unadulterated.us

The End by Charlie Higson - review

I haven't written a stand-alone book review on unadulterated.us in a while - but for this book, the last in a series that I read start to finish, as soon as each book came out, I must. It has been quite a journey for the kids in these books, who have battled their way through swarms of diseased, cannibalistic adults and formed their own societies, legions, and alliances - and it's been a wild six years for me too.

Bright shiny things for bright young things and the people who love them: Some new YA (and YA-adjacent) books, Spring 2016

 

I am on a significant roll with my YA and adult reading lately. When's the last time you could say that? When's the last time every book you picked up knocked you on your butt and made you holler on Facebook or DM the author or, in once case because I don't have any access to the author - yell at the author's agent about how good the book was? I mean, who knows agents?

Apparently, I do.

Each and every one of these books deserves a thoughtful in-depth review. And I expect we will see those reviews in the New York Times or Kirkus or the Guardian or somewhere else that hasn't yet employed me to write book reviews. From me, you're just gonna get a list and a couple paragraphs. Pollen. Makes me stupid. So here you go (in ascending order by audience):

 

Happy International Women's Day to us all: some positive sexuality in pop culture

Not bad - just drawn that way.

You hear a lot, in some circles, about how difficult it is to teach children about values in the face of persuasive and abundant media depictions of violence, licentiousness and other bad crap, including sexual violence and predatory behavior toward women that is often dressed up as romance. I'm looking at you, Edward the vampire. What was that character's last name? Crap, now I have to go check.

Aaaand I fell down a Renesmee rabbit hole. BOY is that character a mess. Talk about a plot Band-Aid, jeez. Need to tie something up? Get Renesmee to do that thought-projection thing and everybody's all up to speed.

The Twilight books and movies are indeed remarkable in the number and variety of bad relationship behaviors that they romanticize. Endangering oneself to get attention? Bella. Stalking? Edward. Treating a potential romantic partner as an attainment? Heyyyy werewolf and vampire, I see you guys dick-jousting over there.

 

I use this image to illustrate some of the less-popular traits of adolescence in our Something Wicked This Way Comes of Age presentation. In that talk, we discuss how the popularity of horror fiction among teens makes perfect sense given the evolutionary imperatives that drive their neurological and emotional development. The whole MUST MATE thing, mostly. 

Must mate - and confused as hell about it. Which is why it's so frustrating when movies and TV aimed at them furnish so very many examples of What Not To Do With, To, or Around the Object of Your Affection; How Not To Refer to Your Guy or Lady; What Not to Ask Them To Do; etc and obviously I could go on all day. But good moments in media exist too. I was inspired to run a few of them down because... well because we took the kids to see Deadpool this weekend. We're bad, we know.

 

Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston - review

 

In her author's note, E. K. Johnston admits straight out that she wrote this book while very, very angry. I bet she did. This is a fucking great novel.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear is about a teenage rape survivor. Hermione, a popular athlete - co-captain of her cheerleading team - is drugged, raped, and left half-submerged in a lake. She cannot remember the crime or identify her attacker. She is angry, hurt, and sad, but she and her team and her family tackle each step of her recovery process with courage, love, and determination.

And there you have the bare bones of your standard-issue Problem Novel, during the course of which we will watch our heroine struggle bravely to regain her confidence, conquer her self-doubt, and perhaps find love. Excuse me while I never ever read a book like that again. Maybe, because Emily Johnston has written this book, I never have to.

Because Hermione does NOT struggle with self-doubt. She is quite clear that the only person to blame here is the guy who attacked her, and if she even momentarily loses her clarity on that score, her best friend Polly is burning with fury at her side, ready to remind her. Nor does Hermione have to deal with parental shellshock or smothering. Hermione's team rallies around her - even the boys try to act normal, with mostly pathetic results (ehh, boys). When she slaps her ex-boyfriend, whose stance is that "she'd have been safe if she'd been dancing with me," her therapist is eager to hear how hard. And when Hermione stops in to see the pastor to ask him to stop reminding the congregation to remember her in their prayers - she does not WANT to be Hermione the Rape Victim and who can blame her - the pastor looks her in the eye with compassion but not pity.

Everyone holds their breath when she has to endure examinations, pregnancy tests, and a termination procedure, but they never once utter the word "options" - which Hermione notices with gratitude. 

Exit, Pursued by a Bear is a freaking casebook of How to Think and Do when dealing with a victim of sexual assault.

And in the hands of a lesser writer, this might result in tedium or sanctimony. It might at least be distracting. I think we've all seen movies like that - cancer movies especially perhaps. Debra Winger spewing love and forgiveness from her hospital bed in Terms of Endearment, Susan Sarandon nobly handing over the reins to Julia Roberts in Stepmom.

But bless her, E.K. Johnston (author of The Story of Owen, which is my sons' hands-down favorite book of all time right now, and in my own top ten) is NOT a lesser writer. I read this book in three hours, propelled onward by characters I loved and who loved each other. It is marketed as a cross between Veronica Mars and A Winter's Tale, but honestly I saw more Jessica Jones in it than Mars - Hermione faces her trauma with some of Jessica's belligerence (but none of her bourbon), and the friendship between Hermione and Polly is just as rock-solid as Jessica's relationship with Trish. Remember, at the end of the series, the big climax is Jessica telling her best friend that she loves her? Same thing here. "I love you." "I know."

I imagine that Emily Johnston wrote this book after seeing yet another young rape victim publicly blamed for the crime perpetrated against her. I imagine that she sat down, all gritted teeth and flared nostrils and hair on fire, and wrote this book for all those girls, to show them that SOMEBODY knows the right way to treat them, to talk to them and about them. And if that's what we need, if we, as parents, faculty, friends, cops, teammates need a template for how to respond in a situation we hope no woman ever has to endure, well, now we have it. Lucky for us it's a compulsive, easy read, because I'm hoping it gets assigned in about a million advisories, homerooms, and health classes.

Look for this stellar work of realistic fiction in March, 2016.

Somewhere under the radar - Overlooked Books of 2015

Sometimes we read books, sometimes they're just scenery.

Opened my email this morning to find an unusual year-end list from Kirkus: the Most Overlooked Books of 2015. I like that. That list made me think.

Usually this time of year I have no time for thinking. Even as the holiday BS is winding down, I'm usually busy reading hard and arguing loudly as a judge in the Cybils Awards. The Cybils are publicly nominated, with the finalists and winner agreed upon by a panel of judges. Finalists are announced January 1st, and the winners are announced on Valentine's Day - put it in your calendar. I'm not a judge this year though, so I get to sit back and spectate and read all the lists.

Because in addition to the Cybils, state lists and year-end best lists are proliferating like glitter under a craft table, all leading up to the big announcements of the Newbery/Caldecott/Printz/etc awards at the ALA Midwinter meeting January 11 (8am, in case you want to tune in for the live feed). The Nerdy Book Club awards have just been announced, and I love the Nerdies. Rather than a WINNER and a list of runners-up, the Nerdies publish lists of 10-30 books. Books are nominated via the website, a committee decides the finalists, and then the finalists are publicly voted upon. I love the thoughtful ways that the Nerdies, the Cybils, and some state lists (including the Maryland Black Eyed Susan, which I am on this year) try to ensure balance between the opinions of professional and general readers. 

 

Cece Bell, Jackie Woodson, Dan Santat and Yuyi Morales at the ALA Annual Conference, June 2015. It was a very good year for the ALA Youth Media Awards.

 

To be perfectly frank, however, I do not like awards. Too much of a democrat, I guess. I do not feel that books compete against each other, and I firmly believe that almost every book has its audience, even deeply flawed books. HOWEVER, it is impossible not to be conscious of the fact that, of all the consequences of a book getting an award, the largest one by far is the award's effect on the book's sales - general sales for sure, but school library sales in particular.

Purchasing for a school library is hard. I loved doing it when I did it, but I do not miss all the blood that ended up on the floor when I had to pare my lists down. And I am fortunate that I never had to justify my purchase decisions like so many librarians do. Awards, stars, and reviews in major publications are in some systems a requirement in order for a school librarian to purchase a title for his or her kids. And to that may I just say UGH.

Because, hard as award committees all work to consider all books, some great books, especially slightly off-kilter books - still manage to fly under the radar. Fun fact: not one of Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales has won a major Youth Media Award or Honor. And let me tell you - Nate's books are far from off-kilter. Every one of Nate's informative and entertaining nonfiction graphic novels should be in every school library in the nation. 

So, I were still buying for a school library, I'd start with the Cybils finalists and the Nerdy winners - not only are those lists longer than the National Book Award finalists and the ALA Award Honorees, but I find them to be more focused on kid appeal. Then I'd compare my working list to this spreadsheet compiled by EarlyWord, which aggregates the Year's Best lists published by Amazon, Booklist, Entertainment Weekly (which is - perhaps surprisingly - a reliable source of good critical reviews), Hornbook, HuffPo, WaPo, NYT, SLJ, WSJ (eff you Megan Cox Gurdon), Library Reads, Publishers Weekly, the National Book Awards, and TIME magazine, who should either get better staff on this or just quit it.

But I would still be missing some great stuff, and that's where this Kirkus Overlooked Books list comes in. It's not long enough though, covering as it does titles for all ages (including Scarlett Undercover, a debut novel that I started but put down for some reason, and am picking up again on their recommendation). So I've taken a nostalgic scroll through my 2015 Goodreads shelves and here for you are my own picks for Best Overlooked Books of 2015:

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GIVE IT: All the goodies for this holiday season

 

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed... -- Lloyd Dobler, Say Anything

 

It's not just me, is it? Faced with the task of buying one or more THINGS per family member or dear friend - determining what that THING shall be, finding it, pricing it, procuring, storing, sometimes hiding it, then processing it via gift wrap and tags - doesn't everyone get a little Doblery? After all, he gives her his heart - something he had to neither shop for nor wrap. She gave him a pen.

But, for better or for worse, we're giving gifts. And you know what will make you feel a little better about participating in this annual collective shuffling of goods bought sold and processed? If those goods are actually, you know, GOOD. Like books. 

Read on, babies!

Waking from tormented sleep - Two recent coming of age novels

Say you've got a 14-year-old reader. A boy who is has started to welcome a sliver of romance into his postapocalyptic action novels, a girl who is beginning to find the Wings of Fire novels a little simplistic. Maybe you've got a formerly enthusiastic reader who is suddenly uncommunicative, a good student who is newly plagued by self-doubt, a pair of lovebirds who spend half their homework time texting each other emojis. I am trying - unsuccessfully - not to say 'ugh' to that last one. I mean, there's no harm in texting adorable tongue-stuck-out poofy pandabear hearts to your dear one, but GOD. On behalf of your future self, can I just ask you to knock that shit off? to exhibit some self-respect..? 

Maybe just take a break and read a book instead? You might learn something about the way you're acting. Some kids like realistic fiction at this stage - they want examples of how other kids have tried to be cool in the face of first love, they are looking for language they can pilfer when talking back to their parents. That's helpful stuff. But there are also books that examine the darker urges of adolescence, that blow them up and play them out to pitiless extremes.

TO WIT: 

 

 

Jack Gantos's The Trouble in Me is an account of some bad decisions the author made during junior high school in Florida. And When We Were Animals by Joshua Gaylord is a sort of magic-realist novel about adolescence in a small town. Both books treat coming of age as a sacred and terrifying process, marked by blood and fire, perilous but inevitable. 

 

Teen lit that talks back to the canon: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

 

Yes yes, I know. I am the last children's lit professional on the planet to have read this book. You've all read it, and you've all loved it, and I am late to the Eleanor & Park Party.

Oh my god. Think of it -- that would be the funniest party. We'd all have to wear plaid flannel and band t-shirts and stand around looking at the floor until we each stormed out of the room in tears.

It would be like the parties at my college radio station in the 80's, come to think of it! Actually we didn't even have parties at the radio station, they were all canceled on account of everyone panicked at the idea of going to a party. Which of course was expressed as scathing disdain. "Oh yes, let's have a party. That would be OH SO FUN."

Rainbow Rowell flanked by Oliver Jeffers and James "I can't write worth a damn but boy am I a nice guy" Patterson at BEA

That's totally why I managed to not read this book, you know. I was supposed to read it for a committee I was on and I cheated and read all the reviews instead. I was supposed to listen to it on audio for a workshop and I didn't. I heard Rainbow Rowell speak at BEA and she was SO funny and charming that I downloaded it onto my phone immediately and read it at the bar that night and then stopped reading it because I don't know a hot guy walked by or a good song came on (DOUBTFUL) or my food came or something.

Former college radio programmers (we didn't actually call ourselves DJs) are constitutionally unable to do what everyone else is doing. It is stupid and it causes us more harm than good and EVERYONE thinks we're pretentious and they're right, but there you have it. If you've read the book, you understand.

Both Eleanor and Park are going to make bitchin' college radio DJs.

 

The WRUW air studio in 1986. Note albums by the Specials and Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel. Hi, Randy!

Teen lit that talks back to the canon - Half Bad by Sally Green

 

Here is a thing that I am not: I am not a high school English teacher. But if I were...

The kids and I all read Half Bad by Sally Green in the last couple of weeks. It's on the reading list for Books for the Beast, a one-day YA conference put on every other year by the Enoch Pratt Free Library. I'm a facilitator and Milo's a teen attendee and I think registration is still open. You should come!

Anyway, the book is - I mean, not to put too fine a point on it - it's good. Characters are complex, plot takes unexpected turns, and settings are described really nicely. I'm a nut for setting - I believe a writer is fully inhabiting her character when she writes about how the air feels, or the ground underfoot, or describes how the sun slants over mountains or the roofs of a city.

There are some who will say that the premise of Half Bad is a bit too Potteresque - there are witches and there are non-witches, and the non-witches don't know about the witches, and there are Black Witches and White Witches. At one point the main character, Nathan, won't even say the name of his father, 'the most evil Black Witch there has ever been'. Yeah, Sally Green, I'm sorry hon but somebody already owns He Who Must Not Be Named.

BUT. In my experience, derivative doesn't bother kids much. My own kids, when this Potterish political milieu was pointed out to them, were like 'ehh...' Ezra said, "there's so much else in the book that is pretty original, it's no big deal."

So that's not my issue. Oh - I have an issue, did I mention?

I Crawl Through It by A. S. King - review

 

Let me be right up front about something: I couldn't wait to read this book.

There aren't a whole ton of people writing literature - Literature with a capital L - for teens these days, and even fewer that I can stand to read. Not because they're bad, not at all - but because the truth of teens is so hard. If you write it well, it's going to hurt.

Everybody Sees the Ants hurt. Reality Boy, that too. But after reading Glory O'Brien's History of the Future, which had pain but also love and humor and that whole thing where you hate your best friend - well, there was no way I was not going to hit that pipe again just as soon as possible. I got a copy of I Crawl Through It at this year's School Library Journal Day of Dialog, and I started it on the subway back to the hotel.

ABaFT (Adult books for teens): Wolf in White Van plus a picture book for teens: Home

 

Something bad has happened. It was a long time ago, but it was really bad, and Sean's life is now carefully constructed from and around the consequences of that thing.

He's not lonely, exactly. He's not sad, exactly. He's also maybe not reliable, exactly.

What just happened at the Newbery/Caldecott Awards

The ALA Youth Media Awards were just announced about an hour ago. These honors are awarded by committees of librarians who read, evaluate, and discuss approximately a femto-jillion books in a year and decide which book in a given category is THE BEST of the year and which few are THE RUNNERS UP.

I generally don't comment on these awards on this blog because, like any other award, calling any given anything THE BEST in a year is ridiculous. YOU ARE THE BEST TOMATO. WORLD'S BEST JOKE 2014 IS WHAT EDDIE IZZARD SAID ON TWITTER NOVEMBER 13th. THE AWARD FOR BEST LEFT BOOB OF 2015 GOES TO KATY PERRY'S LEFT BOOB.

 

I also have found these awards to be kind of stuck in the mud. Historical fiction or relationship drama tends to get recognized while funny books are disregarded. Lotta "girl books" have gotten the Newbery, while the Caldecott has gone to a disproportionate number of men. Creators of color are under-represented, as they are in all of children's publishing, except in the awards that are specifically given to African American or Latino authors and illustrators, which often go to the same squad of (very talented and totally deserving) people every year.

Put it this way - when an illustrated prose novel (The Invention of Hugo Cabret) won the Caldecott Medal one year everyone went, "WHOA!!" And when a nonfiction book (Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village) won the Newbery people all gasped. This is what has passed for bold in previous years.

 

This year's awards are something else, though.

Spring 2015 Preview - Soup to nuts!

What the heck. Let's do this.

For some reason - it's not like I've got nothing else going on - I have been unusually aware of upcoming titles recently. I've spent a bunch of time on Edelweiss and Netgalley scanning publisher catalogs, and just yesterday attended the Book Buzz that the AAP put on at DC Public Library.

Reps from Scholastic, Penguin, Sourcebooks, Quirk, Tor, and many others gave a roomful of librarians a preview of what they've got coming down the pike.

Here are the books that I thought really stood out, plus books that weren't represented at the event that I know about and am looking forward to. These are in age order.

Books to end all books - WWI for kids

It's 2014, the centennial of the onset one of the bloodiest, most devastating wars in history. A war which should have taught the world the dangers of nationalism, military escalation, and imperialism. Well, we all know how that went.

On the UP side, the WWI centennial gives us (educators, parents, librarians) an excellent opportunity for engaging the kind of reader who connects with nonfiction, especially history, and especially the kind of history that involves guns. I'm not using the word "boys," but you know what I'm talking about.

 

 

Author Laurel Snyder's male-variety offspring enjoying a Civil War reenactment and Nathan Hale's Big Bad Ironclad at the same time.

My particular boys have been reading up on WWI because our family is going to Belgium for a bridge dedication. Their great-great-uncle did a heroic deed and then promptly died, making my husband's brothers and sisters the closest thing he would ever have to descendants. You can read about it here if you are so inclined. We will be touring battlefields and cemeteries and museums, and we have all been boning up just in case the plaques are all in Flemish.

Here are a few recent books for your WWI collection:

ABaFT (Adult books for teens): The Martian by Andy Weir

I am going to have a teenager in my house. In - wow - 11 days, I will suddenly have a teenage boy in my house. 

 

Somehow, this person...

...turned into this person.

 

Relax, that's root beer. And that's MY jacket. He looks better in it than I do, the swine. His feet are bigger than mine. His tan is better than mine. God, I think his hair might be better than mine! Sigh.

His taste in reading material is pretty good, though. And he reads faster than I do, so lately I've been relying on him to vet titles for me the way I used to for him (Poison by Bridget Zinn and Mortal Danger by Ann Aguirre both get his seal of approval). So it felt very darn peculiar to recommend The Martian to him.

Series books for summer pleasure reading - This is the post for parents

 

I know what you want. I see you. You come in to the library with that little-bit-panicked look in your eye: "Oh shit there's no school for like MONTHS and they're going to do nothing but play Minecraft and moan about being bored." Or pull scary crap like balance-beam on an 8-foot fence. YEESH.

I am right there with you. Milo is in the basement right this second watching those awful Sky Does Minecraft YouTube videos. Or porn. No I did not just write that. I take it back. Wait, let me just get him up here, I'll be right back. 

................

He was practicing guitar. OF COURSE. God, I am so not ready for him to be a teen.

Anyway, you want book recommendations for your children so that they do not forget how to read / become glassy-eyed screen zombies over the summer. You want books that are IRRESISTABLE, books that they will plough through and then ask for the next. In short, you want series books, and you want series that have been out for long enough that there's no waiting for the next book.

 

How to pick a cookbook for your kids

 

It can't be easy, right? Writing a cookbook for kids? I mean, if you're writing a cookbook, that means you are a good cook. You know your asparagus from your elbow macaroni, if you know what I mean. And here you are writing instructions for people who don't know what the salt looks like when you tell them to get it out of the cupboard.

IT'S THE BLUE CYLINDRICAL CONTAINER. CYLINDER. YOU KNOW, ROUND LIKE A... oh Christ I'll get it. SEE? THIS IS SALT.

In which I am unexpectedly won over to the idea of DRAGONS

 

It is the damnedest thing.

In recent years, YA trends have come on about as subtly as a brick tornado. Vampires. Zombie plagues. Fairy tales. Mermaids, oh god the mermaids. Last year it was cancer. And you'd think, if I took a mermaid trend in stride, I would not be surprised by the sudden appearance of dragons in contemporary YA fiction. I'd be like, "Aw come on guys - it's all dragons nowadays!" But there I was, five pages into Talker 25, going "What the...? It's dragons?"

I think it's because they're just so doofy. Right? Giant lizards with wings? What is that - half dinosaur, half... fairy? How are you going to fit that into a world? Literally - how are you going to fit that creature into a world filled with humans?

Then there's the stigma that goes along with being the dragon-obsessed girl. If you're not careful, your dragon novel will make you look like the kind of girl who goes as Daenarys Targaryen for Halloween. (OR TO HER WEDDING OH GOD MY EYES)

 

 

Hee hee hee. I got a little sidetracked. 

Waking The Coldest Girl in Dark Coldtown - two reviews

There's a lot of horror running around loose on the streets these days. It's a trend. Brainless monsters, mad government scientists, possessed townsfolk and crafty killers lurk in the alleys and infest the woods by the side of the highways. Yep, it's a stimulating time to be a teen reader.

Until fairly recently, horror had been in kind of a slump. Horror had a big day back in, hm, the late 70's, early 80's. Throughout the 80's, the Halloween movies were in theaters and Stephen King was putting out two books a year.

 

In 1978, I was pretty sure this cover showed Luke Skywalker battling the black spy from Spy vs. Spy.

 

By the 1990's though, we were out of the funhouse, laughing at the cheesy effects and accusing each other: "You were scared!" "No I wasn't, that was stupid!" By 1990, horror had become so familiar that it had devolved into camp (Tremors), or kid stuff (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), or mere eerieness (Edward Scissorhands). By the mid-90's, Danielle Steel and John Grisham had taken over Stephen King's dominance of the best seller lists. As recently as 2007, none of the major publishing houses had horror imprints.

But, like an oily slime seeping up from the depths of a dark bayou, horror is somehow once again everywhere, a foul slick coating the surface of popular culture. Simon & Schuster just started up a horror imprint. American Horror Story and The Walking Dead are killing it on TV. Danny Torrance is back. And I have more and more kids at the library daring me to scare them. Kids that have blazed through Goosebumps, sampled the Weenies, and are looking for something as scary as Horowitz Horror - but longer.

 

When you get to the bottom you go back to the top of the slide - some recent (mostly YA) reads

...which is my way of saying oh my life - and my reading - has been HELTER-SKELTER for the past couple of months. Here's why - allow me to solicit your interest in some excellent upcoming events and ongoing projects:

1). I'm on YALSA's Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults booklist committee (nominate your favorites today!)

 

2). I'm a facilitator at Enoch Pratt Free Library's biannual teen reading fest Books for the Beast (join us!). It's an all-day event (free lunch!) October 19th with super speakers and small group discussions. This year, we will be joined by RAINA TELGEMEIER! SHARON FLAKE! and ROBIN WASSERMAN!!

I want to read The Waking Dark so badly, but I have so much required reading right now, it's silly.  You however should read that book, and then come to Books for the Beast and tell Robin Wasserman what you thought of it! It's supposed to be scaaaary!

 

3). I'm moderating the Sassy Girls panel at the Baltimore Book Festival September 29 (and this one you better get to, if you are my friend at all). My sassy authors (I wonder if any of them are old enough to remember Sassy? Did you know that some marvelous hipster angel is scanning all of her old Sassys and putting them online? Damn, I still dress like that half the time) anyway my sassy authors are:

• Elisabeth Dahl (Genie Wishes)
• Erica Perl (When Life Gives You O.J. and many others)
• Shawn Stout (the Not So Ordinary Girl and Penelope Crumb books)
• Elissa Brent Weissberg (The Short Seller)
• Tracey West (about a million adaptation and series novels, also co-author of the very sweet Cupcake Diaries books)

 

4). Just announced! I'm a first-round judge for the Picture Books category of the Cybils Awards! Bring it on picture books YEAAAAHHH! Nominations are open to the public, and the online form will be up October 1!

 

 

5). I'm covering the Américas Award, given this year to Sonia Manzano for The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano, for School Library Journal's online newsletter. Sonia Manzano is also Maria from Sesame Street and that fact just fills me with love every time I remember it.

Also recognized this year by CLASP (the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs) are Martin de Porres: The Rose in the Desert by Gary D. Schmidt, the hyper-award-winning Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Drummer Boy of John John, and In Darkness, which has been on my to-read list ever since I saw that weird cover. Any novel that features Toussaint L'Ouverture as a guest character vaults right up my list. Blame Madison Smartt Bell.

 

All this extracurricular activity has led to periods of binge reading during the last few months: graphic novels, funny realistic YA fiction, heartbreaking YA fiction, and rock'em sock'em middle grade/YA speculative fiction. Plus picture books, I'm always reading the picture books, but those I manage to run down in gang posts on Pink Me fairly regularly.

So now I'm going to try to binge-review. GO:

I'm a highway star - Two new YA books that hit the open road

 

Nobody gonna take my car
I'm gonna race it to the ground
Oooh it's a killing machine
It's got everything
Like a driving power big fat tyres
And everything

I love it I need it
I bleed it yeah it's a wild hurricane
Alright hold tight
I'm a highway star!

 

God I love Deep Purple. Am I the only one anymore? To me, Deep Purple is the seminal sound of teenhood. It's music you listen to in stale basement rec rooms - mindless and churning, full of movement but not getting anywhere. The long-haired, cigarette-smoking boys who hung in a greasy cluster outside the bus port door at my junior high school LIVED and DIED by Ritchie Blackmore. Sigh. Those boys smelled so bad.

Proxy by Alex London - review, plus didn't you want to know what I thought of Game of Thrones? I thought so.

 

Summer Reading season is just about drawing to a close at the ol' public library. For the past month we've been dredging up copies of Beloved and Animal Farm. We've scurried around looking for Trash, The Book Thief, and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind for po-faced youngsters who absolutely can't stand the idea of summer homework. I often try to sweeten the visit (thanks teachers for making a visit to the library a chore!) by offering the kid an additional, just-for-fun book.

Summer is the time for kids to remember that reading is an entertaining activity. With my psychic powers, I will beam that into the brain of every English department head in the country. Right now. Ow. Ok, I'll rest up and do it next spring.

So... this young Joe comes in the library last night looking for A Tale of Two Cities. I look at the calendar. "When does school start?" I ask with a wince. "Monday," he grunts. I am sympathetic, but his mom gives me this "Mmm-hmm" look that I treasure. I love being old enough to be complicit with moms. Of course, he is to have it read by the time school starts, and of course, he has been reading The Maze Runner trilogy all summer instead.

This is the perfect moment to mention Proxy.

Wise Young Fool by Sean Beaudoin - review (plus mini rant)

 

Stay with this one. The book, I meant, but now that I've started writing this review and it went jackknifing off the rails before it even left the station, I mean the review too.

 

 

MOVING TO MONTANA SOON

I read Wise Young Fool (due out today! from Little Brown) sitting in a chilly hotel room in Cusco, Peru, during the couple days it took me and my children to adjust to the radical changes in altitude and gut flora that accompany - well, going to Peru. Which sounds like a euphemism, and in fact is now a euphemism in our family. Poor Peru. In truth, we had a wonderful three weeks there, and we will remember so many wonderful things about that trip - but I'm pretty sure it's only the vomiting that will live on in our family's linguistic microculture.

I love a good linguistic microculture. Future Swearing, school-specific slang and in-jokes, whatever's going on in Riddley Walker. It can go too far, though, and here is where we swing back around to talking about teen literature and Sean Beaudoin.

WAIT. SPOILER. WISE YOUNG FOOL IS EXCELLENT. I just have a few things to say before we get to that part.

 

THE GOSPEL FROM OUTER SPACE

I have been reading Sean Beaudoin's books for a while, and I find them intriguing. Beaudoin is - I guess I'll have to use the term "prose stylist," - a person who finds a groove and writes in it, somebody who adds syncopation, frill, and rumble to his writing. And this is something of a rarity in young adult fiction. What's that? You want to know why? Ok sure fine, I'll tell you why: because a lot of people don't think that teens have the sophistication to read through and past anything but the most ordinary deviations from straight prose - text messages, teen vernacular, the occasional cartoon.

I personally think those people are really, really wrong - I am not sure anyone but a teenager has the mental flexibility to read super-styley stuff like John Dies at the End, or Philip K. Dick. You know damn well Chuck Palahniuk and Tao Lin are totally just arrested teens, piling on the attitude. And there's a reason we make college students read Vonnegut and Nabokov. As we get older, we just don't have time for the divine detail.

 

Oh my living room is such a mess and I haven't even been to BEA yet! Middle grade boy books, Spring 2013

 

I know it's a losing battle, keeping the place in some kind of tidy shape, and it's certainly not all the fault of my kids. The books, lord the books. But sometimes I am just in a GET IT ALL OUT OF HERE mood, and such is the mood that descended tonight.

I haven't had the time to read hardly anything lately, so as we picked up books and shelved them or put them in the Back to the Library bag, I got Milo (11) and Ezra (nearly 10) to talk about the books they've read.

 

 

Ezra: Battle Bunny is the result of a ten year old who just watched a whole lot of apocalypse movies making his mark on a cute little Birthday Bunny tale. It's terrifically funny - there's a picture on Battle Bunny's wall that shows a bunny mama leaning over a bunny baby and the ten-year-old added the words "Drink your poison."

NB: The overstimulated ten-year-olds actually responsible for Battle Bunny are Jon Scieszka and Mac Barnett, with illustrations by Matthew Myers... 

Tools of the trade - Two books that are making me better at the things I do

You might think, if you know me from reading Pink Me, that I am a children's or teen librarian. I'm not - at my system we are all generalists. So while I love fixing kids up with great books, the fact is I also enjoy helping grownups. I spend most of my time drumming up copies of just the right David Baldacci, or helping readers find Amish romance novels and car repair manuals.

 

Which, um... Amish romance novels? Right. I'm going to need a finding aid for that.

Trash Can Days by Teddy Steinkellner - review

 

I am sorry that Teddy Steinkellner was dumped in a trashcan in middle school. Truly I am. Nobody deserves to be humiliated like that, and I hope the boys who did it look back on that episode and feel gut-wrenching, ball-twisting shame. I hope they grow up and have children and experience the fear that some little pack of fourteen-year-old pricks is going to do something like that to one of their kids.

And I have to praise a book about middle school that gives us an episode of upside-down in a garbage can. The clarity of the prose, the observational exactness as the garbage juice trickles into the boy's hair - it is necessary to hear this. If it happened, and especially if it is likely to happen again, we need to know what it is like. It's a little like climbing Everest - if a person has been there, they owe it to the rest of us to tell us what it's like.

Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts - review

 

Dark inside, dark outside. Dark on top and down below. Dark in a box. Dark with a fox. Dark in a house. Dark with a mouse. I'm sayin - this book is DARK.

Hee hee hee. I stayed up til 4am to finish it.

Cover that up! Some recent book covers and the books inside them

 

I just finished reading The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy by Nikki Loftin. This is a damn fine book, a creep-up-on-you book. It has a devil-in-the-noonday-sun quality that many have compared to Roald Dahl. Me, I didn't see the Dahl in it so much - there's little to laugh at, for one thing - and I'd compare it more to creepy-banal British village horror. Love that stuff.

The main character in this book carries a heavy emotional burden, and the book, in addition to being a great, suspenseful fairy tale retelling, goes about hip-deep into the braided stream of villainy and its causes. There's a lot of Mayor Mills in Splendid Academy's Principal Trapp.

But look at that cover. Spunky blonde and tubby sidekick - looming, slightly comic haunted-house-looking building in the background? All that alliteration in the title? Does this cover make you expect emotional redemption as a theme?

It didn't for me anyway. I assumed, judging from the cover - and don't say don't do it, we all do it - that this was a book for fans of The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls. I would have handed it to any kid who goes for the new Gothic Humor genre that we're seeing so much of. And don't get me wrong, some of those kids will like it - but it is not Gothic Humor. It's not terribly funny, and it goes very dark. It's a bit reminiscent of Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat, actually.

Weirdly, this is only one of many books I have read recently (and I have read about a dozen books in the past four days) (don't ask) (influenza B) (I don't recommend it) with a cover that is more than a little bit misleading.

Adaptation by Malinda Lo - review

 

Crash your car miles from nowhere on Nevada's Route 375, aka Extraterrestrial Highway, after a series of strange events have led to airplane crashes and highway closures, and what do you expect? Recover from life-threatening injuries only to be handed a non-disclosure agreement and be escorted home by two agents in black suits... oh yeah, this can't be good.

What happened to debate partners Reese and David in the month following inexplicable bird attacks that shut down the nation's air traffic? How have they recuperated so quickly from their crash? And what's with the strange vertigo that Reese feels whenever she touches David, or her mom, or even total strangers? Then there's the free-spirited pink-haired girl to whom Reese is irresistibly attracted. Well, ok that part is completely understandable ;)

Malinda Lo sets up an intriguing situation for her appealing, believable characters, and does a particularly nice job communicating Reese's discomfort as the unusual things she experiences and observes after she attempts to resume her normal life in San Francisco grate against everything she knows. The book loses some steam in the last third, as other characters drop away and we are back to just Reese and David, but by then it is too late for the reader - how's it going to end?

Suspenseful, girl-powered, contemporary science fiction full of realistically diverse characters making realistic contemporary use of technology. Plus hot kissing! Hard to resist.

Adapted from a review originally published in VOYA. 

Rookie Yearbook One edited by Tavi Gevinson - review

Here's something I would not have expected, certainly not on a night when I have a deadline looming on another project - I opened the mail after work and found a copy of this fat book, the first print product of Tavi Gevinson, aka The Style Rookie, and I opened it up and read the first couple of pages... and then I read the whole thing straight through for like five hours.

Tavi - don't you know who Tavi is? Tavi is this wonder-child. Only 16 years old now, she started blogging about style and fashion when she was like eleven and quickly became a fashion world darling. She wore her hair in a faded blue-gray bob, sometimes with a giant bow. She was, by all accounts, enthusiastic and questioning, eager to learn, a total fashion fan, but always with a point of view. I never read The Style Rookie, though. Really, I spend so much time keeping up with children's lit, all I have time for is Go Fug Yourself and sometimes Lainey.

 

The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee by Tom Angleberger - review

I swear these Origami Yoda books just keep getting better. The current crisis at Ralph McQuarrie Middle School is... how will everyone get by without the guidance of Origami Yoda, now that Dwight has transferred to fancy Tippett Academy? And by the way, what is going ON with Dwight? Reports are filtering in that he is no longer digging holes and sitting in them, speaks in complete sentences, and, strangest of all, has stopped bringing Origami Yoda to school!

While The Strange Case of Origami Yoda was about accepting and appreciating Dwight and his weirdness, and Darth Paper Strikes Back was about accepting - while not exactly appreciating - Harvey's oblivious jerkiness, each book also has seen the kids gradually gaining consciousness of how their actions affect other people. In other words, Tommy, Sara, Kellen, and their friends are developing - naturally, spasmodically, at different paces (the girls are quicker) - the emotional intelligence of teens. And listen, if you think teens have no emotional intelligence, try spending time with a bunch of 5th graders. Secret of the Fortune Wookie continues this progress, in a way that I can't reveal without spoiling the Fortune Wookiee's actual Secret.

All this emotional growth is delivered in a way that is subtle as hell, though, and conveyed with so much humor that no child will put down this book feeling like he has been Shown How To Be A Better Person.

BONUS: Han Foldo
THING THAT MADE ME SNORT: Mr. Good Clean Fun's puppet sidekick Soapy the Monkey
SEQUEL I CAN'T WAIT FOR: At the end of Fortune Wookiee, we get some big news about big changes afoot at McQuarrie Middle, and I am going to LOVE seeing Tommy, Kellen, Sara, Rhondella, Harvey, Quavondo, Cassie, Remi, Amy, Tater Tot, Lance, Dwight, and even stuck-up Brianna band together to take down the Evil Teaching To the Test Curriculum. I also can't wait to see the Star Wars puns Tom Angleberger will come up with for standardized testing.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - review

Do you know what a lich is? If someone taunts you with, "Answer the question, Claire," who are you being compared to? (Extra points: what's the question?) What will an oscillation overthruster allow you to do? And have you ever found yourself in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike?

A stray facetious comment worked its way into a discussion about the popularity of teen fiction among adult readers a while ago. "What about YA novels that are written just for adults?" I'm paraphrasing, I don't remember the exact wording. Just an offhand jokey comment, right?

But then I read Ready Player One. Ready Player One is a virtual reality adventure with a teen protagonist, a love interest, and a wing man. Our isolated, socially awkward hero must work his way through riddles and duels to win keys, open gates, and sort of save the world; and along the way he will develop leadership skills, learn to work with others, and listen to his instincts. Classic YA plotline.

But this book is not for teens.

Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn - review

I am violating my own rule here. My rule is I don't review books by people I know well enough to hug.

I know Mary Hahn well enough to hug, and to kiss on the cheek. Both of which things I did last time I saw her, the day after I finished reading this book. I think you would, too.

Mary's an old friend of my parents - I think her first husband and my dad went to college together? Maybe mom was a bridesmaid? She and my mother were pregnant with their first children at the same time, and compared notes. Some time after those girls (one of them me) were born, she and my parents more or less lost touch.

Mary started working as a school librarian, and in the mid-1970's started writing novels for children. Mysteries. Ghost stories. And though most of these stories stay well within the range of "comfortably spooky" - excellent choices for middle-grade readers who crave just enough chill to keep them turning pages, but not enough to keep them up at night - that's still thirty-some years' worth of haunted houses and restless spirits, guilt, revenge, and loss.

And now we know why.

Librarian to the Stars: What to Expect When You're Expecting... Your Movie to a. Be Awful and b. Tank

Do you know what I get tired of? I'll tell you what I get tired of. I get tired of these over-30 (or over-40, or even over-50) actresses calling me up on the phone, complaining about the parts they're being offered. "They keep sending me MOOOMS!!" Nicole will whine. "When it's so OBVIOUS I am still Sexy Secret Agent material!" Or it'll be Kristen Wiig: "Do I look like a MOMM to you?! Why don't they get Catherine O'Hara?"

 

 

Those pants are really a sweater - and Catherine O'Hara makes 'em look good.

 

Sigh. Catherine O'Hara is 57 years old. The poor woman's been carrying the "funny mom" baton since the late '80s - time for her to move on to "funny mother-in-law." Jane Fonda and Candice Bergen can't be expected to handle all those roles by themselves.

Although - it's kind of a fact, besides the gay moms and Kevin's poor mother, mom movie roles have been a bit lame lately. Movie moms generally are participating in some kind of horror story in which they have to protect their child/get back their possessed child/never had a child to begin with; or they are present only as comic obstructions to the teenager or adult male saving the world in some way. Julie White, the mom in the Transformers movies? Totally underutilized.

 

Those Transformers movies would have been so much more fun if the mom were the hero instead of the kid. Look at her with her baseball bat. Let 'em have it, Judy!

 

Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs - review

Grace is feeling kind of out of place at her new high school in San Francisco. Newly arrived from a small town, she is hoping to find a friend.

Tough Gretchen has no need or desire for friends.

And snooty rich girl Greer doesn't have friends so much as she has acolytes, minions, and social rivals.

What do these three have in common? Besides first names that start with G? Well, they were all adopted, for one thing... and since this is a teen novel, you might as well guess: they're long-lost triplets. Not just any triplets, either. Descendants of a mythological monster slayer, they have a duty and abilities and there's a prophecy and all of a sudden Grace's GPA is in danger and Greer's Stella McCartney top is going to get mussed.
 
Part Percy Jackson, part Beverly Hills 90210 - with an acknowledged debt to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Grace has moved to San Francisco from a small town called Orangevale, where she attended a two-story school with stucco-covered walls), this is good fun, marred somewhat by writing that hammers home every expressive nuance ("'What are you doing here?' she demands, clearly unhappy to see me.")

Boy characters are amusingly decorative - entering the action with portentious fanfare, all eyelashes and biceps, only to disappear for long stretches with nary a ripple, reappearing - or not - several chapters later. Although they may have some role in later books, in Sweet Venom they appear to be nothing more than gratuitous romantic interest. A not-too-serious paranormal action novel along the lines of the Maggie Quinn, Girl vs. Evil books.

Adapted from a review originally published in VOYA.

BZRK by Michael Grant - review

 

You have got to hand it to Michael Grant - the guy has CHOPS.

I started reading his stuff with the first GONE novel. "Terrific premise," I thought. "Great staging of the classic civilization-reboot-in-the-hands-of-the-children plot." And then, "Jeez that's some STRONG horror. This guy pulls no punches."

Then I read The Call, the first entry in his middle-grade series, The Magnificent 12. I described that book as "Michael Grant popping the top off his can of funny." It's like entry-level Douglas Adams: I hand The Call and The Trap to any kid who answers 'yes' to the questions, "adventure?" and "funny?"

Now for BZRK. This is sci-fi set in the real world: non-dystopian secret-agent-type sci-fi, gritty, dark, and extra-violent. Teenagers are recruited to fight battles so surreptitious that they are invisible to the naked eye.

 

Nonfiction Monday - High Riders, Saints, and Death Cars: A life saved by art by Nicholas Herrera - review

 

It's the fortunate teenager who will come across this beautifully produced art book and its subject, self-taught folk artist Nicholas Herrera. Not only does Herrera describe his process, inspirations, and technique, but he speaks frankly about his wild youth, bad behavior, and the consequences thereof.

 

 

The Wreck, Mi Vida de 25, 1999

 

 

Anticipation - new books to look forward to

Ah, spring! My neighborhood is foaming over with dogwood and azalea, sketched pink scribbles of redbud branches and nodding lilac. Driving the kids to school is like a trip through some wretched YA fairy forest. Except it's also roadkill season, so the smashed rats and opossums on the side of the road give it a little gory, edgy aspect. Again, much like a lot of recent YA. Sigh.

I am totally, happily mired in reading for the YALSA committee I'm on, Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults (go nominate your favorite! do it now! I'll wait!), and I can't in all conscience post reviews of books we're considering for the list - but I can take a break from teenage immigrants and rock stars from time to time in order to cleanse my palate with a new book.

Here are some I have waiting in the wings for me:

 

Boy21 by Matthew Quick - review

Finley is the only white kid on his basketball team. He's not the tallest, or the most talented, but he is the hardest-working player, and that has earned him his position as starting point guard. That hard work might just one day propel him out of his crime-infested ruin of a hometown.

So is Boy21 a sports novel? Not exactly.

Finley has played and trained - obsessively, single-mindedly - since he was ten years old, when something bad happened to his family and he found that shooting 500 free throws in a row allowed him to not think about it.

Is Boy21 a coming-to-grips-with-crisis novel? Not exactly that either.

Finley has time for only one thing in his life besides ball, and that's his girlfriend, best friend, and only friend, Erin. She is beautiful and the star of the girls' team and has a lot of patience. She gets along with Finley's drunk grandfather, his sorrowful father, and she loves Finley, even though he speaks rarely and breaks up with her every basketball season.

So it's a young love novel? Ok I know I'm getting annoying with this - I'll stop.

Nursery Rhyme Comics: 50 Timeless rhymes from 50 celebrated cartoonists - review

FIFTY ARTISTS FIFTY! It's like a Ziegfeld chorus line up in this fine large-format comic anthology, except hairier. And less able to walk and sing at the same time. Probably really bad at doing anything in unison.

 

From "Hush Little Baby" by Mo Oh. I love her line and her delicate colors.

Fifty of your favorite comics artists have taken on 50 old-fashioned nursery rhymes, resulting in an anthology that is funny, strange, sweet, and surprising. Some of the artists, like Nick Bruel (Bad Kitty) and Marc Rosenthal (Phooey!), are familiar names in children’s publishing; others, like the talented Mo Oh (Lily Renee, Escape Artist, which is not a good example of her sweet and funny style) and Jen Wang (Koko Be Good), are relative newcomers.

Buried Thunder by Tim Bowler - review

The Rowan Tree Inn has sat placidly under its thatched roof at the center of a picturesque forest village for centuries. "Has sat." That hits me wrong. I don't think there's anything incorrect about it, but... I know I don't like it. "Has satten" sounds better, but "satten" is not even a word. All right, I'm going to leave it. This book's not worth fussing over.

When fourteen-year-old Maya moves into the Inn with her parents and older brother, she experiences that same kind of unease. Disturbing visions, eviscerated foxes, and sinister townspeople seem to conspire with scary nighttime noises to keep her thoroughly freaked out. Is she psychic? Is she imagining things?

Nonfiction Monday - Miss Etta and Dr. Claribel: Bringing Matisse to America by Susan Fillion - review

 

Art and history intertwine in the story of Claribel and Etta Cone, two sisters from Baltimore whose intellectual openness and love of art–not to mention tidy personal fortunes–brought them into contact with many pioneering minds of the early 20th century. More than mere art patrons, the sisters forged decades-long friendships with Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo, Pablo Picasso, and especially Henri Matisse.

 

The collection of art that they amassed, which includes many masterpieces of Postimpressionism as well as works from Asia and Africa (now at the Baltimore Museum of Art), liberally illustrates the gracefully designed pages of this book. So too do the author’s colorful Matisse-inspired illustrations, most of which are based on archival photographs. The book is a pleasure not only to behold but to hold, too - prestige paper and meticulous attention to color honor the author, her subjects, and the art.

 

Painting by Susan Fillion based on a famous photo from 1903.

An art educator in Baltimore, Susan Fillion has obviously spent untold hours with the Cone Collection and with the voluminous correspondence and other papers of the sisters. She frequently describes a scene or situation from Claribel’s or Etta’s perspective, an effective and engaging device. In the hands of a writer less intimate with the sisters, this might feel false or presumptive, but Fillion keeps it simple and convincing. A beautiful and accessible gateway to a study of Postimpressionism, and a moving portrait of two extraordinary women.

Adapted from a review that originally appeared in School Library Journal.

 

Today's Nonfiction Monday Round-up is at Emu's Debuts.

 

12 Things to do Before you Crash and Burn by James Proimos - review

Short. Raucous. Undiluted. Pungent. Sneaky. Foulmouthed. Bright.

These words describe one of two things - your favorite uncle or James Proimos's first book for young adults.

Sita's Ramayana by Samhita Arni, illustrated by Moyna Chitrakar - review

The Ramayana is the ancient epic story of the exiled prince Rama and his beautiful wife, Sita. When Sita is kidnapped by a love-struck demon king, her husband’s efforts to rescue her result in a war that eventually involves not only demons and mortals, but also gods, monsters, and even animals. This story has been told and retold, painted, performed and translated in every medium imaginable. 

 

High tech.

 

Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet - review, plus bonus Battle of the Books prediction

Clem was born premature, when his pregnant mother was startled by a heartbroken Nazi pilot shooting her chimney to pieces at the end of World War II in rural Norfolk, England.

Using this birth as a pivot point, Mal Peet tells us the story of Clem's family from the time his grandmother was a girl to nearly the present day. We see the twentieth century work its changes on this family, as wars take men away and bring them back, social movements carry Clem's family out of their indentured hovel and into estate housing and allow Clem to attend an exclusive school, and romantic love finds a foothold.

Librarian to the Stars: At the Governor's Ball

 

 

Providing reader advisory services to movie and TV stars may sound like it's all glamor and glitz - private screenings at Matt Damon's place, long walks with Taylor Kitsch, tequila shots with Cameron Diaz - but in reality, it's hard work. It's a year-round, always-on-call job that requires constant monitoring of tons of information sources. You should see my office - a dozen laptops and giant flatscreens feeding me 24-hour updates from Cynopsis Kids, Early Word, Rama's Screen, and the Hollywood Reporter.

But that's what it takes. What would happen if, out of the blue, Hailee Steinfeld chased you down in a hallway at NBC panting, "I have to read a science fiction novel for English but I hate science fiction!" It wouldn't do to flail around until you lamely suggest she reads Virus on Orbis 1. Nooo. That kid, she needs more action. Not so much character development. Black Hole Sun is the book for her. She'd be perfect as the voice of the AI that is the main character's advisor, conscience and best friend. Or she could be the kick-ass love interest Vienne.

Tune in to my wave as I provide book advice to the attendees of the 84th Annual Academy Awards from my perch by the bar at the Governor's Ball...

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys - review, plus Battle of the Books prediction

 

We are well shut of the twentieth century, I think. That was the first thing that crossed my mind as I closed Between Shades of Gray at about 1:30 in the morning last night. Good god. This is historical fiction that grabs you by the throat.

Where are we? We are in Lithuania in June of 1941. Stalin has annexed the country and part of his strategy for integrating it seamlessly into the Soviet Union is to round up anyone who might object and send them to Siberia. 

Who are we? Fifteen-year-old Lina, upper middle class, a gifted artist, with a ten-year-old brother and a beautiful mother. Papa, a university administrator, has already disappeared when soldiers pound on the door and throw Lina's family into a truck.

Chime by Franny Billingsley - review, plus Battle of the Books prediction

 

What is happening to 17-year-old Briony Larkin and the miserable fenside village of Swampsea? Briony is beautiful and intelligent, neglected by her father after the death of her beloved stepmother. Possessed of a supernatural gift that allows her to see and converse with the nature spirits that surround her village, before she died, her stepmother commanded Briony to avoid the swamp where these spirits live lest something terrible happen.

To make an already joyless life considerably worse, Briony is responsible for her difficult twin sister Rose, who, due to a blow to the head when the girls were seven, exhibits symptoms and behaviors similar to those associated with autism spectrum disorder.

Then a handsome boy comes to the village, and with him progress: the swamp is to be drained and Swampsea to become the terminus of a London rail line. As Swampsea struggles to - belately - join the twentieth century, Briony struggles with new roles that she both fears and desires. I'm always looking for neat coming-of-age metaphors, and the advent of the modern age is a good one. Will Briony allow herself to fall in love? Will she learn to control her power? Will she figure out the deceptions that have been perpetrated upon her, leaving her full of frustrated, self-abasing rage? 

Pink Smog by Francesca Lia Block - review

Louise at thirteen is friendless and flat-chested. Bad luck and worse decisions have torn apart the cozy canyon life she shared with her parents, B-movie director Charlie Bat and starlet-turned-homemaker Brandy-Lynn, and now she lives in a courtyard condo down below the smog line. Instead of her tiny, hippie elementary school, she's attending a big public junior high where everything seems like a competition. And then, after one too many drunken arguments with Brandy-Lynn, her dad leaves.

Pink Smog: Becoming Weetzie Bat is the prequel to Francesca Lia Block's popular Weetzie Bat stories - this is Weetzie before she becomes fully Weetzified: not yet blonde, only partially sparkly, showing barely a hint of the wistful siren to come. With some of the glitter swept away, the emphasis is on Louise's feelings and encounters, which have always been well-written, but can be overshadowed by the feathered, flowing, Mod Podge fabric of Weetzie's later life. Heartbroken, teased, neglected, and possibly hexed, Louise begins to learn about risks that are worth taking and people who are worth cherishing. She is a peaceful child who, when faced with cruelty and loss, develops into a young woman who is pliant but not wimpy, strong but not aggressive.

A fresh gem for Weetzie's fans, Pink Smog stands comfortably alone as well. It would serve as a Gateway to Francesca Lia Block (which is an arch a lot of us are happy to have passed through - Jezebel once called Weetzie Bat ""The Book for Girls Who Ended Up Taking a Gay Dude to Prom" - I myself took my best friend's much-older brother), and although marketed to grades 9 and up, this book could be wise comfort to a reader as young as 5th grade whose family has undergone sudden change.

A version of this review appeared in VOYA a few months ago.

Pink Me: Librarian to the Stars! Jennifer Lawrence Edition (special appearance by Brad Pitt)

I feel like Tony Shalhoub's character in Galaxy Quest: "Heh heh," he chuckles, mentally adding up the squad of enemy alien soldiers guarding the [whatever], the rock monster the crew had encountered on a recent visit to a desolate planet, and the ship's transporter mechanism. "I just had this really interesting idea."

I've just done a little idle internal arithmetic myself. I read a lot, right? Mostly kids' and YA books. It's ridiculous. And it's gotten to be I kind of feel like I'm cheating when I take time out for the essentials: Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue, September Vogue, and Go Fug Yourself. Your essentials may not be my essentials. There's room for all of us here.

 

But my consumption of gossipy fashiony stuff means that I do kind of keep an eye on the traffic at the intersection of these two interests of mine - namely, when YA (and sometimes kids') novels are made into movies. Like... Ooh there goes Oscar nominee Viola Davis again - she's going to be in the movie they're finally going to make of Ender's Game. Hm. I wonder just exactly where Viola Davis fits into Ender's Game. Ugh here's another mouth-breathing Hemsworth: which YA heartthrob part is he going to be panting all over this time? You know. Everybody does that.

And you can't help wondering, you know, if you somehow found yourself sharing a First Class row with say Brad Pitt (I could get bumped up, it could happen!), what would you end up talking about?