unadulterated.us

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.

 

Unlucky Charms by Adam Rex - guest video review by Milo!

I am a lucky woman. By almost any metric, that's me, Lady Lucky. I can walk under ladders.

One of the ways in which I am lucky is that there are about five authors out there whose work is just exactly what I want to read. I can go to those authors and always always be surprised and moved. Gibson. Liz Jensen. Nick Harkaway. Charlie Higson. Ian Fleming (but that's more of a sick obsession). And by "always always" I mean - no duds. No books that make me go "ehhh." Neal Stephenson for example. Love everything he's written either side of the Baroque Trilogy, but those three books made my eyes roll back into my head, and so he doesn't make this list. 

What I'm getting at - obviously - is that Adam Rex does. I don't know what is similar in our backgrounds or genetics or whatever, but his imagination travels paths that seem enticing and familiar to me - as if they are paths that I glimpsed once from a passing car and wished I had the time to detour into. His humor makes me laugh out loud on trains and in bars.

Which is why I can't review his latest book, Unlucky Charms, the second in The Cold Cereal Saga. This author speaks so clearly to me that I can't tell how he sounds to other people. I can't be objective while I'm giggling out my nose. Luckily, I have a couple of clear-eyed readers in my house who can be relied upon to give you the what when I can't. Here's Milo:

 

 

Now, I admit I read the ARC of Unlucky Charms as soon as I snagged it at ALA Midwinter, and I admit I was going to pass it to Milo as soon as I got home, and I further admit than when this hardcover came in the mail - pretty much before I got home, thank you someone at Harper! - Milo grabbed at it as if he were a magnet and it was made of paperclips, but let me tell you, Milo is not a man who will allow preconceptions to influence his appreciation of a book.

So when he tells you it is funny and brave and awesome - you better believe it. Available Feb 5.

 

 

From Unlucky Charms by Adam Rex - Marcos Horchata reporting

 

PS: Good lord I have written yet ANOTHER review of something involving Adam Rex in which I forgot to mention the art! How do I keep doing that? Adam Rex is supernaturally talented as an artist. His illustrations are the kind that kids pore over, looking for clues, soaking up the visual realization of scenes they have already mentally assembled from the author's words.

They exhibit charm, draftsmanship, and a particular genius for realistic expression, facilitated I believe by his habit of sculpting little heads and using them as models. I like to think he mounts those heads on tiny plaques and hangs them on the wall when he's finished - a miniature hall of horrors. Maybe he talks to them, they're like a Greek chorus when he's stuck on a drawing. "Make him fatter," grunts Frankenstein. "With bigger eyebrows!" yells Grandpa Ned. "What is that sweater about?" snipes Barnett. 

This art, by the way, is not something I am worried I'm biased about. I know art, and I'll borrow a technical term from art criticism here and call it GOOD. It's GOOD ART.

Buy this book, buy all his previous books. Support him so that he can keep feeding my habit, and I swear you will thank me for it.

 

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.

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? 

Cold Cereal by Adam Rex - review

 

Sometimes it is hard for me to respond to a book as a reviewer. Some books hook me just the same way a book would have hooked me when I was ten years old, and I am in, along for the ride, imagining myself sleeping in Anne Boleyn's bed at the Met, or confronting an evil horseman in a snowy lane in Wales.

I think that's why I do this.

And do you know how kids recommend books to each other? Have you heard them try? It's no use trying to teach them to sketch the main character and then set up the situation - they're going to either tell the entire plot in minute detail or they're going to reproduce a run of dialogue, bafflingly out of context and unintelligible due to their uncontrollable excitement.

Possibly they're going to try to relate the mood of the book to an experience they've had - my friend Rabbit, who is thirteen, does this all the time, and I love it. I can never follow his parallels: "You know how like you could be in the desert, but it's cold, except it doesn't look like it could be cold? This book is exactly like that," but I could listen to him all day.

Modelland by Tyra Banks - review

Books can be badly-written in any number of ways. The characters may be poorly defined, the plot predictable. The pace may stutter. The author may have O.D.-ed on simile, or rely too heavily on certain phrases ("His scar prickled like fire"). Or the author may assume that his or her readers are total idiots, and load the text with unnecessary clarification. ("'What are YOU doing here?!' she exclaimed, a look of surprise on her face.") A Tragic Overuse of Capitalized Nouns may strangle the reader in Unwarranted Portentousness.

Tyra Banks doesn't really do any of these things. FYI. I mention this in case you, like me, had some kind of suspicion that a person with no apparent experience writing fiction might be, I don't know... TERRIBLE at it. I'm terrible at it, and I write all the damn time.

 

But she's not good at it, either.

 

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde - review

 

"Who, exactly, is the Mysterious X?"

"They're more of a what than a who. It won't be in a form you'll recognise, and there is something other about X that defies easy explanation. It's more of a sense than a person. A shroud, if you like, that confuses their true form. It also smells of unwashed socks and peanut butter. You'll be fine."

Tiger looked at the note, then at the Quarkbeast, then at where the moose had been but suddenly wasn't, then back at me.

"This is a test, isn't it?"

Yes, little children, this is a test. Are you going to grow up to be the kind of person who not only reads all the books of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but who also seeks out the radio recordings? Will the Discworld become a second home to you? If you cut yourself shaving, will you always claim that "it's just a flesh wound!" in a defensive tone and a British accent?

If so, The Last Dragonslayer is your brand of silly.

Secrets of Tamarind by Nadia Aguiar - review

 

The scientist in Simon wished there was time to study the animals he was seeing and catalogue all the quirks of nature and environment that had driven their strange evolution. A herd of spotted marsupials, almost impossible to see, moved in shifting camouflage as they chased the shadows of clouds. A small, horselike animal with gigantic ears that swiveled like saucers was the first to hear him coming, and when it took off across the plains its drumming hooves alerted dozens of lumbering, slow-moving tortoises who vanished into their shells, leaving a sudden rock bed. Mice-like rodents leaped dozens of feet into a stand of cactus, fleeing from birds that veered away from the unforgiving spikes at the last second. Simon watched in fascination as these dramas unfolded around him.

We went to Costa Rica last summer, and now I think I understand where Nadia Aguiar's prose comes from. The ruby-red birds and flowers, the emerald landscapes, the fruit that is sweet but complex. The dark jungle, the bright hillsides. Roseate spoonbills and strawberry frogs. Honest-to-god toucans. It's all astonishing, but it's real.

 

The miraculous island of Tamarind, where siblings Simon, Maya and Penny washed up after a shipwreck in The Lost Island of Tamarind, reads like that. Deep in the Bermuda Triangle, its startling beauty is murky or brilliant, misted with cloud or sunlit, lush, decadent, fragile... and likely to twist into violence at any moment.

Books in the beach bag - leisure reading for middle grade

 

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Adult Swim at our pool is fifteen minutes, and I swear, that can be the longest fifteen minutes ever in the history of time. Longer than the fifteen minutes it took you to figure out the new remote. Longer than the fifteen minutes it took Jane Austen to describe who rode in which carriage on that crucial twenty-minute journey to the ha-ha. Way longer than the fifteen minutes you had to stand in line at the DMV, because at least then you could fantasize different options for blowing the building up.

NO you can't have more money for the snack bar.

NO you can't go to the baby pool.

NO you can't play Angry Birds on my phone with your wet hands.

Who likes saying no all the time? Not me. Far better to give the kid a seat in the shade, a cold water bottle, and a just-for-fun book to read. I asked all the kids who had assembled for my younger son's birthday party to grab a book and cram onto the couch for this month's Pink Me banner. Here, amid a long list of entertaining summertime reads, are the books that caught their eye:

 

Small Persons with Wings by Ellen Booraem - review

I am a classic judge-a-book-by-its-cover-er, and it's been burning me lately. I picked up this one grownup book because it had a woman in a print dress holding a giant handgun on the cover, and I figured it'd be like that funny movie where Sissy Spacek shoots her husband. I picked up Now Is the Time for Running because it has a kid with a soccer ball on the cover, and I don't read enough sports novels. Holy hell, is that book not a sports novel.

I did not pick up Small Persons With Wings by Ellen Booraem for kind of a long time, because it has a girl's cute feet standing pigeon-toed on the cover, and that middle-grade faux awkwardness is something that sets my teeth on edge.

Also wrong about that one.

Brass Monkeys by Terry Caszatt

 

Couple weekends ago we fired up the fire pit for the first time this year. Fire good.

Fire is convivial and pretty and warm and often smells spicy and smoky and exciting. Plus it's good for roasting marshmallows. And since this is Jesus season, we had PEEPS to roast on our fire. If you've never tried it, may I recommend. I don't like Peeps, but a roasted Peep is like a bite-size crème brûlée. A vaguely poultry-shaped, distinctly trailer-park crème brûlée. Or in the case of the bunny-shaped ones, a vaguely tumor-shaped trailer park crème brûlée. SO GOOD.

The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan - review

I am sure that very little has to be said about The Lost Hero. Author Rick Riordan is rightly beloved of readers from 8 to 18 and beyond - I know many moms who have read the Percy Jackson books with their kids only to become slaves themselves to the exciting plot, likeable characters, and imaginative scenarios. I myself considered buying The Titan's Curse at Target one Sunday even though I knew the book was waiting for me at the library and I could pick it up when I went to work the next day. I needed to find out what happened next.

But something happened at our school's Lost Hero release party that made me appreciate Rick Riordan anew. Not a big thing, but an important thing to me.

Nola's Worlds #1: Changing Moon, by MiniKim, Mathieu Mariolle, and Pop - review

The French. What is it they put in the water over there? French people (and Belgians) can DRAW. MiniKim takes the best energetic manga style and superimposes it onto meticulously-drawn settings that incorporate believable volumes, texture, and architecture. Good old-fashioned draftsmanship plus sweeping, pretty, cool-looking characters. NICE.

And then this art was colored to within an inch of its life by a kawaii-loving woman who goes by Pop. The lines are colored, skies are colored and clouded, highlights and shadows are deftly applied, and the color palette is delectable. Teals, pinks, plum, lovely oranges from burnt to sherbet - it's like a candy shop you'd never want to leave, not too sweet.

My library has this shelved as juvenile, but it's been nominated as a Best Graphic Novel in the Cybils Awards in the Teen category, which might make more sense, given the vocabulary and the persistent loneliness experienced by Nola as she is consistently ignored by her mom.

The story, by Mathieu Mariolle, is quick and funny, maybe a trifle scattered, but this is the first in a series after all, and is a translation to boot. Quite nice.

The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith - review

What is this?

I know about teen novels with alternate worlds. Usually those worlds are carefully mapped out, explained, lovingly explored by the author.  And I know what is a book with a teenage protagonist who endures a terrible, traumatic experience. Although usually those are girls. It can be rough these days to be a girl in a YA non-fantasy novel. You might get buried alive, or raped, or raped a lot, or accidentally kill your parents, or be in a coma or die, and you will almost certainly be kidnapped. I even know horror. I have read a lot of horror, especially when I was a very young person, and very unsure about things.

So I think The Marbury Lens is horror. But it is non-cheap, un-easy horror.

Super Human by Michael Carroll - review

This is the time. The time is now. Michael Carroll's Quantum Prophecy series has zipped beneath the radar like a low-flying caped crusader for far too long.

The Quantum Prophecy trilogy describes a world in which superheroes and supervillains were once a natural part of the world order, keeping the peace, trying to take over the world, doing their stuff. But ten years ago, one supervillain's dastardly plan went tragically awry, and all the superhumans disappeared. Now, a few young people are beginning to exhibit unusual abilities - only to discover that a world of peril and plots has been waiting for them. Dun dun DUNNN!

The Big Big Big Book of Tashi by Anna and Barbara Fienberg, and Kim Gamble - review

Zhou, rising 2nd grader, seven years old: So what's up, Mom?

Your Neighborhood Librarian: Tell me about Tashi.

Z: Tashi is a book for boys and girls, and it's kind of a fairy tale. It has fairy-tale creatures and not-fairy-tale creatures in the same book. I love how there's the big actual story, which is this little elf man called Tashi comes to a new country after he's been sold to this really mean warlord by his parents for some reason, and then Tashi meets Jack, his new friend, and this Jack has his own garden and when he goes up the tree he tells stories, at lunch, and he tells Jack stories, and Jack tells stories to his mom and dad, and his dad is all worried about socks in one story. That's why dad is kind of funny.

YNL: So there are multiple stories in one book, and some of them are told by Tashi to Jack and some are told by Jack to his parents.

Z: Yup. It's very common to see parents telling a bedtime story but in this one it's the parents saying, "Tell me a story! Tell me another Tashi story!"

 

Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O'Malley - review

Dear Internet,

I thought you were looking out for me! How have you not forced me to read Scott Pilgrim before now?

I ask again: HOW has someone not held me down, pried my eyes open, and shoved Scott Pilgrim into my face?

The Search for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi - review

Epic science fiction for kids, sumptuously illustrated, as one might expect from the breathtakingly talented Tony DiTerlizzi. Long but somehow a very fast read - I wouldn't have believed it, it's not like the margins are extra-wide or the typeface extra-big, but my 8-year-old read 120 pages between dinner and bedtime one night last week.

The main character, 12-year-old Eva Nine, is seemingly the only human on a strange planet, the indigenous population of which includes large grazing animals, birds, and plant/animal chimeras of varying degrees of intelligence. These species bear some resemblance to animals and plants that exist at the very edge of weird in current zoology - lichen that travel, protists that seem to think, microscopic carnivorous plants. Pretty cool.

BEA (no longer so) brief recap

 

Your Neighborhood Librarian with some of the guys of Guys Read: Jon Scieszka, Adam Rex, and Mac Barnett. David Lubar is lurking off to the right.

Wow. Was this a great show or what! I am still a little breathless, not least from hauling the giant bag of great books away from the Javits Center. And I swear, I only took the great ones, or the ones I expect to be great, or the ones I really want to know about. I didn't take any random stuff, and still there's got to be 30 books in there.

Everything from Charlie Higson's new book The Enemy, which I find especially intriguing because it intrigues my 15 year old friend N, who usually restricts his reading to game guides... to David Ezra Stein's Interrupting Chicken. The title alone tells you that this book is going to be a mega hit at storytimes for preschoolers on up. My son Zhou read it to us this morning - it's a star!

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher - review

What is it about Incarceron? Oh, there's all this hype about it, it's the big new series, gonna be (((""THE NEXT HARRY POTTER"" ARG I can't even bring myself to TYPE that phrase without air quotes and a vicious eyeroll and some sort of intricate rude gesture))) according to numerous sources. That kind of guff generally makes me run run run away. Makes most of my friends - grownup and kid - run run run away too.

 

But. I liked a few of the phrases I read on the flap. "Eagle tattoo." "Crystal key." "Dystopic future." Most of all, I was hooked by "Vast metal prison." Just a little darker than many YA fantasy novel settings. I sensed that here there would not be dragons.

The Hidden Boy by Jon Berkeley - review

I have this shower curtain that I love. Stay with me. At first glance, this shower curtain is merely a lacy, toile-y, silhouette pattern of old-fashioned clip-art (what used to be called cuts or spot illustrations) of animals and plants. Like one of those Dover books barfed all over my bathroom (Ready-to-Use Old-Fashioned Silhouettes if you want to know which one).

But if you spend any time gazing at my shower curtain, which, let's face it, sometimes might happen in a bathroom, you begin to notice details. There's a rabbit playing a bugle. A Bambi and a Thumper staring out at you with decidedly malevolent eyes. An empty birdcage that has apparently been the scene of some violence. Bees are gigantic, while bears are tiny. The petals on some of the flowers are ladies' legs. And the goats rowing a fancy gondola - something about those goats freaks me right out.

The slightly alternate world that Irishman Jon Berkeley has created for his new series The Bell Hoot Fables is a lot like my shower curtain. The elaborate treehouses that make up the village of Bell Hoot are in the midst of an old forest, not far from a still lake and a rushing waterfall. Bees hum, flowers waft their fragrances, the sun warms the leaves. It's a good book to read in springtime.

But undercurrents of tension and strangeness run through the community, and through the forest, as young Bea, who has come to Bell Hoot along with her family for reasons she does not at first understand, quickly surmises. In the first place, her little brother Theo appears to have vanished on the crossing from our world to... wherever Bell Hoot is. Then there's the pale daughter of her host family, Willow, who appears to be wasting away. Thornbushes are planted below everyone's window, and the treehouse ladders are pulled up at night. Conflicts among the families of Bell Hoot are coming to a head, and - not surprisingly - Bea discovers that only she may have the resources to save the day.

The residents of Bell Hoot use a kind of natural magic they call Mumbo Jumbo. Some have incredibly sharp eyesight, some can influence objects with their minds, and some have analytical skills reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes. Bea's Granny Delphine predicts that a man will buy a razor on Friday by combining her observation of the man's poorly-shaven face with his reaction upon learning that he is to be paid on Friday. That's neat stuff.

Throwing extraordinary skills into the mix can hurry a plot along nicely, and is fun wish-fulfillment for young readers. Too often, however, the new skills come too fast to be processed by the character and integrated into his or her personality. Not so here. Bea discovers her newfound communication skills in a more meditative manner - it's quite nice, and we feel the character gain confidence as she begins to trust and act on her instincts and reasoning.

As happens sometimes in fantasy-adventure novels, I feel like the ending came on somewhat rushed. Motives are a bit weak. Mind you, this beats the heck out of those protracted wrap-ups you see sometimes, in which every character has to be back-storied and tied up and tucked in... but The Hidden Boy is only the first of a series.

I am quite lucky that "Berkeley" comes between "Aguiar" and "Collins" on the library shelf, as I will be handing this book to readers of The Lost Island of Tamarind and the Gregor books.

And true to the mysterious nature of the forest surrounding Bell Hoot, I have never been able to find that shower curtain for sale again. Someday it will wear out, and I will have to replace it with Christ of the Andes, or Edward Cullen, or something mundane like that, and my bathroom will become just that little bit less interesting.

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins - review

I am revisiting the first in the The Underland Chronicles because my kids are finally old enough for it, and, rabid Percy Jackson fans that they are, they are SOOOO hungry for funny adventure. So far, listening to the audio version in the car, they are alternately spellbound and laughing like something is actually tickling them.

It's good. It's beyond good.

I think one of the keys to writing funny adventure is dialogue, and Suzanne Collins has such a gift for it. She develops speech patterns for each of her underground races and for two-year-old Boots, and leaves Gregor all the cute sarcastic lines every kid wishes he had the wit to say.

Further, Gregor assumes all the worry and responsibility of an older brother, but without getting mired in it. He's a man of action, trusting his instincts and abilities and dogged in his persistence - all good traits, but ones that he will learn should be tempered with planning and advance knowledge. It's a good journey to undertake, and proceeds so organically.

We paused the audio after the first disc (after Gregor has met the human Underlanders and has resolved to get back to the surface before his mom gets too wigged out by their absence) for me to ask the kids if they had any predictions about the plot.

They did not think Gregor and Boots were going to get back in a timely fashion. Check.

They anticipate that Gregor and Boots will meet with peril on their journey. Check.

They wanted me to put the story back on NOW. Ok, ok!

I think my library should re-order new shiny copies of these books, and I think it's time to give 'em a new push to our young friends hungry for adventure.

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.

Salt by Maurice Gee - review

Salt by Maurice Gee

"Salt" is such a good word. Hard-edged and hissing, but with that L in the middle for nuance. Only one syllable, four letters, terse, definite, but not simple. "Salt" is a noun and a verb, and sometimes an adjective, and it has meanings both mundane and technical - alchemical, even.

In this book, "salt" refers to the salt mines that Burrows dwellers such as Hari and his father, Tarl, must labor in if they are caught by the Whips - minions of the all-powerful Company. But all of the word's connotations travel through the narrative like a mineral vein through ore.

Yes - by the way - we're living in the Land of Capitalized Nouns here, and that's just one of the features of this book that ought to make me cringe: It's the first of a trilogy. It features the by-now familiar main character pairing I call The Princess and the Pauper - Hari, who lives in Blood Burrow and hunts rats for meat, meets up with Pearl, who is fleeing from an arranged marriage that is meant to consolidate her family's position of wealth and power. I can understand the appeal of this kind of arrangement for an author - it gives the reader a window into both ends of an alternate world's social spectrum. But it's getting kind of played: Terry Pratchett's Nation, Westerfeld's Leviathan (and, naturally, Kenneth Oppel's Airborn), and the forthcoming Ship Breaker, which is one spectacular, dark book, all have it.

Also, there are echoes and elements of many other wonderful stories. There's a physically and psychically arduous journey akin to "gotta get that Ring to Mordor". The ruined city and the mines call Riddley Walker to mind (GOD I love that book). We've got a Bene Gesserit witch type, a hands-free Vulcan mind meld, and Jedi mind tricks that even come complete with a seductive Dark Side.

So why does it feel so original? I think it's the spare writing, the unembellished landscape, the unexplained discrepancies between the world of Salt and our own. The plot seems to unspool as if the author is watching his characters make decisions rather than the other way around. The strong spiritual component doesn't bog down the action, and in fact feels natural within the landscape of Hari and Pearl's journey. They experience personal growth that could not be more mysterious to them if they were in a John Green novel.

Maybe that's why this book works so well for me. Maurice Gee writes people as well as John Green, stage-manages an action scene as well as Tolkein, and doesn't get distracted into loving descriptions of the world he's created, which can be a marvelous thing, but which will put off a non-fantasy reader in a heartbeat. It's a flinty book, but one to savor.

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld - review

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Maybe I sabotaged this book for myself. I don't usually get worked up anticipating a new work of children's or young adult fiction - usually, they show up, and I go, "Wow, look at this!" I'm consistently surprised that chapter books written for younger folks actually engage me. You'd think I'd know better. Like, you'd REALLY think I'd know better.

But when I heard that Scott Westerfeld - believable social economies, interesting ideas, nervy plots - was taking on the satisfying contrasts and textures of steampunk, I have to admit, I got excited.

And then, when I finally got my hands on it, the book, for me, fell a little bit flat. We follow Alek, only child of the archduke Ferdinand and his commoner wife Sophie, after his parents' assassination; and Deryn, a lower-class girl masquerading as a boy so that she can join the British air force. World War I is breaking out, and the German weapons - walking kerosene-burning tanks - are pitted against the genetically engineered organic fighting machines created by the British. Deryn serves aboard The Leviathan, a zeppelin-like airbeast that is mostly whale, while Alek escapes his ancestral castle in a two-legged armored walker, accompanied by his armorer and fencing instructor.

The details are, as expected, splendid, especially the delicate ecosystem that comprises the giant airbeast. There are castles and there are uniforms, scientists in bowler hats and a Tasmanian wolf (mysteriously called a Tasmanian tiger). Yummy.

But why, reading this, did I find myself wishing that I were instead reading Airborn again? There are a lot of similarities between the two books, and I kept remembering details of Airborn fondly as I read Leviathan. It's not a contest - obviously - and they're both exciting books, worth reading, and anyone who likes the one will likely enjoy the other. It's just that, if I had to recommend just one, I'd pick Airborn. Kenneth Oppel's descriptions of sensory experiences - running barefoot, moonlight and cold air - edge out Westerfeld's more hard-edged details.

Recently I've heard that Adam Rex is taking on the YA vampire novel, and I'm excited to see that. I expect that he'll punch a few holes in the "beautiful but doomed" vamp trope, a la The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks. If I find I am disappointed in that book, I'll know - it's just me.

Pretty Dead by Francesca Lia Block - review

Pretty Dead by Francesca Lia Block

Reading Francesca Lia Block is like standing in front of your grandma's jewelry box and putting on every necklace and all her rings. Mmm, charm bracelets! And what are these green beads! And yes, please, the big pearls, whether they are real or fake. In fact, I get the distinct impression that writing Francesca Lia Block is a lot like standing in front of grandma's jewelry box and loading it all on. The clothes! The houses! The beautiful boys and the beautiful girls!

Only thing is, unlike many other authors that revel in the aesthetic, Francesca Lia Block doesn't make it seem shallow. She hangs a mirror above the jewelry box and shows us the girl. Sometimes the girl is having fun, trying on the baubles, sometimes she's sad, thinking about grandma and wondering where each piece of precious junk might have come from. But always the girl is looking in the mirror.

Pretty Dead is Francesca Lia Block's take on the vampire novel. The girl this time is Charlotte Emerson, undead a hundred years, rich and beautiful and lonely as a cloud. The vampire thing is kind of a perfect setup for Miss Block - when Charlotte meets a boy that she cares about, and he wants to know about her past, she has an excuse to revisit a century of fashion moments. A Chanel cardigan, an Elsa Schiaparelli frock, velvet bell bottoms, and shoes of every shape and height. Also the bombing of Hiroshima.

Largely skipping past most of the tropes that usually shape the plot of vampire stories (blood consumption, sunlight avoidance), the story revolves around Charlotte's humanity. She remembers it, she mourns it, she seems to be regaining it. She has amazing sex, and she wishes for a child. This is the flip side of Francesca Lia Block's love of adornment - she loves the thing being adorned as well, revels in the heat and aroma of her beautiful people.

I routinely recommend Francesca Lia Block for adult fans of Twilight. I think everybody could use a little dose of the freedom and tenderness found in her books. They always make me want to hang up another wind chime, put on another scarf.

Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder, illustrations by LeUyen Pham - review

Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder, illustrations by LeUyen Pham

When you recruit a team of siblings whose job it will be to solve your mystery, survive the adventure you send them on, or adjust to the magic that you are willy-nilly injecting into their ordinary everyday lives, you have three choices.

1. You can establish verisimilitude by making them sniping, squabbling siblings who insult each other and barely endure each other's company, like the Grace family in Tony DiTerlizzi's Spiderwick stories or the Willoughbys at the beginning of The Willoughbys
   
2. You can make them react believably to danger and uncertainty by banding tightly together, viz the Baudelaire siblings, who are as supportive and encouraging of each other as the events surrounding them are... unfortunate.
3. Or you can take the middle path. Think the Aldens. Or the Casson kids. Heck, think of the March girls or the Pevenseys. They don't always agree, and sometimes a fit is pitched, but as far as I'm concerned, there's your verisimilitude. No hair-pulling required.

What I'm saying is: brave, considerate, honest and smart does not equal BORING. Laurel Snyder's Any Which Wall is a Penderwick-y book, a Nesbitty book, an avowedly Eager-y book, featuring four children who discover a wall that works magic, and who must figure out how to use it and what it can do. Once they've got that sorted, the next step for each kid is to decide - what to wish for. What's YOUR heart's desire? Hard to say? Try making that decision when you're six.

But while each child makes this decision based on his or her own interests (Henry wants pirates, Roy chooses American history, little Emma wants a castle, while big girl Susan just wants to see her best friend again), their adventures give each kid the opportunity to exercise underused muscles: independence, honesty, logic, compassion. I've often heard it said that kids practice known skills at home, but they learn new things on vacation. Well, my husband implies that he read this somewhere, every time he tries to justify taking a few days off and blowing town together.

The writing is clear and pleasant - Laurel Snyder has a particular gift for describing place (when the kids visit New York City, and the subway emerges from the tunnel to cross the East River, her description of the graffiti-ed buildings seen from above made me nostalgic for a daily commute I haven't taken for almost ten years), and her dialogue is natural and unaffected.

LeUyen Pham I have to guess was just a shiny shiny gift from Laurel's editor. Nobody draws regular kids, with their quirks of gesture and occasional annoyed expression, like Ms. Pham. Between the two of them, they've created four children as real as the kids playing LEGO in the dining room at this very minute.

If you liked the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer - book list

If. You Liked. Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. There. I said it.

I have put together this list I don't know how many times in the past couple of years, and I guess I just have to bite the bully (get it? like Twilight shoves all the other books around?) and admit that: 1) People want to read Twilight and 2) People LIKE Twilight.

I mean, why am I such a snob about these books anyway? What was I reading when I was eleven? I'll tell you what I was reading when I was eleven. No wait, read this book - Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick - and you will know what I was reading when I was eleven. And I turned out ok. Reasonably ok. Ok shut up - am I exploring my nascent sexuality with my twin brother or luring my arch-enemy into a leech-infested pool? No. I am not. That was a rhetorical question by the way.

And maybe that's setting the bar kind of low, but I think it is some kind of proof that young readers of Twilight are not going to grow up and fall in love with pale, stalker-y older men. Pale, stalker-y older men are in fact CREEPY in real life, and almost all young women are viscerally and instinctively aware of this. We can trust our girls. (Hi, Olivia! We can trust you, right?)

There's still the issue, recently pointed out by someone at the Princeton Romance Writers Conference (and I am too lazy to go looking for it so I am going to paraphrase), that these paranormal romance novels represent something of a throwback to the old doctor/nurse kind of power differential that turned so many of us against romance novels to begin with (think Mr. Rochester and his employee - Jane - in Jane Eyre). Nowadays, romance novels feature women who are just as strong as, and on equal social footing with, the men, but in Twilight et al, the male character is by definition more powerful than the girl - he's immortal! he can change into an animal! or, uh, sparkle!

But that I don't know what to do about. EXCEPT. To recommend the following pretty good books as follow up reads for people who enjoyed the romance, the drama, the imaginative world of Twilight. Some of these books feature characters with supernatural powers or are set in alternate or future worlds, but some do not. There's at least one cute boy in each, but none of them has a female protagonist as wimpy as Bella.

The Luxe by Anna Godberson. Soapy and irresistably fancy, dripping with drama. Look at that dress!

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I reviewed it here earlier. Catching Fire, the next book in the series, has just been published.

Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception by Maggie Stiefvater. An extremely cute boy, some psychic torment, a well-written, lovely setting, and a harp. It's all good.

Prom Nights from Hell. Stories by Stephenie Meyer, Meg Cabot, Lauren Myracle, and other writers who are all about what it is to be a girl.

Prom Dates from Hell (Maggie Quinn: Girl vs Evil, Book 1) by Rosemary Clements-Moore. Good-looking teens, more dramatic than it looks, snappy dialogue. I reviewed the third book in this series a couple weeks ago.

Tithe by Holly Black. Anything by Holly Black, in fact.

Margo Lanagan's Black, White, and Red books. Dark, with a side of strange, drizzled with a stylish-sexy port wine reduction.

The somewhat overlooked Troll Bridge by Jane Yolen and her son, Adam Stempel. Music, magic, peril, attitude.

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. The first in the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, about drama and magic in a Victorian boarding school.

Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause. Ms. Klause has been writing about the allure of the supernatural boy for longer than anyone, and in this one, the boy's a werewolf. Grrr!

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

Graceling by Kristin Cashore. Horses, swords, special powers, a fiery heroine, and a gorgeous guy. The sequel, Fire, will be out in early October.

and what the heck... you know what else any red-blooded reader of the Twilight books will like?

Flowers in the Attic, by V.C. Andrews. It's wrong. It's hot. It's so hot that it's wrong and it's so wrong that it's hot. And you just know "V.C. Andrews" is a pseudonym. Who do you think it is really? Wonder if that's what Salinger's been up to all this time.

Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run by Michael Hemphill and Sam Riddleburger

Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run by Michael Hemphill and Sam Riddleburger
I grew up in Maryland. Which means that every third field trip was to some vast undulant green field that once played host to one of the big bloody shindigs of the Civil War. Bull Run, Appomattox, Antietam. Harper's Ferry, Yorktown. Gettysburg if you were lucky, because at least then there was a side trip to the farmers' market, where all the bad kids bought bullwhips which the teachers confiscated for the bus ride home.

Ohhh, god that stuff was boring to me. Whatever visualizations the Park Service dreamed up: films, dioramas, 3-D maps with little lights, rangers in uniform... I never could get it up for the Civil War. Still can't. Seriously, I'm a full-on adult - a librarian, a photo archivist, a reader - who has never given a rat's rosy rumpus about the American Civil War. It's embarrassing but true.

Which is why Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run has me SO IMPRESSED. Twelve-year-old Stonewall (named after the general by his obsessed parents) shares my outlook - he's been frog-marched to Civil War re-enactments every weekend since he was six, and he knows enough about the Civil War to know that he is not interested in it in the least.

I have to say, I was a little dubious at first. Those obsessed parents are pretty monolithic in their disdain, disregard, and disapproval of Stonewall, and Stonewall is good and sick of weekends without his PlayStation. I wasn't looking forward to, say, a father-son adventure during which they Learn To Appreciate Each Other's Skills And/Or Outlook.

Luckily, when Stonewall is catapulted back in time to the real Battle of First Manassas (aka Bull Run, the first battle of the Civil War), his parents are left behind, presumably to putter around pretending to shoot other History Channel addicts in the twenty-first century. No more jerky dad 'til the very end.

Instead, we get the entire Confederate Army, such as it was at this point in the war: barefoot and smelly, raggedly armed and freshly learning the terrifying and painful realities of battle. And Stonewall's reaction is even more visceral - no matter what words Stonewall uses in his fast-paced, detailed narration, you know that he is really saying "Holy crap!"

The action is easy to follow, though the decision to include a map of the battlefield is a good one. The supporting characters, though a bit broadly drawn, satisfy. The conclusions that Stonewall comes to - about war, slavery, freedom, and bravery - are strongly supported by the events that he witnesses. No murky philosophizin' here:

Most of them, I bet, had visions when they enlisted of doing heroic things in battle. But I wonder how many had thought about what really happens in war, that you might really get shot, get killed. I don't think my father and his reenactors think too much about this part of a Civil War soldier's life. How can you and still want to reenact it? (italics mine)

By the end of the book, Stonewall has a mission that reverberates into his own time, a pretty girl to share it with, and most importantly, a reason to attend next weekend's reenactment. Which I assume is also a reason for these authors to write another book. I hope so, because Stonewall Hinkleman humanizes the Civil War like nothing I've ever read.

Labels: adventure, age: Grade3 and up, boy books, historical fiction, science fiction, superstar books

How to train your dragon by Cressida Cowell - review

What do you want me to say? If the kid in question likes stories about monsters that aren't very scary... if the kid likes the funny... if the kid likes the mythical creatures... yeah man, you can recommend this series of books (How to Train Your Dragon: The Heroic Misadventures of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III) to a lot of kids. Heck, there's a movie contract already, so you know it's got broad appeal. (Either that, or an eleven-year-old orphan, which actually this one does not - Hiccup's father, Stoic the Vast, is alive and well and very loud.)

In fact, we listened to this one on audio. Gerard Doyle was the narrator, and holy moley - the guy really put his back into it! He even sang! He was so entertaining that while we noticed the author's occasional overuse of phrases and words, it just didn't bother us. Based on this reading, Gerard Doyle has made my short list of all-time favorite readers (others are Tim Curry, Jim Dale, Stephen Briggs, and Stephen Fry). Thumbs up.

No, I do have one more thing to say: Hiccup is brave and smart and a loyal friend. This is a funny book with a big heart. Extra thumbs.

Labels: age: Grade1 and up, audiobooks, boy books, fantasy, fiction, funny

Some favorite books for teens

• Kiki Strike:Inside the Shadow City by Kirsten Miller. Fifth grade girls exploring an underground New York City. History, espionage and adventure.


• The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer. It's sci-fi, but it's not all magicky. Lots of action and an intricate plot. Chiwitel Ejiofor reads the audio version - mmmm!
  


• Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman by Eleanor Upland. In Victorian London, a thief reinvents himself as a gentleman. Interesting information about the jail system and sewers, and a great story. The great Stephen Fry reads the audio version.
  


• Stowaway by Karen Hesse. Inspired by the true story of a boy who stowed away on Captain Cook's ship Endeavour on its 1768 voyage of discovery. Great gateway to the amazing story of the voyage, written with economy and color. I don't remember the name of the reader on the audio version, but he was perfect.
  


• His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) by Phillip Pullman. Indescribable. I ripped through these 3 books in about a week. Metaphysics, politics, fantasy, all in a quick-moving, tightly-plotted story.


• Alex Rider series (Stormbreaker, Point Blank, Skeleton Key, Eagle Strike, and Scorpia) by Anthony Horowitz. 13-year-old MI6 agent. James Bond, Jr.


• Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books by Francesca Lia Block. These are lovely. Weetzie and her friends live their dreams in Los Angeles. They fall in love, break up, have babies, and dress like Patricia Field threw up all over them.

Labels: fiction, YA