All We Can Do Is Wait by Richard Lawson is an incredibly moving story about life, death, and the gray area in between. It is set in Boston, Massachusetts, with the collapse of the Tobin Bridge bringing hundreds of people to Massachusetts General Hospital to hear news about their loved ones. Among them are five teens: Scott, Alexa, Jason, Morgan, and Skylar. Scott is waiting to hear about his girlfriend; Skylar worries for her older sister; Morgan hopes for news about her father; Jason and Alexa—siblings who are not close—try to comfort each other about the fate of their parents. As they all sit in the waiting room, their fear and agitation pushes the teens together, and they end up forming a surprisingly close bond, even though they have only known each other for a few hours. The characters felt incredibly lifelike and relatable, and the author manages to make the reader empathize, if not sympathize, with even the most detestable characters. In a very short span of time, each character undergoes a change of heart, priorities, or of character. Jason and Alexa start to repair their fractured family; Scott tries to finally let go of the past; Skylar learns the importance of confidence and self-reliance; Morgan learns to accept change. In addition to its captivating characters, the prose in All We Can Do Is Wait is well written and does an excellent job of conveying emotions. Jason says he “still felt rooted in place…because he didn’t know what was left of his life inside.” Skylar “felt herself standing very much in the middle of it. Not the center of it, not the focus of all this chaos, but caught in its tightest, fastest winds, circling around her, whipping past and jostling her like turbulence.” On the surface, this book seems like many others: a saga highlighting the dystopian undertones in our society, simply following the trend of forcing character development with over-the-top disasters. But it is much more than that. Waiting rooms, where the entirety of All We Can Do Is Wait is set, are just what they sound like: rooms meant for waiting, settling in as we twiddle our thumbs until we are called in, or we get The News, or really, whatever gets the story started. They are rooms for the “Inbetween.” But in this book, waiting rooms are not the place where you wait for the story to start; they are a story in themselves, rooms full of soon-to-be widows or orphans, full of future history-book-worthy events. This novel explores the moments before death, the seconds before the grief sets in, the instances before someone’s world changes, and how knowing that you are in a room meant for exactly that can bring strangers together or extinguish the last remaining embers of a once-close relationship. All We Can Do Is Wait by Richard Lawson. Razorbill, 2018. Buy the book here and help support Stone Soup in the process!
Book Reviews
The Twits, Reviewed by Petros Korahais, 8
The Twits by Roald Dahl is a disgusting, creepy, repulsive book full of gross descriptions of stinky people who are just as horrible on the inside as they are on the outside. In most books, the main characters are heroes, but in this one they are cruel, wicked villains that play mean tricks on each other and the animals that live around them. Even though all of that is true, I wanted to continue reading about these bizarre people and their wacky ways. The book introduces readers to talking animals, vindictive humans, hateful pranks and crazy plots of revenge. The Twits, a husband and wife, antagonize each other and the birds and monkeys that live and are caged in their yard. The book is funny, unique, and full of colorful descriptions that make you feel like you have met these awful people. In the end, The Twits reminds us that bad guys get their comeuppance. Their energy is spent hurting each other and those around them, but it all comes back to them in the end, reminding us to be kind to each other and to animals. And to clean the rotting food out of our beards. The Twits by Roald Dahl. Viking Books for Young Readers, 2007. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process! Petros Korahais, 8 (Whitestone, NY)
All Rise For The Honorable Perry T. Cook, Reviewed by Emma, 9
All Rise For The Honorable Perry T. Cook by Leslie Connor is an amazing book that deserves much praise. The main character, Perry T. Cook, is a perfectly regular kid… except for the fact that he was born in a jail because his mom is an inmate there. He’s lived there all his life, and the bullies at school use that as a way to tease Perry. But Perry will always have his friend Zoey Samuels at his side. It’s true… but not in the way Perry thinks. When Zoey’s stepdad—a law attorney named Thomas VanLeer, who pokes his nose into everything—finds out that Perry is living in a jail, he decides it is unacceptable. Thomas VanLeer has a plan, and it includes adopting Perry T. Cook and uprooting his life as a result. Can Perry save his mom and himself from being separated? This story is really made up of two plots with two settings: home and school. Perry just wants to get to his real home, the Blue River jail, with his mom and the rest of his family, the other inmates. But this plot slithers into the school plot: Perry’s school assignment. Perry has to write an essay or make some other form of project, and it has to be about his family. It’s the same assignment Perry’s class gets every year. Perry’s teacher is super nice, but she’s not going to give Perry a different topic for his presentation. Perry’s going to have to face the fact that his mother is in jail, and he hatches a plan to collect all of the inmates’ stories of how they got stuck in jail. Perry learns his mother’s story and begins to unravel a mystery surrounding it. While I recommend All Rise For The Honorable Perry T. Cook, the story also has several flaws. Some of the life stories are unrealistic. Mr. Krensky, for example, the grumpy, mean inmate, stole money and used it to buy himself a mansion and all sorts of fancy and expensive things. We have to question, knowing that this novel is realistic fiction, would this really happen? However, besides Mr. Krensky, the novel is pretty truthful in the matters of how many of these people are in jail because of need or accident. Mrs. DiCoco is a woman who hurt her back, got addicted to painkillers, and eventually began stealing money so that she could afford more. Mr. Rojas started an illegal gambling ring to get enough money to send his two daughters to college. It is true that United States prisons have more people in them than anywhere else in the world, even countries that have greater populations than we do. A lot of people in jail shouldn’t be there, and should instead have help. While this book addresses this, it addresses it without criticizing the idea of prisons, prison wardens, and other people like that, who make sure that the lives of people in prison are miserable. In All Rise For The Honorable Perry T. Cook, the warden is “kind,” and Perry’s mother eventually becomes the new prison warden after the old warden retires. This seems a bit ironic, seeing as Perry’s mother was an inmate; the oppressed become the oppressors. Overall, while reading The Honorable Perry T. Cook, I want you to enjoy the story while thinking about its problems and the entire world we live in, which forces people to do bad things and then puts them in a “correctional facility.” Still, The Honorable Perry T. Cook by Leslie Connor is an amazing book by an amazing author. All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook by Leslie Connor. Katherine Tegen Books, 2017. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
