Megan's Reads & Reviews

  Author: Colson Whitehead Title: The Underground Railroad Genre: Historical Fiction Publication Date: August 2, 2016 Number of Pages: 306 Geographical Setting: Various southern US states Time Period: 1800’s Plot Summary: This story chronicles the journey of a young slave girl Cora, as she desperately chases freedom. She meets Caesar, a young man from Virginia, who informs her of The Underground Railroad, and they take a horrifying risk to try and escape. They get into some troubling situations as they make their way to freedom.  Furthermore, in this novel The Underground Railroad, is not a metaphor, but an actual train and railway. They make there way through several states and even run into a terrible slave catcher, and a few other troubling people along the way, leaving you wondering the whole way if Cora ever makes it freedom.  Subject Headings: African Americans, Slavery, Racism Appeal: Character: Large cast of characters including a strong black, female charac...

I think that the rise of audiobooks and eBooks, has done a lot to change appeal factors.  I would like to first focus on eBooks, I don’t think not having a physical copy of a book changes much about knowledge of the genre. Some factors I do think can be changed are that an eBook doesn’t have the thickness of a large book, which can often make a book look more intimidating. I do not think changing the font changes pacing or tone all that much. However, if a font is distracting in the way it looks, it might change the pace at which I read a book. Changing the line spacing might make a paragraph look less intimidating. I feel like using a big font might result in feeling like you read a lot faster and might change your reading speed. When it comes to audiobooks on the other hand, I think they have many ways of changing appeal factors. I think this is particularly true when it comes to who is reading the audiobook. For me, I think narrator choice can greatly affect your enjoyment of a ...

For this assignment I attended a book club that my mom has been a part of for a couple of years. This meeting was at our local winery, but it’s usually at the organizer’s house. Everyone got drinks to sip on. Participants also brought snacks to share, and one member even bought the charcuterrie pretzel off the winery’s restaurant menu for everyone to share. It was an interesting experience for me because I was the youngest person there by a longshot, I am twenty-six, and if I had to guess, everyone there was in their late 50s to late 70s. However, a few of the participants I know from my old church, where my mom met the organizer of the book club, or through other mutual friends of my mom, so it wasn’t as if I was uncomfortable with being much younger than everyone else participating. I also had a good experience because my mom’s friend who organized the book club took the time to introduce me to everyone and we chatted for a while, waiting for everyone to arrive. Unbeknownst to me, ...

We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) is a nonprofit created to promote all forms of diversity in children’s literature and publishing. This campaign started as an online protest against the lack of diversity in the publishing industry, after an all-white male panel was announced for BookCon in 2014. Wanting to make a change, Ellen Oh, Malinda Lo, and other authors and publishing insiders began protesting and discussing the lack of diversity and representation in the field on Twitter using the hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks. Under this hashtag, people began sharing reasons why diverse books are important children’s literature. Because the hashtag grew exponentially, a core group of individuals decided to continue the movement, and on July 29, 2014, We Need Diverse Books became a nonprofit. (Hart 2021). Next, there are several types of programs that WNDB provides including awards and competitions, grants and mentorships, and their biggest area of contribution, resources for anyone involved in the b...

  Author: Katarina Bivald  Title: The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend  Genre: Gentle Reads Publication Date: January 19, 2016 Number of Pages: 394 Geographical Setting: Iowa Time Period: The 2010s Plot Summary: For the last few years, Sara from Sweden and Amy from Broken Wheel Iowa have been pen pals exchanging books. When Sara finally makes it to Iowa to visit Amy, she learns Amy has passed away. Not wanting to return home and wanting to learn more about Amy and this town, Sara decides to open a bookstore with Amy’s books. Through this bookstore Sara learns about the interesting townspeople (Who happen to be bothered by her presence at first), by finding them books to read. Additionally, throughout the novel we learn a lot about Sara and Amy, by getting to look at their letters back and forth from before Amy’s death. Eventually, the townspeople come to love Sara, and she begins to wonder if she should stay in Broken Wheel. Relationships are forged, secrets are shared...