Book Review - Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend

Instead of prompt writing, I'm doing a book review (book rave? book praise? should I name these something else considering these are definitely not proper reviews?), seems par for the course. I joke, but I actually wanted to talk about this book, well, it's entire series.

I recently went to the book release for Silverborn, the fourth book in the series. It involved an interview conversation, some Q&A and you bet I got my brand new copy of the book signed. Jessica Townsend is an Australian author too, so I love the local spirit. She's amazing, funny and also incredibly honest. Because of course a few of the audience members were aspiring authors and if she couldn't answer a question about writing, she'd admit it before giving advice the best way she knew how. It was educational and inspiring.

Now, on to why everyone should read the series.

For the most part, yes these are children's books. But let's be honest, most adult reader's still have a little kid inside them somewhere. A side of us that loves a good adventure story. (As a side note, to any parents, I do recommend this book for your children, and the teacher librarian in me must insist an age limit of 11+).

There's the premise of this little girl who is cursed and is destined to die at midnight on her eleventh birthday. Logically we know the main character can't die, but boy you certainly wonder how she's going to get out of it.

Get out of it, she does, but barely. And then she finds herself in this magical city she's never heard of before called Nevermoor. Honestly, I think I want to live there. The magic is in every pore of this city and this book series.  I love everything that Jessica Townsend has done to bring this world to life. 

This story has the unique magic yes, but that isn't all that this story is about. There's that little girl who thought she was going to die finding not only a new family, but she finds herself as well. She also finds herself living in the kind of Hotel I would love to live in.

Okay, another joke aside, Morrigan Crow goes through the ringer, and while she doesn't quite come out the other end entirely unscathed, she does come out. The point is that if she wants to stay in this city, she needs to complete four trials to join the Wundrous Society. If she doesn't, she will return to the damning fate she escaped. Okay yes, it can get a little dark, but it's still a kids book, so stay calm.

There is also such an eclectic collection of characters that you're sure to have more than one favourite. 

Jessica says that she writes these books because she loves the world she's created, she believes in writing a story for herself to love and everyone else who loves it is just a bonus. And it shows how much she loves this series, you can feel the passion and energy that goes into every word. Maybe that means it takes longer for release, but let's be honest, you can't rush a quality book.

This was basically a rant and maybe some of the reasons I gave aren't the kind of things that draw you in, but I'll just say this. Read it. There, I'm ordering you to now. No excuses. 

Okay, if you like middle grade fantasy that is incredibly well written, then you definitely have no reason to say no.

Click book image for Goodreads page.

Journal Entry 6 - Am I Surprised? No. Not Really.

So, I'm not all that surprised that my attempts to write a prompt or something every day on this blog only lasted 2 months. 

I have a notorious habit of not sticking to projects, whether they're book ideas or, even worse, fanfiction. I have so many WIPs on AO3, I'm not even kidding. That being said, I really want to work on them. I just have so many of them, that I can never decide which one I'm going to work on. I just go around in circles and before I know it, the time I could have spent writing has run out and I don't work on any of them.

Some of you may think "why don't you work on them now instead of writing this essay of excuses?" Which is totally fair, but I rank high in the procrastination hierarchy. That being said, I was working on my book before I came here. Since I was working on my laptop where I also work on this blog, my eyes were drawn to the icon in my favourites bar and here I am. 

I want to write more, so I'm hoping to actually post here again. Obviously, it's not going to be a prompt a day anymore, that was never sustainable, what I'm really surprised about is that I lasted as long as I did initially.

We'll see how this goes I guess.

Journal Entry 5 - End of Another NaNo Challenge

Today marks the last day of July Camp NaNo as it is the 31st of the month. July is the luckier camp month since you get that extra day compared to 30 in April and November for the real deal.

My goal for this camp was 25k, and while it looks like I'm going to fall short, I got pretty close. When it comes to NaNo, whatever you write is words and therefore counts. So the word count I did achieve this month is about 60% novel and 40% blog posts (since some of them were longer than what I might have written in my novel for that day).

After the first day this month that I didn't do any writing, I reminded myself it wasn't the real NaNo, and that camps are just a warm up, nothing to stress over too much. And so, I ended up skipping a day here and there, that would be why I'm not reaching the goal.

Also, I've had other things going on and other hobbies to steal my time. My hyperfixation problem meant I spent one week being a little unproductive because I was too focused on one thing to do much else. Welcome to my life.

Camp NaNo is over, so I'm no longer going to be keeping track of my word count, but I think that will take a little pressure off. My friend, the one also writing a novel, and I are trying to get to the library regularly to do writing. It helps to be outside with my laptop and having no choice but to get some work done. When I'm at home, there are too many other things that might pull me away.

These next few weeks are going to be a bit busy, I've got a number of gatherings with family and friends to do, my three zero birthday is next week and my family is all over the country, meaning I've got things going on at different times. I don't feel a week from 30, I barely feel late 20s, I think it's because mentally, I'm a kid. Not literally, just that feeling as an adult where you act like a kid because you miss being one sometimes. Adulting is hard.

Since I have now just started whining about life, I think it's time to end this entry.

Book Review - The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton

Seeing as India Holton's new book, The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love, is coming out soon, I figured I'd do a review on her first series.

As you can guess from the title, we have a society of lady scoundrels, and scoundrels in this case being pirates. Yes, we have a book about lady pirates. Not to say there aren't any male pirates in this series, as there most definitely is (this is a romance series), but the main character of this book is one of these lady scoundrels. And these pirates are still proper ladies.

Honestly, the premise alone was funny, but reading the actual book is even better. I don't read many historical books, even less ones set in Victorian England, but this one pulled me in.

One thing you all should know is that these are not the kind of pirates that sail on ships with Jolly Rogers blowing about in the ocean breeze. No, these pirates drive houses. With Jolly Rogers blowing about in the high altitude breeze. This book is a fantasy with magic, so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that the houses fly, but they have an actual ship's wheel for steering and everything. Even canons if you can believe it.

As you get through the other two books in the series, you even have witches and super spies that work for the Queen. Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, is even in these books. Though you can imagine, given the nature of these books, that she is not historically accurate and very out of character. But in a fun way.

Another magic fantasy book with a unique take on how magic operates and I could never get over the fact that we have pirates whose ships are their houses. A wide plethora of interesting characters and you've got one amazing book. There's also a bit of mystery to add some flavour.

At the end of the day, we have a humous book with romance, magic, mystery and a reminder that women are not to be underestimated. Our heroines, Pirate Cecilia Bassingwaite (Book 1), Witch Charlotte Pettifer (Book 2) and Spy Alice Dearlove (Book 3), are dangerous damsels indeed.

Click image for Goodreads page.

Next Round Part 2

"Week one over and I am proud to say that I only had three absences," Vera boasts.

This Friday afternoon found the two year five teachers in the room between their two classrooms. It was time for a weekly check in. Most other year levels used this time to catch up in a positive light, like a normal teacher should do. Of course, these two were ready for their first competition, number of student absences for the first week of the year.

"Oh, three you say? Well Vera, I am proud to say that I only had one this week," Damien replies, casually taking a sip of his tea after the words had left his mouth.

Vera felt her eyebrow twitch, she thought she had this in the bag, three was a pretty decent number for five days. No matter, the real test of absenteeism will come at the end of the year with percentage. She could live with this outcome as they had more important matters to discuss.

"So NAPLAN practice, we haven't had a chance to discuss how we're going to go about it," she says, opening her laptop to check the dates for this year.

"Last year's plan seemed to work well enough," the man replies.

"It did, and we can use it, but we'll have to make adjustments, we have a welcoming assembly for the new teachers in week three that might go a little longer than usual, and week five is jam-packed with events as well."

"If we can make time for the lessons we have, then they should not interfere too much."

She frowns as her eyes take in the information on her screen, "I wonder what the writing stimulus will be this year."

"Your guess is as good as mine," he shrugs. "I think we'll have time for some narrative and persuasive recap like we did last year, and maybe get started on information reports depending on how they go."

"Looking at my students' writing from last year, it should go relatively smoothly, though I have a few that still struggle with persuasive language," she replies.

"This cohort are good with Maths for the most part, so we can cover the usual term one topics and maybe a few recapping lessons to benefit the ones who still have trouble with certain areas."

They spent the next hour talking NAPLAN, planning English and Maths lessons to prepare the students for the test.

-

Jasmine had only managed to converse with the two year five teachers a handful of times over the last week, but her mind would always go back to that first time she saw them. It was just her luck that she would leave school on Friday at the same time as the both of them. She was halfway into her car when she spotted the two of them leaving through the gate.

Damien was gentlemanly enough to hold the gate open for his teaching partner as the woman talked his ear off. His face was blank, but he did appear to be listening. As they drew closer, she could make out what they were saying.

"You know Damien, I think my class is going to blow yours away this year," Vera was saying. "I have a good feeling about getting some high bands in my class."

"We shall see," the man replies, a small smirk crossing his face. "If last year is any indication, you're doomed to fail."

"What are you implying?"

The two passed her car, only stopping their argument for a moment to wave Jasmine good as they did. She watched as Damien helped Vera unload her bags into the back seat of her car before waiting for her to get in. Vera gave the man a wave before driving off, and it was after she had pulled from her park that the man himself headed for his own car.

Jasmine realised she would never understand these two, and figured it had been best she had not bothered to participate in the staff bet.

Finally, part 2 is here. And in only two parts, I already have the poor victim of my two competing teachers, one of the year 3 teachers.

Today's part mentioned the NAPLAN test, this is for years 3, 5, 7 and 9. It's a literacy and numeracy test that has a few purposes. It helps teachers to see which students might benefit from extensions and which areas some students are weak in. It also helps parents to see where their children are fairing for their age group.

Vera mentioned bands at the end there, those are how student results are shown. The bands go from 1 to 10, but each of the four year levels have different expectations for band placement. For year 5, band 4 is the national standard, this is where year 5 students are expected to be. Anything lower is below national standard and is a concern. Bands 5 to 8 are the above bands for year 5. These are children that excel at literacy and numeracy as far as their year level goes.

Truthfully, teachers have mixed feelings about NAPLAN. It used to happen closer to the end of the year, so teachers for the four year levels involved spent a lot of time preparing the students for the tests. There are four tests, one each for reading, writing, language conventions and numeracy. It's a lot to prepare for. Now the test happens in term 1, it's nice to get it out of the way early, let me tell you. Though the pressure does get shared with the year levels below each, so the 2, 4, 6, and 8 teachers who start the preparations.

NAPLAN is important, though I think some schools take it too seriously at the detriment of the children. When I was kid and had to sit the tests, I hated them. Now as a teacher, my feelings haven't changed much.

<Part One

Journal Entry 4 - Update

I have been very unproductive this past week, mostly because I've been occupied with other hobbies. I've done some novel writing, but haven't really done any blog writing since I posted part 1 of Next Round. I promise I'll still write it, just not today though. 

The last draft of my novel was 75k words and the current re-write is at 15k so I have a ways to go before this draft is done. I have no idea how long this draft is going to take to write, but I'm going to be working on it a little more after this post. My friend, the one who is also writing a novel, and I are trying to go to local libraries more frequently to work on our novels. We'll see how that goes.

I've been working on a large-ish paint by number that is taking awhile because it has lots of small parts and it's slow going when you have shaky hands and want to stay in between the lines. It'll be done one day though.

The weather here has been crazy, we had several weeks that were pretty warm but the weather finally remembered it is supposed to be Winter and the cold front has arrived.

I don't have the brain power right now to work on Next Round, hence the journal entry instead, but my draft re-write takes a little less power at the moment, because I'm up to a section that doesn't need much changing.

Hopefully tomorrow will see some more writing posts.

Next Round

A loud thunk reverberated through the room, a pile of folders now sat neatly on the only table in the room. A second, similar sound was heard not moments later as another pile of folders sat on the other side of the table. The two owners of the piles were staring each other down, waiting for the first one to open their mouth. The woman of the duo gives in first. "Damien," she greets stiffly.

"Vera," he returns, equally stiff.

"So glad you could be here for our first meeting."

"It would be a bit hard for us to plan for this term if one of the two year five teachers was not here," he reminds her.

"Indeed, shall we get this meeting on the way?" she asks as the two sink into their opposing seats.

"First order of business, the students."

"I took the time to review my students report cards from the end of year four," she says, pulling out a particular folder. "I compared their marks from first semester to second semester and saw some amazing improvements."

"I as well saw great improvement for my new class," he nods, looking over his own folder. "PM levels rose exponentially for many of the lower readers, which is nice to see."

"I see, how many at 30?" she asks, pretending as if this information had no real impact for her.

"Sixteen. You?"

She twitched, "Fifteen, but I'm sure I can raise that by the end of the year. Most of them are between twenty-five and twenty-nine, with only a couple between twenty and twenty-four."

"I see, my class sounds about the same."

She nods along, trying to find something else to mention. "It seems I have a few that are well above in both Maths and English," she says, hoping to have a leg up on this one. "Four to be exact."

"Ah yes, I have three students well above in both," he answers, barely hiding his own twitch. "I seem to have a lot of sporty students in my class, that will be nice come Districts."

"I'm also looking forward to a few of my students possibly going."

Equal ground so far, but the year had just begun.

"Shall we start our planning with English?" he asks, they could save the rest for later.

"Great idea," she replies. "I'm looking forward to this year, it looks to be a good one. I'm sure we'll defeat you in all areas."

"Oh Vera, perhaps your memory is failing you," the man sighs mockingly. "But I believe my class was victorious last year."

"That was last year," she gripes. "This year will be different Damien, you'll see."

He smirks, "I'm sure I will. Bring it on Miss Jones."

"You're going down, Mister Marsden."

-

Outside the room, two people were watching the two year five teachers through the window in the door, one with his hand on the door. He had been planning to introduce the new year three teacher to them, but had paused before opening the door.

"Parden me, Tom, but are they glaring at each other?" Jasmine asks, her eyes fixed on the two teachers in the small room between the two classrooms.

The pair were indeed now glaring at each other. Tom sighs, "We might have to introduce you to them when they're not together. I had hoped this year would be different, but alas, it remains the same."

"That being?"

"That the two year five teachers compete for the best class and it's been going on for three years now. If they weren't such good teachers, I'd be much more concerned about their motivations."

Jasmine turned her gaze back to the two teachers who were now rapidly typing on their laptops, showing each other different pages on their screens and yet still at least frowning. Maybe she would come back later.

"There's a bet going on about how long it will take before they'll finally realise this is just a way for them to pretend they don't have feelings for each other, want to weigh in?" 

Jasmine nearly causes herself whiplash turning her head to look at Tom as he so nonchalantly asks that question. She was beginning to realise, this school was strange.

Prompt: Reverse trope - Academic rivals except they're two teachers who compete for the best class.

When I first saw this prompt, I laughed so hard. Maybe some of you have heard this advice for authors before, but it's 'write what you know.' Well, my only degree is in Primary Education, and so, that's what I know. Unfortunately, not very useful for the me who likes to write fantasy and sci-fi, but very helpful for this prompt.

It's also not really a prompt that I can allow to be over in only one post. So, I have planned a multi-chapter story you could say, based on this prompt. It will span over an entire school year (which, in Australia, is late January to late November/early December depending on the Easter Holidays). It's not going to be some massive story, but I just had to put a little more effort into a prompt like this.

The next few paragraphs is a spiel about how some things work in education here in Queensland, Australia, so feel free to skip if you don't care, it's just to help make some things make more sense.

Primary school goes from Prep to Year 6. Preps are either 5 turning 6 or 6 turning 7 depending on if their birthday is in Jan-Jun or Jul-Dec. It's complicated and trips me up sometimes too.

We do marks with at least a five-point system and in most of the schools I've worked in, it goes Well Below, Below, Expected, Above and Well Above. This is the basis, but some schools might use something different. It's all centred around where they are expected to be based on the Achievement Standard for their year level in the Australian Curriculum.

I mentioned PM Benchmarking in this chapter too, this is reading levels. A Year 5 student is expected to be reading between levels 25 and 30, 30 being the highest level for most Primary aged students, though 30+ does exist. It's not uncommon to have students below or even above the expected levels. Some children just learn differently. 

We plan our subjects in unit cycles, we generally can't plan an entire term in one day, so we do short cycles and have more planning days mid term and again at the end of term for the next one. Planning also happens at home as well as before and after school because there are too many subjects to be able to plan in one day anyway.

While this story is mostly supposed to be a humourous romance about two teachers that are competing, and secretly like each other, you'll find a little bit of my thoughts in there because teaching is not an easy gig.

Part Two>