Transitive Verve

  Clap When You Land  is Elizabeth Acevedo's third-ever novel, but her second one written in verse. It is the story of two sisters separated by life, borders, and secrets, who are finally brought together when their father dies in a tragic plane crash. The inspiration for this novel was American Airlines flight 587, which crashed after departing New York for the Dominican Republican in November 2001. About 90% of its passengers were Dominican or of Dominican descent, Acevedo shares in her Author's Note. News coverage died down as soon as suspicions of terrorism were disproven, but Acevedo didn't stop researching about the passengers and their stories. Yahaira Rios lives in New York with her mother who manages a spa, and her father who disappears to the DR for a few months out of the year. She is a chess champion--or rather, was , until she one day learned something she wasn't supposed to know, and then stopped speaking to him. Camino Rios lives in the Dominican Republic...

Thoughts at a glance: ***** (It was amazing!) Summary: Big and tall, with womanly curves that belie her 15 years, Xiomara Batista is hard to miss. And yet, Xio feels largely unseen: to the kids at her school, she is a "ho" or "fast" because of the shape of her body; to her uber-religious mother, she is sin waiting to happen; to her father, she is invisible. But deep inside, where nobody else sees, Xio is a poet. She is full of feelings, and they have nowhere else to go, except her notebook. Her life changes when her English teacher invites her to join the Poetry Club, where students perform their work, and also, she starts developing feelings for a boy in her class, knowing that anything having to do with boys is absolutely forbidden by her mother. Xio's journey through faith and doubt, first love, and the bonds of family is told in poetry.

Hey! A different sort of post than usual: since September, I have gotten SUPER into bullet journaling , and one of the things I've been trying to do every month is to dedicate a page to a literary quote about that month. Here's what I currently have in my BuJo, having now set up everything for the rest of 2016: