Book Review: City Under the City by Dan Yaccarino

City Under the City

by Dan Yaccarino (jP Yaccarino)

 

This brand-new children’s picture book felt like a throwback to my own childhood. The artistic style of this one captured the tone and feel of a book published in the late 1960s or early 1970s. This is “dystopian fiction” for children.

 

in City Under the City, Bix is a child in a futuristic city where the humans are all helped and watched by a collection of floating giant eyes…who provide all that the human beings need, but discourage individuality and actual “thinking”. Bix is a precocious and stubborn little kid, who resists the conformity that the Eyes impress upon everyone else.

 

When a friendly mouse shows Bix the way to a hole to escape the “perfect” city they live him, Bix follows, and discovers an amazing old city hidden beneath the surface of the modern high-tech futuristic reality everyone else simply accepts. There, he discovers a massive collection of pre-Eye books in a library and learns to think clearly on his own.

 

For a simple children’s story, this is actually a template for resisting authoritarianism and dogma, as Bix brings his new-found knowledge back to his family and launches as a resistance movement against the all-seeing Eyes. I enjoyed this on all the levels it was presented, but especially the cute artistic style, that reminded me of watching The Jetsons as a kid.

 

( official Dan Yaccarino web site )

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Book Review: How I Resist: Activism and Hope for a New Generation edited by Maureen Johnson

How I Resist: Activism and Hope for a New Generation
edited by Maureen Johnson (YA PB (Non-Fiction) Johnson)

Living in an era in which more and more people are becoming activists in one way or another, I’ll admit this book caught my eye on one of the libraries’ “new books” displays, and I enjoyed browsing through it enough to check it out.

How I Resist is a relatively quick, easy read. Editor Maureen Johnson has assembled a collection of 29 essays, interviews, poems and/or cartoon selections, by a wide and diverse group of contributors. All take on the themes of “how to resist the status quo — how to make a difference — how to “matter” in today’s world of news churn, social media obsessions, fractured interpersonal relationships and hostile political separatism. Contributions come from writers, actors, musicians, poets, artists and people from across a wide social spectrum. Many are individuals I was not familiar with, while others are best-selling personalities like authors Rebecca Roanhorse, Libba Bray, Jennifer Weiner and Jacqueline Woodson. Each has a unique perspective, and while many offer variations on the concept of “Don’t give up — keep trying — just by trying you’re making an impact”, several of them have very precise and constructive advice on being a modern day activist.

Definitely worth sampling!

[ publisher’s official How I Resist web site ] | [ official Maureen Johnson web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library – Public Service

Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem (audiobook)

My Life on the Road
by Gloria Steinem [Compact Disc Biography Steinem (also Downloadable Audio)] 

Gloria Steinem reads the introduction to this autobiography, then actress Demi Moore takes over to read the remainder. I found listening to the eight CDs to be empowering, informative, and hopeful. The autobiography featured signs of hope that overcame hardships, inequality and tragedies throughout the decades of Steinem’s life. I was impressed by how easy it was to relate to the author’s life lessons, and was grateful she gave credit to the diverse people through which they were given. Demi Moore’s voice was a wonderful selection for reading these CDs and the downloadable audio available through Lincoln City Libraries. I completed this with a vast amount of new knowledge, as well as launching points for more people and historical eras I want to research further.

( publisher’s official My Life on the Road web site ) | ( official Gloria Steinem web site )

Recommended by Jodi R.
Gere Branch Library

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!