Wake by Lisa McMann
Janie lives in a poor neighborhood with her alcoholic mother but that doesn’t keep her down. She’s intelligent and motivated. The only thing keeping her down, literally, are dreams. Janie has a unique ability to enter people’s dreams, but it causes her to black out, lose feeling in her limbs and lose sleep herself. And she can’t control this ability. As she is passing through her neighborhood, she is struck by a particularly disturbing dream and loses control of her car. Enter Cabel. When he sees Janie in his dream, things get complicated. And Cabel isn’t being honest with her.
Wake is a fun thriller. I read it in about 4 hours (couldn’t put it down, despite the opening dreams – the typical ‘naked in a crowded room’ - being rather lame). I’ve started the second book, Fade, and I am wondering where McMann is going to take it. The third book, Gone, is slated for a Spring 2010).
I would recommend this to those who enjoyed The Devouring by Simon Holt.
Update (9-07-09): Nominated for the Printz, I don’t think this one will go the distance.
No Cream Puffs by Karen Day
Madison is the first girl to play organized baseball with the boys in Michigan… Read about how Madison navigates the cinfusing and often treacherous waters of friendships, mother-daughter relationships and first boyfriends as she learns to listen and trust that voice inside of her. -Karen Day
This book is a delightful slice of 1980: neighborhoods (remember those? when everyone knew everyone on the block), Kool-Aid, and banana bikes. Madison is a lively twelve-year-old who just wants to be: a girl, a gifted athlete, a girlfriend (Tommy is so cute!). But everyone else is so busy judging her because she is the first girl to play little league baseball that she’s getting confused! Soon the whole town is weighing in, tearing Madison further from her friends, her mother and the sport she just loves to play.
In addition to taking me back to the glorious decade of my youth, I’ve learned there is a name for my favorite breakfast (has been a fav since the 80s!). “An egg pop is a fried egg laid across a piece of toast smothered in butter and jelly” (p139). No Cream Puffs is an solid read with a hooking beginning (Fight! Fight! Fight!).
The protagonist is fiesty enough to carry through but young enough to make mistakes along the way (I could have been reading about myself had I been born a decade earlier). The secret concerns she has are so touching and endearing that it is easy to relate to and love her. “I slip on my uniform and stare in the mirror. HINTON’S, the name of the team’s sponsor runs across the front of my shirt in red letters. No matter how hard I tug at the shirt, my left breast refuses to go anywhere but in the middle of the O. It’s as if someone has drawn a red target around it” (p 29). So she wears leotards underneath even though it scrapes her underarm.
I highly recommend this to young female athletes who also like a touch of romance.
The Lightning Thief Cast Update: The Gods
So exciting! I love love love the casting picks but what do you think? Can this spawn another Harry Potter-like following. Many of the kids like the books and they are perfectly structured for movie adaptations…
Zeus
Sean Bean (The Lord of the Rings, Troy, The Island, GoldenEye)
Poseidon
Kevin McKidd (Rome, Journeyman)
Athena
Melina Kanakaredes (CSI)
Chiron
Pierce Brosnan (GoldenEye, Mamma Mia!)
Medusa
Uma Thurman (Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Gattaca)
Percy Jackson
Logan Lerma (Hoot, 3:10 to Yuma)
Annabeth
Alexandra Daddario
Percy Jackson: Cast Update: Annabeth
Rick Riordan has passed this on: Annabeth has been cast! Her name is Alexandra Daddario and you can check out her experience on IMDB. She is 23 ! I thought “Percy” was old at 17! Hummm. What are they planning?
Undercover by Beth Kephart
Another engaging and delightful book! Elisa is the second daughter - the plain, invisible daughter to the older, beautiful Jilly. “In a modern day Cyrano de Bergerac, Elisa ghostwrites love notes for the boys in her school. But when Elisa falls for Theo Moses, things change fast. Theo asks for verses to court the lovely Lila – a girl known for her beauty, her popularity, and a cutting ability to remind Elisa that she has none of these.”
I enjoyed this book because it talks about language and evokes feeling through poetry. Because the Lily’s of the world will try to hold the Elisa’s back but this Elisa rises. She is a strong girl and knows her self-worth (thanks, Dad!). She is courageous even in the face of truth (she never tries to put her own physical beauty on the same level as Lily or Jilly, but she brings out what she can and finds a different kind of beauty – one that Theo, showing his depth, appreciates and chooses in the end). Well-paced and realistic, Kephart weaves a story about every-day school experiences, marital problems and joys, friendship and first love into Undercover. I can’t wait to recommend it to my teens because I couldn’t put it down and wanted more when it ended (though she ended it perfectly, if in a slightly Hollywood fashion). I’m sorry this one didn’t make it to the 2009 Garden State Teen Book Award List.
Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen
This is a review of an ARC of Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen. The book is slated for a June 2009 release.
I adore this book. It was just what I needed: very readable, interesting three-dimensional characters, recognizable/believable situations (all except the convenient arrival of the ex-boyfriend) that progressed the story and added to the characterization. I even learned a little something. Oh, and did you catch the throw-back to Lock and Key?
Ever since I began dating my current boyfriend, reading has taken a back seat (and why not when he was more entertaining than anyone or anything else). But I actually told him to bugger off because I had to continue reading this book! It was a pleasure to read! Thank you, Sarah Dessen.
I really liked what Opps…Wrong Cookie had to say (though I liked Lock and Key and loved Just Listened).
Update (9-7-09): Another among several popular titles (if not literary masterpieces) nominated for the Printz and one of the more deserving of that nomination though not the award.
Korgi by Christian Slade
I stumbled upon this delightful wordless graphic novel while in search of titles to recommend for summer reading. I’m working on a list (grades 3-5) for our system and I believe Korgi will be a good series for those reluctant girl readers.
Want to learn more. Watch the trailer.
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
This is a review of the ARC copy of Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson.
*** This review contains SPOILERS! ***
[IPDATED: 3/23/2009]
I shouldn’t. I can’t. I don’t deserve it. I’m a fat load and I disgust myself. I take up too much space already. I am an ugly, nasty hypocrite. I am trouble. I am a waste.
I want to go to sleep, but I don’t want to die. I want to eat like a normal person eats, but I need to see my bones or I will hate myself even more and I might cut out my heart or take every pill that was ever made (p 202-03).
Wintergirls rambles on like this most of the time. Readers are stuck in the first-person narrative mush that is Lia’s consciousness. The style itself is choppy; trying too hard (where the PR people got “lyrical and evocative prose” is a mystery to me). It dragged.
Lia is a senior and the skinniest girl in her high school. If you ask her, she would say she is thin-framed. She is actually anorexic. If you asked her about it, she would ask you why your eyes don’t work. She’d say she is clothed in fat.
The book begins with Lia’s childhood best friend, Cassie, found dead in a motel room. Lia’s hallucinations have her thinking Cassie is haunting her. We begin to understand why Lia is anorexic but by the time it is explained, I no longer care, because whatever the reason was… it’s no longer relevant.
That was the summer I finally grew, after years of being smaller than everyone. Puberty stretched me on the rack until me arms and legs popped out their sockets and my neck almost snapped. This new body smelled damp. The butt jiggled, the thighs looked a mile wide in tights, and a soft double chin bubbled up. My ballet teacher pinched the extra inches, took away my solo, and told me to stop eating maple-walnut ice cream. I went from being the elegant swan to the ugly duckling that couldn’t walk without tripping over her own feet (p 165).
Lia isn’t interested in boys (though I guessed she might be interested in girls and that played out) or ballet or sports. Just knitting and reading but those felt artificial to me.
This book has none of the subtleties of Speak. Lia name-drops so many different authors (Gaiman, Tolkien, Pierce, Yolen) that I’m not sure it’s Lia talking but rather the author.
I found the book tedious; too many adjectives (“If you catch an adjective, kill it.” Mark Twain). And it didn’t add up. After speaking with a girl who had been anorexic for years, I was able to put my finger on it:
What rang true:
- Lia’s obsession with the scale. It’s always about the number.
- Lia’s enjoyment in cooking and watching others eat.
- Cassie’s experience (though limited stage time) as a bulimic
What didn’t work:
- Lia’s empty personality. She is her anorexia. And nothing more (Anorexia is usually a symptom of something else. In this case, Lia is a Peter Pan figure who can’t accept the changes adolescence brings.). She did nothing. And yet Cassie was extremely active. Lia was a poor choice for…
- The Narrator. Her mind was mush. Her thoughts needlessly repetitive. She may read to escape but she obviously doesn’t glean any wisdom from her readings (yet Gaiman is brilliant? To me, yes. But to a schizo-like Lia?).
- Lia wonders why everyone’s eyes are broken (she’s obviously fat!) and yet she talks about exposing her skeleton… so does she is think she fat unless her insides are out?
Ms. Yingling Reads also commented on the language: “The poetic language seemed out of sorts with the topic, somehow.” Though her review overall was favorable.
Updated (9-07-09): Nominated for the Printz, I can’t help but hope it doesn’t win. It would just aggravate me. I know Anderson has something much better coming… the sequel to Chains!
The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester
Stephenie Meyer called this “the oddest/sweetest mix of Little House on the Prairie and X-men.” I couldn’t have put it better.
Piper McCloud is a straight-up farm girl, full of corn, potatoes and sweet innocence. But ever since she floated – rather than fell - off her diaper changing table, she has been kept on the farm, kept secret. When her ability is made known to the small town she lives in, the news spread like wildfire.
She lands in a top secret, underground government facility under the watch of Dr. Hellion. There, Piper discovers all sorts of plants, animals, and people with special abilities. Happy at first, she soon learns that something is very wrong. With the help of super-genius Conrad, Piper must find a way to save everyone: mild-tempered Violet who grows or shrinks depending on her emotional state, Daisy whose strength is unmatched by man or machine, Jasper whose power is unknown, twins Nalen and Ahmed who can control weather, to name a few.
This is a book with simple themes expressed elegantly. It has a delightful mix of action (my co-worker and I agree, this would make a terrific movie), character development, joy and sorrow. I would recommend it to a fourth or tenth grader, a high-level or reluctant reader.
Sarah Dessen Syndrome
March 26, 2009 at 3:09 am (Commentary) (chick lit, sarah dessen, young adult literature)
I still love Dessen but Somewhere is absolutely right. “I do believe people come into our lives to get us through stuff, to help us discover who we are, to show us that thing right in front of us that we can’t see. But in that list of people, I wouldn’t just include boyfriends, I’d include friends and teachers and coworkers.”
Permalink Leave a Comment