Listen, this is not a bad novel, but it is so conventional and predictable and exactly what you would expect to find on a generic Women's Prize list. Using a style that has become more familiar of late, the author moves back and forth in time, using Hazel, Miriam, August, and Joan as her narrators, to present pivotal moments and events within the family and their world. I’ve been anxious to read another Vivian Vande Velde story after absolutely loving The Rumpelstiltskin Problem. It seems most MG princess stories features a rebellious, tomboyish princess who defies her parents and thinks being tough is the only way to live.

The Brick Matching Guide - Forterra

She doesn't have a personality outside of her trauma—which is a criticism that can also be extended to her mother Miriam, her aunt August, and grandmother Hazel. The author is very good at creating vivid characters--both likable and not, and it's easy to like our froggy heroine as she strives to get back home. Joan’s sister Mya is the only female member of the tight family group not to have her own chapters, while the other key characters are Miriam’s husband Jaxson (who serves in the Marines including in the Gulf) and Derek August’s son.Joan begins to understand that her mother, her mother’s mother, and the mothers before them persevered, made impossible choices, and put their dreams on hold so that her life would not have to be defined by loss and anger—that the sole instrument she needs for healing is her paintbrush.

Frogged by Vivian Vande Velde - OverDrive

You could visually imagine the area with its flowering magnolias and wild blackberries, the very vision of Southern living. I picked this up on the way out of the library because of the catchy cover and I always enjoy re-tells of fairy tales. The beauty of Memphis, the music, the fragrance of the magnolia blooms set against the history of racism. Touching its corners, I thought then about all that had passed in the eight years since we arrived in Memphis.

And I cannot let a review of the book pass without remarking on the author’s ill-advised attempts to criticise Instagram and other reviewers who did not fully like her book – for example this following a 4 star (!