Read Catfish Rolling if you like magical realism, literature, and stories that are carried by emotion rather than plot. It feels like a mix of soft sci-fi, magic realism, and Japanese mythology (some of it new to me), and it is a slower paced story with descriptive prose, focusing more on Sora’s feelings and longings of her family, growing up a hafu (half Japanese) in Japan, romantic feelings (she’s bi), and what time actually is. When an intuitive librarian lends Jamie a disguised book that reflects his own emerging feelings towards boys, a romance is sparked by scribbled notes in the book’s margins. Kumagai is one to watch, with such a powerfully crafted and original debut novel, I wait in anticipation for her next work to be published! When Leto awakes from her death, the enigmatic Melantho reveals her destiny: to kill the last prince of Ithaca and destroy the curse.

Identity, family and loss are key themes running throughout the novel where myth, fantasy and scientific discovery collide. Her determination to work with her father to uncover the secrets of these scattered time areas, makes her easy to root for. These zones however draw speculation and intrigue, and this is how Sora makes her income: taking people into these forbidden zones so they can quench their desire for the unknown, until one day her father learns of what she has been doing and leaves her with little choice but to move away leaving him alone when perhaps that isn’t the wisest idea. It won’t be an enjoyable read for everyone, and I don’t think a book for the masses was the author’s intention. The blurb for the book mentioned that this would be a perfect book for fans of Studio Ghibli and I couldn’t agree more.Kelly's particular interest in language acquisition and vocabulary development has led to the publication of her first book, Word Power: Amplifiying vocabulary instruction (2019) - full of ideas for building a language-rich environment and top tips to Power-Up explicit vocabulary instruction. The different time zones are described as dangerous, but the actual consequences of them were not explored enough for my taste. Now Sora and her scientist father live close to the zones - the wild and abandoned places where time runs faster or slower than normal. But Sora must be swift for anyone who spends too much time in these zones are seldom seen ever again, and with her father already showing signs of such damage, she must push herself further than she ever has before. Sora feeling lost in the unknown future, and the bittersweet nature of changing friendships, felt incredibly relatable.

I want to thank RB Media via NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to listen to Catfish Rolling by Clara Kumagi and narrated by Susan Momoko-Hingley.In this book, the different time zones had managed to instigate suspense and mystery everytime Sora went into it. I'd say it's the kind of soft and emotional sci-fi that reminds me of Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011) and Mike Cahill's Another Earth (2011). View image in fullscreen Simon James Green, author of the ‘timely’ Boy Like Me, photographed at home in south London.

I've been a fan of Japanese fiction for a while now and anything that melds together the love of the natural world with a surreal story is fine with me. I personally could imagine especially the last part of Sora’s personal adventure transformed into a Ghibli’s animation vividly. There are flashbacks all throughout the story where we read about Sora’s life before the earthquake and it has a few beautiful friendships and love stories. However, this concept is short-lived and the book quickly becomes absorbed in the daily life of Sora - her future, her relationship with her father, the shock of her lost mother, and her struggles as a minority. All in all, I'd recommend this if you're looking for a YA novel that's complex and multifaceted in the ways that it deals with grief and trauma.

trochę wonky napisane i jeszcze ostatnie 2 godziny audiobooka mega mnie nudziły i często się wyłączałam słuchając. In Boy Like Me by Simon James Green (Scholastic), it is 1994 and, thanks to section 28, there can be no mention of gay relationships in UK schools. Her fiction and nonfiction for children and adults has been published in The Stinging Fly, the Irish Times, and the Kyoto Journal among others; this is her debut novel.