Atmosphere (Taylor Jenkins Reid)

 

I saw lots of social media posts with people crying and talking about how this was the best book they ever read....at least Taylor Jenkins Reid best book. I can't say I was that hooked by it. Space: not really my thing. All the way through it, I kept trying to figure out what is the main point of this? Is it about being strong women? Is it about speaking out for LGBTQ+ rights? Is it about not being afraid to be yourself. Is it about standing up for what is right and being a good person even when your family is brutal? Is it about friendship. 

I think it's about all those things. 

And the last 30 pages about tore my heart out. What an ending. I don't often cry when I read. This made me gasp....then the tears.

Great quotes:

Bravery is being unafraid of something other people are afraid of. Courage is being afraid, but strong enough to do it anyway.

Happiness is so hard to come by. I don't understand why anyone would begrudge anyone else for managing to find some of it.

Because the world had decided that to be soft was to be weak, even though in Joan’s experience being soft and flexible was always more durable than being hard and brittle. Admitting you were afraid always took more guts than pretending you weren’t. Being willing to make a mistake got you further than never trying. The world had decided that to be fallible was weak. But we are all fallible. The strong ones are the ones who accept it.

Just the act of falling in love was to agree to a broken heart.

Goodreads says:
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars.

The Probability of Everything (Sarah Everett)

 

This could be the best book I've  read all year. In the first 200 pages it was okay and then there was a twist that changed everything. I had 100 pages to go until book club tonight and I thought I'd get up early and finish the rest of the book. I didn't quite finish before school started so I had to steal time here and there. I finished it during DEAR time while everyone was reading and when DEAR was over I said to my class, "Can we just sit still and be sad for a moment?" Of course they wanted to know why....and it wasn't something I could even explain. I think the fact that there is so much math involved in the storyline caused me to suspend any idea that it was nothing but realistic fiction....only to realize I had been totally fooled! 

I just loved this book. It is one I'd read again. It would be interesting to read it a second time to see what subtle hints were given that I totally missed. It isn't one I'd read aloud to my students though. There are some tough topics. However, it would be great for middle and high school, for sure.

Everyone in book club loved it too. 

It made me wonder what I would put in a time capsule to represent myself. This is going to take some thought! 

The author is from Edmonton too! Pam H sent the author a message saying, "This would make an AMAZING one act play! Let's collaborate!"

Favorite quotes:

p. 254 As you grow up, you're going to hear a lot of opinions about the right way to be Black. A lot of people will tell you to turn the other cheek or stay in our lane or just be quiet, stay in the neighborhood where everyone looks like you. But you deserve a world where the way you're treated is based on your character and not your  skin color. And you're allowed to fight for that world; you're allowed to make waves.

...if I'm being honest with you, Grit, I'm tired. I'm tired of the way we've been treated in Pineview. I'm tired of the odd looks and the suspicion and the disrespect. I'm even more tired of turning on the news and seeing the way Black people are treated everywhere. I'm tired of making a political statement just by existing, just by being black. And I think that's okay. Tired is okay. I don't have to Make A Statement every minute of every day. I can love myself and love my family and be a human and that's enough. 

p. 293 I nod, because I will do anything for him. Becaause he is my favorite person in the universe. Because if fathers  can be friends, he is mine, and even if they can't, he is mind.

p. 294 on losing someone through death:

....I'll always be one of you, but I can't be here the way I want to be. Remember what I s aid that day when we looked at the stars? People get closer or farther away, so you have to be strong and wonderful and wise and silly and everything you are without me. You have to be that Statgirl. That's what will make me happiest of all.

I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my dress.

p. 305 Now, Mom says something I don't expect. "I'm more than just sad. I'm determined. I'm resilient. I'm angry too. Angry as heck that someone would hurt your afther for such a stupid reason or for absolutely no reason at all. Because he never thought we belonged there, so of course we were in his house. I'm angry that whatever happens to the man who did this will not be nearly as bad as what has happened to us. I'm not going to tell yo uthat it will get any less painful or any less hard, but we will get through it.

p. 307....she whispers, "You don't have to be strong, baby. We'll do it weak. We'll limp and hurt and take everything one day at a time....

Setting
Neighborhood called Pineview - the "nice" part of Elderton (p. 7)

Characters

Mom (Bim)

Dad (Jar p. 131)

Lo (little sister)

Baby Z (baby due in  months)

Jeremiah Woods (Dad's BFF)

Mrs. Sorensen (neighbor who always just walks right in p. 14)

Kemi (cousin)

Dia (Chinese American friend)

Grandma (speaks Yoruba....Nigerian language)

Aunt Miriam - a feelings doctor (psychologist?)

Ty - Kemi's twin who died (p. 55)

Lois! (waitress at Patricia's diner) p. 90

Uncle Jere - surgeon

Uncle Steve

Jen - oldest cousin

Goodreads says:

A heart-wrenching middle grade debut about Kemi, an aspiring scientist who loves statistics and facts, as she navigates grief and loss at a moment when life as she knows it changes forever.

Eleven-year-old Kemi Carter loves scientific facts, specifically probability. It's how she understands the world and her place in it. Kemi knows her odds of being born were 1 in 5 .5 trillion, and that the odds of her having the best family ever were even lower. Yet somehow, Kemi lucked out.

But everything Kemi thought she knew changes when she sees an asteroid hover in the sky, casting a purple haze over her world. Amplus-68 has an 84. 7% chance of colliding with earth in four days, and with that collision, Kemi’s life as she knows it will end.

But over the course of the four days, even facts don’t feel true to Kemi anymore. The new town she moved to that was supposed to be “better for her family” isn’t very welcoming. And Amplus-68 is taking over her life, but others are still going to school and eating at their favorite diner like nothing has changed. Is Kemi the only one who feels like the world is ending?

With the days numbered, Kemi decides to put together a time capsule that will capture her family’s truth: how creative her mother is, how inquisitive her little sister can be, and how much Kemi's whole world revolves around her father. But no time capsule can change the truth behind all of it, that Kemi must face the most inevitable and hardest part of life: saying goodbye.

Neil Armstrong (Little People, Big Dreams series) by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara

 

I was surprised how many of my students knew who Neil Armstrong was. They really liked learning about how he became an astronaut. Great discussion!

Goodreads says:

In this book from the critically acclaimed, multimillion-copy best-selling Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the life of Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon.
 
Little Neil’s dreams took flight when he rode on his first airplane as a child. After studying aeronautical engineering and time spent in the Navy, he became a pilot. From there, he was selected to take a trip to where no human had gone before—the moon! Along with his team, Buzz and Mike, he was the captain of the Apollo 11. And Neil took a giant step for humankind as the first person to ever step onto the surface of the moon.This inspiring book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the legendary astronaut.

​Little People, BIG DREAMS is a best-selling series of books and educational games that explore the lives of outstanding people, from designers and artists to scientists and activists. All of them achieved incredible things, yet each began life as a child with a dream.

This empowering series offers inspiring messages to children of all ages, in a range of formats. The board books are told in simple sentences, perfect for reading aloud to babies and toddlers. The hardcover versions present expanded stories for beginning readers. Boxed gift sets allow you to collect a selection of the books by theme. Paper dolls, learning cards, matching games, and other fun learning tools provide even more ways to make the lives of these role models accessible to children.

Inspire the next generation of outstanding people who will change the world with Little People, BIG DREAMS! 

Hello, Star (Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic)

 

Definitely a book to save and read at the carpet....when we finally get a carpet back and can sit close together to read a story! 

“The girl felt her heart pinch at the idea of the star slowly losing its light all the way out there on its own.”


Goodreads says:

When a young girl learns that a bright light in the sky is coming from a dying star, she promises to keep it company until the light goes out. Every night the girl reassures her friend that she is still there.

As the years pass, the girl learns everything she can about planets, space, and the universe, inspired by her dimming friend—until she realizes she needs to do something more.

This touching tribute to stars, space, and science celebrates how a small act of compassion can flourish into a life full of meaning and wonder.

The Girl Who Named Pluto: The Story of Venetia Burney (Alice B McGinty)

Who would have thought it was a little girl that named Pluto? Great story!

One of my favorite As it Happens stories on CBC was the one where people vented their anger over Pluto no longer being a planet. This book even addresses that in the afterward.

Goodreads says:

An empowering, inspiring--and accessible!--nonfiction picture book about the eleven-year-old girl who actually named the newly discovered Pluto in 1930. 

When Venetia Burney's grandfather reads aloud from the newspaper about a new discovery--a "ninth major planet" that has yet to be named--her eleven-year-old mind starts whirring. She is studying the planets in school and loves Roman mythology. "It might be called Pluto," she says, thinking of the dark underworld. Grandfather loves the idea and contacts his friend at London's Royal Astronomical Society, who writes to scientists at the Lowell Observatory in Massachusetts, where Pluto was discovered. After a vote, the scientists agree unanimously: Pluto is the perfect name for the dark, cold planet.
Here is a picture book perfect for STEM units and for all children--particularly girls--who have ever dreamed of becoming a scientist.