Fantastic. It's just utter brilliance.

I really did not enjoy this book because I did not feel attached to any character, intermittently lost in what was happening, and un-enthused by the style. When I think of the students I have had, I cannot identify any student who would enjoy it. I am confused at who the audience is.

The book started out strong then took a 90 degree turn into shallow waters and left me feeling rather disappointed. The narrative of the past by Gertruui was wonderful though and the prose overall was lyrical with some very quotable passages. Maybe it just needed a second draft? It was pretty okay.

Once again I found myself in the Netherlands in the Second World War, though this time another half of the book was set in modern Amsterdam, and I was very pleased that I'd read [b:The Diary of a Young Girl|48855|The Diary of a Young Girl|Anne Frank|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1358276407s/48855.jpg|3532896] earlier this year (or was it last year?) as it gave me a solid background for this tale.

Not that it focused exclusively on Anne Frank, but it did assume a certain amount of prior knowledge. This book also assumes at least a passing interest in poetry, in art, and in 20th Century European history. Without these things already in the reader's understanding of the world, this book would lose most of its impact. I daresay that's why some reviewers here on Goodreads gave it only 1 star, or 2, and that's fine - you can't be all things to all people.

Another necessary quality in the reader is that of being interested in more than one's own age-group. "Well, of course!" you say, but as this book is aimed at Young Adults, you can probably see my point. Many titles written for that market have older or younger people, if they exist at all in the story, as fairly two-dimensional bit players. This, however, has two elderly women integral to the plot, and a couple of middle-aged women as also quite important characters. The cross-generational relationships are very nicely written.

So - this is a tale of a 17-year-old English lad called Jacob, who goes in his grandmother's stead to the annual ceremony marking the landing of British paratroopers at Arnhem (don't quote me here - I've taken the book back to the library and I'm terrible at remembering historical facts). It's also a tale of the 18-year-old Geertrui who nurses an English soldier - Jacob's grandfather - and who is now telling the whole story. These two tales are interwoven, though we don't know for a long time quite to whom Geertrui is telling her story.

Jacob also learns a lot about himself as he meets new and fascinating people, and as he begins thinking about others from a more adult and independent angle. There's a cast of interesting people and some great scenery and city descriptions - all told, an excellent book.

Wow! This is a great book - reread after reading his newest book. No wonder the Printz Award was given to it. The story takes place in current day Amsterdam and during WWI when the main character's grandfather was a soldier. It offers huge questions and topics for discussion. Would make a great book club pick for any age group high school above (many situations that would not be appropriate for younger audiences).

I read somewhere that [b:This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn|590348|This Is All The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn|Aidan Chambers|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176076122s/590348.jpg|467879] is the only book in the Dance sequence that has a female protagonist and now I don't think that's true, because Geertrui is clearly the protagonist of this book. She is the one who is preparing a manuscript for a single person to whom she is trying to express her story. That the person to whom she is addressing her story is also the protagonist of his own narrative written in the third person which occupies what I estimate as at least 50% of the page count is merely one of the ways in which Postcards is different from the other Dance books I have read thus far. Geertrui prefigures some events that will become part of Cordelia's story, as well:

Spoiler

her thoughtful and delibrate choice to become sexually active, her unplanned pregnancy, and an unexpected death, although here it is not hers, but her partner's.

I really like how the Dutch of the native speakers is integrated into their English -- sometimes groping for a translation for a peculiarly Dutch word or idiom, sometimes just fumbling for a bit of vocabulary. This is very tricky to do right.

Like Jan in [b:The Toll Bridge|6421628|The Toll Bridge|Aidan Chambers|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266690234s/6421628.jpg|467882], Jacob experiences a frisson of homoerotic attraction at the beginning of the book but then in practice proves to be either entirely or mostly straight. I think this works as a positive portrayal of a questioning character, especially since, unlike in Bridge, there are other queer people in happy consummated relationships:

Spoiler

Ton, who is gay, presents as more than a little genderqueer, and is happily in a relationship with Daan, who is both bisexual and polyamorous. The only thing I don't completely love about the matter-of-fact presentation of their relationship is that Daan's female partner gets short shrift and no page time.

This book has several elements that may have made it more of an award-friendly breakout than the other Dance books: the WWII theme and particularly the intertextuality with the oft-assigned Anne Frank's diary, the inclusion of assisted suicide, that perennial high school debate or persuasive essay topic.

2.5 starts

I originally out this on my TBR when I was 15, but didn't get to it till now (which tells you how much of a procrastinator I am). I think at the time I would have really liked it, but at this point I think I've just grown out of YA as a gene.

I picked this one up from the library on the strength of it being a Printz winner, and the Printz committee did not let me down. There's a lot of big, deep stuff here, but it never feels weighty or didactic. Chambers weaves in themes of love, sex, death, identity, history and family effortlessly and meaningfully. Unlike most YA novels, Chambers is content to dwell in ambiguity, and while the adolescent protagonist does do some growing up and coming in to his own, not everything is solved or neatly tied up in a bow.

Come Aidan Chambers scrive di sesso tra adolescenti (e giovani adulti) in un modo che... indescrivibile. Solo lui ci riesce.

Medal Winner 2003

Uncertain sexuality, polyamory, adultery, assisted death, AND a World War II story. How could this not win awards? *sigh* This definitely falls into the "not my thing" category, but the "not my thing" was so overwhelming that I find it hard to evaluate it free of that. I appreciate literature that asks me to get out of my comfort zone and stretch my understanding of the world, but this book gave me no comfort zone whatsoever, and no relief from the stretching. The two and a half page sermon about why euthanasia is a good thing, even though people are sad about it, and how teenagers should have written documents about what circumstances they would rather be dead in, took this from two or three stars to the one star.

Marriages can last a lifetime happily, not because people find it easy to stay in love forever but because love and commitments are choices to be made over and over again.

Most people don't have any control over when or how they die. It's not a right.

World War II is an incredibly story-worthy event, however, using it as the counterpoint to every current social issue imaginable feels emotionally manipulative.

I realize I bring a bias to the story, but aside from that bias, the alternating viewpoints had mixed results for me. The World War II chapters carried the momentum of the story, but going from 1st person in the past to 3rd person in the present was repeatedly confusing to me, especially since the present was so introspective, and the main character of that storyline shared a name with the main character of the World War II storyline.