be as easy as they think. When one of the main character's (Taichi) friends (Futaba) approaches him and asks him if he would be willing to help her get with Taichi's childhood best friend (and crush) Toma, he accepts begrudgingly and that's where the story picks up. Honestly, ...

*Discaimer* The FNaF books do not directly connect or relate to the FNaF Games or the FNaF Movie! (Though if you watched the FNaF Movie please, tell me how it was 😊 ) As you know, Out of Stock is now over. But with the ending of a story, a new beginning emerges. The story 1:35 A.M. follows a young woman named Delilah, who was “orphaned at a young age and recently divorced”. Delilah works at a dinner with shifts that move all over the place. One day she’ll be working six to two, another two to ten, and another ten to six. Therefore, her sleep schedule is non-existent. But wait! It gets better. Her neighbor is an old lady, Mary, who sings at the top of her wrinkly lungs every day early in the morning. The story actually starts off with her singing loudly about her alarm clock . If you can’t tell, this absolutely irritates Delilah, who just happens to hate alarm clocks and old ladies named Mary who sing at the top of their lungs before the sun comes up.     ...