You Gotta Love Giveaways!

Check out this blog for a Kindle Fire Giveaway!! :)
http://literarytimeout.blogspot.com/2014/01/january-kindle-fire-hdx-giveaway.html

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

To be honest I had never heard of this book until I read an article about it being banned. Then it caught my interest, which is actually kind of sad. Sad not just for me, but for everyone else that found out about it that way too. I always hear about a book being banned and wonder why? So of course I put the book on hold at the library to see what all the hub bub is about. Yet so many books that are banned by libraries or schools are usually the best books out there. They are real, true, and honest about the way life really is, and that is why I usually like them. And of course more people start reading them or wanting to read them once they hear it has been banned somewhere. In my opinion people want to censor too many things in this world.

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell is a book I probably never would have ever read, but I am so glad that I did. It is such a simplistic love story about two teenagers who appreciate the small and simple things in life. Music, comics, and a the touch of a hand are what brought these two together. I love that just sitting next to each other on the bus is what brought them together.

This book isn't full of action and adventure, but is a down-to-earth story about the lives of two people who just want to be together in a world that won't let them. It kept me reading and rooting for these two to just be able to be together. Their race and an abusive home are only a few things trying to keep them apart. They both come from such different worlds that I love how they come together just by the simple act of reading comic books on the bus. I loved that it was reading that started it all!

I would highly recommend this book and I thoroughly enjoyed it and was sad when the book ended. It is definitely appropriate for high school aged kids. The book itself has some foul language, which I believe was part of the reasoning for the ban of the book along with a few intimate scenes, which I felt were not vulgar. This is the article I read:
http://the-toast.net/2013/09/17/chat-rainbow-rowell-love-censorship/ 

Image from: http://siminiblocker.tumblr.com/post/48141647950/and-then-they-kissed-eleanor-and-park Courtesy of Simini Blocker, Illustrator. He has some other great illustrations to go along with Eleanor & Park as well! So check out his website: http://siminiblocker.tumblr.com/