Customer Comments

I grew up in the Portland area, one year older than Jackson. Much of what he describes I remember from news reports, including the recent, violently sudden exhumation of the legal questions surrounding his Aunt's death; like many other pieces of his story, to realize that "the family" in all those articles in the Oregonian was *Jackson's* family laid one more piece of poignant counterpoint melody to my internal/local life story. --- I'm glad Jackson wrote this blisteringly honest book, recording through sympathetic, searching eyes parts of history that most of America would prefer to ignore. Portlandia's "Dream of the 90s" was a white dream; the black community, in all its aspects, experienced the 90s very differently. --- Also, yes: Jackson is a very skilled writer. --- P.S. The Notes, although they pretty much require a magnifying glass to read (ugh to the publisher!), are an education in themselves.

I discovered this series by accident at Goodwill this summer ... and bought the rest of it at Christmas for my older kids (ages 10 and 12), although waiting so long to see where the writers took the storylines and the characters nearly killed all three of us! This is our first-ever series for which literally *every time* I went to Powell's or Goodwill (we are used-books buyers) my kids reminded me to "Be sure and look for more of those books!" The Runaways series is a very nice example of the things I love in fiction: interesting idea, intelligently designed, completely steeped in and respectful of the genre (in this case, the superhero genre) while asking the real social questions that such a "reality" would create. The art, especially at the beginning of this first book, really hits the reader in the face with stereotypical blah-blah-blah characters ... which you know from reading the dustjacket teaser are all decorative lies with which those characters have deliberately surrounded themselves. I love the juxtaposition of in-your-face old-skool archetypes and 21st-century role-reversal. The teenage characters are appropriately reactive *and* intelligent (to varying degrees), which I liked; the adult villains are real people (well, except the space aliens), the political corruption feels unfortunately too reasonable, the adult superheroes display the irritating closed-mindedness of the perpetually successful ... this is a nice step into the Marvel world, from underneath-and-to-the-side, and things look pretty different from down here. As the series moves forward, parents should be aware (before hooking their kids on it) that it is categorized a "Teen Romance," and although there isn't any graphic sex, there are right-after bedroom scenes, a lot of enthusiastic kissing, and no assumption of monogamy as the series progresses. For parents who have sexuality issues (pro-, con-, or otherwise ;) ), be aware that various sexualities are explored--although not too much in this first book. The romance stuff looks to me to be geared toward 12 to 14 year old girls--exploring ideas about sex and relationships, but maybe not super graphically. But the action is good, the plotlines well convoluted, with the storyline pendulum swinging regularly from [normal life-ish] to [completely whacked out], and the emotional life of the characters tracks well. If you and your kids can take some edge to your goodguy/badguy definitions, I recommend this series :). I make a point of trying to read at least 12,000 pages of books a year, and after looking back through my reading-journal, this book stood out as the top'est of my top three books that I read in 2012 (the other two were The One-Straw Revolution, by Masanobu Fukuoka, a classic about really serious back-to-nature agriculture, and the gorgeously illustrated children's book set in pre-modern Korea, Good Fortune in a Wrapping Cloth, by Joan Schoettler). Get sucked in! And say hi to Old Lace for me :).