The Hungry Readers

REVIEW: Bleeding Violet

2012-01-30T17:58:00.000-05:00

Reeves, D. (2010). Bleeding Violet. New York: Simon Pulse.

454 pages (but with large font!)

Appetizer: If she doesn't take her meds, Hannah hears the voice of her dead father. Listening to him, she arrives at her mother's house in small town Portero, Texas at midnight. She lets herself into the house of the women who she's never truly known.

Her mother still doesn't want her there, but they make a deal: If Hanna can manage to make friends and survive for two weeks then she can stay.

Her survival is in question because Lamartine may be even stranger than Hanna is. Creatures hunt and feed upon the residents. The only defense is a group called the Mortmaine. Hanna finds herself attracted to one of their recruits and to hunting the creatures in her struggle to create a home for herself.

Within the first few pages I was captivated by the perspective Reeves created for her protagonist. Hanna is hilarious, moving and disturbing in the way she reveals that she may have killed her aunt before hitching rides to East Texas. Having said that though, some of the bonds that had kept me tethered to the book loosened a little when I realized the book had such an unusual fantasy or so many twisted elements of magical realism. I would have been fine venturing with Hanna through a realistic story as she struggles to begin a relationship with her estranged mother.

I've read multiple bloggers say "It's not for everyone, but I enjoyed it" about both Bleeding Violet and its companion novel, Slice of Cherry. I suppose my opinion is about the same. There's a lot that's engaging about Bleeding Violet. It was the kind of book where I found myself saying, "I'll just read one more chapter...one more chapter...oh look, I'm half way through."

It's engaging, refreshing, but also brutal at times.

Dinner Conversation:

"The truck driver let me off on Lamartine, on the odd side of the street. I felt odd too, standing in the town where my mother lived. For the first seven years of my life, we hadn't even lived on the same continent, and now she waited only a few houses away.
Unreal." (p. 1)

"'You broke into my house to fix a snack," she said, testing the words, her East Texas drawl stretching each syllable like warm taffy. "I better be dreaming this up, little girl."
"It's no dream, Rosalee. I'm here. I'm your daughter."
Her hands clutched her sleep shirt, over her heart, otherwise she didn't move. Her oil black eyes raked me in a discomfiting sweep.
"...Hanna?"
"Yes,"
"God." She seemed to recognize me then, her gaze softening a little. "You even have his eyes."
"I know." I marveled over the similarities between us. "Not much else though."
Rosalee looked away from me, tugging at her hair as if she wanted to pull it out. "How could he let you come here? Alone. In the middle of the night. Did he crack?"
"He died. Last year." (pp. 7-8)

"The statue in administration, the statue in the restroom. "Those were people?"
"Yeah," Lecy said. "The lure call you to the window and suck out all your juices and organs, all the good stuff, and leave this glass shell behind." (p. 87)

"I kept silent a long while, thinking about everything Wyatt had told me: doorways to other worlds, a mayor with power over the dead, a Key made of bone. I let it all sink in and found myself smiling. I was right to have come to Portero, a town more insane than I could ever hope to be.
"So my mother is the supreme badass of Portero," I said, embracing the strangeness and letting it embrace me in return." (p. 112)

Tasty Rating: !!!

Cybils Award Finalists Announced!

2012-01-02T00:36:00.001-05:00

Late last night, while I was off at a New Year/bachelorette party, the finalists for the 2011 Cybils Awards were announced.

1,289 books were nominated! And now it is down to the final few in each category:

Book Apps

Easy Readers & Early Chapter Books

Fantasy & Science Fiction (Middle Grade)

Fantasy & Science Fiction (Young Adult)

Fiction Picture Books

Graphic Novels

Middle Grade Fiction

Nonfiction for Middle Grade & Young Adult

Nonfiction Picture Books

Poetry

Young Adult Fiction

As a second-round judge, I will be lucky enough to be reading through the YA fiction category's final seven. Listed in no particular order, the finalists are:

Anna and the French Kiss
Between Shades of Gray
Bunheads
Everybody Sees the Ants
Frost
Leverage
Stupid Fast

The discussion has already begun. Squeeeeeeeee!

My lips are sealed from discussing (and fingers bound from typing about) the judges' discussions, but I'd love to hear about which 2011 YA and children's books and apps would get your votes.

What a wonderful start to the new year!

REVIEW: Sweet Venom

2011-12-28T14:28:00.080-05:00

Childs, T.L. (2011). Sweet Venom. New York: Katherine Tegan Books.

345 pages.

Appetizer: It's her first day at a new elite school in San Francisco and Grace wants nothing more than to be a better version of herself; someone who stands up to bullies. With her first encounter with a girl named Miranda, it's clear it's going to take some supernatural power to make her tougher.

Gretchen, in contrast, cares nothing for her classmates and just slips by in school to avoid notice. Oh, and she spends her nights hunting monsters from Greek mythology who have escaped into the human realm. As a descendant of Medusa with an important destiny, she has been battling and biting the monsters since she was twelve. But she can't seem to handle the boy in her biology class who seems to have a crush on her. Plus, over the past few weeks, things have been a little strange. More monsters are slipping into the human realm. On top of that, her mentor, Ursula, is missing. On top of that other on top of that, when Gretchen sees Grace for the first time, she realizes that she may not be alone. She may have a sister to go with that destiny.

So, I really enjoyed one Tera Lynn Childs's other books, Oh.My.Gods, and I was very excited when I'd heard she was doing a series based on the descendants of Medusa. There's so much fun gender issues to work with. And Childs does a good job of including a Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibe (There's also a Charmed vibe and a Sisters Red feel). She also does a good job of creating different experiences for her characters (providing a fun argument and discussion on the influence of nurture over nature in terms of personality development). But, overall, I wasn't that crazy about Sweet Venom.

The way that Childs switched point of view among the protagonists really unnerved me. I'd be fine if it were consistent, but sometimes she switched between Grace and Gretchen every other chapter, then suddenly Grace would narrate for two chapters in a row. *Potential spoiler--although the information in the next sentence is mentioned in the book blurb* Don't even get me started that a third sister's point-of-view that was added over 200-pages into the story. If this were an epic fantasy, it'd be okay. But given my vaguely OCD-nature, I needed more consistency in the narration throughout the story.

I also feel like Childs went a little overboard with trying to make Grace unhappy about who she was: I can't stand up to bullies, I can't do exercise, I can't take classes with the mean girl (who, by the way, had no discernible motive for being so mean), I can't talk to boys, I'm a coward. Obviously the character was going to change and get over these things throughout the novel. And it would be fine if Grace was nervous or struggled with some of these issues, but it was a little over the top and Grace wound up seeming whiney and annoying.

On top of these issues, Sweet Venom had very little resolution in the end. It's pretty much a "To be continued" moment. So, be prepared for that if you pick up this book.

Dinner Conversation:

"Hydras have a distinctive odor. It's somewhere between the acid tang of burning hair and a boat full of rotting fish. You can smell them from miles away.
Well, you can't. But I can." (p. 1)

"I take a deep breath. Am I ready? New home, new city, new school, new friends. Hopefully. New life. New me.
I feel equal parts fear and anticipation. But one look in Ms. West's sharp eyes and I feel a jolt of confidence. I feel strong and invincible. How can I let myself be afraid of change, when it's what I want? The chance to become the strong, confident young woman I've always dreamed of being.
This is the first step." (p. 14)

"I suck down an entire pudding, trying to pretend I'm not disappointed that he's giving up. It's not like I want him to pursue me. I can't want him to pursue me. My own ego liked the attention, I suppose, the interest in me as nothing more than an average girl.
Don't be dumb, I tell myself. You're not average. You don't get the normal life with the BFF and the boy. You're destined for more than that. and your destiny is a solo adventure.
Still, I allow myself a brief moment of sadness when I stand to take my empty tray to the dish line and Nick doesn't move. Doesn't even react. And like that, poof, I'm forgotten." (p. 54-55).

"Standing there, in the middle of a dance floor surrounded by dozens of ordinary teens, is a girl who looks exactly like me. I mean exactly like me. And, I realize as we blink at each other, she saw the lizard's tail." (pp. 90-91)

"If we're twins, like I have to believe we are, then her heritage is also mine. Her duty to hunt monsters is also mine. Is it fair to let her continue to carry that responsibility all on her own?" (p. 109)

Tasty Rating: !!

REVIEW: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

2011-12-26T13:09:00.054-05:00

Riggs, R. (2011). Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Philadelphia: Quirk Books.

348 pages.

Appetizer: When Jacob is 15 years old, something happens to divide his life into "before" and "after." As a child, Jacob had grown up his grandfather's stories; tales of monsters and extraordinary people (and he had the old pictures to prove it!). As many kids would, Jacob grew older and began to see his grandfather's tales as exaggerations. But, on a fateful day, Jacob gets a call from his grandfather and learns that there may be some truth to what his grandfather said. This realization will lead Jacob to counseling, and eventually to a Welsh island and an abandoned orphanage where he searches for the truth in his grandfather's words and the truth behind the strange old photos of peculiar children doing extraordinary things.

What a great read! The old photos scattered throughout the novel were wonderful and would make this story a great model for writing in response to pictures. I loved the humor early in the story, the peculiarities of the children (some of them give the story a bit of an X-Men feel) and the descriptions of setting that Ransom Riggs used throughout.

I think I'm going to use this one as an in-class writing prompt!

The before and after structure reminded me heavily of John Green's Looking for Alaska. (Plus there was a mention of multiethnic Santas, characters rapping, etc.)

My one big critique would be of the mystery; if you want to call it that. There wasn't enough of one. I found it also easy to figure out who the villain was. Also, *spoiler for page 130-ish* I wished there had been a little more set-up of the time loop. It being introduced really threw me for a loop (haha).

Nonetheless, Riggs's writing is wonderful and I plan to recommend this book often. In fact, I'd say this book was probably one of my favorites of 2011. It's fitting that I ended the year with it

Dinner Conversation:

"I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen. The first of these came as a terrible shock and, like anything that changes you forever, split my life into halves: Before and After. Like many of the extraordinary things to come, it involved my grandfather, Abraham Portman" (p. 8).

"More fantastic still, were [Grandpa Portman's] stories about life in the Welsh children's home. It was an enchanted place, he said, designed to keep kids safe from the monsters, on an island where the sun shined every day and nobody ever got sick or died. Everyone lived together in a big house that was protected by a wise old bird--or so the story went. As I got older, though, I began to have doubts" (p. 9).

"It wasn't until a few years later that my dad explained it to me: Grandpa had told him some of the same stories when he was a kid, and they weren't lies, exactly, but exaggerated versions of the truth--because the story of Grandpa Portman's childhood wasn't a fairy tale at all. It was a horror story" (p. 17).

"As you can imagine, convincing my parents to let me spend part of my summer on a tiny island off the coast of Wales was no easy task. They--particularly my mother--had many compelling reasons why this was a wretched idea, including the cost, the fact that I was supposed to spend the summer with Uncle Bobby learning how to run a drug empire, and that I had no one to accompany me, since neither of my parents had any interest in going and I certainly couldn't go alone. I had no effective rebuttals, and my reason for wanting to make the trip--I think I'm supposed to--wasn't something I could explain without sounding even crazier than they already feared I was." (p. 61)

"If Cairnholm's only phone connected to some den of iniquity called the "piss hole," how did that bode for the rest of the island? Would my first trip to Europe be spent evading drunken maniacs and watching birds evacuate their bowels on rocky beaches? Maybe so. But if it meant that I'd finally be able to put my grandfather's mystery to rest and get on with my unextraordinary life, anything I had to endure would be worth it." (p. 64)

"And that is how someone who is unusually susceptible to nightmares, night terrors, the Creeps, the Willies, and Seeing Things That Aren't Really There talks himself into making one last trip to the abandoned, almost-certainly-haunted house where a dozen or more children met their untimely end." (p. 99)

Tasty Rating: !!!!

REVIEW: Fire

2011-12-26T10:15:00.036-05:00

Cashore, K. (2009). Fire. New York: Firebird.

461 pages.

Appetizer: After her father's death, Fire is the only human monster left in the Dells. She hates to look at herself in a mirror, for fear of being shocked by her own striking appearance. Wherever she goes, everyone looks upon her with some combination of lust or jealousy. Guards must follow her everywhere to protect her from people who would attack her out of lust or out of anger.

After she is shot by an archer who is motivated by neither of these feelings, Fire and her allies begin to suspect there is some conspiracy at work in the kingdom.

The beginning of Fire reminded me a little too much of the start of Graceling, the companion novel: Both protagonists are ostracized--granted, Katsa is an outsider due to everyone fearing her, as opposed to being stunningly beautiful--and both have friends who are in love with them who the girls must refuse to marry.

But despite these parallels and Cashore's consistent commitment to writing strong female characters who must spend lengthy amounts of time traveling within the fantasy world she has created, Fire is very different from Graceling in that Fire (the character) spends much more time dealing with the power dynamics of the court. I really liked her romantic relationship with a certain prince and military commander.

I did find that Fire wasn't a book a book that gripped my attention and refused to let me go. Rather, there were a lot of points in the book when time just passed and Fire sat around...not...doing much. Meh.

I also think this book complimented Graceling well in terms of creating two different worlds that are connected and can also be compared.

A third companion novel is coming out within the next few months: Bitterblue. Despite it being named for a familiar character from Graceling, I look forward to seeing how it is placed within Cashore's expanding world.

Dinner Conversation:

"It did not surprise Fire that the man in the forest shot her. What surprised her was that he shot her by accident" (p.19).

"Her nightmares were always worse on days when she'd spent time down among the cages, for that was where her father had died.
Cansrel, her beautiful monster father. Monsters in the Dells came from monsters. A monster could breed with a non-monster of its species--her mother had not been a monster--but the progeny was always monstrous." (p. 28)

"This was something Fire knew about herself: Her mind made mistakes sometimes, but the real traitor was her body" (p. 78).

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: The Son of Neptune

2011-12-20T07:34:00.014-05:00

Riordan, R. (2011). The Son of Neptune. New York: Hyperion Books.

513 pages.

Appetizer: Percy has spent the last two months with almost no memories of who he is. He has been evading two gorgons who just won't stay in the Underworld. By arriving at a camp for demigods in San Francisco, he seems to have finally found a place he can rest. Kinda.

Percy has found the camp of the Roman demigods, the Greek demigods and Percy's natural enemies. But he'll have to join with them if he ever wants to restore his memory and find the one person whose name he remembers--Annabeth.

Stunned by Percy's arrival, two Roman demigods, who are outsiders among the ranks, find themselves on a quest with Percy. Hazel is a cursed daughter of Pluto. She keeps many secrets, including the fact that she has died before. Frank has a few secrets of his own as well. But after learning who his true father is, he finds himself leading a quest which he knows will most likely lead to his own death. Uncertain and understandably frightened, the three new friends must travel to Alaska, the land beyond the gods, to try and prevent the next phase in Gaia's awakening and to restore the balance of life and death.

So, if you read the first book in this series, The Lost Hero and any or aaaaaaaaaaall of the Percy Jackson or Kane Chronicles, then you pretty much know what to expect of The Son of Neptune: A bit of humor, a lot of action and a fun take on the Greek and Roman gods. It is worth noting, that this particular addition to Riordan's series...es does include several major references to the original Percy Jackson series. (So, it might be good to have read them...or to at least vaguely remember the events.)

The beginning of The Son of Neptune did feel a little slow. Since several new characters were introduced, it felt more like a novel beginning a series as opposed to a middle novel. It also felt like a bit of a slow start since Percy had to befriend Hazel and Frank before the adventure could even begin and play war games at Camp Jupiter. (But having said that, the last 100 pages are action PACKED. Like, beyond packed...the action box is overflowing and cannot be properly closed.)

Nonetheless, the way that Riordan has changed up this series to both include and grow beyond Percy is very interesting. I like that he has continued to expand the states and lands that the characters visit as well as expand the racial and national representation of the demigods. Plus, the inclusions of the Amazons as the owners of the company Amazon was particularly fun.

Dinner Conversation:

"The snake-haired ladies were starting to annoy Percy.
They should have died three days ago when he dropped a crate of bowling balls on them at the Napa Bargain Mart. They should have died two days ago when he ran over them with a police car in Martinez. They definitely should have died this morning when he cut off their heads in Tilden Park.
No matter how many times Percy killed them and watched them crumble to powder, they just kept re-forming like large evil dust bunnies. He couldn't even seem to outrun them. (p. 3).

"A chill went down Percy's back. "The Feast of Fortune...The gorgons mentioned that. So did Juno. They said the camp was going to be attacked on that day, something about a big bad goddess named Gaea, and an army, and Death being unleashed. You're telling me that day is this week?"
Reyna's fingers tightened around the hilt of her dagger. "You will say nothing about that outside this room," she ordered. "I will not have you spreading more panic in the camp."
"So it's true," Percy said. "Do you know what's going to happen? Can we stop it?"
Percy had just met these people. He wasn't sure he even liked Reyna. But he wanted to help. They were demigods, the same as him. They had the same enemies. Besides, Percy remembered what Juno had told him: it wasn't just this camp at risk. His old life, the gods, and the entire world might be destroyed. Whatever was coming down, it was huge." (pp. 41-42)

"Um, what exactly does it mean--you standing for me?"
"I guarantee your good behavior," Hazel explained. "I teach you the rules, answer you questions, make sure you don't disgrace the legion."
"And...if I do something wrong?"
"Then i get killed along with you," Hazel said. "Hungry? Let's eat." (p. 90)

"'Thanatos has been chained,' Mars announced. "The Doors of Death have been forced open, and no one is policing them--at least, not impartially. Gaea allows our enemies to pour forth into the world of mortals. Her sons the giants are mustering armies against you--armies that you will not be able to kill. Unless Death is unleashed to return to his duties, you will be overrun. You must find Thanatos and free him from the giants. Only he can reverse the tide." (p. 146)

"'There!' Mars finished writing and threw the scroll at Octavian. "A prophecy. You can add it to your books, engrave it on your floor, whatever."
Octavian read the scroll. "This says, 'Go to Alaska. Find Thanatos and free him. Come back by sundown on June twenty-fourth or die."
"Yes," Mars said. "Is that not clear?"
"Well, my lord...usually prophecies are unclear. They're wrapped in riddles. They rhyme, and..."
Mars casually popped another grenade off his belt. "Yes?"
"The prophecy is clear! Octavian announced. "A quest!" (p. 149)

"'First things first." Percy tried to sound confident, though he could feel the level of panic rising in the room. "I don't know who the seven are, or what that old prophecy means, exactly. But first we have to free Thanatos. Mars told us we only needed three people for the quest to Alaska. Let's concentrate on succeeding with that and getting back before the Feast of Fortuna. Then we can worry about the Doors of Death."
"Yeah, Frank said in a small voice. "That's probably enough for one week." (pp. 173-174)

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: Live Writing: Breathing life into your words

2011-12-18T08:23:00.021-05:00

Fletcher, R. (1999). Live Writing: Breathing life into your words. New York: Avon Books, Inc.

131 pages.

Appetizer: As part of his series on writing, in Live Writing Ralph Fletcher describes tools to help middle grade readers bring their writing to life.

With accessible terms, examples and writing from his own, other published authors as well as the writings of third to seventh graders, Fletcher describes ways to bring stories to life, focusing on character, voice, conflict and setting. He also discusses having a strong beginning or lead, a satisfying end, vivid details and golden lines. In culmination, Fletcher unpacks a 7th grader's writing sample for all of these aspects.

This writing guide also include advice from some other authors related to the concepts Fletcher highlighted. (Alas, since this book was published in 1999, some of the authors, while excellent, are not as commonly referred to as those included in some other writing guides for children (like Rip This Page.) Along those same lines, Fletcher references some picturebooks and middle grade novels that, while classic, also felt a little dated.

Overall, there is some excellent advice in Live Writing. This is a great resource to have in a classroom to help middle grade authors improve their creative writing.

Dinner Conversation:

"This book is based on the simple idea that every writer has a toolbox. Instead of awls and hammers, a writer's toolbox contains words, imagination, a love of books, a sense of story, and ideas for how to make the writing live and breathe" (p. 2).

"By "live writing" I mean the kind of writing that has a current running through it--energy, electricity, juice. When we read live writing, the words seem to lift off the page and burrow deep inside us. My goal in writing this book is to help you make your writing come alive" (p. 3).

"Writers don't read like other people. Writers are interested in what's going to happen, of course, but they are also keenly interested in finding out how the author created the effect." (p. 10)

"Your writing voice is like a handshake; it makes the connection with the reader" (p. 42)

"Setting does matter. Stories (history) happen in a particular place. Martin Luther King, Jr., got locked in a jail in Selma, Alabama. That place will be forever linked with this event. Wilbur and Charlotte became friends in that dusty old barn. Describing the setting is more than just a necessary chore--it's a crucial element in making your writing deeper and richer." (p. 67)

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: Stitches

2011-12-15T08:14:00.056-05:00

Small, D. (2009). Stitches. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

329 pages.

So, you're looking for some nice, speedy, light reading over the winter break?

Stitches is a speedy read, that much is true. But it is by no means light or nice. Unless "nice" can be interpreted to mean riveting in a horrified and traumatized-by-proxy kind of way.

Yikes.

My reading buddy, Monica, tackled this graphic novel during a readathon a couple of years ago. Here's her reaction.

Appetizer: In this memoir, amazing children's illustrator David Small shares about his dysfunctional childhood. At six, he and his mother visited his maternal grandmother. The woman would prove to be unstable. At eleven, David would begin to develop a growth on his neck that would not be operated on until he was 14-years-old. The series of surgeries would leave David with only a single vocal chord. Silenced and living in a house with people who barely speak, Stitches is the story of David finding his voice and avoiding the insanity his mother and grandfather could easily drive him towards.

This memoir is both stunning and moving. I am forever impressed by Small's illustrations and ability to capture perspective. But seeing the familiar style of his drawings was that much more disturbing, because as I read, I was repeatedly reminded of Imogene's Antlers, a childhood favorite of mine that is also by him.

The graphic novel repeatedly references Lolita and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The allusions to Alice and the white rabbit are particularly wonderful.

Dinner Conversation:

Tasty Rating: !!!!

Wow, I'm off to find a something with some humor now.

REVIEW: The Future of Us

2011-12-08T10:28:00.074-05:00

Asher, J. & Mackler, C. (2011). The Future of Us. New York: Razorbill.

356 pages.

Appetizer: It's 1996 and Emma's father just bought her a new computer with Windows 95 to buy her love. Josh brings her an AOL CD-Rom (100 free online hours! OMG!!!!). When Emma logs on for the first time, she discovers a strange website listed in the favorites bar: Facebook. The site seems to be devoted to a woman in her thirties with Emma's name and birthday. The picture of the woman looks eerily like Emma. But this woman is married, jobless and seems unhappy as she shares WAY too much personal information on the website.

Emma shares the secret of the strange 'Facebook' with her neighbor and former-best friend Josh. As they become aware of their futures, they slowly realize that their behavior now changes who they will become. For better or for worse.

I was really excited about The Future of Us. Not so much because of the premise, but because I loved Asher's 13 Reasons Why and Mackler's The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things and Vegan Virgin Valentine. Combine two awesome authors and you can't go wrong, right? Eeeeeeeeh. From page one, I was a little disappointed. The first chapter from Emma's perspective felt rushed and like a long joke about the way the internet used to be. The premise of the story just didn't feel like it would be sustainable and nothing about Emma or Josh's characterizations really sparked my interest. They were just blah.

I did love the way the characters struggled with how the small (and big) decisions they made impacted their realities fifteen years in the future. It's a very powerful look at the idea that there are consequences, even for some seemingly small decisions. This is best embodied when Emma does a little addition and realizes someone close to her may conceive a child within the next few months. There's a wonderful analysis on choices and consequences waiting to be written about this book (and there's even a cross-curriculum connection to the concept of the domino effect during the Vietnam War).

Without being too preachy, The Future of Us could cause some readers to think a little more critically about their online relationships and behaviors, but mostly I think readers will pick it up as a fun read (a fun read without nearly the oomph that Thirteen Reason Why had).

*Spoiler* *Spoiler* *Spoiler for the end* *Spoiler* *Spoiler*

I did have some trouble with Emma as a character. From the beginning of the book I "nothing-ed" her, but about midway through the book, I actively started to dislike her. I really didn't like the way she jumped from guy to guy in the present and kept playing with her future as though it was a game, judging each potential husband as though they were the cause of all her potential unhappiness. (There's a little consideration of finding the right career or school, but not enough.) Eventually, Emma did have a grand realization about her nature:

"I stroll through the grounds, thinking about how ever since we discovered Facebook, I've been changing specific things in an attempt to improve my future. Jordan Jones was probably cheating on me...But every time I got a new future, I still turned out unhappy.

For the past five days, I've been trying to understand why this happens to me and how I can tweak things so it won't happen again. But I'm starting to wonder if it actually has nothing to do with the future. Maybe it has everything to do with what happens now.

...He never did those things for me because I never gave him the chance. I never told him what I was reading or what movies made me cry. I kept enough distance so I would never get hurt.

I've always protected myself when it comes to love. And maybe that's the problem. By not letting myself get hurt now, it ripples into much bigger pain later on. In the future, maybe I never let my husbands see the real me either, so, I never give them the chance to learn what makes me happy." (p. 313-314)

Okay, I'll take that. It's about time. This girl needed to be single for awhile. Heal from your mom's repeated divorces. Love yourself first girlie, then consider adding a worthy boyfriend into the mix. Sounds good. Finally, maybe Emma will be redeemed in my mind. But hey, that's my crazy feminist perspective.

Of course, fewer than 40 pages later, AKA the same night in the story, Emma gets herself a new man.

Mmm, kay. Yes, relationships do have to go both ways, okay. And yes, you do have to take a chance on the right person and be willing to be vulnerable. But I felt like this girl still needed to figure out who she was and what she wanted first. By this point, I wasn't convinced this character had much of a soul of her own, let alone one she could share with someone she loved.

*End spoiler*

Dinner Conversation:

"I can't break up with Graham today, even though I told my friends I'd do it the next time I saw him. So instead, I'm hiding in my bedroom, setting up my new computer while he plays Ultimate Frisbee in the park across the street" (p. 2).

"For about twenty second, my monitor freezes. Then the white box snaps into a tiny blue dot and a new webpage fades in. It has a blue banner running across the top that says "Facebook." A column down the center of the screen is labeled "News Feed" and under that are tiny photos of people I don't recognize. Each photo is followed by a brief statement.
...I circle the mouse around the screen, confused by the jumble of pictures and words. I have no idea what any of this means, "Status" and "Friend Request" and "Poke." (pp. 9-10)

"One side of my brain whispers that this could be a website from the future. The other side of my brain screams at the first side for being an idiot.
On the screen, Emma Nelson Jones, with slight creases at the corners of her eyes, is smiling." (p. 15)

"If it was a prank, nothing would've changed between yesterday and today. But everything I did differently today sent little ripples of change into the future. Being in a bad mood this morning, because of this, changed the way I interacted with people when I got to school. And that, fifteen years down the line--"
I laugh. "Ripples of change?"
"It's something Kellan told me."
"You told Kellan?"
"Of course not," Emma says. "I just asked her about time travel from a physics perspective." (p. 76)

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: Making Up Megaboy

2011-12-06T10:50:00.042-05:00

Walter, V. & Roecoelein K. (1998). Making Up Megaboy. New York: Delacorte Press.

62 pages.

Appetizer: Told in many different voices with striking images to match the monologues, Making Up Megaboy tries to understand a thirteen-year-old's motive to kill an elderly shop owner. Aside from speaking to admit he did kill the old man, Robbie will not speak, except to ask for art supplies so he could draw a comic of his only friend and his creation, Megaboy.

Some of the potential motives surrounding Robbie's actions include his crush on a girl from school, dissatisfaction with his racist father, not having been taught right from wrong, being an outsider, and on and on.

This novella is an interesting experiment. With no clear answers about what caused Robbie to kill someone, its up to the reader to make connections, make meaning and draw their own conclusions about what was going through the boy's head and what caused him to act the way he did.

Making Up Megaboy would be a good book to have students make arguments about, using support from the text. Since the book is so short, it would be very easy for students to make connections across the text without getting overwhelmed. It also would be a good sample project to have students explore voice and different perspectives, all circling around an event or the experience of one character. I'd also consider pairing the novella with Walter Dean Myers's Monster to show to very different approaches to trying to understand characters who face consequences for the deaths of others.

Due to the sensitive nature of the story, it is probably a book I would want to get parental permission for before sharing with students.

Dinner Conversation:

"It was his birthday, three months ago today. He just turned thirteen. He was too old for a birthday party, but we gave him a fancy new mountain bike at breakfast. I thought he was pleased with it. He said he liked it.
I didn't think he even knew about my husband's gun. We never showed it to him. We never talked about it." (p. 9)

"Robert kept the gun in the dresser, in his sock drawer. Robbie never had any reason to go in there.
Lord, I will never understand why he did it. I asked myself every day what went wrong, but I can't find any answers. He wasn't a bad boy. He didn't have bad friends, except maybe that Mexican boy who hung around for a while.
Why would Robbie shoot somebody on his birthday? It should have been a happy day." (p. 9)

"People in Santa Rosita are in shock about the incident that took place here two days ago, when a thirteen-year-old boy shot and killed Jae Lin Koh, the elderly proprietor of a liquor store on Main Street. The boy who allegedly committed this violent crime has not been identified officially because of his age, but classmates at the Kennedy Middle School know who he is." (p. 19).

"Me and him made up stories all the time about a superhero called Megaboy. Megaboy is kind of like Popeye in those old comics, you know? He just looked ordinary until he ate his spinach, and then his muscles popped out all buff? Megaboy just looks all ordinary until he eats these special chips. I mean, they look just like regular potato chips or something, but they're really coated with megaspice that made him all strong and everything. Mostly Megaboy takes care of little kids that are in trouble and finds lost pets and stuff. We made up stories together. Then Robbie'd draw the pictures, and I'd write the words" (p. 20).

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: Scars

2011-12-01T09:24:00.060-05:00

Rainfield, C. (2010). Scars. Lodi, NJ: WestSide Books.

233 pages.

Appetizer: Kendra knows she is being followed. She thinks the man who molested her as a child is back and is trying to keep her silent. The only person she can really trust to talk to is her therapist, Carolyn. But since her dad was downsized at work, her parents want her to stop seeing Carolyn. In fact, they're even talking about moving out of the city. Kendra's mom just doesn't get what she's going through or what matters to Kendra. The only ways that Kendra can deal with all of the pains and pressures are by cutting herself and by working on her art.

Despite all of these difficulties, a girl named Meghan has caught her eye. Meghan has her own problems. When the two girls are enrolled in the same art therapy course, Kendra begins to see the possibility of finding someone who can love her.

While I appreciated that Scars didn't feel like a traditional problem novel due to all of the thriller elements, some of those same thriller elements made Kendra's high school experience seem overly dramatic. (Arguably, this could be because Kendra survived serious trauma, so little conflicts could seem much more threatening. But as I read, it felt more like a representation of high school that I would have only bought into in middle school...you know, before I knew what high school was like. For example, on the first day that the novel depicts, Kendra is bullied, kissed, and checked-out by completely random characters. Also, sometime the dialogue seemed forced cliche or as though a modern teenager wasn't saying the word. I just didn't believe it. Not based on the narration and how Kendra described herself. I do appreciate what the author was aiming for though.)

A huge aspect that I thought was missing from the book was a scene in which Kendra revealed her childhood molestation to her family. The book is set six months after she would have had that discussion with her parents and is only mentioned in peripheral ways. But imagining how difficult such a reveal may be and knowing that some readers may share similar experiences to Kendra, but have yet to speak about it, I really wanted to see a scene with Kendra speaking/writing/drawing about it with or for someone for the first time. I know it's beyond the scope of the story and I know that such a scene would probably make the story a little too reminiscent of Laurie Halse Anderson's masterpiece Speak, (both would feature artistic girls who struggle to find a way to tell someone about the traumas they have experienced--although the individual characterizations are completely different). But still, I wanted that scene. Flashback anyone?

I also wanted it to be clearer from the beginning whether or not Kendra had told her family and classmates that she was a lesbian. From her narration, it's a clear aspect of her internal characterization, but I couldn't tell for over half the book whether she was firmly "in the closet" or open with her parents and classmates. (I wanted to know because, again, coming out and revealing this is an important experience and instead it was treated as a part of the mystery that is revealed late in the novel about Kendra's background.

It is also worth noting that the person who molested Kendra as a child and who continues to harass her to try to keep her silent as a teen is pretty much...pure evil. Like, maybe more evil than Lord Voldemort. It's not as though I want a fair and balanced account. But he was evil to the point that I struggled to believe his level of vileness was possible. The ways he abused and the extent to which he manipulated Kendra as a child was overwhelming.

One of the greatest strengths of Scars was the author's note. In it, Cheryl Rainfield reveals that she has felt similar pains to her character Kendra. She provides one of the most etensive list of resources for help and support that I have seen at the end of a YA novel. And she advises the reader to "be gentle with yourself," a similar idea that some of the helpful adult characters express to Kendra. I found that to be a beautifully said and a wonderful sentiment.

Dinner Conversation:

"'Someone is following me.' I gulp air, trying to breathe.
Carolyn leans forward, her face worried. "What makes you say that?" There's a hesitation in her voice that stings me.
"You don't believe me!" I spit the words out at her, then look away, twisting my hands together to keep them from trembling.
"I didn't say that. I don't know enough about this yet to know what to believe. Why don't you tell me about it?"
So you can go tell my parents? (p. 7).

"Do you have any idea of who it might be?" Carolyn's voice is soft, like she knows I want to run.
A door snapping shut. His hand on my wrist.
"It's....him."
"The man who molested you?"
"Yes." I wince and clench my trembling hands in my lap, digging my nails into my palms. But the trifling pain isn't enough to distract me.
"It must be terrifying for you to think he's out there somewhere."
"It is," I whisper.
"But Kendra, pedophiles don't usually come after their victims, especially not years later. They like easy access and frightened, compliant children who they can manipulate--not active teen girls who might fight back." (p. 9)

"The constant noise makes me want to scream--people slamming their lockers shut, girls giggling with each other, sneakers squeaking down the hall, boys burping as loud as they can--but I know I'm only feeling like this because of the note.
And I can't let myself think about that.
My arm is hot and stiff, every jostle sending pain through me. But it's not the bright, hard pain that makes everything go away. It's an annoying, irritating pain that makes me grit my teeth. I wish I could tear my nails through my flesh like blades. I don't know if I can go through the whole day without finding a way to cut." (p. 19)

"Mom's paintings are picturesque views of the world, little postcards of happiness, while mine are all emotion and color. Mine tap into my pain and grief and sometimes into my happiness, but always into something that comes from deep inside. No boats in the harbor or sunlit meadows for me. I do my art because I have to. Paint or cut--they both help me survive. But Mom paints for the money--and her art sells. People want those perfect postcards of the world. I don't think they want messy emotion. But I have to try." (p. 44)

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: Revolver (Built with amazing mood, tone and tension since 1910/1899)

2011-11-25T09:15:00.013-05:00

Sedgwick, M. (2009). Revolver. New York: Roaring Brook Press.

201 pages.

Appetizer: Sig's father is dead. He died in an accident on the arctic ice. He died falling through thin ice that he should have--must have--known better than to cross over. 14-year-old Sig doesn't question the tragedy of his father's death too much until the very next day, when a strange and threatening man arrives at the family's cabin while Sig is there alone with his father's dead body. The man insists Sig's father took something from him and Sig must decide whether or not to use the revolver that his family has kept hidden for ten years.

Goodness gracious, ya'll! What a well-structured and tense little book.

Told in short chapters and in interweaving periods between 1899 when Sig's father first got the revolver and 1910 when Sig must decide whether he's going to use it, Revolver makes wonderful use of allusions, foreshadowing and a stark mood to create a wonderfully tense story as Sig contemplates the moral implications of using his father's gun.

Srsly, everyone, I heart it.

That doesn't mean Revolver is perfect. I wasn't too crazy about the flashbacks to 1899 and the omniscent narration that jumped among characters' perspectives all willy-nilly. But still, bravo. I approve.

Dinner Conversation:

"Even the dead tell stories.
Sig looked across the cabin to where his father lay, waiting for him to speak, but his father said nothing, because he was dead. Einar Andersson lay on the table, his arms half raised above his head, his legs slightly bent at the knee, frozen in the position in which they'd found him; out on the lake, lying on the ice, with the dogs waiting patiently in harness." (p. 1)

"If.
The smallest word, whcih raises the biggest questions." (p. 3)

"It was at these times that Einar told Sig important things. The things a son should learn from his father. It was at these times that he told him about the gold days, and the gold lust, or about the revolver, which sat in its original box, like a princess's jewels in a case. And Sig, like a good pupil, would listen, always listen, with maybe a rare question now and again.
"A gun is not a weapon," Einar once said to Sig. "It's an answer. It's an answer to the questions life throws at you when there's no one else to help" (p. 8).

"He'd come for the gold, and he hadn't meant to stay. These things never lasted long, Einar knew. Just like the Klondike, by the time the rest of the world got to know about the gold, it would be too late; all the best strikes found, the land claimed, the easy pickings gone. All that would be left would be the struggle to survive in a world of danger, both natural and man-made, with the occasional speck of gold dust coming his way. Just enough to keep that stupid dream of easy money alive, the dream of fantastic wealth, of ease and luxury and fine things for the rest of his days, but in reality not enough to live on for even a week." (p. 45)

"Maria woke and propped herself up. Her movement disturbed Sig, who woke too, to witness one of the few scenes from his early childhood that he would remember forever, and clearly.
He remembered the look on his mother's face as she saw what Einar had bought. Only many years later would he finally be able to put a word to that look. Despair.
"What is it?" Anna repeated. "Is it food? Is it for when the food runs out?"
"No," Einar muttered. "It's something else. For when the faith runs out." (p. 50).

"He ran out of things to say, and Wolff stayed exactly where he was.
"I don't think you understand. Since your father is no longer with us, that makes you his heir.
"That means my business is with you." (p. 83)

Tasty Rating: !!!!!

REVIEW: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever

2011-11-20T16:23:00.000-05:00

Kinney, J. (2011). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever. New York: Amulet Books.

217 pages.

Appetizer: Greg Heffley is back to share his November and December adventures. In this installment of his diaries, he and his best friend Rowley try to get their own newspaper off the ground. Greg also tries to make some money to buy clothes and toys for his internet pet--a Net Critterz chihauhua aptly named "Gregory's Little Friend" by his mother. Most daunting of all, Greg finds himself trapped inside after a blizzard with his mom and two brothers. And it would seem it's every Heffley for him or herself to survive the storm.

Greg and the other students at his middle school have to find ways to amuse themselves after the school takes all of the playground equipment away due to safety concerns:

Hahaha, those bored kids watching through the window are creepy.

I enjoyed this installment of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The very first illustration amused me:

I especially liked that a lot of the things that Greg finds himself in trouble through throughout the novel are things that he did by accident or because he "didn't know any better" as opposed to intentionally doing wrong. I remember a lot of similar (although usually not as costly *Glances at the sports car that Greg's dad didn't own for very long*) mistakes from my own childhood.

Cabin Fever continues what a reader who has encountered any of the previous Diary of a Wimpy Kid series can expect: Amusement. A bit of a child's selfish intentions combined with an honest and funny look at middle school, friendships and family.

Dinner Conversation:

Tasty Rating: !!!

Readathon: Updates One and Two

2011-10-22T10:08:00.019-04:00

YAY! IT HAS BEGUN!

1)Where are you reading from today?

My students' midterms! And some theory on the teaching of writing. (It's not quite my usual fun reading, but it must be done. And if I'm good, I can pick up some fiction later.

2)Three random facts about me…

Erm...1. I love listening to This American Life. I'm catching up on old episodes now.
2. My cat is lying across my feet, trapping me in place. (I think this will help to keep me reading)
3. Part of my readathon may involve rocking to the audiobook of Chime.

3)How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours?

More than I can actually read in 24 hours.

4)Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)?

Just to do more reading than I've had time for over the last several weeks.

5)If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, any advice for people doing this for the first time?

Mix in some graphic novels, short stories, articles, picturebooks or other short texts to keep you motivated. SRSLY! It helps!

LET THE FUN BEGIN!

UPDATE TWO:

I'm still here and I'm still reading! So, far I did some reading that was prep-work for the classes I teach next week.

Part of what I have been preparing for my students is a discussion of young adult fiction book covers and they way certain themes, colors,images seem to trend in and out. There have been blog posts about this in the past: how dark covers are, the focus on faces, puffy dresses, flowers, etc.

The cover trend I'm adding to the list is underwater scenes (AKA girls drowning):

Now I'm going to switch directions and focus on some grading. It's proven to be a VERY slow process.

Wish me luck!

REVIEW: Saint Training

2011-10-16T09:41:00.025-04:00

Fixmer, E. (2010). Saint Training. Grand Rapids, MI: Zonderkidz.

233 pages.

Appetizer: It's the spring of 1967 and sixth grader Mary Clare O'Brian has begun to write letters to the Mother Superior of a convent asking for advice. Mary Clare has the goal of becoming a saint. But with all the daily complications of having to look after her many brothers and sisters, her mother's fascination with reading The Feminine Mystique and a competition to write an essay on "What a religious vocation means to me...," Mary Clare is having trouble living up to her saintly aspirations.

She starts to realize how complicated life can be. Not only in terms of being good, but also in terms of her own family. Her mom, who is pregnant for the umpteenth time, wants to do other work than caring for her many kids at home and Mary Clare is left to do a lot of the work of caring for her siblings and wondering how her family can afford to care for another child. One of her brothers wants to enlist to go to Vietnam with his best friend, while another older brother wants to get status as a conscientious objector to the war.

The author, Elizabeth Fixmer, does an excellent job of presenting Mary Clare's faith as she goes from blind obedience and making deals with God to questioning aspects of Catholicism, earning "saint points" and beginning to view how complicated issues of faith in the real world can be.

For a reader who might not be very religious, a lot of the Catholicism could be a little overwhelming. I also felt like an older reader or adult would have to explain a bit about feminism for a younger reader to get the book. (In fact, the only aspect of this book that might not have to be discussed, is the historical setting. This book was a little too history--light for my personal tastes. Especially since the opening paragraph is about racial tensions and how Mary Clare imagined herself providing support to a black student she imagined being integrated at her Catholic school. I felt like a promise made early in the story was dropped, allowed to roll under a chair and forgotten until the very end.)

My favorite part of Saint Training was the exchange of letters between Mary Clare and Sister Monica. As the story continued, Mary Clare began to ask a lot of important questions. I found this very engaging.

But toward the end of the book, this also became frustrating, because Mary Clare revealed major plot developments in her letters without them being mentioned in the narration before. I found myself flipping back and forth between pages, wondering if I had missed something.

Overall, I liked that Saint Training took on issues of faith and social justice. I liked Mary Clare's childlike faith and the way that she took on adult concerns and worries over her family. But I did find some of the religion and jumps in the narrative to be a bit overwhelming at times.

Dinner Conversation:

"March 25, 1967

Dear Reverend Mother.

My name is Mary Clare O'Brian. I am in sixth grade and I am writing because I want to become a Good Shepherd nun. I like the Good Shepherd nuns best because you work with unwed mothers and their babies. I love little babies." (p. 7)

"Mary Clare finished her Social Studies test and turned it upside down to wait for the rest of the class. It was easy, mostly easy, and on the subject that Mary Clare had heard a lot about at home around the dinner table: civil rights. She couldn't believe that Negroes had to sit on the back of the bus in the South and even drink from different water fountains. They were fighting for basic rights, especially the right to vote. Mary Clare liked to imagine that a Negro girl entered her very class at Saint Maria Goretti School. She would show her around, become her friend, even hold the drinking fountain on for her.
Now her face scrunched into a yawn she fought to control. She was tired from being up almost all night--first listening to her parents fight, then praying for the perfect plan to make things better for her family. After she came up with the perfect plan, she couldn't sleep at all.
She was going to become a saint." (p. 11)

"Lord, help my family. Please, please give us enough money so Mom and Dad can be happy again.
She stopped. She was sick of this prayer. Why wasn't God answering? HE used to answer her prayers all the time." (p. 15)

"Now she knew the problem: God would only listen to her if her soul was pure. If she was going to make her mother happy again, she would have to be a saint right away.
She made a plan. She would study, she would practice saint-like behavior, and she would become a nun. Many of the girl saints had been nuns before being sainted, so she figured becoming a nun was the perfect stepping stone to her real goal. She'd be so darned good she wouldn't have a thing to confess on Saturdays.
Mary Clare explained the deal to God. If you take care of my family--give them enough money, make my parents happy...I'll become a saint. She repeated it several times in case it was hard for God to hear through all of her sins." (p. 16)

"Don't just tell them what you think they want to hear, Mary Clare. Don't get into the roles everybody expects from a woman--where your identity is what the Church tells you it should be. 'God's servant, and God's bride'...that's all part of the feminine mystique," she said. "Everybody knows what nuns do and the vows they take. Go inside your heart and tell them who you are."
Mary Clare was confused. She didn't know what the feminine mystique was, and she was pretty sure that to win this contest she had to pretty much say what the judges wanted to hear, but she did want to be real." (p. 79)

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: TTYL

2011-10-12T08:44:00.041-04:00

Myracle, L. (2004). ttyl. New York: Amulet Books.

209 pages.

Appetizer: The first in an often censored series, ttyl chronicles the IM messages between Zoe, Angela and Maddie; three best friends who are trying to navigate the start of their sophomore year.

Zoe is dealing with an overbearing mother as she explores her spirituality by attending church with her favorite teacher, who may have his own intentions by spending time with her. Angela is navigating a romantic relationship: whether she can trust her new boyfriend, Rob, and whether he is "the one" to have sex with for the first time. Maddie, the most pessimistic of the three, battles the frustration of becoming a frenemy of a popular girl named Jana. Despite their differing concerns, problems and jealousies, the three girls struggle to maintain their friendship.

From page one, I was impressed by how well Myracle managed to present characterization and differing voices among her three protagonists. This was helped by each of them typing in different fonts and regularly taking online personality quizzes. (I remember taking similar quizzes throughout high school. Oh, memories.)

Despite these efforts, it did take me a little bit of extra time to ease into the story and to figure out characterizations. I did notice there was a little bit of resistance whenever I had to put the book down. But each time I picked it back up and eased back into the characterizations, it was hard to stop reading. (Which is about as good as it gets.)

I decided to finally read ttyl because--alas several weeks too late for banned book week--this was the week to discuss censorship in my literature course. Since the ttyl series topped the 2009 top-ten list of most challenged books, I'd been curious about its content. I wondered if it was the fact that the story was structured entirely as instant messages that contributed to the trouble.

It turns out the first book takes on a lot of topics that may be sensitive; like underaged drinking, (mild) dirty humor, female characters being critical of each other and referring to girls they don't like as "sluts," and discussion of pubic hair, lubricant, etc. At various points, characters contemplate losing their virginity, are critical of religion or consider having a romantic (and creepy!) relationship with a teacher.

I firmly believe the vast majority of fourteen or fifteen-year-olds at the very least have contemplated these issues, overheard discussions or jokes like these, if not discussed them with their friends.

The student-teacher romantic relationship did make me more than a little uncomfortable, especially since (vague spoiler!) the teens don't report the situation to the administration. But still, it was great that the book included discussion of such a concern and showed how a friend can provide support to a conflicted and confused teenager.

While I think ttyl is a great read for the novel's intended audience, Myracle is also famous for writing some younger, middle grade series. I could see a parent of a ten-year-old girl who just finished reading Myracle's Eleven and going on to read ttyl getting upset. I say "parent" intentionally. TTYL is an unlikely book to be assigned to an entire class, because of this, I think any young reader who has a choice to read it, but isn't ready for its subject matter, will self-censor and put the book down if they're uncomfortable.

Dinner Conversation:

(p.1)

(p.3)

(p. 122)

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: Shakespeare Bats Cleanup (It's like a better sequel to Love That Dog than Hate That Cat was! Yay sports + poetry!)

2011-10-04T07:04:00.060-04:00

Koertge, R. (2003). Shakespeare Bats Cleanup. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.

116 pages.

Appetizer: 14-year-old Kevin Boland wants nothing more than to play baseball. But after he is diagnosed with mono, there's no way he'll be able to play ball or go back to school for a looooooooong time. Stuck in his room and bored, Kevin is anything but excited when his dad (a writer) gives him a blank notebook. His dad notes:

"You're gonna have a lot of time on your hands. Maybe you'll feel like writingsomething down" (p. 1).

And from that, a novel in verse is born.

While stuck in bed and later as he starts to attend baseball games again, Kevin works on writing various forms of poetry; from haiku, to blank verse, to elegies, to sonnets. What's more, he goes back and revises his poems, showing his process and the importance of revision. (Yay! Can I hear a cheer for revision! Wat Wat!)

Also, as Kevin battles mono and misses playing baseball, both he and his dad are dealing with a much larger loss; that of Kevin's mom. But as they deal with their grief, Kevin begins to see the possibility of another type of joy: His first real girlfriend. A girl named Mira notices that Kevin writes poetry. Torn between wanting to tell her the truth about what he's writing and not wanting to seem like one of those "sensitive" guys, Kevin tries to figure out how to get to know Mira better.

I'll admit, during the first half of the story, I wasn't too crazy about Shakespeare Bats Cleanup. Kevin was hung-up on missing baseball and he had rigid ideas about masculinity that didn't exactly rock my world. Then Mira was introduced. And I loved her character. She added a lot of humor and brought out a fun dynamic between Kevin and his father as they start to date. As Kevin and his dad prepare to pick up Mira to go to a poetry reading, Kevin writes:

Dad comes downstairs in shorts

and Pumas. I ask him to change. On the way

to Mira's he says, "Now I'm nervous." (p. 82)

*Smiles*

Plus, Mira and her family added a multicultural dimension to the story. Kevin, who is white, begins to entertain thoughts of learning Spanish to better communicate with Mira's extended family, some baseball players and to be able to translate poetry by Octavio Paz.

Overall, I felt like Shakespeare Bats Cleanup is a slightly older version of Love That Dog, that will specifically appeal to boys who *still* aren't completely convinced of the awesomeness of poetry.

Apparently there's a sequel, called Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs. I'll read it...but I'll probably wait for the paperback version, which should be available by mid-March.

Dinner Conversation:

"Then Dad comes in and says, "The doctor
called. Your tests came back. You've got
mono."
"So I can't play ball."
He pats my knee. "You can't even go to
school, Kevin. You need to take it real easy."
He hands me a journal, one of those marbly
black-and-white ones he likes.
"You're gonna have a lot of time on your
hands. Maybe you'll feel like writing
something down." (p. 1)

"Why am I writing down the middle
of the page?
It kind of looks like poetry, but no way
is it poetry. It's just stuff." (p. 5)

"I'm just going to fool around a little,
see what's what poetry-wise" (p. 5).

"My name is Kevin Boland.
I live in Los Angeles (a suburb, actually).
I'm fourteen years old, I love baseball,
and I haven't got a girlfriend.
I'm just writing because I'm bored.
Thank God nobody's going to read it." (p. 12)

"That book I've been reading
is big on revision, which means, by
the way, not just doing something over
but seeing it again. That's kind of cool." (p. 23)

"'I'm a writer.'" That's a cool thing to say.
I don't mean I am, but I'm not a baseball
player either.
Not anymore." (p. 28)

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: Jenny Green's Killer Junior Year (I was not impressed)

2011-10-01T09:47:00.001-04:00

Belasen, A., &; Osborn, J. (2008). Jenny Green's Killer Junior Year. New York: Simon Pulse.

284 pages.

So, when I first started typing this review, I accidentally put 'yar' instead of 'year.' As though 11th grader, Jenny, had become a pirate. (Note: I would read that book. I may be out of high school, but I'm still looking for ways to transition to a career in piracy.)

Appetizer: After a sucky sophomore year, Jewish American Princess (or--I kid you not--'Jap' as she prefers to use *shudders*) Jenny Green decides to leave her Long Island public school in the hope of finding cooler people and "the one" (AKA Prince Charming) at boarding school. She has a good idea of who her prince will be: a boy named Josh who had transfered previously.

Jenny settles into Molson Academy, navigates having to live in a house of artists/hippies, finds a friend, orchestrates running into her prince, finds a way to cheat in her AP calc class, considers losing her virginity and flirts with her favorite professor.

But all is not perfect.

She starts to realize that Josh may not be as wonderful as she thought he was and after he drunkenly attacks her, Jenny will have to do things she'd never considered before: become a killer.

But what starts out as self-defense, quickly evolves to murder as other men wrong her.

I wouldn't say I *hated* this book. I could say I disliked it. But, I think saying I didn't get it would be gentler. From the first page, I hated Jenny. She was shallow and judgmental. So, when she started killing other characters, with seemingly almost no regret, I was not inclined to care.

Eventually guilt and potential consequences do present themselves, but by then, I was just reading to get the book done.

On top of that, the book repeatedly refers to 9-11 and a potential school shooting at Molson to explain some of Jenny's choices and to imply that the crazy-screwed-up world is somehow contributing to her choices. While I appreciate the effort to show the subtle pressures influencing Jenny, my reaction as I was reading was just to say "WTF?! What the heck is this doing in this book?!" I felt like Jenny Green's Killer Junior Year was attempting to make some cultural or feminist commentary, but I just failed to follow it.

Oh, and this book is supposedly humorous.

I didn't find it very funny.

Was I missing something?

Also, aside from the killing, there are also a handful of pretty sexually explicit scenes.

Dinner Conversation:

"'Twas the end of a long and bitter sophomore year. 'Twas. I just really wanted to use that word. I promise I won't use it again; this ain't Dickens. Seriously, though, sophomore year totally sucked. I broke my toe and couldn't be in the school production of Grease, Doug Lapidus took a picture of a huge zit on my nose and broadcast it on Facebook, and that bitch Veronica Cohen stole my prom date Mark Leibowitz" (p. 3).

"Still, none of my experiences in high school could have prepared me for the utter lameness of the guys I'd soon meet in boarding school. I repeat, and seriously, feel free to scribble this somewhere while you're reading: None of my experiences in high school could have prepared me for the utter lameness of the guys I'd soon meet in boarding school. Pretty please, keep this in mind before you blame me for everything that happens in the next however many pages" (pp. 5-6).

"It proved fairly easy to track down Josh Beck. Some random girl knew him and said he was usually at the school gym around five.
Okay, I'm totally gonna sound like a stalker now, but I basically camped outside the gym until I spotted Josh." (p. 41)

"Memories flooded my feeble mind--memories of 9/11. My family and I were supposed to go into the city the night before to watch a Broadway play and stay at a hotel. It was a tradition. We called them "Green Apple Nights," and Daddy let us take off from school and everything.
Anyway, Daddy had a friend in the towers that we were going to visit the morning of 9/11, and the only reason it didn't happen is because Abby got food poisoning and everything was canceled. Daddy's friend died in the attacks. It took me years to recover from the fact that I, too, almost died that day. And here death was again, knocking on the door but not coming inside. It chilled me to my core. What the F was up with September?" (p. 53)

"I wanted to get away with it. Beneath the anger and the self-defense lay something primal, something pleasurable even. As I'd watched Josh squirm, a feeling came over me I can only describe now as empowerment. Watching this creep die suddenly filled me with a force I'd never known myself to possess. It was all mine. I was Supergirl" (p. 68)

Tasty Rating: !!

REVIEW: Smile (This book did make me smile--and gave me flashbacks to my braces days)

2011-09-28T07:07:00.030-04:00

Telgemeier, R. (2010). Smile. New York: Graphix.

214 pages.

Appetizer: Set over approximately four years (between 1988 and 1991, through the middle school years and up into the beginning of Sophomore year) in San Francisco, Smile is a memoir of Raina's tween years and her painful quest to shape her teeth into a smile that wouldn't cause her embarrassment. It begins simply enough: Raina is to get braces. This plan is complicated when Raina trips while chasing a friend and lands on her face, damaging her two front teeth. Complications ensue.

Many complications.

Aside from the issues with finally getting her smile to be the way Raina wants it to be, she's also dealing with acne, having a crush, realizing what she wants to do with her life, needing her first bra, learning that some of her friends are not so much friends as they are frienemies AND getting her ears pierced. This book kind of reminded me of a puberty book (like Sex, Puberty and All That Stuff or What's Happening to My Body), but would be much less awkward for a young girl to receive or discuss with an adult.

At one point, Raina notes the need to talk about how tweens feel awkward about their bodies:

I feel like that is exactly what Smile does: starts a conversation to help girls to feel a little less freakish.

This memoir felt so honest and made me reflect on my own memories of being eleven-twelve-thirteen-fourteen-ish (for better or for worse). (For better...I focused in on the day I got my braces off in eighth grade. My teeth felt so slimy! Then, after I went back to school, Mike P., the boy I kinda-sorta had a crush on, was the first person to notice that my braces were gone. Very exciting.)

I really liked the way Raina's continuing battle to get her teeth problems under control provided a unifying conflict to bring the story together. The one aspect that weakened the text for me was the narration at the very end. The equivalent of a voice over, on p. 206 Raina makes comments like "Instead, I threw my passion into things I enjoyed, rather than feeling sorry for myself" and "I realized that I had been letting the way I looked on the outside affect how I felt on the inside."

*Barfs a little.*

I, of course, agree that these are important messages to give to tween (and even some adult!) readers, the way the narration came in to sum-up the message felt a little too overty/teachy-preachy/didacticy for my tastes.

You had me until page 206, Raina Telgemeier. Page 206.

Dinner Conversation:

Tasty Rating: !!!!

REVIEW: The True Meaning of Smekday (I still heart it)

2011-09-21T15:35:00.045-04:00

The last time I read The True Meaning of Smekday, I listened to the audio book...

And it was magnificent!

This time around, I decided to read the actual text, so the graphic novel portions would be a little easier to follow and so I could write a proper review of the book.

I actually only got about 40 or 50-pages in, before I found myself desperately missing the voice of Bahni Turpin and went back to the Odyssey Award-winning audio book.

(She adds so much personality to the Boov voices!)

And look, I still managed to write a review of the story.

Rex, A. (2007) The True Meaning of Smekday. New York: Hyperion Books for Children.

423 pages.

Appetizer: As part of a school assignment and national competition, twelve-year-old Tip (AKA Gratuity Tucci) must write about "The True Meaning of Smekday" and describe her personal experience during the recent alien invasion.

Tip had quite the experience, to say the least.

In this hilarious road-trip story, Tip recounts how her mother was abducted by aliens, how she befriended a Boov alien who goes by the name J.Lo and how together the crossed much of the country in search of Tip's mom.

Although the middle part of the story does feel to drag on a little as Tip and J.Lo go from state to state encountering various characters, I absolutely love the way this novel explores and discusses issue of race, discrimination and the forced relocation of people. (And those are topics that normally a person would be hard-pressed to say that they "love" anything about discussing them.)

There are so many wonderful humorous moments in the story that even a year after reading this book for the first time, can still make me giggle.

My biggest regret in terms of The True Meaning of Smekday is that I did not listen to or read it soon. *Bows to Holly who had originally recommended the book to me months and months before I ever got around to reading it.*

I've used this book in my classroom twice so far. Once, I read aloud a portion of pages 24-29 to demonstrate the misunderstanding of when people (in this case creatures) from different cultures meet and to highlight the power dynamic between different cultures meeting (and from there show how some science fiction novels include cultural critiques and can be a vehicle to discuss race relations as well has historical periods when people from a specific culture were forced to relocate...*wipes brow* that's a lot for one little read aloud to be able to do.)

The second time I used the book, I first did a pre-reading activity in which my writing students had to invent and describe their own "Smekday" holiday. Many of them seemed to have a lot of fun with it. In terms of their thoughts on the book.

I also used the book to discuss audience, since during her narration, Tip mentions several times that she's writing for people in the future.

Mmm, delicious. So much to talk about.

I have to admit though, *after* reading the book, only a handful of my students enjoyed the book as much as I did. Many seemed to think it was too long.

My argument that the meandering middle just provided "more for them to love" only went so far.

Dinner Conversation:

"ASSIGNMENT: Write an essay titled THE TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY. what is the Smekday Holiday? How has it changed in the year since the aliens left? You may use your own personal experiences from the alien invasion to make your points. Feel free to draw pictures or include photographs" (p. 1)

"It was Moving Day.

Should that be capitalized? I never would have capitalized it before, but now Moving Day is a national holiday and everything, so I think it should be.

Capitalized.

Anyway.

It was Moving Day, and everybody was crazy" (p. 3).

"I remember Apocalypse Hal was on the corner by the Laundromat. Hal was a neighborhood street preacher who worked at the fist and crab place next door. He wore a sandwich board sign of Bible verses and shouted angry things at passerby like "The end times are near" and "Seafood samples $5.99." Now his sign just read "TOLD YOU SO," and he looked more anxious than angry.
"I was right," he said as I passed.
"About the fish or the apocalypse?" I asked. He followed beside me.
"Both." (p. 4).

"I stifled a laugh. "J.Lo? Your Earth name is J.Lo?"
"Ah-ah," J.Lo corrected. "Not 'Earth.' 'Smekland'."
"What do you mean, 'Smekland'?"
"That is the thing what we have named the planet. Smekland. As to tribute to our glorious leader, Captain Smek."
"Wait." I shook my head. "Whoa. You can't just rename the planet."
"Peoples who discover places gets to name it."
"But it's called Earth. It's always been called EArth."
J.Lo smiled condescendingly. I wanted to hit him.
"You humans live too much in the pasttime. We did land onto Smekland a long time ago."
"You landed last Christmas!"
"Ah-ah. Not 'Christmas.1 'Smekday."
"Smekday?"
"Smekday" (p. 28).

"Okay. Starting before the Boov came.
I guess I really need to begin almost two years ago. This was when my mom got the mole on her neck. This was when she was abducted.
I didn't see it happen, naturally. That's how it is with these things. Nobody ever gets abducted at a football game, or at church, or right after Kevin Frompky knocks all your books out of your hands between classes and everybody's looking and laughing and you have no choice but to sock him in the eye.
Or whatever" (p. 33).

"My birth certificate says "Gratuity Tucci," but Mom's called me Turtlebear ever since she learned that "Gratuity" didn't mean what she thought it did. My friends call me Tip.
I guess I'm telling you all this as a way of explaining about my mom. When people ask me about her, I say she's very pretty. When they ask if she's smart like me, I say she's very pretty" (p. 37).

Tasty Rating: !!!!!

REVIEW: Mad Love (is tons of mad fun!--but maybe a little too chaotic)

2011-09-20T09:03:00.058-04:00

Selfors, S. (2011). Mad Love. New York: Walker & Company.

323 pages.

Appetizer: Alice has been telling a lot of lies lately. She's had to. The biggest lie is that her mom, a semi-famous romance author, is "overseas," researching her next book. The reality is far less glamorous, and despite being tired of the lies, Alice does everything she can to maintain her family's secrets. This becomes almost impossible though, when the family savings are close to gone, her mom's publisher is demanding the next book and Alice speaks on her mother's behalf at a book event and a strange young man in the audience insists Alice tell his story.

The possibly crazy/super attractive/vaguely stalkery guy always wears a black hoodie and claims to be Cupid. Yes, The Cupid. But he goes by Errol now.

When Alice refuses to write "Errol's" story, he begins to make her romantic life (or lack there of) complicated. The skateboarding boy--Tony--who Alice has been admiring from afar is suddenly in her life adding just enough stress that Alice might go crazy (one of her biggest fears).

I know it may seem like it took me over a month to read this book, but don't take that as a judgment on Mad Love. Blame moving across the country and starting a new job.

I wanted to sit around and read this book.

What a breath of fresh air!

If you may remember, few but dear readers, I complained during my Starcrossed review that I was stuck reading a string of mediocre books that were related to Dudley the Dissertation's topic, the gods and creatures of myth. Mad Love has cut the string! It felt sooooo good to dip into a book by someone who can string a bunch of words together in a way that is clever, amusing and tells an engaging story.

This book is well-written and funny. I liked the exploration of Alice struggling to write a romance novel. I actually wound up reading a portion aloud to my writing class (When Alice looks at writing guides and lists the rules for writing a romance: pp. 82-85.)

Although, by mid-novel, I did wish things would speed up plot-wise and that there'd be a little less random craziness and some more clear direction of where the story was going (and that Alice would make more progress on her goals). That feeling didn't leave as I continued to read. (Random horrible storm that Alice must go out in to rescue someone at the end? Whattheheck?!) In the Author's Note, Suzanne Selfors noted that she had to revise this story extensively. Frankly, I thought it could have used another revision or two. It felt like there were a lot of wonderful pieces that just didn't quite fit together. My head was left feeling a little crowded by the book's end. Crowded, but also amused.

Dinner Conversation:

"When you're sixteen, summer is supposed to spread before you like a magic carpet, waiting to carry you to new, exciting places. Paperback novel in hand, bare feet buried in speckled sand, long kisses with a boy in a kayak--that's what it's supposed to be about. Summer, with its coconut and pineapple flavors, with its reggae rhythms, with its endless possibilities for adventure and romance.
But if you asked me on that Monday in July, I'd tell you that there was nothing exciting about my summer forecast. My magic carpet looked more like a plain, beige indoor-outdoor kind of thing and it was nailed solidly to the ground" (p. 3).

"It's easier to tell lies when there are no loving eyes staring back at you.
I told lots of lies.
Deception had become my life. It wasn't a compulsion. I didn't do it for some sort of thrill. I lied constantly because I'd promised my mother that I'd never tell anyone the truth about our situation. Lie upon lie upon lie, heaped into a great big pile. Like a dung beetle, I maneuvered that pile everywhere I went. And I was sick of it" (p. 9).

"The guy stood. "I have a question for Alice."
I tapped my flip-flops against the floor. Though his eyes were somewhat shaded by the rim of his hood, his gaze was intense. "Yes?" I asked.
"I have a love story to tell," he said. "And I need you to write it for me. When can you get started?"
A few women chuckled, then a long span of silence followed as the guy continued to stare at me. Was this a joke?
Tom cleared his throat. "You mean you want Alice's mother to write it? Alice is the Queen of Romance's daughter. Maybe you didn't hear my introduction."
"I know who Alice is," the guy said. "I want her to write my story."
The word "want hung in the air, adding an eerie note to the atmosphere. I shifted in my seat. "Well, that's very nice and everything, but it's your story so you should write it yourself."
"I'm not a writer," he said. "But I lived the story, so I remember every single detail. All you have to do is read through my notes, then write it" (p. 15).

"My name is Errol, but I used to be called Eros. Most know me as Cupid." He continued to stare out the window. "I wasn't named after Cupid. I am Cupid. The original, one and only Cupid."
Music and customer chatter competed with his statement, so no one turned to gawk or snicker. But I'd heard him. A pained smile spread across my face as I pretended to be interested. My suspicions were proven. Something was wrong with him and the last thing I needed was to be on his radar.
"There's only on thing I want," he continued. "And that is to tell my love story to the world. Not the version you find in mythology books, but the real story. The true story. I'm the only person who can tell it and I want you to write it" (p. 55).

"Why couldn't I write Untitled Work in Progress for my mother?
Being the Queen of Romance's daughter made me the Princess of Romance. I may not have inherited her Nordic bone structure, her sexy figure, or her naturally plump lips, but surely I'd inherited something. And maybe that something was the knack for storytelling. I'd gotten Bs in English. I'd been raised on the romance genre. It was such an obvious answer. And what else was I doing with my summer?
Nothing!
I could devote every minute of every day to the project. It didn't have to be a Pulitzer Prize winner, just something that Heartstrings Publishers would accept. This could work. It would work. It had to work." (pp. 81-82)

"Someone was watching me.
Errol.
He stood across the street, looking right at me. Foreboding rolled over me, dark and sinister. If ever there was a time to run, it was then. But I didn't run. I couldn't. Like in a nightmare I stood rooted to the spot.
"Alice?" Tony touched my arm.
Errol's hood concealed most of his face, but his mouth was tight with determination. He held his left arm straight out. Then he pulled his right hand to his chest. Something was going to happen. Something bad. I felt as helpless as a small creature caught in headlights.
And then, BAM!
Something collided with my chest. A jolt shot through my body, electrifying the tips of my fingers and toes" (pp. 87-88).

"In an odd way I suddenly felt better, because of the two of us standing in that bedroom, Errol was clearly the crazier. He thought he was the Roman god Cupid. Sure, I might have heard a voice in my head; sure, I might have gone a bit wacko for a few hours, but I had no delusions about my identity. I wasn't Isis, or Supergirl, or Bella Swan. I was Alice Amorous, daughter of a semifamous, mentally ill romance writer, who would soon be getting food stamps if her mother didn't turn in another book. Which I was supposed to be writing." (p. 137)

Tasty Rating: !!!!

REVIEW: Wonderstruck (I wasn't struck)

2011-09-18T09:29:00.000-04:00

Selznick, B. (2011). Wonderstruck. New York: Scholastic Press.

629 pages.

Appetizer: Set in Gunflint Lake, Minnesoa in 1977, Ben is missing his mother who recently died in a car accident. During a stormy night he walks to his old home from his aunt's house. Among his mother's stuff, he finds her rainy day fund and a book called Wonderstruck with a hand-written note that mentions a man named Danny and a bookstore bookmark of a store in New York City. With these few clues, Ben hopes that he may finally find and know his father. Just as he picks up the phone and try to call the number for the bookstore, lightning strikes the house and Ben's life is once again changed.

This picturebook/novel is also the story of a lonely girl named Rose in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1927. She admires an actress in a silent film named Lillian Mayhew. After learning that Lillian will be in a play in New York City, Rose decides to run away to see her.

Both of their quests will take Rose and Ben to New York City and to the American Museum of Natural History.

Ben's story is told almost entirely in text and Rose's story is told almost entirely in illustrations. Despite the differences in settings, there are moments when the tales connect and (eventually) unite.

When I began reading, I was frustrated because of the seemingly wide gaps between the two stories. Initially only images like stars and lightning connect the two. My brain was desperate for the two stories to unite. Part of what made me fall totally and completely in love with Selznick's previous giant-picturebook/novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, was the way the setting, medium and content all worked together to add meaning to the story. By the third or fourth time that I read The Invention of Hugo Cabret, I was still finding new meanings and connections among the different aspects of the story.

I can't say the same will happen with Wonderstruck.

Don't get me wrong, this novel is still impressive. It has a E.L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler feel to it. It just didn't *capture* me the way Selznick's Hugo Cabret did.

As a book, it does demonstrate a love of astronomy, dioramas, wolves, and museums, expresses a sense of loneliness and searching that I found very relatable and shows examples of the experience of being deaf in different times.

But still, Wonderstruck didn't capture my imagination or impress me the way The Invention of Hugo Cabret did. (Not that books should always be compared. But since these two stand alone in terms of their form, it's hard not to make comparisons.)

I'd be curious to know what some of you thought of the book, Few But Dear Readers. Am I alone in my stance?

For the time being, here's one of the early moments when the stories overlap for you to enjoy. Mary is watching a movie of a storm and Ben is in his mother's house, looking through her stuff as a storm approaches. Enjoy.

(pp. 120-126)

Dinner Conversation:

"Something hit Ben Wilson and he hopened his eyes. The wolves had been chasing him again and his heart was pounding. He sat up in the dark room and rubbed his arm. He picked up the shoe his cousin had thrown at him and dropped it on the floor.
"That hurt, Robby!" (p. 16).

"Ever since the accident, the wolves had appeared, galloping across the moonlit snow, red tongues wagging and white teeth glistening. He couldn't figure out why they were stalking him, because he used to love wolves. He and his mom had even seen one once from the front porch of their house. The wolf had looked beautiful and mysterious, like it had stepped out of a storybook" (p. 17).

"He had believed his mother when she told him he'd never be lost as long as he could find the North Star. But now that she was gone, he realized it wasn't true.
The mysterious quote from his mom's bulletin board echoed again in his mind.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" (p. 27).

"Was it days later or only a few minutes when his aunt Jenny appeared? Her eyes were red and watery. She sat on the bed and stroked his hair. He thought he could smell the food she'd been cooking at the lodge as she ran her fingers down his cheek just like his mom used to. He watched her lips move. He looked at the nurses talking to each other. His head felt like it was full of leaves. He opened his mouth to say he couldn't hear but nothing came out.
The nurse handed Aunt Jenny a piece of paper and a pen. She wrote a note and handed it to Ben.
"I know you can't hear. Don't try to talk. Just lie still."
Ben's head throbbed. How did she know what he'd been thinking?
"You've had an accident. You're going to be okay, but you were hit by lightning." (p. 175)

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: The Facts Speak For Themselves (but don't use quotation marks)

2011-09-13T08:53:00.015-04:00

Cole, B. (1997). the facts speak for themselves. New York: Puffin Books.

184 pages.

Appetizer: Thirteen-year-old Linda was escorted into the police interrogation room with blood still under her nails. After being interrogated about the deaths of two men (a murder-suicide situation between the boyfriend and boss of her mother that Linda is somehow at the center of), Linda is separated from her little brothers and mother, who need her to watch over them, to stay at a center run by nuns.

She has meetings with a social worker to discuss her childhood of abuse, discrimination, abandonment and responsibility over her brothers.

Linda's story is touching, heartbreaking and the amount of responsibility she took on at such a young age is shocking.

This can be a wonderful book to give voice to the secret pains and dark scars that many children and adults have.

Although, as I was reading, I did wish that quotation marks were used to better mark dialogue.

This book may be dark, but it is also real...and difficult to put down after you start reading. (I know that if it were a movie, I'd hate it. It's kind of like Requiem for a Dream. You just know things are going to get worse and worse.)

Dinner Conversation:

"The woman policeman says why don't you come in here, and so I went. It was a little room with a table and some chairs. That was all. Instead of a window, there was a big mirror. I wouldn't look at that. I didn't want to see myself. I sad down and folded my hands. There was still blood under my nails, so after a minute I put them under the table" (p. 9).

"Listen, young lady, Sister says. You're not in charge anymore. This is a difficult situation, and it's going to take a little time to straighten out. Two men are dead, she says and bites her lip.
What two men?
Mr. Green and Mr. Perry.
That was how I found out. Jack had died in the ambulance and Frank had walked down into the basement of the parking ram and shot himself" (p. 20).

"I gave her the facts, and she wrote them up in a preliminary report. I know, because I got it out of her bag when she came back one afternoon to warn me about what was going to happen.
There's going to be a hearing, she says, and I want you to be as straight with the judge as you are with me" (p. 23).

"I want to write my own preliminary report, I said.
She looked at me a long time.
I think that's a very good idea, she says finally.
Will they read it?
Yes, she says. I'll make sure they do" (p. 25).

"Looked at in a certain way, the whole history of the world seemed arranged so we could meet that first time.
He said we were doomed by circumstance. Our fate was in the facts" (p. 141).

Tasty Rating: !!!

Louisiana Series: An audio Book review of My Louisiana Sky (AKA the day I began to worry about Coral Snakes)

2011-09-10T13:08:00.000-04:00

As a way to get to know my new state of residence, I've been trying to read literature about Louisiana.

(The selection has proven to be a little...pathetic. There's not much of a selection. Especially since I'd like to read about more than just New Orleans.)

First off, let me tell you that my general knowledge of Louisiana was very limited before moving here: Hurricane Katrina, other hurricanes, cajuns, Remy from the X-men, alligators, oil spill, Mardi Gras, True Blood/The Southern Vampire series (which, admittedly I've seen every episode of/read every book).

It's a pretty limited view of an entire state.

I actually had to bite my tongue during my initial Skype job interview to stop myself from asking if alligators and hurricanes were something I should worry about in the area I would be moving (Answers: Not too concerned unless a hurricane displaces the alligators and Yes, be concerned: power outages possibly lasting weeks, high winds and rain during the storms.)

So, I was left feeling like I wanted to see some of the other ways that my new state is presented. I--of course--turned to children's literature.

I decided to begin my acquaintance (and this new series of reviews) with Louisiana in children's literature by listening to the audiobook of Kimberly Willis Holt's My Louisiana Sky. She's the author of When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, which I read five or six years ago and remember enjoying.

The premise is that Tiger Anne--a girl living in Saitter, Louisiana--faces a choice. She and her grandmother have always had to look after Tiger's mother and father who are both "retarded" (to use the dated language in this historical novel). When tragedy strikes, Tiger must face the choice of moving to Baton Rouge to live with her stylish aunt and staying home to care for her parents.

An angsty premise that is one-part coming of age story and two-parts character figuring out her own identity through a major decision story. I could get into it.

I especially liked that Tiger was a tomboy who played baseball better than most of the boys.

I downloaded and started listening...and absolutely *hated* the tones the narrator used to voice the various characters. Sometimes her Southern accent didn't match the Louisiana accent I've been enjoying for the past few weeks. Often when she gave voice to minor characters, she spoke in tones that made them sound completely and unnecessarily idiotic.

I was not a big fan. I probably would have enjoyed the story more if I read it.

I did eventually ease into the story. Especially when a character died of a heart attack after seeing a coral snake. (So...coral snakes...is this something I have to worry about now?)

Louisiana, please advise.

Then towards the end of the book, there was a hurricane.

Sigh.

At least there weren't any alligators.

How much I learned about Louisiana: Not too much.
How much I felt comforted about some of the supposedly-scary aspects of the state usually presented by the media: Also not too much.

I have since discovered there was a children's movie made of the My Louisiana Sky, starring Juliette Lewis and a younger Michael Cera, among others.

...

Netflix guesstimates I'd give the movie two stars.

...

I did add the movie to my queue. It will stay at the bottom and I'll get to it when I get to it.

REVIEW: Darth Paper Strikes Back (YAY!!!!!)

2011-09-05T10:38:00.000-04:00

Once again, I must apologize for the lack of posts. It would seem that as stressful as preparing to move halfway across the country was, actually moving and starting the new job is even *more* stressful.

Lucky for me, there was a happy book delivery to my new home....

I have been waiting for this book to come out for ~~YEARS~~ several months. I absolutely loved The Strange Case of Origami Yoda and taught it to my undergraduate children's literature classes. It was one of the few books that the vast majority of my students seemed to enjoy. (There were, of course, always a few Star Wars-haters or disinterested-ers who couldn't get into it. There were also people embarrassed to be seen carrying around a book with such a nerdy cover.

Then there's me. I want a poster of this cover to put up in my office.* Whatever.)

But more than the fun Star Wars references, Angleberger seems to *get* it. He seems to truly remember what it is to be a kid; the concerns and the humor.

So, I was very happy about the sequel: Darth Paper Strikes Back....

[Cue Star Wars music!!!!!!!!!]

Appetizer: "It is a dark time at McQuarrie Middle School." Harvey has been causing trouble by making an origami Darth Vader and it's only the first day of seventh grade. Worst of all, Dwight has been suspended and may have to go to a correctional and remedial education facility. Before Dwight left the school with his Yoda finger puppet, Yoda managed to give one last bit of wisdom: To ask Tommy, Kellen and some of the other kids at McQuarrie to build a case file to prove that Dwight isn't a danger to anyone.

What follows are the accounts of many of the seventh graders, speaking about the good deeds Dwight (and Yoda) did over the summer at the skate park and during the fall in science class and at other events.

The fact that Angleberger includes a "multicultural inclusion gone wrong" episode was of particular interest to me. Caroline, who was a love interest to Dwight in the previous book, but who has now started going to a private school, is having trouble with an "understanding our differences" policy at her school since she is the one who is different. Caroline has a severe hearing impairment. She usually reads lips, but since her new classmates try to converse with her by yelling or using sign language (which Caroline does not use) she is having trouble understanding them.

Yoda's advice to Caroline *does* involve telling a lie (which I won't reveal the specifics of). I wasn't too crazy about the lie. But the fact that the situation was included and that Yoda/Dwight still provided a fun solution that made me think Angelberger or Yoda needs to start an advice column for middle schoolers. He does an amazing job of encouraging empathy across different backgrounds and experiences.

As I continued to read Darth Paper Strikes Back, a few concerns did come to mind. In this book, Harvey is presented as being a villain. Although I will admit he was my least favorite character during the first book, he still represents a very real characterization. So, I wanted to see a bit more understanding of his perspective sooner. Also, this book includes pseudo-swear words (You know, %$#@, etc.). The reason I mention this is because I know for a fact that second graders read this series. I could see parents of children that young being upset by such typing. (There was also use of the word "crap" on page 71, which, when I was little I used to get into debates with other kids over whether that was a swear word or not. The character who uses the word does get in trouble for his bad attitude after using the word. But still... *shrugs* Parents of second-graders be warned.)

This is a series that grows with the students though. The first book included a lot of different voices in episodic short chapters and had drawings in the margins throughout the entire story. Darth Paper Strikes Back includes longer chapters, fewer voices, conflicts that build across chapters and, due to some of the plotting, the margin illustrations are not used in the final third of the story. The book is slowly helping younger readers to transition to novel reading. Good show. Good show, I say.

Angleberger also begins to build an argument about the way creative and unusual kids are treated under the "Teach to the Test" mentality that schools have. Here's an excerpt from Tommy's point-of-view that demonstrates this:

I was almost to my locker when I saw Principal Rabbski up ahead. She likes to stand in the middle of the hallway so that all the kids have to detour around her.

I put my hand up and pointed Origami Yoda right at her.

"If you strike down Dwight, he will grow more powerful than you can possibly imagine!" said Origami Yoda.

Rabbski sighed.

"Tommy, I think it's time you and I had a little talk."

..."Listen, Tommy," she started. I've heard about your petition or whatever it is that you're going to give the school board tonight. I can't talk to you about another student's disciplinary problems, but there are a few things you need to understand."

She had a lot to say. A lot of it was about the Standards of Learning tests that we have to take and how important they are to the students and to the school. She said some students were a constant distraction from the Standards of Learning. Not only were they hurting themselves, they were also hurting other students and the whole school, since school funding was based on test scores.

"When I see you in the office for screaming at another student one day, and the next day you're walking down the hall with a Yoda puppet, being disrespectful to me, that just proves my point," she said. "You're a good kid, but another kid has got you confused and distracted. I need you to put Yoda away. Put your petition away. And concentrate on the real reason you're here: To learn. To ace the Standards test."

Well, I was confused and distracted, but there was no way I was buying all that. It had an Emperor Palpatine sound to it. (pp. 129-131)

Well put, Tommy.

*Sets timer and begins waiting for the third book. Also starts taking bets on whether there will be three or six books in this series.*

Dinner Conversation:

"It is a dark time at McQuarrie Middle School...
When did it start? I can tell you exactly when it started.
The first day of school. The very first day of seventh grade. We didn't even get one good day. We got, like, five minutes" (p. 1).

"Paperwad Yoda? Sorry, this isn't the year of Paperwad Yoda."
And then he goes, "Bom bom bom bom-ba-bomb bom-ba-bomb." Vader's theme.
And he sticks out his hand and there it is: an origami Darth Vader, made out of black paper, with shiny silver eyes and a red paper lightsaber.
There are a lot of things that might have happened next. I was about to say, "That's awesome," because I did think it was awesome.
But before any of us guys could say anything like that, Rhondella says, "Aww, it's so cute!"
And Sara says, "Yeah, it really is cute, Harvey."
And Amy says, "He's so teeeny!"
Harvey was furious, of course." (pp. 2-3)

"This case file is to try and save Dwight and Origami Yoda from the school board. His is it going to save them? I have no idea. But Origami Yoda said to do it, so we're doing it.
That was the last piece of advice Origami Yoda was able to give us. Since then we've been on our own. Actually, it's worse than that...
Instead of Dwight and Origami Yoda, we're stuck with Harvey and Darth Paper!" (pp. 8-9)

"Dwight looked like a zombie. He was too freaked out to say anything.
But he held up Yoda, and Yoda said, "Out of school kicked we have been."
"Kicked out? For what? For having Yoda? No way!" said Kellen.
"Way yes," croaked Yoda. "Save Dwight you must."
"How?"
"The truth for the school board you must write. Another case file is needed."
I was going to ask him something useful about the case file--like, why we needed to write it or what it should be about--when Kellen butted in.
"Should I doodle on it again?" asked Kellen annoyingly.
"Hurt that could not, I guess," answered Yoda.
The Dwight's mother and Principal Rabbski came out of the office, and I didn't have a chance to ask my useful question" (pp. 16-17).

"Dear School Board,
Having had some time to reflect on the incident with the pre-eaten wiener, I have come to the conclusion that Dwight/Yoda are the good guys while the rest of the kids around here are a pack of wild savages who would think it was really funny if I ended up puking from food poisoning or getting a tapeworm or worse!" (p. 92)

Tasty Rating: !!!!

*Can somebody make this happen? I've done multiple searches and an Origami Yoda one doesn't seem to exist. Who wants to be a hero and find/make me a poster?!

REVIEW: Divergent (If The Giver Bought the Hogwarts Houses a Drink, Nine Months Later This Is the Book a Stork Would Deliver to YA Readers' Doorsteps)

2011-08-14T15:43:00.062-04:00

Roth, V. (2011). Divergent. New York: Katherine Tegen Books.

487 pages.

Appetizer: In the future and in the remains of Chicago, people choose factions to devote their life to: Candor for those who privilege honesty, Abnegation for those who value selflessness, Dauntless for the brave, Erudite for those who devote themselves to intelligence and Amity for those who focus on peace. There are also an unlucky few who are faction-less, who live in poverty.

At the age of sixteen, people are tested and then choose their faction during a ceremony. Raised by abnegation-ist parents, Beatrice--or Tris--faces a tough choice. She has never felt like she truly belonged with her selfless parents. The results of her test complicate matters further. Beatrice learns she is divergent--she could potentially belong to three of the factions--a fact she is told to keep secret as she faces the choice between betraying her parents' hopes for her and pursuing her own dreams.

Divergent is an interesting concept. It's a blending of the sorting into Hogwarts houses with the Hunger Games and The Giver. The execution of this story, however falls short of the blogger and insta-movie deal hype that I heard about this book. It also falls short of the stories I'm comparing it to. Although Tris's struggle to make her own choice for herself is engaging--and is a central struggle for any young person who is contemplating making choices that his or her family disagrees with--it falls short when compared to Katniss sacrificing herself for her sister in The Hunger Games.

The deadly challenges Tris faced while being initiated into the Dauntless faction were hard to believe as permissible in the society. While logically, I knew that Roth was constructing a world different from my own and was critiquing the hostile and horrible environments that the Dauntless characters live in, I just couldn't quite believe the world she was creating. Wouldn't a brave person speak out against the injustice and suffering they see around them? I found myself mumbling "lawsuit" repeatedly as the Dauntless initiates were required to jump onto or off a moving train or leap off the side of a building with no support, safety nets, training or proper instruction. I repeat, lawsuit.

Maybe I'm just not "dauntless" enough to believe in this world or maybe I've been too sheltered all my life/too lucky to ever experience a group dynamic with such a competitive and dangerous mentality.

*Shrugs*

As a reader, I also needed to feel a clearer threat to the society or to Tris. The Dauntless train hard to protect what remains of human society...from what? While there are hints that ~~Denmark~~ Broken-Chicago is a kind of stinky place within the first 300ish pages, I needed a real threat sooner. I also needed to understand why being divergent was dangerous sooner. Basically, this book could have--and should have--been 150 pages shorter.

But having said that, there were some moments in this book that really captured my attention and engaged me. Whenever Tris faced injustice at the hands of her fellow initiates or at the hands of the Dauntless leaders, I wanted her to come back and kick a-- *ahem* ...and kick bum-bum. (And she was a tough character who wanted to do just that.) I also found some of the subtle tensions and themes very engaging; such as the propaganda the erudite faction was creating against the abnegationists or the way Tris had to accept the idea that some of her friends were also her competition.

Overall, this is another one of those books that doesn't seem to meet the hype, but is still enjoyable. Recommend it! Just don't imply that it's the best thing in THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE/SINCE SLICED BREAD/IN THE WORLD OF YA LITERATURE as you do.

Dinner Conversation:

"There is one mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cuts my hair" (p. 1).

"Today is the day of the aptitude test that will show me which of the five factions I belong in. And tomorrow, at the Choosing Ceremony, I will decide on a faction; I will decide the rest of my life' I will decide to stay with my family or abandon them" (p. 2).

"People who get this kind of result are..." She looks over her shoulder like the expects someone to appear behind her. "...are called...Divergent." She says the last word so quietly that I almost don't hear it, and her tense, worried look returns. She walks around the side of the chair and leans in close to me.
"Beatrice," she says, "under no circumstances should you share that information with anyone. This is very important" (p. 22).

"I realize that the decision might be simple. It will require a great act of selflessness to choose Abnegation, or a great act of courage to choose Dauntless, and maybe just choosing one over the other will prove that I belong. Tomorrow, those two qualities will struggle within me, and only one can win" (p. 37).

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: Starcrossed

2011-08-10T13:32:00.000-04:00

Angelini, J. (2011). Starcrossed. New York: HarperTeen.

487 pages. (Those be a lot of pages! And I read every single one...like a big girl.)

BEAUTIFUL COVER: Check.

INTERESTING PREMISE: Helen is attracted to/repelled by a new boy on the island and learns that they are members of waring factions descended from the Greek gods. Check.

A GOOD ENGAGING STORY: ....

A GOOD ENGAGING STORY?

...

...

Meh.

Appetizer: Sixteen-year-old Helen just wants to be normal. But as a six-foot tall, beautiful, blond that all the Nantucket tourists stare at, it would seem she's doomed to stand out. (Poor baby. Don't you just tear-up at the thought of her burden? It does turn out that Helen is hiding some big secrets though--including super strength and speed--but by the time I realized that she had real secrets, I was already annoyed by Helen's self consciousness.)

When the Delos family moves to town, Helen has a strange reaction to the mere sight of one of the boys in that family, Lucas: She wants to kill him. (WTF? Anger, violence, hate and attempted murder are the new sexy?! No thank you.) She also starts to have dreams of a dry land that also hosts the three Greek fates. To make matters worse the Delos family now know her secrets, but can she trust these potential enemies to keep them? And what are they and Lucas hiding? And who else might be searching for Helen?

Let's admit this straight away--I did not enjoy this book. Normally, I probably wouldn't have finished or written a review on it. But since Starcrossed was related to my dissertation research, I forced my way through it.

Okay, that disclaimer out of the way, on to the rest of the review...

Nothing about Helen or Lucas really grabbed me. I found the starting point of I-Hate-and-Want-to-Kill-You to be an upsetting starting point for a romance and the continuing violence against women (with few consequences) was disturbing.

For example, one of the Delos family members, Cassandra, attacks Helen with a sword to test a theory:

"Cassandra swung the sword. In that millisecond Helen knew she'd had a good life, because she suddenly loved it so much that she could have wept with gratitude. She'd had amazing friends, the best dad in the world, and a strong, healthy body. She'd even experienced the joy of flight. And once, just once, in the middle of the night, she'd almost kissed the only boy she'd ever wanted.... (p. 254-255)

Nice defeatist attitude, Helen. If your life is so great, why don't you try to keep it as a supposed-friend swings a sword at your neck? You don't have to fight back, but a nice duck or sidestep would be appropriate. Let's continue with the scene...

Helen felt a strange, vibrating tickle, like someone had pressed a gigantic kazoo against the side of her throat and blown on it. She saw Cassandra's eyes widen as she pulled the blade back from the side of Helen's neck and looked at it."

..."'I was right.' She dropped the sword and grabbed Helen in a hug. Then she started jumping up and down, making Helen jump with her. "You're not dead! This is...You have no idea how happy I am I didn't just kill you!" she squealed." (p. 254-255)

What the heck? Seriously?

Look, I am open to a book exploring violence, victimization and empowerment...but I found Starcrossed's presentation to be thoughtless with almost no consequences of actions and choices included.

Both good characters and bad characters hurt characters who pose no threat to them. Multiple times throughout the story, Helen is abused by Hector Delos, a supposed friend, under the premise that he is training her.

Helen is also threatened many times and in many ways, but never fights back. (This, in theory, could be a great message about remaining in control, not rising to the bate or advocating peace, but since Helen learns she's invulnerable to weapons, and so just let's herself get hit, it's not exactly a model impressionable young readers should follow.)

Plus, the way the Delos family is constructed reminded me a little too much of the Cullen family in Twilight. Then there was the way that the entire family--whether they liked Helen or not--devoted their lives to protect her. Like in TWILIGHT! The fact Helen lived alone with her dad. Also Twilight-ish. The fact that she starts a relationship with a boy who wishes to protect her but resists her and all of his urges to be with her sexually--STINKS OF TWILIGHT!

Now would be a good time to accuse me of having Twilight on the brain...but honestly, I don't. I haven't reread the books in year or so.

Also, I was not crazy about the way the book played with point-of-view. The vast majority of the story is told from Helen's perspective. That's fine. Then suddenly, there are small segments from one of the villain's perspectives. Okay, I guess. The suddenly we see Lucas's perspective. Ummm, why? And within the last 100 pages, while being under the guise of third-person limited with Helen's perspective, the narration still briefly dips into other characters' thoughts. Sloppy. I just wanted the narration to be consistent.

Sigh. I feel like I've had a string of mostly negative reviews over the last couple of months when it comes to these vaguely dissertation related myth books. While I of course enjoy growing more and more snarky, I am starting to feel bad for the string of authors whose books I've been critical of. Let us all keep our fingers crossed that the next book in my ol' dissertation mountain will entertain me more.

Dinner Conversation:

"Some of the Labor Day tourists were staring at her, not unusual, so Helen tried to turn her face away as subtly as she could. When Helen looked in a mirror all she saw were the basics--two eyes, a nose, and a mouth--but strangers from off island tended to stare, which was really annoying" (p. 2).

"'But I really thought you'd be more interested in the Delos family. You'll be graduating with a few of them.'
Helen stood there as Delos ran around her head. The name meant nothing to her. How could it? But some echoey part of her brain kept repeating "Delos" over and over" (pp. 11-12).

"Secretly, Helen had always felt she was different, but she thought she had done a pretty good job of hiding it her whole life. Apparently, without realizing it, she'd been sending out hints of that buried freak inside of her. She had to try to keep her head down, but she wondered how she was going to do that when she kept getting taller and taller every damn day" (p. 23).

"Lucas was standing in front of his locker about twenty feet away, staring back at Helen while the world waited for gravity to switch back on. He was tall, over six feet at least, and powerfully built, although his muscles were long and lean instead of bulky. He had short, black hair and a dark end-of-summer tan that brought out his white smile and his swimming-pool blue eyes.
Meeting his eyes was an awakening. For the first time in Helen's life she knew what pure, heart poisoning hatred was" (pp. 43-44).

"No one of regular human strength could have stopped Helen from strangling him if she set her mind to it. Lucas was like her.
The thought made her stomach heave. How could she be anything like someone she hated so desperately" (p. 70).

"Helen suddenly realize dhow many random events and raw impulses had driven her decisions these last few days. When she thought about it, it was as if she had stopped choosing for herself days ago.
"The Furies won't allow us to avoid each other," he said in a dead voice" (p. 81).

Tasty Rating: !!

REVIEW: Vordak the Incomprehensible: How to Grow Up and Rule the World

2011-07-20T11:12:00.027-04:00

Vordak/Scott Seegert. (2010). How to Grow Up and Rule the World. New York: Egmont.

196 pages.

Appetizer: Evil Vordak the Incomprehensible has some advise for all of us "inferior" ones: How to grow up and rule the world (in case you didn't figure it out by the book's title). While regularly asserting his superiority, Vordak provides essential information about any potential evil villain's behavior, costume, lair, laugh, plans, etc., as he ~~or she~~ seeks world domination.

This how-to guide includes contracts, quizzes, commandments, scenes that could be acted out, question and answer sections, charts and illustrations that will amuse readers. (I could particularly see third or fourth-grade boys who have just finished Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Captain Underpants or the Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians series loving this book.) I think this book's varied structure will keep kids engaged. (Although, every now and then, I did happen upon a page that confused me a little. Like this one from page 43...

It took me a minute to realize that the "no" and "yes" weren't a part of the dialogue on the page and were instead noting which was the appropriate response. I would have preferred if the 'no' answer were crossed out or something.)

I did also have trouble with the way gender (and nerds!) were presented. Scientists were picked on (I would have preferred if they were championed since mad scientists want to rule the world too!). But much worse, there really was no possibility presented that a female villain would want to rule the world (We have ambitious goals too!) I was willing to overlook this problem until I hit page 130. In this section, Vordak was recommending villain-types to include on a terrifying team. The last addition is:

Sigh.

Inappropriate.

I know there are some people out there who would say I'm reading too much into this page (I know this for a fact, I occasionally get comment/email spam from such people who not so kindly request that I relax and not take little kids' books so seriously.) But for real, peeps. Children's literature is how young people make meaning about the world. The subtle messages are the ones that can be the most dangerous (as opposed to "promoting evil" which is repeated over and over again throughout the handbook and is easier to consciously critique). Pairing a supposedly beautiful woman with the suggestion to include her on a team based solely on appearance with the stipulation that she needs no skills is not cool.

I'll stop myself there.

I'd hate to get caught ranting.

For the most part, this is a fun bit of escapist reading for any reader who loves superheroes. One of the book's greatest strengths is Vordak's awesomely large vocabulary. While lots of young readers will not get every word, they'll be amused enough to keep reading and (dare I hope?!) look up the meaning of a word or two to add to their vocab to intimidate and prove their superiority to the "imbeciles."

Plus, one of Vordak's commandments involves playing with language:

Having said that though, I could see some parents having a problem with the book. Early on, Vordak asserts that all people have at least a little evil in them. Plus, a lot of Vordak's evil advice is on a small scale, like possibly saying, "Wow! You are one fat cow." to a lunch lady (p. 29). While I fully believe most young readers will find this hilarious and will simultaneously realize that this is not appropriate to actually say...there is also a small minority I could picture *actually* following through with some of Vordak's suggestions.

I'd still keep How to Grow Up and Rule the World on my classroom bookshelf though. I would probably mark the offensive "hire the woman because she looks good" page with some explanation points and even a "Not Cool" written in the margin to make my stance clear (and hope my students ask why I marked that page *fingers crossed!*). I think the book has great potential to get a reluctant reader enjoying reading! (I'd just also be ready to say, "This book is just for fun! If you *do* let any of the messages in this book--subtle or obvious--influence your behavior, do the exact opposite of what Vordak suggests! Mmm, kay?")

Dinner Conversation:

"Greetings, inferior one. I am Vordak the Incomprehensible. Who you are doesn't matter. What does matter is my dastardly decision to add the world of book publishing to my growing list of conquests. Without even trying very hard, I have created a book of such unbelievable brilliance that it dwarfs all other literature preceding it throughout the course of human history" (p. 1).

"I am tremendously proud of my heartless nature, and if you have any hopes of eventually becoming planetary dictator, you, too, will need to embrace your inner evil. I'm not talking "break your mother's favorite ceramic egg and blame it on your little brother" evil. I'm talking "willing to pull the moon into a collision course with the Earth by means of a powerful, nuclear-powered tractor beam in order to get your way" evil. I'm talking incredibly evil. Worse than your orthodontist" (p. 2).

Favorite illustration that I will try to find a way to use in one of my classes:

"We Evil Masterminds work long, grueling hours developing our organizations and concocting our brilliantly evil plans, patiently biding our time for the ideal moment in which to strike. And then, in swoops the Superhero to thwart everything. No preparation. No planning. Nothing. He simply receives "the call" and off he goes, swooping and thwarting" (p. 73-74).

Tasty Rating: !!

REVIEW: Beauty Queens by @libbabray (Somehow, even more awesome than Going Bovine! It seemed impossible, right?)

2011-07-17T12:59:00.000-04:00

Hi all!

Sorry for the lack of posting over the last few weeks. I am teaching my first graduate class on multicultural children's literature and all the readings, the new class prep work and the super-awesome-AMAZING level of discourse among the students is keeping on my toes and striving to learn more and more so ~~I don't drop the ball~~ can keep challenging my students.

On top of that, I've also started training to do some part-time online tutoring.
(They actually had me teach a lesson on math! EEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEE!)
So, I'm still working to adjust to the changes in my schedule.

ON TOP OF THAT on top of stuff, last week I also received a job offer for a year-long position that would require me to move to Louisiana within...oh, about three weeks time and begin teaching two courses (one of which the likes of which I haven't taught before). So, yeah. Crazy times for me.

But enough excuses, on to the review...

Bray, L. (2011). Beauty Queens. New York: Scholastic Press.

390 pages.

(An ARC was sent to my boss...AND I STOLE IT!)

Hunger Games
Lost
Lord of the Flies
Some Feminist commentary
The worst/best of reality TV
Libba Bray
Satire
Craziness
+ Fun
Beauty Queens

Appetizer: There has been a plane crash on a remote island. The plane had been filled with 50 Miss Teen Dream Pageant contestants, their handlers, costumes and a few camera crews. But after the crash, only a handful of the beauty queens survive. They must determine whether they should continue to prepare for the big pageant as they await rescue or focus on survival.

As the days pass, the girls realize that there is something odd about the island and that they may have to work together and save themselves.

So, based on my love for the Printz Award winning Going Bovine and any interview that I've seen of Libba Bray, I fully expected that Beauty Queens would amuse me.

It did not disappoint. (And actually, I think I like it even more than Going Bovine since it explores so many wonderful questions surrounding femininity and feminism. ) And by 'many,' I mean TONS OF ISSUES! There is explorations of racial and gender stereotypes, transgendered and disability experiences, female desire for sex, many version of what femininity is. There is also a lot of social and cultural commentary and criticisms about boy bands, beauty products, T-shirt designs, and ON AND ON. I would love to teach this book in a feminist YA lit course! (*Hint* Somebody--hire me to teach a feminist YA lit course.)

In terms of classroom uses though, I would probably only do read alouds of select portions that could work as a stand-alone or short story. (I actually used one chapter with my current students to discuss princess culture.)

Plus, both Miss Ohio and Miss Michigan survive the initial crash. Since those are the two states I've lived in for most of my life, I was happy to follow my representatives, excited that the midwest was ON THE ISLAND! (Of course, post-Louisiana job offer, I can't help but notice that a Miss Louisiana is missing in action.)

I did initially have some trouble with the omniscient narrator. I wanted to stay with Adena, the first character the reader meets. I also had trouble keeping track of who was who. (It is worth noting that keeping track of or remembering names is a reoccurring problem in my life. But it is also admittedly made more difficult when all thirteen-ish of a book's main characters are interchangeably referred to as Miss STATE-Name and So-and-so-first-name.)

But the more I read, the more I enjoyed the story, liking how the quirky aspects all came together. I loved the critiques provided in the footnotes. I also loved the way the author dove below the surface of each of the girl's characterization to break down stereotypes. There are certain beauty queens on the island that it would have been easy for me to hate if they were presented as mere stereotypes (I'm looking in direction of Miss Texas), but I wound up engaging with them all. (On that note, I especially liked that the story didn't turn into a girls vs. girls massacre, which had seemed like a possibility in the early chapters.)

YAY, beauty queens!

Dinner Conversation:

"This book begins with a plane crash. We do not want you to worry about this. According to the U.S. Department of Unnecessary Statistics, your chances of dying in a plane crash are one in half a million. Whereas your chances of losing your bathing suit bottoms to a strong tide are two to one. So, all in all, it's safer to fly than to go to the beach. As we said, this book begins with a plane crash. But there are survivors. You see? Already it's a happy tale. They are all beauty queen contestants" (p. 1).

"Okay, Miss Teen Dreamers, I know we're all real flustered and everything. But we're alive. And I think before anything else we need to pray to the one we love."
A girl raised her hand. "J.T. Wooodland?"
"I'm talkin' about my personal copilot, Jesus Christ."
"Someone should tell her personal copilot that His landings suck," Miss Michigan muttered. She was a lithe redhead with the panther-like carriage of a professional athlete.
"Dear Jesus," Taylor started. The girls bowed their heads, except for Adina.
"Don't you want to pray?" Mary Lou whispered.
"I'm Jewish. Not big on Jesus."
"Oh. I didn't know they had any Jewish people in New Hampshire. You should make that one of your Fun Facts about Me!"
Adina opened her mouth but couldn't think of anything to say." (p. 7).

"Reality check: We're stuck on a freaking island with only a few bags of pretzels to each and God only knows what kinds of dangerous animals or mega-zombie-insects out there, and you want us to keep working on our pageant skills?"
Taylor glossed her lips again and smacked them together. "Correct."
"Don't be so negative," Miss Ohio said. "I'll bet the coast guard is on its way to rescue us right now."
Adina shook her head. "What we need is a team leader."
"I accept," Taylor said.
"Um, not to be rude or anything, but usually you put it to a vote. It's a democracy, right?" Adina laughed uncomfortably" (p. 20).

"'I think you're missing the salient point here,' Shanti said. "Miss Teen Dream is a girls' pageant. You are not a girl. Ergo, you are disqualified."
"Who says I'm not a girl?"
"You have a wang-dang-doodle!" Tiara squeaked.
"Is that all that makes a guy a guy? What makes a girl a girl?"
And the girls found they could not answer. For they'd never been asked that question in the pageant prep" (p. 99).

"The baton passed from girl to girl as ideas were discussed: Huts. Fishing lines. Rain-catching tarp. Zip lines. Tanning booth. By the time the baton came to Taylor again, the girls had a renewed sense of hope. After all, they were the best of the best. They had lived through the pageant circuit, which was no place for wimps.
"When they come to rescue us, they will find us with clean, jungle-forward, fashionable huts and a self-sustaining ecosystem. We will be the Miss Teen Dreamers they write about in history books," Taylor said.
"Nobody writes about Miss Teen Dreamers in history books," Adina scoffed.
"They will now, Miss New Hampshire. We will be the best ever. This is my new goal. And I am very goal-oriented" (p. 104).

"Mary Lou and Sosie gathered rocks and pebbles from the beach and spelled out the word HELP along the shore so that it might be seen from a passing plane. At the end of the word, Sosie made an exclamation mark with a smiley face at the bottom.
"That way, they'll know we're friendly," she reasoned." (p. 120).

Tasty Rating: !!!!!

REVIEW: Sirenz (These girls didn't tempt me...there are more enticing sirens out there)

2011-06-17T19:55:00.000-04:00

Bennardo, C., & Zaman, N. (2011). Sirenz. Woodbury, MN: Flux.

275 pages.

Appetizer: Seventeen-year-old roommates Shar and Meg do not get along. It's just not working out. One night, after a failed attempt to try to develop a friendship, a fight over a beautiful pair of red high heels and a very attractive boy results in the guy dying in a subway accident. To make matters worse, the nearby witnesses think Char and Meg pushed him.

In steps the god of the Underworld, Hades. He makes Char and Meg an offer they can't refuse (at least, not without suffering through a long prison sentence). The two girls are tasked to become sirens, like the monsters from Greek mythology. They have a short period of time to lure a person who has made a deal with Hades to one of several underworld portals throughout New York City.

While the task seems simple enough, they realize too late that the more they use their new bewitching powers, the more bird-like their appearances become. And if they fail, Shar and Meg will become Hades's dog walkers...for all of eternity.

The story alternates between Shar and Meg's perspectives. At first I was amused by their differing characterizations. But, as I kept reading, it seemed that any differences between the two were only at the surface level, and I couldn't really distinguish between their voices except for the fact that one was more fond of the color pink than the other.

I also initially liked the way aspects of mythology were alluded to early on in the text (a hot guy was referred to as a god, etc.) and the way Persephone was portrayed.

But the more I read, the more aspects of the story began to engage me less and less and leeeeeeesssssssssss. At times, the way action was described in the story was a little too brief for my taste. Stuff would happen, and I would be like, wait, what? The way gender and feminine beauty are treated are also just begging to be analyzed. (But in terms of Sirenz being a bubble gum, light, New York City is the center of the universe, fashionista, chick lit, it's nothing out of the ordinary.) The focus on superficiality did start to grate on me as I kept reading. It's statements like, "War it would be. And may the better-looking, better-dressed, nicer girl--namely, me--win" (p. 65) that make me right "ugh" in the book's margins. And what about the smarter girl? I'm personally all for the smarter girl winning. (Although, at no point in the story did Meg or Shar strike me as being particularly smart. Call me a workaholic, but after making a deal with the god Hades that could cost my soul, I'd spend my next morning trying to plan how to complete my half of the bargain instead of going shopping. But that's just me....)

Also, despite the fact that Meg and Shar are seniors in high school, they may as well be twenty-somethings. In fact, I wish they would have been...because then I probably wouldn't have bothered to read it.

Overall, I liked the premise of this story. But the characterizations and lack of intelligence in the plot and protagonists left me wishing the book was 100 pages shorter.

Dinner Conversation:

"God, you're wearing those clunky things again? How stupid, wearing five-inch wedge heels on cracked and frozen New York City sidewalks. What if you break an ankle?
"Great shoes," I said, faking a beauty queen smile at Meg" (p. 1).

"It was an accident!" whispered Shar.
"My dear Sharisse and Margaret, this poor soul is dead. You both had a hand in killing him. Do you think that will matter to his family and friends? To the courts?"
"How do you know our names?" My voice, steady until now, trembled slightly. I glanced over at Shar, who stared back, looking as pale as I felt.
"What should we do?" she whimpered." (p. 20).

"But let's get back on topic. You killed an innocent man." He grinned sardonically. "And if I heard you correctly, you both said that you would do anything to make this situation go away. I'm here to oblige you. I've never seen such natural talent!"
"Talent for what?" I asked.
"Think about what happened. You met that young man tonight, and you made quite an impression. He was going to take both of you to a music venue, yes? You saw what you wanted and wasted no time in engaging him. And then Sharisse"--he turned a lascivious grin on Shar--"not to be outdone, moved in, and all she had to do was smile. How could he stay away from either of you? He was completely enchanted. You lured him to his doom, and he happily followed!" (pp. 23-24).

"Our agreement requires you tow to lure Mr. Romanov to one of the many portals to my realm. To help you achieve this task, your natural talents will be enhanced." He looked from me to Meg and back again before continuing.
"As Margaret has so accurately described, the Sirens called to the sailors, who couldn't resist them. A word or a look drew their victims to them." He licked his full lips and gazed at me. "One look from you, Sharisse, is already captivating. From this moment forward, no mortal will be able to look away when you engage him. And you," he continued, turning to Meg, "so glib, Margaret. They'll hear you, and they'll obey."
"That's it?" I asked.
"I doubt it," Meg replied. (pp. 30-31).

Tasty Rating: !!

REVIEW: Reaching for Sun

2011-06-09T18:59:00.000-04:00

Zimmer, T.V. (2007). Reaching for Sun. New York: Bloomsbury.

181 pages.

Appetizer: Josie Wyatt is in the seventh grade. She lives with her mom (who is almost never around since she's trying to complete her college degree) and her grandmother. She hates school. She's never met her father. Her family has had to sell most of their farm land and must watch subdivisions for the rich be built around their house. She is bullied by most of the kids at school. And she has cerebral palsy.

Reaching for the Sun is set over (just about) a year as Josie makes her first friend, deals with her grandmother's deteriorating health and struggles to find the words to get her mom to let her not participate in a summer clinic designed to help her with her cerebral palsy.

This novel in verse is written by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer, a local author who I have heard speak a couple of time, and who (full-disclosure!) made contact with the literary agency that would eventually represent me. So far, this is my favorite book by her. Josie's voice is honest and poignant. The moment that really drew me in was when she thinks about what type of man her absentee-father must be:

"I wonder
if he ditched me and Mom
when he found out about my disability,
or if it gave him the excuse he needed--
typed letter left behind in the mailbox,
no stamp.
I wonder if I got my straight
blond hair, blue eyes,
and cowardice from him,
and whether he's real smart,
rich, and now got himself
a picture-perfect family" (p. 15)

Ouch!

Throughout the book, there are also illustrations of a flower growing in the bottom right margin of each page. As you go through the story, Josie grows and blossoms as a character and the flower grows and blossoms too. I thought this was a wonderful touch that complimented the content and name of the story beautifully.

Overall, I found Reaching for Sun to be a very touching and realistic story of a girl coming into her own.

Dinner Conversation:

"The last bell rings,
but
I'm hiding
in the last stall
of the girls' bathroom
until I hear
voices
disappear behind closing
classroom doors.

Only then
do I slip out
into the deserted hallway
and rush to room 204,
a door
no one
wants to be seen opening.

Not even
me." (p. 3).

"With my odd walk
and slow speech
everyone knows
I've got special ed,
but if I wait
until the hall clears,

taunts like tomatoes
don't splatter
the back of my head" (p. 4).

"Mom wants me
to love school like she does,
follow her lead to college,
make my mark:
the first astronaut with
cerebral palsy,
or at least
a doctor or lawyer,
something with a title or abbreviations, I guess.
But Mom's dreams for me
are a heavy wool coat I
wear, even in summer." (p.46).

Tasty Rating: !!!!

Interesting Twitter Trend #YAsaves

2011-06-05T08:12:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal posted an article that accuses YA literature of being too violent, dark, etc.

Whether you agree with the author, Meghan Cox Gurdon, is up to you.

In response, however, YA author Maureen Johnson started a tweeting trend on twitter that included people describing the ways YA literature has influenced them. You can find some of the comments at http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23yasaves (or searching #YAsaves on twitter.com).

Many of the comments are moving. I highly recommend giving them a glance.

REVIEW: Genesis (Moving "Forward Toward the Past")

2011-06-04T21:23:00.001-04:00

Beckett, B. (2006). Genesis. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

150 pages.

A few weeks ago one of my reader friends came into my office and talked about how Genesis was the best book she'd read in a looooooooong time, how I needed to read it NOW, etc.

While this friend didn't *exactly* say we couldn't be friends anymore if I failed to read it, it was implied that to be a *good* friend I would read the short dystopian novel. And read it soon!

And so I did.

And, let me tell you, Genesis is not a book that a doctoral student should read around the oral defense of her dissertation. I kept getting flashbacks to my general exams. *cringes*

Appetizer: Anax is being tested. Set during an examination and shared predominantly as a transcript, Genesis is told almost in in real time for a period of four-ish hours as Anax, a student of The Academy who has specialized in history and in analyzing the life of a man named Adam Forde, describes the end of the world as the reader knows it, the history of The Republic and how Forde helped change everything.

I absolutely loved the way that both the world of the story and the structure of the narrative refer back to the works of Plato and other classical thought. Genesis is kind of like a post-apocalyptic Republic, in that it takes on issues of education, class, individuality and artificial intelligence. It's an interesting and very intelligent narrative.

Early on, I did feel like the dialogue provided a little too much convenient backstory, but overall this is a well-plotted book...that is kind of difficult to explain beyond what I've already said.

About 3/5ths of the way through the book, Anax presents her interpretation of a series of exchanges of how the focus of her work, Adam, engaged with a being of artificial intelligence named Art. About that point, I started to pick up a major Battlestar Galactica vibe. For reals. I could practically hear the stacatto music in the background as Adam and Art debated humanity vs. AI much like the conversations between Gaius Baltar and Six...except less sexual...and without the skimpy red dress.

I definitely recommend checking it out (it is, after all, a pretty quick read). As for whether it was the best book I've read in the last couple of years...it may be my friend's, but I wouldn't say it was mine.

But then, I feel like it's been a while since a book really grabbed me.

You read that, authors and books? That's an invitation. Impress me!

Dinner Conversation:

"Anax moved down the long corridor. The only sound was the gentle hiss of the air filter overhead. The lights were down low, as demanded by the new regulations. She remembered brighter days, but never spoke of them. It was one of the Great Mistakes, thinking of brightness as a quality of the past.
Anax reached the end of the corridor and turned left. She checked the time. They would be watching her approach, or so it was rumored. The door slid open, quiet and smooth, like everything in The Academy zone." (p. 3).

"EXAMINER: Four hours have been allotted for your examination. You may seek clarification, should you have trouble understanding any of our questions, but the need to do so will be taken into consideration when the final judgement is made. Do you understand this?
ANAXIMANDER: Yes.
EXAMINER: Is there anything you would like to ask, before we begin?
ANAXIMANDER: I would like to ask you what the answers are.
EXAMINER: I'm sorry. I don't quite understand...
ANAXIMANDER: I was joking.
EXAMINER: Oh. I see. (p. 4).

"The founders of The Republic sought to deny the individual, and in doing so they ignored a simple truth.
The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate, and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them" (p. 50).

Tasty Rating: !!!!

REVIEW: The Throne of Fire (The Kane Chronicles Book Two)

2011-06-02T18:16:00.000-04:00

Riordan, R. (2011). The Throne of Fire. New York: Disney-Hyperion Books.

446 pages.

Appetizer: It's been several months since the events of The Red Pyramid took place. Sadie and Carter Kane are still living in Brooklyn, they have found other descendants of the pharaohs and are training them.

Things are about to get intense and complicated though (much to Sadie's dismay. It's her birthday and she just wants one day off). After the siblings learn that the Apophis, a snake of chaos that will cause the end of the world, is going to be released in five days they and some of their new recruits must find and raise the god Ra in the hopes of maintaining the balance between chaos and order. Adventures that take the Kane siblings to Russia and Alexandria ensue.

So, it could be the fact that I finished my dissertation, edited it, defended it before a committee and am a few weeks away from graduation, but somehow this book seemed *funnier* to me than Riordan's previous books. Sure, I know that his other books have humor in them, but The Throne of Fire actually made me giggle from time to time. Especially the scene involving the magic camels, Katrina and Hindenburg (who was filled with gas like the zeppelin). And I quote:

"Our camels plodded along. Katrina tried to kiss, or possibly spit on Hindenburg, and Hindenburg farted in response. I found this a depressing commentary on boy-girl relationships." (p. 253)

Hahaha.

My biggest criticism of The Throne of Fire is the emphasis on romantic relationships. Carter is still set on finding Zia, who he is certain will still feel their special connection. Sadie is torn between the god Anubis and one of the new recruits, sixteen-year-old Walt, who has a dark secret he is trying to hide from Sadie. These romances are subtle and raise some great tensions in the story, but I felt like I would have preferred it if Sadie and Carter were a couple years older. (Sadie is thirteen...a little young to be torn between a sixteen-year-old and an immortal god. A one-sided crush, I would have been fine with--I had a crush on a sixteen-year-old named Sam who I went to Campy Henry with when I was Sadie's age. I was totally crazy about him. But here's the thing. To him, I was still a little kid. The romances in The Throne of Fire just felt a little too complicated and YA.)

One thing I did notice (and appreciate) was that during Carter and Sadie's many journeys from here...to there...and back there again...was that Riordan tended to summarize a lot of their adventures with brief descriptions of the complicated travel struggles, but without immersing me in yet another lengthy conflict. If he had included the details of a lot of these trips, the book could have been a couple hundred pages longer. And I might not have made it through that.

Dinner Conversation:

"Carter here.
Look, we don't have time for long introductions. I need to tell this story quickly, or we're all going to die.
If you didn't listen to our first recording, well...pleased to meet you: the Egyptian gods are running around loose in the modern world; a bunch of magicians called the House of Life is trying to stop them; everyone hates Sadie and me; and a big snake is about to swallow the sun and destroy the world." (p. 1)

"We're going to wake the god Ra," Carter said, as if it was as easy as getting a snack from the fridge.
The trainees glanced at one another. Carter wasn't known for his sense of humor, but they must've wondered if he was joking.
"You mean the sun god," Felix said. "The old king of the gods." (pp. 52-53)

"I looked down at my street clothes. A sour taste filled my mouth. Carter and I had a quest to undertake, and it was unlikely we would come back alive. Another responsibility on my shoulders, another unreasonable demand for me to sacrifice my life for the greater good. Happy birthday to me." (p. 59).

"So let me get this straight," Sadie said. "We break into a heavily guarded Russian national museum, find the magicians' secret headquarters, find a dangerous scroll, and escape. Meanwhile, we will be eating chocolate."
Bes nodded solemnly. "It's a good plan. It might work." (p. 156)

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: Dork Diaries (Book One)

2011-05-30T20:22:00.000-04:00

Russell, R.R. (2009). Dork Diaries: Tales from a not-so-fabulous life. New York: Aladdin.

282 pages.

Appetizer: Nikki has just started attending Westchester Country Day on scholarship and she wants nothing more than to fit in with the popular mean girl MacKenzie and her friends. But how? Would an iPhone or winning an art prize get her invited to MacKenzie's birthday party? Nikki struggles through middle school, hoping to find the key to popularity and happiness.

As I was reading Dork Diaries, it was hard not to compare it to The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Both are focused on the experiences of middle school, one from a boy's perspective (DoaWK) and one from a girl's (DD), both use illustrations (although DoaWK's are more central to the story), both feature superficially-minded selfish characters, but while I can't help but occasionally chuckle at the content of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Dork Diaries left me silent, not very amused, and from time to time wondering wtf. One of my "WTF?" moments was this passage:

"The most important lesson I learned last year was that having a CRUDDY phone--or NONE at all--can totally RUIN your social life. While hordes of celebrity party girls regularly FORGET to wear undies, not a single one would be caught dead without her cell phone. Which was why I was nagging my mom about buying me an iPhone" (p. 4).

WTF? What am I supposed to think about that? I get that this is meant in jest...but I just don't find it funny. There were a few other attempted jokes like that throughout the book.

I did appreciate the tension over Nikki's desire to belong and to find true friends. I also appreciated Nikki's embarrassment by her father's van. That also felt very real to the age.

Overall, I wasn't that impressed with Dork Diaries. Nikki's conflicts with MacKenzie and her attraction to Brandon felt pretty typical of middle grade/tween/young-young adult romance books. The story did end on a positive note...which is also typical of this type of book.

Since the illustrations didn't add to much to the story over all, I was just left feeling like Louise Rennison's Angus Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging was a much more entertaining diary series (although for a potentially slightly older age group).

Dinner Conversation:

"Sometimes I wonder if my mom is BRAIN DEAD. Then there are days when I know she is.
Like today.
The drama started this morning when I casually asked if she would buy me one of those cool new iPhones that do almost everything. I considered it a necessity of life, second only to maybe oxygen.
What better way to clinch a spot in the CCP (Cute, Cool & Popular) group at my new private school, Westchester Country Day, than by dazzling them with a wicked new cell" (p. 1).

"Absolutely no one writes their most intimate feelings and deep, dark secrets in a diary anymore! WHY?!
Because just one or two people knowing all your BIZ could completely ruin your reputation.
You're supposed to post this kind of juicy stuff online in you BLOG so MILLIONS can read it!!!
Only a TOTAL DORK would be caught WRITING in a DIARY!!" (pp. 7-8).

"This morning the halls were plastered with colorful posters for Random Acts of Avant-Garde Art, our annual school art show.
I'm SUPERexcited because the first prize for each class is $500, cash! SWEET!
That would be enough for me to buy a cell phone, a new outfit from the mall, AND art supplies.
But most important, winning that award could transform me from a "socially challenged ART DORK" to a "socially charmed ART DIVA" practically overnight!" (p. 46).

"When the office assistant asked if I was there to pick up an entry form for the avant-garde art show, I just froze and started clucking like a hen:
Buk, buk, buk-ka-a-ah!
Then, MacKenzie laughed, like ME entering the competition was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard.
That's when I spotted the yellow sign-up sheet for library shelving assistants, also known as LSAs. Every day during study hall, a few kids get excused to go to the school library to shelve books. An LSA's life is about as exciting as watching paint dry.
So, instead of trying to achieve my dream of winning a major art competition, I very STUPIDLY signed up to shelve DUSTY and BORING LIBRARY BOOKS!" (p. 48-49).

Tasty Rating: !!

REVIEW: The Emerald Atlas (Book One of The Books of Beginning Series)

2011-05-28T16:47:00.000-04:00

Stephens, J. (2011). The Emerald Atlas. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

417 pages.

Appetizer: When Kate was four-years-old, her mother woke her to inform her that she had to watch over her baby brother and sister, Michael and Emma. That night her parents disappeared with a stranger and have never returned.

Ten years later, Kate and her siblings (now eleven and twelve-years-old) are shuffled from orphanage to worse orphanage, asserting that their parents are still out there, somewhere. When one last adoptive parent is deemed unacceptable by the siblings, they are sent to one final orphanage in upstate New York, in a town called Cambridge Falls. It doesn't take them long to realize there's something strange about their new home. First, they're not only the only children at the orphanage, but they're the only children in the town.

As they explore their new home, the siblings find a strange room, and in it a strange book. A photo album that, when a photo is placed upon it, sends the children to the time and place the photo was taken. The siblings learn that Cambridge Falls has a dark past, an evil Countess/witch who is holding the town hostage as she searches for something. Realizing the danger, the siblings try to escape to their own time, but accidentally leave Michael behind. Kate, who had promised to keep him and Emma safe, knows that she must rescue her brother and find a way to save the town.

Some reviewers have compared The Emerald Atlas to Harry Potter. From the first few pages, I definitely picked up on an HP vibe. But instead of Harry being left on a stoop of his family members, Kate's parents are the one leaving her and her siblings. Instead of McGonagall and Dumbledore having a conversation about how extraordinary he is over a sleeping baby Harry, a seemingly wise, old shadowy man and her parents have a conversation about the the children's destiny outside of Kate's bedroom. And instead of pronouncing Tomato as tomato, I will now be pronouncing it toMAto.

Also, the Dr. Pym character feeeeeels eerily similar to Dumbledore, knowing impossible things and being ridiculously wise. (What is it about having god-like old people in children's literature? Sure, I get that it's an archetype and I'm all for respecting elders, but sometimes Granny Relda from the Grimm Sisters series, Dumbledore and this Dr. Pym seem more than human.)

Focus brain.

There's also a friendly giant in The Emerald Atlas who lives in a cabin. Although, he's nothing compared to Hagrid.

But that's enough of comparison talk. The Emerald Atlas does hold its own as being an engaging story. There were a lot of great suspenseful moment, like when the siblings were fleeing from starved wolves. I really loved Emma. She was tough and made a lot of humorous comments. Here's one from when the siblings learn about some of the Countess's henchmen, the Screechers:

"Morum cadi, the deathless warriors," the Countess said. "Though I admit Screecher is a fitting name. They were men, hundreds of years ago. But they traded their souls for power and eternal life. Which they were granted, of a sort."

"They're not so bad," Emma said. "Mostly smell is all." (p. 104)

And as far as villains go, the Countess is pretty awesome as well. She's twisted and funny. Kind of like Sue Sylvester from Glee, but less vicious. One of my favorite quotations from her was:

"When I married the Count, everyone said he had no more than six months to live. I don't need to tell you I didn't plan on allowing him even that long. But wasn't it just like the old mule to creak on for nearly a year? Honestly, he must have survived a half dozen attempts to poison him. Never marry a finicky eater, my dears. Nothing but trouble." (p. 100)

I'm not certain The Emerald Atlas deserves all of the hype it is receiving. But it is definitely an entertaining fantasy to keep in mind as a book recommendation.

Dinner Conversation:

"The girl was shaken awake. Her mother was leaning over her.
"Kate"--her voice was low and urgent--"listen very closely. I need you to do something for me. I need you to keep your brother and sister safe. Do you understand? I need you to keep Michael and Emma safe." (p. 1)

"The girl's heart was hammering in her chest, and she had opened her mouth to ask what was happening when a man appeared in the doorway. The light was behind him, so Kate couldn't see his face, but he was tall and thin and waring a long overcoat and what looked like a very rumpled hat.
"It's time," he said.
His voice and that image--the tall man silhouetted in the doorway--would haunt Kate for years, as it was the last time she saw her mother, the last time her family was together. Then the man said something Kate couldn't hear, and it was as if a heavy curtain was drawn around her mind, obliterating the man in the doorway, the light, her mother, everything." (pp. 2-3)

"What...happened?" Emma asked. "Where are we?""
"I can answer that." Michael's face was flushed with excitement, his words tumbling all over themselves. "We're in Abraham's picture! Well, not in the actual picture itself; that would be ridiculous"--he allowed himself a quick chuckle--"we've been transported to the time and place the photo was taken."
Emma stared at him. "Huh?"
Don't you see? It's magic! It has to be!"
"There's no such thing!"
"Really? Then how'd we get here?"
Emma looked about and, seeing no clear way to argue, wisely changed the subject. "So where are we then?" (p. 48)

"I do not enjoy playing the grump! But I must cure you of your excessive love of me!" The Countess picked up the doll that Annie had dropped and smoothed his patchy hair. "So, the word has already been sent to your men. They'll find me what I'm looking for, or beginning this Sunday--I do hate Sundays, they're so dull--beginning this Sunday, your town will lose a child each week I have to wait." (pp. 60-61)

""But I would like to give you a word of warning." He leaned forward in his chair. "There are places in this world that are different from all others. Almost like separate countries. A forest here, an island there, part of a city--"
"A mountain range," Kate said.
"Yes," Dr. Pym said. "Sometimes a whole mountain range. Cambridge Falls and all that surrounds it is such a place. Now, the town itself is quite safe. But do not go deeper into the mountains. There are dangers there you cannot possibly imagine." (pp 73-74)

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: Abandon (Book One of The Abandon Trilogy)

2011-05-13T19:26:00.000-04:00

Cabot, M. 2011. Abandon. New York: Point.

304 pages.

On the outset, The Goddess Test and Abandon have a lot in common. Released within weeks of one another, both new series play with the myth of Persephone. Both involve teenage girls moving to new towns with their moms, coming to terms with the possibility of someone's death, and dealing with the romantic entanglements of the Lord of the Underworld, Hades. Excuse me, Henry. Or John. Both are series. And both have left me feeling "meh."

Appetizer: Pierce died. Or had a near death experience a couple of years ago. Since then, she hasn't been the same.

She remembers what it was like to die, where she went. And she is haunted by the boy she met there, John. She would question the reality of her experiences, but she knows John is real. He left her a necklace to protect her. It changes colors depending on who she is with (a mood-necklace? Srsly? Please try harder, Meg Cabot. I think you are capable of better.). Despite the fact that Pierce and her mother have moved to Isla Huesos, she is still haunted by John and the fact that he wants to take her back to the underworld.

While Cabot's writing is easy to engage with and Pierce is an interesting character, I had some trouble with the beginning of the book. It felt like Cabot was trying to create such an air of mystery about Peierce's past and kept alluding to an accident, an incident, a near death experience and to a Him who was haunting her, I had trouble keeping all of these occurrences straight, especially as the narration jumped through time to share about several of them. Now, the experience of trying to piece together Pierce's past wasn't so frustrating that I felt like putting the book down, but it was more confusing than I think Cabot intended it to be. Around page 40 or 50, the plot evened out and it become easier for me to figure out when Pierce was narrating about.

At that point I was all ready to enjoy the story, but then some other aspects of the plot didn't ring true to me. Pierce is driven to protect her friends. I'm fine with that. But since she's the new girl to Isla Huesos, her decision to hatch a plot to investigate a bunch of popular kids--or A Wingers--to help her cousin and a girl she'd known for only a couple of hours and hadn't even had an extensive or deep conversation with felt very forced. Plus, none of these tensions (or many others) were in any way resolved by the cliff-hanger-y ending of the book. I was left feeling very "meh" towards the book. And like Cabot should have done another round of revision before publishing the book.

John is meant to be the tempting bad boy. Cabot does a good job of presenting that, but I was still more than a little skeeved out by his relationship with Pierce. With Pierce's first experience with being dead and talking with him, it becomes clear that he is expecting Pierce to make choices without having all the information about what she is agreeing to or without knowing the consequences of those choices. It was one more small step above manipulation.

I liked the idea of this retelling. I like the way Cabot explores the question of death. But over all, I felt like the actual story fell short of what it could have been.

I repeat, "meh."

The second book in the series is called Underworld. I'll probably read it. Not because I expect it will redeem Abandon's weaker plot-points, but because it's related to my dissertation topic and I feel obligated.

Dinner Conversation:

"Anything can happen in the blink of an eye. Anything at all.
One.
Two.
Three.
Blink.
A girl is laughing with her friends.
Suddenly, a crater splits apart the earth. Through it bursts a man in an ink black chariot forged in the deepest pits of hell, drawn by stallions with hooves of steel and eyes of flame.
Before anyone can shout a warning, before the girl can turn and run, those thundering hooves are upon her.
The girl isn't laughing anymore. Instead, she's screaming." (p. 1)

"So who cares what happened to Persephone? Compared to what happened to me, that's nothing.
Persephone was lucky, actually. Because her mom showed up to bail her out.
No one's coming to rescue me." (p. 2)

"Do you want to go someplace else?" he asked. "Someplace away from here? Someplace warm?"
"Oh," I said, feeling a rush of relief. He'd realized there'd been a mistake. HE was going to fix it. I was going home. "Yes, please."
And then I blinked. Because that's what human beings do, especially when they've been crying.
But when I opened my eyes again, I wasn't home. I wasn't standing on the shore of the lake anymore, either.
And what I'd been hoping was the end of the nightmare I'd been going through turned out to be just the beginning. (p. 53).

"He pulled out one of the thronelike chairs. "You must be tired. Won't you sit down? And I'm sure you must be hungry."
It wasn't until he said it that I realized I was. Just looking at the mounds of ripe peaches, crisp apples, and glistening grapes in those gleaming silver bowls--not to mention the cool clear water in those crystal goblets, so cold I could see the condensation dripping from the sides--well, it wasn't easy to stay where I was, especially feeling as wobbly on my feet as I did.
But my dad had warned me about situations like this. Maybe not this exactly. But not to accept food--or drinks--from strangers.
Especially young male strangers. (p. 57).

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: The Goddess Test

2011-05-04T08:20:00.001-04:00

Carter, A. (2011). The Goddess Test. Don Mills, Ontario: Harlequin Teen.

293 pages.

Appetizer: Kate Winters's mother is dying. They move to Eden, a town in the upper peninsula of Michigan where her mother had lived when she was younger. While Kate wants nothing more than to spend every possible minute with her deteriorating mother, several of her new classmates insist on drawing her out, including the head cheerleader, named Ava.

When Ava is killed in a trick she attempted to play on her, Kate finds herself making a deal with a mysterious boy named Henry to save Ava's life that is reminiscent of the deal Persephone experienced with the Greek god Hades.

As part of the deal, Kate must spend six months of each year with a seemingly early twenty-something man, named Henry. She soon learns that she will face tests to see if she is worthy of being Henry's wife and gaining immortality. Thus, the goddess test.

So, out there in the internetz world, there are a lot of mixed reviews of The Goddess Test. Some are saying it's a wonderful engrossing spin on bringing Greek mythology into the present world. Others are outraged, saying Carter completely ignores traditional mythology and attempts to infuse it with Christian values.

The question is really about how much can an author can play with the figures of myth. Some like to maintain traditional versions (Rick Riordan and his Percy Jackson series) others completely ignore a lot of the history (Ross Collins and his Medusa Jones).

I felt like Carter was somewhere in the middle. *A kind-of spoiler that could lead to a major spoiler for the book (if that makes any sense)* Kate meets a lot of the Greek gods as soon as she arrives in Eden, Michigan, but doesn't realize their true identities. They all have fake names (which, as someone who is terrible with names, didn't confuse me at all. Nope.) I found the list explaining who was who that is at the back of the book before I even began reading. This meant that as I read about various characters acting in different ways that didn't fit with their true Greek identities. (Artemis in charge of the dresses?! Frak, no!) *End the kind-of spoiler for the end of the book* I felt like Carter was creating a monomyth, combining Christian themes and beliefs with traditional myth to explain the world. I think this is becoming more and more popular in YA and children's lit.

When I first started reading the book, Monica had posted a comment to my Goodreads account asking why I wanted to read it. We had the following phone conversation, re-constructed to the best of my failing memory.

Shel: So, The Goddess Test?
Monica: Don't read it!
Shel: Why not? I'm enjoying it so far.
Monica: They make Hades a virgin! A VIRGIN!!!!!!
Shel: ...I don't think I've gotten to that part yet.

(In retrospect, Monica may not have freaked out so much about the Greek god of the Underworld being a virgin quite that much.)

Monica and I then had a very intelligent conversation about gender roles in relation to how modern heroes like Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and Kate are being presented and how Percy gets to go off and have adventures to save the world and fight a war (funsies!) while Kate is not the toughest of ladies (boo!). (Seriously, I felt like she was an emotionally strong character, but physically she rivals Bella Swan in terms of being a distressed damsel. Kate's legs can barely support her more often than a baby hasn't learned to crawl or walk yet. Get it together, girl.)

Plus, Riordan is more conservative in the way he presents the Greek gods, etc. We are geniuses (not at all focused on how a several thousand-year-old attractive young man may still be a virgin).

Maybe we should have used this book as a literary feast...that is if I could have convinced Monica to give it a second chance.

I really loved the eerie tone of the story that Carter set up. I felt it matched Kate's mood perfectly. And since the book I'd read before this one was poorly written, The Goddess Test felt like a breath of fresh air. That is, until I hit about page 40ish, when Ava was very randomly killed. That was a moment where I had to literally exclaim "WTF," while I read in Thompson Library's lovely silent reading room. I got glared at. I got glared at reeeeeeeal good.

This would become a cyclical experience as I kept reading. I'd be enjoying the tensions and internal landscape of Kate's characterization that then something completely random would happen plot-wise that would make me mumble "WTF?"

There were also quite a few moments throughout out the book were I was left feeling like it was a little ridiculous...or just not that clever. Throughout the story, Kate is supposedly in danger, but she doesn't seem all that concerned. And when there are threats to her life, they aren't that clever. Given the way that the story presents the supposed assassin (as someone who has killed countless girls previously, no matter the ways Henry attempts to protect her), I would have expected something more impressive than what is in the story.

Overall, I'm declaring that I enjoyed the book. Some of the plot developments seemed forced or not foreshadowed or explored enough. I definitely liked the tensions over death and the fact that the story was set in Michigan.

Michiganders forever!!!!!!

When does the second book Goddess Interrupted come on? (And is it an intentional play on the title Girl, Interrupted? Will Kate be committed to an insane asylum where she befriends some of the other patients and comes to terms with the way society has treated her while exploring the nature of reality with a beautiful Greek god running around in the background? I could probably get into that. Just saying.)

Dinner Conversation:

"I spent my eighteenth birthday driving from New York City to Eden, Michigan, so my mother could die in the town where she was born. Nine hundred and fifty-four miles of asphalt, knowing every sign we passed brought me closer to what would undoubtedly be the worst day of my life.
As far as birthdays go, I wouldn't recommend it" (p. 12).

"What would you do to have her back?"
I struggled to understand what he was saying. "Back?"
"Back in the condition she was in before she jumped in the water. Alive."
In my panic, I already knew my answer. What would I do to have Ava back? What would I do to stop death from tightening its chokehold over the remaining shreds of my life that it hadn't already stolen? It had marked my mother and was waiting in the wings to take her from me, inching closer every day. She might've been ready to give up, but I would never stop fighting for her. And like hell I was going to let it claim another victim right in front of me, especially when it was my fault Ava was here in the first place. "Anything." (p. 45)

"Wandering listlessly through the halls, I ran my hand across each surface I passed, staring blankly ahead into the darkness. Tonight marked the end of the only chapter in my life I'd ever known, and I didn't know how to live in the emptiness ahead" (p. 63).

"Think--you know the myth, do you not? Who was Persephone? What was she?"
Fear stabbed at me, cutting me from the inside. If what he claimed was true, then he'd kidnapped Persephone and forced her to marry him, and no matter what he said, I couldn't help but wonder if he would try to do the same to me. But the rational part of me couldn't look past the obvious. "You really think you're a god? You know that sounds crazy, right?" (p. 101).

"Why the tests?" I said. "Why are they necessary?"
"Because," he said. "The prize is not something we give out lightly, and we need to make sure it is something you can handle."
"What's that?"
"Immortality." (p. 106).

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: Moon Over Manifest

2011-04-29T09:52:00.012-04:00

Vanderpool, C. (2010). Moon Over Manifest. New York: Delacorte Press.

342 pages.

I finally got around to reading the current Newbery winner. When Moon Over Manifest was announced as the winner, only one person I knew had read it (one person out of at least a dozen who spend their time trying to read as much children's literature as is humanly possible. This book wasn't just a sleeper agent. It was the unexpected chaos factor). That one-person-out-of-a-dozen's reaction? "Baaaaaaaaah, they keep picking books that are beautiful to adults but BORING to kids. All of the people and their different names are confusing. Bah humbug."

Okay, I'll admit. I added the bah humbug to the end of that quotation. As far as I know, I'm the only person (not in a famed Christmas novel or movie adaptation) who uses the phrase bah humbug.

Then, as other people I knew got around to reading the book before me, their comments pretty much confirmed what Person One already said: "I'm an adult and I'm confused. How will an eleven-year-old tolerate this book?"

So, when I finally got around to reading the book, I was a little hesitant. I had my pen ready to take notes on who was who in the cast of characters. Because I would defeat this book! I will not be confused!

...for once.

Appetizer: In May of 1936, Abilene Tucker has been sent to Manifest, Kansas to stay while her dad works on the railroad. He'd often told her stories about the town where he grew up, but Abilene is surprised by the dusty town she finds. on her first night there, she discovers a box of mementos. Abilene begins to seek out the history of the objects and her father's history in the town. She relies upon the stories of a psychic, old newspaper articles and other methods to try to learn her family's past.

Since the novel is set during the Great Depression, I was strongly reminded of Out of the Dust (but without poetry). Visually, I also kept thinking about the TV show Carnivale (which is in no way appropriate for wee little ones), and which represents the 1930s well.

Moon Over Manifest is such a good social studies teacher book. I could talk about the KKK, the Great Depression, World War I, treatment of immigrants, coal mining, newspaper writing, small town life, the importance of storytelling, prohibition, finding a sense of belonging or home...and on and on.

But there are also a lot of difficulties with the book. There are flashbacks within flashbacks, some difficult vocabulary. Characters who have multiple names. And even though there is a list of characters at the beginning of the book, not everybody is included. (If used as a read aloud, I would strongly recommend creating extensive character list worksheets to have students fill-out as we go through the book.)

I did enjoy the ending of the novel though. The interweaving plots came together nicely and reinforced the importance of story, knowing the past and creating a sense of home.

I was left feeling as though the book took on more than it should have. I thought that if it were trimmed down by a hundred pages, the humor and the central story would have been brought out more and would probably engage young readers a little more. As it is, I was left reading a book that had some nice moments (KKK+Dark Outhouse+Plus switching toilet paper with poison ivy leaves=AWESOME!) but that also left me feeling pretty bored. It was a book I felt like I had to get through, instead of one I was actually enjoying. Which is not good.

As it is, I have to agree with my anonymous friend that I mentioned at the beginning of the post. Moon Over Manifest feels like a winning novel for the adults, not for the kids.

Dinner Conversation:

"The movement of the train rocked me like a lullaby. I closed my eyes to the dusty countryside and imagined the sign I knew only from stories. The one just outside of town with big blue letters: MANIFEST: A TOWN WITH A RICH PAST AND A BRIGHT FUTURE.
I thought about my daddy, Gideon Tucker. He does his best talking in stories, but in recent weeks, those had become few and far between. So on the occasion when he'd say to me, "Abilene, did I ever tell you 'bout the time...?" I'd get all quiet and listen real hard. Mostly he'd tell stories about Manifest, the town where he'd lived once upon a time." (p. 1)

"I knelt on the floor, and with a fairly easy push and pull, the floorboard popped up enough for me to get my fingers under it and pull it up. It would have been the perfect hiding spot for one thing. There was already something there.
I pulled the something out, slow and gentle, and held it up to the moonlight. It was a Lucky Bill cigar box and inside were papers and odds and ends. There were letters, thin and folded neat. One bigger page looked like a map. The odds and ends clanked inside the box." (p. 21)

"Let us put your mind to the test as well. It seems everyone is fond of a good story, dead bodies on trains notwithstanding. Therefore, your assignment will be to write a story of your own. You may select the topic and it will be graded for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and creativity. It will be due September first." (p. 31)

"An honest to goodness spy!" cried Lettie as the three of us crouched behind the wooden Indian in front of the hardware store. "Right here in Manifest! Why, I've never heard anything so exciting." (p. 41)

"It was interesting piecing together fragments of stories I'd heard from Miss Sadie. Noting what had changed and what had stayed the same. But for some reason, these stories all made me sad and more than a little rankled. It rankled me that everyone in this town had a story to tell. Everyone owned a piece of this town's history. Yet no one mentioned my daddy. Even when Gideon had been here, he hadn't really been here. I couldn't find much of a sign of his ever even having set foot in Manifest, let alone having left an impression." (pp. 245-246)

Tasty Rating: !!!

Also, since we're quite a way into 2011, I figured it was time to start working on some of those challenges I wanted to participate in. This may be pushing it, but I had wanted to read this book ever since it was announced as the Newbery winner all the way back in...January. Yes, January.

It counts!

REVIEW: Cupidity

2011-04-21T22:37:00.000-04:00

Goode, C. (2004). Cupidity. New York: Simon Pulse.

273 pages.

Appetizer: Laura Sweeney loves mythology. She's set to be her class's valedictorian, but the one thing she lacks is love. Without thinking, she sends a prayer to Jupiter asking for a boyfriend.

Her prayer is heard! Most of the Roman gods are living in a retirement home in Los Angeles. Since it's been a while since anyone has prayed to them, they decide to answer Laura's prayer, sending Cupid in the disguise of a beautiful teenage girl named Cupidity to make a match for her.

It doesn't take long for cupidity to cause chaos in Laura's Ohio high school, with jocks dating goths, popular girls dating popular boys. Realizing something is not right, it'll be up to Laura to restore order.

I have to say, I really liked the concept of Cupidity. I thought the idea of having the Roman gods living in a retirement home was an interesting twist. Also, the romantic confusion is so complex, seemingly challenging to high school cliques and gender bending (since Cupid becomes Cupidity and then winds up having a role in the confused love mess), I was reminded of a Shakespearean comedy.

I think I would have loved this book...when I was eleven. You know, before I had any idea what romance or high school were actually like.

The writing quality...is not so great. I found myself cringing at cliches and mediocre descriptions. The book often tells instead of shows. As a character, Laura did not engage me at all. I found her annoying and as the story went on I had serious trouble believing that she was as smart as she was supposed to be. She was just blah. Her love interests were blah as well.

I was left feeling certain that I loved the concept of this book, it's potential sense of escapism, much more than the actual book.

Overall, I was left feeling meh.

Dinner Conversation:

"Flies buzzed around the Dumpster in the alley, and the late-summer heat was brutal even in the shade. Laura Sweeney swatted a mosquito away from her arm and pushed her glasses back up her cute but sweaty nose. Her friend Taryn sat across from her on the benches behind the Dairy Queen, and both were dressed in the blue polyester uniforms of the DQ" (p. 1).

"Why isn't there a perfect boy out there for me? Someone I really like.
In anguish, she lifted her head and shouted to the rainy sky, "Jupiter, send me a boyfriend!"
A crack of thunder startled her, and she looked around, feeling a slight chill" (p. 14).

"Cupidity...bow and arrows. Laura's fevered imagination seized on a ludicrous explanation for these two unlikely romances. Cupidity had shot her arrows that fateful night when Megan and Peter fell for each other....
No, it's too insane to think that Cupidity is some kind of modern-day Cupid, Laura decided. I've got to keep my imagination in check" (pp. 111-112)

Tasty Rating: !!

REVIEW: The Immortal Fire (The Cronus Chronicles Book Three)

2011-04-13T08:35:00.000-04:00

Ursu, A. The Immortal Fire. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

510 pages (Yikes!).

Appetizer: In the final Cronus Chronicles novel, Charlotte is still recovering from the adventures in the last novel, The Siren Song. She and Zee are back at school, but all is not right in the world. They watch the news, knowing that the world is unravelling as the Greek gods stop hiding their existence from humanity.

Philonecron is keeping busy too, more certain than ever that he is going to become the ruler of the universe, he visits an Oracle and receives some disturbing news.

Zeus, the current ruler of the universe, is not a fan of all the new chaos. In fact, he thinks it might be time to be done with the silly humans for once and for all.

I have to say, I am sad that this series has ended. The narration of this series is so fun. I absolutely love Charlotte and the themes (sacrificing one for the many, the continuation of life after death, etc.). I just wish I wasn't reading these thick books under a dissertation related time frame. It puts a bit of a dampener on the enjoyment factor.)

I enjoyed The Immortal Fire immensely. The jumps back and forth in time made more sense with this book than with the second one. The voices of the gods were incredibly engaging. I also loved Philonecron's realization that Charlotte and he should be "frenemies."

Part of the reason I wish there were more books in this series is that the ending of The Immortal Fire did seem a little rushed. There are all these wonderful tensions about how the humans may have to rebel against the lazy-slacker Greek gods and I felt like that key conflict was dismissed too easily. Plus, I felt like I wasn't left with a clear picture of what Charlotte and Zee's life would be like after the events of the story. It was a little dissatisfying. (But also, since I'd hit page 500, I was also pretty ready to JUST BE DONE WITH THE BOOK!!!!)

Dinner Conversation:

"At the cradle of civilization, close to the belly button of the world, there is a sea like no other on Earth. This sea is unique for many reasons--the particular wine-dark color of its water, the fact that it is at the nexus of three continents, and of course because of the vast population of Immortals who call it home. Up until about an hour ago, it was also unique because on it there sailed a yacht like no other--but there is not much of that yacht left anymore, thanks to the ministrations of a rather vengeful, extremely giant, giant squid" (p. ix).

"A few days later, half a world away, one ordinary eighth-grader girl was lying on the couch in her den, stroking her cat and feeling sick. There was nothing too extraordinary about this situation; this girl stayed home from school, and if you looked at her you would not be surprised. For Charlotte Mielswetzski (you know how to pronounce that by now, right? Meals-wet-ski?) was covered in gross yellow bruises and small cuts and wore her wrist in a splint and generally looked as if she had had an unfortunate encounter with a very large falling piano" (p. 3).

"The gods had retreated because Zeus didn't want to deal with humanity anymore. And they kept it so humanity didn't know they existed. That didn't mean they didn't interfere--some gods used the mortal realm as their playground, and people as their playthings. The policy seemed to be that they could do whatever they wanted as long as no one noticed them.
Well, people were noticing them now" (p. 11).

"This was the way of things. [Philonecron] was a hero, this was a hero's journey, an epic for the ages--the saga of a humble demon's long journey from Underworld garbage collector to Supreme Lord of All Creation. He never wanted an enemy--he was peace loving, not prone to conflict--but every hero had a nemesis, one as terrible as he was great. It was only literary. It was the conquest of the Universe, after all. One did expect it to be literary" (p. 57).

"Yes, [Zeus] had made a decision, but circumstances change and a good leader changes with them. The children had caused all of this, and maybe humanity needed to be punished for it. Zeus hated to give Hera the satisfaction of doing what she wanted, but if those children did one more thing it would be time to make another decision. It would be a terrible bother, of course, and his world would be a little more empty without humans, but sometimes you have to suffer for justice.
They had one more chance" (p. 125).

"[Mr. Metos] paused and gazed at the cousins. "Though now I find I have a new [purpose]."
"What's that?" Charlotte asked.
"Keeping the two of you alive."
"Oh," said Zee.
"And apparently I cannot do that by myself, and I cannot do that while you two lead your daily lives in the open. I have made every attempt to shield you from danger, and with every attempt the danger seems only to grow. There's only one option that I can see."
Charlotte and Zee looked at each other. "What?" Charlotte asked, her voice shaking a little.
"You are coming with me. We are going to the Prometheans" (pp. 158-159).

Tasty Rating: !!!!

REVIEW: The Phantom Tollbooth

2011-04-11T07:51:00.014-04:00

Juster, N. (1961). The Phantom Tollbooth. New York: Dell Yearling.

256 pages.

If you would have asked me a couple of months ago, I would have sworn that I never read The Phantom Tollbooth. Ever. When I finally listened to the audio book and then picked up a paperback copy, I started to realize a few of the characters Milo meets seemed...familiar.

It turns out I *did* read the classic novel sometime around the fourth or fifth grade. It just didn't leave much of an impression. In fact, I'm pretty sure I thought it was boring with an image or two capturing my interest every now and then (like Alec, who always had the same point of view and so walked on air waiting to "grow down" and reach his full height, or like Milo leading an orchestra in the sunrise).

As an adult though, my impression has changed. (Although, Alec the boy who walks in the air and conducting an orchestra in colors are still two of my favorite moments.)

Appetizer: Milo is one out of sorts little boy. He just doesn't know what to do with himself. He's not interested in anything. One day, he arrives home to find someone has delivered a small car, a map and the phantom tollbooth. After going through the tollbooth, Milo finds himself in a fantastic land, where cities named Dictionopolis and Digitopolis are always at odds. The only hope for the entire country is to bring back the princesses Rhyme and Reason to the country. Milo, along with some of the friends he makes along the way, may have the best chance at restoring rhyme and reason to the land.

With lots of play with language and filled with observations about culture, I wouldn't call The Phantom Tollbooth a plot driven novel by any means. (At that could have been part of my problem as a fourth or fifth grader.) Instead of tension, the novel is more episodic revealing witty observations and critiques of culture and language. I think it is a book that, when used with kids, an adult should help mediate the experience, to help the kids know what it is they should be taking away from the story.

For my students, the aspect of the novel that seemed to strike them the most was the conflict and companionship between language and mathematics. By chance, I wound up with a lot of students who plan to be math teachers someday. Generally, a lot of future math teachers are unhappy that they are required to take my course, which inherently favors language arts and social studies. So, it seemed to be an inspiring and powerful message that our first book explored this supposed battle between math and language (through the conflict between Digitopolis and Dictionopolis). I even got the best-est email ever from a student saying they couldn't wait to incorporate The Phantom Tollbooth and other literature into his math classroom. (YAY)

My students are now in the exact right place for me to show them my favorite picturebook series about math EVER:

Don't you just see this book and want to read it?

If I'd had a teacher who'd shown me this series's mix of fantasy, history and math when I was younger maybe I would have enjoyed math a little more.

Despite all of the wonderful and witty explorations of idioms and discussions of math and how they go hand-in-hand, my students still came to the conclusion that language was favored throughout The Phantom Tollbooth since more chapters were set in Dictionopolis than in Digitopolis. But we did discuss how we loved the fact that a pencil is described as a "magic staff" capable of great power and magic. That is such a powerful metaphor. I love it!

Sidenote--I originally listened to the audio book of this novel and it caused me to declare it to be THE MOST BORING BOOK EVER. Reading it myself made it much more enjoyable for some reason or another. Something for you readers of the world to be aware of.

Dinner Conversation:

"There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself--not just sometimes, but always.
When he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in. On the way he thought about coming home, and coming home he thought about going. Wherever he was he wished he were somewhere else, and when he got there he wondered why he'd bothered. Nothing really interested him--least of all the things that should have" (p. 9).

"Suddenly he found himself speeding along an unfamiliar country highway, and as he looked back over his shoulder neither the tollbooth nor his room nor even the house was anywhere in sight. What had started as make-believe was nor very real" (p. 16).

"Well, then," said Milo, not understanding why each one said the same thing in a slightly different way, "wouldn't it be simpler to use just one? It would certainly make more sense."
"Nonsense."
"Ridiculous."
"Fantastic."
"Absurd."
"Bosh," they chorused again, and continued.
"We're not interested in making sense; it's not our job," scolded the first." (p. 40)

"And so they were taking from the palace and sent far away to the Castle in the Air, and they have not been seen since. This is why today, in all this land, there is neither Rhyme nor Reason."
"And what happened to the two rulers?" asked Milo.
"Banishing the two princesses was the last thing they ever agreed upon, and they soon fell to warring with each other. Despite this, their own kingdoms have continued to prosper, but the old city of Wisdom has fallen into great disrepair, and there is no one to set things right." (p. 77)

Tasty Rating: !!!!

Although I picked up this novel only to discover that I had in fact read it as a child, I'd still like to count The Phantom Tollbooth in the "Wish I'd Read That" Challenge, since if I hadn't picked it up to read, I would not have discovered that I was actually re-reading it.

Readathon: Monica's Fifth Update

2011-04-10T01:44:00.000-04:00

Oooooh, I'm really enjoying my current book--Inside Out by Maria Snyder. I had been worrying, because I finished Across the Universe not too many days ago, and it seemed like two futuristic mystery-ish spaceship novels in almost as many days might be too much. Apparently, though, I'm just a spaceship kind of girl. ;)

This may be my last post of the Readathon, unfortunately. I am going to keep at the actual reading portion of it, but I have moved to my bedroom and... there's a strong chance that I'm going to pass out unexpectedly for the remainder of the night. I will try to remain strong, though!!

Just in case, it has been a brilliant day! Thanks to all who participated on our Mini-Challenge. And see you next year!!!

Readathon: Monica's Fourth Update

2011-04-09T23:02:00.000-04:00

Shel and I were reflecting today about how we've done quite a few Readathons at this point, and it's fun every time. Are you guys still all going strong and reading like champs, friends and readers?

I worked my way through House Without Windows, which was just... fantastic. I love old books to start with--I think it's that super-ancient-paper smell--and this one in particular was even better than normal. I was planning on reviewing it here but I think I may actually need to let it percolate for a few hours before I attempt it. I babble under the best of circumstances, so probably trying to write something serious after... many... many hours of reading and caffeine... isn't the best idea.

Next up, I'll be tackling Inside Out! I have heard it's brilliant in pretty much every way, so I have high hopes it'll carry me through the evening.

Keep on reading!

Read-a-thon: Shel's Fourth Update

2011-04-09T22:52:00.000-04:00

Hi again, Cool Cats, Hot Dogs and Few But Dear Readers,

I'm checking-in to let you know that it's getting close to my bedtime. I'm going to keep reading, but it will be from the comfort of my bed.

Expect my update to come tomorrow morning.

Keep up the reading, peeps!

Shel's Response to the Book Sentence Mini-Challenge

2011-04-09T22:01:00.000-04:00

It's kind of sensical....

The mockingbirds shiver, wide awake, getting revenge on Lauren Wood.

Readathon Mini-Challenge: Re-Create the Cover Winner!!!!!

2011-04-09T20:41:00.000-04:00

Guys, this picking winners stuff is difficult. I can see why Monica and I have always chosen people at random in the past.

This time though, Monica and I decided to choose by effort. And that made this incredibly difficult. So difficult, in fact, that Monica and I had to choose at random between the finalists.

So, without further ramblings, the winner is Sheila at Bookjourney with this recreation:

Congrats to Sheila! Pick your book-alicious prize from the dewey website!!!!!

Monica and I would also like to make note of a couple of honorable mentions who were in serious competition for the top spot.

Anna of wordsandfood did an amazing job:

Her time and effort really shows!!!!!!! Monica and I were super-impressed!

We also wanted to recognize the work of LRAtRandom:

It took me longer than I would like to admit to realize one of the images wasn't actually a book cover.

Thank you to everyone who participated! There were so many fun and amazing recreations!!!!!!

You all have futures as cover designers, as far as I'm concerned.

Read-a-thon: Mid-Point Questionnaire Response

2011-04-09T20:15:00.001-04:00

1. What are you reading right now?

Shel:

Monica: The House Without Windows, by Barbara Newhall Follett

2. How many books have you read so far?

Shel: Pathetically, I haven't finished any. But I have made progress in two longer novels and worked on my dissertation.

Monica: Ditto! Oh my gosh, I'm ashamed of myself. But in my defense, I'm reading a super ancient Library of Congress copy, and I'm afraid to turn the pages too quickly.....

3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon?

Shel: Continuing to march my way through The Immortal Fire.

Monica: Gently turning the pages of House Without Windows, onward.....

4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day?

Shel: Nope.

Monica: Not at all! Hooray for Saturdays!

5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those?

Shel: Do my indoor cats clawing to be let outside count? I tried to explain to them that they are my indoor babies, but they're rather obstinate. So, instead I have to get up every ten minutes to let one in or out from my balcony.

Monica: Some... the birds were screaming, occasionally I got hungry... and The Walking Dead keeps calling my name. Alas.

6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far?

Shel: The lack of reading I've done. Instead I've been enjoying jumping from blog to blog. Bad reader!

Monica: I have really enjoyed the challenges this year! They all seem so inventive!

7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year?

Shel: I just love participating.

Monica: I vote ponies for every participant.

8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year?

Shel: Remember to check out picture books from the library so I will be able to feel *awesome* when I say I will have read 20 books.

Monica: Get sturdier books! And also maybe more snacks... I'm running low.

9. Are you getting tired yet?

Shel: Not yet. My lower back is demanding I stretch more.

Monica: Getting there! I may need coffee!

10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well for you that others may not have discovered?

Shel: Caffeine. But I doubt it's undiscovered.

Monica: Um. Good lighting? Not being near cats? Cats for sure lure you into taking naps....

Readathon Mini-Challenge: Re-Create the Cover

2011-04-09T16:39:00.003-04:00

Mini-Challenge!!!!!!

Welcome Readathon Participants!

This mini-challenge runs from 5 PM to 8 PM EST.

Your mission, should you be super-awesome enough to accept it, is to use household objects, pets, stuffed animals, people, places, things in your neighborhood, etc. to take a photo recreating the cover image of one of the books you've read or plan to read for the readathon.

If you lack a book cover, don't feel left out! You can create some sort of representation of whatever you are reading by drawing, constructing, pasting, shaving, WHATEVER....

Participants should post an image of the book cover (or a brief description of it if no cover is available) and the photo of their recreation on their blog and then post a link to the post in the comments of this post.

(The prize will be provided by Dewey.)

Readathon: Monica's Third Update

2011-04-09T14:40:00.003-04:00

Well friends, I had to take a break from fun reading to eat lunch and watch a bit of Walking Dead with the boytoy.

But really, isn't that almost like participating in Readathon? Because, after all, the show is based on a really epic graphic novel series, which absolutely everyone should read.

Right.

Back to actual book-reading.

Read-a-Thon: Shel's Third Update

2011-04-09T14:10:00.000-04:00

Hello Cool Cats, Hot Dogs and Few But Dear Readers,

I am here and I am still reading.

I managed to meet my daily goal for working on my dissertation. (Although my cats still aren't showing any initiative to type up the changes.) If I'm super lucky, maybe I'll work ahead a little later in the read-a-thon. Maybe.

For the time being, I'm taking turns reading The Immortal Fire, Moon Over Manifest and listening to the audio book of the second House of Night novel, Betrayed:

In other news, I have a cat on my lap. This does not bode well for moving or stretching my back. (That's right kids, the first symptom of achy-back-if-i-were-a-real-slug-being-still-this-long-wouldn't-be-a-problem syndrome has begun.)

Readathon Mini Challenge: Favorite Classic

2011-04-09T12:21:00.003-04:00

And here's our next challenge, coming by way of Allie over at A Literary Odyssey: Name your favorite classic book... and a justification.

Although it's tempting to be all "OMG PRIDE AND PREJUDICE," I think I'm going to have to go with "The Secret Garden," by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I've loved it since I was old enough to read. At this point, my battered stained copy is like a personal friend.

Plot-wise, the book has pretty much everything. Brat of a girl slowly becoming a decent human being? Yes. Pseudo-magic boy who can almost talk to animals? Check. Gorgeous descriptions of the English moor coming alive in spring? Definitely. And of course, mysteries in a potentially haunted mansion, down-to-earth servant girls who don't know how to be "proper," scary uncle/father figures who loom about in the background whilst slowly gaining your sympathy, and endless descriptions of crocuses coming to life.

I can't even pick out which character I like best. Mary is, as mentioned, a brat of the highest order. Burnett happily writes along, describing her as all yellow and pinched and nasty-looking, so it's a relief when Mary finally starts to improve. You have to love a book where minor characters say things like, "God, I know we're supposed to feel bad for her because her parents are dead, but did you ever SEE such a repulsive little creature?" Oh yes.

Mary's cousin Colin is even worse--my favorite scene in the book is when Mary storms into Colin's room while he's shrieking like a banshee about his impending death, and smacks him full in the face while shrieking back about how he's the most horrible boy on earth and why doesn't he just DIE already!? (Actually, this is making me a little worried about my personal psyche, that at age eight this was my favorite book....)

And of course there's Dickon, the kindhearted country boy who has tame fox kits as pets and who can call birds straight down from the trees. He can SUMMON ANIMALS. Guys, this is awesome. He sees beauty in everything, even nasty little pinched Mary, and more importantly sees their potential to become something wonderful. Loved him. The nineties-era movie did not do him justice.

And... now I'm rambling, and have the insane desire to throw aside the not-nearly-as-good book I'm currently reading, and go back for a nice reread of Secret Garden. Because it's fantastic. ;)

Read-a-thon: Shel's Second Update

2011-04-09T11:31:00.000-04:00

Break time!

Thus far, I've only been working on my dissertation. But I only have to revise another six pages or so before I meet today's goal (very doable.) Then somebody will have to type up all of my changes... *glances at cats* it's about time they started contributing around here. I mean, I can't type up the changes, today is supposed to be devoted to reading.

Also, can anyone figure out the answer to Monica's mini-challenge book cover puzzle below? I cannot. Unless, CSI Asia: A need for speed is really a book someone has decided to publish. No?

I'd probably read that book. As long as there was some Sara/Grissom angst. Their romance was the only reason I watched that show.

Okay, back to the reading! I think I'm going to take a break from the dissertation and switch rooms for awhile to help me stay motivated. Hello, comfy chair. Hello, Newbery award winner.

Readathon Mini Challenge: Book Puzzle

2011-04-09T11:11:00.004-04:00

My first posted mini challenge of the day! I'm sure there will be more, unless of course I succumb to fatigue and pass out under the table for the remainder of the afternoon....

According to the instructions over at One Librarian's Book Reviews,

For this challenge, you will be creating a Book Puzzle. Essentially, this is a series of pictures, graphics, or photos that you put together that will describe a book title.

So let's see... we'll do one that I just read the other day (for the first time, which is sort of embarrassing). Have fun guessing!

Now, back to the books!

Readathon: Monica's Second Update

2011-04-09T10:35:00.000-04:00

Well friends, it's official -- I'm probably going to give up on the proofreading and dive right into trashy YA reading within the next hour. This, of course, goes against my entire plan for the day. But how am I supposed to concentrate on grammatical inconsistencies when there's a book about spaceships calling my name, siren-like, from the corner of the living room?!

It's a losing battle, for sure.

I don't know if any of you ever have the pleasure of proofreading, but it can be a wonderful experience... or a nightmarish one. I was worried originally that I would end up unable to read books "normally" ever again--that I would latch on to every tiny mistake and grumble about how the editors should have caught it. Luckily, I apparently can compartmentalize that particular section of my brain, and keep it from bothering me when I'm reading for fun. ;)

Read-a-thon: Shel's First Update

2011-04-09T10:00:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I'm having a...sloooooow start to the day, this morning.

Nonetheless, I am super-excited about the readathon today. In case you haven't noticed, I've been dropping the ball what it comes to posting reviews as of late. Blame my dissertation. It has been turning me into a crazy person these past few weeks. Seriously. A crazy person. I'm so thankful that I still manage to remember to brush my hair each day, because the rest of my mind is going.

So, I am very much looking forward to a day of reading (with a few hours of dissertation work intermixed). Be prepared for a day of posting because both Monica and I love participating in readathon mini-challenges. We'll also be hosting our own challenge later in the day.

If you'd still like to join the readathon or learn more about it, visit here.

But before I leave you to immerse myself in a nice, welcoming story, here are a few answers to kick the day off.

1)Where are you reading from today?

My home. Where the cats circle and the cable box makes a funny clicking noise.

2)Three random facts about me…

1) My dissertation is driving me crazy.

2) Teavana's Earl Grey Creme tea has become the official Tea of Me. It is delicious with ricemilk and LOTSA sugar. (But then, lots of sugar can make just about anything delicious.)

3) Did I mention I have turned into a crazy person?

3)How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours?

I don't have a specific number. I just need to make some serious bum-kicking progress in the books I've been reader. (For more on the books that will be bum-kicked, see the next question.)

4)Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)?

I don't have any specific goals beyond getting through another twenty pages of my dissertation and getting through a large Chunk of Ursu's The Immortal Fire and Vanderpool's Moon Over Manifest. Both of which I have been stuck in the middle of for a couple of weeks.

5)If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, any advice for people doing this for the first time?

It really does help to read graphic novels, picturebooks or some other quick read to help you feel like you're making process. I'm just not certain if I'll be following my own advice....

Readathon: Monica's First Update

2011-04-09T09:01:00.003-04:00

Good morning fearless readers! And welcome to the first Readathon of the year! :)

I'm super pumped for today, and I know that Shel is too. My birds, unfortunately, seem less than thrilled -- they've been shrieking since eight this morning and show no signs of stopping... I may need to send them on a field trip outside if I'm going to get any actual reading done.....

Anyway! On my TBR pile today I've got two books by Barbara Newhall Follett (The House Without Windows and The Voyage of the Norman D), Inside Out by Maria Snyder, and A Conspiracy of Kings by my she-just-doesn't-know-it-yet-BFF Meghan Whalen Turner, of whom the ground upon which she walks I worship. Heartsies.

I'm also proofreading today, which I figure counts as reading, albeit tedious and not all that fun reading, so that'll be helping me break up the day as well.

How about you, friends? What are your plans for the day?

Happy Reading!

REVIEW: The Siren Song (The Cronus Chronicles Book 2)

2011-03-31T16:56:00.000-04:00

Ursu, A. (2008). The Siren Song. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Reader.

430 pages.

Appetizer: It's been several months since Charlotte and her cousin Zee traveled to the underworld to prevent a revolt against Hades and Charlotte is still grounded for having been out all night. Her cousin Zee's parents are being overprotective as well. And Charlotte feels certain that she can get through anything as long as her cousin is by her side, but when Zee starts behaving strangely, Charlotte isn't so sure anymore. So, when her parents plan for the family to go on a cruise (fun!) to see famed historical sites along the East Coast (less fun), Charlotte thinks it may be her only chance at a break. She doesn't even suspect that she is venturing into a trap set by Philonecron, who blames her for his failure to take over the Underworld.

The Siren Song lives up to the fun narrative voice set up by the first book in this trilogy, The Shadow Thieves. As I was reading, I felt Charlotte's frustration with how overbearing her parents were being and I loved Zee's continued struggle to find a place that he belongs (although, Philonecron's fascination with him did become a little too creepy this time around. As the reader, I wasn't really picking up the supposed would-be-father-wants-you-as-a-son vibe that the story was trying to establish. For me, it was more of a creepy-demon-guy-is-way-too-in-love-with-a-teenage-boy-ICK vibe.) I also felt like the story could have been trimmed a little. (Charlotte spent too much time running around her cruise ship for my liking and I was left with the too-strong desire to want to go on a cruise (if only I had the time/money...I suppose I would be willing to settle for a tanned man servant bringing me drinks and making whooshing sounds to represent the sound of the sea waves.)

As with the first novel, most of the story is told from Charlotte's perspective, with an introduction to give Zee's account. With this novel, I didn't really feel as though including Zee's perspective added much (except for maybe trying to attract those elusive male readers).

I did like that Poseidon was a featured Greek god in The Siren Song. It was particularly interesting, since Ursu's approach to creating him was so different from Rick Riordan's in his Percy Jackson series.

I really love the world Ursu has created and the fact that Charlotte, an ordinary girl, must repeatedly best the Greek gods. With most of the gods disinterest in helping mortals and Charlotte and Zee's acknowledgement that the system has to change, I am very curious to see what happens in the final novel of this trilogy, The Immortal Fire.

Dinner Conversation:

"Once, not so long ago, inside an ordinary middle school in an ordinary city in an ordinary state in the middle of an ordinary country, a small redheaded eighth grader was doing something very ordinary indeed. Charlotte Mielswetzski (Say it with me: Meals. Wet. Ski. Got it? If not, say it again: Meals. Wet. Ski.) was in the school office calling her mother. And lest you think she was calling her mother for some interesting reason, let me assure you she most certainly was not. For Charlotte could be found in that same office calling her mother every day after school." (p. 3).

"An American History cruise!" said Mrs. Mielswetzski. "Up the East Coast! Normally, a girl who is grounded doesn't get to go on cruises, but given the educational nature of this one, we thought we'd make an exception."
"Anyway," said Mr. Mielswetzski, "it will give us a lot of time together. As a family."
Her parents exchanged a happy look.
"Oh," Charlotte said. "Um, look I've got to go to my room now." (pp. 16-17)

"It was silly, of course. Ridiculous. Normal boys aren't afraid of shopping malls. Normal boys go out with their friends and have fun and talk about sports and gils and music and video games and don't worry about whether a half-demon/half-god freak is stalking them. But normal boys just don't have Zee's fabulous luck." (p. 96)

"She was stranded in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on a cruise ship full of people in singer-induced comas. For the last month of her life, she had been feeling increasingly more alone in the world. Well, now she was truly all alone.

Tasty Rating: !!!!

REVIEW: The Shadow Thieves (Cronus Chronicles Book One)

2011-03-23T18:54:00.000-04:00

Ursu, A. (2006). The Shadow Thieves. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks.

420 pages.

Not to be confused with one of the books in the Peter and the Starcatchers series by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson that has the same name, The Shadow Thieves is the first book in the Cronus Chronicles which features Greek gods and creatures. (Although, with all the shadows being separated from their children, it is difficult to not think PETER PAN! YAY!)

Appetizer: Thirteen-year-old Charlotte Mielswetzski (Meals. Wet. Ski.) thinks her life would be a terrible story since nothing much has happened to her. (I disagree with a humorous narrator like hers, her life seems pretty interesting to me. But terrible or not, her life is about to change: Her cousin Zachary is moving in with her family, her odd new English teacher, Mr. Metos, is doing a unit on Greek mythology and Charlotte keeps having dreams of the ground breaking under her feet and her falling.

Her cousin, who likes to go by Zee, is having some problems of his own. His grandmother died over the summer and ever since then it seems all of the other kids around him are getting sick. It will be up to him and Charlotte to figure out what is going on and to fix it.

This story won me over from pretty much page one. The narrator rambles humorously in a way that I wish I could write. Plus, the narrator is very pro-kittens (How could you not be?!). Writing as someone who has read...oh, over thirty-something novels that include the gods in the modern world, the narrator's voice was very refreshing.

I did struggle a little with the way that the text shifted perspective. I immediately loved Charlotte and did want to leave her story-line to hear about other characters. I also felt like some of the characters figured out what was wrong a little too easily.

But aside from that, I looooooved The Shadow Thieves. I'm not saying everyone will love it, but I recommend it highly.

Dinner Conversation:

"Pay attention. Watch carefully, now. Look at the sidewalk, there. See that girl--the one with the bright red hair, overstuffed backpack, and aura of grumpiness? That's Charlotte Mielswetzski. (Say it with me: Meals-wet-ski. Got it? If not, say it again: Meals. Wet. Ski. There. You thought your name was bad?) And something extraordinary is about to happen to her.
No, the extraordinary event will not be related to that man watching her behind the oak tree...that oddly pale, strangely thin, freakishly tall, yellow-eyed, bald-headed man in the tuxedo" (p. 3).

"So, anyway, there she was, walking along in an ordinary way, muttering to herself about curses, with her bursting backpack and her metaphorical black cloud and her ordinary bad mood--when something extraordinary happened.
A kitten appeared in front of her.
Not--poof!--not like that. Nothing magical at all. Quite ordinary, in fact. A normal chain of events, just what you would expect with a sudden appearance of a kitten" (p. 5).

"Charlotte did not sleep well that night. For a few days she had fancied herself on the periphery of some great mystery, one that had begun with the sudden arrival of her British cousin and then seemed to encompass her English teacher as well. But suddenly Charlotte wasn't living in a mystery anymore, in a fantasy world made of dark secrets and hidden tunnels and vampiric teachers and foggy London nights. Now Charlotte lived in this horrible world where her best friend could get so sick she couldn't lift her head" (p. 70).

"Lots of kids are sick. So I guess--"
"Wait," Zee leaned forward. "How many?"
"I dunno," Charlotte shrugged. "Maddy's got it. She's been gone for a week."
Zee leaned toward her and grabbed her arm. Bartholomew fell off his lap. "What is it? What does she have?"
Charlotte stared at him. "I don't know! Nobody knows. She can't get out of bed, it's really awful, she's just lying there-"
Zee fell back into the couch. "Oh no." His hands flew to his face. Charlotte and Bartholomew stared.
"What?"
"It's my fault," he said slowly. "It's all my fault."
Charlotte could not stand it anymore. "What's your fault? Zee, what's going on?"
Zee had lost all color in his face. He seemed to be shaking.
"They followed me." (p. 84)

Tasty Rating: !!!!!

So, about a year ago, my dissertation advisor suggested I read this series since it was so closely related to my dissertation. I planned on it. I meant to read it. Somehow, I got the idea in my head that the series wasn't that closely related to my topic. Stupid ideas and stupid head.

I'm so glad I read this book before my dissertation was finished even though I now have to go back in and add new segments to heavily edited and polished chapters. There would have been a gap in my dissertation without including this series.

On to book two, The Siren Song!

Just A Snack: Wicked Lovely

2011-03-21T10:27:00.004-04:00

Marr, M. (2008). Wicked Lovely. HarperCollins.

As apparently the only person left on earth who had not read any of the Marr's Wicked Lovely series, I felt like I at least had to check out the first book.

I'm... undecided.

The writing was actually fairly good, and I liked Aislinn's desperate, albeit useless, attempts to remain a Normal Teenager.

However, I found pretty much everyone to be profoundly unsympathetic and/or uninteresting.

Keenan? Keenan the harem-owning stalker, plucking innocent girls from the streets and condemning them to a life of either a) suffering as the power of Winter floods through their veins, or b) flitting around desperate for his attention and requiring apparently a diet of nothing but sunlight and sex? No.

And Seth? Seth the stereotypical pierced and tatted bad-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold, who lives in a set of train cars (one of which is filled with nothing but a bed and dim lighting) and who doesn't appear to have independent thoughts outside of Oh My God I Love Aislinn I Wonder If She Has Eaten Today?

Even Beira just read like a Disney villain. I kept expecting her to steeple her fingers and cackle wildly. Meh.

So in summary, okay book to skim, would recommend to anyone who was gripped by the torrid passion of the Edward v. Jacob fight for Bella... but not interesting enough for me to read the next seventeen novels in the series. As tempting as it would be to hear more about Seth's gorgeous navel ring (really?), I'm just not up for it.

Oh, and on a final, semi-unrelated note. No one in the book seemed as squicked out as I was to discover that Keenan had, you know, tried to get all up on Aislinn's mom.... I realize it came during a pivotal and fast-moving action sequence, but you'd think at least SOMEONE would point out how kind of twisted it is that Aislinn is now marrying Keenan. Keenan, who apparently used to be in love with her mother. Her mother, who subsequently died from her unwillingness to be with him. Because he's a creeper. No? I'm the only one, here?

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: Hell Week (Book Two of the Maggie Quinn: Girl Vs. Evil series)

2011-03-21T09:34:00.018-04:00

Clement-Moore, R. (2008). Hell Week. New York: Delacorte Press.

327 pages.

Appetizer: Maggie Quinn is back. After surviving prom and the rest of her senior year of high school, she is now a freshman at the local college and trying to find a way to get her articles in the local and college papers.

Maggie is also uncertain of what's going on between her and Justin. He went off on an internship to Ireland for the summer and apparently he's been back in the country for a week, but hasn't called her. (WTF, Justin?! If I didn't already think you were way too old for Maggie I might be upset.)

Maggie has her eye on doing an expose on the college's sororities. As she goes undercover, she has to face the reality that she may be in over her head, especially when one of the sororities seems to have some supernatural tendencies. Looks like Maggie may have to take on evil once again.

As with the first book--Prom Dates from Hell--I'm left feeling pretty lukewarm toward this series. Maggie has a lot of great sarcastic lines that I love, but a lot of the story itself feels as though it is a mushed together hybrid of Veronica Mars and Buffy. (Specifically a mash-up between the Buffy episode Reptile Boy and the Veronica Mars episode My Big Fat Greek Rush Week.)

Plus, there were a lot of names in this books. And almost all of them belonged to sorority girls. I could not keep the characters straight. And the narration didn't always give me little clues to remind me of who was who. Kaylee, Tara, Alexa, Devon, Victoria, Kirby, Juliana, Holly, Jenna, Brittany, Ashley! AAAAAH! So many cute sorority-girl names. (And while I'll admit, I'm horrible with names in real life, usually I can hold my own in literature.)

Also, this time around, the tension and danger took a very long time to emerge...and there wasn't really a wonderful monster to describe, like in the first book. So, again, I felt lukewarm.

On the plus side, I now feel like I have a better understanding of the Greek system.

I will plan to read the third book, Highway to Hell at some point. For the time being I have to look at some other books that may have a place in my dissertation.

Dinner Conversation:

"Bright teeth flashed; I fought the instinct to recoil. Perfectly white, perfectly even, possibly once human. Coral pink lips pulled back all the way to the gums, giving the smile an unfortunate equine quality. "Soooo...?" The owner of the teeth and lips drew out the word and flipped it up at the end in a question. "What's your major?"
"English." An untruth. I don't tell them, as a rule, but I'd been asked this question five times in the last hour, and the lie rolled off my tongue now with ease" (p. 1).

"'You're not really going through with this, are you?'
I glared..."I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, come on."
..."I'm working on something."
"In a sorority." Not a question. Just incredulous.
"Don't think I can pull it off?" I asked, slinging my satchel over my shoulder.
"I know you can. That's what worries me." He tapped the page. "It says right here: 'Resistance is futile.' These things--historically, sociologically--they suck people in."
"It's a sorority, not a cult, Justin. I'll be fine."
I swung out the door, already regretting the words. When would I learn not to tempt fate?" (p. 87-88).

""Have you considered that there may be some greater power at work here? You joke about Faustian bargains, but maybe that's not a coincidental analogy."
"Sorority girls from Hell? Isn't that like saying French people from France?"
"I'm serious, Maggie." (p. 171)

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: Prom Dates from Hell (Maggie Quinn: Girl vs. Evil Book One)

2011-03-14T08:06:00.010-04:00

Clement-Moore, R. (2007). Prom Dates from Hell. New York: Delacorte Press.

308 pages.

Three pages into Prom Dates from Hell I knew I was going to love it. (Talk about a bias!) I loved the sarcastic, smart voice of Maggie Quinn right away. She reminded me of a hybrid of Veronica Mars and Buffy Summers.

...But I guess with dark hair.

Appetizer: After stopping an incident of bullying in the halls, the three most popular girls in the senior grade (all named Jessica) take notice of Maggie and start to make her life hellish. While that would be bad enough, Maggie has been having dark dreams again, and that part of herself that is a seer like her grandmother has been awakened, just when *something* at the school is trying to make the most popular seniors suffer.

Just in time for prom!

No longer able to ignore her intuitions, Maggie enlists the help of an attractive college guy, Justin, to fight evil. While they quickly try different folk tactics to hold off the ghost/monster/shadow/demon-thing, it quickly becomes apparent that the beastie may be too much to contend with.

I enjoyed Prom Dates from Hell enough that I will definitely be picking up the second and third books in the Maggie Quinn: Girl Vs. Evil series. Maggie has a lot of wonderfully sarcastic narration.

I have to admit that while I was amused, I was not *completely captivated* by the story. I figured out who the real culprit was pretty early on (although, Clement-Moore did a good job of constructing her red herring.)

I was also a little sceeved out by the age difference between Maggie and Justin. Although Justin's exact age is never specifically given. He's already in college and it's safe to assume he's far along in his program since he talks about graduate credits and what not. Speaking as someone who has been that age, I would have thought that a senior in high school was a wee-little baby and I NEVER would have considered dating someone in such a different position. And I know YA lit loves to have the high school girl date a college boy. But my immediate response is to wonder what is wrong with said college-aged character that he can't date someone his own age. Plus, beyond battling the forces of darkness, I didn't really feel a special connection between them beyond the occasional one-liner or the unfounded over-protectiveness on the part of Justin.

Meh.

Dinner Conversation: !!!

"As an interactive horror experience, with beasts from Hell, mayhem, gore, and dismemberment, it was an impressive event. As a high school prom, however, the evening was marginally less successful.
I should start at the beginning, but I'm not entirely certain when that is, so I'll start with the day I realized that despite my most determined efforts, I was not going to be able to ignore the prom entirely" (p. 1).

"Back on the middle school Serengeti I learned that, lacking a certain killer instinct, my best bet was to avoid standing out from the herd and making myself a target for the apex social predators, at least until I'd built up a tough skin. Now I'm sort of like the spiny anteater. Small and prickly, trundling along, a threat to no one. Except ants, I guess, which is where the metaphor runs out" (p. 2).

"Again my eye snagged on some dark movement--her shadow on the water? I barely had time to wonder, a half-fired neuron of warning, then everything went wrong" (p. 43).

"What if I want to get in touch with you?" he asked.
"About my alleged psychic powers?"
"Maybe."
"Then think about me real hard, and I'll know to give you a call." I flashed a sunny smile, put the Jeep in gear, and drove away. For the first time that day, I felt as if I'd gotten the upper hand in a human interaction" (p. 74).

"I had a lot to do that afternoon. Besides homework, newspaper, and yearbook, there was saving the world as well. Where was I going to fit in a date?" (p. 190)

"Witch hunts scared me. Not for the obvious reasons, but because they were so irrational that there was no defense against them. But I couldn't actually be hanged for a witch. Could I? I wouldn't put anything past the Republicans" (p. 223).

Tasty Rating: !!!

Personal Post: My Adventure with Roller Derby

2011-03-12T21:49:00.000-05:00

Guys, I don't think I've spoken about this in a public forum before. I absolutely loved the movie Whip It.

It's just good YA and a great look at femininity. Plus, the movie made me want to skate in a roller derby. I had fantasies of skating, forcing people of the track, hearing people cheer as I rolled past with some chart-topping hip-hop playing in the background. In these fantasies I don't fall. I just knock people down and then pump my fist in the air to the sound of cheering. It's a fun fantasy.

But if my one attempt at roller skating since the age of ten has taught me anything, if I ever actually tried to participate in a roller derby, I'd be the person who would have to crawl off the track while begging for the refs to make it stop. When I tried to skate over the summer, my body had the weird sensation that roller skating was familiar, that I should have been able to take off and fly around the rink, weaving around obstacles. My mind and lack of balance disagreed. I didn't fall, but I *did* look ridiculous, like the stupid goose by the river who honks a lot but can't quite make it off the ground when the others take off that you pity and that you feel fairly certain won't be able to fly south for the winter with all of the more coordinated geese, that it'll suffer through the early part of winter, only to starve and die and then have its carcass freeze in the cold and have people pass by it on some nature trail and say, "Awwww, poor thing," but moments later they're thinking about something else, the dead goose forgotten.

I would be that goose.

Nonetheless, when somebody in my program suggested several of us avoid thinking about our finals or our dissertations by watching the opening game of the Ohio Roller Girls. I jumped on the opportunity, my declaration of "I loved Whip It!" was met with "OMG! US TOO!"

But despite my repeated viewings, once I arrived at the Ohio Expo Center and the first derby began, I quickly realized I did not know much about the sport. I especially didn't know what all of the refs' hand gestures meant. Those gestures seemed important to understanding the game.

If I am ever to become a roller derby skater, I will *for sure* need to figure out what the refs' gestures mean.

But for the time being, I decided to be content with sitting in the front row on the floor beside the track, hoping somebody will have a dramatic (but painless!) fall right in front of me (but not so dramatic that they slide/fall/fly into me) so that I can capture it for all of forever-ness.

And that brings us to the point of this post. Pictures:

I'll admit, I'll probably still have fantasies of being on a roller derby team. It's a nice distraction from my dissertation. But considering that I cringed every time one of these players fell, that I like the *thought* of being aggressive but don't actually like *being* aggressive, that I hate pain and that I can't skate, I think I'll be staying on the sideline.

With my camera.

Just A Snack: Trapped

2011-03-11T08:41:00.000-05:00

Northrop, M. (2011). Trapped Scholastic Press.

This is a cool looking book -- the cover makes you claustrophobic right from the start (and the almost-buried "Winter Wonderland Dance" sign is a nice bit of dark humor), and each chapter is headed with an illustration of snow rising... and rising... and rising... until finally there's nothing but white.

The kids act exactly like anyone would expect a group of freshmen and sophomores to act. They worry about their folks, but also about their zits. They go through technology withdrawal and wear the batteries on their phones out sending useless texts and playing video games. They don't really get along, but in a Breakfast Club sort of way they're willing to put up with each other since they've got no other options. It was easy to put yourself into the mindset of the main character, hormones and all.

That being said, I got a little sick of the ominous, Something Terrible Is Going To Happen foreshadowing that the author insisted on throwing in. It was tolerable on page eight ("Looking back on all this, I shiver a little.... Images creep in: black smoke and blue skin"), tedious by page thirty-four ("From here on out, the number would only go down") and irritating from there on out. Yes, yes, someone will die, we get it.

Plus, despite the foreshadowing, the book doesn't actually explain the outcome of the storm. We know in a loose sort of way that the narrator survives, because he's the one prophesying DOOM all over the place. But the rest of the kids? Their families? The state in general? Not so much.

Upside? It was a GREAT book to read on a snow day.

Tasty Rating: !!!

REVIEW: Mr. Monster by @Johncleaver

2011-03-06T09:19:00.006-05:00

Wells, D. (2010). Mr. Monster. New York: Tor.

Appetizer: Things have calmed down since the events of I Am Not a Serial Killer. There haven't been any more murders and the people in Clayton are starting to relax. Even though John knew the fate of the killer before anyone else, he's still having his own problems. He broke down the wall that kept his dark impulses under control. Mr. Monster is out now and is urging John to do more violence.

But then, another body, a girl this time, is found and it looks like the town has another killer. John fears that the dead girl is a message. A message for him.

He must deal with the new killer, with trying to keep Mr. Monster in check and, most surprisingly of all, going on a date with a neighbor girl, Brooke, the girl he has been trying to control his obsession with for months.

I really liked John's struggle with trying to date Brooke. It was a good challenge for John.

*Spoiler for mid-book in this paragraph* I also liked the drama involving John's sister, who is dating an abusive egotistical guy who reminds John of his father. It was an interesting trigger for John's murderous impulses and for insights into the family's past. Although, after John sees a bruise on his sister's face and has to vent his anger, I really hated who is hurt by John's rage. It was a sad enough scene that I almost wanted to stop reading. *End spoiler*

I have to admit, Mr. Monster included a lot of dark aspects that won't be for every reader. Reader, be warned.

The third and final book in this trilogy, I Don't Want to Kill You, will be out at the end of March. You can pretty much count on the fact that I will be picking it up, wanting to know what happens to John and his many demons.

Yet again, I am left feeling like I know way too much about human embalming. I am off to read a book that involves less death. *glances around at YA dystopian, vampire and zombie trends* Assuming there are any light books left out there.

Dinner Conversation:

"I want to do a lot of terrible things, and it's just easier to come to terms with that side of me by pretending it's someone else--it's not John who wants to cut his mother into tiny pieces, it's Mr. Monster. See? I feel better already.
But here's the problem: Mr. Monster is hungry. Serial killers often talk about a need--some driving urge that they can control at first, but that builds and builds until it's impossible to stop, and then they lash out and kill again. I never understood what they were talking about before, but now I think I do. Now I can feel it, deep in my bones, as insistent and inevitable as the biological urge to eat or hunt or mate.
I've killed once, and it's only a matter of time before I kill again." (p. 12).

"For my sixteenth birthday I got a dead body to play with: Mrs. Soder, the oldest woman in Clayton County, finally died. The corpse was laid out on the stainless steel embalming table, the body bag removed and the body motionless. It had died in the hospital, and they'd shipped it to us in a hospital gown. This made it a lot easier; rather than wrestle with real clothes, or try to get the family's permission to cut them off, we could just snip a tie here and there and have the hospital gown off in seconds. The embalming would be almost too easy--I wanted to take as much time as possible, so I could really enjoy it" (p. 76).

"For me, embalming was a form of medication; it brought a sense of peace that I had never found in any other aspect of my life. I loved the stillness of it, the quietness. The bodies never moved or yelled; they night fought or left. The dead simply lay there, at peace with the world, and let me do whatever I needed to do. I was in control of myself.
I was in control of them." (p. 79).

"They found the second woman's body on Saturday, lying in a ditch on Route 12, covered with a similar array of torture wounds. It was the same place where the Clayton Killer's second victim was found, less than ten feet from the exact spot. It was now obvious that this new killer was trying to communicate something, but what? Was he saying "I'm the same," or "I'd different"? Was he telling us he wanted to be like the first killer, or was he hinting that he already was? More than anything else, I wondered who he was talking to: the police? The whole community? Or was he sending this message to the only other killer in town?
Was he talking to me?" (p. 87).

Tasty Rating: !!!