unadulterated.us

Fierce Style: How to Be Your Most Fabulous Self by Christian Siriano - review

The fact that Christian Siriano went to prom with my longtime babysitter has NOTHING to do with how much I enjoyed leafing through this book. (It has everything to do with why I picked it up in the first place though - we miss you Marci! Hope they show Buffy on TV in Ecuador!)

Although the book is for the most part obviously written by a professional, and liberally studded with grating catchphrases that I'm sure are a lot more charming in person (if I never hear the phrase "hot mess" again I will weep not a single tear), there is plenty of real Christian in here. He lists Subway and T.G.I. Friday among his favorite places to eat, advises all women to wear heels all the time, and still has a place in his heart for Saved by the Bell. What do you think - was this tiny, marvelous, gay suburban Maryland kid a Screech or a Zack?

He also thanks my friend Kristen in the Acknowledgments - she teaches jewelry making where he and Marci went to high school. (And about those catchphrases? He provides a glossary: "I call everyone 'lady' because everyone has that inner lady who needs to wear full-length gloves and a bird hat." Here's where I shake my head and have to admit he has a point.)

I love his Manly List of Manly Things to Do: he advises buying a flannel shirt "red plaid only," buying a wallet, or playing a sport, like throwing a frisbee around in the park and then getting a frozen yogurt "with fun toppings!". At the end of the list he confesses "Okay, so apparently this is as manly-man as I get. I tried!" You have to appreciate a fellow who knows his strengths.

This. This is his strength.

In between the pictures of glamorous women and glamorous Siriano gowns (see above, the glamorous but non-model-sized Christina Hendricks, in a glamorous Siriano gown at the glamorous Golden Globes - designers who can dress non-model-sized people get my particular respect, and in this instance I venture to say the ex Mrs. Malcolm Reynolds has NEVER had her fabulous assets clad to such advantage) and snips of style advice from Tim Gunn, Vanessa Williams, Heidi Klum, and Whoopi Goldberg (of all people), there is advice about coping with disappointment and depression, finding your creative voice, and, of course, about making things work for you when you are just a little bit not like everybody else. I know a ton of teenagers who could benefit from the practical, hardworking, slightly self-indulgent advice in this book.

I picture Christian Siriano eighty years old, still tiny, still peering through his pushed-down glasses with that look of terrified resolve. He always looks like he knows damn well the situation calls for a suit and he is showing a flamenco dress, and if that flamenco dress isn't the most heart-stopping thing anyone has ever seen he is TOAST. Lucky for him, that flamenco dress is ALWAYS heart-stopping. At eighty, he will still be surrounded by towering, beautiful women, women hoping he will work his vision upon their bodies - the Valentino of the twenty-first century.

I kind of hope he will have stopped calling everyone "tranny" by then, though!

Time You Let Me In: 25 poets under 25, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye - review

Yes it's poetry. I don't like poetry as a rule, but by god I say yes to this:

...even when
the words grace me with their presence,
they don't always choose to step
delicately into the world, pink shoes
treading softly over the white horizon.
usually poetry slops lazily over the couch
of a page and dangles while I remove its muddy
shoes and rearrange the pillows, all the while
muttering something about Frost and how maybe
his comments against free verse were right
all along (poetry in rhyme always cleans up
after itself) although honestly, you haven't lived
until the homeless free-verse poem on your couch
decides to stay for a cup of tea and, if you're
lucky, lets you take notes on everything he says.

from "invitation" by Mackenzie Connellee, in Time You Let Me In

There's a butt-ton more of that where this comes from - meditations on the last photons from a dying star, the burning feeling of hiding and making out, joyrides and wine coolers, fitting in, learning, rebelling, parents, grandparents, and oh my god breathless love. Something about the sparkling grittiness of late youth - it's all coming at them so fast, no wonder all they have time for is poetry, little phrases of clarity captured on a car ride or lying in bed, strung together and looped across a window.

Here's another little bit:

as far back as I can remember
we've been pissed off,
the whole bloodline, just really pissed.

from "as far back as I can remember" by Jonah Ogles, in Time You Let Me In

If you could say "Good job!" in that delighted voice with the big smile in it that you give a three-year-old who zipped her own coat to a teenage or just-past-teenage poet (which you can't, not unless you want to hideously damage him or her), I would say "Good job!" to Lauren Eriks, who wrote:

I have bed knobs in my hands, portals,
doorways. I can leap over
buildings, baby, bouncing
through walls. I'm free as a
racing rubber ball. When I get lit
on the trail of your Camel cigarette,
you know I can break
every bottle, butt, bombshell around.

from "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" by Lauren Eriks, in Time You Let Me In.

As I write this, on this Spring night full of wind, there are teenagers vaulting from the parking garage to the roof of our library, trying doors and evading the cops. We are startled by their sudden presence, by the thump of their feet on our roof. Those kids will go home and write poetry. Or eat a Hot Pocket and play Rock Band and crack each other up re-telling what they just did. That's poetry too.

Poetry Friday is hosted today at The Drift Record.

Goldsmith's Daughter by Tanya Landman - review

Here's one for my antipodean girlcrush author Karen Healey, who wrote the excellent Guardian of the Dead (reviewed on Pink Me a couple months ago). Karen is always complaining that I find YA books and talk 'em up too well, and she is running out of book money. This is not criticism that I am too broken up about - push the sheep out of your way and go to the library!

So, for Karen, a book that I do not especially recommend:

Itacate is a teenage Aztec girl in the splendid city of Tenochtitlan, the daughter of a goldsmith, raised by him and by a nurse since the death of her mother. When we meet her, she is miserably navigating the inflexible rules, ironclad beliefs, and harsh punishments of Aztec society, at odds with the future decreed her by the circumstances of her birth and gender. She's terrible at weaving and making tortillas and wants to be a craftsman like her father.

Then the conquistadors show up, and everything is tossed into a cocked hat. As far as plot disruptors go, the arrival of conquistadors is right up there. Itacate's father, whose skills are waning, is called upon to provide more and more gold to appease the vicious and brutal Europeans, and Itacate must masquerade as a boy so that she may fill in for him. This is a dreadful transgression in Aztec terms, but gives the author the chance to place Itacate into situations she would not ordinarily witness.

There is a lot to like in this book. Ms. Landman skilfully works a luxury of detail into the story. All five senses are engaged by descriptions of the crowded marketplace, the floating fields, the smelly conquistadors and meticulously-groomed Aztec nobles, the gold and turquoise treasures - even the fighting and the food are depicted in vivid language. It is difficult, however, to shake one's distaste for Itacate's love life.

It goes like this: before the arrival of the conquistadors, who will eventually destroy her city, killing everyone she knows, Itacate has a vision of a blonde and blue-eyed youth. And what do you know, she meets this curly-haired young man on the very day that the bad guys march into town. His name is Francisco, and before he became a soldier in service to the Spanish crown, he was a goldsmith like herself. Itacate and Francisco get to know each other while creating a big gold Virgin Mary. He confesses that he despises his countrymen for their greed and brutality. He alone of all the soldiers eschews raping the locals, and he even bathes. He's a good Nazi.

One of the nice things about this book is that the Aztecs are depicted as living in close proximity to their spiritual beliefs, yet are not depicted as ignorant superstitious yokels, even as Itacate begins to examine her faith. In this context, Itacate's vision seems to lend the Spanish conquest a predestined quality. I suppose it is a difficult trick when writing historical fiction to present known events with any element of novelty or surprise. But the mystical quality of a vision is I think a bad choice - there is an implied authority that seems to excuse the Spanish just a little.

In addition, Itacate's response to Francisco's physical appearance feels blatantly Eurocentric: he is described as having "gleaming gold hair" and eyes "blue as the sky". Compared to every human being she has ever seen or could imagine, I would think that this would translate to "monster". The Chinese thought white men were walking corpses - that seems like a much more believable response. And while I accept that it is not outside the realm of human experience for a member of an occupying force and a terrified native of an occupied city to fall in love, in this case I found it both trite and insulting to a character I came to like.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi - review

You want my one-line recommendation? This is the most exciting book I have read since Emma Clayton's Roar.

Action, plot, an interesting world... deeper questions of what makes family and what constitutes loyalty... oh man. I am totally hoping there is a second book.

But let's take a step back for a moment. What is this book? It is the first YA book from up-and-coming SF writer Bacigalupi, who has previously won praise for his short stories written for adults. It's about Nailer, a teenage boy who works stripping beached cargo ships of their precious metals: copper, aluminum, stainless steel. Although Nailer's world is desperately poor, it is strictly organized, rather in the image of a mill town - there's a heirarchy of breakers, runners, overseers, and management, and then there's support personnel (hookers and drug suppliers) for those who can't physically cope with the rigors of ship breaking.

We are living in a warmer future, one with higher sea levels and a giant divide between rich and poor. I believe we're somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico (although a two-day high-speed train ride to New Orleans would seem to indicate we started further away). Nailer encounters a rich girl, shipwrecked on a boat whose opulence represents a wealth he can barely comprehend, and he decides to help her - in part because he hopes she can pull him out of his bleak and brutal life, but, even from the start, because his humanity - something in short supply on his beach - will not let him abandon her.

One of the things I like about the book is that we don't get an overview of this world, not at first, and, really, not at the end. The author leaves it to us to flesh out some of the details that he lets drop. Carbon limits. Drowned cities. A seeming absence of government. An emphasis on trade agreements, even at the very tiny level of who gets to strip which part of which dead ship. Hmm. Hm, I say.

Whenever I read a YA book set in an alternate reality - future, alternate past, whatever - I look for the element that seems similar to our current time, and in this book, it's the gulf between rich and poor. Nailer's life could look a lot like the life of the scavengers that I've seen on the beaches in southern India. Nita, the rich girl, who is, I think not coincidentally, South Asian, is an Upper East Sider to the core. Educated and spoiled, strong of body through good nutrition and Phys Ed classes, she manages to keep pace with Nailer purely through strength of will and advantageous upbringing. By the end of the book, both teenagers see each other as real people, but it is debatable whether their worlds can merge.

There is a lot of violence in this book. It's completely consonant with the difficult world that Bacigalupi has conjured. I can't decide whether it is made more shocking by the bright sunlight and tropical setting, or if that setting mitigates it somewhat. It certainly is an interesting contrast, and reinforces the "Third World" feel of the book.

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean - review

Geraldine McCaughrean is on a very short list in my head of people who write for children as if they think children appreciate writing. She, along with writers like N.D. Wilson, Jacqueline Woodson and Barbara O'Connor are the Margaret Atwoods and Anne Tylers of children's literature.

These writers appear to have never been told that grown-up literary elements like an ambitious premise, a driven main character, a landscape that reflects or contrasts the character's story - are things that are too rich for the child reader.

Thus we have Pepper Roux, who wakes up on his fourteenth birthday knowing that this will be the day that he dies. And thus he spends most of the next 300 pages on borrowed time, looking over his shoulder for the angels who are bound to be screeching toward him, bent on carrying him off to his eternal reward. If that's not a premise worthy of Jerzy Kosinski or Jhumpa Lahiri, I don't know what is.

And the way that Pepper effortlessly slides into a variety of identities - ship's captain, journalist, horse thief, and even loving husband - requires a complicity of the reader: requires that the reader both suspend disbelief and acknowledge the transparency of the deception, leading the reader to the very adult conclusion that the individual is less important than the role he or she plays.

But then, back again, as, in each case, Pepper's desire to do good affects his performance in each role, driving the plot, providing warmth and humor, and usually driving him on to his next role, as he invariably gets into trouble by investing his adult identities with a child's good heart.

Getting a little academic up in here, aren't we? What did I do with those gummy bears? I have to hide them from the children, and sometimes that means I've hidden them from myself as well.

So. All that literature stuff aside, The Death-Defying Pepper Roux is fully as bracing and adventurous as the title might lead one to believe. Set in the south of France, the salt air in it lifts the hair and stings the eyes. Characters are as broad as a lady's behind in a Toulouse Lautrec poster, and sometimes as sad.

The Sheriff of Yrnameer by Michael Rubens - review

Put Douglas Adams and Joss Whedon into a blender and you get... no, yeesh, you'd get gritty red-headed paste that couldn't carry a tune.

Let's try that again. Put The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Firefly into that blender, push Pulse, and you might end up with something salty and sharp and entirely without nutritional value - the kind of cocktail that makes you feel like you're maybe going to sneeze and giggle at the same time. If that sounds good to you, you'll like The Sheriff of Yrnameer. If not, definitely you won't.

This is one of those books that I kept casting in my head as I read. Nathan Fillion as Cole, the small-time criminal who finds himself on the run in a stolen ship full of freeze-dried orphans? No, too obvious. Bruce Willis? Too old. Matt Damon too handsome.

But the cheerful Cthulhu-like loan shark chasing Cole? Definitely Donald Sutherland. And the unimpressed missionary smuggling the children to safety, who in the past I think would have been played by Shirley MacLaine... I could see Salma Hayek.

Rubens wiggles a lot of fun stuff in here - cannibals, a friendly sentient computer that freaks everyone right the hell out, tumbling tumbleweeds, characters with antennae or purple fur, and a whole bunch of could-be shout-outs to books and movies in the hipster geek pantheon.

Or maybe I just liked it because he makes fun of a line I love to use.

"Where'd you learn to do all this?" she asked.
When he opened his mouth to answer, she quickly added, "Don't say prison."
He shut his mouth.

This is an adult book that appeals to the teenager in all of us. Ergo, it's a fine book to recommend to teens. There are a few off-color jokes, but no hot and sweaty scenes, and the swearing is all future swearing:

"What is it?" asked Nora.
"A Dynaco Mark IV StarStation Success!Sat, probably the Apria B model," said Bacchi.
They all turned to look at him.
"And that gip is farged UP," he added.

"Thank you!" yodels the librarian in service to young adults.

Bonus: awesome cover.

Bonus II: Colbert endorsement.

And another thing... by Eoin Colfer - review

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

Fat Vampire by Adam Rex - review

Fat Vampire by Adam Rex

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ding. We know who Ophelia is.

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

Ding. We know who Sophie is.

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

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

Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey - review

Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey

You know, I miss rock stars.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diary of a Chav, a novel by Grace Dent - review

Diary of a Chav, (aka Diva Without a Cause), by Grace Dent

Shiraz Bailey Wood is a wannabe ghetto fabulous fifteen year old in Essex. That's Essex, near London, not Essex, near Baltimore, although they are weirdly similar. OUR Essex is a blue-collar community with a reputation for teen pregnancy, lottery addiction, and recreational drug use. It also smells like poo, due to the proximity of the county's sewage treatment plant. (That's according to my colleague TinkerCinderBellaHontas, who grew up there, so don't email me.)

Shiraz's Essex is pretty similar. Her mom, who works at Essex's version of the OTB, cooks nothing that is not processed. Her family watches reality TV to the exclusion of anything else. Her favorite outfit is her pink tracksuit, accessorized with her biggest gold hoops.

And Shiraz speaks in this incessant drawly slang - half Cockney, half what is euphemistically called "urban". It's hilarious, it really is. For a school assignment, she has to write a letter of complaint.

"I have just spent two weeks of sheer unmitigated hell in a half-finished hotel, what was advertised as 'the most stunning jewel in the crown of this fabulous island.' Well if this is your most stunning jewel mate, you ain't got much bling bruv, 'cos this place was a right state and you are a proper liberty sending anyone there."

The whole book kind of reads like a stand-up comedy character gone long-form. Which we've seen - Jeff Foxworthy has a whole slew of "redneck" books. Belzer has written a few novels, pretty much AS Detective John Munch. I used to entertain people with my excellent South Baltimore accent at parties ("Aoh yeah hon, all's zere wen 'at sugar plant sploded - it was sew laut ah fought we's unner attack bah da British again!"*), and I will bet you real money that Grace Dent has been doing her Shiraz impersonation for years. She loves this girl, like you love a trashy cousin who doesn't yet realize there's more to life than chain restaurants, reality TV, and the mall; and in the course of Shizza's year, Dent begins to gently (and not so gently - the mashed rat in the bhaji is pretty rude!) remove her pavé-rhinestone blinkers.

It's so funny, and in the end, it's big-hearted and lovely. The slang will be an impediment for some readers, but there's an equally funny glossary in the back. For example: about the incomprehensible British TV series Last of the Summer Wine, Shiraz says "This is the most boring 'comedy' in the universe... despite never being funny, it is on every week and always has been and always will be until the end of time due to the cast making a pact with Lucifer in 1982 and becoming immortal."

I for one really appreciate that explanation.

*Oh yes, friend - I was there when the sugar plant exploded. It was so loud I thought we were under attack by the British again!"

Salt by Maurice Gee - review

Salt by Maurice Gee

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld - review

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell - review

The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell

I know exactly the market for this mildly irritating, rather precious book. "Would you rather be bitten by an alligator or a large cat? How many diapers whould you say you have changed in your life?"

It's all questions, leading me to ask a few of my own. What species of human spends upwards of 50% of its time questioning things? What age group considers self-examination as necessary as texting?

Teenagers. In case the "texting" clue didn't tip you off. Only reservation I would have about handing this to a whole squad of teenagers is the slightly hyper-Anglo countrified nostalgia that shows up from time to time. "When was the last time you gapped a spark plug yourself?" "Are you as fond as I of cobalt glass?"

In fact, the whole thing could easily be a 164-page entry in McSweeney's Internet Tendency. With a side of Stuff White People Like. On the other hand, I do feel affection for it. Like Padgett Powell, and the swanky authors who endorse him on the back cover (Safran Foer! Amy Hempel! Luc Sante, now that's hard core!), I like words. And I like that this book contains these words and phrases:

• hernia
• pine cone
• amateur
• filament
• hoeing
• banana-seated stingray bike
• crotch bark
• booze
• harbormaster

Pretty Dead by Francesca Lia Block - review

Pretty Dead by Francesca Lia Block

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

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

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

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

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

Going Bovine by Libba Bray - review

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

I sort of think I am not literate enough to review this book. It's a picaresque! There's an unreliable narrator! A running reference to Don Quixote! The entire thing may well be an hallucination... dun dun DUNN! Maybe it says something about me - but also I think it says something about Libba Bray - that after I finished it, the best parallel I could think of was that episode of Buffy when she's really in a mental hospital in LA, and all that Sunnydale vampire stuff, and her friends, and the personal growth, and the vampire sex - was all a pathetic delusion.

Our hero is a slacker stoner boy in a Texas burb, alienated from his family, alienated from his peers, oh hell just alienated in general. And in the typical arc, things get worse and worse until... something weird happens. He is diagnosed with bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

I'd like to take a moment here to review some of the weird things that have happened to underachievers in books I've read recently.

• The kid in Unwind - parents schedule him for medical dismemberment
• Nathan Abercrombie - becomes undead after having been doused with Mad Scientist Juice
• Emerson Watts (Airhead) - her brain is transplanted into a supermodel's body
• Cameron Smith (this kid) - mad cow disease

Is it me? or are the stakes rising? and getting more... medical? Just an observation. Back to Cameron.

Don't think that just because Cameron's stuck in the hospital, this is a sad, heavy, disease-y book. It's pretty damn funny, in fact. Cam gets out of the hospital and hits the road, accompanied by his pal, Gonzo, a dwarf. They go to Mardi Gras, shit gets blowed up, sandwiches are consumed, they pick up a yard gnome whose first helpful act is to rob a drug dealer. Like that.

Time and space warp - at one point, Louisiana is "a thousand miles" away from Texas. Cameron's guide, a punk-rock angel named Dulcie (Hola, Miguel!), provides insight and teaches Cameron to live in the moment.

There is sex. There certainly are erections. I am a bit tired of reading about erections, personally. They're not as funny as some writers seem to think they are, although I do concede that they're a little funny. There's dope-smoking, although after Cameron gets his diagnosis, he does stop self-medicating.

It's the kind of book that you could read over and over and still be getting stuff out of. That's bad grammar. I trust you to get past it, just as Libba Bray trusts her teenage readers to handle the entirely grown-up themes she's laying down for them. I do love a book that respects the child.

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.

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah - review

AvLong Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

Just a quick review. Ishmael Beah's memoir of his time as a boy soldier in Sierra Leone, A Long Way Gone is somewhat outside my usual scope for Pink Me. It's not terribly new, and it's usually shelved as adult nonfiction. I'm including it only because I read it recently, and it frequently appears on summer reading lists for middle and high school students.

I know there's some controversy about whether or not Ishmael Beah has been entirely truthful in this memoir - but I do not care. There's some controversy about whether or not lots of people are truthful in their autobiographies. I once read Zsa Zsa Gabor's autobiography (get it on audio if you can, it's a scream), and she claimed to have been deflowered by Kemal Ataturk.

Ok I know there's a difference. Zsa Zsa Gabor did not, as far as I know, grow up to work for the U.N. But what I'm saying is, unreliable narrator or no, A Long Way Gone is the clearest window into the terrible experience of being a boy soldier that I've read, and for that reason I recommend it for classroom use in high school. I believe that teens should read books that are inspiring and show what good exists in the world, but I believe that without contrast, without an appreciation of exactly how bad we can be, noble actions cannot be appreciated either.

I would also argue - loudly - that this book be paired with one of Alexander McCall Smith's Botswana books. It becomes easy to perceive Africa as full of horrific violence and abysmal poverty, because middle-class, stable Africa rarely makes the news, and McCall Smith accurately depicts Botswana in all its rather boring beauty. Unless we can see the people in Beah's book as people just like us, what happens to Beah and his friends and his family retains an air of fiction, whether it be true or not.

Banned Books Week FTW!

There are few holidays I enjoy celebrating more than Banned Books Week. To me, banning a book is just such a brilliant way of acknowleging its power and encouraging young people to read it.

People challenge books in school and public libraries all the time, everywhere. bannedbooksweek.org, in addition to their list of Banned Book Week events, now has a map of book challenges in the United States. Here's what they say about it:

There are hundreds of challenges to books in schools and libraries in the United States every year. According to the American Library Association (ALA), there were at least 513 in 2008. But the total is far larger. 70 to 80 percent are never reported.

I took a look through the ALA's list of challenged and banned books for 2008-09 and I was happy to see books that I've reviewed on this blog, and more importantly, books that I've bought for the two school library collections that I manage.

Here is just a sample of the books that people have felt most threatened by in the past year. If I've reviewed it, the link is on the title. Get threatened! Read these books!

Alexie, Sherman. Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian.

Brannen, Sarah. Uncle Bobby's Wedding

Colfer, Eoin. Supernaturalist. This book had me on the edge of my seat, though I never reviewed it here. Dystopic YA fiction oh yeah!

Green, John. Looking for Alaska. Nobody writes realistic teen stories, with all their real drama and real humor, like John Green. Apparently somebody objected to all the real.

Kaysen, Susanna. Girl, Interrupted. Oh sure, it's harsh. It's graphic. But for any girl going through mental torment, it is a warm port in the storm.

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. ...but remember, it's a sin to ban a classic.

de Haan, Linda and Stern Njiland. King and King.

Harris, Robie. It's Perfectly Normal. It's perfectly predictable for a book with the word "sex" in the subtitle to get some people's panties in a twist. Reading the word isn't going to give your kids chlamydia, you know.

Pullman, Philip. The Golden Compass

Parnell, Peter. And Tango makes three. Gay! Gay penguins! Indoctrinating our children with their cuddly gayness! AAAGH!

Myers, Walter Dean. Fallen Angels. One of the very few books about modern war for teens, and people complain about the language.

Salinger, J.D. Catcher in the Rye. Yup, people are still objecting to the depiction of nosepicking in this book.

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Every year. Every year somebody gets worked up about it. As if our children would never learn the n-word if it weren't for that rascal Huck.

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.

The Roar by Emma Clayton - review

The Roar by Emma Clayton
Almost five hundred pages of brilliantly unpredictable fully-immersive postapocalyptic British fiction, set in a thriftily-constructed half-drowned London, shot through with luminous sensory stimuli and an extra helping of good old-fashioned LANGUAGE. I read it in two days, and I loved it, and I want to do it justice. So I'm going to keep this short.

He paced and watched the sea and for a while he felt like a firecracker with its fuse lit, a bit dangerous - as if when she walked through the door he would erupt and fly around the room breaking the lights, setting fire to things, and taking lumps out of the ceiling. Then he felt all soft and gooey, as if when she walked in he would melt and she would find nothing more than a puddle of love in the middle of the floor. Then he felt both of these things, that he was a firecracker about to explode, but instead of sparks, he was full of love and it was all going to be a bit messy.

Do not take this passage the wrong way. It occurs on page 471, and contains I think the first and the second (and the last) instances of the word "love" in the book. I picked it because it gives you Emma Clayton using a twelve-year-old's casual vocabulary to precisely describe a complex emotional state - some trick! Plus, cute there at the end.

The best science fiction - and, I would argue, the best teen fiction - pulls pieces of the status quo out of context so that the reader has a chance to see some aspect of contemporary life from a new perspective. In the case of The Roar, Ms. Clayton has picked natural resource management, environmental degradation, and (because she is English and name me one English author who doesn't, given the chance) the injustice of class.

Exciting, beautiful, gut-wrenching stuff, fully on par with, say, Jo Walton or Charles Stross. Cyborg animals, fighter planes, high-stakes arcade games, diverse characters, mutations, truly dreadful villains, and food made of mold! No wonder it nearly crests the 500 page mark. The ending feels a little rushed perhaps, but by the time I hit it, I was so swept away that I did not mind.

Labels: age: Grade5 and up, fiction, science fiction, superstar books

Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd, edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci - review

Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd, edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci

Ok I'm not even fifty pages into this and I need to email everyone I know RIGHT NOW. (That's me paraphrasing Cordelia in the first ever episode of Buffy - AS IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT). The first story is about what would happen if you were at ComicCon? and you were a Klingon? and you got real hammered and you woke up with your pants off in a room with a Jedi? You MAY have had to have seen the Seth-Rogen-on-Seth-Rogen fight scene in Fanboys to truly grok the matter-antimatter reaction that such a coupling implies.

And I CAN'T believe that just last week I wrote a completely, slobberingly geeked-out review of Highway to Hell, and I'm using all the same references again. Lame, lame, lame, lame, LAME!

Deep breath. No, okay, sorry I'm JUST too excited. All the little icons on the cover? First of all they're by eBoy, who does cool vinyl toys you can get at Atomic Pop and kidrobot, and that's cool - not geek cool, COOL. Second of all... they're the contributors! (Not the unkillable cheerleader or the knight or the old-school vampire, the more normal-looking people) Cecil Castellucci is wearing a Squidfire t-shirt, or at least that ought to be a Squidfire t-shirt. Scott Westerfeld is sporting green goggles like he's just been out machining the brass engine couplings on his armor-plated zeppelin.

HIS story is a situational analysis: two people, a briefcase full of cash, a bottle of vodka, two guns and a pair of handcuffs in a private compartment on a speeding train. What happens? Well that all depends on the alignment of the two people, now, doesn't it? He even includes a grid. Awww. Like anyone reading this book needs an explanation of Lawful vs. Chaotic.

It really should be called "Geekgasmic". There are all these Easter eggs scattered throughout: comics, jokes about furries, numerous bowls of M&Ms, and gratuitous Dr. Who references.

Oh my god you guys - and in the author bios, each person runs down his or her geek cred.

These people are FRRREAKS.

A LOT of them have been DMs. Greg and Cynthia Leitich Smith had the Starship Enterprise on their wedding cake. Libba Bray, who wrote the mystical Regency boarding school trilogy that started with A Great and Terrible Beauty, and whom I always pictured as, like, a collector of cameo brooches and lace jabots, apparently went as Columbia to Rocky Horror for TWO YEARS.

The stories are about geeks and geekiness, and they pull no punches. Very few of the geeks in this book are Secretly Hott Geeks, which is refreshing. Gamer geeks, sci-fi geeks, and Trekkers are represented, but so are literature geeks, a pep geek, and even a Golden Age geek. A surprising number of these stories are quite sensitive, but not in a LOTR climax kind of way, more in a Han-Solo-about-to-get-turned-into-a-penny kind of way.

Short story anthologies are always fantastic to hand to people who are not sure what or who to read next. Teens fall into this category at least as often as adults do, but there are precious few YA anthologies. This is the first I've seen in a while that features realistic fiction. With Geektastic, Black and Castellucci are doing teens a big service, introducing them to the likes of Barry Lyga, John Green, David Levithan, and other members of their herd.

Labels: fiction, superstar books, YA

Highway to Hell, a novel by Rosemary Clement-Moore - review

I am woefully behind in my YA reviewing. I have been reading YA books all summer - in part because I like YA books, partly because I got so many YA ARCs at BookExpo, and of course, partly because I like to be able to recommend books to teenagers.

But I haven't been able to bring myself to review them. Sure, Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception by Maggie Steifwhatever was fine, with romance and uncertainty and music and telekinesis, and the similar but less romance-y Troll Bridge: A Rock'n' Roll Fairy Tale I would recommend without hesitation.

The forthcoming Sphinx's Princess, in which Esther Friesner imagines the pre-royal life of Nefertiti (King Tut's wife) the same way she did Helen of Troy's in Nobody's Princess, was perfectly serviceable clean teen historical romance fiction. The Goldsmith's Daughter, about an Aztec teen who crosses gender lines to protect her family, was terrific - right up until she fell in love with a conquistador. Hey, doesn't everybody love a good-Nazi love story?

I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and I have independent confirmation that YES it is a good choice for young adult readers. Wondergirl, my favorite middle schooler, read it over the summer at my suggestion, then rented the movie and laughed all the way through it. Hee hee hee!

But WHYYY have I not reviewed all these things? What is the MATTER with me? Have I lost my joy in reading and nowadays I am just plowing through these novels for the sake of getting them done? WOE!

Cough. That was probably a little more melodramatic than the situation warrants. Anyway. I am, by contrast, supernaturally excited about this book, the most recent in the Maggie Quinn, Girl vs. Evil series. I am a newcomer to Maggie, her friend D&D Lisa the evil genius, her paladin of a boyfriend, and the trouble - EEEVIL trouble - that seems to dog their footsteps. I picked up the book because I liked the coolio Craig Phillips cover, and because on it, Maggie wears aviator sunglasses while motoring along in her Jeep with no doors.

And now I've just finished it and I'm happy, I'm happy happy happy. Maggie and Lisa are geeky plus good-looking, but in a believable, Kristen-Bell-in-Fanboys kind of way. Their banter is witty but not so witty that it sounds fake. They call each other "moron" with regularity. They are aware that together, they make up Bart Simpson's sisters, and if you point it out, they will roll their eyes so hard they'll almost knock themselves over.

Maggie is psychic and Lisa is a witch, and BF Justin has the looks, the good manners, and the physical competence of a Riley Finn without all the whining. Seriously, I'll never forgive Whedon for what he did to that character. Make him evil, kill him off, but emasculating him like that was just mean.

The plot is TIGHT. There's enough going on that the author could be forgiven for letting a detail or two go unexplained, but she does not. Furthermore, answers are not hurled into the text at the end in any old "Have this droid's memory wiped" manner. They are woven in, sometimes not even overtly. My new pal Rosemary Clement-Moore doesn't seem to think it's necessary for a character to say, "Oh so that's why the demon absorbed that shotgun blast without injury." If it's not a major plot point, she'll let you make that connection yourself, which, I have to say, is extremely generous. If I'd written anything half so clever, you can bet I would be showing off all my tied-off ends like a Boy Scout who just earned his Knots merit badge.

PLUS. Maggie is petite and powerful, and sassy and cute. I'm a geek. But I didn't think of Buffy until page 270, when she tells a giant amalgamated demon who is doing a good job of intimidating her, "You are so full of crap." Of course, now I can't stop.

The book is, somewhat refreshingly, not without God. I am a little weary of the dances that many authors do in order to keep their teen demon-fighting free of any actual discussion of faith. As when Buffy runs into a high school classmate in the cemetery and he asks (about God), "does he exist, by the way? Is there word on that?" and Buffy answers, "Nothing solid."

In this book, Lisa, in particular, is quite concerned about going to Hell after having summoned a demon in a previous book. There are Catholic characters who participate in the Back Demon Back, saying prayers and swinging branding irons.

Our setting is the fictional Dulcina, TX, right down in the foot of Texas, near the Gulf of Mexico. Lucky for us, Clement-Moore knows her Texas. She writes the landscape - its smells and sky, its few features, the effect livestock has on it, and most of all its subtle rises and falls - really well, with unstrained, natural imagery. You get the feeling she's spent some time on a horse.

(I briefly became a little concerned that the "Moore" in "Clement-Moore" was as in Christopher Moore, which would make sense, kind of like when I found out Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld are married, but looks like not. Apparently, though, she and I are the same person, because she lists Television Without Pity and Go Fug Yourself as good wastes of time, and Susan Cooper and Meg Cabot - whose blog writing I thought of more than once while reading this book - as hero authors. Plus she liked Firefly. Awww.)

Funny and smart, exciting and hip, Highway to Hell was just the squirt of lime I needed to cut through my midsummer complacency.

Labels: fantasy, fiction, funny, girl books, superstar books, YA

Airhead by Meg Cabot - review

Airhead by Meg Cabot How can it be that I've never read any Meg Cabot before?

Ahem, actually, I know exactly how that can be, and I'll bet you my colleague TinkerCinderBelleAhontas could tell you too. I am not such a big fan of girly. My hair may be pink, but that's kind of the only pink thing about me. So Princess Diaries? Yeah I'm not likely to pick that up. Queen of Babble? Exact no. When it comes to grownup fiction, I read Chelsea Cain, who, in all fairness, also features a stunningly beautiful heroine in her books, but one who accessorizes with scalpels instead of stilettos.

What made me pick up Airhead then? A strong sense of duty to young adult girl readers? No. Those girls who like Meg Cabot probably already know they like Meg Cabot and don't need me to introduce them. Also, I've never scrupled at recommending Meg Cabot even not having read her. I trust TinkerCinderBelleAhontas, who really enjoys Meg Cabot.

It was seeing Ms. Cabot speak at Book Expo this year. She was introduced by Julie Andrews, and she was appropriately "OH MY GOD y'all, that's JULIE ANDREWS!" even though she knows Julie Andrews from when they made the movie. She was even appropriately "OH MY GOD y'all - a MOVIE!". She doesn't say "y'all," by the way. But she should maybe take it up, it goes good with "OH MY GOD!" She talked about her new series, Airhead, explaining that the brain of a smart, video-game-playing tomboy (Emerson) ends up transplanted into the body of a famous teen supermodel (Nikki), and then admitting that it's maybe not the most realistic book she's ever written. And this is a woman who has written books about an average American girl turning out to be the heir to the throne of a European country, so, as she pointed out, she knows from unrealistic.

Anyway, she was charming and really really funny.

So I picked up Airhead, and I giggled. And I enjoyed the descriptions of the luxe loft life of the supermodel. Plus, I giggled. And I liked the characters, and I got all "Brandon or Dylan" over whether she's going to end up with her homeboy, the secretly studly Christopher or with the dreamy British singer-songwriter Gabriel. (Oh, we all know, don't we?) And - yes you know - I giggled.

AND Y'ALL!!! That is TOTALLY NOT LIKE ME! Do we remember? Hunger Games was almost spoiled for me when it got to the "Brandon or Dylan" part. Same with Graceling! So I am totally crushing on this lighter-than-air, all-romantic-complications-all-the-time girl book? It's amazing. I feel exactly like Em, the tomboy, who has always disdained the girlier things in life, when she realizes that kissing? IS SO GREAT.

Meg Cabot? IS SO GREAT.

Labels: girl books, superstar books, YA

Becoming Billie Holiday by Carole Boston Weatherford - review

Becoming Billie Holiday by Carole Boston Weatherford

‘Becoming Billie Holiday’ begins with a quote by Tony Bennett: “When you listen to her, it’s almost like an audio tape of her biography.”

This book could be that biography. Nearly one hundred first-person narrative poems detail Holiday’s life from birth until age 25, the age at which she debuted her signature song “Strange Fruit.” The poems borrow their titles from Holiday’s songs, a brilliant device that provides the reader with a haunting built-in soundtrack.

As in her previous book, ‘Birmingham, 1963,’ Weatherford’s language is straightforward and accessible – almost conversational. She captures Holiday’s jazzy, candid voice so adroitly that at times the poems seem like they could have been lifted wholesale from Holiday’s autobiography, ‘Lady Sings the Blues.’

Floyd Cooper’s sepia-toned, nostalgic mixed-media illustrations provide an emotional counterpoint to the text. Resembling old photographs seen through a lens of aching hindsight, they make explicit the pain that Weatherford studiously avoids giving full voice to in her poems. For, although Holiday’s early life was one of relentless rejection, discrimination, and poverty, the author stays true to her subject, and maintains a resolute and defiant tone, albeit one tinged with regret.

Prostitution, rape, jail time, violence, and minor drug use are described in the book, but it ends on the proverbial high note, before the singer’s drug use, alcoholism, and early death. This captivating book places the reader solidly into Holiday’s world, and is suitable for independent reading as well as a variety of classroom uses.

Labels: biography, black kids, diversity, poetry, superstar books

Snow Falling in Spring by Moying Li - review

Snow Falling in Spring by Moying Li
I have to say, I always found the story of Mao's War on Sparrows to be a little far-fetched. Leader of one of the world's largest countries, and he takes aim at... sparrows? Seems a little petty. On the other hand, commanding every man, woman, and child in China to go outside, 24 hours a day, for weeks, and frighten off millions of tiny birds so that they have nowhere to land and drop dead out of sheer exhaustion? Inconceivably arrogant. Almost an arbitrary exercise of power. Also, I know it was 1958, but surely somebody must have realized that eliminating such a widespread species might have complicated consequences.

All in all, it sounds exactly like the kind of thing some short-sighted, delusional monarch might decree in a fairy tale.

I recently read about it in Sparrow Girl, a picture book set during the Cultural Revolution, written by The Talented Sara Pennypacker (the Clementine books, Pierre In Love) and illustrated by the likewise talented Yoko Tanaka. A little girl rescues a few sparrows from the Sparrow War and keeps them in her family's barn. In spring, when it becomes apparent that the absence of sparrows has caused a proportional increase in the insect population, and crops all across China are being ravaged because of this, she releases the last sparrows in all of China, and there is hope.

It's a lovely book and a sweet story, but it reinforced my "Naw... really? Oh come on," attitude about this event.

But I think Moying Li's memoir (the book I'm actually reviewing), subtitled "Coming of age in China during the Cultural Revolution," finally has me convinced.

And so, day after day we watched the battle unfold as vigilant Beijingers stood their ground. Then, suddenly, sparrows started to fall from the sky, utterly exhausted. Soon there were hardly any left. At dinner one evening, flushed with pride as he waved a copy of the People's Daily, Baba announced that in our city alone we had eradicated over 400,000 sparrows!

Moying Li takes us along as, step by step, her country moves from the excitement and hope that accompanied The Great Leap Forward to the paranoia, zealotry and despair of the Cultural Revolution. Her family goes hungry, is split up, endures denunciation, but ultimately survives and moves forward. The kindness and loyalty that she encountered during these years brought tears to my eyes as I read.

The pace never falters in this gripping memoir. Not too demanding, the book includes some photographs and a helpful glossary (which would have been enhanced by pronunciations - my favorite axe to grind), and would be a spectacular class read, in addition to being a great leisure read.

Labels: age: Grade5 and up, biography, diverse cultures, history, superstar books, YA

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

all the wrong people have self-esteem by Laurie Rosenwald - review

all the wrong people have self-esteem by Laurie Rosenwald

OH. MAGAD! This book includes:

1. a DIY update on the Ian Dury song "Reasons to be Cheerful"


2. an advice-for-teens Mad Lib


3. some French and


4. thru 122. many many more useful and funny and brilliantly colored things

PLUS it starts out by saying that nobody interesting ISN'T plagued by doubt. Yeah. Word. This is the NUTS.

Now, you couldn't let it be said that Laurie Rosenwald, the artist who brought us the color book And to Name but Just a Few: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, which I also loved - isn't clever, and doesn't know she's clever. A native New Yorker who teaches a workshop called "How to Make Mistakes on Purpose," she reports in her author (auto)biography that "by the time she was 35 she had to go to Sweden just to calm down." And she peppers this smart, cranky, deep book with plenty of examples of her own wit: after she blow-dries her hair by sticking her head out the car window, a friend asks, "But isn't that city air - dirty?" To which Laurie mentally replies, "Where do you think the air in your blow-dryer comes from - the Swiss Alps?"

But that doesn't mean she's NOT clever. Look at me: I just found out I am incapable of putting a space between the words "go" and "to" as a result of having learned to code when I was about ten - and people still hang out with me, too.

So give Laurie Rosenwald 45 minutes. Do the Mad Lib. Crack yourself up, and let her crack you up. She may be just a little smug, but she's right.

Labels: girl books, nonfiction, YA

Foundling and Lamplighter (Monster Blood Tattoo) by D. M. Cornish - review

Author D.M. Cornish has a passion for neologism. His Latinate and Germanish terms sparkle through the first two books of his series Monster Blood Tattoo like the bubbles in champagne. Maybe, then, we can commission him to come up with a term for the tiresome literary state, common in Greek tragedy and really crappy mysteries, that happens when readers figure out a character's Big Secret long before the character does.

Rossamund, a gentle, short orphan conscripted into dangerous service in a fancy, fanciful land peopled by everymen (humans) and untermen (monsters), does not know the truth about his origins. But we do. We figure it out a few hundred pages into the first book, and by the end of the second book, which, by the way, is over 600 pages long not including the extensive glossary, Rossamund has not figured it out himself.

On its own, this is not a fatal flaw. After all, everyone knows what's going to happen to Oedipus a quarter of the way into his play, and he doesn't figure it out til almost the end, and this knowledge only adds to the tragedy of Oedipus Rex. But in Monster Blood Tattoo, the machinations that the author goes through to delay Rossamund's epiphany feel like they are thrown in his path merely to give the book more space to describe the Half-Continent, the world that the author has, by his own admission, spent fifteen years imagining and peopling in his head. You should see the map he drew. Detailed? You'd have to blow that sucker up wall-size before you could even read it.

Listen, I am not against world-building. I have drawn my share of maps, believe me. But there comes a point, if you are writing a book, that the narrative has to take precedence.

Comparison has been made to Tolkein, and I can see why. The world of the Half-Continent is the most completely-imagined fantasy world since Middle Earth, in terms of material culture - maybe even more so. Cornish does all of Tolkein's descriptive work, and adds in much of the incidental detail Peter Jackson had to design when he made the movies - the weapons! the uniforms! the stylistic elements! And, like Tolkein, he has illustrated his world himself - and he is a very talented illustrator.

But the pace and tone of Monster Blood Tattoo has very few ups and downs. What Cornish does not do as well as Tolkein - and I make the comparison only as a shortcut, I don't mean to imply intent - is this: when Frodo, in his wanderings, encounters new subcultures and meets new people, Tolkein manages to bring most of these people alive in a few strokes. Rossamund moves about quite a bit as well, but most of his transient comrades seem all but interchangeable. Young guy, old guy. Mean guy, nice guy. Plus, there is not one smile to be had in either of the books so far. The bleak tone never lets up. It's like the trip to Mount Doom all the way, with no Sam Gamgee to occasionally crack us up, or at least cook us breakfast.

I will recommend these books to ravenous fantasy readers, but as spectacular examples of obsessive vision, not as adventure literature per se.

Labels: age: Grade5 and up, fantasy, fiction, YA

Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith - review

African-American girl-powered WWII historical fiction? Hell, this book would get the thumbs-up from me on the strength of its demographic and seasonal usefulness alone! I'm going to be passing this baby out right and left when historical fiction season is upon us. But I'm going to feel good about doing so on the strength of the unusual story and interesting characters.

Taught to fly by her late father, a farmer with a sideline in crop dusting, all Ida Mae wants is a life among the clouds. But after she graduates from high school, she's stuck cleaning houses and living at home with her mom, little brother, and grandfather, because not only is Ida Mae a girl, and a farm girl at that, she's a black farm girl in the American South in the 1940's.

When the United States enters World War II, and later creates the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, Ida Mae grabs at her chance to fly and to serve her country. However, her race is still a barrier, and she enters the WASP "passing" for white.

So many terrific topics are brought up here - gender and racial discrimination, of course, but also the friction of maintaining a falsehood in order to attain one's true potential.

Flygirl is maybe not the most fluidly-written book - many characters appear to express emotion either by blushing or grinning - but it's one I can recommend with my head held high, and one I'll enjoy discussing with some of my more thoughtful young friends.

Labels: adventure, age: Grade3 and up, black kids, historical fiction, YA

Paper Towns by John Green - review

Paper Towns by John Green
I just read the obituary of Anthony Powell in The Economist Book of Obituaries (and oh man is that a great gift for the intellectual gadfly in your life!) and apparently, his advice to book reviewers was “say what it’s about, what you think of it, and perhaps make a joke".

Paper Towns is about Quentin, who has adored his next-door neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, from afar since they were nine years old. Q gets to adore her from up close for one long, prank-filled night a month before graduating from high school, and then gets a month to think about the differences, since she disappears completely the very next day.

I think it's a very clever book. John Green, author of An Abundance of Katherines, which I never read but keep thinking I should, sets up a mathematically precise framework for discussions of empathy, presentation, and perception. Without ever using any of those three words, which is - hoo boy - wouldn't that ruin a YA book?!

In the name of deciphering Margo's whereabouts, Q is sent off on solitary missions and vigils, taking him out of his familiar surroundings and giving him time to think. Because Q is carless for much of the book, he must enlist the help of friends, which forces him to consider their needs and personalities. There's even a road trip, the ultimate modern opportunity for contemplation. Every teenager might benefit from such an episode.

Wow, Anthony Powell's advice sucks so far. I wouldn't read this book, given this review, and that's completely wrong, because Paper Towns is one of the rare YA books not involving apocalypse that I might read again just because it's so good. How about if I tell you that Q and his friends are funny nerds - sharp and up to the moment - and the insights come sandwiched between situations involving keg stands, inappropriate deployment of Confederate flag t-shirts, and urine-filled squirt guns?

"I'll ask Angela if she knows anybody," Radar said. "Although getting you a date to prom will be harder than turning lead into gold."
"Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds," I added.
Radar... came back with another. "Ben, getting you a date to prom is so hard that the American government believes the problem cannot be solved with diplomacy, but will instead require force."

There!

Labels: fiction, superstar books, YA

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

Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway - review

Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway

Let's roleplay a booktalk for this book:
You: Cool kid, maybe 14 or older (there's plenty of swearing), sporting visual evidence of interest in music. Franz Ferdinand pin, floppy hair, vintage Siouxie and the Banshees t-shirt. Something like that. You may be a girl, but you may be a boy too - even though the protagonist is a girl - and it is a VERY fizzy book - I believe that boy music fans will like it too.
Me: Librarian, pink hair, one large but tasteful visible tattoo.

Commence:
Me: Come with me I have something for you.
You: Er!
Me: No seriously you have to have this. You will like it. It is funny.
You: [Panic!]
Me: Ok, see? Audrey breaks up with her boyfriend, he writes a song about it, it becomes a number-one hit and all of a sudden she's just as famous as he is and half of America hates her because she's the one who broke his heart. And Audrey is REALLY funny and very cool. Oh, and she thinks Karen O is the coolest person in the world.
You: Oh. Oh? Oh! Um, ok!
Me: Oh wait, how old are you? There's a lot of swearing.
You: No yeah it's fine. I'll take the book.

Bonus dialog for parents:
Audrey: MOOOOM! Have you seen my shoes?
Mom: I am not the shoe fairy!
Audrey: But if you were?
Mom: By the garage door.

Dude, we have all been there.

Labels: girl books, superstar books, YA

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link - review

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
I keep having to check the spine of this book to verify that it is indeed shelved as Young Adult. Because it is so good.

Kelly Link's short story "Monster," included in this collection, was in the anthology Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones... So Maybe You Could Help Us Out. About a very scary monster who has the sense of humor of an eleven-year-old boy, it stuck in my mind. "Weird." I thought. "Also really funny, and also, I have no idea whether that kid gets eaten or not." Not a lot of adult fiction leaves you hanging to that degree.

The very first story in this book, "The Wrong Grave," cemented these opinions. The author's matter-of-fact, conversational tone makes the creepy stuff completely much more creepier, a trick that Neil Gaiman employs from time to time, but Kelly Link's unbelievable imagination and wildly unpredictable plotting put her - I'm gonna say it, and it's gonna hurt me more than it does you - out ahead of, or perhaps just out further than Gaiman. She has ideas that perform like underage Chinese acrobats - plate-spinning, teeth-hanging, pole-climbing ideas.

There is love in these stories too, though not a lot of romance: there's connection and true friendship and sorrow. I have read this book in my car, in the bath, and waiting for an oil change at the Honda dealership - possibly the least magical place in the world. The last thing I read there was The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and I'll tell you, the lighting and the CNN and the burnt-coffee smell ruined that book for me. But when they called my name yesterday to say my car was done, I did not want to close this book.

Labels: age: adult children, fiction, superstar books, 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

The Merchant of Venice (Graphic Shakespeare) by Gareth Hinds - review

The Merchant of Venice (Graphic Shakespeare) by Gareth Hinds
I'll admit, The Merchant of Venice has never been my favorite play - smug Portia, gloomy Antonio, is it racist or is it a comment on racism: whatever, Shakespeare - but this condensation by Gareth Hinds is skilfully done. He manages to reduce giant long scenes of greeting and farewell to fairly snappy exchanges, while incorporating the famous and beautiful speeches from the play (the quality of mercy; prick us and do we not bleed) in a reasonably organic way. And I personally like the scratchy, sketchy grisaille drawing style - I think it suits the setting - though I know that some people find it a bit drab.

The thing is, though, putting The Merchant of Venice in a modern setting is always problematic. The juxtaposition of real peril - Antonio's trial and potential death - with the lighthearted naughty teasing that takes place between Antonio's newlywed pals comes off as even more jarring. When Portia and her maid Nerissa dress up as men, travel to Venice, and save the day, the audience is clearly meant to be as impressed as their husbands are - but in a modern context, we more or less expect Portia - beautiful, rich, smart Portia - to pull a Nancy Drew. If not a Buffy, for Pete's sake. Shylock is lucky she wasn't carrying a stake.

Speaking of Shylock, his poor treatment at the hands of the otherwise noble Antonio and his friends just doesn't make it when they're wearing tailored suits instead of jerkins and pantaloons. A guy in a suit who says he's going to spit on a Jew is, nowadays, an irredeemable douche - and it takes a story much longer than this one to show him as otherwise. (I can't help it - I'm thinking of Tony Soprano here.)

There are just too many problems with this particular play for it to be anything but a hot mess except when presented exactly as written and in historical context. This is not to say that this book isn't immensely superior to graphic novel adaptations of Shakespeare by other authors. It is: they're terrible. It's just that other plays have aged better. I look forward eagerly to Gareth Hinds's treatment of almost any of them, as I am currently on the lookout for his King Lear.

Labels: cybils, graphic novels, YA

Chiggers by Hope Larson - review

Chiggers by Hope Larson
I read this sweet-but-not-too-sweet graphic novel at the same time, and for the same reason (it's a Cybils nominee), as Betsy, Ms. Fuse #8, did, and I pretty much have to say... what she said.

Is that a cop-out? Yeahhh... but no! She just happens to have written just exactly what I'd've written (except, hrm, more words, 'cause of the part about me being lazy and sometimes being content to just go like, "ME LIKE," and I guess you'd have to say this current review would be an example of that).

Except that, unlike Betsy, I do have some memorable summer camp experiences, both as a camper, at Girl Scout camp and orchestra camp (I played oboe) and, if I'm not mistaken, some G&T camp where we read Walden Two and discussed behavior modification... and as a counselor, at a beautiful hippy-dippy camp up in Maine where I taught candle-making and fencing to Manhattan preteens wearing Echo and the Bunnymen t-shirts (in 1984). And reading Chiggers took me right back to camp, especially to Maine, and I found myself trying to remember the names of the girls in my cabin: tall Allison, shy Betsy, bubbly Deenie, and a girl we called Titsy, whose personality traits you may intuit all on your own.

Chiggers is terrific that way - the art, the plot, the characters all ring true. Even the trees look just right. Why, I remember the morning I found a dead mouse in a trap, and since I didn't have my glasses on I had to bring it right up to my face to see what it was, and then... but I guess that's a story for another blog.

Labels: cybils, girl books, graphic novels, superstar books, YA

Not the End of the World by Geraldine McCaughrean - review

Not the End of the World by Geraldine McCaughrean.
Geraldine McCaughrean is one prolific and well-rounded person. She writes adaptations of classical literature for children (Gilgamesh. Odyssey. Cyrano. etc.). She won the contest to write the sequel to Peter Pan. She writes reg'lar old adventure novels. And she wrote Not the End of the World, a "realistic" retelling of the story of Noah and his family, complete with onboard predation, physical and psychological brutality, manure, and moldy grain.

Yeah man, it's a wild premise. Our main narrator is Noah's daughter Timna, who gradually begins to question her father's version of what's going on and why; but most of the other humans and some of the animals on the ark weigh in with their points of view as well. I think it could be an important book for a kid who is learning to discern alternate perspectives, who is beginning to, you know, question the dominant paradigm.

Certainly I've never spent much time parsing the story of the Flood - I'm a big wintry atheist and I think it's all B.S. So Ms. McCaughrean's thoughtful and thoroughly imagined book took me somewhere I've never been.

I would press this book into the hands of every potentially open-minded kid I came across - if I weren't worried about the parents. You can call me a coward but I would really run it by the parents first. I would hate it if a hypothetical Malka and Elisheva weren't allowed back at the the library because some pink-haired propagandist librarian (that's me!) suggested a book that gave their parents hives.

Labels: fiction, superstar books, YA

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - review

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I do approve of science fiction for teenage girls - too much fiction aimed at young women is vapid and self-fulfilling. And I habitually enjoy post-apocalyptic worlds. Also, nothing wrong with a little ultra-violence of the type the kids in this book must engage in. Plus, it's Suzanne Collins, my go-to gal in the children's section - I have yet to meet a kid (boy OR girl) who didn't thank me for introducing them to Ms. Collins's friend Gregor.

So why am I not jumping up and down about The Hunger Games? Let me break it down.

1.
If I think young adult fiction has a mission, and sometimes I think it does, I think it should be to cause young people to question things that have been presented to them - truths (Not the End of the World by Geraldine McCaughrean), values (Uglies), government (Little Brother), commerce (So Yesterday), etc. Ok, yeah granted, books can be just fun too. That's fine. But speculative fiction particularly has this opportunity - because the context of the story is so different, the elements of the book's world that are the same as ours stand out in higher relief.

And to make a long sentence short, I don't think The Hunger Games takes that opportunity. There's no one element that is terribly similar to our world. Even the 'reality show' that is the titular Hunger Games is so dissimilar to our reality shows - watching it is mandatory - that it's hard to tell what, if any, comparison Ms. Collins is inviting.

2.
I found the insertion of a little romance to be tedious. It felt like it was jammed in there to make the book more palatable to the teen girls. I'd like to think that not all teenage girls NEED romance for a book to be relevant to their interests.

I thought when the romance became a major part of the Uglies series, that's where it bogged down. God knows if the next Hunger Games books are all about Katniss choosing between Baker Boy and Hunter Guy, I will be disappointed.

3.
I thought the very best parts of the book were the chapters that described Katniss's home town and the capital city. Suzanne Collins does wonderful detail, as we know from Gregor, and her alternate worlds are richly and roundly imagined and full of dirt and vistas and infrastructure.

I am hoping that Katniss takes a tour of all the districts of her world in the next two books, and leaves both those boys behind.

Labels: adventure, fiction, girl books, science fiction, YA

The Lindbergh Child (A Treasury of XXth Century Murder) by Rick Geary - review

The Lindbergh Child (A Treasury of XXth Century Murder) by Rick Geary

It's tough not to love Rick Geary. That fussy, old-fashioned style: all those millions of parallel contour lines, his little crenellated edge lines, the beautiful hand lettering... all of it making everything he illustrates look so elegant and classy and clean. Which is so great, because, by and large, lately, Rick Geary illustrates crime.

This contrast nets the most tee-hees in the truly grisly stories - I think I remember reading The Borden Tragedy when it came out, and I seem to recall he does a nice job with severed limbs - but even absent any gore, The Lindbergh Child is an engrossing read.

I am very pleased to have it as an addition to the True Crime nonfiction shelves, and even more pleased that the lack of nudity or profanity gives me carte blanche to recommend it to anyone who can hack the history. About grade 4 and up.

Labels: age: adult children, age: Grade5 and up, graphic novels, history, nonfiction, YA

The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs, by Jack Gantos - review

The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs, by Jack Gantos
You know, this is the first of Jack Gantos's books that I have read. I never read Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, or Rotten Ralph, and, although I am tempted by Hole in My Life, I am pretty sure it's the kind of prison memoir that really only attains its full mind-bending potential when read by a person already familiar with the adult that this jailbird grows into. The adult that writes the kids' books, which one presumes are less, err, shank-y.

So I kind of figured that Love Curse of the Rumbaughs, shelved in YA and given a kind of Goth / Marcel Dzama cover, would be something of a middle ground.

...

And all I can say is, unless there were some VERY peculiar rapes happening in that medium-security detention facility, I think I dove into the deep end.

Don't get me wrong, I kind of love the book. Set in a claustrophobic Pennsylvania town and populated with several close-knit generations of German immigrants - heck, if those people were Magyars instead of Germans, that would be my grandfather's family. Brr.

There's taxidermy. There's meteorology. There's even a little poison. And there's incest, just a touch of it. And somewhere along the line, a bell went off in my head. Add a few dozen more characters and locations, and Love Curse of the Rumbaughs is The Hotel New Hampshire. This is not a bad thing, and not a dishonorable comparison, in my view. Makes it somewhat easier to review, too.

In the context of "YA novel," Love Curse of the Rumbaughs, a humorous novel that includes incest, is unprecedented and difficult to categorize. But in the context of, say, "John Irving novel," I am on firmer ground. I can say that in Jack Gantos's latest novel, his first work of fiction for a young adult audience, he explores love and secrecy, using the generations of the Rumbaugh family to play variations that are by turns appalling, funny, brave, and lonesome.

It's a weird book, all right. But it's right on up there.

Labels: fiction, YA

Town Boy by Lat - review

Town Boy by Lat
This is the kind of autobiographical graphic novel that people who have graduated from story-based, comic-book-like graphic novels such as Y: The Last Man, Bone, and Asterix (not to mention Naruto, Bleach, etc) start to appreciate.

It's a fact, Jack. Not too many people go straight for the autobiographical graphic novel. They'll start with Love and Rockets before they begin to appreciate Blankets. Ok, Persepolis is an exception, but Persepolis was marketed as a biography.

But I have high hopes for Town Boy. I think that the goofy, Don Martin-esque style is perfect for middle-grade boys. Our hero, Mat, and his best pal Frankie, live in Ipoh, Malaysia in the 1960's, but their poses and stratagems, gestures and uncertainties, and passion for loud music will feel familiar to boys, people who know boys, and people who once were boys.

I fear it's a little long for anyone younger than, say, 5th grade, but the subject matter would work for younger kids. I wish it had chapter breaks. But as an adult, it's certainly a childhood memoir to treasure.

Labels: age: adult children, age: Grade5 and up, boy books, diverse cultures, fiction, graphic novels

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

The What's Happening to My Body Book for Boys by Lynda Madaras - review

The What's Happening to My Body Book for Boys by Lynda Madaras

Holla! Dance around! Oh baby! Mmm! Get down with your bad self!

The new edition of Lynda Madaras's excellent "Oh my god what's that hair doing there?" book is finally available at the library where I work, and from the jobber I buy books from! Thank you, oh thank you. I have read ALL the puberty books, and this one is the best one out there for boys, but I never could use it before, and here's why:

Adolescent boys are just coming to tentative grips with their masculinity - this kid, and his best pal Duckie there in the background, are not the boys they're going to consult when they have questions about acne and condoms. And GOD knows they don't want to be seen carrying this kid around. At the public library, I have seen boys actually recoil when I have offered this book to them. Parents have taken one look and winced.

Last year, when our school expanded to seventh grade, the reading specialist tasked me with three requests: World War II, beauty and hygiene, and puberty. So I read ALL the puberty books. What's Going on Down There?, The Boy's Body Guide, the AMA's Boy's Guide to Becoming a Teen ... and this was the one that addressed all of the issues. (It comes down to surprise boners - most puberty books do not address the sudden and unwelcome trouser tent, a phenomenon that boys can be too embarrassed to ask about in sex-ed class. It needs to be in a book that they can consult privately.)

Thank you to my system and thank you to my book vendor. The rest of Lynda Madaras's body and hygiene books are also available with this new cover.

Labels: age: Grade5 and up, boy books, nonfiction, superstar books, YA

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

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

Peak by Roland Smith - review

Peak by Roland Smith
I really enjoyed Smith's Cryptid Hunters, a page-turning, funny adventure story of two siblings and their globe-trotting uncle (father). Featuring nefarious villains and their henchmen, resourceful young people who confront their fears, and guest appearances by mokele-mbembe and Sasquatch, Cryptid Hunters pretty much hit all my buttons.

Reading the jacket copy for Peak, I expected much of the same. Peak is a teenager in New York City who is a born mountain climber. The city is not his natural habitat, and he gets into big trouble. In swoops his estranged father, Josh, a world-famous climber, who trundles Peak off to Asia, buys him a bunch of climbing gear, and leaves him in the care of a Sherpa monk in Kathmandu. From there, we're off to Mount Everest at a breakneck pace. So far, so good: globe-trotting parent, exotic locale, physical challenges, extremely rapid pace.

And there's no doubt, Peak is another page-turner. There's an interesting supporting cast, and the climb itself is described so vividly that I felt compelled to pull out our DVD of Everest: The Death Zone for accompanying visuals. Loyalties are called into question as Peak confronts his limitations, and eventually, after Learning Something About Himself, he resolves his moral dilemma and gains perspective on his life.

Given this book's strengths, do I have to quibble with it? Well, apparently so. In the first place, I think the story suffers somewhat for the lack of a female contemporary for Peak. Also, Smith misses an opportunity to give even a brief overview of China's history with Tibet, especially since the bad guy in this show is a Chinese military man, and the border between Tibet and Nepal drives much of the plot. But it's a fine book.

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