Header image with four cats and the text: Pussreboots, a book review nearly every day. Online since 1997
Now 2024 Previous Articles Road Essays Road Reviews Author Black Authors Title Source Age Genre Series Format Inclusivity LGBTA+ Artwork WIP

Recent posts


Month in review

Reviews
All Summer Long by Hope Larson
Bat and the End of Everything by Elana K. Arnold
Circle by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen
Eggs Benedict Arnold by Laura Childs
Elegant Yokai Apartment Life, Volume 1 by Hinowa Kouzuki
Everlasting Nora by Marie Miranda Cruz
Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts
The Fire Cat by Esther Averill
Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara by Colleen Morton Busch
Heartwood Hotel 1: A True Home by Kallie George
Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake
Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos by Lucy Knisley
Knife Edge by Andrew Lane
Like Vanessa by Tami Charles
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Mothership by Martin Leicht and Isla Neal
Murders and Metaphors by Amanda Flower
An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim
Prose and Cons by Amanda Flower
The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum
A Scandal in Scarlet by Vicki Delany
Secret Coders 6: Monsters & Modules by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes
Skyward: The Story of Female Pilots in WWII by Sally Deng
A Sprinkle of Spirits by Anna Meriano
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
Watch Us Rise by Renée Watson and Ellen Hagen
Wee Sister Strange by Holly Grant
You Are Light by Aaron Becker

Miscellaneous
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (April 01)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (April 08)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (April 15)
Looking ahead to July
March 2019 Sources
March 2019 Summary
Reading for Work
The value of ebooks
Weekends

Road Essays
FF0000: Orphans to the city by way of the interstate

CCFFFF: Siblings to Utopia by Way of the Cornfield: a reading of "Slumber Party.

CCFFCC: Siblings through the maze to utopia

CCFF99: siblings to utopia via the labyrinth

Road Narrative Update for March 2019

Previous month



Rating System

5 stars: Completely enjoyable or compelling
4 stars: Good but flawed
3 stars: Average
2 stars: OK
1 star: Did not finish

Reading Challenges

Canadian Book Challenge: 2024-2025

Beat the Backlist 2024

Ozathon: 12/2023-01/2025

Artwork
Chicken Prints
Paintings and Postcards


Privacy policy

This blog does not collect personal data. It doesn't set cookies. Email addresses are used to respond to comments or "contact us" messages and then deleted.


Like Vanessa: 04/01/19

Like Vanessa

Like Vanessa by Tami Charles is historic fiction set in 1983 in Newark, New Jersey. This is the year leading up to Vanessa Williams becoming the first Black woman to win the Miss America title. To put that in perspective, I was eleven when she won.

Vanessa of this novel is growing up in a housing project. She's going to a rough school, living through a time when three decades of flight from the urban centers by white middle class had taken its toll on the big cities.

Vanessa has an incarcerated mother and a grandfather who is an addict. She goes to an underfunded school. But a teacher has decided to host a school wide beauty pageant. Vanessa decides to enter to emulate her idol.

I'm obviously not the intended audience but I enjoyed seeing Vanessa William's early career through a different perspective. I certainly did grow up with her as a model and later an actor.

Four stars

Comments (0)


Lab puppy
Name:
Email (won't be posted):
Blog URL:
Comment:

Twitter Tumblr Mastadon Flickr Facebook Facebook Contact me

1997-2024 Sarah Sammis