Audiobook Review: Feed (This book is still unit!)

Anderson, M.T.  (2002).  Feed.  Cambridge, MA:  Candlewick Press.

300 pages (5 hours, 1 minute audio book)


Appetizer:  Titus and his friends went to the moon for a good time and while it was kind of fun since he met a girl named Violet, it wound up sucking because some of their feeds were hacked.  But after that, Titus's life isn't quite the same, a fact he has trouble dealing with.

The feed is--essentially--an internet connection in most people's heads, complete with advertising, chats and viruses.  Through Titus's voice, M.T. Anderson reveals a possible future in which skin legions are becoming cool, the English language is diminishing, schools are run by companies and consumerism is a requirement.  Although only written in 2002, some of Anderson's predictions feel as though they are only several years or decades away from becoming realities.

The audiobook was a fun read.  The ads that are sprinkled throughout the novel are brought to life with actual jingles and all of the comments made from the President sound vaguely George W. Bush-like (dating the book a little).

This week my students had the choice between reading Feed and Brave New World.  As I was re-reading Feed though, I thought of an even better book pair:  Feed and A Walk to Remember.  No, seriously.  The different ways that the protagonists deal with the declining health of their girlfriends is fascinating.

When we discussed the book, my students didn't seem to enjoy Feed as much as I thought they would.  But it became apparent from our discussion why they were resisting the text:  It was scary.  Aspects of the scary dystopian future were a little too familiar.

Frankly, that just makes me even more impressed with Anderson's Feed.


Dinner Conversation:

"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck." (p. 3)

"I guess if I'm honest?  Then I was hoping to meet someone on the moon. Maybe part of it was the loneliness of the craters, but I was feeling like it was maybe time to hook up with someone again, because it had been a couple of months." (p. 5)

"Link and I were chatting about the girl, like I was going, She is meg youch, and he was going, What the hell's she wearing?, and I was going, Wool.  it's wool.  Like from an animal, and then Calista did her own chat to us, which was, If you want to hear about an animal, what about two guys staring with their mouths wide open so they look completely Cro-Magnon?"  (p. 21)

"She was on the moon all alone.  Here it was, spring break, and she was on the moon, where there was all this meg action, and she was there without friends.  She said she just walked through the crowds and watched, and she saw all these great things that way.  She said she was there to observe."  (p. 28)

"She took me up to a huge window.  We stood in front of it.  Outside the window, there had been a garden, like, I guess you could call it a courtyard or terrarium?  But a long time ago the glass ceiling over the terrarium had cracked, and so everything was dead, and there was moon dust all over everything out there.  Everything was gray.
Also, something was leaking air and heat out in the garden, lots of waste air, and the air was rocketing off into space through the hole, so all of the dead vines in the garden were standing straight up, slapping back and forth, pulled toward the crack in the ceiling where we could see the stars.
"Whoa," I said.
"Isn't it beautiful?"
"It's like...," I said.  "It's like a squid in love with the sky."
She was only looking at me, which was nice.  I hadn't felt anything like that for a long time.
She rubbed my head, and she went, "You're the only one of them that uses metaphor."
She was staring at me, and I was staring at her, and I moved toward her, and we kissed.  The vines beat against each other out in the gray, dead garden, they were all writing against the spine of the Milky Way on its edge, and for the first time, I felt her spine, too, each knuckle of it, with my fingers, while the air leaked and the plants whacked each other near the silent stars." (pp. 62-63)


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

REVIEW: Where Things Come Back

Whaley, J.C.  (2011).  Where Things Come Back.  New York:  Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

228 pages.


Appetizer:  My first thought when first hearing of this book:  "Why isn't it called Where Things Return?  Why?!"  Why use two words when you could use one?

My first thought after hearing that this book won both the 2012 Morris Award for debut authors and the Printz Award for young adult literature:  "I must read this NOW.  Wordy titles work!"

My first thought after learning that the author, John Corey Whaley, is a Louisiana teacher:  "Yay!  I can't wait to show my students."

My first thought after reading the book:  "Meh.  Alas, alack, oh dear.  I wanted to enjoy it more."

Where Things Come Back is the story of seventeen-year-old Cullen Witter, whose cousin recently died and who has a crush on the tragic Ada Taylor (her previous boyfriends have a tendency to die....).  Cullen's brother has gone missing.  There's no evidence or reason for Gabriel's disappearance and the grief is hurting every member of Cullen's family.  On top of that, Cullen is stuck in Lily, Arkansas just like all of his other friends, and knows he will never leave until he knows what has happened to his brother.  As Cullen searches for a way to bring Gabriel back, the town of Lily searches for the elusive Lazarus Woodpecker which has been seen for the first time in sixty years.

Every-other-chapter is devoted to sharing the story of Benton Sage, a missionary who works in Ethiopia and then his roommate after Benton returned to the U.S. to attend college.  These seemingly unrelated stories eventually come together in striking ways.  (Although, these chapters never really won me over.  I found the narration to be too telling.)

Throughout the novel, there are paragraphs which begin "When one..." to describe the way Cullen reacts to things.  At first I found this subject change from the first person to be very off-putting, but I have to admit, it grew on me.  I also liked the way that Cullen invented book title names throughout the narrative.  It reminded me a lot of the novel King Dork and the attention its protagonist paid to creating band names and album covers.

Nonetheless, Where Things Come Back never really captured my imagination or interest.  I never desired to pick it up and read it.  However, when I did bring myself to read the book, it was the type of narrative where it was easy to just keep reading.  (To get through as opposed to enjoy)  I can appreciate and respect what Whaley has written.  He pushes away from the way many YA narratives are told.  But I never really connected with Cullen, his friends or the story.


Dinner Conversation:

"I was seventeen years old when I saw my first dead body.  It wasn't my cousin Olso's.  It was a woman who looked to have been around fifty or at least in her late forties.  She didn't have any visible bullet holes or scratches, cuts, or bruises, so I assumed that she had just died of some disease or something; her body barely hidden by the thin white sheet as it awaited its placement in the lockers.  The second dead body I ever saw was my cousin Oslo's.  I recognized his dirty brown shoes immediately as the woman wearing the bright white coat grasped the metallic handle and yanked hard to slide the body out from the silvery wall."  (p. 1)

"Being seventeen and bored in a small town, I like to pretend sometimes that I'm a pessimist.  This is the way it is and nothing can sway me from that.  Life sucks most of the time.  Everything is bullshit.  High school sucks.  You go to school, work for fifty years, then you die.  Only I can't seem to keep that up for too long before my natural urge to idealize goes into effect.  I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good."  (p. 5)

"You see, Ada Taylor had a grim history.  As a sophomore in high school, when I was just a freshman, Ada was dating this ass-hat by the name of Conner Bolton.  Conner was a senior and made it his personal mission to make every freshman in the school terrified to be caught walking alone or near the bathrooms, lockers, or trash cans.  But alas, he died before Christmas break in a car accident.  Ada was the only other passenger.  She walked away without a scratch.  Then, the next year, Ada was dating this okay guy who I used to play G.I. Joes with on the floor of my mom's hair salon.  His name was Aaron Lancaster.  He didn't even make it to Thanksgiving before he up and drowned int he White River during a thunderstorm.  His dad found his empty fishing boat.  A search party found his body four days later.  I heard it looked like he had been microwaved.
After that, it almost seemed like a ridiculous thing to date Ada Taylor, or even go near her.  But that didn't matter much to the young men of Lily, even me.  The unspoken philosophy of all those in love with Ada was something like this:  If I have to die to get that, then death it is."  (pp. 6-7)

"When Benton Sage found out that he would be going on a mission for his church that year, he was overwhelmed with excitement and panic.  His stomach felt a sort of queasy rumble as he stood with his sisters and Reverend Hughes, and watched as the entire church circled around them, clasped hands, and began to pray.  Ethiopia, he thought, would be the first place he could truly exert his faith.  It was his fear of travel, of leaving his comfortable life in Atlanta, of floating mysteriously thirty thousand feet in the air, that made eighteen-year-old Benton feel as if he would collapse onto the church's soft, green carpet as he heard the choir begin to chant amens and hallelujahs behind him."  (p. 16)

"'Did you hear about that bird?' Lucas asked me, still staring toward the house.
Lucas was one of the smartest and strangest people I knew, and so I wasn't very surprised by his choice of topic.
"What bird?" I asked.
"There's this woodpecker that's been extinct for, like, sixty hears.  Only, this guy from Oregon or something was down here and he thinks he saw one."
"In Lily?"
"Right outside of town.  I think he was canoeing down the river and saw it fly by or something.
"Weird."  (pp. 29-30)

"It was one of those moments when you're waiting on someone to say something important or funny or just do anything to break you away from the sad thoughts that overwhelm your mind.  Thoughts like never having enough money to move away or not getting into college.  Thoughts like having to come back to take care of a sick parent and getting stuck here all over again.  That's what happened in Lily.  People dreamed.  People left.  And they all came back.  It was like Arkansas's version of a black hole; nothing could escape it." (p. 35)

"It was three hours later and after calling everyone we knew and driving around town twice that we decided to call the police.  It was a Thursday when my brother, the Left Hand of God, disappeared.  It was on this same Thursday that John Barling appeared on national television to talk about the Lazarus woodpecker and how it had come back from the dead." (p. 55)

"Here's the problem with a fifteen-year-old boy going missing:  No one thinks he has been taken.  Especially Gabriel, who looked to be my age.  Everyone in town, though they didn't say it, was thinking the same thing:  Gabriel Witter has finally run away from his family.  That, or he went hiking through the woods and either got lost or got eaten by a bear.  Here's what I knew:  My brother was taken from me.  He did not run away, because he wouldn't.  He couldn't.  He would never.  And he'd never gotten lost in his life."  (pp. 58-59)


Tasty Rating:  !!

The 2011 Cybiles Award: My perspective on Frost

Appetizer:  The last of the Cybils realistic young adult novels that I'll be featuring is Frost.  The novel is the story of

Opening Line:  "Before I lived there, before any of this happened, I imagined Frost House as a sanctuary.  It crouches on the northern edge of Barcroft Academy in a tangle of lilac and evergreen bushes, shadowed by oaks and sugar maples.  Hidden enough that I didn't even know it existed until junior year, when I chased a field hockey ball through the underbrush into its backyard.  I assumed the white-clapboard cottage was a faculty member's house.  Most Barcroft dorms are three-story brick buildings' this was a weathered old Victorian, small and squat, with a wraparound porch and a mansard roof hugging the second floor.  The kind of place a family would life.  The first time I saw it, I could almost hear a whispered call mingling with the soft rattle of leaves:  Come inside, come inside...  (p. 3)


My Thoughts of the Nominee:  Frost a wonderful haunting novel.  Baer does a wonderful job of bringing the house and setting to life and of slowly revealing Leena to be an unreliable narrator.

I did have some trouble engaging with Frost though.  I wasn't too crazy about Leena, Celeste or any of the other characters.

The one aspect I really loved were the descriptions of Frost House.  It really came alive...and became the coolest character in the book.

The 2011 Cybils Awards: My perspective on the nominee Everybody Sees the Ants

Appetizer:  As a freshman, Lucky Linderman took a vow to stop smiling.  Since the age of seven, he has been bullied.  His tormentor, a boy named Nader, has always gotten away with his pranks, bullying and threats.

The one person who seems to help Lucky is his grandfather.  A prisoner of war in Vietnam who visits with Lucky in his dreams.

When Nader's bullying grows worse, Lucky's mom uproots them both for a vacation and Lucky finds himself guided by his uncle and maybe even facing a romance.


Opening Quotation:

"All I did was ask a stupid question.
Six months ago I was assigned the standard second-semester freshman social studies project at Freddy High:  Create a survey, evaluate data, graph data, express conclusion in a two-hundred-word paper.  This was an easy A.  I thought up my question and printed out 120 copies.
The question was:  If you were going to commit suicide, what method would you choose? (p. 3)


My Thoughts:  I really liked that Everybody Sees the Ants took on the issue of bullying.  I also liked that it would lend itself to discussing the Vietnam War.

A.S. King's writing was clear.  She created a great voice for Lucky.

However, the magical realism of Lucky's conversations with his grandfather did not work for me at all.

Nonetheless, check this one out!  I was glad the Cybils Award gave me an excuse to pick it up.

In case you hadn't heard, the Cybils 2011-2012 winners were announced!!!

You can look over the complete post about the winners at the Cybils website, but here's a quick breakdown of the winners:

Elementary and Middle Grade

Book Apps

The Monster at the End of This Book
by Callaway Digital Arts, Inc

(Just bought it!)

Fiction Picture Books

Me . . . Jane
by Patrick McDonnell

(got it!)

Nonfiction Picture Books

I Feel Better with a Frog in My Throat: History's Strangest Cures
by Carlyn Beccia


(Got it!)

Easy Readers

I Broke My Trunk! (An Elephant and Piggie Book)
by Mo Willems

(Got it!)

Early Chapter Books

Have Fun, Anna Hibiscus!
by Atinuke

Poetry

Requiem: Poems of the Terezin Ghetto
by Paul B. Janeczko

(Added to my cart...and I'm hovering over the "buy now" button)

Graphic Novels

Zita the Spacegirl
by Ben Hatke

(Added to my wishlist)

Fantasy & Science Fiction

The Cheshire Cheese Cat: A Dickens of a Tale
by Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright

(Also added to my wishlist)

Middle Grade Fiction

Nerd Camp
by Elissa Brent Weissman

Young Adult

Nonfiction Books

Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart
by Candace Fleming

Graphic Novels

Anya's Ghost
by Vera Brosgol

(Already on my wishlist)

Fantasy and Science Fiction

Blood Red Road
by Moira Young

Already on my wishlist)

Young Adult Fiction

Stupid Fast
by Geoff Herbach

(YAY!  This is the book I helped select!!!!!!!!  Read it readitREADIT!)




Over the next week or so, I'll post some of my personal comments on some of the books I looked over as one of the YA fiction judges.

Which of these winners have you already read?  Which books are you going to pick up soon?  (I already downloaded the There's A Monster at the End of This Book app and I'm eyeing a copy of Zita the Spacegirl to start my reading of this collection.

Audiobook Review: The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here's a review of a romantic read in honor of the holiday.

Smith, J.E.  (2012)  The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight.  New York:  Poppy.

5 hours and 17 minutes of listening or 256 pages.


Appetizer:  Hadley missed her flight to London by four minutes.  FOUR MINUTES!  Forced to wait several hours for the next flight, she risks being late to her father's wedding to a woman whom Hadley has never met and hates on principle.

As Hadley waits, she meets and befriends a British boy named Oliver--a freshman at Yale--who is scheduled to fly to London on Hadley's new flight.  They are even to sit in the same row.  Their conversations at a cafe near their gate and on the airplane put Hadley at ease.  She is amazed at how comfortable she feels talking to Oliver, even discussing the difficulties she's been having with her father who left her and her mom for the woman he is now marrying.

After just spending several hours with Oliver, Hadley knows that she wants to see him again.  But she doesn't know if the crazy circumstances that first allowed her to meet him will fall into place again; especially after she realizes that his reason for flying home to London may not have been a cheerful one.


I really enjoyed The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight.  I loved the title, cover and premise of this book.  As for the actual story, I found it to be a refreshing break from some of the heavier reading I've been doing recently, yet it still had enough depth of themes and character development that it felt real and went beyond "a happy bit of escapism."  (Although, some of Hadley's realizations about her family members did feel a little forced...but also necessary.)

Smith did a good job of capturing the feeling of being on a plane and--to an extent--being in London.  I do have an odd complaint though...since the title is so "math" oriented, I found myself wishing that Hadley were a math genius throughout the story.  There are one or two moments where she thinks in terms of math, but I found myself wanting more.

Generally, I liked the technique of having Hadley reflect upon her experiences or flashback to events before the 24-hour period that the book is set during, but several of the flashbacks felt unnecessary given the way that some of the information had been alluded to previously.



I did find Hadley's character to be a little whiney at the beginning, but that could have been a product of listening to the book instead of reading the pages.



The audiobook is narrated by Casey Holloway. I thought she did a good job of narrating from Hadley's perspective and I found myself wishing the novel were in first-person so I could have been brought even closer into Hadley's experience.  I wasn't too crazy about Holloway's British accent though, especially for Oliver.  (It was easier to hear when she voiced several women later in the novel.)  But still, it was a fun (and short!) book to listen to.

*Spoiler for the kinda-end*  As a side note, while Smith did a good job of making Oliver's refusal to reveal what he was studying and his misleading her about why he was flying home seem like appealing characterizations, in real life those would have been major red flags.  He repeatedly misleads her.  *End Spoiler/Rant*



Dinner Conversation:

"Airports are torture chambers if you're claustrophobic.
It's not just the looming threat of the ride ahead--being stuffed into the seats like sardines and then catapulted through the air in a narrow metal tube--but also the terminals themselves, the press of people, the blur and spin of the place, a dancing, dizzying hum, all motion and noise, all frenzy and clamor, and the whole thing sealed off by glass windows like some kind of monstrous ant farm."  (p. 5)



Tasty Rating:  !!!!

Audiobook Review: The Fault in Our Stars

Green, J.  (2012).  The Fault in Our Stars.  New York:

313 pages.


So, my signed copy of Green's novel arrived on its release date and it has dutifully sat on my bedside table, begging to be read.  But alas, I lacked the time.

I even had a student who came in to talk to me about the book, but I had to tell her I hadn't read it yet; like a failure.

*Points skyward.*  To the audio book I went (the Kate Rudd version, not the John Green...sorry, Kate's recording was cheaper)!



Appetizer:  Hazel Grace Lancaster is living with cancer.  Worried that she's depressed, her mom makes Hazel regularly attend a support group.  At one meeting, Hazel meets Augustus, a cancer survivor who is there to support his friend Isaac who is having surgery soon.  Augustus and Hazel trade book recommendations that leads to a quest to know what happens to the characters in Hazel's favorite book.  Along with their quest, romantic tensions arise, but with Hazel's terminal diagnosis and Augustus's regular scans to check for more cancer, their future together is uncertain.

So, I loved The Fault in Our Stars.  The audiobook was wonderful.  The way Kate Rudd brought Augustus's voice to life was great.  This was one of those audiobooks that I didn't want to stop listening to even after there was nothing I could think of to do while listening.  (I actually dusted my apartment so I could keep listening!)

Green does a good job of sharing about a realistic romance (which I imagine was one of his many goals with writing this book).  He specifically critiques paranormal romances and "cancer books."  Here's one example:

"AIA is about this girl named Anna (who narrates the story) and er one-eyed mom, who is a professional gardener obsessed with tulips, and they have a normal lower-middle-class life in a central California town until Anna gets this rare blood cancer. 

But it's not a cancer book, because cancer books suck.  Like, in cancer books, the cancer person starts a charity that raises money to fight cancer, right?  And this commitment to charity reminds the cancer person of the essential goodness of humanity and makes him/her feel loved and encouraged because s/he will leave a cancer-curing legacy.  But in AIA, Anna decides that being a person with cancer who starts a cancer charity is a bit narcissistic, so she starts a charity called The Anna Foundation for People with Cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera."  (pp. 48-49)

Yay!

I absolutely loved Hazel's friend Kaitlyn, who is described as a girl "who just happened to be an extremely sophisticated twenty-five-year-old British socialite stuck inside a sixteen-year-old body in Indianapolis.  Everyone accepted it" (p. 42).  I've been friends with a Kaitlyn sort of girl.  They're fun.

When I teach, I tend to use Looking for Alaska, but I think in the future, I may switch to using The Fault in Our Stars.


Dinner Conversation:

"Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.
Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer.  But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer.  Depression is a side effect of dying.  (Cancer is also a side effect of dying.  Almost everything is, really.)" (p. 3)

"'What?' I asked.
"Nothing," [Augustus] said.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Augustus half smiled.  "Because you're beautiful.  I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence."  A brief awkward silence ensued.  Augustus plowed through:  "I mean, particularly given that, as you so deliciously pointed out, all of this will end in oblivion and everything."  (p. 16)

"'I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things.  I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you."  (p. 153)


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

Audiobook Review: Dead End in Norvert

Gantos, J.  (2011).  Dead End in Norvelt.  New York:  Farrar Straus Giroux.

341 pages.


Appetizer:  Set in 1962, little Jack Gantos (a kinda-sorta-fictional character who is prone to nosebleeds) gets himself grounded forever.  (It was a bit of a crazy situation, although there were other factors, Jack was following his father's orders to plow down his mother's corn to create a runway for the plane he...obtained.)  Practically the only freedom Jack is allowed is to help old Miss Volker, the medical examiner and obituary writer, who roots for the original founders of Norvelt to die.  (When Eleanor Roosevelt founded the town she tasked Miss Volker with watching over the residents and now, decades later, Miss Volker is ready to move on.)

Norvelt itself is a very interesting character of a town; a bit of history brought to life that embodies different political and economic views.   (For example, Jack's mother favors the barter system, a fact that sometimes embarrasses Jack and his father feels that the town--founded on the principal of putting poor people in a position to help themselves--is a failed Communist experiment.)

Several times throughout the historical novel, Jack talks about the way he engages with books--both fiction and nonfiction--demonstrating the value of both history and literacy.  There was one scene in which he and his best friend discuss the way books smell and sniff the gutters of various books.  This reminded me of my father, who judges the quality of a book based on the way it smells.

Overall, a very enjoyable book.  Some of the plot details threw me for a few loops:  The Hell's Angels make a few appearances.  The story turns into a murder mystery.  That made me ponder a little.

Jack Gantos's--AKA the actual author's--reading of the audiobook was great.  He kept the focus on the story (as opposed to some crazy inflections or accents some authors or voice actors use).  The story was fun and hilarious--enough so that I chuckled out loud several times.  In particular, I'm trying to find a way/reason that I could share the dear hunting chapter with my students.  Although I think the book would appeal to both boys and girls, I can't help but think--with the occasional icky detail or bathroom humor--it was written to target boys.


Dinner Conversation:

"School was finally out and I was standing on a picnic table in our backyard getting ready for a great summer vacation when my mother walked up to me and ruined it" (p. 3).

"I was a nosebleeder.  The moment something startled me or whenever I got over-excited or spooked about any little thing blood would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames" (p. 8).

"'You're looking at the original Norvelt," she said.  "There are two hundred and fifty houses in five sections on this map with the names of the original owners.  If you count up the red pins you'll see that all but nine--eight now that Mrs. Slater has passed--of the original owners have died or left since 1934" (p. 35).

"'Miss Volker," I said about as politely as I knew how, "do you think you will outlast the rest of these original people?"
"I have to," she said.  "I made a promise to Eleanor Roosevelt to see them to their graves, and I can't drop dead on the job--so let's get going" (p. 36).


Tasty Rating:  !!!!

REVIEW: Bleeding Violet

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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:  !!!