 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher and today I'm going to review Like a Hurricane by Jonathan Bacott which is a middle grade verse novel that is just absolutely beautiful. It was originally written in French and has been translated recently into English. I saw this reviewed on Ashley's channel and just knew I had to read it because I'm a huge fan of verse novels and I love to see how authors use that format of storytelling in order to create something that is vibrant and alive and moves with a much shorter word count than we're used to in say a regular novel. So Like a Hurricane is the story of a boy who is trying to work out how to come out as gay to his parents and to his best friend and the entire book is a journey through his feelings about this, about everything that has come before and everything that is present that he is feeling and it is both described incredibly beautifully but also presented in a really fantastic way within the text. So the words have shape and movement and that is the most powerful thing about verse novels is the author's ability to use language but also use the physical look and shape of text and print to create a story. One of my favorite genres to teach ever is poetry and I don't consider myself a great poet but if I'm going to write something I tend to lean towards poetry because I find that is a really incredible way of expressing yourself without having to sit there and minutely write out every little detail because you have so much nuance and power within the word choice that you have which makes verse novels really incredibly powerful in classrooms. The amount of emotion that just seeps out of these pages as you read it is just phenomenal and I like I literally do not have more words than that to describe it because it's one of those books that is very difficult to describe. You kind of have to see it and experience it and read it to understand it but when I say that this is a book that ever since I read it I've thought about it every single day and I've told so many people about it because it is just that powerful and that moving. I think if you were going to use this in a classroom with older students so you're looking at year five, year six and sort of moving on through upper middle grade and into high school this is just an incredible mental text for how word choice and placement within phrases and sentences has the power to move you and how you can use moments and experiences to highlight how you're feeling in an absolutely wonderful way. It is heartfelt at times it is a little bit confronting because obviously our narrator is afraid of the reaction that he's going to get from the people who know him and yet this book has that element of queer joy that wraps up the story which is so important to have in books like these where there is acceptance and there is unconditional love and I just I fell in love with this book. It is truly a wonderful, wonderful text and I hope that people will pick it up. I will leave links to more information about the book down below. This will easily be on the top of my favorite kids books of the year and I'm really really glad I have another middle grade verse novel to add to my collection because this is honestly one of my favorite formats to read so thank you very much for watching. I hope that if you have the opportunity to pick up this book that you do because I think it is a really powerful middle grade title. If you have read this book and you'd like to talk about it feel free to discuss it in the comments or if you just want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a balloon emoji. I hope that wherever you're in the world you're staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.