A rollicking adventure of strange creatures, battles, and subterfuge. Filled out with delightful illustrations, this fast-paced story is an easy read. I found it terribly violent and a bit thin on character, but it won plenty of awards (including a Newbery Honor last year).
Monday, March 25, 2024
Elf Dog & Owl Head, by M. T. Anderson (ill Junyi Wu)
Sunday, March 24, 2024
With A Little Luck, by Marissa Meyer
Defying the odds, he finds a rare signed record that everyone's overlooked, he wins a radio contest for two tickets to see a British hearthrob in concert, he finds missing homework, and he's rolling d20s perpetually. With the tickets, he gets the courage to ask Maya out on a date and she surprisingly accepts. And then she surprises him further revealing that she loves fantasy roleplaying as well and becomes an essential part of his D&D parties! It would seem that there is no limit to the things that Jude can do with his magic die until, that is, his luck changes.
Maya turns out to be a lovely person but not the love of his life. His true love is actually with someone else. His grade start slipping again. Every good deed he tries to perform backfires on him. It would seem that the die has now cursed him and he can only roll d1s. But for everything that goes wrong, some new opportunity arrives. Jude begins to discern that it isn't a simple matter of good and bad luck.
For a novel based (as its predecessor Instant Karma was) around Beatles references, the lesson of this story actually comes to us from the Stones -- "you can't always get what you want...you get what you need." As Jude's luck seems to reverse, he comes to understand that luck itself is overrated. And the best things in life are not determined by fate, but by courage and taking chances.
Continuing the unobtrusive magical nature that Meyer played with in Instant Karma, there are plenty of similarities but is is an imminently more satisfying story. Prudence and Quint from that book play minor roles here to give us some foundation, but Jude's struggles to gain self-confidence and his acts of bravery are much more relatable that Pru's acts of karmic vengeance. And while a string of hillariously improbable coincidences at the end of the story might have derailed the whole thing, they in fact are quite in keeping with the spirit of this fun and enjoyable read.
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Cupid's Revenge, by Wibke Brueggemann
Katherine doesn't seem very impressed with Teddy but Katherine and Tilly have instant chemsitry and that makes things awkward. Tilly knows better than to date Katherine, but the heart wants what the heart wants. And, anyway, you know how this trope works so I don't really need to lay out the rest of the story. Furthermore, the setting -- rehearsing a play -- is tiredly familiar. No surprises!
What's a little more off script is the rest of the story: Tilly's oddball family of professional musicians and dancers (so, so unlike Tilly) are colorful and humorour. The drama of taking care of Tilly's recently-diagnosed-with-dementia grandfather, who's come to live with them and proves to be alternatingly a huge handful and a great help, provides pathos.
Full of humor, some lovely romance, frank depictions of sex, and a fantastic cast of characters, Cupid's Revenge (the novel) is a stand out for both refreshing a tired plot and being a surprisingly good read. I have a poor record with British YA (or NA, in this case) as it tends to be preachy and condescending, but this book surprised me. It's not just a heroine with a good head on her shoulders but a full cast of characters who act like normal people and behave sensibly. The story and its humor comes through so much bettter without lots of false drama and contrived circumstances.
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Drawing Deena, by Hena Khan
Deena is also capable of solving her own problems. With some help from her friends, they help set up a social media site for her mother's business. They develop policies and plans for her mother's commercial success. Along the way, Deena learns to stand up for herself and her family.
Full of lots of ethnic details (mostly about clothing and food), Khan's book is really about portraying a typical American malaise: children stressing themselves sick. What it doesn't do is spend much time on the treatment. Rather, Deena just sort of recovers at the end, gaining assertiveness and confidence. So, even though there's plenty said about Deena's condition and its prognosis, there's hardly anything on strategies for stress relief. That makes her recovery something of an article of faith rather than a shared journey and sucks much of the pay-off out of the story.
Monday, March 11, 2024
Ruptured, by Joanne Rossmassler Fritz
Claire wavers over whether she should tell anyone what her mother said. Perhaps she no longer believes it. But what will happen when Mom does remember what she was feeling? Claire's previously distant Dad has been devotedly doting on his wife. Perhaps, his actions can make up for whatever triggered her mother's doubts about the marriage in the first place?
This quick read is all the more speedy for being written in verse. It's not a particularly compelling use of the method and mostly just allows the action to race ahead without much attention to character development. Outside of Claire herself, there isn't much room to expand on much of anyone. There's some sketchy drama with a friend and some set backs in Mom's recovery, but these are glossed over. I found it pretty thin.
Saturday, March 09, 2024
Hope In the Valley, by Mitali Perkins
Her attempt fails as she is literally unable to speak up in defense of the house's preservation. Pandita must accept that she has to let it go, but does that mean that she must accept every else that is going wrong in her life? Does she have to watch her father start dating again? Or tolerate the way that her sisters never respect her wishes? Or the fact that her BFF has abandoned her to hang out with a classist popular girl?
Pandita's world seems to be spinning out of control and it would be easy for her to get sucked in by all of the drama, but the something unexpected happens. She gets asked by the local historical society to help review the contents of boxes of abandoned documents from the old house to search for items of historical importance. As she does so, she unearths the forgotten history of the "Valley of Heart's Delight" (as Silicon Valley was once known) -- a history full of discrimination and prejudice and people who fought it. Through these rveleations, she gains confidence in herself and develops a voice strong enough to speak out for what she believes in.
There's a lot going on. First, there is the tween-appropriate introduction to NIMBYism and the politics of housing and urban development. The is the story of Pandita's family rebuilding and moving on after a loss of her mother. And finally, there is Pandita's personal journey from quiet middleschooler to strong voiced and confident orator. Despite the many threads to the story, this is a surprisingly easy book to read. Charming.
Monday, March 04, 2024
Shut Up, This Is Serious, by Carolina Ixta
Her best friend Leti ought to have everything going for her. She's an honor student and doing well at school, but now she's also pregnant. Worse, the father is a black kid that Leti's racist parents would never accept in their house. She knows that eventually she'll have to tell her parents, but Leti procrastinates. In their seemingly impossible situations, the two girls struggle to find solutions.
Deftly sifting through a wide array of issues, including child abuse, teen pregnancy, abandonment, prostitution, racism, and poverty, Ixta packs a huge punch into her debut novel about coming of age in East Oakland. Belén herself drove me crazy with her endless series of bad decisions and her stubborn unwillingness to accept help, but I was still captivated enough to hang in there for her. She felt real and in fact really quite beyond my judgement. I won't ever really know what it is like to grow up in Mexican-American household, but this novel opened a portal that allowed me to see it with all the good and the bad. A rich and rewarding story.
Saturday, March 02, 2024
If I Promise You Wings, by A. K. Small
Thursday, February 29, 2024
Good Different, by Meg Eden Kuyatt
An inspirational story in verse about a neurodivergent girl in the process of self-discovery. The verse itself is not particularly extraordinary, but the choice to write this book in verse is brilliant as it captures the process of Selah's inner dialog much better than prose would have done.
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Red, by Annie Cardi
Sunday, February 25, 2024
Cold Girls, by Maxine Rae
A complex emotional story that hints at much more than it says, Rory and Liv are anything but the cold girls that they projected to the outside world. In fact, it was the shared knowledge that there are these strong current underneath that bonded them together. It was also a relationship that was coming to an end as the girls were about to graduate and move on. Neither girl could ever hope to maintain the facades and there are moments when each of them crack, but by dying Liv avoided ever having to face those feelings as much as Rory ends up doing (on her own).
The story starts strong and quickly gets us deep into the hidden world that these two girls share, but I found the middle section a hard slog. With little clear sense of where we were going or why we were going there, the multiple characters and complex relationships between them become a chore to keep straight. The constant time shifts become trying as well as I had to keep reminding myself what was happening at a point of time we haven't rveeisted for the past fifty pages. It's only towards the end, that the story's pace picks up. An end point becomes visible and I tuned back in. I think the story would improve with a re-reading and if you enjoy a book that you can get more out of with a repeat then this might be for you.
Monday, February 19, 2024
Absolutely, Positively Natty, by Lisa Greenwald
Practically no one has any interest in the idea, but Natty is determined to make it happen and through persitance and stubboness she manhandles a band of skeptical kids and demoralized adults to come together. But is being relentlessly positive a good thing and can it really change anything? Natty is convinced it will all work out, as long as she can just keep a sunny outlook. For whether that is true or not, you'll have to read the book.
There is certain level of frustration with a story that never actually resolves, but my biggest issue with this book was the flimsyness of the premise. From nearly the first page, just about everyone is pointing out to Natty what a foolhardy exercise it is. Her unwillingness to accept any truth in that isn't all that interesting. That doesn't leave much to grow on and the conclusion is largely inevitable. And when the refusal to acknowledge that bad things are happening causes Natty to gaslight her friends, it doesn't make her look very kind. There's not much learned in the end and not really a lesson worth learning.
Saturday, February 17, 2024
Pieces of Me, by Kate McLaughlin
She is suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), a condition characterized by having vivid alternate personalities that manifest in a person and are usually formed as a coping mechanism for an early childhood trauma. The actual particulars of Dylan's trauma take a while to be uncovered and the real itself is anticlimactic. The story focuses instead on Dylan's growing understanding of her condition and her learning to cope with it. Unfortunately, this part of the book (roughly the middle) is also the weakest section.
I was really captivated by the story from the start and reminded of how much I enjoyed novels dealing with mental health. There's a compelling mystery with all sorts of interesting elements that are slowly revealed. Up to the diagnosis, this is a real page turner. But once we know what is happening, the pacing really slows down and becomes this big educational text where we're introduced to Dylan's "system" and her "alters" who "front" for her from time to time because of various conditions. Not much actually happens in these 150 or so pages beyond a bunch of repetitive and strikingly boring conversations. It's only when the culprit (a completely new character never mentioned prior to that point of the story) is revealed that the pace picks up again. But here McLaughlin is at a loss as to how to portray the moment of confrontation and the last sixty pages reads more like a lengthy postscript than a climax. There is no dramatic conclusion. In fact, there really is no conclusion at all.
A fascinating topic but the presentation sucks the life out of the story. It starts strong but then treads water, before dying at the end with a whimper.
Monday, February 12, 2024
Opportunity Knocks, by Sara Farizan
Enterprising Lila doesn't let this hold her back. She marches down to the bank and tries to apply for a loan for the band program. She gets turned down, but she comes across a strange box lying on the floor of the lobby. The box turns out to contain a magical being who calls herself Felise and brings good luck for a week to the bearer of the box. Lila doesn't know what to do with her good fortune but she manages to spin it into a number of small successes, raising money for the band program.
Then, just when things are really starting to look good, the owner of the box comes looking for it and wants it back!
A lovely, albeit heavy-handed, middle grade reader story about the magic of friendships and self-determination. The magic that Felise brings, in contrast, is downplayed and much of Lila's good fortune is attributed to Lisa herself, Lila exhibits an infectious combination of bravery, compassion, and good ideas that makes her a perfect friend. And while that point is sometimes thrust a bit too forcefully in the reader's face, the book is a pleasing combination of a fun story and positive messages. Having enjoyed her YA novels, it's nice to see her doing equally well with a younger demographic.
Sunday, February 11, 2024
The Stranded, by Sarah Daniels
Esther is a sixteen year-old studying to become a medic and, if she can pass her exam, win a coveted slot to study on the mainland. She and her boyfriend Alex are loyal citizens, but they find themselves dragged into the conflict as the land forces ratchet up their suppression and start implementing their genocide.
There is some elaborate world building but the book doesn't waste much time before diving into the thick of the action. Told in alternating chapters by three narrators -- Esther, her older sister's boyfriend Nik (who works for the rebellion), and Hadley (the leader of the government forces charged with controlling the boat) -- it maintains a breathless pace through over 400 pages. It's a fast read, but doesn't leave much time for sorting out the characters or for the reader to establish much attachment to them. Rather, the story screams out "film option!" and seems designed for a visceral and visually immersive adventure. It would probably make a great film, but as a dystopian novel it's fairly average.
Friday, February 09, 2024
Long Road to the Circus, by Betsy Bird (ill by David Small)
Sunday, February 04, 2024
Dog Star, by Megan Shepherd
Laika is a stray, a "cold dog" in her words. Very much unlike the "warm dogs" who have warm house to live in and food to eat. Instead, Laika must survive on scraps and her street smarts to get by. But a careless lapse leads to her capture and enrollment in a program to train canines to undergo the rigor of space travel. She excels at it despite her distrust of human and other dogs.
Nina is a proverbial "cold girl" whose very best friend has abandoned her by defecting along with her family to America. because of the family's betrayal, Nina is told that she must denounce her friend in order to protect her own family. She struggles with the idea and is horrified to find the things that are being said about her friend. Confused by the way her fellow students and teachers are betraying their ideals, she seeks solace in the presence of animals and bonds with Laika. The two grow close and, when Nina discovers that Laika won't be able to return from her trip, Nina becomes convinced that she must do something to save her best friend.
One can question the wisdom of writing a children's book about a girl and her slated-for-death best friend. The true story of Laika is one that sits uncomfortably in history and there will be many people who would simply never read this book on principle. Shepherd makes this much worse in two ways: by developing a strong emotional story between the girl and the dog and by telling half the story through Laika's voice. The chapters told from Laika's trusting point of view -- including her final moments on the rocket -- take a rather strong stomach (or severe detachment) to read. Shepherd makes the argument in her afterward that the story, while tragic, needs to be told because of Laika'a major contribution to science and the nobility of her sacrifice, but one might counter that argument by pointing out that Laika never actually chose to make the sacrifice so what we are basically witnessing is a living creature being murdered.
Setting those ethical questions aside, the story felt uneven. The story of Laika and Nina opening up to each other was lovely, but the political elements of the story are half-heartedly developed. The bullying at school is poorly explained. An over the top attempt at last minute sabotage rings untrue and largely undermines the emotional seriousness of the story. One almost wishes that these diversions had been skipped altogether.
Saturday, February 03, 2024
Bliss Adair and the First Rule of Knitting, by Jean Mills
So, she plays thing safe. She has a crush on Taz Fenwick's "perfect proportions" that seems unlikely to ever be consummated, which is just as well since she's still a bit afraid of boys. She has a small group of friends. She helps her parents out at the family's yarn shop, helping people fix their knitting mistakes. Her two loves -- math and knitting -- provide comforting boundaries.
Two things shake up that comfortable world. First, the arrival of the pregnant girl (the granddaughter of a customer) challenges Bliss to accept that some problems are out of her league. But it is accidentally eavesdropping of a conversation between a classmate's mother and her lover that presents a quandary for Bliss. Should she tell her friend about the infidelity or is it kinder to mind her own business? And do the rules change when the friend becomes a romantic interest?
Interspersed with lots of knitting references, this novel gently explores Bliss's growing awareness of life's imperfections. At times perhaps unrealistically mature, Bliss still has enough room for growth to teach the us a few things. The positive supportive atmosphere of the story and the realistically unresolved ending leaves the reader a satisfactory conclusion.
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Check & Mate, by Ali Hazelwood
Saturday, January 27, 2024
Briar Girls, by Rebecca Kim Wells
Miranda promises that she can help Lena break the curse in exchange for Lena's help in helping bring down an evil tyrant who holds sway over the city of Gather deep within the Silence -- a feat which requires killing or setting free a sleeping princess protected within a castle surrounded by impenetrable briars. But it quickly becomes apparent that Miranda is not telling the truth and, as various adventures unfold, she's far from unique. Just about everyone in this story has hidden agendas and is hiding something. Lena has to figure out who to trust and often must take temporary advantage from unreliable allies.
Featuring dragons, wolves, blood magic, curses, prophecy, and the rather enigmatic Silence itself, Briar Girls is a densely written, fast-paced fantasy adventure. It sacrifices a great deal of character development in the process. For while we get a chance in the beginning to meet Lena and to develop her rebellious and largely disobedient personality, most of the other characters are underdeveloped. A sexual encounter between Lena and a boy named Alaric is sweet but strangely clinical. A professed love with Miranda goes largely unconsummated, but does feature some brief moments of jealousy that suggest at feelings that are never quite allowed to develop. As far as side characters, most of all I enjoyed the dragons, who were delightfully sadistic (as well as being snobby epicureans). A story like this lives and dies on the action and the world building, both of which are stellar so any flaws in the characters can be overlooked safely.