What are five things you take for granted? I could start by assuming that you take your senses for granted. The ability to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste are so normal that they are often not appreciated until they are lost. If you have never lived in darkness, or silence, or in a world without touch, smell, or taste, you might not realize what a gift these abilities are. In 100 Days of Sunlight by Abbie Emmons, the main character, Tessa Dickonson, learns to appreciate all five of her senses after a fateful car accident. Due to an injury from the accident, Tessa must endure 12 to 14 weeks of blindness before her vision returns—but there’s also a possibility that her vision will never return. Tessa is doomed to 100 days of darkness, if not more. Tessa is a blogger and poet, and after she loses her sight her grandparents place an ad in the newspaper looking for someone to type her poetry and blog posts for her. But none of them expect Weston Ludovico to show up in response to the ad. Weston has his own backstory: three years before 100 Days of Sunlight, he lost most of his legs, and now has to wear prosthetic limbs. He knows what Tessa is going through—the feeling that your whole world has been turned upside down and things will never be the same again, because now you have a problem, a handicap. At first, Tessa hates Weston and his “obnoxious optimism.” She is rude to him and does her best to scare him off. But Weston is just as stubborn as she is, and he insists on showing her the beauty that can be found through hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting. The book is split up into five parts, each titled after one of the senses. As the story progresses, Weston shows Tessa how to overcome her fears of the darkness and how to see the positive side of things, while Tessa and Weston become better and better friends. Weston loves to be with Tessa for another reason: she treats him like a normal person. Ever since he got his prosthetic legs, everyone treated him as broken, or fragile. But Tessa can’t see his legs and he doesn’t tell her about them. He’s excited for the chance for someone to treat him like a real person, rather than an invalid. 100 Days of Sunlight is not the type of book I would normally reach for, but I had been listening to a podcast with the author, Abbie Emmons, and I decided to try it out. Abbie Emmons’ writing is captivating and delightful, right from the first page to the last. Tessa’s and Weston’s characters are empathetic and deep, rather than shallow. There are also good secondary characters, such as Tessa’s grandparents, Weston’s three younger brothers who think of Weston as a superhero, and Weston’s friend, Rudy. 100 Days of Sunlight is technically a Young Adult book, and it does have some cursing and elements of romance in it, but overall it was a fast, interesting read that I would highly recommend. 100 Days of Summer by Abbie Emmons. Abbie Emmons, 2019. Buy the book here and help support Stone Soup in the process!
book review
All We Can Do Is Wait, Reviewed by Sita, 13
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!
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)
