DO YOU REMEMBER? by Sydney Smith and STELLA DIAZ HAS SOMETHING TO SAY by Angela Dominguez

At our November meeting we discussed our picture book first, Do You Remember? by Sydney Smith. We all liked so many things about this book: the contrast between 'then' and 'now' as a young boy and his mom go through various memories of their lives after -- as we learn later -- they are no longer living with the dad of the family. We thought the gentle structure of this spare story was perfect for its purpose -- the idea of reliving memories as a bedtime story activity. We agreed that it had quite deep meanings, and appreciated the difference between the mom's and the son's recollections of the same events. The fact that each of their voices was presented in a different color text was quite helpful, and the illustrations helped us to know exactly what each was remembering. A couple of readers experienced this book via YouTube, and it was obvious that it didn't come across as clearly as if one was reading the actual book, since the visual elements were very important to the story, even including the different colors of endpapers: light in the front and dark at the end. We appreciated that the reader was left with the idea that these twol, who now lived in a new place would be making new memories -- helped by many of the pictured articles brought with them from their previous life.

We had differing opinions of our novel, Stella Diaz Has Something to Say by Angela Dominguez. We all agreed that it was too long, and could have used better editing. After that, our discussion boiled down to this:

Pros: It was a nicely done story (even tho' too long); parts of it were interesting and the characters seemed real; it provided good insight into one particular family while at the same time being a universal story of a timid young girl gaining confidence as the experiences of her life in school and at home and with friends helped her learn more about being in the world and finally feel free to speak her mind.

Cons: The writing felt somewhat tepid and flat -- one reader felt it was boring; another felt the story was not engaging and contained "no engine" and "turgid pacing"; some wondered why this book had received an award for Humor, since they didn't find much funny in it at all.

This discussion was a perfect example of the joy of our book group...the fact that each reader brings something different to the experience, therefore producing different reactions after reading a book. The same is true of young readers, and we felt that some young readers might really like and relate to this book while others would become bored and put it down. ...and so goes the world!