I was really looking forward to Borrowed Names – a book about mothers/daughters, a book about Laurie Ingalls Wilder, Madam C.J. Walker, and Marie Curie (and their daughters). And I did like it but more than half the book was the store of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder. The Walkers and Curies felt shorted – which is too bad because I particularly liked the Walker and Curie sections of this book.
Twin Spica – a little girl wants to be in the first class of the Tokyo Space School. There are problems, of course, it’s a graphic novel after all. The girl’s mom was injured and killed when she was a baby – when the first Japanese rocket crashed into earth after lift-off. Elly read this one before I did and she liked it. I read it and… I liked it too, once I settled into the traditional backwards method of reading (it always takes me about three pages to get used to reading right to left, lol) – but I didn’t get the end. I don’t know if it’s because it was almost midnight when I finished or if I missed a heading that explained what the heck was going on but… I think I need to re-read the last three pages. Maybe that’s the intro to volume two? I don’t know. (FYI to those looking for middle grade graphic novels – there’s some family violence in this book. The father slaps the daughter a couple of times. And there are cases where the kids fight with each other, but in the context, the fighting makes sense (three kids locked in a small room together and told to place dominos – millions of dominos – in line within 7 days …. Or they flunk the test. It’s one of those controlled environment tests for space programs. Totally stressful, read Packing for Mars if you’re confused by this. Heh)