Eva Collina

Representation: Minor Black characters
Trigger warnings: Physical injury, blood depiction, anti-Semitism
This review can also be found on The StoryGraph.
Score: Six points out of ten.

So. This book was part of the Children's Book Council of Australia shortlist for Older Readers this year, and I'm not sure why the judges put this on there since What We All Saw was dissatisfying to read. This book, however? It was slightly better, but still, Completely Normal reigns supreme as the best book the judges chose. It starts with the main character Eva Collins, or Eva for short, and some aspects make this book stand out; one, this is a memoir, and two, it's all in poetry, but I don't think that was the best choice since it lessened the impact and it felt like someone pressed the Enter key a couple of times and called it "poetry." Also, I got this from one of the two libraries I go to, and they didn't have this physically since they only had an ebook copy. I realised it's so short that it didn't leave an impact, but lastly, this isn't as good as books like Inside Out and Back Again and Refugee. Even the former was outstanding poetry. This was not. Now that I said that, Eva moves to Australia from Poland, then stays there for a while, returns to Poland and Australia a few years later and... That is it. What a shame.… (meer)