Lupe Wong Won't Dance, by Donna Barba Higuera

This is no greater hell on Earth than a middle school square dancing unit.

Lupe Wong has a hero:  Fu Li Hernandez, the Chinese Mexican pitcher for the Seattle Mariners.  As a fellow Chinacan/Mexinese, she figures he's got to know her frustration when filling out the race item on forms.  Lupe's uncle is friends with Hernandez and has promised Lupe that he'll arrange for the two of them to meet if Lupe can get straight As this year.  It should be easy.  She's doing well in all of her classes.  But then she discovers that they are going to have to learn to dance in phys ed and suddenly Lupe isn't sure she can do it!

Lupe is a problem solver, so she turns her energy towards finding a way to get the curriculum changed.  She tries to convince the adults that square dancing is harmful (no luck!).  Then she uncovers that the words to the "Cotton Eye Joe" song they are dancing to are suspect (the school changes the dance music). She starts a change.org petition to protest the fact that boys choose the partners (the school pledges to change the policy next time). And so on.  But in the end, the real solution is for her to find a way to just dance in her own way.

In general, this was a pretty amusing book.  Lupe is creative and persistent.  While she exploits the Culture Wars for her own selfish gain, she's astute and in the long run comes to see the bigger picture here (the author's long-term solution to Lupe's complaints is certainly discussion worthy and will give readers food for thought).  Ultimately, the story is a winner because it focuses on how thinking about others and their needs will make you a winner.  For as much as Lupe wants to meet her hero, she proves that she is willing to put that dream on the line to do the right thing.  That is ultimately a pretty heroic thing to do.

Jelly, by Jo Cotterill

Jelly is the class clown.  Adept at mimicking her classmates and their teachers, she makes everyone in eighth grade laugh. But the truth is that she's hurting inside.  She'd like to tell people the truth about how their harsh words about her weight hurt her feelings, but people don't want to hear that.  Instead, it's simply better to smile, act like it doesn't hurt, and laugh it all off as a joke.  Life goes on and making a big fuss won't solve anything.

While her decision to deflect through comedy gives her agency and the appearance of confidence, Jelly still finds that she comes home exhausted after a day of wearing her happy face.  She's hardly alone.  She's seen the way her mother pretends to be happy around her friends and how Mom tries to please the selfish men she dates and placate Jelly's abusive grandfather.  Jelly's mother just pretends it doesn't hurt.  

But then Mom gets a new boyfriend who's different from the others. He's supportive of Jelly's Mom and solicitous to Jelly's hopes and dreams.  He comes with novel notions that it is alright to feel bad and that appearances are overrated.  It's attractive and yet terrifying at the same time and Jelly and her mother have to decide how much longer they want to keep pretending?

It's a middle reader that surprises.  On its face, the book is safely in the beauty-is-on-the-inside realm.  Jelly learns that she doesn't have to hide behind self-deprecation and that she can get what she wants without always making people laugh.  But the novel, by bringing in her mother's example (and exploring the abusive nature of her grandfather's relationship with his family) bites off much meatier material:  exploring the way that abusive patterns develop and what it takes for a victim to free themselves from them.  Jelly articulates the feelings of her age well, but her fears and the angst surrounding them will resonate with almost every reader to one extent or another, making this story of building self-confidence a universal tale.  A good choice for multi-generational reading and sharing.

Wildfire, by Carrie Mac

Annie and Pete are that rare set:  the boy and girl who have remained friends from childhood without drifting into romance.  What has allowed that is their code of rules and a shared history.  Bonding over a variety of near-death experiences (mostly as a result of poor choices with dumb luck rescues), they understand each other in a way that no one else does.

Hiking through the woods of the Pacific Northwest (amidst hundreds of wildfires) they make one irresponsible decision too many and find themselves in a situation that can't get out of.  This elicits a stream of recollections of each of their previous close calls, used to tells us the story of how they become so close.  Unfortunately, it also leaves them further and further away from any chance of rescue.

There's a tremendous depth to the characters and I admired Mac's storytelling ability, but these Annie and Pete are a bit hard to take.  Pete in particular behaves really badly, selfishly putting Annie into some impossible situations. Occasional bad choices are the bread and butter of YA.  They create the situations that the protagonists get themselves out of.  But here, they come one after another and the characters seem determined to let them happen.

Self-destruction is not pretty and not terribly inspiring.  Smart kids doing stupid stuff isn't really a story I want to read.

Mermaid Moon, by Susann Cokal

Sanna is not like the other mermaids.  She knows that she obviously has a mother, but no one can remember who she is.  They know that her mother was landish, a human, and for this reason a spell was cast that would cause all concerned to forget about each other.  Now, Sanna wants to find her.  An old witch helps transform her into a landish girl so she can do her search.

On dry land, her sudden appearance and an incident involving the transforming of roses during a feast day cause her to be mistaken for a saint.  As a result, she comes to the attention of the ruler, Baroness Thryla.  Thryla announces that such an important person as Sanna must become betrothed to her son, a rather self-absorbed boy named Pedar.

Sanna is non-plussed.  None of this brings Sanna closer to finding her long lost mother.  She's not particularly interested in Pedar or even in the ways of landish romance.  Pedar does himself no favors, acting arrogantly around her.  And something is a bit off about Thryla.  In fact, the woman is a witch, who gathers souls to help elongate her life.  Sanna, with all of her magic, could be a powerful source.  To exploit her and retain her, Thryla must keep Sanna close by.  In the end, when Thryla and Sanna face off, the outcome surprises everyone.

A flowing and melodic fantasy novel, but plagued by a painfully slow pace that both suffers from repetition and also from skips and jumps that are confusing to follow.  I never got much into it, although I slogged through to the end.  The story eventually does resolve (we find Sanna's mother by the end) it really isn't very interested in telling a story.  Instead, it delights in its words.  There is also an underlying misandry (men portrayed as either rapacious or vain) and anti-religious thread to the entire book which is a bit disturbing.  This is addressed in an afterward from the author as some sort of literary experiment but seemed out of place and pretentious.

A Home for Goddesses and Dogs, by Leslie Connor

Back when Lydia's mother was still alive, the two of them would work on collages.  Their collages, built off of pictures taken from an old forgotten family album, were their "goddesses" with each one signifying a different trait ("goddess of generosity", "goddess of the third heart", etc.).  Each of them is dear to Lydia now that her mother is gone and one of the very few things she takes with her.  With her father absent (aside from the annual birthday card which Lydia never opens), it's her Aunt who comes to take her home.

She relocates to the small town of Chelmsford, where Lydia's aunt lives with her partner in an old farmhouse with the house's owner, Elloroy.  The same week that Lydia arrives, the women decide to adopt a new dog.  Lydia isn't a dog person, so she isn't too sure about the dog, but despite his issues with becoming housebroken, the animal grows on her.  Likewise, while Lydia struggles with adapting to her new home and with coming to terms with her mother's death, eventually this home for her goddesses and for dogs becomes her home as well.

Full of lovely ideas, the execution of this fresh story of a non-traditional family leaves a lot to be desired.  So many of the themes of the story (adaptation, grief, identity, etc.) are handled piecemeal and largely unresolved.  A very late attempt to work out her father issues is half-hearted and incomplete.  The dog simply exists.  He struggles and she struggles but eventually they sort of bond, and there's no particular breakthrough beyond the realization that they have grown close.  And then there's the odd side trips that the story takes:  the hostile neighbor and a peculiar and upsetting case of animal cruelty,  Neither of these appear to serve much purpose.  The story's overall intent seems to be to simply show Lydia adjusting amidst a variety of challenges, but since none of these directly contribute, we left with wondering what the story was all about.

In the Role of Brie Hutchens, by Nicole Melleby

Brie loves soap operas, but she never counted on her eighth-grade life becoming one.  She gets caught by her Mom looking at nude pictures of her favorite soap actress.  Embarrassed and trying to distract her mother, she blurts out that she's been chosen for the honor of crowning the school's statue of Mary.  This is one of the highest honors at her Catholic school and only granted to the very best student.  The problem is that Brie is not that sort of student and the honor has not actually been announced yet.  But if it means keeping her mother from finding out that Brie might like girls, then Brie will do whatever it takes to win that honor.  Along the way there are Brie's dreams of attending a performing arts school next year (too expensive for the family), her father's unemployment and tensions over money in general, and Brie's tentative exploration of her sexual identity with another girl at school.

The result is a wonderful tone-perfect book about coming out, suitable for young people who are aware enough of adult issues to begin YA, but needing the comfort of a middle reader.  While this is an LGTBQ children's book, it moreover a book about learning how to say what you want, how to ask others for respect, and growing up in general.  Brie's struggles with her mother over recognizing her homosexuality are heartbreaking, but credible and sensitively handled.  Her struggle to be acknowledged and accepted by Mom and for her mother's difficulty in letting go is universal enough to be relatable to anyone.  Brie's relationship with the girl she likes, Kennedy, has all of the sweetness and awkwardness that one expects from eighth grade budding romances.  In sum, Melleby has a good ear and had produced an authentic, age-appropriate, and sensitive story about developing sexual identity.

Lila and Hadley, by Kody Keplinger

A lot of things lately haven't been going well for Hadley.  Over the last few years, she's been undergoing the loss of her vision and is now legally blind  Because her mother got caught stealing from her employer and been sent to jail, Hadley's had to move in with her older sister, Beth.

She's developed a short temper with good reason.  Having to leave her friends is frustrating.  The way her sister won't stop bugging her about learning how to use a cane before she loses all of her sight makes her angry (even though the truth is she's scared at just how fast her vision is deteriorating).  Her Mom calls every night to talk, but Hadley hates how her mother lied to her and won't pick up the phone.  Hadley is so mad but she doesn't know what to do about it.

One day, when she's forced to accompany her sister to a local animal shelter where Beth works, she chances upon Lila, a shy pit bull.  Something clicks between the two of them, much to the surprise of the staff who have had no luck in socializing and training the dog.  But Hadley sees a kindred spirit in Lila (and Lila seemingly does as well in Hadley).  Can the two of them -- both feeling abandoned, angry, and scared -- save each other?

A fairly predictable middle school animal novel with a lovable dog and a testy protagonist.  Hadley is the weak point to this book.  Keplinger puts a lot of effort into showing how angry she is and while it is understandable that she would be so with all the stuff she's dealing with, it gets wearisome to deal with Hadley's endless rudeness, meanness, and self-centeredness.  The story is about Hadley's growth towards acceptance and inner peace, of course, but it's a story that is poorly plotted.  It's not so much a gradual growth as much simply a sudden stop.  A couple life lessons along the way are intended to provide the justification for change, but we don't see the lessons actually being learned as much as simply occurring.  The narrator's poor grammar works fine in dialogue, but gets excessive and precious in the first-person narration and it actually hinders our ability to see her internalization.  Animal stories work best with humor and hijinks, both of which are lacking for the most part from this story.  More dog and less girl would have made this a better book.

Nevertell, by Katharine Orton

Lina has never known life outside of captivity.  Born inside a Soviet prison camp, she ekes by with her mother and her best friend Bogdan.  The Commandant has a soft spot for her (which many in the camp believe is because he is her father), but life is still very hard.  One night, Lina and Bogdan escape, with instructions to find someway to get to Moscow, where Lina's grandmother will help them.

The world outside of the camp is dangerous.  Not only are they in the middle of frozen Siberian steppe, but the land itself is full of spirits and sorcerers.  Ghost wolves and Baba Yaga herself roam free.  Constantly thrown from one danger to another, Lina and Bogdan navigate through a world that mixes Soviet reality and Russian folk tale in a magical quest.

The amalgam of historical fact and folktale is peculiar, and one that I never got used to.  Despite the inspirations, there was nothing that really felt particularly Russian about this story.  Names, places, and ideas were all there, but the characters were distinctly English.  The story itself is wildly chaotic and hard to really follow.  The bad guys (the Commandant and the witch Svetlana) are strange and inconsistent characters, and their motivations contradictory and obscure.  The goals of the quest are constantly changing.  By mid-point I gave on trying to keep track of why we were going places and doing things.  The plot had more loose ends than a well-worn Central Asian rug!  A colossal mess of a novel.

Girls Save the World in This One, by Ash Parsons

June and her friends are super psyched about attending ZombieCon! They've been saving all summer for the passes and this is going to be the last major blow out before they go their separate ways for college.  Zombies have been June's favorite thing for years and she's super psyched to meet her heroes - the stars of Human Wasteland -- in the flesh.

Despite some snafus accomplishing their goals and some run-ins with a former friend, the Con is turning out to be everything they hoped it would be.  However, something seems off.  A few of the cosplayers seem a bit too realistic. And then during the full cast panel discussion, the girls find themselves in the middle of a real life zombie attack!  As the infected attack the convention attenders, June and her friends team up with the cast of the Human Wasteland fighting from ballroom to atrium trying to save their lives.

As the girls call upon their fan knowledge of their favorite show, proving to often be savvier than the cast members, there are lots of little Galaxy Quest moments, but not nearly as many as one would have expected.  Instead, Parsons plays this mostly straight.  Part of the reason for that is that the story is really torn between two directions:  June's ambivalence about growing up (and a side story about a falling out with her ex-BFF) and the whole saving-the-world-from-Zombies thing.  The stories are distractingly different and Parsons only real solution is painstakingly attempting to connect them.  This leads to pretty jarring shifts in pacing.  In the end, I just wasn't invested enough in June and her friendships to follow the drama and focused instead on her slaying of the infected rotting corpses of her fellow fans.  Overall, a clever concept full of unrealized potential.

What I Want You To See, by Catherine Linka

The art scholarship was supposed to be Sabine's ticket out of poverty.  After her mother died, she's ended up on the street.  The scholarship, with a free ride and money to cover living expenses, would carry her through.  And then after art school, there would be a future as long as she worked hard enough.

The reality is that the scholarship solved little. It doesn't really cover her needs and it leaves her vulnerable.  An unsympathetic teacher, cut- throat competition from the other students, and a past that she can't run away from fast enough put her in a precarious place.  Worst of all, Sabine carries a chip on her shoulder.  Resentful that she always has to work so hard and the world is ganging up on her, Sabine makes a tragic error of judgment that snowballs.  As a result of her decision, she finds herself embroiled in a forgery scandal, the untangling of which will finish her career before it even starts.

After everything she has been through, Sabine can't imagine throwing it all away.  Her mother always told her that "the only way out is through." For Sabine, finding the strength to bravely plow on through her mess may be the only way out.

A tense story, combined with a protagonist who makes all the worst decisions (with the best of intentions), creates a novel that engages from start to finish.  You really want to root for this young woman, whose heart is truly in the right place, but her problems seem so insurmountable (and they keep on coming).    Along the way, she travels a truly impressive growth, moving beyond anger and wrath towards acceptance and forgiveness.

Ending a story like this was always going to be challenging, but Linka does a great job of providing a conclusion that, while not particularly rosy, at least offers some hope.  Given what Sabine has to endure, hope might be good enough.  So that, even if she doesn't get what she wanted, she gains understanding and growth that is its own reward.  That journey makes Sabine's hard slog a rewarding read.

Fable, by Adrienne Young

The Narrows are a dangerous place, where traders try to make a living sailing treacherous waters and navigating trade between people who have little and want more. It is a place only for the ruthless. It is a place where whenever you are on the verge of making it, there's someone ready to pull you back down. Nothing is free, Fable's father told her and she's learned the lesson well.  Four years ago, Fable was abandoned to fend for herself on a scrappy island.  Through struggle, ingenuity, and her wits, she's managed to make it to her seventeenth year, but she's running out of options.

Just as she is on the verge of losing her life, she finds rescue from a trader named West who leads a band of four young sailors on a ship called the Marigold.  While Fable wasn't exactly in a place to be choosy, there is definitely something wrong going on here.  In a place like the Narrows, everyone has secrets but the crew of this ship seem to have the sort of past that attracts trouble and gets people killed.  Nonetheless, they manage to reach the port of Ceros where Fable plans to confront her father -- the man who abandoned her four years ago.

Nothing ever works out like one hopes and the Narrows have a way of defeating you just as you think you have won.  Except now, Fable finds she has much more to lose,  "Never, under any circumstance, reveal what or who matters to you," her father also warned.  Far too late, Fable finds that more people are important to her than she have ever realized.

A breathtaking fantasy story set in a naval setting.  Young creates a tense world, teetering unsteadily between order and chaos.  Danger is ever present and haunts these young people's lives. There's never a restful moment in the story (Fair warning: as this book is the first of a duology, you won't even find rest at the end of this book!).  The tense storyline is enhanced by the complex relationships between the five young people on the ship and the overlapping threads with their antagonists.  There's rich drama here/

There is, in fact. much to love in this book:  an immersive and plausible setting with a complex socio-political structure, vivid scenery, lots of naval action, and meaningful human interactions between Fable and the four members of the Marigold.  Romance, a late arrival to this passionate story, almost seems like an unnecessary afterthought, but it certainly doesn't detract from the story.  The focus though is the usual lifeblood of a great adventure:  loyalty, betrayal, legacy, and destiny. A gripping page turner.

She Loves You (Yeah Yeah Yeah), by Ann Hood

In 1964, Trudy Mixer discovered the Beatles and she founded the first Beatles fan club in Rhode Island at her middle school.  They would sent fan letters, make posters, and whenever a new album came out, the members would pore over it.  Trudy could even get her Dad to join her in listening (Mom preferred Sinatra to four boys who needed haircuts!).  The Beatles and the affection she shared for them with her peers and her father were forever!

But two years later, the numbers in the fan club are dwindling as Trudy's friends drift away to cheerleading, her father has less time for her, and even the Beatles are changing the sound of their music.  With the world changing in both big and small ways, Trudy wants to find some way to bring everything back to the way it was.  When she learns that the Beatles are coming to perform in Boston in August, she realizes that this is what could finally do it!

A sweet period piece that captures lots of atmosphere.  The theme of learning to cope with change is tried and true material of course.  With a focus on what would seem most striking to young readers, we've got everything from the advent of disposable diapers and the first Barbie doll to Betty Friedan and the Vietnam War.  And then there's the Beatles themselves, which form an appropriately formidable place in Trudy's obsessed mind.  The strength of the story of course rests on Trudy who carries the story with a mix of determination and insecurity that make her relatable to middle schoolers.  The book's fantasy ending, which could have seemed overly contrived, works as it provides both payoff and a means for wrapping up a story that is more about friendship and loyalty than the music.

Burn Our Bodies Down, by Rory Power

Margot hasn't had much in the world except her mother (which isn't saying much).  Their relationship could at best be called "abusive," with Mom largely neglecting her daughter and leaving the girl struggling to find love and affection, but Margot has had no one else.  When Margot stumbles across the discovery that she has a living  grandmother, and that Gram wants to meet her, she is overwhelmed with the hope of finding love and a home at last.  Despite her mother's warnings, Margot flees to Gram's farm in rural Nebraska.

It is not the warm welcome she was hoping for.  All is definitely not right.  The townspeople eye her suspiciously, accusing of things that they refuse to explain.  A fire kills a girl that no one recognizes, but who bears a striking resemblance to Margot and whom Margot has never seen before.  Gram, denying knowledge of any of this, refuses to explain herself.  The mysteries pile up.

A creepy story that relies largely on gaslighting to propel its story.  It's well written, but the cruelty and abuse that permeates the novel (and is present in every adult character in the book) got to me quickly.  More so since this is a story that would have largely been resolved if people had actually started conversing and comparing notes.  Still, the ending feels compelled to go far into the deep end of implausibility making that ending poetic but a dramatic shambles.  A fast read that never dragged, but it never became particularly enjoyable.

Twenty Things I Learned from Reading 2000 Books

As I approached the milestone of my 2000th book review, I wanted to be able to share some sort of profound observations about young adult and children’s literature, but inspiration never quite struck.  Instead, I thought I might share some tongue-in-cheek pearls of wisdom I have learned from my time spent over the last sixteen years.  In no particular order, here is the World According to Middle Grade and YA literature:

1) If your parents throw a birthday party for you and invite the whole class, no one will come.

2) If the story is intended for Middle Graders and contains an animal, it will be the focus of the story.  If the book is YA, the animal will be quickly forgotten.

3) If you are American, you will always have two best friends.  If you are English, you will have only one.

4) Every teen party will be unchaperoned and have a keg.

5) Every time you consume alcohol, you will drink too much and vomit in the bushes.

6) Your phone will always either be turned off/muted or have a dead battery.

7) Assuming your parents have not bought you an expensive car, your vehicle will be a junker and have a cute name.

8) Kids only listen to music that was popular when the author of the book was a teenager.

9) Showing up for work is optional.  Your boss at the coffee shop will rarely mind if you miss work, especially for a good reason like having a fight with your boyfriend.

10) With the exception of the protagonist, pretty people are always popular and always mean.

11) Protagonists are always beautiful, even if they think they are not.

12) All girls have at least two eligible, handsome boys to choose between.  One of them will be nice and the other one mean, but the heroine will be the only person in the book who can’t figure out which one is which until the end of the book.

13) Teens only read nineteenth century English literature for pleasure.

14) When you are eleven or twelve and are the subject of the story, you will get your first period.

15) Schools don’t exist for learning.  Their job is to supply cafeterias, gyms, and libraries.  They also serve as useful settings for public humiliation.

16) Malls don’t exist for shopping.  Their job is to provide a place where you can run into people you are trying to avoid.

17) Never turn to an adult to solve your problem when you can spend 200 pages of pointless drama trying to solve it by yourself first.

18) Keeping secrets from your BFF/teachers/parents is never a conscious decision, but just something that happens.  It is always a good idea…until it isn’t.

19) Every family owns a beach house.

20) Mothers are usually dead.

Have I forgotten your favorite trope?  Let me know what it is!

Refraction, by Naomi Hughes

A year ago, an alien spaceship came to Earth.  No one knew what it wanted, but when it broke up in orbit into hundreds of shards and pieces, the world changed.  The stars realigned and the sky darkened.  The world came to an end and only three places still supported life:  London, Singapore, and Cisco Island.  On the latter, a stalwart group struggles to survive, fortifying themselves from the terrors of the mainland.

Reflective surfaces have become portals that spread thick fog everywhere and through which horrible monsters emerge.  Staring into a mirror is suicide and owning one has been quickly outlawed.  But people still needed mirrors, lenses, and other shiny objects and that is where Marty makes a living as an underground dealer in reflective contraband.  It's a dangerous occupation, both because of the materials handled and the classification of dealing as a capital offense, but Marty has no choice.  He needs to find his brother who he believes is in London and getting there is going to take money.

Before he can manage to make the money he needs, Marty gets caught and is summarily exiled from the island.  Along with him is the son of the mayor, exiled for the "crime" of having captured and turned Marty in to the law.  Now, ironically dependent on each other for survival, the two boys try to stay alive in a world of fog and danger.  With the enemy hiding in the fog and reflective surfaces, the paranoia and fear will keep you on the edge of your seat. But as scary as that world is, we quickly learn that the situation is much more complex and terrifying.

This highly entertaining science fiction adventure combines a terrifying premise with complex and interesting characters.  Marty suffers from OCD, which causes minor tics like his need to tap doorframes and triple check locks, but which also plays a significant role in the story.  Without giving away major spoilers, the OCD becomes an integral part of the solution to the story.  His complicated relationship with the mayor's son adds additional tension to the already tense and paranoid setting.  The result is a taut and scary thriller that gave me nightmares.  It stumbles at the end, but mostly because of the impossible standards it sets us up for.  Highly recommended.

Tweet Cute, by Emma Lord

I'm pretty convinced that the challenge I would face in writing decent YA would not come from the difficulty of remembering the trials of adolescence as much as my pedestrian understanding of social media and the prevalence of technology in contemporary adolescent life.  Lots of other authors seem to suffer from that same deficit, so it's nice to read a novel written by someone who handles it all with elan!

Pepper is an academic achiever and a driven perfectionist in everything she attempts, whether it is being captain of the swim team or baking amazing desserts. So when her mother's burger chain business Big League Burgers is struggling to make a bigger impact on Twitter, she naturally agrees to help their hapless social media director.  

Jack, who always feel like the lesser of his identical twin brother, does everything he can to help his family running the neighborhood deli.  At school, he's considered something of a clown and not the star achiever that his brother is.  But he has a secret: he's a coding genius and he's created the social media app Weazel which allows students to communicate anonymously.  It is both wildly popular and completely banned by the school.

When Big League Burgers unveils its new sandwich, Jack and his brother notice an uncanny resemblance to their own deli's fave.  Convinced that the corporate giant is trying to steal from their family, they launch an attack on Twitter that takes off.  Soon, although neither one knows initially that the other is behind it, Pepper and Jack find themselves wrestling in an internet battle using their family's corporate accounts.  At the same time, they are similarly haplessly entwined with each other on Weazel.

This update of You've Got Mail has all the usual rom-com charms.  It's a bit crowded between the Twitter battle, Pepper's baking finesse, and the Weazel app, but it manages to tie everything up neatly in the end (with some help from some convenient coincidences).  With all that stuff going all, it's a bit of a slog to get through the first eighty pages.  To really get the storying moving in fact, some of the key elements at the beginning simply drop away (Pepper's grade point average takes a dive, the swimming fades away, etc.).  So, this isn't anything spectacular, but it is fun if you don't overthink it.  And after I've had my head in the world of Panem for three days, I definitely didn't mind some food porn and smoochy bits!

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by Suzanne Collins

Taking place decades before the events in The Hunger Games trilogy, this prequel gives us a taste of the early years after the war, opening with the tenth Hunger Games.  It is also an opportunity to give us background on Snow and how he came to see a young woman like Katniss Everdeen as his nemesis.

The story begins on familiar ground as we walk through the events of the Hunger Games themselves (as we did in books I and II) but where those were smooth running affairs, it is apparent that at this early date, they were still working out the kinks.  In striking contrast, the body count has racked up long before the Games even start.  

Snow is a student at the Academy and in a novel new twist this year the students have been enlisted to "mentor" the tributes.  Snow gets assigned to the female tribute from District 12, Lucy Gray.  She's a musician and and a member of a wandering troupe of romani-like entertainers called the Covey.  Like a gypsy, she flits around in colorful skirts and charms the people around her (including Grey himself) which proves decisive in her ability to stay alive and defeat much more able opponents.  But there is more than charm at play.  They have a mutual shared interest in her staying alive.  Her success in the Games will help Snow get a college scholarship he desperately needs.

That works fine during the Games, but when things go awry and the story shifts to District 12, their roles change.  The mutual interest persist, but there is suspicion and distrust and Snow doesn't know if he can trust her anymore. But in all honesty, could he ever trust her?

There are several things that make this a very different sort of story.  One obvious difference is the point of view.  In the trilogy, we are seeing the world through the eyes of Katniss and her rebellion against the Capital District.  Here, the story is told through Snow and life in the Capital is nowhere near as easy as we have grown used to it.  Some of that is because the Capital is still rebuilding from after the war, but Collins is also showing us that even those who benefit from the power structure suffer.

This is the origin story of a tyrant. While Katniss was heroic and fighting a good fight through most of the story, Snow is a troubling protagonist.  Some of his ideas (in particular his obsession with order and his selfishness) are odious.  One starts feeling uneasy when the book pushes us to root for the oppressors and we hope that the rebels get caught and killed.

But there's more going on in this novel than simply cashing in on the popularity of the trilogy.  While the trilogy used the Games as a metaphor for the cutthroat competition for college placement and job seeking, the goals here are simultaneously grander and more obscure.  Hints of that are seen in the five quotes that precede the story.  The first three come from the trifecta of liberal democracy -- Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau -- all speaking about the Social Contract.  Wordsworth follows with his ties to Rousseau.  The last quote comes from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which might seemingly be intended for the shock value of a monster let loose, but that would ignore Shelley's ties to her parents (Godwin and Wollstonecraft) and their critique of Rousseau.   Although heavy handed, this presages Collins's grander ambition in this story of critiquing the Contract itself.  The idea that we sacrifice our freedom in exchange for the order of authority is a key principle in our culture, and the tension that exists in that surrender was never fully worked out by liberal philosophers.  That it has these nuances is obviously lost on Snow and is the point that Collins in making.  While the Games were presented as a perversion of liberal democracy in the Trilogy, here it is dissected as a central component of it (seen much more clearly in the raw early years of Panem).  In an understanding with more than small nod to Foucault, Collins is demonstrating that the sacrifice of freedom does not give us order, but rather serves us control.

An interesting message to explore in a YA book, but what about the story itself?  It's long and meanders a lot.  Once the Games are over, the story truly drifts away from its focus, but it does eventually come back together in the end, in a rushed finale that solves problems by largely killing off characters (an approach also found in Mockingjay).  This is a less accessible story.  It is hard to imagine someone picking up this book without already having been drawn in by the trilogy.  In sum, not just a prequel but an ambitious political critique that is fated to be read by fans looking for some Katniss magic and disappointed to find only gloomy portents of the things to come.

Audacity, by Melanie Crowder

Clara Lemlich, an early labor organizer in New York and leader in the Triangle Shirtwaist Uprising, is the subject of this biography in verse.  Tracing the story of her life from a shtetl in Russia and her family's immigration to the United States to her involvement in organization women in New York's sweatshops, Clara makes an compelling subject.

Struggling against sexism, tradition, racism, and economic injustice to realize her dreams, it's a battle that one cannot truly say that she ever won, which makes the decision to tell her story in verse particularly poignant.  So much of what she faced and fought with goes unsaid in this novel.  For those parts of her life left in ellipses, a brief biographical essay and the transcript of the author's interview with her descendants fill in some details.

The verse is occasionally ambitious but overall sufficient to convey the action of the story and pull our focus to Clara's personality, accent her drive and ambition, and call out her doubts.  Faced with so many obstacles, she is particularly ravaged by regrets as the failures of her actions and the costs of those failures start to pile up.  Verse gives us the silent spaces and moments of reflection that a more standard text would have felt compelled to push through.  And so my usual skepticism about the format is set aside.  This is a good book, providing an inspirational approach to labor history and the role of women activists in the labor movement.  Recommended.

Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know, by Samira Ahmed

Stung by a humiliating academic failure when her application to art school is rejected, Khayyam accompanies her parents to Paris in disgrace. She was so certain that she had uncovered an earthshattering connection between author Alexandre Dumas and the artist Eugene Delacroix, but her thesis was demolished by the judge.

Her father is French and her mother a Muslim Indian, which makes her an exotic American transplant.  Right now, Khayyam wouldn't mind some quiet to take stock.  In addition to her bungled scholarship application, there's her frustration with her sort-of boyfriend back in Chicago.

But Paris simply takes her closer to the causes of her woes.  Surrounded by the places where Dumas and Delacroix lived, Khayyam picks back up her search.  In the process, she stumbles across a young man with a similar quest (and strangely enough a direct descendent of Dumas!).  Together they learn of a Muslim woman named Leila who crossed paths with not only Dumas and Delacroix, but also with Lord Byron.  A historical mystery (interspersed with Leila's story from her voice) unfolds.  Along with it, a contemporary romance in the streets of Paris develops.

While listed as Young Adult, this literary mystery is really more of an adult novel with a young protagonist.  Khayyam has some angsty teen moments, mostly involving the triangle with her American boyfriend and the young Dumas, but otherwise there is nothing here that particularly speaks to adolescence.  That doesn't mean that young readers will not enjoy the unraveling of the mystery or characters, but simply that the novel will appeal to a broader audience.  As a mystery it works pretty well.  

The book is less effective at promoting Ahmed's ideological goals. Using Edward Said's critique of orientalism as a launching point, she uses the example of Leila (and Khayyam's obsession with telling the woman's story) to illustrate the process of giving voice to women in history. Byron, Dumas, and Delacroix and their odious relationships with women make easy cannon fodder and this is entry-level criticism aimed at younger readers. Here, it hangs uneasily, much as her bombastic novel Internment did for anti-Trumpism. The polemic, which only becomes fully developed in the latter part of the novel, does not add much and largely occurs at the cost of Khayyam's story of personal growth and confidence building.

What Unbreakable Looks Like, by Kate McLaughlin

Bound as sex slaves in a seedy Connecticut motel, "Poppy" and the other girls live a hellish existence.  But the trauma doesn't end when she is rescued in a police raid and claimed by an estranged aunt and uncle.  For as much as they want to help her rebuild her life, Lex (her real name) has a lot to process and work through.  A process that experiences a serious set back when she tries to return to school to get her diploma and falls victim to an attack by her fellow students. 

Seeing herself as damaged, she can't believe that anyone would want her (and readers will also be similarly impressed at the amazing generosity of the aunt), but with time we Lex learns to trust again.  Eventually, she even gains enough strength to fight back.

The book's subject matter is difficult to read and one of the strengths of the novel is the careful attention to detail that McLaughlin gives to it.  It's well-researched and no holds are barred in its explicit (but not exploitative) details.  Lex is similarly memorable.  A curious combination of insightful and ignorant, her voice is a bit hard to pin down.  In the beginning, I underestimated her as an inarticulate drop-out but as she regains confidence she becomes reflective and wise beyond her years.  Ironically, the great strength of her characterization can be credited to the weak writing of the book (more on that below).  In failing to develop a consistent voice for her protagonist, McLaughlin actually makes her a compelling study on contrasts.

But in the end, the book suffers from its writing. Frequent repetition and jarring plot jumps suggest that more revision and editing was needed.  McLaughlin has lots of great detail to share and is reluctant to pare it down so by the end she resorts literally to a lecture to fit it all in.  That may achieve political aims, but it sidelines Lex and her story and relegates her to a case study.  And the obvious dramatic payoff of watching Lex's attackers come to justice is diminished by not depicting any of it.  With all this good raw material and a compelling concept, it seems a disappointment.