Student Review: Rising Trouble Maker written by Luvvie Ajayi Jones is ¨A fear-fighting manual for teens.¨ This book is an amazing educational self-help book that is relatable and helpful for people of high school age. In this novel, Luvvie shares her and her grandmother, Mama Faloyin´s experiences, and passes on the wisdom and advice she wishes she had in those moments. This book contains three sections: Be, Say, and Do, which paint inspirational points of view encouraging readers to be the best version of themselves. This book’s main purpose is to show even the most insecure and timid individuals that they have the power within themselves to become confident self-assured beings that are capable of amazing things with the right mindset and certainty of who they are, who they want to be, and how to get there. This book would be an excellent piece of literature for ages 12-17. However, I believe that anyone who picks up this book would benefit from something written within its pages, regardless of what age the reader may be. Overall, I believe that this book goes over many essential topics that are the key to self-betterment, growth, and general well-being. This piece of literature, although just recently published in 2022 should be made a staple for young readers of this generation and the ones to come.

Personal rule: a book that starts with a map is going to be great.  Trapped in Terror Bay is no exception to that rule, although it takes some skill and attention to navigate, much like the poor sailors on the lost Franklin expedition to the Arctic.  Written almost in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure, this non-fiction book puts the reader in the doomed shoes of Captain Francis Crozier, sailing through imagined accounts of events onboard the ship, tracking the voyage across the Atlantic, around Greenland and eventually into the maze of ice and islands between the North American continent and the North Pole.  As weather worsens, disease rampages, and nature triumphs over the technology of 1848, the reader explores this tragedy and its mystery in short, engaging chapters.

Within each chapter are subsections that include modern forensic research into the expedition, sidebars about characters, politics, nautical technology, and knowledge from the native peoples who have lived on the Arctic ice since time immemorial.

It took me a while for me to notice subtle changes in fonts, page color or border, or headings to denote these different sections, but once I did I read this like a textbook, skipping around to follow the parts I was interested in, then doubling back to read the sidebars that explained something in the main storyline.  With that in mind, this is a great book to teach some textbook reading skills. Readers will love the inevitable doom, perfectly captured by the author, the fascinating facts and insights into life in the mid-1800’s, and the modern quest to understand the events of the past.