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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?

Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore - review

Just a quick YA book review today, pumpkins - I am up to my [pick a body part you don't mention in polite company] in holiday crafting and carding and cocktail recipes.

What? Cocktail recipes are not part of everyone's year-end frenzy? Huh. What do you guys do?

 

 

Rosemary Clement-Moore delivers two things that have become the normal main features of YA books for girls: cold supernatural thrills and hot boy romance. What makes her hot boys and cold thrills stand out from all the rest are the girls that navigate the spaces between them: they are aggravated and amused, intrigued and insulted, cool but occasionally klutzy. They may find themselves covered in bat crap, but they will likely leave with an awesome exit line. Their narration conveys the knowing but self-conscious tone that is native to all teenage girls.

In Texas Gothic, strange doings are afoot at a big ol' cattle ranch in the west Texas Hill Country. Has an archaeological dig disturbed a centuries-old ghost? Or are nefarious humans taking advantage of local folklore to scare people away, and if so... why? Teenaged Amy Goodnight, the only intentionally "normal" member of a family of benign but powerful witches, seems to be the only one who can get to the bottom of The Mystery of the Mad Monk... but not only is she mortified at the Scooby Doo-ness of the whole "Mad Monk" thing, she is also nearly literally mortified by the ghost's overtures.

If you enjoyed Nancy Drew's The Secret of Shadow Ranch as a kid (yum, cowboys!) but are too self-aware to let yourself get caught up in silly stuff like The Ghost Whisperer, this is the book for you. Gotta love gothic.

Catching up on middle grade chapter books

It's Election Day here in Maryland - the midterm general election, not the primary, so there's not much hoopla. Oh, Maryland. Stay sweet. Anyway, the children are off school, and it's Tuesday, my day off, and it's a beautiful fall day, so I thought I'd catch up on what my boys have been reading. 

They've both reached the point that they are reading for fun independently. And kind of a lot. It's great, but I have to say, a little scary. I bring stuff home from the library I think they'll like, and they read that stack in a weekend, and then start eyeing the review copies I get in the mail.

This is going to sound like a back-door brag, but I am legitimately worried that they're a little too erudite for their own good. Zhou, who is in grade 3, complained at a class book discussion a couple weeks ago that he thought the metaphor in the title of Jerry Spinelli's memoir Knots in My Yo-Yo String was insufficiently reiterated in the text. In almost those words. Right? That's an oy vey moment, for sure.

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:

 

Guys Read: Thriller, edited by Jon Scieszka - review (plus bonus rant!)

 

The first book in the Guys Read Library, Guys Read: Funny Business, is one of my favorite shortcuts when I'm at work in the children's section. When I see Mom hauling her cranky middle grade boy over to the shelves, I will grab a copy of Funny Business, crack it open to the Christopher Paul Curtis story or to Jack Gantos's The Bloody Souvenir, and start to read. When I get to the part about the blood poisoning, that's when our young man usually stops farting around and looks at me.

I hand him the book, and say, "When you come back - if you come back - come find me and I'll give you something else disgusting to read." Mom looks at me and can't decide whether she's repulsed or grateful.

The Shattering by Karen Healey - review

 

Oh, the pleasures of an old-fashioned Something Is Not Right in the Town of Stepford/Sandford/Antonio Bay/Milburn/Celebration novel. It's a premise that allows an author to explore themes of conformity and artifice while creating a claustrophobic, paranoid atmosphere in which the protagonist becomes increasingly convinced that the familiar, friendly fixtures of his or her youth might be harboring Terrible Secrets.

Not a bad metaphor for a teen novel, wouldn't you say? And perfect reading for a hot summer night.

Electronic Thursday - Nancy Drew: The Secret of Shadow Ranch for iPad by Her Interactive

Ah, Nancy. So accomplished, so self-possessed. Is it any wonder that Carson Drew's baby girl has successfully piloted just about every new media vehicle that she's come across? In another life that girl would be a test driver for Car & Driver magazine. Wow, that might actually be a ridiculous-but-cool premise for a TV series - Nancy Drew Behind the Wheel. Every week Nancy puts a new fancy car through its paces while solving a mystery and being chased by thugs! She'd get kidnapped all the time, of course, and she'd end up rating cars on the roominess and comfort of their trunks, and also the ease with which they can be unlocked from the inside.

 

In this new iPad app based on an old old book (originally published in 1931!), Nancy solves mysteries and rides horses, rescues a failing dude ranch, debunks a ghost and pals around with BFFs George and Bess. All that never gets old, I swear. I haven't read a Nancy Drew in decades, but the story in The Secret of Shadow Ranch kept me turning pages just like I was ten years old and reading my mom's copy.

The text has been somewhat updated, of course - Bess carries a cell phone, although it doesn't impact the plot, as she can never get a signal out the desert. There are some choose-your-own elements (tip: don't try to wrassle the rattler by yourself), and although Ned Nickerson is mentioned, apparently he's off at college rather than hanging around the girls being dopey.

And regardless of the very entertaining sound effects, music and animations; seek and find games and word puzzles that decorate, punctuate, and illuminate this text, it is in fact the text that gives The Secret of Shadow Ranch staying power. Every child I handed it to (boys as well as girls) quickly became immersed in the suspense, and kept returning to the story, choosing time with Nancy over time spent killing zombies, slinging birds at hogs, or driving muscle cars.

Some things I liked:

• game allows for multiple players so that each reader can preserve his place
• the music, which is blessedly not constant, is appropriate to the story in mood and instrumentation - harmonicas and fiddles and guitars
• the art is all weathered wood, saddle leather, and dusty rocks, all the surfaces we love about the West (although the pictures of people come straight out of a box)
• when the gang takes turns singing campfire songs, George's rendition of "Home on the Range" is truly and comically awful

I'd like to see a progress bar or page numbers (although given the choose-your-own-adventure sections I can see that page numbers might be difficult) so that players can assess how far they have to go to reach the end of a chapter - in this age of rationed "screen time" that information is important for children, both in order to prioritize their activities and to negotiate with a parent. "Can I have until the end of this chapter? I'm 80% through."

This is an excellent book/game hybrid, a rarity for middle graders, and an exceptional incentive to read. Even kids who at first hurry through the text to find the special items that let them play games get caught up in the narrative once Nancy and her friends go hunting luminescent scorpions, or when the ghost horse shows up.

Bonus: hapless, boy-crazy Bess gets into trouble every time she separates from the other girls: at my count, she is menaced by a rattlesnake, tarantulas, and a cougar, gets thrown from her horse, freaked out by a necrotic-looking doll, and falls down a hole.

 

The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable by Dan Gutman - review

 

There are some authors, I freely admit, whose books I don't read. Not because I don't think I'll like them, or because I don't think I'd be able to recommend them, but because they are already appreciated and sought out by children. Dan Gutman is, of course, like this. Very few kids need my help discovering Dan Gutman.

When you check a kid's prior reading to get a bead on his/her likes and dislikes, there are certain books you can refer to. "What did you think of Harry Potter?" is a fair question - most every kid will at least know who Harry is. The Magic Tree House books (god bless 'em but don't make me read 'em) are in this category, but not a whole lot else. Wimpy Kid. And, of course, My Weird School. You can triangulate a kid's response to these known series to find where he falls on the axes of funny / mystery / fantasy. Hm. That graph would be an interesting thing to draw. Sounds like a job for xkcd.

The Night Owls by the Timony Twins - review

 

You know, there is so much right with this book, I'm just going to cut to bullet points.

• Single-page comics that work separately but legitimately hang together as a book-length arc. No, legitimately. I'm serious. Like a season of really good TV. And, like a season of really good TV, there are mini-arcs and single-pagers interspersed between and nested within the larger arcs. Comic books have always done this, but not all comic books have done it this well.

• The mashup of the supernatural and the Roaring Twenties is fun. Al Capone goes up against a guy with an enchanted lead pipe. A chorine in a Marx Brothers show is haunted by her dead husband. The Pied Piper of Hamlin is gigging at the Cotton Club (making him the Pied Piper of Harlem?).

The Trouble With Chickens by Doreen Cronin, illustrations by Kevin Cornell - review

The trouble with chickens, in the experience of J.J., the hard-boiled, seen-it-all world-weary hound living out his post-glory days in a country farmyard, is that they're flighty. Untrustworthy. Calculating, manipulative, and either a lot smarter than him, or very very dumb.

The trouble with chickens, in my experience, is that everything wants to eat them and they don't run fast. Still kind of mourning our backyard birds.

The Ghostwriter Secret by Mac Barnett - review

Transcribed from recording made on hidden micro-spy recording device. Subject: Mao (not his real name) age: 9. File: Barnett review 10-20-19-46. Indoctrination sequence begun...

 

Your Neighborhood Librarian: Ok, so Mao, here we have the The Ghostwriter Secret, the second of the Brixton Brothers books by the perilously undershaven Mac Barnett and compulsively undercapped Adam Rex.

Mao: Who?

YNL: The guys who wrote and illustrated the first one (ooh, new paperback cover). And Guess Again! What did you think of this book?

M: Well I think that it's good, and the cover gives you a really good idea of how it is -- exciting, but also like kind of suspenseful. On the cover, you see them underwater in a pool with bullets coming down, and that is really suspenseful.

YNL: Because?

M: Because, well, I don't want to ruin anything if you haven't read the book...

YNL: But I have.

M: Ok well then because THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS IN THE BOOK!!

YNL: The bullets raining down on them in the pool.

M: Yes!

YNL: And that's important to you because...

M: Kids do not usually get shot at in kids books! That part was great!

Songs of innocence and experience - adult weirdness for teens

Well, not just any teen. Teens with a taste for... for the unusual, let's say. Teens who are not satisfied with sports novels and vampire boarding school melodramas. Teens who have read Janne Teller's Nothing, who enjoy truly odd stuff like The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs and Madapple and then wonder why there aren't more books like those.

There are, of course - there are plenty of challenging novels in the YA section, but there's no shame in walking a kid through the adult section, and there's nothing immoral in handing a book about a serial killer to that kid.

Reading on the radio

Everyday I read the book. (Well ok this isn't me, this is Elvis Costello, but still. I wanted to use this picture.)

It was a lot of fun, and very interesting, to record a segment at Baltimore's NPR station, WYPR, about summer reading for kids. I was happy to proselytize a bunch of books that I think will have wide-ranging appeal this summer to a variety of readers.

The audio of my interview with Tom Hall, culture editor of Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast, is on the WYPR website. After the break is the complete list of books that I mentioned, plus a few we didn't have time to talk about.

The School of Possibilities by Seita Parkkola - review

I'm staring at the cover of this book and wondering what to say about it. The cover is awfully busy, in its overly geometric way - a giant factory looms over a little red brick schoolhouse, smokestacks rising into the gray clouds, from which descend feathers, like snow. Below the school, stairs descend into a darkness in which half-lidded yellow eyes lurk.

Also, the O's in the word "School" are eyes. And there's a... you know what? I'll quit with the cover. Except to point out the one enticing element of it, the one element that you should pay attention to and use as your barometer when you consider whether you need it for your kids, or your library.

"SEITA PARKKOLA"

The Amanda Project Book 1: invisible i, by Melissa Kantor

Let's dispense with the disclosure right away - Melissa Kantor, the author of this, the first Amanda Project book, is an old friend of my husband's. Am I letting that influence my review? Absolutely not. Did that influence the fact that I opened this book in the first place? For sure.

I am guilty - more than most - of judging books by the cover, and this one has a cover that I might not have been able to get past. It's hot pink. There's a picture of a slender white girl on the front, her back to the camera. Yes, it's the faceless girl again.

On the other hand, the typography and illustrated doodads on that cover are original and hip. A key, a bird, some vine-y floral stuff - despite the fact that it seems like EVERY teen girl novel is embellished with vine-y floral stuff right now, the vine-y floral stuff in invisible i manages to look classy and fresh. That, as it turns out, is because it was drawn by a young man by the name of Brian Floca (Moonshot, Lightship).

And this, dear friends, is the crux of my review. You can put together a book whose premise has been done before, load it up with ancillaries and gimmicks, clothe it in hot pink and put a faceless girl on the cover, and if the writer is amazing and the web designers are the best and the illustrator is multi-award-winning Brian Floca, you will have a fantastic book.

The Amanda Project shows us how it's done.

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.

Reading as a reasonable substitute for hibernation

I live in Baltimore. See above. I am too sore from shoveling to do much of a post today, but I thought I'd share what my sons have been reading through our blizzard.

First, a little perspective. The children in Baltimore City have been excused from school since noon last Friday. We have had two snowstorms, depositing a total of about 173.4" of snow, all of which we have had to shovel, since this street hasn't seen a snowplow since... well, Baltimore City has never plowed this street. It's not even considered a secondary road, which I guess makes it a tertiary road, which is I guess one step up from a deer trail.

I had to work Monday and Tuesday during our brief respite between storms, during which time my husband beat a strategic retreat, jetting off to exotic Wichita, Kansas. He can't get back home, of course, because our airport closed, then re-opened, then became swamped with passengers.

Took the kids to work with me Tuesday, and they were angels. The little one helped me find books for customers, and the big one helped out with reader advisory. I was trying to help one little girl find something to read, when my 8 year old son piped up with, "What kind of books do you like to read?" This can be a hard question to answer, especially when you're in 2nd grade, and the girl was clearly stymied trying to answer. So my boy says, "Put it this way - what's the best book you've read recently?" The little girl said "Babymouse," and my son said, "Babymouse! Well then you'll love Amelia Rules!"

I might as well quit. That kid just did my job at least as well as I've ever done it. So I'm going to let them review books today.

My first grader, Zhou (not his real name):

I like Secret Agent Jack Stalwart. I like how the pages are arranged, because it says, "I quickly peeked around the corner and then I saw..." and then you have to turn the page before you can see what he actually saw! And I would give it 5 stars because I like the story too. It seems really fictional. It's not funny so far, and not scary, and I like the picture on the front, because it tells you you're in New York and there's a dinosaur inside.

I used to be reading The Lightning Thief, but now I'm stuck on Jack Stalwart. Lightning Thief was a little hard, I think I'll practice on some more Jack Stalwart, and then I'll go back to Lightning Thief and see if my practice has paid off. Now I'm out of words. Words are buzzing through my head, I don't know which ones to use.

My third grader, Mao (not his real name either):

I've been reading Cryptid Hunters. It's about two twins, um Marty and Grace O'Hara. I like that the O'Hara twins end up getting themselves dropped into the middle of the Congo, because it makes you know there's going to be excitement in this book. The run into alligators, green mambas, and bad guys.

They are hunting for a dinosaur, mokele mbembe, and they go to this like treehouse and while Marty is off getting supplies from where they dropped it the night before, Grace is kidnapped! And Marty goes and tries to save her, and basically that's how they end up discovering the mokele mbembe nest. They're funny the way the talk to each other, and when Marty chops off the head of the big snake with a machete, that's a little scary, and their uncle getting his leg bit off, that was a little scary. But not too scary, because it's a book. 

I've also been reading The Hardy Boys. Let's just say that the Hardy Boys are, well, great, and they start off as two kids of a famous detective. Usually he's away on other cases that somehow get connected to their case. There's always something new, something extra thrown in to the adventure.

I like Joe the best mostly because he isn't as good as his brother Frank, but he always is the one who figures out the big picture, and then Frank gets all the details pinned. I like the old Hardy Boys, because in the newer ones they're part of an organization, which takes all the fun out of it, and in the older ones they have their friends helping them out, which makes me happy.

I got into Hardy Boys because I read The Brixton Brothers. Can you bring me the next Brixton Brothers home from work?

Sadly, I cannot. It's not due til October, which seems like forever away. And at this point, given the head-high piles of snow outside and the six-foot icicles plunging like deadly spears of celestial bronze from the eaves, I'm not sure I even believe in March.

The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity by Mac Barnett, with illustrations by Adam Rex - review

The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity by Mac Barnett, with illustrations by Adam Rex

I read a lot of funny middle-grade boy books. I, in fact, have something of a subspecialty in "If you liked Diary of a Wimpy Kid." SIGH. *I* didn't even like Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Although the author sent me a really nice email thanking me for my extremely ambivalent review. Jeff Kinney = classy guy. No matter what you think of Greg Heffley.

So I end up using the words "goofy," "silly," "cute," and, when I'm feeling not-so-inspired, "funny," in my reviews kind of a lot. Every now and then I have a chance to bust out "witty." Not that often. Binky the Space Cat got a "witty" from me, for its winking and generous portrayal of Binky, an overweight housecat training to be an astronaut. The True Meaning of Smekday I called witty. Derek Landy's Skulduggery Pleasant (which probably also got an "urbane"). And - not coincidentally - these are three of my hands-down favorite middle-grade books EVAR.

Joined now by this first book in what I hope will be a long long long (think Hardy Boys, Barnett - hope you're not doing anything for the next ten or twelve years) series of detective novels starring preteen everyman Steve Brixton and his honorary brother and actual best friend, Dana.

WITTY. This book. Wit to the Tee. There is a prom limo. There is a thug who is "nasty, brutish," and (you guessed it) "short." Mac Barnett even takes a swipe at the ALA's READ posters - truly, truly a man after my own fuggin' heart.

Our protagonist, Steve, a naturally bright kid to begin with, has been thoroughly schooled in the habits and techniques of solving mysteries by his heroes, Shawn and Kevin Bailey, cleancut, midcentury all-American boys who are not only ace teen sleuths but also varsity athletes! The Bailey Brothers' tips (haymaker punches, complicated knots, How To Spot a Scoundrel (hint: they limp)) come in handy when Steve tries to check out an old library book and is suddenly surrounded by a SWAT team of secret library agents!

Except - not only are Shawn and Kevin fictional, they're also conspicuously Golden Age. In the few instances when their advice isn't actually dangerous (Have to jump out of a second-story window? Roll when you hit the ground! Need a hiding place? Behind an airplane propellor is a good spot!), it's ludicrously old-fashioned.

Nice disguise, huh? Luckily, Steve is resourceful and knowledgeable and persistent - and heals fast - plus, all his experience reading detective novels has sharpened his deductive reasoning to a fine point.

The chapters are short, the funny is abundant, and the clues are all there. I'll bet my mom (an inveterate mystery reader) would have figured it out. But neither I nor my 8-year-old did. Listen: I kept reading this book even after the kids were in bed, my husband was out watching the Browns get creamed again (sorry honey) and I had those horny Southern vampires all cued up on the DVD player. I totally needed to see how it ended.

Oh wait - did I forget to mention Adam Rex's illustrations? Again? Adam Rex is brilliant. (I can't wait to read the forthcoming Fat Vampire - Laura, where's my copy?) Adam Rex's illustrations push this thing over the edge - from well-written serial fiction, exceptional grist for the mill of the middle-grade reader's imagination - to something that you could absolutely give as a gift. The cover and spine are exciting and packed full of things to look at, while echoing the format of older hardcover series fiction.

What I need now is MORE.

Fade by Lisa McMann - review

Fade by Lisa McMann

I was with this fun, rather slight piece of YA suspense right up to the 21 Jump Street ending. I think it's a first novel, and for that reason I'm going to forgive the author for cramming as much adolescent wish fulfillment in as possible. "I wish I had a magic power! And... and a boy who pines for me and is secretly hot! And... and... and I wanna FIGHT CRIME!!"

The premise - a girl is unwillingly pulled into observing the dreams of anyone who falls asleep near her - is pretty original; the characters are good. There's a little minor horror and boy-girl smoochies. The slumber party politics are particularly well written, especially an amusing subplot in which the school queen bee is in love with our protagonist's best friend. I don't know if I'll read the rest in this series (Fade, Gone), but I'd read something else by Lisa McMann.

I, Q by Roland Smith - review

I, Q by Roland Smith Book One: Independence Hall

Hold on to your butts, as Samuel L. Jackson says when he tries to reboot an entire island. And don't try to read this one if you're at all sleepy - Roland Smith has written a spy novel (the first in a series), and he is NOT kidding around!

Our story opens as teenage Q (short for Quest) and Angela become brand-new step-siblings, the children of two single-parent musicians who have found each other, fallen in love, and become massive rock stars at a fairly late stage in life. (Which is kind of a nice bone to throw the middle-aged reader - I had fun imagining Patti Smith as Q's mom and John Doe as Angela's dad. Shouldn't Patti Smith and John Doe fall in love and go on tour?)

Anyway. The new family embarks on a cross-country tour in a luxury bus, but when a crusty old roadie shows up by the side of the road and turns out to be a freelance secret agent intent on protecting Angela from people who want to use her as leverage against her allegedly dead biological mother, a Secret Service agent killed by a suicide bomber at Independence Hall... (remember to breathe)... they realize that their trip is going to be even stranger (and possibly longer) than anything rock and roll could have thrown their way.

I think that sometimes people underestimate how much complexity kids can take. Yes, much of the plot of I, Q hinges on who knows what, when they know it, and how they know it - but that's spycraft for you. The 39 Clues series is similarly sinuous, plot-wise, and also works in missing parents, a boy-girl team, and an overall sense of Trust No-one. Any kid who goes for that series will lap up I, Q like fizzy pink lemonade.

Action, secret identities, shifting alliances, interesting locations (the next one's set in the White House!), groovy rock-star perks (Q can get tickets to the hottest show in town for people who help them), and, most of all, quick-witted cool kids who can think for themselves put this book right up there with the Alex Rider series and other "realistic" adventure novels such as The London Eye Mystery and the Young Bond Series.

Labels: adventure, age: Grade5 and up, boy books, fiction, YA

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.

I told your mama I'd get you home, but I didn't say I got no car

Audio books will save your life. Or at least keep you out of jail. Yes. Don't argue. Stop it. It's true! I'm serious! Do you want me to pull this car over? Because I swear I will leave your narrow butt right here by the side of the highway! We have at least 13 more hours in this car today and if you keep arguing with me you will not be going home with the rest of us! And stop making that "Eeeee" sound. I know it's you. But a crappy narrator, or a stupid story, will NOT help. I listened to The DaVinci Code one summer in the car and I nearly drove off a bridge in desperation. Oh my god that book was terrible. So - the following titles have been selected as being engaging for adults and for kids, often with superlative narrators, classic appeal, and/or historical interest. Look in your local library for these - they're awfully expensive to buy.

Anderson, Laurie Halse. Fever 1793.

Avi. The true confessions of Charlotte Doyle.

Babbitt, Natalie. Tuck Everlasting.

Balliett, Blue. Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3, and The Calder Game. I admit that I'm not a giant fan of the nasal narrator, but don't let that stop you. Probably just me.

J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan. Narrated by Mister Jim Dale.

Bruchac, Joseph. But not for super-little kids - too scary!

Buckley, Michael. The Sisters Grimm (series). Awfully funny and even more clever, although I didn't like the way the sisters sniped at each other in the first book. The kids did though. I'm just too sensitive.

Collins, Suzanne. Underland Chronicles (series).

Cooper, Susan. The Dark is Rising (series). IF you can find them. Ably narrated by Simon Jones.

Dahl, Roald. British A-listers such as Alan Cumming, Eric Idle, Jeremy Irons, and Lynn Redgrave read Dahl’s subversive stuff. As does the author himself.

Dowd, Siobhan. The London Eye Mystery.

Fleming, Ian. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. SOOOO much better than the movie. Hard to find, but worth it. First of all, mom's not dead, she's along for the ride, and second of all, the ride is great!

Funke, Cornelia. The Inkheart series, the Ghosthunters books, Dragon Rider, and The Thief Lord. Brendan Fraser narrates some of these, and he has a nice voice for it. But they're no George of the Jungle. (And yes, any excuse will suffice for me to link to a picture of Brendan Fraser in that movie.)

Gaiman, Neil. The Neil Gaiman audio collection. Silly + weird = fun. Don't miss the author interviewed by his daughter at the end.

George, Jean Craighead. My Side of the Mountain. Dated, but still beautiful and exciting. Another one that's kind of hard to find.

Landy, Derek. Skulduggery Pleasant series, read by Rupert Degas. Rupert Degas is my new hero. His characterization of the Troll under Westminster Bridge alone is worth the price of admission. There's an interview with the suave, sarcastic, conceited Skulduggery himself at the end. You know, Rupert Degas also reads Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Brr - if I didn't have kids in the car, I would totally be listening to that.

Law, Ingrid. Savvy.

Lofting, Hugh. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle. Don't let the interminable, strange, sappy movie spoil this crazy old story for you. There is no Anthony Newley and his fruity accent here.

Lowry, Lois. The Willoughbys. Vellly intelesting narration by Arte Johnson, who, apparently, is still alive.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter. Award-winning narration by Jim Dale, who I swear has won every award except knighthood and an Oscar for his work on this series.

Riordan, Rick. Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Ok, I don't like the reader's brutal Queens accent and extremely poor Greek pronunciation. But I suck it up, because the stories are terrific and the kids LOVE them. And so should you.

Sinden, David, Matthew Morgan, Guy Mac Donald (aka The Beastly Boys). An Awfully Beastly Business (series). The GRRRREAT Gerard Doyle reads these. Can't wait! Book trailer here.

Selden, George. The Cricket in Times Square. Friendly narration by the versatile Tony Shalhoub, lovely violin passages.

Snicket, Lemony. A Series of Unfortunate Events (series). Although this series is no longer the hot ticket in print, I feel like the audio versions will persist in popularity, because of Tim Curry's chuckling, mournful, spitty, insane readings. A depressing yet beautiful and hilarious song by The Gothic Archies is a bonus on each audio book.

Stanton, Andy. You’re a Bad Man, Mr. Gum. A truly distinguished audio book. Read by the author, he takes liberties with his own text, adapting certain 4th-wall-busting asides to the audio format. Plus, my god this book is funny! The red fairy in the bathtub who hits Mr. Gum with a frying pan whenever his garden starts looking messy... brilliant!

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island. Alfred Molina ("Throw me the idol, I'll throw you the whip") does for the sound of Treasure Island what N.C. Wyeth did for the look - now, whenever I think of that book, I will hear Mr. Molina's voice. Stevenson's very large and at times obsolete vocabulary (what is a mizzen, anyway?) is a lot easier for kids to digest in the audio context. And Molina is a genius with characterization, by turns silky, gruff, naive, you name it.

Stilton, Geronimo. Read by Edward Herrmann.

Wilder, Laura Ingalls. The Little House books. Cherry Jones reads these, in a timeless voice that is both dry and warm. Even if you know these books well, her perfectly paced performance brings them to life in a new way.

White, E.B. Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. Julie Harris reads Stuart Little, and White himself memorably reads Charlotte's Web. Beautiful and kind of heartbreaking there at the end.

Winkler, Henry. The Hank Zipzer series. The Fonz reads his own books, and when you hear him do it, you'll think, "Seriously? Somebody cast this funny little guy as a cool motorcycle dude?" The seventies really were a little weird.

Woodson, Jacqueline. Anything she reads herself is always going to be beautiful and affecting.

Labels: audiobooks, fiction, superstar books

Into the Volcano by Don Wood - review

Into the Volcano by Don Wood

Into the Volcano is an intense mystery-adventure coming-of-age chapter book in comic book style - something of a departure for Don Wood, the illustrator of such picture books as Piggies and The Napping House.

Two brothers, Duffy and Sumo, visit their mysterious aunt in Hawaii, who sends them off on a perilous expedition into the bowels of an erupting volcano, accompanied by strangers whose skills are obvious, but whose trustworthiness is not.

The dangers faced by the boys are terrifying, especially an interlude during which Sumo, wracked by guilt and indecision after he thinks his brother has fallen to his death, is trapped in the dark on an underground cliff, and is visited by the specter of Death. That the children have been exposed to such peril knowingly by the adult who has been entrusted with their care is a dark vein running through the story.

A prose book with this content would probably be suitable for children in grades 3 to 5, and in fact, Sumo and Duffy appear to be no older than nine or ten, but Wood’s artwork brings the perils they face into startling focus, making the book more suitable for grades 5 to 7.

Keenly observed depictions of the Hawaiian landscape and geological processes lend an impressive veracity to this exciting and unusual offering; Into the Volcano is a rare example of a graphic novel for young people that is neither manga nor mainstream.

Labels: adventure, age: Grade5 and up, boy books, diverse cultures, graphic novels

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

Gifts for girls

Girls can be hard to buy for. They're picky! We're picky - us girls. Here are some things to think about when you're buying for girls.

Is she an animal lover?
Korgi by Christian Slade. For anyone age maybe 5 or 6 and up, up, up. Wordless, but not toothless. Unbelievably adorable little corgi dog and his girl (who has wings but I wouldn't call her a fairy) get into trouble with monsters and squidlike aliens and scrap their way out. Black and white, but that doesn't seem to be a problem with this title. And Korgi Book 2 is even better than the first.

Does she like action?
Rapunzel's Revenge by three Hales. Mmm, call this 10 and up. There are bullets and a hint of romance. Also wit. And BEAUTIFUL, detailed color art. I think this is one of the best graphic novels of the year.

The Lost Island of Tamarindby Nadia Aguilar. Age 10 and up. Reviewed earlier.

Any interest in cooking?
The Spatulatta Cookbook. Age 7 and up, but you might be able to push it younger if there is an interested grownup in the house. This is last year's excellent cookbook for kids, but nothing this year tops it. It's two sisters doing the cooking, and they're in most of the pictures, fooling around, demonstrating, having a good time. It's spiral bound, which is so great for cookbooks. And the pictures make the food look appetizing, not weird. The best kid cookbook I've seen this year is Southern Living Kids Cookbook, which kind of surprised me.

Into mysteries?
Ottoline and the Yellow Cat by Chris Riddell. Age 7 and up. Heavily illustrated, this is kind of a bridge book between First Chapter type books and regular chapter books. A lot of the clues are in the crinkly, detailed pictures, which is super fun.

The Far-Flung Adventures series by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. Age 9 and up. Not as heavily illustrated, super sense of humor. I know an entire class of seven year olds who pushed their reading ability so that they could read one of these books together, and they all loved it.

The 39 Clues. Age 9 and up. Ok ok it's gimmicky as all get-out, with the cards, and the online thing, and the actual prizes, but kids are lapping it up and the authors that are participating are first-rate. Plus the characters are interesting and strongly-written, and the plot is respectably labyrinthine.

Is she curious about the world?
What the World Eats. From the team that brought us Material World: A Global Family Portrait back in 1995 - you know, the book that showed families all over the world in their houses, and with all their stuff brought outside for a picture? Holy crap, we should do that with our house, and see what we can leave out on the curb. But anyway. The new book has the same lush, colorful, giant pictures, the same potent juxtapositions, and results in the same sense of insight about wealth, and health, and opportunity.

And once those insights have been attained, there's Give a Goat, a picture book for kids maybe first grade and up that's all about Heifer International. The kid in the book organizes his class to raise money so that they can purchase a goat via Heifer. Touches on teamwork, responsibility, compassion, arithmetic, and economics. A terrific accompanying gift if you yourself give flocks of chicks for the holidays.

Oh, you've got a teen girl to buy for?
Sorry, you're screwed. Can't make a teen happy. Amazon gift card, baby. That way, if she spends it on The Twilight Saga: Slipcased, you don't have to know about it.

Ahem. Did you really think I was going to leave you in the lurch like that? Naw... here are just a couple ideas for teenage girls.

Crafty crafter?

Get her to make me one of those mohawk hats, will ya?

Not so adeptly crafty, and not as much of an anarchist?

Cute but not kawaii.

Writer?

Ignore the stupid title, this one is an excellent how-to for self-expression, covering technical aspects as well as inspiration.

Artist?

Buy her art supplies, but throw in this one for inspiration.

I'd be tempted to buy actress/mathematician Danica McKellar's new book, Kiss My Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who's Boss, for a middle school or teen girl, but I'd be afraid it'd look like I was being all preachy. If you can get away with it, you should. The book is legitimately funny and helpful and hard to put down! Who'd'a guessed?

And if she sometimes feels the pressure:

It's wonderful. It's a year in the life of several high school students in Chicago - it's like a reality show with a writer.

Stay tuned for the boy books.
Your pal,
your neighborhood librarian

Labels: age: adult children, age: Grade1 and up, age: Grade3 and up, age: Grade5 and up, fiction, gift books, girl books, graphic novels, mystery, nonfiction, YA

The Lost Island of Tamarind by Nadia Aguiar - review

The Lost Island of Tamarind by Nadia Aguiar
Oh, boy! Oh boy oh boy oh boy! For kids who like their adventure with a little adventure thrown in, with a shot of adventure in a test tube shoved down in the middle to add in later after the adventure gets diluted by the melting ice!

No, wait, that's a Key West piña colada - there is no ice in this book. BUT - the Lost Island in question, somewhere within the Bermuda Triangle, IS vivid and unpredictable, full of characters who are lost, or found, or looking for their lost shaker of salt... just like Key West. Instead of Hemingway's six-toed cats, there are flying fish and giants and thuggish apes.

And not only is the setting marvelous - with a fabulist retro vibe reminiscent of Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, or Edgar Rice Burroughs - but the characters are full, modern, and believable. Our heroes are Maya and her younger brother Simon, who have been stranded on the island after their marine biologist parents were swept overboard in a storm. In some ways they are your typical brother-sister team (think Cryptid Hunters, The 39 Clues, The London Eye Mystery), sometimes chafing against each other, sometimes working together as smoothly as only family can. But these characters have an astringent emotional core: their mom and dad are missing, and Maya and Simon are worried. Too many books and movies get the parents out of the way so that the plot can proceed, and you could almost forget that there ever were parents. Not so here: Maya's anxiety wafts through The Lost Island of Tamarind like acrid smoke through the jungle.

In addition, the kids are carrying and caring for their baby sister, who, although a remarkably easy-going nine-month-old, is not some super-baby à la Sunny in A Series of Unfortunate Events. The hardships faced by these young people ring true, and they surmount them using skills consonant with their background and age. Having grown up on a boat, they both can read a ship's log and navigate (and change a diaper), and Simon is a star at knots, but neither is a genius, and they each have their flaws.

I have been pressing The Lost Island of Tamarind into the hands of every eager reader who has come my way recently. There are enough ooh-aah moments (mermaids!) to satisfy the fantasy readers, but not so many as to put off the anti-swords contingent. It's astonishing to me that this is Nadia Aguiar's first book: the sweet, lush setting and the sharp, clean characters make one fine tropical cocktail. I want another.

Labels: adventure, age: Grade3 and up, fantasy, fiction, superstar books

Madapple by Christina Meldrum - review

Madapple by Christina Meldrum
If I were to booktalk Madapple to a bored-looking teen, I might do it like this:

There's this girl, Aslaug, and she's been raised by her mother, in, like, total isolation. Her mother's part crazy and part witchy and part smart. Then the mother dies. And since the mother and the daughter had this weird hermitty life, curtains nailed over the windows and using leaves for soap and stuff, at first the cops think the daughter killed her. But she didn't. And it kind of gets weirder from there, especially when she meets this completely hot cousin she never knew she had, who falls in love with her. Also there's lots of drugs.

I don't know. I guess that's how I'd do it. I'd probably leave out the rape that isn't really a rape, and all the information about the medicinal and spiritual uses of native plants (which is pretty interesting), and the courtroom testimony that is interspersed with Aslaug's first-person account (which is larded with more objections than an old Perry Mason), and the mystery of Aslaug's conception that, I swear, is a mystery to everyone in the book but which the reader will figure out literally in the first five pages.

My colleague Eerily Similar Paula (who I used to call Other Paula, but I didn't like that, and besides now I can abbreviate her to ESP) passed this book to me. I get most of my weird YA fiction from her nowadays. Typically, she'll hand me the book, and wearing a skeptical squint, will say, "See what you think."

Back at ya, babe: try The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs.

Labels: fiction, girl books, YA

It's dizzying

Pink Me readers (all both of you!) may be suffering from a recent drought of Pink Me reviews. Me, too. Believe me, I thought that with both kids in school this year I'd be reviewing nonstop. And I have, well kinda.

I review for School Library Journal in addition to reviewing for Pink Me, and SLJ has recently blessed me with THREE largish nonfiction series. Serieses? Well, three sets of nonfiction books. So, yeah, that's taken up a lot of time.

I've also started to receive ARC's from publishers, and man, there's nothing so tempting as a brand-new book that isn't out yet. Unfortunately, I rip right through them, review them, and then realize they won't be available until like April! So those reviews are waiting in the wings.

In addition, I've been on something of a YA reading jag lately. I read two YA novels involving incest in like a week. Eeeurgh. Haven't really gotten to the point that I can write reviews of those yet.

Also, this is the time of year that our school library figures out its budget, and I get to pick the new books we're going to buy this year. It's so much fun, but it's heartbreaking too, because given the money we have, I have to cross a lot of fine books off the list. So I've taken the time to revisit some of the books that have been on my list during the past year, and I've been researching some of the topics that the teachers will be focusing on. Anyone know a good middle school book on the birth of democracy? Yeah, me neither!

And just today, I got word that I'll be a Cybils panelist! I'm very excited about this - I'll be on the graphic novels panel. I've been a comics reader for about twenty years now, and I feel like I can look at a graphic novel and really understand some of the artist's and writer's choices.

So look for those YA novels to be reviewed soon, and hopefully LOTS of graphic novels, and a terrific picture book called Amadi's Snowman, and I finally read The London Eye Mystery. That one should be in every school library.

Thank you for your patience and your kind support.

Labels: cybils

Vacation reading

Ah! We are back from two weeks in various cities and beaches in the American Southeast, and did we have time to read? We did!

I read:

So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld
Loved it! The whole "cool hunter" thing is a bit nineties, but you gotta love a good mystery, and a good mystery that is full of cool stuff is even better. Also, Westerfeld's examination of the co-opting of youth trends for mass consumption is straight out of Commodify Your Dissent, a compendium by the folks at The Baffler that every teenager should read before cracking that next can of Monster Mixxd Energy Juice.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
(reviewed while I was on vacation in New Orleans, thank you very much)

Farthing by Jo Walton
Technically a grown-up book, I would recommend Farthing to any young adult reader interested in speculative fiction, history, or mystery. It's an illuminating "what-if" novel set in an England that has accepted Hitler's "Peace with Honor" - disguised as an old-fashioned English country house mystery: Gosford Park meets Brazil. There are many discussions involving sexuality, i.e. who is homosexual and who is not, but no sex.

The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones by Anthony Bourdain
Essays by the author of Kitchen Confidential and The Bobby Gold Stories. I recommend the crap out of Tony Bourdain - but not, typically, for kids. There's the language, not to mention the extremely frank talk about sex and drugs. There are some teenagers, though, especially the ones considering restaurant careers... hey, they should know what they're getting into!

My rising 2nd grader read:

Black Lagoon adventures, books 1-7 by Mike Thaler ; illustrated by Jared Lee
The kid is giggling to himself as he goes through and then reading passages out loud to his younger brother. I'm taking that as a thumbs-up.

My husband read:

How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein
Recommended road trip reading. At every state border, as we hollered out "Good-bye, Georgia!" and "Hello, Alabama!" Bob would have some anecdotal treasure to relate about battles, topography, bureaucratic snafus, and the duplicitousness of Virginia. Luckily, he kept most of them to himself. (I kid! I kid!)

Also, he read The Economist. Also the newspaper. On the beach. I swear, one of these days I'm going to strap him to a chair and force Robert Ludlum down his throat. Or... eww.

On audio:
Our faithful minivan transported us a grand total of 2875 miles. And did we listen to books in the car? We did!

We spent most of our time in the car with Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan. We got through The Lightning Thief, The Sea of Monsters, and The Titan's Curse.

My boys, who are 5 and 6 years old, now know the traits and attributes of all the major Greek gods and a fair number of the minor ones. They cried out for "more Percy" every time we got into the car. Unfortunately for my husband and I, the narrator, Jesse Bernstein, is... well. In addition to a gritted-teeth Queens accent that would make Archie Bunker proud (shtreet, frushtrated, firmiliar, foward, bedgeroom), the guy continually misplaces the emphasis in sentences and phrases. Also? A word to audio book producers? When your narrator encounters the word "ichor" and pronounces it "icker"? Stop the tape and look it up. He does animal voices really well, though.

And at bedtime:
Since the boys share a room, I can read to them both at bedtime, usually a long chapter book, while they fall asleep in their beds. I have read Nurse Matilda, The True Meaning of Smekday, and A Hat Full of Sky in this way. My Boov voice was irresistable, as I predicted, but the Nac Mac Feegles nearly did me in.

On the road I started reading the second Skulduggery Pleasant book, Playing with Fire. I am pleased to report that it is starting out just as sardonic and action-packed as the first book, and I am proud to say that I am working Skulduggery's deep velvet voice almost as well as Rupert Degas, who read that first book so amazingly well that we replayed sections again and again.

Here's to beach chairs, lounge chairs by the pool, couches in shady living rooms. Anywhere you get a chance to just sit and read. That's vacation, baby.

Labels: age: adult children, age: Grade1 and up, age: Grade3 and up, audiobooks, boy books, fantasy, fiction, mystery, superstar books, YA

The adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson - review

The adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

Interesting. The adoration of Jenna Fox is many things. It is:

• a young adult speculative fiction novel for girls who don't like science fiction

a coming-of-age novel for people who eschew the touchy-feely (me!)

a medical thriller, fully as suspenseful as early Robin Cook

a meditation on choices nearly as profound as Walden, which it frequently quotes

And I think it is, very subtly, a pro-life statement.

Now, I, like the reviewers at SLJ, Publishers Weekly, The Horn Book, etc., and my colleague Other Paula, who recommended it to me, enjoyed this book. I liked Jenna, who has awoken from a coma with no memory, and who struggles to assimilate information that will help her interpret her world and make sense of her often conflicting impressions. I enjoyed watching her evaluate her former life, explore her new life, and forge a new identity from the best pieces of both. The near-future world that Pearson has invented, full of genetically engineered species and antibiotic-resistant bacteria and oxygenated transplant gel loaded with neurochips, is both believable and intriguing. And I thought that "waking from a coma" was a serviceable metaphor for teenagers just beginning to realize that they are not merely extensions of (or reactions against) their parents, and that they can choose what kind of person to be.

But although this book is a suspenseful, thrilling read, I went through it slowly, because there's a lot going on in it beyond the mystery of Jenna's past. Specifically, the frequent ethics discussions merit very close attention.

In Jenna's world, "Science" (it almost wears a capital S in this book) is responsible for the disappearance of native species and an epidemic that killed a quarter of the world's population. In response, the federal government has enacted laws and created an ethics board that controls access to and application of advanced medical treatments. To ensure equitable access, a point system is in place, under which every person is assigned 100 points. Medical procedures use up those points: physicians decide whether a person 'needs', say, biofeedback software for their prosthetic limbs, or a kidney, or a heart transplant, based on how many points they have left.

Jenna is the daughter of a biotechnology billionaire, and she has recovered from a truly devastating car accident. I don't think I'm giving away too much of the plot when I say that Jenna has exceeded her points.

This fact, along with various revelations pertaining to what was lost and what recovered from Jenna's body after the crash, as well as a quadruple amputee whom she meets at school, and the fate of her best friends from before the accident, leads Jenna to question her right - and desire - to be alive.

I was skating right along with Jenna, feeling her dilemmas, rejoicing in her rebellions, all the way up to the book's ending, an artificial-feeling happy coda set two hundred and forty years later. 240 years is a long time: long enough, presumably, for a character to gain complete perspective. And 240 years later, Jenna is content with her choices, and the world's society backs her up. She muses on faith and science, and thinks that they are two sides of the same coin. At this point, I thought to myself, "'Faith'? Was this book about faith?" Earlier in the book, Jenna wondered if she had a soul, and her grandmother is Catholic... and then I realized that Jenna's post-coma memories include events that happened before she could talk: a near-drowning as a toddler, her baptism, and... being in her mother's womb. This representation of a fetus's perceptions and feelings is extremely provocative and, amid Pearson's well-written examinations of the meaning and value of human life, I think it's unnecessary. It made me go back and re-examine all of the science and ethics in the book.

I feel sure that Mary Pearson did not write The Adoration of Jenna Fox (although, if that title isn't Jesus-y enough for you, I'll write the sequel, and call it Ecce Jenna) as Christian or pro-life propaganda.

Until that ending, I would even say that her presentation of the ethical issues faced by the characters is basically balanced - though that point system thing rather reeks of pro-life rhetoric. If the book had been left open-ended, I would recommend it without reservation. It could be used in many terrific science-class discussion topics (some of which are listed in the discussion guide, some, not). Teen literature should challenge convictions, should poke holes in the status quo.

But resolving Jenna's ethical conflicts - presenting her choice as the one right choice - damages the credibility of the book. Sure, "it's just fiction," but I'd like to give this book more credit than that. You quote Walden that much, you kind of better be prepared to defend your choices.

Labels: fiction, girl books, science fiction, YA

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow - review

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Marcus is the kind of kid whose best friend gets him a biography of Alan Turing for his fourteenth birthday. A boy who spoofs gait-recognition software by putting gravel in his shoes. He's the kid who hacked the spyware-infested and adware-infested laptops the school system provides. Smart and sneaky, Marcus might as well have been born with a Question Authority bumper sticker slapped across his butt. Not the kind of kid to take five days of detention and questioning (aka imprisonment and browbeating) by the Department of Homeland Security lying down.

Cory Doctorow weaves a lot of interesting set pieces, e-culture references, and technical explanations into this tale of cyber disobedience and the power of ideas. I guarantee that any reader will learn something new. You may know what a Sailor Moon outfit looks like, and you may understand how public keys work and how to make them. You may have read about how to make a video camera sniffer using a toilet paper tube on Instructables (and in fact, that Instructable may have been written by Marcus), but... how's your Bayesian analysis? Did you know that your digital camera "signs" each shot with unique metadata - meaning your every capture can be traced back to your machine? And did you know that Kerouac wrote On the Road on a big long scroll of paper?

Well, ok, everyone knows that last one.

Little Brother is a terrific adventure. Its protagonist is resourceful and brilliant but also thoughtful and real. But what really distinguishes this book is the voice of Cory Doctorow, patiently and passionately explaining why privacy is important, why dissent is crucial to democracy, and what can happen when we forget that. Oh, and he also slags Microsoft without hesitation every chance he gets - giving the book that whiff of honesty that teens crave.

Like Halting State for teens. Like So Yesterday for geeks. Like 1984 for today (and with a happier ending). And when they're finished with this one, start 'em on Gibson and Philip K. Dick.

Labels: age: adult children, age: Grade5 and up, boy books, fiction, mystery, science, superstar books, YA

Tuff Fluff: The case of Duckie's missing brain by Scott Nash - review

Tuff Fluff: The case of Duckie's missing brain by Scott Nash

Thank goodness for Scott Nash. With this book, the first of a series, the illustrator of the Flat Stanley books shows that he, like his late partner in crime, out there thinking of the first graders. Not everybody is. I mean, I love Elephant and Piggie very much, but I bet that when Mo Willems's daughter grows out of Beginning Readers he'll move on to kids' graphic novels (please? that would be really great!). In fact, I wonder if, after my kids grow out of Beginning Readers, if I'm going to continue trolling those aisles for something, anything fun and readable and cool-looking.

Well, hopefully, Scott Nash will always be there for the little guys.

My recent graduate of first grade snatched up Tuff Fluff as soon as he saw it, plopped right down on the floor, and started reading it to his younger brother. That's the highest endorsement I know.

Labels: age: Grade1 and up, Beginning Reader, funny, mystery

Kingdom Keepers by Ridley Scott - review

Kingdom Keepers by Ridley Scott.
There are a few things my husband and I believe we will never do. We will never live outside of the city limits. We will never go on a cruise. We will never go to a Disney park.

I don't feel like I'm missing anything, really, by hewing to these few resolutions. They're not iron-clad, anyway - I have an idea that in twenty years, that cruise is going to look a lot more attractive. And in lieu of that third item, I sometimes read about Disney World. I love hearing about the tunnels, and the staff in-jokes. Cory Doctorow is pretty much my Disney lens. That guy is obsessed. His Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a book I recommend to young adult and adult readers all the time.

Kingdom Keepers provides another neato, after-the-park-is-closed view of Disney World, and that is FUN. Here's the premise: Finn, our main character, along with his 4 middle-school colleagues, is tasked with solving a riddle and obtaining a magic talisman in order to thwart the evil forces threatening to take over the Magic Kingdom and beyond.

There is an inscrutable old man to serve as guide. There is an inscrutable and heart-stoppingly beautiful young woman (two, actually) to cause Finn to question motives and loyalties. There are thrilling chases through darkened rides. BUT. Kingdom Keepers suffers from a paradigm conflict. On the one hand, there are those meddling kids, using logic and detective work to solve the mysteries, figure out who the bad guys are, and plan their moves... but on the other hand, there's one heck of a lot of magic going on: Finn, who is part hologram, can from time to time walk through walls and stuff; and the villain (Maleficent, the evil witch from I think Sleeping Beauty) can throw fireballs, fly, and crash network servers.

In general, when you pit the human detective against the supernatural villain, it becomes really difficult to make the detective's methods seem worthwhile. Unless you set up very clear (and tedious) rules, magic is enough of a deus ex machina that it can knock your detective's deductions into a cocked hat. It's why Batman rarely comes up against bad guys with supernatural powers – he battles human criminals who make weird wardrobe decisions, not elemental forces gone berserk. Like fights like.

I could come up with other examples here – John Constantine comes to mind – but I just read WIRED magazine today and I keep thinking of the geek who got an entire convention full of gaming nerds to put on an impromptu re-enactment of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And I don't want to be that guy.

Further, Kingdom Keepers suffers from open-end-itis. When you've finished the book, a number of questions are left hanging - Who was she? How come that worked? That kind of sequel-bait to me is just cheating.

In conclusion. Kingdom Keepers. Let me put it this way: it's just exactly like Scooby-Doo. Five kids, an empty amusement park, costumed villains trying to take over – except there's no use ripping the mask off that pirate – he's an Audio-Animatronic.

Bonus for you: animated LEGO Monty Python.

Labels: adventure, age: Grade3 and up, fiction, mystery

Un Lun Dun by China Miéville - review

I found an interview with China Miéville on YouTube in which he describes Un Lun Dun as falling within the tradition of the unexpected journey / heroic quest book. This is definitely true - substitute a dank boiler room for an ornate wardrobe or a rabbit hole (hello up there!), and you're on your way. Fans of books like that will love Un Lun Dun.

However. Un Lun Dun subverts a whole batch of those tropes, starting with the "Prince of the Blood" thing. Aren't you a little tired of the quiet but beautiful kid inevitably turning out to be something greater once removed from her own context?

In this book, the prophesied Chosen One gets bonked on the head in the first fight and is out of the action. Hey, a surprise! Not only does this make room for a less obvious hero to emerge, but it pitches all the other characters' preconceptions about the coming conflict into a cocked hat. Plus, we the readers don't have to suffer through an endless series of riddling prophesies and seemingly pointless quests whose Real Lessons are revealed Later.

That's all well and good for aficionados of this type of book, who will revel in the classic plot devices turned upside down and shaken like British babies. But I will be shoving this book at all kinds of readers (including adults) - I think that it packs in so many mini-elements of delight and mystery (there's a term for this, and I forget what it is), that any reader will be hooked from page to page. You find this in Suzanne Collins' Gregor the Overlander books, and, most spectacularly, in Harry Potter.

That video is a little disconcerting, isn't it? China Miéville looks like Woody Harrelson in Natural Born Killers.

Labels: adventure, age: adult children, age: Grade3 and up, black kids, diverse cultures, diversity, fantasy, fiction, superstar books, YA

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy, read by Rupert Degas - review

Gosh, it seems like I've just hated everything I've read lately, doesn't it? Peter and the Starcatchers got the big raspberry, I got all kvetchy about Peak, and The Name of this Book is Secret just didn't ring any bells for me. I haven't even put up my review of The Kingdom Keepers by Ridley Pearson, and just as a preview? it's not 100% positive either.

All of which is kind of funny, because the two books I've got going right now? Sweet! I'm reading Un Lun Dun by China Mieville, and we've been listening to Skulduggery Pleasant in the car.

Skulduggery Pleasant is Derek Landy's first book for children, and the second is already in the can, which is a Very Good Thing. His characters are broadly drawn, meaty, yet precise - like Chinese calligraphy done with a big fat brush dripping with ink. The dialogue is snappy, with some fun deconstructionist bits; and the plot is just twisty enough: not even the very close listener Mr. Four could find any holes.

But the real revelation here is Skulduggery Pleasant himself, a several-hundred-year-old living skeleton working as a freelance detective. He's urbane. He's competent. He's noble. He knows it. And his wit is very, very, very dry. He puts me in mind of James Bond, if Clive Owen had gotten the job. Or Indiana Jones, perhaps as played by Hugh Grant.

It's fairly unusual in contemporary children's literature to find a leading man per se: that is, an adult male that carries the book. Adult males are villains (say, Voldemort), or guides (Dumbledore), or surrogate fathers who aren't around much either (Sirius Black), but it's usually the eleven-year-old orphan who is the center of attention. Skulduggery Pleasant is written from the point of view of its main female character, an eleven-year-old girl named Stephanie Edgely, but it's Skul who drives the action. He's more than a mere guide for Stephanie. It's interesting, and I think it's because Derek Landy's background is in screenwriting rather than children's literature. My guess is that nobody told him.

Which is not to say that Stephanie falls by the wayside. More than your usual preternaturally resourceful girl protagonist, she is written from the inside out, and feels very real, though a bit devoid of background. Even her parents, bit players for sure, are people who you feel you kind of know.

A word about the audio edition - GET THE AUDIO EDITION. Like the Lemony Snicket books read by Tim Curry, it has original music: deep, jazzy bass, thumps of percussion, fingersnaps and distant screams; and, also like those books, it is read by a MASTER of vocal characterization.

Rupert Degas is apparently a voice superstar in the UK, with everything from Bob the Builder to Haruki Murakami on his resume, but this is the first time I've heard him. He reads an Irish tween girl as convincingly as an adult woman from London, and he has a vast repertoire of deep, hoarse, whispery, creaky, etc. that he gleefully applies to everyone else in the book. The cackling, gibbering, transforming Troll under Westminster Bridge should win this guy an Audie all by itself. We've played that chapter "about a hundred and sixty-seven times, and it KEEPS GETTING FUNNIER EVERY SINGLE TIME"!

When we finished the audio book this afternoon, my two boys and I were left craving more Skulduggery, and there it was! a bonus track featuring an interview with the man himself: relaxed, egotistical, coy, and dead-on funny. Can't wait for the sequel.

Labels: adventure, age: adult children, age: Grade3 and up, boy books, funny, mystery, superstar books

The Name of this Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch - review

The Name of this Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch
Two kids, not popular at school, become unlikely allies in their quest to solve a mystery, foil creepy villains, face peril, etc etc yes we know.

More than anything else, this book reminded me of Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett. The main characters are more prickly than appealing at first, and maintain their less-pleasant quirks throughout the book, which is nice to see, for a change. Often, authors will drop that stuff once they've established the character as an “individual” and the plot takes off. There are lots of riddles and lots of abstruse knowledge, in this case about people with sensory differences, especially synesthesia. A pretty unusual topic to find in a kids' book, and hey! I'm all for interesting information tidbits tucked into the plot.

My kids thought it was just as funny as could be, and the plot was straightforward enough for them to follow. I wouldn't say that it was one for my all-time favorite list, but eh, it'll appeal to the funny mystery lovers.

Labels: adventure, age: Grade3 and up, audiobooks, fiction, funny, mystery

Victory, by Susan Cooper - review

Victory by Susan Cooper. When I was a kid, I read Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series at least once a year starting in 5th grade. There's a movie of the first book out, a movie that apparently poops all over the plot and characters, which is a darn shame, because they're wonderful. My imagination developed like a print in a darkroom because of those books.

Now, I clearly remember that it was 5th grade when I first read The Dark is Rising, because I did a book report on it for Mrs. Milloff's class. Mrs. Milloff was really large and really really short, and kind of grey and hairy to boot, plus she had a fierce New York accent. She would have easily fit in at Hogwarts. Maybe that's where she's teaching now. I liked her, and oh sure, she was unforgettable.

So it was with some surprise that I spotted Victory by Susan Cooper on the New Books shelf. I mean, 5th grade was 30 years ago (I am shocked to realize). It's the same Susan Cooper, I checked. But this book is not about semi-mystical peril in the Welsh countryside, it's about Admiral Nelson. Ugh you say. Certainly Ugh I said. Naval history, god, I think only my father reads it, and I'm pretty sure he reads it so that he'll have at least one subject that he is sure to know more about than anyone within earshot.

But I read it out of loyalty to Susan Cooper, and it turned out to be a real page-turner. It's told by alternating narrators: Sam, a young crewmember on board Victory, Admiral Nelson's ship; and Molly, a lonely 21st century girl recently transplanted to Connecticut from her home in England. The descriptions are vivid and believable and the action is quick and exciting. As with many novels based on actual events, the book has to go to some manufactured lengths to inject suspense towards the end, but that is a very minor issue that most kid readers will not resent. And that cover, well, it's handsome, but a bit cryptic for my younger patrons.

Victory takes pride of place on my list of historical fiction to recommend to young readers who either like historical fiction or are required to read some for school. Thumbs up.

Labels: age: Grade5 and up, boy books, fiction, historical fiction, mystery

Some favorites for Kindergartners

Big Man and I came up with this list just before xmas and I thought I'd share. If you have a kid, select books for kids, or like to read picture books (they're totally underrated!) these are some good ones. I have a board book list too, I'll probably post that next week.

• Chickerella by Mary Jane Auch and Herm Auch. Cool art, and at the end the heroine goes into business with the prince!
• Maxwell's Mountain by Shari Becker and Nicole E. Wong. Excellent for discussing projects and planning and reaching past your boundaries.
• The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest by Lynne Cherry
• Mixed Beasts by Kenyon Cox and Wallace Edwards. Beautiful, witty illustrations, full of little jokes.
• Ruby Sings the Blues by Niki Daly. Gotta be ready to holler along with Ruby if you're gonna read this one aloud.
• The Yellow Balloon by Charlotte Desmatons. Fun for all ages. A bottomless source of story and detail, with no words at all!
• Charlie Cook's Favorite Book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. Clever and fun celebration of reading.
• Gakky Two-Feet by Micky Dolenz. The guy from the Monkees writes a book about pre-humans!
• Extinct Files, The: My Science Project by Wallace Edwards
• Josias, Hold the Book by Jennifer Riesmeyer Elvgren and Nicole Tadgell. A little boy in Haiti learns the value of education. Sweet.
• Ellsworth's Extraordinary Electric Ears by Valorie Fisher. Cool-looking and full of vocabulary-building detail.
• Eddie's Garden and How to Make Things Grow by Sarah Garland. A really nice gardening story, with good science mixed in.
• In the Woods: Who's Been Here? (Mulberry Books) by Lindsay Barrett George. All of the Lindsay Barrett George picture books are so amazing. This one shows you how to draw conclusions from details of your surroundings.
• The Monster Show: Everything You Never Knew About Monsters by Charise Mericle Harper. Monsters in underpants, heh heh.
• Prehistoric Actual Size by Steve Jenkins. The best use of Steve Jenkins' collage illustration style I've seen yet.
• The Worm Family (Bccb Blue Ribbon Picture Book Awards (Awards)) by Tony Johnston and Stacy Innerst. Say it loud! We're worms and we're proud!
• SuperHero ABC by Bob McLeod. Faithful to old-style comic book illustration and concept.
• If You Decide To Go To The Moon (Booklist Editor's Choice. Books for Youth (Awards)) by Faith Mcnulty and Steven Kellogg. Facts about space travel and the moon, with an environmental message.
• Harvey Potter's Balloon Farm by Jerdine Nolen. I like everything by Jerdine Nolen, but this trippy little offering is especially sweet.
• Fancy Nancy: Bonjour, Butterfly (Fancy Nancy) by Jane O'Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser. Celebrating individuality and the concept of more is more.
• Captain Raptor and the Moon Mystery by Kevin O’Malley & Patrick O’Brien. Gorgeous paintings and a real page-turner to boot.
• Seen Art? by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. Kid goes to MoMA.
• Mommy? by Maurice Sendak. Totally indulgent pop-up book. Spin the mummy!
• The Ravenous Beast by Niamh Sharkey. One of the first books a pre-reader can narrate himself, taking cues from the rhythm of the text and the pictures on the page.
• Wild About Books (Irma S and James H Black Honor for Excellence in Children's Literature (Awards)) by Judy Sierra. What's not to love about a ponytailed librarian in hot pink pants parking her bookmobile at the zoo? The insect haiku is a crackup.
• Henny-Penny by Jane Wattenberg. Shake, rattle, and roll! Use a whole lot of crazy hepcat voices to read this crack-a-lackin' version out loud.
• Dear Mr. Rosenwald by Carole Boston Weatherford. Did you know that the Sears, Roebuck founder funded hundreds of black schools across the South? I didn't.
• Flotsam (Caldecott Medal Book) by David Wiesner. Another wordless, mind-expanding book from David Wiesner, maybe his best so far.
• Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems. Great role-reversal for kids - they're the ones saying "No!" and you the reader get to have a tantrum in the middle of the book.
• Leonardo, the Terrible Monster (Ala Notable Children's Books. Younger Readers (Awards)) by Mo Willems. Leonardo is a terrible monster because he's bad at it. Sweet without being gross.
• Nothing to Do by Douglas Wood and Wendy Halperin. Celebrating the kind of things kids get up to when their minds are allowed to wander.
• Ruby's Wish by Shirin Yim and Sophie Blackall. Inspiring true story about a Chinese girl who wants more than her traditional role dictates.

Labels: age: PreK - Grade3, picture books, superstar books

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

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsberg - review

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is my favorite book of all time. In it, two kids, Jamie and Claudia, decide to run away from home. Since they're smart and practical (not to mention snobbish and greedy) and don't want to end up on a curb in Times Square, they plan to run away to a place that's indoors and has some of the comforts of home. They pick the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Isn't that great? That's a thought process that basically makes sense. And you can tell right off that this is not going to be your hijinky plot-driven pratfall novel - they don't run away to the circus, they run away to an art museum. E. L. Konigsberg writes great books, with sharp characters, but this is her genius work. An unpleasant, geeky girl with a violin case and an annoying little brother goes into an art museum - and that's the premise for a successful, beloved kids book? Dag.

What keeps this book going, and what fascinated me as a kid, is the view of the off-hours museum through Claudia's eyes. Claudia is a pretty dissatisfied kid, and in the peace and beauty and mystery of the museum, she has a chance to get out of her crabby self and become absorbed in the beautiful, weird, storied objects that surround her. She gets to touch and examine precious things that are usually off-limits, and in the process, one object stops her in her tracks - a small sculpture of an angel.

When it was my turn, my object was Cupid and Psyche by Jacques Louis David.

I came around a corner in the Cleveland Museum of Art, looking for something to write a paper on for ARTH103, and this baby popped me right in the eye. It's enormous, for one thing, and very detailed, almost realistic. Cupid is climbing out of bed, smirking - yeah, he tapped that - and now he's trying to get out of there without waking her. I believe I met this painting before I met my husband, but this is kind of what my husband looked like when he was 19, when we met (minus the smirk, he would insist I point out).

Claudia wants to learn everything there is to know about "her" angel, and in the process discovers something that only the titular Mrs. Frankweiler knows (looking back, Mrs. Frankweiler had to be a registrar - registrars are consistently the coolest, geekiest people in all art museums I've come across). Though the angel isn't really Claudia's, this secret knowledge is. The process of discovery, the possession of knowledge, and her intimacy with the object change her, showing her what is best and noblest in her nature.

When I had my Art History classes in the basement of the Cleveland Museum, I would leave through a set of very high, very heavy double doors. I'd run down the wide marble steps that led to the Lagoon. I was usually the only person there, and at those moments, I always felt like Claudia - I felt like I lived in that museum, and that all the treasures inside of it were mine. Eventually, I spent so much time with those objects that, like Claudia, I did own them in a way. I sat in front of paintings and tapestries and Japanese woodcuts for hours, desperately hoping to find enough to say about each object to fill a ten-page paper.

I am not a spiritual person. Maybe I'm the antithesis of spiritual - I'm a physical person. I believe in the transformative power of knowledge, and I believe that firsthand observation is the best way to gain that knowledge.

When you can take time to absorb the textures and smells of an object, you can absorb its language, feel the actions that made it, and figure out which questions to ask. You can meet its maker.

Me, I know the political climate that Jacques Louis David painted in - I know why there are laurel leaves on Psyche's bed. I know what the missing letters in the Byzantine tapestry were, and I know what happened when the weaver was running out of room on the right side.

Don't get me wrong - it's not the trivia itself that I groove on. What I like is the way you can decode details of the artist's world backwards from the details of the work.

When I finally had a chance to decide what to do with my life, I chose to live in museums, like Claudia. That book showed me a place filled with intrigue and stories, a place where you could figure out things that nobody else knew.

I have spent a lot of time in Claudia's museum, both as a student and working there, and she was right -- knowing that place feels like having a big cool famous friend. It was a privilege every single time I went into the workrooms of any museum I worked in, from Birmingham to Brooklyn to Baltimore.

Maybe if I'd read a different book, a good book about a scientist kid, for example, I might have been a botanist (except I still would have flunked Calculus). But I read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and it changed my life.

Labels: age: Grade3 and up, fiction, mystery