Book, movie & music reviews by teens for teens! Because who would know better what Berkeley teenagers might want than other Berkeley teenagers?
Some of the most recent reviews are featured here.
See all the reviews at BPLTeensRecommend.wordpress.com.
Then check them out from the library.
Do you have opinions about books, movies and music? Submit your own review!
I am reviewing the book called Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. This book was really good. At first I was reading it for an assignment that my teacher gave me but after I started reading the first two chapters I was just so into it I would read it in my classes when it’s not even time to read and my teachers would get mad at me. But it’s basically about two half-sisters from different tribes in Ghana and they’re separated. One became a slave and the other went with the white people to live with them in their castle. And the book is about them coming together as complete opposites.
Every chapter in the book was a generation and they would go down that line and the half-sisters and their families would take turns telling their story. And then a new generation comes and generation after generation after generation they finally meet each other. And it’s just about how they reconnect and it’s such a beautiful moment when they do meet at the end of the book because you’re reading the whole story to find out how it finally ends and it’s a great book! I recommend it to literally anyone who’s interested in African American literature or family or meeting, coming together and being together. Middle schoolers, yeah, anybody can read this book – it’s an awesome book!
Reviewed by: Suhera – 17 years old
Find Homegoing at the library.
I am reviewing a documentary called The Dawn Wall which is about this one kid who was really into rock climbing in Yosemite with his dad. As a kid he was doing crazy, crazy climbs and then he entered an “anyone can enter” competition and won it! And they let him compete in the world’s which was the next day at the same place even though he was only a 14 year old against all these adults. It’s the hardest climbing competition and he wins that and basically becomes one of the best rock climbers in the world even though he’s never competed! I don’t think he’d ever climbed on a wall, real rocks in Yosemite. And then he becomes quite popular and does a lot of climbing.
He ends up getting invited on this trip to Kyrgyzstan with his girlfriend who is also his friend and climbing partner. And they go there and while they’re climbing these crazy mountains, in the middle of the night one night they are on a wall and hear a gun shot. And they start seeing bullets hitting the rocks around them. So they climb down and are kidnapped by Kyrgyzstani rebels. They are taken on a long march. There are firefights with the Kyrgyzstani military, they are stuffed in holes during the day so that they are not found and they walk all night. They haven’t eaten. Tommy ends up pushing the last of their kidnappers who are with them off a cliff and now they are all alone in the middle of Kyrgyzstan without food for 8 days and have to find their way to safety. They finally find a Kyrgyzstani military base and are brought back to the United States. There’s all this media attention and they become famous. But he’s still traumatized by having killed his kidnapper.
Eventually Tommy and his girlfriend get married and they do a bunch of climbing. He summits all of these really hard climbs in Yosemite that most professional rock climbers can only attempt one of. Eventually his wife leaves him and Tommy decides to climb the hardest face of El Capitan that has never been climbed before. He spent 7 or 8 years planning the route, climbing different parts, looking through things and every year trainings. And eventually he does it with a climbing partner and it takes like two weeks. They are on the wall the whole time – eating and sleeping and doing everything on the wall until they finally get to the top. And there are all these people watching below, watching them climb, and there’s really good camera footage of them on the wall.
I don’t really like climbing or climbing stories because my cousin’s really into climbing and I once watched a really scary climbing movie with her (Free Solo) so I wasn’t really too excited. But ended up being really cool because it wasn’t just about “oh he climbed this really cool wall.” It was about his whole crazy life and his personal journey and I would recommend it to anyone who’s interested in the outdoors or adventures or crazy lives.
Reviewed by: Sam – 15 years old
Find The Dawn Wall at the library.
Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli is a historical fiction book about a Gypsy kid in Poland. He is assumed to be a Jew and hangs out with Jews and has Jewish friends. He meets the love of his life, Janina, while they are living in the same house with a lot of family members. Eventually they have to leave the place, but while they are there, Misha and Janina would sneak out into the other people’s side. They would go to where the Jackboots – or Nazis – as they’re called are and steal food from them. It was fun and games, but also it had the realism of being grave danger. It is kind of cheerful a little bit, but not too much. It is a good book with an overall melancholy feeling.
Reviewed by: Jonathan – 14 years old