"Scarlet" by Marissa Meyer

**Spoilers!**

In the book, Scarlet, by Marissa Meyer, she continues to expand the story and world she set in Cinder, the first book in the Lunar Chronicles. Scarlet focuses on a retelling of the "Little Red Riding Hood" fairytale, introducing Scarlet Benoit, a young woman whose grandmother has mysteriously disappeared. Soon, Scarlet realizes that this mystery is much larger than just her grandmother, and enfolds years of agression and tension built up between Earth and the Lunars, as well as the one person who could stop the threat of war. The missing Lunar, Princess Selene.

I finally read it! Yeah me!

So this book has been sitting on my Nook for weeks, and last week, I finally started to read it. I was so excited, and the book lived up to my expectations greatly.

As I mentioned in the first Lunar Chronicles book, the books are futuristic retellings of some of the most familiar fairytales, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White. One of my favorite part of these books so far is the imaginative setting revamp. The world of the five nations in future-Earth is so vivid and well planned out. The prejudices, actions and thoughts of them as a society have been really thought out and still resonated clearly in Scarlet, which was interesting. I thought maybe because it was a whole different country, and each country was so large, the cultures would vary largely country to country.

One thing I did want to learn a little more about was France, specifically, in the book. We learned a lot about New Beijing in the first book, and had vivid imagery to go along with the new culture we learned about. Though this book was still descriptive, I wanted to learn more about Paris, farmland area France, and customs of the French in this universe.

Another thing I wanted to see, though less of, is the Wolf-Scarlet romance. I enjoy the relationship, and it was fun to see grow, and I have nothing against it, it was a little cheesy to see the last couple scenes with them and even the middle of the book. They barely know each other, but almost seem ready to get married. I get that the Prince Kai-Cinder relationship couldn't continue as a key plot point, but it kind of set the mood of the story. This is a series about girls not obsessed with love, ready to do what is important overall first. Scarlet is a strong character, but how fast she changes from not trusting Wolf, at all, to being head-over-heels for him, seems completely out of the character established at the beginning of the book. The Wolf and Scarlet relationship made this feel a little bit like Twilight. Oh no!

Overall, I still loved the book, and would recommend it to fans of the Hunger Games, fairytales, and sci-fi. Please, if you find this interesting, read the first book first. It won't make much sense otherwise!

Martin Espada Essay

Recurring Themes in Martin Espada’s Poetry

Martin Espada is a well known, educated and respected Puerto Rican poet from New York City. His poetry often deals with major issues and have recurring themes, which stretch between poems. One strong theme in Espada’s poetry is the idea of power, and the abuse of it.

For instance, in Espada’s poem, “The New Bathroom Policy at English High School,” the principal abuses his power over the school by banning the speaking of Spanish in the bathrooms. He has no incentive to do so besides the speaking of Spanish, and hearing his name in these conversations, constipating him. The principal in this poem is abusing his power as the principal, cutting of the Spanish speakers in the school of a location where they can express their culture and may speak the language most comfortable to them, if they learned Spanish as a first language. 

Another example of the theme of the abuse of power in Espada’s poetry is in his poem, “Revolutionary Spanish Lesson”. The people mispronouncing the narrators name are either using the power of the narrators name and purposefully mispronouncing it to frustrate him, or just not taking the time to ask them how his or her name is pronounced. When you have a choice to make, like the subjects of the poem mispronouncing the narrators name again, and again, you have power over the situation. Being careless with this power to make better choices is still an abuse of a, even if small power much of the time, power.

Lastly, the theme of abuse of power is an important theme in Martin Espadas poems in the poem, “Two Mexicanos Lynched in Santa Cruz, California, May 3, 1877”. This poem speaks of the lynching of two Mexicans by whites in California. The theme of abuse of power is extremely strong in this poem. Not only is the extreme racism and prejudice obvious in this situation, the “gringos” in the poem had much more power than these Mexicans. There were forty of them present at the hanging of the only two Mexican people, which means that the Mexicanos were almost certainly outnumbered to fight the whites who were trying to kill them. The whites were higher status and have a better situation than the Mexicans. They could've gone on to face little or no repercussions for what they did. It’s murder in every sense of the word, and all murders or deaths are terrible, but the way it was committed makes it even worse. The white subjects in the poem abused their physical and societal powers over the Mexicans. 

In conclusion, the abuse of power is a huge theme in Martin Espada’s poetry. He uses it clearly in three different poems of his, “The New Bathroom Policy at English High School”, “Revolutionary Spanish Lesson”, and “Two Mexicanos Lynched in Santa Cruz, California, May 3, 1877”. Espada used many different forms of abuse of power in his poems, showing that no matter what kind of power you abuse, it’s still wrong if you do it for the wrong reasons.

"Breathing Underwater" by Alex Flinn

**Spoilers!**

Breathing Underwater is the story of Nick, a seemingly perfect and popular high school student who is charged with a restraining order on his ex-girlfriend, Caitlin. But why? Nick doesn't think he did anything wrong. He just taught her a lesson. The book chronicles his journey to his anger management classes that will "help him", and overall just his journey to redemption.

I enjoyed this book a lot. My favorite moments were the letters, and seeing how bad the abuse got in the relationship. I couldn't really imagine anyone besides some alcoholic father (like Nick's dad) abusing anyone, but this really shows me that abuse can happen for lots of reasons, and isn't always the reasons we think. I also was surprised about the relationship itself, and gave me an insight to an abusive relationship. The book showed me a lot about the kind of people who get caught in relationships like this, people like Caitlin who don't think they're good enough because of someone (Caitlin's mom), who think the person will be their only hope at a relationship. Also it was interesting that Nick didn't think he was being that harsh, or that we was wrong. It made me really worried for others who are in situations like this, and how they might not even know what they're doing is wrong.

Also is made me sad that Caitlin's or Nick's friends didn't try to help Caitlin when they saw something wrong about the relationship. I think if I ever saw a friend in trouble I would have to tell them, even if it meant losing a friendship. 

Overall, this book was really interesting and emotional to read, and I enjoyed it. The movement to Nick's "redemption" was well written, as Alex Flinn is awesome. Read it!

"After" by Amy Efaw

**Spoilers!**

After, by Amy Efaw, tells the story of Devon. Devon has always been the "good girl". Straight A's. Master goalie on the soccer field. Quiet and well-behaved, even with her slightly obnoxious and childish mother who goes through men just a little bit too fast. But when a new-born baby is found in a trash can behind Devon's house, left to die, and Devon is the one to blame, her life will change forever. But how could Devon herself have not known about the baby as she claims? When she was pregnant, gaining weight and throwing up? 

This was actually a really good book. I heard some bad reviews about it and wanted to see if it was as terrible as people were saying. Though really the only thing that bothered me was that Amy Efaw used too many soccer references in it. I'm kind of laughing at that now, because that's a very silly thing to think of a book. But I guess it was very soccer oriented? I did think Devon, as a character was a little useless at times, and some of her motivations were confusing me. But I know very little on the subject of the book, pregnancy and rejecting your child after birth, so I may not have the full picture.

I thought this was a really intriguing book about how far humans will go to keep their personal image. I hated Devon at the beginning. It seemed so obvious that she was pregnant, and all the things that were put up against her as evidence, mostly the details in the flashbacks, shows that she did know that it was likely she was pregnant. She even seemed to hide it from other people actively, which means that she did know! I understand that denial over traumatic events can occur, but it seemed so obvious that she knew that she was with child, and that she could have done something about it.

One of the reasons this book ended up being really satisfying for me is that at the end, Devon does realize all of the things I said above. She knows that even if she was denying it to herself, at some level she knew she was pregnant. She knew what she was subconsciously trying to do when wearing baggy clothes, or what she realized when she had cramps from sit-ups. That she knew that she had to pay and do something about almost killing her child was what really showed that Devon was still Devon. She knew she wanted the baby gone when she gave birth. She knew she was trying to make it go away by hurting the baby. If I tried to do get rid of a child in secret, I wouldn't be able to get it off my mind- that I tried to kill something as precious as a baby, but I didn't pay any consequences.

As I said before as well, I didn't like that there were so many random soccer references in the book. I get that soccer was important to Devon as a character, but would someone realistically think that everything was like soccer? I got all the little anecdotes about hard games and practicing and tough foul shots, but it kind of took me out of a story that was really about what humans can and will do and denial, and made me think it was one of those children's shorter chapter books all about some kid and his baseball team, and the conflict is all about how some other guy on another team cheat and he has to prove it or something. It just felt wrong. It was a weird tonal change in the book. I expect that from sports books, but do even professional soccer players always think in soccer metaphors, similes and analogies?