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The Official Student Paper of Riverside Poly High School

Book Reviews

Apr 11, 2023

Written By: Delaney Norris, Staff Writer

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy By Douglas Adams

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a short and fast-paced outer space adventure. It follows normal human Arthur Dent and alien Ford Prefect after the destruction of Earth. The story is easy to understand and enjoyable, but writing this review only a couple of weeks after reading the book, I can hardly remember any details about it.  The book isn’t meant to be anything too profound, as it is meant for a pre-teen age group and it gets its job done-simple and kooky fun. But did I have fun? I don’t even remember, what a shame. All I can say is the plot twist at the end is crazy and one of the few things I remember from the book. If you want a short read with a strange ending this could be the book for you.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn By Betty Smith

This book is so good! As a sucker for coming-of-age stories based in New York, this opinion may be biased but please take my word for it. (All opinions are biased anyway right?) The story follows Francie Nolan and her poverty-stricken family as she grows up in Brooklyn in the early 1900’s. The book is especially interesting because the story is largely based on author Betty Smith’s own life. Each chapter was interesting with well-thought-out characters and scenarios. It is a slightly larger book at almost five-hundred pages but the way it is written makes it feel much shorter and not dragged out at all. My only warning is to not read Anna Quindien’s forward that is at the beginning of the book as it (for some reason) mentioned major plot points that occurred in the book and spoiled parts of the book for me. What the hack Quindeen? Why did you do this?

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