unadulterated.us

The Witch's Guide to Cooking with Children by Keith McGowan, with illustrations by Yoko Tanaka - review

Like a Hal Hartley movie for children, this book follows two siblings through a couple of days in an innocuous, unnamed suburban town that is new to them. There are perils - an old lady wants to eat them and the town librarian is untrustworthy. Notably, their own parents (who are not really their parents) want to get rid of them. Yes, it's Hansel & Gretel in the Twenty-first Century.

But Sol and Connie can handle it. Quirky in an understated way, resourceful and brave, the siblings face their fears, reconcile their emotions, and outwit the witch in a remarkably implacable way. I'm not kidding. Hal Hartley for kids. It's weird.

But weird funny, not weird weird, and not without suspense. The tone is calm, almost austere, throwing the more unusual bits of dialogue and plot into sharp relief. My kids, at least, really responded to the author's matter-of-fact presentation. No punches pulled, but no excess build-up either.

Yoko Tanaka is the perfect illustrator for this tale, by the way. Her big-eyed figures are just alien enough, and her landscapes are just normal enough, to underscore the dreamy sense of disconnect that runs through McGowan's prose.

I will say that the ending, which is rather abrupt and extremely inconclusive, outraged my boys. This reaction is confirmed by my friend Psychic Friend, who listened to the book on CD while baking cookies with her daughter. I'm expecting a sequel, but I kind of wish I weren't. Don't tell the kids, but I LIKED the ending!

Heck: Where the bad kids go by Dale Basye - review

This book tempted me for months. Sitting on the New Books rack with its glowing colors and intricate Bob Dob cover illustration of two cool kids. And finally I succumbed, took it home, began reading it, a chapter at a time, to my kids at bedtime.

As the dark, twisted details and plot points added up - shoplifting and vandalism, an exploding marshmallow bear, thrift-store black dresses - I kept waiting for the story to gel. But beyond the premise: when bad kids die, they go to a junior-league Hell called Heck, which premise you can pretty much get from the title... there really isn't that much story. Which is not in and of itself a bad thing. This is one of those world-building books in which the characters wander around discovering each aspect of their world. The food. The organizational structure. The economy. And here's what happens when you read a book like that - either you enjoy the imagination of the writer, and you love the details and characters that he or she lovingly describes, or you do not care for the writer's vision, and you do not enjoy the book.

A Series of Unfortunate Events falls this way. Readers either like names such as Carmelita Spats and details such as Esme Squalor's hideous fashion sense (me) or they don't (some people). So maybe it's just me with Heck. But I think I can be objective in saying that the book falls rather flat. I find the tone unvarying, the word choice a bit unimaginative, and the pace slow. In addition, many of the jokes will zip right over the heads of the child reader, starting with the surname of the main characters - they are Marlo and Milton Fauster. Not Foster, Faust-er. Get it? As in the fifteenth-century German alchemist, later the subject of a play by Goethe?

You get forgiven a couple of those, in my opinion, but this book is kind of loaded with 'em. And I believe that dark and twisted works even better when the main characters respect each other. All dark and no light makes a YA graphic novel, not middle grade fiction.

I'd recommend Debi Gliori's Pure Dead Magic books and the Secrets of Dripping Fang to kids attracted by Heck's creepy-cool allure.

Me and You by Geneviève Côté - review

Me and You by Geneviève Côté

When I was in college, my roommate and I had a brief hobby we called "____ Appreciation Day". It started when one day, by accident, we both wore a lot of earth tones to a class taught by an esteemed art historian who wore so much brown that we called her Mudwoman. We decreed that day "Mudwoman Appreciation Day," and from time to time would honor a friend or professor similarly. We'd wear a hat, or a lot of color, or an athletic shirt. Or we'd try to be real short, for "Melfo Appreciation Day." That didn't work - we were both 5'11". Of course, what we were really doing was appreciating each other - dressing alike, cracking each other up.

The pig and bunny in Me and You have much the same impulse. They are such good friends that each wants to be just like the other. The pig puts a pair of tights on her head to mimic bunny's long ears, and bunny makes herself a curly tail out of a lemon twist. The crunchy, sketchy graphite lines and delicate watercolors are are as light and fun as the story is. For the littlest kids.

The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics, selected and edited by Art Spiegelman & Francoise Mouly - review

The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics, selected and edited by Art Spiegelman & Francoise Mouly

This hefty tome landed on my desk with a question on a Post-It: "Shelve with adult or in kids' graphic novels?"

Let's discuss. First of all, the beast is 350 oversize pages long. It has an introduction AND a foreword. On the other hand, the Introduction is written by Jon Scieszka, and the first word of it is "Wow."

Dennis the Menace and Little Lulu are in this book. So's Pogo, Uncle Wiggly, Donald Duck, and Gerald McBoing Boing. The comics are funny - slapstick name-calling kid-friendly funny, fast and loose and unselfconscious, but the editors obviously did not select anything truly offensive. Nobody gets called fatso or four-eyes, and I was on the lookout for characters getting smacked in the mug with a frying pan, and I didn't see a one.

It is an interesting exhibition of the state of play in the mid twentieth century. If you were writing a paper about humor for children, or the evolution of adult perceptions of children's humor, you would refer to this book. But you would also giggle.

I think that what most tempts us to slide this puppy in with the grownup books is its sumptuous production and classy design. Printed on ivory paper, the cartoons are reproduced in their original misregistered halftones, but I swear the page numbers and some of the interstitial text looks as beautiful and fine as letterpress. This high-quality presentation is something that Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly are known for. I swear that man took the money he made from Maus and sunk every cent into TOON books, their publishing company. They've been using toothy paper and thick inks since RAW, and if comics ever become thought of as fancy and luxe, it will be because of these two. 

While this book might be kind of too much for a kid to check out of the public library, it would make a really excellent gift - it would be the kind of book that would stay in a child's bedroom for six years, as he picked it up and put it down, browsed for something silly, or showed his favorites to his friends. And it deserves a home next to The Best American Comics. Librarian's choice.

The Secret World of Walter Anderson by Hester Bass, illustrated by E.B. Lewis - review

The Secret World of Walter Anderson by Hester Bass, illustrated by E.B. Lewis

"Art was an adventure, and Walter Anderson was an explorer, first class."

Oh heck, I don't have to read any further. I'll buy this book for our school library for that line alone.

One of the reasons I suspect that it is hard to write children's books about artists is that, by and large, artists are weird. Can I say that? Sure ok there are artists that live in a house, paint in a studio, come home every night at 5:30 pm and make the salad... but many many visual artists are Aspy like Warhol, or tortured like van Gogh, or, at the very least, desirous of an immense amount of solitude. Cezanne. Georgia O'Keeffe. And Walter Anderson.

It can be difficult to explain to a child why a grownup might need to be alone. Really alone. Alone for a long time. The three books I've linked to here, Cezanne and the Apple Boy, Georgia Rises, and The Secret World of Walter Anderson, do a good job of showing what the artists were after with all that solitude: there's a lot of air, a lot of nature, and, thankfully, a lot of reproductions of each artist's actual work. Can't stand artist biographies that don't show the work.

But of the three, I think it's the Walter Anderson book that succeeds best. The text of the book focuses on the privations that Anderson endured - chose to endure - in order to work on a uninhabited barrier island off the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, while a long author's note relates his biography, not shying away from the mental illness that seemed to be palliated only by perfect isolation.

Personally, this makes sense to me. The author mentions that her husband had been director of the Walter Anderson Museum, and it has been my experience that spending a lot of time with a person's stuff is the best way to learn that person. Bass clearly feels this guy. And luckily, her text was teamed with E.B. Lewis, whose sensitive, realistic watercolors have brought such warmth to books like The Negro Speaks of Riversand Jacqueline Woodson's The Other Side. His animals and landscapes, particularly the water and the varying light on the island, are masterful.

Of the many artist biographies that I choose when I select books for a school library, this will be one of my favorites.

And another thing... by Eoin Colfer - review

 

And another thing... by Eoin Colfer, part 6 of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy

 

I've always thought that the Hitchhiker's books were not so much written as doodled. Maybe while Douglas Adams was on hold with the insurance company, or, since he was British and they have the National Health there (THANKS MASSACHUSETTS. GOD, YOU GUYS.), on hold with the Queen. I bet she puts people on hold incessantly, and then goes and rides out to the hounds or whatever, giggling her ass off because in England, if you hang up on the Queen, even if she's put you on hold and gone to Scotland, you get beheaded.

I'm on hold with Blue Cross. As if you couldn't tell.

Given that postulate, it is not too far-fetched to think that somebody else might be able to write Hitchhiker's. After all, the Rough Guides routinely cycle through writers, say, when the Tanzania stringer gets fed up with feeding his carefully crafted prose into a gnash-y machine made up of copyeditors and lawyers, and decides that, rather than spending his days grilling tour operators and counting bedbugs, he'll buy a set of vibes and spend his evenings as a jazz musician on the beach at the north end of Dar es Salaam.

It works. I'm not saying it's AS good, but it works. One suspects all Eoin Colfer really had to do was get good and bored, read the first seventy books (what? how many?), and set up a little sim in his mind. A little tank with a virtual Arthur, a virtual Ford Prefect, a tiny Trillian and Zaphod. Nudge them into motion, and then drop random toys into the tank. You could do it in a bathtub with action figures, come to think of it. A plastic chicken becomes Buff Orpington, corpulent second-in-command of a colony of rich expatriate Earthlings in the Magrathean system. The LEGO Viking turns into Thor. "Hm..." Colfer wonders, idly piloting a toy boat under the arch of his leg. "What would be Zaphod's relationship to Thor? Friends? Lovers? Or is Zaphod the hamburger to Thor's David Hasselhoff?"

 

 
  
Simon Jones reads the audio. Ably. More than ably. He manages fussy Arthur best - after all, to many of us he is Arthur, but he does Vogon very well too, and all of the more blustery characters. Perhaps the most satisfying part of this book is merely hearing the names aloud again. My children have been calling just about everything a Pan-galactic Gargle Blaster lately. Could be much worse - they could have latched onto (no pun intended) Eccentrica Gallumbits, The Triple-Breasted Whore of Eroticon Six.

Fat Vampire by Adam Rex - review

Fat Vampire by Adam Rex

Adam Rex is astonishingly talented. He's a poet and a painter. He's a writer and a sculptor and a young man carving pumpkins. He's a New World Man. In The True Meaning of Smekday, he was funny in a kind of stop-short-and-read-it-again way - much like I've sometimes wanted to rewind Sesame Street ("Was that a cut at Dr. Laura?" "Is that muppet supposed to be Amanda Palmer?") He managed, in Smekday, to be funny in a way that makes adults laugh without becoming inaccessible to children.

But what really impressed me in that book was his deft description of the evolution of trust and friendship between his two main characters, Tip and J.Lo. (Jeez, just typing those names makes me want to read it again.) The book was, quite surreptitiously, all about their relationship, and yet it was never boring, not squishy, and did not drag. On the contrary, it zipped right along, with many interesting novelties along the way.

That same talent for invisibly stitching intricate character development into a taut plot is put to good use in Fat Vampire, Adam Rex's first novel for teen readers. In it, our boy Adam backs off on the jokes (although, my god, there is still plenty of wake-up-the-husband-and-read-him-a-paragraph funny in here) in favor of a powerful, line-by-line depiction of high school. And I think I am not spoiling anything when I say - OUCH. A typical high school in the Philadelphia suburbs is our setting, and our more-than-typically-isolated teenage protagonists are Sejal, a middle-class exchange student from Calcutta, and Doug, the titular fat vampire.

Who would have gotten a stupid giggle out of "titular." As do we all. 

Doug is fifteen forever. Man. For many of us, that is our version of hell - no vampirism necessary. Certainly it is for Doug, the kind of geeky, overweight, self-conscious kid who by necessity is living for the day that he leaves for college. Had been living for it, anyway. Now that he's a vampire, he'll never lose the baby fat, never grow tall. In addition, he is not clear on how to do the cool vampire shit - can't turn into a bat at will, can't turn into a wolf at all, and he is still pretty stoogey when it comes to finding blood. Biting cows and whatnot, when it turns out that the cool vampire at school just finds a girl who's "into it" and is on his merry way.

Sejal is in the U.S. partly to shake an addiction to online social networking that blew up into real-world tragedy. Perhaps not surprisingly, the cultural disconnect that she experiences is easier to bridge than the gulf created by her online life, which she has jettisoned, along with her luggage, at the airport. It is an irony of high school proportions that Sejal's goals, though quite a bit loftier than Doug's - she wants to be good - are infinitely easier to attain.

Adam Rex captures both the soap-bubble sensitivity and the steamroller self-centeredness of teenagers, and conveys it through dialogue and gesture. Actions speak louder than words, and dialogue speaks louder than narrative - witness our introduction to the kids who sit under the tree at lunch:

"Hi," said a girl with long, slender arms. "I'm Ophelia. Cat's probably told you about me."

Ding. We know who Ophelia is.

"The airport lost my bag," said Sejal, "but Cat and I wear the same size."
"That's sad," said Sophie. "About your bag. You probably had all kinds of beautiful kimonos or robes or whatever."

Ding. We know who Sophie is.

Understated, but by no means underwritten. And pulling off "understated" in a novel set in high school, with its intricate social system of checks and balances, unspoken snubs and devastating faux pas... well, that's quite a trick.

Here's another trick: it's a high school vampire novel written for teens that never says the T-word, although if I am not mistaken, it blames Stephenie Meyer. That's ok. I blame Stephenie Meyer too.

The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis by Barbara O'Connor - review

The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis by Barbara O'Connor

Sweet. Sweet, and full of mud. That's a nice combination, kind of like Tom Pearson for kids. Also, any book involving kids and a creek (at least one in which none of the kids drown - I am still not over Bridge to Terabithia) usually gets me breathing a little deeper. Know what I'm saying? No? Hm.

Popeye lives in a leaky old house that backs onto the woods in semi-rural Fayette, South Carolina. His parents are off somewhere and he is being raised by his overprotective grandma Velma. He is on the verge of possibly petrifying with boredom when an RV full of disheveled kids breaks down on his doorstep. The oldest of the kids, Elvis, has an insouciant manner and a thirst for adventure that Popeye soon successfully emulates, even though it means disobeying Velma's progressively specific decrees against going too far into the woods, playing with Elvis, or leaving the house at all.

Popeye and Elvis never do anything really bad, nor do they put themselves in any danger, and by the end of the book it seems clear that Velma will begin to allow Popeye a little more rope. I think it's interesting that Barbara O'Connor allows this straining at the boundaries to be a positive thing - in a middle grade book, not YA.

This is a short, funny piece of realistic fiction that will play to both boys and girls from 2nd grade on up. It's got a nice sense of space, and the environments, from Elvis's family's crowded RV to the quiet, humid woods, are beautifully written, with well-chosen details that bring them to life without bogging things down with too much description.

Andrew North Blows Up the World by Adam Selzer - review

Andrew North Blows Up the World by Adam Selzer

Here's an odd one. The title character believes that his father and his older brother are spies. His entire imaginative life, and many of his actions, are predicated on a large and elaborate framework of delusion, fostered by his older brother's good-natured tall tales. The fact that the brother is lying to him, and that his family is in fact an ordinary suburban family, is apparent to the reader fairly early on. Events and information finally shake Andrew's faith, but at the end of the book he has rebuilt his false worldview to encompass the new information that he has gained.

Ok. Andrew is self-deluded, but he is happy. In a Walter Mitty-like way, the adult reader may consider this an acceptable outcome, but I have serious doubts about kids. This book would be really perfect for a kids' book group, or for a class read, but I think I would be reluctant to shove it at an individual reader and say, "Here, read this!"

Granted, my sample group consisted of myself and my son, a voracious 3rd-grade reader, but I came to the conclusion, especially after the boy rejected the book quite violently, that the concept is a bit much, a bit meta, a bit too sophisticated for the middle-grade audience, though I hesitate to say that, as I think that the sophistication of that audience is often underestimated.

What 5th Grade wants

 

Fifth grade, when they were fourth grade

Fifth Grade visited the school library this week, as they do every week, and very candidly told the school storyteller (yes we have a paid part-time storyteller but not a librarian - the reading specialist has to do double duty) (do not get me started) that "Fifth graders don't like the library." Not like! The library! I know!

And, instead of sucking in a quivering breath and staring all puppy-eyed at these ungrateful whelps, as I might have, Ms. Z., the storyteller, whom I admire even if I'm not a fan of the opportunity costs represented by her employ, whipped out a legal pad and said, "Ok, Fifth Grade, what do you want to see in the library?"

Love these kids. No hemming and hawing here. What do they want?

"More computers," says one. Don't we all.

"More sports books." I knew that. For the most recent library I outfitted, I bought sports books in every Dewey area I could - books of sports poetry, science experiments involving sports, sports fiction, sports in art, the physics of sports, sports medicine, beginning readers, first chapter books (thank you, Jake Maddox, whoever you are!), and dozens of biographies. Khalil and Darnell, I'll get a bus to shuttle you over to the library in the new school.

More manga, specifically Tokyo Mew-Mew and Kingdom Hearts. Ugh. Fine.

Babymouse, Bone, and, says Oswald the Unsatisfied, "more graphic novels in general." We have gone through at least two sets of Bone and one set of Babymouse. Library vendors, please put your strongest bindings on these books that were previously thought to be of short-term interest. They are the new classics.

Oswald the Unsatisfied (he picked that name, not me) also wants horror. Mystery. LOOONG novels.

At least 3 of them asked for "funny novels." Big surprise. If I had the cash, I'd buy them everything reviewed on this blog under the category "If you liked Diary of a Wimpy Kid."

Imani wants "outer space and insects" (not insects in outer space, but I couldn't resist). Interesting. For 5th grade. Middle-grade nonfiction is not always populated with the finest in nonfiction literature.

One lovely young lady asked for "tragedies." Oooh! Some good books to pine over! And, predictably, one of them wanted the Twilight series. The reading specialist and I are in accord: No Twilight for Fifth Grade. Sorry, girls. The main character has a damn vampire baby at the end - that is not appropriate for eleven year olds.

There are three requests for comic books. Mystery mystery mystery. Suspense. And, the grail, "funny action." No kidding. If I could find another series exactly like Percy Jackson and the Olympians I would be home free. And don't say Skulduggery Pleasant, they've already read all three books. What I need are books that read like a Jackie Chan movie.

The bottom line is that they want to read for fun - they want things that are fun to read. If you librarians and editors and authors and teachers out there ever need a shot in the arm, please think of the 5th graders at our school. They want to read for fun because - pat yourself on the back - WEEE ARRE DOINGGG OUR JOB!!

And what a fun job it is!

Books for the unborn

Yikes. That title makes it look like we're talking zombies, doesn't it? Sorry. We're not.

It all started with a novel request - and at five-plus years in the public library, those are becoming fewer and farther between. (Although the young man who asked me to tighten the screw-in barbell in his lip piercing the other day was a new one, now that I think of it. I declined.)

So, trolling the children's section looking for patrons to harass assist, I saw a beautiful young pregnant woman (and since you ask, yes I do think all pregnant women are beautiful) with a discontented expression on her face and a small stack of board books in her hands. "What can I help you find?" is my usual entree, and I was delighted and slightly startled to hear that she was looking for books to read to her unborn child. After assuring her that reading anything out loud would probably have a felicitous effect on this lucky baby, I suggested a few books with fun rhymes, onomatopoeia, singing (lots of singing), and/or laughing, plus a few gently rhythmic books for sleepytime.

I don't know if reading to the unborn has a measurable effect, but it certainly can't hurt, and it surely has a good effect on the parents. It introduces the parents to the joys of picture books, and is in some ways their last chance (for a while) to really sit and savor them without having to defend them from chubby, flaily little hands. They get to anticipate sharing familiar stories with this happy child once she or he is breathing air; and it's lovely to think of the time this woman is going to spend lavishing her undivided attention on the person to be. I am an atheist, and I do not believe in prayer, but I believe in the power of intention.

Anyway, I thought I'd share what I came up with.

Jazzy, fun-to-read books:

Chicka-chicka boom boom. Bill Martin, John Archambault, and Lois Ehlert.

Jamberry by Bruce Degen.

Click, clack, quackity-quack by doreen cronin and betsy lewin.

How Do You Wokka-Wokka? by Elizabeth Bluemle. Here's the Pink Me review.

Chicken Cheeks by Michael Ian Black. Reviewed on Pink Me.

Mr. Brown can moo, can you? (and lots of other Dr. Seuss)

We're going on a bear hunt by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury. Make the "swishy-swashy" sound effects a tactile experience as well.

Quiet, soothing books:

All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon. Read the Pink Me review.

Day is done by Peter Yarrow.

This Land is Your Land by Woody Guthrie

Books about parents thinking about their children:

Forever Young written by Bob Dylan, illustrated by Paul Rogers. Might really be the only time for this book - it's definitely written more for adults than for children.

Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman

This is the day adapted by Phillis Gershator ; illustrated by Marjorie Priceman. Made me tear up on Pink Me.

Just the two of us by Will Smith, illustrated by the breathtakingly talented Kadir Nelson.

Speaking of Kadir, He's Got the Whole World in His Hands gains a whole new meaning when singing it to your unborn child.

But I think, most of all, I'd recommend that this lovely young woman find a chapter book that makes her happy - something funny, like Nurse Matilda, or something old-fashioned, like Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, or whatever was her very favorite book when she was a kid, and read a chapter or two every evening out loud to her tummy. That is beauty with links to the past, the present, and the future.

Mazel tov to the fortunate parents, and all my fondest, strongest, best intentions to the babies of 2010,

-- your neighborhood librarian

Birdie's Big-Girl Shoes by Sujean Rim - review

Birdie's Big-Girl Shoes by Sujean Rim

Birdie loves helping her mother get dressed. She picks out her mother's sparkliest jewels, her most glamorous sunglasses. She gazes breathlessly at mommy's Louboutins. Birdie's mother, needless to say, is just as cute and chic as she could be, in her sheath dress, with her closet full of shoes. It's nice to see a mommy like that in a picture book from time to time. I know mommies like that. I am not, myself, a mommy like that, but still. Hey, I wear perfume every day - I have aspirations.

Birdie begs and reasons with her mother to let her try on those beautiful shoes. She busts out the big pleading eyes. She is irresistable.

And she tries on the shoes, and she falls down, and she concludes that her bare feet are the most beautiful shoes of all, and that's sweet. But I like this book because of Birdie's big soulful eyes, and because Sujean Rim uses exotic, delicate Japanese printed paper for some of the dresses and shoes, and wispy knits, and because I know that some little girls will just lap up the fashion illustration-esque style.

Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey - review

Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey

You know, I miss rock stars.

Nowadays, when there's a good-looking, seemingly unattainable, arrogant boy in a teen novel, he's not Peter Frampton. He's not Morrissey. He's not even Dave Grohl, who, after all, is all daddied-up nowadays and so I suppose is not nearly as unattainable as he used to be. No, nowadays that gorgeous bad boy is bound to be a vampire. Or a werewolf. A changeling, say. In Guardian of the Dead, he's patupaiarehe.

He's WHAT?! Patupaiarehe?! Dude, man, I was totally going to use native Maori fairy legend when I wrote my Twilight-y teen paranormal romance novel, and now? Dang.

Lower left-hand corner of this block of stamps. That's a Maori fairy, a patupaiarehe. Boy is cut, right? And, like most things Maori, Maori fairies are fierce. Strong and heartless and full-sized. No wings. Bearing no resemblace to a Disney fairy, except I suppose that, presumably, because they're supernaturally gorgeous, they also have cute butts and big eyes. Maybe Lady Gaga is patupaiarehe. Would explain a lot.

Am I dwelling on the Maori fairy thing? I am. Here's why: this book may be a teen paranormal romance novel, but it has about as much in common with other teen paranormal romances as the Maori fairy does with Tinkerbell.

Our protagonist in Guardian of the Dead is Ellie. She's expert in tae kwon do, socially inept, and, apparently, actually overweight. This is rare. Usually, when a girl character describes herself as plain, or fat, or ugly, it is because she lacks the perspective (or the self-esteem) to see herself as she really is... and at some point somebody points this out to her, often someone who doesn't like her, so you know it must be true. Nobody corrects Ellie when she calls herself fat, and I love that. She is not beautiful, and she is still a hero. Still worthy of love.

Ellie kicks ass. Ellie gets exasperated. Ellie falls in love, and cannot trust herself (or him, and for good reason). Ellie also gets beat up kind of a lot. Ellie is Orpheus - not Eurydice.

Ellie's best friend is Kevin. Kevin is big and handsome and athletic - and totally impotent, in several important ways. Kevin describes himself as asexual, and is allowed to be so. He's not under a curse, or merely immature, and he doesn't wake up one morning and decide that he's in love with Ellie. He is what he says he is. Ellie saves his ass.

Ellie's crush is Mark. Mark is secretive and doesn't wash his hair enough, does well in school but shuns social contact. When Ellie begins to figure out Mark's secrets, he bewitches her so hard she gets a migraine that makes her puke. Mark is by no means perfect. Ellie saves his ass, too.

The plot, by the way, is also good. Unpredictable, full of interesting bits of myth, with lots of well-scripted action. Did I mention Ellie gets beat up a lot? Man. Healey's writing makes you feel it every time Ellie gets tossed in a stream, every time she gets clawed by supernatural Maori scaries. Also, we are in the land of the funny teens. Their dialogue is both natural and witty - Ellie in particular does self-deprecating wit with easy grace.

Karen Healey is a first-time author, and, as such, could this book use a little polish? Maybe, especially in the dialogue-heavy scenes. But her command of myth and geography, her sprightly plotting, and my god, those wonderful characters more than make up for it. Look for this one in April.