Seed Savers – Unbroken
Title: Unbroken
Author: Sandra Smith https://authorssmith.com
Genre: Teen/ Young Adult
Length: 339 pages
“Had Smith been right? Was the U.S. headed for disaster?”
This line in Sandra Smith’s latest installment of the Seed Savers series made me laugh out loud. In Unbroken, Caleb Smith is a whistleblower who sent the government a 23-page letter regarding the impending doom of monocultures. In the real world, Sandra Smith has written a riveting series that gets kids thinking about where their food comes from, who controls the sources, and who should control the sources. This one line in the book could sum up the entire series.
I’ve had the pleasure of reading each of the Seed Savers books as they come out, in advance reader copy formats. I’ve seen characters grow, I’ve witnessed Smith’s writing change and develop, and I’ve gotten to be excited with her (via email) over the much anticipated dream covers.
This series has been with me as I raise my daughter and I’ve loved having it as a reminder of why we garden, forage, and go back to the dirt and the seeds every season. We would have always gardened, but Smith’s books took it up a notch. It has always kept me true to my desire to sit with my kid and show her how to harvest a seed from a plant, or even produce from the grocery store.
Much of Unbroken concerns an ever looming food shortage in a society where food is no longer grown. Because of food shortages in my own life, I can’t express enough how much the message of this book, seed saving being the key to ensuring the world can eat, moves me. Having tomatoes planted every summer makes a huge difference for a hungry family. Being able to harvest Creeping Cucumbers, wild garlic, dewberries, grapes and grape leaves, and plant indigenous seeds in my yard for easy access, makes it that much easier to get by when faced with an over stretched budget. The books also open the door to discussion about ethics and politics, and most of all, where our belief in God and our responsibility to be good stewards of the earth overlap.
Like the Harry Potter books, the series starts out geared toward one age level and evolves into something for an older crowd. I think this is good for young adult series so that kids can have characters who grow up with them. An eight year old could thoroughly enjoy Treasure, but I wouldn’t hand Unbroken (book five) to an elementary student. With that in mind, I only read the first few books out loud to my kiddo, and the rest of the series will come later. That simply means I’ll have the pleasure of enjoying Smith’s books twice.
It’s a Keeper
Title: Keeper
Author: S. Smith
Genre: Middle Grade/ Young Adult Dystopian Fiction
Length: 200 pages
Many moons ago, it seems like forever now, S. Smith sent me a copy of Seed Savers, the first of her young adult series set in an America where growing your own food has become illegal. Children were being taught about seeds and produce gardens in whispers; collecting, saving, and planting seeds a prison-worthy offense.
The story couldn’t have come at a better time for me. It was the summer of 2012, I had a small daughter at home, my husband was out of work, and I had just started spending more time and care actively growing more of our groceries. On top of that, I was beginning to learn how to forage and was focusing my daughter’s future education on as much regarding sustainability and self-sufficiency as possible. I wanted taking care of ourselves to come as naturally as literature does for me. I wanted finding edible grapes in the forest to be as simple as knowing that 2+2 = 4. Then Seed Savers happened and it felt like the stars had begun to align.
Several books later (Seed Savers, Heirloom, and Lily), we finally have the fourth installment of S. Smith’s world. The girls, Lily and Clare, have done a lot of growing up. Siblings Dante and Clare have received a lot more education during their stay in Canada. Rose is being indoctrinated… bad guys are getting closer and closer to turning everything upside down as rebels have begun starting riots in the street. Soon, all four kids find themselves in Portland, Oregon, where Seed Savers headquarters has been stationed under a forested park in the city for years.
More and more, the series is resembling the fast paced action political drama of the Divergent series – without the killing, and with the added fun of things like Dandelion syrup being discussed.
Although I was sent an advanced reader’s copy of Keeper, I still made a point to pre-order a final copy for my kindle. The book is a keeper in every format, and it’s just worth it to be as supportive as possible of this story, help it get told. I’m looking forward to the day Smith gets a movie or mini-series deal. Better yet, the homeschool mom in me votes for it to be a Netflix original.
Insurgent and Allegiant
I read Divergent a while back. It intrigued me enough to know that I wanted to read the rest of the series eventually, but not enough to make too much of a mad rush to get my hands on it. Although now I have read the rest of the series, despite many people telling me not to bother, and I’m glad I did.
So there’s a little too many fingers curling into shirt scenes… it might be the only way Roth has seen or experienced closeness – in the form of people tugging on t-shirts or twining their fingers around fabric in a near desperate manner. That’s ok. As a writer, I have a nasty habit of tucking things places. She tucked this into that. He tucked blah blah blah. My editor gets on me about it all the time. I’m surprised Roth’s editors didn’t nab her for the finger curling. But that’s not the point…
The point is, despite the teen coming of age romance that we’ve seen over and over again, I liked one major thing about THIS romance.
Tris acknowledges that Love is a Choice.
“I fell in love with him. But I don’t just stay with him by default as if there’s no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.”
After Twilight and Bella’s helpless infatuation… After The Mortal Instruments and the “to love is to destroy” mantra… After Hunger Games and a PTSD induced marriage of comfort… I’m glad Roth had the guts to write about another kind of choice, the kind that doesn’t happen just once, but every day in every moment.
I think that every true relationship has a little bit of all of those things: infatuation, passion, trust and comfort, and thousands of choices. It’s interesting that in one sub-genre of young adult fiction, all released within a decade of each other, all popular enough to make blockbuster films out of them… we’ve covered such a vast array of relationships in our teen romances. It’s good for young people to see such a variety of examples.
Even though Roth’s aren’t my favorite books ever, I like that she had the courage to write the ending no one wanted, but the one that would be expected in a world such as the one her characters live in.
I still haven’t seen the Divergent movie, but I’m looking forward to the day I do a little bit more, hoping that they stick to the books and don’t go too Hollywood with it. I also look forward to seeing what Roth will write next.
S. Smith Book Signing – Earth Day Every Day Part Four
The Half Price Books Clear Lake store was a lovely host today for S. Smith’s first signing of her Texas Earth Day Tour.
The weather was gorgeous, a little chilly for we Texans, but quite beautiful. A great day for an author from Oregon to set up shop in Houston.
Last night, in preparation, I made seedling cupcakes. Yet another great Pinterest idea that the Texas humidity took a toll on. The fondant sort of got floppy the warmer it got throughout the day, and the green sort of melted a bit. But over all, I’m pleased with my first try.
We met new readers today, and enjoyed chatting with the customers in the store. Of course, the first and most common questions was, “What are the books about?”
If you’re stumbling across my blog for the first time, Seed Savers is a young adult series about a dystopian society where growing your own fruits and vegetables is illegal. So naturally, an underground organization is created to keep the art and know how of gardening alive. It’s good garden sense mixed with the danger and adventure of kids on the run from the government entities hunting them down.
There are three books in publication that Sandy is signing and selling right now, but the series is set to be five volumes long. The story is pretty epic, in my opinion, as you can tell if you read through all the past Seed Savers posts featured on this blog. I adore this woman and all her work, and I hope that everyone who purchased her book today feels the same way when they’re done reading.
S. Smith will be at Good Books in the Woods Friday night and then at Half Price Books Humble 1-3 pm and HPB Montrose 6-9 pm on Saturday. If you missed today’s signing, please make time to see S. Smith at the other Houston stores before she flits off to Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas. The author is from Oregon so this very well might be a once in a lifetime opportunity!
It All Started With an Upskirt Photo
Maybe I read too much dystopian fiction. Maybe I was a little too brainwashed by my very paranoid grandfather as a child. Maybe it’s a reasonable theory… maybe it’s not. Either way, as soon as I read the news about the man who got off the hook after taking an upskirt photo, a story idea presented itself:
It all started with an upskirt photo. A man on a subway sneaked a picture of a girl’s panties under her skirt and got away with it. The media went wild, the girl was indignant, the government smiled.
You see, it perpetuated a ball that had been rolling for decades. The government already had their talons in the news room, swaying stories in their favor here and there. But now – in the name of privacy and public safety – the right to take pictures on subways would be eliminated. In the name of protecting innocent bystanders from having their ‘public privacy’ violated – of course – the government gained more control.
From no camera subways came no camera buses. Then planes. No photographs could be taken by a non-government official or civil servant anywhere where fifty or more gathered.
Suddenly government didn’t just control how a story was told and which stories were the most important, they could eliminate the ability to tell a story at all. Bloggers and documentarians could no longer cover protests that major media groups were not covering. No visual documentation could be made against the wrongs of any government official. It evolved from having no fight against police brutality or civil servants on power to trips to far worse things. The police and military could be sent somewhere at any time to detain or massacre anyone at any time without fear it would be captured on film and shared via social media. In a time of technology and the globalized internet, the government brought the sharing of information and relevant news back to the 1700s.
The worst part was, the people asked for it.
In the name of safety – and privacy – of course.
Maybe that’s a far fetched story premise. Maybe I should branch out and write some dystopian fiction. Maybe not. Maybe we should watch very carefully how this legal situation is handled.
A Little Bit of Fad Reading
Title: Divergent
Author: Veronica Roth
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (An Imprint of HarperCollins)
Length: 487 pages
So I finally took that leap onto the [fad] train.
When I worked full time in the bookstore, chatting with customers, recommending books in person, I would have read this as soon as it was a thing for the sole purpose of finding something on the shelves that was similar when we were out of stock. It was published in 2011, the year I left. That last year was also one spent handling more inventory and displays as the store’s SIM than handling people and their whims and desires in the book world. So though I was vaguely familiar with the title I totally missed the need to devour this title in a day and come back with a list of titles to hold over disappointed customers until we could get this one in their hands.
Somewhere along the road in my stay-at-home-mom life I discovered Hunger Games, and fell in love. Though part of a huge fad, Hunger Games was no Twilight Saga or Vampire Diaries series. Hunger Games was epic and beautiful and insanely well written.
So when I saw the preview for the movie Divergent, I thought, ‘What the heck? Let’s see if it will surprise me too.’
Color me surprised – again! I really liked this one. I read it in one day – nearly one sitting. It tends to be easy to do that with contemporary young adult novels, no matter how long they are.
I found Hunger Games more moving, but I was able to relate more to the main character of Divergent more. I’m nervous to see how they portray her in the movie, the book version is a person I feel very in tune to. Katniss Everdean is someone I admire and look up to as a literary character, but whom I share very few similarities. Tris’s story feels as though Roth dropped my mind into her version of dystopia. Tris feels how I feel and tends to react in ways I am known to react. (So far anyway.) Many of her fears were my fears at 16, actually I can’t think of one that is different.
For that it was incredibly enjoyable and easy to get into, and despite this being completely entertaining fluff fiction, I consider the hours spent reading it time well spent.
I’m interested to see how the rest of the books go (it’s a series), as well as the movie adaptation in theaters this month. Although I’m a little nervous that it might be too easy to amp up the cheese factor for the big screen – but I guess I’ll have to take a flying leap onto that fad train as well or I’ll never find out.
Teres – It’s About Time
Title: Teres
Author: Gershom Reese Wetzel
Publisher: LucidBooks
Genre: Science Fiction
I read this book in April of this year (2013) when it was still a pdf file. Go back in time a few (or ten) years and I remember listening to Gershom (my dear friend) talk about his ideas regarding a character named Teres. I remember a very cool dinner party at Macaroni Grill with Teresa Noreen, who seemingly semi-inspired the character Wetzel invented in his mind.
She was stunning. So is the book.
I read the book in approximately three to four hours. I believe it’s 300 pages or so long. It was riveting, and I was doing a real time discussion as I read with the author, searching for mistakes. There really weren’t any that I recall.
I’ve been leery about posting a formal review on any of my typical sites (shelfari, goodreads, amazon, etc.) though. Not because I don’t like the book – I love it – but because I have the great honor of being mentioned on the back of the book and I don’t want any potential customer to feel duped or think my thoughts are self-serving or insincere.
I feel too close to write an unbiased review, but I am way too excited about Teres to leave my thoughts undocumented.
Teres is all action and go from start to finish. It’s glorious sci fi patterned stylistically after typical books of the genre, but with a depth that is not easily comparable in anything else I’ve read. Wetzel may not have intended on delivering such a moving message about life, government, and religion, but by nature he’s a wise messenger and that couldn’t help but come across in his writing.
As I mention in so many of my posts, I am a sucker for dystopian societies, and this one is right up there with the infamous Big Brother from 1984 and Libria from the amazing film Equilibrium.
What makes Wetzel’s work so engrossing is what a visual masterpiece he has created. He is first and foremost an artist, then a graphic designer and author. His writing is enhanced by the images his fingers itch to draw out on paper. It’s also really cool that he has the ability to do all his own cover and concept art.
I can’t wait to see more from this character – and her creator. I see sequels and graphic novels and films of the Aeon Flux caliber in Teres’ future.
Seed Savers: Heirloom
Title: Heirloom
Author: S. Smith
Genre: Young Adult
Length: 300 pages
“I haven’t been this in love with a young adult series since Harry Potter,” I wrote after reading the first installment of the Seed Savers Series – Treasure – for the first time. Having now read the second and third installments – Lily and Heirloom – I can happily say that the statement still holds true.
No, there aren’t wizards or magic. The adventure doesn’t reach any of the same fantastical levels, but it is very epic. It is based in a truth that could easily lend itself to being our future. This dystopian society is so intense, because it’s so plausible.
Treasure featured two runaway kids (Clare and Dante) after their discovery of the wonderful world of planting your own seeds and growing your own food, in a government where that is forbidden. They flee for their safety. They flee to learn more.
Lily is where you get to know another character, Clare and Dante’s friend and fellow cohort in the Seed Saving excitement. In this book she blossoms before our eyes into less of a sidekick and more the hero. I was pleasantly surprised to find she had such a huge role in the story. She’s not just the key to almost everything, but the narrator as well! Who knew?
After a long alienation from Clare and Dante, Smith is wise enough to bring us back and feed our curiosity. Heirloom is told back and forth between what’s happening with Clare and Dante, and the world according to Lily. I loved this pattern for a third in a series. It wrapped up some lo0se ends, it led us into asking more questions, and we were able to adventure cross country and learn more about growing plants in a cozy environment in the same book. My brain needed this.
Heirloom, even more than the other two in the series, is full of interesting facts about how a society would get from where it was in the 1980’s to what it is in Smith’s novels. In a time when we are debating GMOs, organics, seeds, and patents, this book is a must have to help middle grade students grasp all the political nuances decisions of today will have on tomorrow. I love that Smith was able to take an intense political topic and weave it into a fascinating (and fun) story.
The fun comes into play, I think, because Smith did not intend to strictly bark all this information at us. It comes from love, and you can sense that as you read. Love for what? “[M]y love of good food,” she said in a blog interview with me once, “Seed Savers is a love story starring home-grown food. I love food—growing, harvesting, cooking, eating, and sharing it. And I think a lot of people these days maybe are missing out on that.”
If you’ve read books one and two, you cannot miss this third part of the series! It’s essential. It has propelled us so much deeper into the story and I’m jittery waiting on the fourth! It didn’t maintain the same read in one sitting quality of books one and two, but I believe that’s because the characters demand more of your time. There is so much more going on, and in the midst of it all they want to teach you as well. That takes more than a day. Clare, Dante, and Lily are growing and stretching their legs, and with them Smith is becoming more detailed and dynamic in her tale. Like good food, Heirloom was made to be savored.
If you haven’t read any of the series, you must. Purchase it for yourself, purchase it for your children for Christmas and read them together – or just swipe the copies and read them yourself. They are so good.
A Real-Time Review
I always take notes and comment in the margins or in a journal through out my reviews. But recently, I read a friend’s novel while he was on facebook chatting with me and I gave him a real time review… moment by moment, thought by thought. He seemed entertained by this, so I thought I could try doing this with more books. What if instead of editing a formal review after a book, I just shared my streaming thoughts? With Prominence League Part Two, I’m giving it a try. The following is directly from my journal this afternoon – no edits.
Title: The Prominence League Part Two
Author: C. David Cannon
Publisher: LucidBooks
Genre: Young Adult
Length: 230 pages
Mandarin Moon in my Scentsy warmer, coffee depleted, still in my pajamas, I sit down to read The Prominence League Part II. I truly enjoyed the first book, but that was baseball and this is martial arts – my element. From line one, I’m HOOKED.
Already the book shows a level of writing maturity – that confidence that radiates “I am a seasoned author now.” I hope my second book shows the same degree of improvement over my first.
I love that he starts the chapter numbers where the previous book ended. It gives you an immediate sense of continuation and begs the question – “Is there an omnibus in my future?”
Still, Cannon keeps with his love for knocking out characters. Carriane is a fainting Queen with a flair for drama. It kind of makes you wonder if she was mildly based on anyone he knew in real life and what that was like.
My favorite thing about dystopian society fiction is how it points out intentions behind real world current events.
“Now I see why people did nothing to stop it,” Ian says looking at the timeline of events in the report. “It happened too slow, and was covered in lies the whole way.” […]
“That’s right Ian […] they weren’t trying to keep us safe from terrorists like they claimed. In fact, they encouraged new reports of terrorist attacks, because they always beefed up their measures after one. This was obedience training plain and simple.”
In all this fabulous story telling, though, I want to slap Carriane and her obsession with her relationship status. But Cannon’s behind the scenes take on our current education system quickly makes me get over it, until Emerald reinstates the token young adult love triangle.
What’s with the Caleb kid that all the females salivate at his very existence? It’s like sitting through high school watching girls fawn over the boy that became the man I married.
And it’s not just the writing that is better than ever [I note after seeing a new graphic], I’m especially impressed with this round of maps and graphics. And for the first time in the series we see a worldwide view of Carriane’s reality.
By Chapter 26, my daughter is using me as a full on jungle gym. She has no idea that what I am reading now will be passed onto her in about eight to ten years. There’s just so much to discuss afterward… the obvious dystopian society and personal worldview stuff – but then also the less obvious near dive into meta-fiction with Carriane’s self-absorbed reality show fantasy and the ever interesting relationship between a hero and their adventure.
Once again I find myself reading an American novelist, possibly sending me on an escape route to Canada. Man, I need to visit Canada already! It is so often deemed a safe haven. do they write novels in Canada about escaping to the United States?
There’s this book by Olivier Dunrea that I read to my kiddo literally every night called BooBoo
Andi read another book.
“Good book,” she says.
So there you have it folks… my first official stream of consciousness review.
Other books you might enjoy if you read Cannon (or if you enjoyed you should read Cannon):
Fizz & Peppers
Arlington Park
Anakalian Whims 
Literary Journal Monday – Mapping My Mind
March 10, 2014 at 10:14 pm (In So Many Words, Reviews, The Whim) (ADD, ancient history, books, dystopia, dystopian society, fiction, Gone, good books in the woods, Hunger, Lang Leav, literary journals, London Review, love, Michael Grant, poetry, reading life, reviews, romance, series, social commentary, Tonight You're Mine, You Instead, young adult)
I am not ADD, but my mind is often many places at once. It goes and goes… it races… it is unstoppable.
I was craving a little bit of dystopian society literature after reading Herodotus. My brain spinning in a circular momentum about democracies, oligarchies, and dictatorships. Darius and then Xerxes tyrading around ancient lands building the Persian Empire. A thousand utopian and dystopian variations of all societies throughout history – a million possible outcomes for our modern world – twisting about in my mind. Conveniently, it was at this moment that a trailer for the movie Divergent came on and I thought, “It’s about time I read Veronica Roth.”
Cue discussion of autism I’ve been having on and off with people since reading Not Even Wrong written by Paul Collins. Collins is an amazing author and obscure historian. Still suffering from story hangovers from Divergent and the movie Tonight You’re Mine (all about instantaneous human connections) – I found myself thinking about my niece’s Gone series.
Set in a town in California, all the kids fifteen and under have been left in a supernatural bubble – all adults over puberty have vanished, leaving kids and babies to fend for themselves and create a new government. Not unlike Lord of the Flies, different factions have formed. One is under the leadership of Sam Temple, another under his half brother Caine (the biblical implications of Caine and Abel not to be lost on readers, of course). Sam and his new girlfriend, Astrid, are two of the oldest left behind. They have formed a parental union for the younger kids, caring for all the helpless, including Astrid’s autistic brother.
Like bumper pool – or pinball, if you missed out on the bumper pool phenomena – the synapses in my brain spark and twitch and leap bringing me back to Paul Collins/Not Even Wrong/ McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. Then, I find myself thinking, “Goodness, it’s Literary Journal Monday.
London Magazine February/March 1981 Vol. 20 Nos. 11 &12
The Private Letters of Tennessee Williams and a piece on Gore Vidal catch my eye. I flip through the first few ads, the table of contents, then stop dead on a heading: FINAL REMINDER.
My thoughts have veered so far off track that I forget what I was reading altogether. I flip through the journal in my hand trying to grasp the reason I had sat down to look at this in the first place.
It’s March. St. Patty’s Day is coming up. Irish authors keep popping in and out of my mind. Ireland… Scotland… Tonight You’re Mine… music… poetry… Derek Mahon, an Irish poet’s name blinks at me from the page of the literary journal in my hand. Literary Journal Monday, of course. I read the poem “The Elephants” first. I love elephants. Then my eyes skip over to “April in Moscow” and I read “Spring burst into our houses…” It does, doesn’t it? Just bursts right in and none too soon. At the end of the poems there is an ad for the Poetry Society Bookshop at 21 Earls Court Square in London. I wonder if it is still there.
If they do still exist, I bet they have a copy of Lang Leav’s Love & Misadventure. I’m dying for a copy. Leav has been speaking to my soul lately. Misadventures stuck in the cogs of the mind of a woman turned 30.
A line from Grant’s book swings into full view of my mind’s eye:
There rarely is when a hug is really needed. It’s that moment Leav writes about…
The lack of selfishness between the characters at this point is refreshing in fiction and real life.
In a 2014 American Society of infantile adults who never learned to fend for themselves and work hard without constant praise, we are fascinated by literature and movies where children and teens are forced to grow up overnight and be adults.
It’s sad when the idea of fifteen-year-olds co-leading a community and making wise, unselfish decisions for themselves and each other sounds absurd and fictional. My associative mind leaps back to all the ancient history I’ve been studying, back to the likes of King Tut – pharaoh at age nine – dead by nineteen, married somewhere in between.
We believe in responsible marriages like the Romans, but we chase telepathic connections like the Greeks. What a very convoluted and contradictory way to live – the reality of a dystopian society is that every society is a dystopia – even a society of one. Our minds are everywhere and nowhere. Of course we are in conflict.
I suppose you Literary Journal Monday followers got a little more than you wanted. I bit off more than I could chew today. I attempted to map my own mind and identify all the associations and patterns, leaving myself somewhat exhausted from chasing whimsies.
At least I got to spend a few stolen moments in this room…
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