In the first chapter of\u00c2\u00a0Wizard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Holiday<\/i>, THIS WAS SO FUN. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, there will probably be some repetition here between the video and this review, but I have SO MANY THINGS I want to talk about. SHALL WE.<\/p>\n
Spring Break<\/b><\/p>\n
A bit off in my predictions, which is okay! So, this book takes place over spring break, which limits the span of the novel; I had assumed something that would be months long. That also means that\u00c2\u00a0maybe<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to take place outside of New York! At no point does Nita mention leaving town. LOOK, I TRIED. I figured that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153holiday\u00e2\u20ac\u009d had the more British\/Europe meaning, like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153vacation,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and assumed that Nita would\u00c2\u00a0go<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0somewhere.<\/p>\n
At the same time, I was deeply distracted by the fact that spring break for Nita, Kita, and Dairine was\u00c2\u00a0two weeks long<\/i>. TWO. WEEKS. WHAT THE FUCK. Is this\u00c2\u00a0standard<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0in other parts of the country? World? Do other countries even\u00c2\u00a0have<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0spring break? Look, we only got one week off here in California, and you know what teachers always did? Assign some nasty project that required days worth of work because they were petty demons who hated fun. I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t truly had or enjoyed a spring break in like twenty years, and these kids get TWO WHOLE WEEKS OFF.<\/p>\n
Grocery Shopping<\/b><\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a massive list of things that all schools should teach to kids, and learning how to grocery shop for yourself is one of them. (Along with learning what taxes are. How to save. How to manage a full-time job and personal chores. HOW TO FIX EASILY FIXABLE THINGS AROUND THE HOUSE.) It took me a hot minute to figure this shit out because I either bought too much stuff in a panic (and too much of it went bad), or I then reacted to said result by buying too little and running out of food. Part of that was due to one complication: FOOD DESERTS. For a huge chunk of my life, I lived in them, which meant that it was miles to a grocery store that had fresh fruit and vegetables. Usually, those stores were also\u00c2\u00a0nowhere<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0near the bus\/train stops, so I could only get to them if I got a ride. When that happened? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d stock up, uncertain if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have another chance to get veggies and fruits again.<\/p>\n
Even then, I wish someone had taught me how to plan meals in advance; how to stock a cupboard with basic items that can allow you to concoct a quick meal if you were exhausted or pressed for time; HOW TO STORE THINGS IN THE FRIDGE SO THAT THEY DIDN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T GO BAD IMMEDIATELY.<\/p>\n
This chapter is giving me a lot of feelings, okay? Buckle in.<\/p>\n
Cafeteria Food<\/strong><\/p>\n WHAT THE HELL WAS IT LIKE FOR ALL OF YOU???? Where I spent most of my childhood \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Riverside, CA \u00e2\u20ac\u201c all cafeteria food was gross, processed garbage. ALL OF IT. When I got to high school, if you were lucky enough to be able to afford it, you could buy pizza or burritos catered from off-site, or these salad cup things that I\u00c2\u00a0loved<\/em> (because I love salads universally FIGHT ME), and the lines for them were super long because they were the best food. However, I was supporting myself through my final years of high school, so i got approved for free lunch that was subsidized through the district. The food was\u00c2\u00a0horrible<\/em>, yet it was often the only time I was getting a meal, so I had to eat it. (It’s no wonder I went vegan a year after I graduated high school.)<\/p>\n I remember the lunch in Boise, though, for the two years I got to have it. We had an honest-to-gods SALAD BAR three times a week. All of the meals had fresh veggies, some sort of protein, a drink, and once a week, we got a dessert. This isn’t me remembering it differently: the food was demonstrably better, so much so that my mom pitched a fit at school when my brother and I started getting sick from lunch in Riverside.<\/p>\n SO WHAT WAS YOUR SCHOOL CAFETERIA LIKE<\/p>\n A Life Without<\/b><\/p>\n There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a subtle thing that Duane does in this first chapter: establish a life without Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mother. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nowhere near as devastating as the opening of\u00c2\u00a0A Wizard Alone<\/i>. Instead, we get the feel of the passage of time, and with that passage, Nita has found ways to move on. She doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forget her mother, and the entire bit with the empty fridge is a chilling way for us to accept that Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mom is no longer in the picture. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what\u00c2\u00a0she<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0was good at, and now that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no longer around, the Callahan family has to come up with a way to adjust.<\/p>\n It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of haunting and eerily effective.<\/p>\n Changes<\/b><\/p>\n Actually, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another change here that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s super fascinating to me:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Welcome to our planet, Mr. Alien,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Carmela had said. Nita absolutely approved of the sentiment. What was unusual was that Carmela had used the Speech to express it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n SO. WHAT.\u00c2\u00a0WHAT<\/i>. How is she learning it? How often does Kit speak it aloud? Is this a sign of SOMETHING ELSE?<\/p>\n I also adored that Duane made it clear that Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dream \u00e2\u20ac\u0153powers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d were going to be addressed in this book. That was such a huge part of the plot in\u00c2\u00a0A Wizard Alone<\/i>, and I definitely want to see how that develops. As it stands, the dream journal is a great way for Duane to accomplish some foreshadowing\u00c2\u00a0and<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0character development at the same time. So\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 space? someone waiting a long time?<\/p>\n Guilt<\/b><\/p>\n Duane wastes zero time in this book, and the first conflict arrives in Dairine. Well, Dairine appears on the last page of the chapter, but what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0done<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0manifests itself in Spot, who spends a good deal of time cowering in a cupboard because of\u00c2\u00a0something<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0that Dairine did. Given Diarine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s emotional state in the last novel, I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t surprised to learn that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been screwing things up. What I\u00c2\u00a0am<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0curious about is if this has to do with her power leveling out as well. Dairine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always had a bigger rebellious streak than Nita, too, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m certain that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got a part to play in this.<\/p>\n Whatever Dairine did was bad enough that Spot started freaking out\u00c2\u00a0before<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0she got home. Tom was alarmed enough that he came over to the Callahan resident to intercept Dairine. He refers to it as not \u00e2\u20ac\u0153on the scale of previous transgressions,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but\u00c2\u00a0still.\u00c2\u00a0<\/i>TOM CAME TO THEIR HOUSE. THAT FEELS LIKE A BIG DEAL.<\/p>\n I also shall vicariously live through Nita since I tended to be the one to get in trouble the most as a kid. FINALLY. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s someone else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s turn!<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OBogxPaFul8<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – I am now on Patreon<\/a>! There are various levels of support, from $1 up to whatever you want! You’ll get to read a private blog, extra reviews, and other such rewards. I POST A LOT OF CUTE PHOTOS, OKAY. Think of it like a private Tumblr blog that only SPECIAL PEOPLE get to read.<\/b> In the first chapter of\u00c2\u00a0Wizard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Holiday, THIS WAS SO FUN. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[525,510],"tags":[513,511],"class_list":["post-4088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wizards-holiday","category-young-wizards","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-young-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n– I have updated my list of conventions and events for the remainder of the year and much of next year.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a>
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches have been announced here.<\/a>
\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"