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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
Teodora and Xochitl Avila are excited that their brother Manny is finally coming home from Afghanistan. However when they learn Manny has PTSD, Xochitl decides to take her brothers on a road trip in order to help Manny deal with it. This book is one big emotional journey for the Avila siblings. Teodora is conflicted between helping his brother and improving himself in order to get the grades needed to get into college. Flores-Scott captures the love as well as the conflicts between the siblings. Loyalty among family comes off very strong. There is even a little romance between Teodora and a girl named Wendy Martinez that is very cute. Readers see the seriousness of PTSD through Manny's struggles and the toil it takes on Teodora and Xochitl. Must read for readers of realistic fiction.
Things I loved: Mexican-American representation, green chile cheeseburgers!!, supportive family, T's determination to change his life. The realities of PTSD and how this can affect family members, too.
Things I didn't love: The dialogue is pretty unnatural. Wendy & T's conversation doesn't sound the way teens talk. (it reminded me of The Inexplicable Logic of My Life in this regard) I also hated that Xoch and T felt responsible for "fixing" Manny, and that T's parents are portrayed as kind of helpless and not responsible enough. It's also upsetting that Xochitl doesn't tell her parents about the suicide note.
SLJ recommends this for 7th & up. I'm more inclined to recommend it to 8th & up because of the attempted suicide and scenes where Manny is dealing with flashbacks. This book is gorgeous and also tragic.
Things I didn't love: The dialogue is pretty unnatural. Wendy & T's conversation doesn't sound the way teens talk. (it reminded me of The Inexplicable Logic of My Life in this regard) I also hated that Xoch and T felt responsible for "fixing" Manny, and that T's parents are portrayed as kind of helpless and not responsible enough. It's also upsetting that Xochitl doesn't tell her parents about the suicide note.
SLJ recommends this for 7th & up. I'm more inclined to recommend it to 8th & up because of the attempted suicide and scenes where Manny is dealing with flashbacks. This book is gorgeous and also tragic.
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
In this heartbreaking novel, Flores-Scott tells the story of how a young man and his sister drop everything in their fight to help their brother who is battling PTSD after returning from Afganistan. This is the story of true sacrifice. While there were some slow parts, this book opened my eyes to how families are affected by PTSD. It is not rainbows and sunshine for many of our military when they try to return home after their stints in the military.
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
T is starting to reach for a dream when his older brother, Manny, returns from duty with crippling PTSD. Sister X drags them all on a road trip from Seattle to New Mexico in the hopes of saving them all.
Couldn’t put it down. Cried my eyes out.
It is online as a graphic novel. Beautiful.
Couldn’t put it down. Cried my eyes out.
It is online as a graphic novel. Beautiful.
American Road Trip takes on the complexity of what happens when the war comes home. Told through the experiences of Teodoro, readers gain understanding about the effects of war on returning soldiers and their families. A compelling story that I could not put down.
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
as someone with no experience, i think he handled the ptsd really well
and he motivated me for school right as summer's ending so thx :)
and he motivated me for school right as summer's ending so thx :)
We still can’t do half stars? I give it 3.5.
If you haven’t heard, this book has been adapted into a comic on the Webtoon app. I started reading it as a webtoon first, and then just felt like pieces of the story were missing? Or that I didn’t want to wait. Then I found out it was based on a novel and I thought “ohhh, I should DEFINITELY just give that a read.”
As far as comparing it to the webtoon, you don’t miss too much too much reading it as a comic. The writing isn’t that lofty in that there are long descriptions of things that you would have missed out on. There are some subtle things here and there, and with the webtoon—despite there being pictures—I felt like I had to re-read a couple times to get what was going on. The dialogue and other text is pulled directly from the book. The webtoon hasn’t been released in full (as of my writing this) and I may come back and give this review an update once it’s all out so that I can give them a better compare.
There’s so much that can be talked about with this book, I could 100% make a reading guide for it with all the themes that are explored. This story explores topics like: family, war, mental health, love (new and old), shitty decisions making, and brotherhood. Sacrifice is also a big theme in this book, as in, was that sacrifice even worth it? I’m talking about going to war, but I’m also talking about the choices the sister, Xochitl makes. Teodoro, who is an excellent main character, is constantly exploring individuality vs family. Where does he draw the line between him as an individual and his allegiance to his family? Growing up in an ethnic household I also struggled with this back and forth.
Things this book is not about? Er, road trips? I wouldn’t say it’s a road trip book, despite being called that, but there is a road trip in it, and it is does showcase some cool west coast cities. I just think it could have been titled something different. But who knows? Maybe there’s an editor somewhere who made that choice.
The three main characters are constantly making complicated decisions and there are times at each point that I wanted to give up on each of them. There are some moments in the story where you’re like “wait, what just happened? That happened fast, why did we just skim over that?” And then there are other moments where I’m like “woah, that was heavy.”
I guess I’m not technically the “YA audience” anymore but I generally still enjoy YA books just as much, so that’s why I read them. But occasionally there is a book that I’m like “oh, I would have liked this better as a teenager,” and this is one of those books. So that’s really just why it gets 3.5 stars from me. Also, {SPOILER} I wasn’t that happy with the ending. I wanted to see and ending where T went back to Washington State. And if I were writing it, I think I would have tried harder to make that work.
I can see myself going out of my way to recommend it to teens, especially young men of color. Books like this—that discuss the aftermath effects of war to kids who are actively being recruited in the military, that show underperforming students fail and succeed and achieve on their own terms, that give a good representation of Hispanic families—need to exist, and I’m glad it does.
I also want to say I read in one other review someone being annoyed that they had to Google how to pronounced Xochitl. Um, too bad? As someone with a hard to pronounce name, it is SO nice to see a name like that as a main character. The author could have definitely just been like, eh, Maria is fine. No, they purposely made a different choice, and that’s awesome.
Now, somebody tell me where I can try a Hatch green chili cheeseburger?
If you haven’t heard, this book has been adapted into a comic on the Webtoon app. I started reading it as a webtoon first, and then just felt like pieces of the story were missing? Or that I didn’t want to wait. Then I found out it was based on a novel and I thought “ohhh, I should DEFINITELY just give that a read.”
As far as comparing it to the webtoon, you don’t miss too much too much reading it as a comic. The writing isn’t that lofty in that there are long descriptions of things that you would have missed out on. There are some subtle things here and there, and with the webtoon—despite there being pictures—I felt like I had to re-read a couple times to get what was going on. The dialogue and other text is pulled directly from the book. The webtoon hasn’t been released in full (as of my writing this) and I may come back and give this review an update once it’s all out so that I can give them a better compare.
There’s so much that can be talked about with this book, I could 100% make a reading guide for it with all the themes that are explored. This story explores topics like: family, war, mental health, love (new and old), shitty decisions making, and brotherhood. Sacrifice is also a big theme in this book, as in, was that sacrifice even worth it? I’m talking about going to war, but I’m also talking about the choices the sister, Xochitl makes. Teodoro, who is an excellent main character, is constantly exploring individuality vs family. Where does he draw the line between him as an individual and his allegiance to his family? Growing up in an ethnic household I also struggled with this back and forth.
Things this book is not about? Er, road trips? I wouldn’t say it’s a road trip book, despite being called that, but there is a road trip in it, and it is does showcase some cool west coast cities. I just think it could have been titled something different. But who knows? Maybe there’s an editor somewhere who made that choice.
The three main characters are constantly making complicated decisions and there are times at each point that I wanted to give up on each of them. There are some moments in the story where you’re like “wait, what just happened? That happened fast, why did we just skim over that?” And then there are other moments where I’m like “woah, that was heavy.”
I guess I’m not technically the “YA audience” anymore but I generally still enjoy YA books just as much, so that’s why I read them. But occasionally there is a book that I’m like “oh, I would have liked this better as a teenager,” and this is one of those books. So that’s really just why it gets 3.5 stars from me. Also, {SPOILER} I wasn’t that happy with the ending. I wanted to see and ending where T went back to Washington State. And if I were writing it, I think I would have tried harder to make that work.
I can see myself going out of my way to recommend it to teens, especially young men of color. Books like this—that discuss the aftermath effects of war to kids who are actively being recruited in the military, that show underperforming students fail and succeed and achieve on their own terms, that give a good representation of Hispanic families—need to exist, and I’m glad it does.
I also want to say I read in one other review someone being annoyed that they had to Google how to pronounced Xochitl. Um, too bad? As someone with a hard to pronounce name, it is SO nice to see a name like that as a main character. The author could have definitely just been like, eh, Maria is fine. No, they purposely made a different choice, and that’s awesome.
Now, somebody tell me where I can try a Hatch green chili cheeseburger?