Alphareader - Danielle Binks

Once you are real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Suzanne collins wrote a trilogy where a main media propaganda strategy was to market a horrific act of violence as a love story to distract ppl and then it got adapted into a box office breaking movie and ppl made it all about the love triangle. so then since they didn’t get the point the first time Suzanne collins wrote a prequel story about the main dictator and she makes it so that you as a reader want it to be a genuine love story so badly even tho it’s so very clearly not and instead feels extremely unsettling to make her point even more meta which then gets adapted into another box office breaking film and now ppl are making romantic snowbaird tik toks. do u think she’s gonna write another book that’s somehow even more blatant or just give up and start executing ppl? hard to say but I wouldn’t blame her for the second one

What I Will

by Suheir Hammad

I will not

dance to your war

drum. I will

not lend my soul nor

my bones to your war

drum. I will

not dance to your

beating. I know that beat.

It is lifeless. I know

intimately that skin

you are hitting. It

was alive once

hunted stolen

stretched. I will

not dance to your drummed

up war. I will not pop

spin break for you. I

will not hate for you or

even hate you. I will

not kill for you. Especially

I will not die

for you. I will not mourn

the dead with murder nor

suicide. I will not side

with you nor dance to bombs

because everyone else is

dancing. Everyone can be

wrong. Life is a right not

collateral or casual. I

will not forget where

I come from. I

will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved

near and our chanting

will be dancing. Our

humming will be drumming. I

will not be played. I

will not lend my name

nor my rhythm to your

beat. I will dance

and resist and dance and

persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than

death. Your war drum ain’t

louder than this breath.

Odysseus had twenty years to shed his battle skin. My grandfather left the battlefield in France and rode home in a ship that crawled across the ocean slowly so he could catch his breath. I get on a plane in hell and get off, hours later, at home.

‘The Impossible Knife of Memory’ by Laurie Halse Anderson

‘The Year the Maps Changed’

Perhaps grief is as much regret for what we have never had as sorrow for what we have lost.

Us by David Nicholls

The Monster of Her Age by Danielle Binks Rating: 5/5     #LoveOzYA

“I’m still hurt by you, and mad at you — but I can forgive you. Because you are more than just your worst moments, Bubbe. And we had so many good ones too.”

My greatest love, after books, is movies, so a book about movies was already a win. Add in a lovely wlw romance and a beautiful family story and you’ve got yourself a marvellous little book. The Monster of Her Age is about the wonders and horrors of love of all kinds and how films shape our world and our lives; how they connect people from all walks of life - all abilities, all cultures, all sexualities. If you loved Mara Wilson’s memoir Where Am I Now? or Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour, definitely track down a copy of this gorgeous Australian YA.

Warnings: death, grief, references to emotional and psychological abuse.