Talk:First Light (Stead novel)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: BobAmnertiopsis∴_ChatMe! 00:49, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I will be reviewing this article shortly. BobAmnertiopsis∴_ChatMe! 00:49, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

1. Well-written:

(a) the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct;

To do:

• In the lead, italicize the already bolded First Light.
• "The novel follows Peter who is in Greenland with his father and mother for research on global warming. Thea lives in Gracehope, an undergroud colony under Greenland." Comma after 'Peter'.
• ".. and Peter's and Thea's attempt to persuade the people to leave." The apostrophe and s after Peter aren't needed, unless they were each making individual attempts to persuade people to leave, in which case "attempt" ought to be "attempts". If they were making a collective attempt, though, then just one "'s" is required.
• "...and met with Wendy Lamb again who once again helped make improvements..." First instance of 'again' should be removed, as it's repetitive (see suggestion second paragraph of lead below)
• "Lamb suggested Stead to meet with a "critique group"..." Would removing the 'to' benefit this sentence? (As in, "Lamb suggested that Stead meet with a "critique group"...")
• "...Peter who lives with his mother and father in New York, but is in Greenland for his father's research and Thea, who lives in..." Add a comma after 'Peter', remove the comma after 'New York', and add a comma after 'father's research'.
• "However, the Settlers possessed unusual abilities such as extremely good vision and hearing, called eye adepts and ear adepts which was seen as sorcery." Commas after 'unusual abilities' and 'ear adepts', and change 'which was' to 'which were', as it refers to the unusual abilities, a plural entity.
• "Grace, the leaders of the Settlers decided to bring..." 'leaders' should be 'leader', comma after 'Settlers'.
• "The map shows a tunnel leading on to the surface." 'on to' is one word: 'onto'.
• "...are in the shape of mitochondrial DNA which..." Comma after 'DNA'.
• "...her research of mitochondrial DNA relates to how a mutation is able to benefit the human body which would cause the extremely good vision and hearing." Comma after 'human body'.
• "One obstacle lies in their way, Rowen, Thea's and Peter's grandmother who banished Peter's mom and did nothing to help Thea's mom when she was on her deathbed from an illness when she ventured aboveground." Colon after 'their way', remove the apostrophe + s in the first 'Thea's'.
• "The dog was born several days ago, but has yet to open his eyes." Remove the comma after 'days ago'.
• "...tries to convince the colony at an reenactment..." 'an' should be 'a'.
• "Coupled with the fact that Peter is and eye adept, the first in a hundred years, the colony begins listening to Thea instead of Rowen." 'and' should be replaced with 'an'.
• "In the novel Peter finds an underground civilzation..." Comma after 'novel', and 'civilization' is spelled this way.
• "6 disks and a length of 7 hours and 6 minutes." Spell out 'six', 'seven', and 'six', respectively, and add 'with' after 'disks and'.
• "...and compared the novel to Stead's second work When You Reach Me feeling..." Commas after 'second work' and 'Reach Me'.
• "Kirkus Reviews found the novel as a "Thoroughly enjoyable arctic adventure" praising..." Comma after 'arctic adventure"'.

 Fixed Glimmer721 ^talk 21:33, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Suggestions: (feel free to contest them...I won't fail this article for any of these)

• "The novel follows Peter who is in Greenland with his father and mother for research on global warming. Thea lives in Gracehope, an undergroud colony under Greenland." What if you linked those two sentences to imply that the novel follows both stories, possibly like, "The novel follows Peter, who is in Greenland with his father and mother for research on global warming, and Thea, who lives in Gracehope, an undergroud colony under Greenland."
• "...an underground colony under Greenland." Underground under Greenland feels repetitious. Maybe try "underground colony located in Greenland."
• The second paragraph of the lead feels a little clunky. May I suggest something along the lines of: "Stead began writing the novel in 2002, but her first draft was a failure. To help her, she met editor Wendy Lamb who advised her to meet with a small group of people who would help critique the novel. After three years of work, Stead finished the second draft and met with Lamb who once again helped make improvements and later published the novel. Reviewers praised the description of Gracehope and main characters, as well as the performances of Coleen Marlo and David Ackroyd who voiced Thea and Peter in a subsequent audiobook publication of First Light."
• You reference that the first draft was a "failure" in the lead, but later on that it was "confusing and unorganized". May I suggest you substitute the latter in for the former in the lead, so as to clarify what is meant?
• You repeat words in close proximity a few times. ("...she sent it to Lamb again and a contract was made. More revisions were made in order to make the new world created in the novel easier to understand." and "were cut out to make the whole book stronger. Stead combined two characters into one, having a stronger outline and also cut out several scenes for minor characters. In the end, Stead found that the revisions helped to make the book stronger.") May I suggest "...and a contract was drawn up." and "were cut to strengthen the whole book." or something else? Antonyms are awesome, yo.
• Were the Settlers themselves called 'ear adepts' and 'eye adepts', or were their abilities called 'ear adepts' and 'eye adepts'? Either way, I'd recommend putting single quotes around both terms to make them stand out, and maybe even adding 'respectively' to the end so the concept is very understandable. (It'd read, "abilities, such as extremely good vision and hearing, called 'eye adepts' and 'ear adepts', respectively, which were seen as sorcery.")
• "...her research of mitochondrial DNA relates to how a mutation is able to benefit the human body which would cause the extremely good vision and hearing." Personally, I'd go with "her research of mitochondrial DNA relates the ability of mutations to benefit the human body, which would cause the extremely good vision and hearing." I'd contend that it flows better. Also maybe 'would' should be 'could.' Saying 'would' sounds too certain.
• "Rowen is the head of Council in Gracehope and is strictly against going aboveground." Maybe "Rowen is the head of the Council in Gracehope and is strictly against going aboveground."?
• "The dog was born several days ago, but has yet to open his eyes." I'd suggest changing the sentence to "Such a dog had been born several days ago but had yet to open his eyes."
• "Just as Thea and her allies are about to lose their argument, Peter arrives with the dog and his eyes open." Consider changing 'their' to 'the' and 'the dog and his eyes open.' to 'the dog, whose eyes are open.'
• "Coupled with the fact that Peter is and eye adept, the first in a hundred years, the colony begins listening to Thea instead of Rowen." Possibly try "That, coupled with the fact that Peter is an eye adept, the first in a hundred years, convinces the colony to listen to Thea instead of Rowen."
• More repeated words. "The novel ends eight months later as the people of Gracehope are slowly educated on global warming and the dangers of staying in Gracehope." It may help to change one or the other to simply 'the colony'.
• "Haegele from the Philadelphia Inquirer also put the novel as a..." Consider changing 'put' to 'listed'.
• "Connie Tyrrell Burns from School Library Journal found the novel as..." Consider changing 'as' to 'to be'.
• "Reviewers also noted an environmental theme in the book." Personally, I'd change 'an' to 'the', as there really seems to be one grand, overarching environmental, not multiple or one obscured one.
• "Kirkus Reviews found the novel as a..." Possibly change 'as' to 'to be'?
• The word 'praised' is used several times in the 'Critical reception' section. Check for other like-meaning words to replace a few instances of it, if you think it would be good.

(b) it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.

• The two links to mystery (infobox and lead) should be piped to go to mystery fiction.
2. Verifiable with no original research:

(a) it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline; Y

(b) reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose);

• "Haegele from the Philadelphia Inquirer..." Please include her first name.
• "...read by Coleen Marlo and David Ackroyd for the parts of Peter and Thea, respectively." I'm just guessing here, but am I right in saying that Peter was played by Coleen and Thea was played by David, as it implies? Something sounds fishy...

 FixedGlimmer721 ^talk 21:39, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

(c) it contains no original research. Y

3. Broad in its coverage:

(a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic; Y

• My recommendation would be to put the 'Critical reception' section before the 'Audiobook adaption' section. Was there any reason it was done this way?

(b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style). Y

4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
Y
5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
Y
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:

(a) media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content; Y

• Consider scaling down the size of the book cover file...it seems a tad large. Otherwise rationale is good.

(b) media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions. Y

Still working on the review. Be back in a bit. BobAmnertiopsis∴_ChatMe! 01:37, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, sweet, done! Nice job on the article. My biggest issue was with some of the phrasing of some of the plot section. Otherwise, this article is not too shabby at all, and pretty much on the fast track to GA status. Oh, one other thing! Okay, two actually. These are both just suggestions, but I'll say 'em anyway: 1) Consider mentioning that the book is young adult in the first sentence of the lead, as in "First Light is a young adult science fiction and mystery novel by Rebecca Stead, first published in 2007." 2) You may wish to link Greenland, post-its, and mention somewhere other than the infobox that the book was published by Wendy Lamb Books. Alright, best of luck! Have fun! I may just have to read this book now... BobAmnertiopsis∴_ChatMe! 03:52, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I'll be passing this article now! Great job! BobAmnertiopsis∴_ChatMe! 06:54, 6 March 2011 (UTC)