Made A Note On My Manuscript While Slightly Drunk Last Night, Looked At It This Morning And All It Says

Get it Squiggly Line man. Get it!! ;) 

Dance-trance Look at this while listening to music, I swear it’s gonna work with every genre! ;)

p.s. I know it isn’t perfect, but this is my first animation and I’m super-proud of it anyway!

Books as Gifts

Hi all, JoAnn here.

Since January is what we retail folks call The Season of Returns, and Valentine’s Day is closing in quick, I figured it might be time for a quick and dirty “Books as Gifts Guide.”

First things first, I will pretty much always advocate that there is a book for just about everyone. 

Narrowing down what is the appropriate book for a given person is the more difficult part.

Did the person you are buying your gift for request a specific title?

Yes: easy peasy.

Your local bookseller should be able to help you lay your hands on that which you seek.

No: less easy but no less peasy.

Did they not give you a title because they couldn’t remember it or because your plan was to go to your local bookstore and see what spoke to you?

If they couldn’t remember the title, booksellers will gladly attempt to Sherlock Holmes their way to what you are looking for. If you don’t have a title or author, being able to tell a bookseller a few basic things about the book you are looking for (what it’s about, name of a character if you are looking for a novel or a series, where the person heard about the book, etc) can make things so much easier. Many times the Google on the Internet Machine has helped me put a name to broken pieces of information and allowed me to put the proper title in the hands of a customer.

And now, for the person that didn’t ask for a book but is on your list to be given one.

The difficulty with this bit is that if someone does not consider themselves a reader and/or doesn’t like books (gasp), there really isn’t anything you can do to force the change upon them. The book you give them will, most likely, sit on a case and gather dust.

Story time: I have a friend named Jon. Jon is an electrician by trade and a mechanic by hobby. He does not like to read novels. He flat out says he is not a reader. He will buy huge, densely written technical manuals and read them for fun. I shit you not, these books are written in such a way that if I try to read them I feel like I’m having a stroke. He will devour these while loudly ranting about how he doesn’t like to read. He does not recognize the contradiction.

For Jon, the best thing to get him book-wise is, you guessed it, a technical manual for something in his wheelhouse. Or a highly inappropriate humor book with lots of pictures. But that is just because I know what makes Jon laugh.

The following questions are a few tools that booksellers will typically use to help you figure out what direction to point you in if you are looking for a book but aren’t sure what book is right for your situation:

1) What is the last book you/insert person here read and loved? 2) What type of books do you/insert person here like to read? 3) What movie was the last movie that you/insert person here really enjoyed?

Question number three I’ve started tossing in my bag of tricks since a bunch of books that have done well in book format have been getting turned into movies. While many of the more literary snobs may pooh-pooh such things, I love it because the books start to fly off the shelves around the time the movie gets closer to hitting theaters and then I can suggest other titles that might tickle someone’s fancy.

At the end of the day, trust your judgment. You know the person that you are buying for. You know their personality and what they like. You can do this, I believe in you.

Image Credit: Kristin Kemper

My name is Marita. I won’t tell you my last name. It would be too dangerous.

That’s right, children. Gather round for Anifesto, part one of three. GET EXCITED, Y’ALL. So, a little background: When I started writing my review for Front Lines, I ended up just talking about Animorphs for about ten paragraphs. I eventually realized how ridiculous that was getting, so I cut most of it and saved it on my computer, where it somehow ballooned into a thirteen-page diatribe. That’s how that happened.

Anyways, on with the show.

Anifesto, Part 1

Alloran: The stupidity of kindness. Charity to potential enemies. You're a fool, Seerow. A soft, sentimental, well-meaning fool. And now my men are dead and the Yeerks are loose in the galaxy. How many will die before we can bring this contagion under control? How many will die for Seerow's kindness?

For people whose lives are empty and meaningless, Animorphs is a middle-grade series consisting of sixty-four books. It’s about five kids who take a shortcut home from the mall and end up stumbling upon a crashed alien spacecraft. Out crawls a wounded alien (an Andalite, to be specific; War Prince Elfangor to be more specific). Before dying, Elfangor explains to them that a silent infiltration has been happening right under their noses: the body-snatching brain slugs known as Yeerks are slowly trying to take over the planet and enslave humanity and their hometown is ground zero.

Elfangor then breaks the Law of Seerow’s Kindness (basically the Andalite’s Prime Directive) and gives these kids advanced alien technology that allows them to morph into any animal they touch. They then proceed to use this power to wage a guerrilla war, desperately trying to hold off the Yeerks until the Andalite fleet can arrive and save the planet. Along the way they pick up Ax, a young Andalite cadet with dreams of glory (and Elfangor’s baby brother). Adventures ensue.

But that’s like describing Les Misérables as the story of a guy who steals some bread. In terms of intricacy, this is a Lord of the Rings-level series. These books span dimensions and galaxies and billions of years. And in retrospect, it is far, far too sophisticated to be considered just a children’s book series.

There are flaws, so let’s just get them out of the way right now. The middle part of the series was ghostwritten and as a result, the books are a bit uneven. The less said about the choose-your-own-adventure Alternamorphs, the better—at least they’re not canon. There’s minor continuity issues, but that is almost to be expected over the course of sixty-two books as the series finds its legs. The Helmacrons were hilarious and fantastic, but completely and utterly pointless. What was that entity in #41? All we’re left with is it stating that humans will require more study (wtf?). And what the ever-loving hell was up with the Nartec?! Just…why?

But even for its faults, this series is epic. Absolutely awesome. Practically unparalleled.

It’s about a fictional war between two alien species that humans got caught in the middle of, but the fact that it is a war is never forgotten. There are casualties and sacrifices, and it hurts.

Rachel: You worry about me? What do you think you’re going to do? Jake, you're a leader now. You make life-and-death decisions. All the time. You've learned to do that. And you've learned to use people. You use them for their strengths and their weaknesses. Worry about me? Like when all this is over you'll go back to being a mediocre basketball player and a decent student?

The Animorphs constantly struggle with the ethical implications of their actions—whether saving the planet is worth losing their humanity, whether the lofty ideals they’re fighting for are actually worth dying a gruesome, bloody death, and whether it’s okay to write off the lives of a few people to save the lives of many. They routinely lose sleep over the deaths they fail to prevent and even more so the deaths they cause. They struggle with switching between normal high schoolers and elite paramilitary warriors. They deal with serious PTSD and constant nightmares. This is, at heart, the story of six children who are thrown into a war they simply aren’t prepared for. Their only choices are to become soldiers or die.

Over the course of the series, each character is slowly broken in their own unique way:

Cassie: No. It's wrong. I won't. I don't want to judge you guys, but you're talking about strategy and risk like this is some computer game. Like there aren't others involved. Have you forgotten that we're supposed to be in this to save lives?

Gentle, kind Cassie would rather heal but must learn to hurt. Because she is uncomfortable with physical violence, she ends up deeply hurting people in more subtle ways. She parleys her natural empathy into unparalleled manipulation.

Rachel: I'm ruthless at times. But even I have enough sense to know the words “we have to win” are the first four steps on the road to hell.

Perky blonde gymnast and fashionista Rachel discovers that she likes killing far too much, and must fight to control the darkness lurking within her.

Tobias: I’m a predator who kills for food. And I’m also a human being who...who grieves, over death.

Tobias is the neglected kid from the wrong side of the tracks who’s never felt like he belonged anywhere. When he becomes trapped in the body of a red-tailed hawk due to a morphing mishap, he becomes progressively more isolated and lonely, in the end severing any ties with humanity.

Marco: Sorry, fighting a guerrilla war against parasitic aliens has amped up my already rampant paranoia.

Marco, who’s already lost his mother to the invasion, becomes suspicious and cynical and all too willing to accept collateral damage.

Ax: I was an Andalite, all alone, far, far from home. Far from my own people. Except that sometimes your own people are not just the ones who look like you. Sometimes the people who are your own can be very different from you.

Ax, the stranded young Andalite, begins to see the army he once idealized for what it is—less noble heroes safeguarding freedom for the universe, more arrogant military superpower power trying to undo its biggest mistake at any cost. Over the course of the series, he becomes more and more torn between his own people and his adopted planet.

Jake: The power made us responsible, see. Without the power, the knowledge would have just been a worm of fear eating up our insides. Bad enough. But it was the power that turned fear into obligation, that laid the weight on our unready shoulders...Power enough to win? No. Power enough to fight? Ah, yes. Just enough, little Jake, here is just enough power to imprison you in a cage of duty, to make you fight...

And Jake, the fearless leader, is haunted by the people he couldn’t save, including his brother Tom. He struggles with the knowledge that it’s not the good guys that win, it’s the ruthless ones. He has the literal weight of the world on his shoulders. His ragtag team of misfits is not humanity’s last line of defense. They’re humanity’s only line of defense.

Image credit: Claire Hummel

The real strength of Animorphs, as with all good sci-fi and fantasy, is that it uses fantastic settings and characters and circumstances to explore very real and important issues. Through the various interactions between alien species and the motivations driving various groups, the series dissects a lot of what happens in the real world (and why it happens) when different races, creeds, and political forces clash. By exploring elaborate worlds that parallel real life, the reader can examine the nature of things like inequality and stereotypes and dehumanization, but free of the historical and emotional baggage that keeps a lot of people from confronting those issues—which is of course the true value of fantastically unreal stories like this.

Marco: You Andalites. You people have a tendency to destroy what you want to preserve.

There’s a lot of great commentary on colonialism. In the end, the Andalites and the Yeerks are both colonial empires wearing very different masks. The Andalites have no need to expand, and yet their arrogance and superiority led them to benevolently enlighten the Yeerks and inadvertently unleash the parasitic slugs on the universe in the process. Stopping the Yeerks is their penance. The Animorphs eventually learn that the Andalites aren’t with the humans, they’re just against the Yeerks. If need be, the Andalites will destroy Earth to keep the Yeerks from winning. Not to mention their scociety encourages rampant sexism and ostracism of any deformed or disabled citizens, which casts them in a distinctly Nazi-ish light. Just because the Andalites present themselves as the ultimate good guys doesn’t make it so.

Aftran: We aren't all the same. See? You believe the Andalite propaganda about us. According to the Andalites, we're nothing but evil slugs. We don't deserve to be free, flying around the galaxy. We're just parasites.

The Yeerks, on the other hand, are severely overpopulated and completely helpless without a host. They didn’t choose to be parasites. They’re not truly evil, they’re just fulfilling the role evolution gave them. Is it really so wrong that they’re desperate to see and hear and touch? They just want a place in the universe, and if no one will make room for them they’ll carve out a home by force. As the Yeerk Aftran points out, “What choice do we have? Back to the Yeerk pools? Back to our home planet, with Andalite Dome ships in orbit above us, waiting for one of us to rise from the sludge, then blow us apart? Leave the universe to the almighty Andalites and the species they happen to like?”

Prejudice and racism (species-ism?) come into play in a big way, and are very much a driving force behind much of the plot. In the Animorphs universe, there’s a ton of stereotypes floating around regarding various alien species. The Yeerks and Andalites call each other “Andalite scum” and “Yeerk filth” at every given opportunity. But of course, the Andalites are honorable and good, a force for truth, justice, and the…uh…Andalite way. The Yeerks are nothing more than a plague on the galaxy, just evil slugs. The Hork-Bajir are seen as sweet, dumb beasts who clearly need a superior species to step in and take care of them. The Taxxons, the only species to welcome the Yeerk empire, are an abomination that should be wiped from the universe. And everyone agrees that the Skrit Na are just plain weird.

Dak Hamee: You almighty Andalites. There is no limit to your arrogance, is there? Well, let me tell you something: We may be simple people. But we don't use biology to invent monsters. And we don't enslave other species. And we don't unleash a plague of parasites on the galaxy, endangering every other free species, and then go swaggering around like the lords of the universe. No, we're too simple for all that. We're too stupid to lie and manipulate. We're too stupid to be ruthless. We're too stupid to know how to build powerful weapons designed to annihilate our enemies. Until you came, Andalite, we were too stupid to know how to kill.

In the beginning, our heroes only incapacitate infested humans while slaughtering infested aliens. It’s a sickening and horrifying realization for the Animorphs that the bladed reptilian Hork-Bajir they’ve been killing are actually gentle herbivores who’ve been completely enslaved by the Yeerks. And the Taxxons, giant carnivorous centipedes, are to be pitied more than feared. The highly intelligent species suffers from a powerful instinctual hunger that drives them to cannibalism. They begged the Yeerks to take control of their bodies in the hopes of finally being free from their hunger (spoiler: it didn’t work).

The harsh lesson the Animorphs learn is that just because an alien species looks, well, alien, they still deserve to be treated humanely. That knowledge has a steep price, though: They can’t give back the lives they’ve already taken, and they can’t stop killing the infested just because they feel sorry for the host bodies.

Controller: Help me. So... I'm cold. Help. Jake: Leave him, Yeerk. Get out of his head. Let him do this last thing as a free human being. Controller: I can't get out. The ears are blocked. Can't get out. Ax: We have to get out of here. They will send reinforcements. Controller: So cold. Just... Can you just get me a blanket or... Ax: Prince Jake. Controller: I'm scared. Does that... Does that make you happy, Andalite? Jake: No. No, it doesn't make me happy.

And to top it all off, there’s the existential quandary presented by the Ellimist and Crayak. As the series progresses, it is revealed that this epic battle for the salvation of the human race is nothing more than a small skirmish between these two nearly omnipotent pan-dimensional beings. The Ellimist is ostensibly good and does not “interfere in the affairs of other species,” but he has no qualms about rearranging someone’s entire existence (usually for the worse, just ask Elfangor) to suit his own needs. Crayak is undeniably evil, and considers genocide a hobby of his. And the Animorphs are trapped in the middle. In the end, none of them stumbled into the war on accident. None of their hardships were brought on by chance. They were pawns in a much larger game the whole time.

Ellimist: Then let us play a game, Crayak. Crayak: There will have to be rules. Ellimist: Yes, there will have to be rules. Crayak: And a winner? Ellimist: That, too, though it will take millions of years. Crayak: I'm not going anywhere. Ellimist: Then come, let us play the final game.

There’s an incredible number of moving parts at work here. It’s as much about political intrigue and betrayal and power as it is about fighting aliens with tigers. There’s a dozen factions at play, all with their own agendas.

The more you learn about this war, the more terrible and complicated it gets. The evil guys aren’t nearly as evil as they first seem, and the good guys aren’t nearly as good. There is no winning this war, or any war, without killing the innocent and collaborating with the guilty.

Ax: War is irrational. Though it is sometimes necessary.

Image Credit: http://veteranfangirl.tumblr.com/

H! Alia here.

I’m holding an OMG-I’m-going-to-TRY-to-read-all-these-books-this-weekend reading party by myself for these books in time for the American Library Association (ALA) Youth Media Awards on Monday morning! These are just a few of the books being considered RIGHT NOW in secret meetings by the Newbery Committee…

Follow this link for a live webcast of the awards on Monday (8am) and info about every award up for grabs!  

These awards are where they announce the Newbery, Caldecott, Geisel, Pura Belpré, Printz, Sibert, Odyssey, Stonewall, Coretta Scott King, Schneider Awards and more…That’s a lot!! And I’m SO EXCITED for it.

Also, the ALA Midwinter Conference is underway in Boston. Ah a land of Book Talk, ARCs, F&Gs and cool people…

Teachers! Holding Mock Caldecotts and Mock Newberys are GREAT ways to get your kids excited about reading. Woo!

Yay for books! Yay for book awards!

                             Image Credit: Pottermore/Warner Brothers HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET of NOPE!  Dear JK Rowling,

Alia here.  There’s no denying you’re one of the most brilliant minds of our era. You’ve created worlds that we get lost in and complex characters that we love dearly. But with MAGIC IN NORTH AMERICA, something went wrong.  Maybe it’s that you’re not from North America? But surely you did your research into the complexities that are the native peoples of this continent...Maybe it’s that you didn’t grow up constantly bombarded by stereotypical images of native people on TV, in movies, as Halloween costumes, etc.? Maybe it’s because you didn’t go to school here and didn’t receive an incomplete history of native peoples that basically stops after “First Contact” & “Thanksgiving” and ignores modern native people? Perhaps...

There are real issues here. You’re dealing with real people, cultures, traditions and religions and with that comes a lot of responsibility. Native people are already heavily stereotyped around the world as “Magical Beings” and now...they’re in your magical canon! Not only do you refer to them as a monolithic group (there are hundreds of nations in the US alone), you *seem* to imply that native wand-less magic is powerful but not as refined as European magic (due to the power of a wand).

I encourage you, Ms. Rowling, to respond to native academics, fans, etc. who are asking you tough, but important questions. Debbie Reese, Dr. Adrienne Keene and many others have tweeted at you. Here, here, here & here are some EXCELLENT articles that delve into your work from a native perspective. This one is excellent as well. I ask you to check out Debbie Reese and Dr. Adrienne Keene’s websites in general. Just look around. They do great work.

Let’s get this discussion going and please let us know who you consulted for this project because we’re SUPER CURIOUS. (at least I am...) Representation Matters. It really does and yes, anyone CAN write a story, but I’d hope they LISTEN and learn as much as possible before releasing it to the world, especially when you’re dealing with living people, religions, and NATIVE KIDS. There’s a long history of misrepresentation, exploitation and stereotyping of native peoples. There’s also the fact native writers already have a difficult time getting published. They have a hard time telling their own stories. MAGIC IN NORTH AMERICA is problematic and we await your response... Sincerely, A Fan **SIPS TEA (out of the Goblet of Fire)**

[Publishing] is a world where writers of color are damned if they do and damned if they don’t—we often find ourselves either being asked to “emphasize” (read: exoticize) our identities (“I love your writing about race,” one editor told me. “Do you have anything else like that?”) or pretend our difference doesn’t exist, to pretend our trauma doesn’t exist, to pretend that the audience we’re looking back at isn’t 90 percent made of white men. We’re pulled in so many directions, it’s a wonder we still have the energy to produce creative work. “Indict us!” the white audience shouts. “Comfort us! Teach us!” It’s an enormous amount of pressure. Sometimes, it can be embarrassing. In the words of Jay Z, “Can I live?”

Morgan Parker in Equity in Publishing: What Should Editors Be Doing? (via richincolor)

YAAAAAASSSS! Well Read Black Girl is awesome. Check out this great interview and get with it. <3 Also Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The Biggest Problem in Publishing? The Invisibility of Black Women Writers

And how #WellReadBlackGirl is changing the game.

MC: What do you hope people will get from following WRBG?

GE: Whenever I read a book that speaks to me, I immediately want to tell the world about it. Every post [on Instagram] is about a writer I admire, a book I’ve read, or a title I’m adding to my “To Be Read” pile. When people use the hashtag #WellReadBlackGirl, it suddenly transforms the solitary experience of reading into a social activity.  

People are constantly looking for diverse reading recommendations. I spend a lot of time finding compelling content produced by Black women: new book releases, essays, poetry, culture writing, etc. I want WRBG to give these extraordinary writers a voice and introduce them to new audiences. Publishers need to fully acknowledge the role Black women play in literary culture. We’re creators, as well as consumers. We deserve that recognition.

Claire here! I am back in the Kids store again at the bookstore. And the first thing I read yesterday morning was Vikki Vansickle’s new picture book. And I am so glad that JoAnn brought it over to me! (JoAnn, you have me hooked. If I Had A Gryphon is going to be my big story time book next week.) 

If I Had A Gryphon is written by Vikki Vansickle and illustrated by Cale Atkinson. It is about Sam, a young girl who has just gotten her first pet: a hamster. Sam thinks hamsters are not nearly as exciting as some of the mythological creatures she reads about in her books. So she starts thinking of some other pets that might be a bit more fun, but also perhaps a lot more work. Maybe hamsters aren’t so bad?

Ohmygoodness this book! I adore this for a multitude of reasons: the illustrations are adorable, there are mythological creatures everywhere, Vansickle’s rhymes are bouncing and delightful, and Sam is both whimsical and practical in an entirely enchanting way. Also that too cute kraken happily playing with a dismal blue whale and a sunken steam ship. That page cracked me up!

The mythological creatures in this picture book make me so so pleased. I loved mythology as a kid. I had all the giant collections of Greek and Egyptian myths I could get my hands on. And later I added Celtic, Norse, and Japanese myths to my collection as I found them. If there were beautiful illustrations, that made them all the better. Myths and the heroes, monsters and enchanted creatures depicted in them fed my imagination. And I have never entirely grown out of that phase. Vansickle makes me slightly nostalgic for those times when little 8 year old Claire was curled up on the couch with giant mythology books, much like Sam. And I really love that Vansickle and Atkinson are introducing these mythological characters to younger readers in such an accessible and fun way.

Vansickle’s rhymes are rhythmic and skip along as Sam considers what she could do with her more exciting pets and what their potential downfalls might be. The kraken one is honestly, pure gold. “If I had a kraken/ We’d swim and deep-sea dive/ But I would need a scuba suit/ In order to survive.”

Also Cale Atkinson’s illustrations just fill me with pink bubbly happiness. He manages to make manticores, kraken, jackalopes, and gryphons look equally joyful and cuddly. I just realized today that he also wrote and illustrated To the Sea, about a lonely boy named Tim who has to take a lost whale named Sam back to the ocean. (If you have not read it, you should, it is just as cute as If I Had A Gryphon.)

PLEASE go check out If I Had A Gryphon. You will love it. At the very least, it should make you giggle.

Okay y’all, Melissa here and we have something extremely important to discuss today.  I just finished reading the third book in the Winner’s Curse trilogy, so let me give you the spoiler-free lowdown on...

The Winner’s Kiss

First off, I’ll just say that I hate the title.  Like, YES there is considerably more kissing in this book than in Crime (LOLLLLL ‘cause there was none in Crime), but kissing wasn’t the point of this finale??? I personally think that The Winner’s CROWN would have been a much better title (also would have kept the “C” trend.  It’s actually perfect. ugh no one consults me.)

BUT I will TOTALLY take a dumb title over the AWFUL NEW COVERS they were proposing! For those of you who somehow missed that whole debacle, Macmillan announced back in November that they were going to do a complete overhaul of the covers.  Before the series was even finished.  After releasing the original cover for the new book (as seen above).  COMPLETE MAYHEM ENSUED.

UGH. I physically cannot look at them.  The best part, though, is that... Don’t these covers look familiar? Hmmmm... Like, super familiar.

WAIT. I KNOW.

Look at that.  It’s uncanny.  And so unfortunate.  ‘Cause unlike Celaena of Throne of Glass, Kestral is not an assassin. IN FACT she can barely throw a knife. No, Kestral uses her wit and smarts to tear you down.  As soon as you show any weakness, she will destroy you with her words and war tactics.  She’s very Sherlockian at times.  So these new covers make no sense.

But this rant has a happy ending!  Macmillan heard our cries! They listened!  Over Christmas they announced that they were throwing out the new covers and going back to the originals.  Which is HUGE.  I have been lamenting various cover changes since the dawn of time and no one has ever listened. It is so heart-warming.

Anyway, the point of all of that is that I would take a title like The Winner’s Poop Bucket if it meant I didn’t have to look at those covers on my book shelf.  REJOICE.

So let me get back to my thoughts on the actual content of the final book, haha.

The Winner’s Kiss (foreal this time)

Ugh, guys, it was SO. GOOD.  You will not be disappointed in this last installment.  I will admit that I had been extremely hesitant about starting this book because I just couldn’t see how everything would be resolved in a way that I wanted.

First, the ending of Crime was BRUTAL. Like tear my heart out, throw it on the ground, and jump on it repeatedly brutal.  Let’s just recap the ending real quick (if you don’t want to be spoiled because FOR WHATEVER REASON you haven’t read Crime, don’t read):

Kestral gets shipped off to a prison camp in the north

Arin sails away for his home in Heran

They both said some pretty gross things to each other beforehand

My babies, come back! Love each other! 

So how was Kiss going to fix everything?!  Even if Arin and Kestral somehow made their way back to one another, how could they reconcile all the things that were said??? Needless to say, I was emotionally distraught before I even started this book.

BUT WORRY NOT. Marie is badass, and she throws some completely unexpected twists at you from the very beginning. And, between you and me, she COMPLETELY makes up for the lack of kissing in Crime.  And then some. (I’m wiggling my eyebrows right now).  Girlfriend totally got my back.

And, some might say more importantly, she wraps up the major conflict with the emperor of Valoria in a way that I greatly enjoyed, but didn’t guess at all.  You go, Marie.  Like, I had a couple guesses for how everything would end, but even when I only had 50 pages left to read, I still had no idea.  So HOLLER.

The Winner’s Kiss is definitely worth the wait and all of the drama over covers.  Honestly, I’m going to go back and read it again ‘cause I sort of inhaled it this time around lolllll

The book doesn’t actually come out for another month (March 29), but GUYS IT’S SO WORTH IT. Just hold out a bit longer!  And then come back here and discuss it with me, obvs.

Peace, Melissa

The War In Our Stars

Kylo Ren: It's a metaphor

Kylo Ren: you wear the scary breathing mask but you don't actually need it to breathe