The Yellow Birds, by Kevin Powers: Coming to a High School classroom near you (to devastate you)

The Yellow Birds
by Kevin Powers
Little Brown and Company: New York, 2012.
ISBN: 9780316219365

War is not an easy thing to understand, nor is it an easy thing to survive.   In Kevin Powers masterful first novel, Private Bartle has returned from Iraq.  He has not returned unscathed; in fact, he is still in Al Tafar, battling for the city and for his friend, Private Murphy.  Bartle, it turns out, made a promise to Murphy’s mother he could not keep to bring him home.  Under the leadership of the hardened and doubtful guidance of staff sergeant Sterling, the twenty-one and eighteen year-old inseparable privates struggle with the dangers and inhumanity they face in an active war zone.   They are obsessed with the death tally, hoping not to be the 1000th casualty.  Murphy begins to show signs of mental strain, eventually making himself scarce.  What follows is as haunting as the writing is lyrical.  This is a simple, tragic, hugely moving story.  Powers writes of Bartle’s experience with an urgency and truth of that can only be conveyed by someone who knows what it is to live the life of a soldier in combat and under fire.  The words sing with simplicity, sincerity, and a lyricism that makes the heart ache with the vivid detail experienced through Bartle’s eyes, skin, and thoughts.  It is easy to see why this debut novel is receiving as much critical acclaim as it is.  The short length makes it accessible, but the content (and salty solider dialogue if the war related deaths don’t do it for you, hypocritical book banners) places this novel firmly in the for adults/mature readers category.  There is no doubt it will become a staple in advanced high school  English classrooms and summer reading lists  - so high schoolers, brace yoselves!  (And fear not, it’s wayyyyy less all over the place than The Things They Carried.) 

Seriously, high school kids.  You will be reading this.  And adults of the world who like great writing but don’t want to spend fifteen weeks reading a book that you need to start bodybuilding in order to physically lift, well…this is a doozy.  I mean, words do not do the words of Kevin Powers justice.  This guy – well lets just say it was not surprising to turn to the back flap and discover that someone has an MFA in poetry.  Did you see the adjectives I used above?  Haunting? Lyical? Simple?  Sincere? Hardened? Urgent?  Truth?  Are those all adjectives?  I don’t even know.  That’s okay, because I’m not writing important, moving books ala Mr. Powers.   Consider the following excerpt:

Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor: A blue ribbon for this blue-haired book

Daughter of Smoke and Bone

by Laini Taylor

Little Brown and Company: New York, 2011.

ISBN: 978-0-316-13402-6

     Karou knows she is no simple art school student.  With blue hair, fluency in more than a dozen human and non-human languages, and an unusual adoptive family whose business dealings include sending her abroad through portals to collect teeth, she knows her life is unique.  What she little does know far outweighs that which she doesn’t know – like how she is the only human in her family, who her family is, and more importantly, who she is – and this soon comes to matter when doors into her family’s workshop around the world are sealed with a handprint burned onto the door.  Karou finds herself cut-off from the only individuals who know who she is, unsure if they are even safe, being pursued by what appears to be a vengeful and violent angel.   Good and evil are thrown into contrast as Karou finds herself caught in the middle of a centuries old war in this gorgeously descriptive novel.   This fantasy novel is recommended for all high-school and public libraries, and for grades 10 and up. 

I’m not sure this review does Daughter of Smoke and Bone justice.  Does it really make you want to read it?  Probably not.  I’m sorry.  I wrote this with a migraine, mostly so the lady on the cover would stop staring me down from my desk, judging me for not writing reviews of things I read more quickly.  Her laser-eyed judgment hurts my brain! This National Book award finalist has been on my to-read list since I insisted we needed it at work in nigh-on-March or something.  I’m not going to lie, the cover made me think it would be incredibly girly, and made me question the whole national book award finalist thing.  I was wrong, friends.