Book Review: Swing It, Sunny by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm

Cover Courtesy of Goodreads

Book Review: Swing It, Sunny by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm

Goodreads Synopsis: Summer's over and it's time for Sunny Lewin to enter the strange and unfriendly hallways of . . . middle school. When her Gramps calls her from Florida to ask how she's doing, she always tells him she's fine. But the truth? Sunny is NOT having the best time. Not only is the whole middle school thing confusing . . . but life at home is confusing, too. Sunny misses her brother Dale, who's been sent to boarding school. But when Dale comes back, she STILL misses him . . . because he's changed. Luckily Sunny's got her best friend and a mysterious new neighbor on her side . . . because she is NOT going let all this confusion get her down. Instead, she's going to remain Sunny-side up!

My Review: I read Sunny Side Up, the first book in the duology, years ago and have been re-reading it from time to time. It was pretty powerful and heartbreaking, especially for a middle grade novel. I wish I could say the same about the sequel.

Swing It, Sunny lacks a story line. Throughout the whole book, Sunny just worries about Dale. Her middle school life is not emphasized at all, and she doesn't go through any major character development. Even Dale himself does not seem to change until the very end. Many issues are also left unresolved, such as why Dale doesn't come home for Easter Break (I believe this wasn't mentioned, at least. My bad if it is). Basically, Sunny learns that Dale needs help (which she learned by the end of the first book), and she pines for him and deals with sad memories in this story. That's it.

I did love the cute illustrations and simple phrases, but overall, this book fell short of my expectations. I give it three stars. It just wasn't exceptional. I hope there will be another book to join this one, though, and will definitely try to check it out!

Top Ten Tuesday: To Read or Not to Read?

From That Artsy Reader Girl

Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish meme in which I talk about 10-ish books related to a central topic. This week's topic is supposed to be about books I read but didn't finish, but that doesn't really happen frequently. So instead, I'll be discussing books that I judged too early ;). All covers courtesy of Goodreads.

1. One Crazy Summer

I didn't recognize how powerful this book was! I came back to it a year later, and thank goodness for that! This sweet, summery book will definitely leave you wishing for more...

2. Walk Two Moons

I also underestimated this one! I came back to it and loved it very much (it also made me cry).

3. Old Yeller

I took one look at this book and shoved it in my closet. It looked by a boring classic, but boy, was I wrong! After I watched the movie at a camp, I just had to read it, and it was awesome (and, like the one above, was very sad)!

4. Full Cicada Moon

This was a cover I was intrigued by, but didn't really try out until I had to. This is a super sweet and cool book as well, and I highly recommend it!

5. Ungifted

I actually planned to read this book, but never got the chance.

Okay, that's a lie. This may even have been one of the books that I brought home from the library and "ran out of time" to read. The next time I checked it out, I read it :).

6. Finally

I'd seen this in the library many times but never bothered checking it out. I think it's good that I finally read it, but it also wasn't one of my favorites.

7. I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You

I'd seen all seven of the Gallagher Girls books before but never really felt like reading them. Fast forward years later and I can't imagine not having read them :). They're cute, funny, and sweet. How can I resist spy adventures?

So these are seven books that I could have read earlier and enjoyed instead of judging them early on. You'll notice that these are mostly middle grade to lower YA, because after discovering so many great books, I tried to be more open and finish the books I started. Now, when I read YA, I usually stick to a book until it's done (unless it's totally horrible or boring).

So what are some books that you judged too quickly? Tell me below!

Photoshoot!

I used to think that I was a really good photographer. I could take pictures of anybody and make them look great.
Then I realized that it was all in my head, and my photos all turned out worse than I imagined. I had no sense of lighting, no good pose ideas, etc. This was heartbreaking, because I really enjoyed photography! So I've decided to try to get better and use books to practice. I'm using what I know to give y'all some tips.

May the camera be with you. (I recently watched Star Wars.)

• Tip one: Think creatively, and take inspiration off what you like! Try out new ways to place your books and arrange them. Look online and on Instagram for ideas from other great photographers. I saw how people use many of their books as backgrounds each shot while focusing on one. This inspired me to take the photo below:
  
• Tip two: Experiment with brightness, shadows, highlights, the works! Even the picture above was played with. Adding cool effects can make an average-looking photo awesome! I simply use basic effects from my phone. If you'd like to be more advanced, Photoshop is supposed to be great, but even I don't need it right now.

I used a transfer effect to modify the photo from above. Though both images are nice, this one looks a bit "vintage" in a way.

I love the polaroid look I got to capture with one effect! This is definitely one of my proudest photos...

Again, changing up the pose changes the scene a bit for variety.

• Tip three: use props from everywhere you can get! Dissecting the photos below, I simply used a copy of American Panda, my pea pod stuffies, a few polymer clay items, some ribbon, and for the background, a napkin (seriously!). Work with what you've got, and you can create great pictures!

                                             

I know I've sure learned a bit in the past few months about photography, and I hope you learned a bit from today's post! Work on finding your own style. I like to use a photo in the center and display some items around it (even though most of the items do not really relate to the story and are simply aesthetically pleasing). What do you like to do? Any photography tips? Tell me in the comments below!

Magisterium Cover Reveal+Predictions

Cover Courtesy of Goodreads

Somewhat of a short post today. The Magisterium book 5's cover has been released! It's so gorgeous!
I cannot wait for the rest of the books! In honor of this event, here are my predictions for the final book:

SPOILERS MAY BE PRESENT. VIEW AT YOUR OWN RISK.

1. Call will not die. I think that Call will come very close to dying but survive at the end.
2. Aaron will be Call's guiding force. It was already revealed that *spoiler* Aaron was left as a voice in Call's head. Slightly strange, but I digress. *end spoiler*
3. Havoc and Alastair will die. I think both of Call's family members will perish because he himself will live. What's the point of being an author if you can't kill off characters?
4. Tamara will come close to dying.
5. Master Rufus will die. The mentor figure usually dies in fantasy novels (refer to Albus Dumbledore).
6. Good will triumph. I would not be satisfied otherwise.
What do you think will happen in the story? What do you think of the cover? Tell me in the comments below!

Happiness in Terms of...Trigonometry?

Yes, you read that title right! I've been doing various happiness molecules post (if you're new, here is one of my first posts about the topic), tying in emotions with science. With this post, I'll be paying homage to mathematics by introducing angles of depression. You don't really need to know much trigonometry, but it might be helpful if you do, not going to lie.

Okay, so angle of depression is shown in the picture below, of the man looking down at the object that is not mysteriously floating (the real question should be, why is he ignoring the floating box?)

Credit
I'm not sure why the clipart still holds its background and doesn't blend in...but oh well.

You can learn all types of trig online, but I bet you didn't know that the angle of depression can also measure how happy you are! It's true! Basically, the greater the angle of depression, the more depressed you are. The "object" is really the world. A large angle of depression means you see the world as a place to be depressed. When you get happier and happier, the world in your eyes seems to move higher and higher, until your angle of depression turns into an angle of elevation.

Typically, the angle of depression is measured in a 90 degree interval in the 4th quadrant of a graph (picture the man as the origin, or the center of the graph, and his line of view as the x-axis). To follow a trig and avoid confusion, the angle ranges from 0 degrees (right at the x-axis, where you're indifferent and only feel that way once a day, right when you wake up) to -90 degrees (when x=0, right on the y-axis, which most do not feel unless they are clinically depressed).

Why is this useful, you ask? Well, it has many uses:

• It can help diagnose patients with depression. Anyone who has an angle of depression below -75 degrees is moving towards being clinically depressed. The average human only has an angle of depression until -45 degrees to their angle of elevations.
• It is a fun topic to blog about. That one's a bit self-explanatory.

Okay, now before I head off, let's do one example!

Rebecca has had a rough Monday. She woke up feeling excited to present her project that day in her science class, with her angle of elevation being 45 degrees. Then, she realized that she had run out of toothpaste and cereal, and was late to school while searching for replacements. She became sad by 30 degrees. Then, she realized she forgot to bring her flash drive to class, and was even sadder by 45 degrees when she couldn't present the project that took her 6 hours to work on! Her friends did give her milk tea to cheer her up, which caused her to be happy by 6.5 degrees. What is her angle of depression by the end of the day?

We can calculate the angle to be 45-30-45+6.5= -23.5 degrees. She is pretty sad. Perhaps more boba tea would cheer her up. And toothpaste.

Anyways, I hope you're not depressed after reading this post! In fact, your angle of elevation should have gone up, right? ;)

Thanks for reading! I'll be back with more posts soon!