The Great Good Thing, by Roderick Townley

Sylvie lives in a fairy tale world -- a real fairy tale -- in fact, she lives within the pages of a book. When the book is closed, she's free to explore the pages and go where she likes. But when the book opens and the Reader appears, she has a role to play and a story to tell. She may be a princess, but she's only a character in a book. All of that changes when she violates the rules and meets the Reader. And when disaster strikes her world, Sylvie leads her people on an epic voyage into the world beyond.

This is a clever, although a bit surrealistic fantasy book. Geared towards middle readers, it has some pretty tricky plot twists that may confuse some younger readers and turn them off. But for those who enjoy thinking-person's fantasy, this is a fun little read.

Boy2Girl, by Terence Blacker

When the nice quiet Burton family in London gains custody of Sam, the son of Mrs. Burton's late sister, it's pretty obvious he doesn't fit in. Angry and wound up and terribly "Yank"-ish, he fights and curses at anyone who gets close to him. But then he accepts a dare to show up at school for the first week dressed as a girl -- a disguise that is surprisingly effective. Yet "Mrs. Doubtfire" this most certainly isn't. Sam makes a strange girl, not even trying to act feminine. That's when the fun really starts.

It's clever and funny and surprisingly revealing for a popular novel. Blacker is trying to get at some of the stuff that defines gender identity, without getting too preachy about it, and he largely succeeds. Characters can be a bit two dimensional, but this is one of those odd books where a constantly changing narrator (just about everyone -- except, notably, Sam himself -- gets a chance to tell the story) actually works pretty well. A clever original.

Pretty Things, by Sarra Manning

In ultra hip and trendy London, four young people take part in a summer staging of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. There's the vacuous fashion-obsessed Brie; gay friend Charlie; swarmy womanizing Walker, and angry dyke Daisy. And, as the story opens, Brie has an unrequitted thing for Charlie, Charlie finds himself attracted to Walker, while Walker decides that he wants Daisy. And, as implausible as any of these infatuations seem likely to bear fruit, things start to get a bit wild and a lot of unimaginable things happen.

The book is way too trendy and current. Not only is it terribly regional (American readers will occasionally find the dialogue and references just a bit off-putting), parochial (London IS apparently the center of all things cool), and temporal (the references to Justin Timberlake and George Bush will not age well), it just grates on the nerves for the first half or so. Then the book does something interesting: Manning stops trying to impress us with how hip she is and starts telling a storr - a very interesting story about sexual identity and the fluid and flexible nature of that identity. By the end I was actually hooked, but first I had to get through the first 140 pages or so to get there.

How I Survived Being A Girl, by Wendelin Van Draanen

In a series of anecdotes, Carolyn tells us about her neighbors, the pranks she plays with her brothers, and the trouble she gets in to. Some of the anecdotes are funny, while others are revealing, and some are even both. As for an actual story, there isn't much here: she spends the summer getting into trouble and the school year butting heads with mean teachers and giggly girls. And her mother is having a baby.

I liked Flipped a lot and was hoping for more of the same, but this is an earlier work and not quite as polished. And it is also a bit dated. Although published in 1997, it references vinyl records several times as if anyone born in the last twenty-five years has had any significant exposure to them. The writing style has a nice folksy down home feeling to it and the settings are warm and friendly so it's a good read, but not exactly classic literature.

One other thing that dates the book is a mention of a spanking early in the book. Corporal punishment doesn't find its way into many children's books anymore (much the same way that smoking has largely disappeared from movies). While statistically speaking, most children have experienced getting hit by their parents, it strangely never occurs in literature. I understand the reasons to paint such an idealistic vision, but I found Van Draanen's inclusion of it (neither graphic nor particularly long) a realistic touch and the sort of thing that real 8-11 year old readers (the target audience) would relate to.

Julep O'Toole: Confessions of a Middle Child, by Trudi Trueit

Julep has the most obnoxious little brother you could imagine, and an older sister with a heart of ice, and she knows that she's the most invisible girl in the universe (or at least in sixth grade!). So, when Danica (the most popular girl at school) invites her to her Halloween party, Julep can't believe her good fortune, but then disaster strikes!

A bit uneven (maybe a few more revisions would have helped), but amusing story with a heroine with some spunk and great misadventures. I didn't really buy the "invisible" part but the siblings were definitely obnoxious enough to elicit sympathy.

Red Ridin' in the Hood, by Patricia Santos Marcantonio

When Jaime and Gabriela are left in the desert to die, they find a house made from pan sweet bread and tamales. Red goes to visit her abuelita and ignores her mother's warning and takes Forest St where she runs into Lupo. Lazy Juan drives his mother nuts when he trades in their delapidated old car for a handful of magic pinto beans. And the vain Emperador is tricked into showing off his new designer clothes to an entire school assembly. Yes, these are classic tales, some from Greek myth, some from the Brothers Grimm, retold with a distinctly Mexican bent.

Some of the stories are more clever than others, some are more interesting, but they're all just moderately updated and altered. Blanca Nieves (Snow White) proves to be worthless as a cook, but she makes a good ranch hand. Red doesn't need a woodsman to rescue her, she's plenty good at dealing with the wolf on her own. But with retelling and a changing of contexts, one of the really neat results is that you'll spend a lotr of time thinking about what these stories are really about.

I'm giving this book very high marks, despite my knee-jerk desire to hate its PC qualities. There is an obvious mission here to create a "multicultural" book that will help school districts and public libraries prove how "culturally sensitive" they are, but the reality is that this is a book of distinctly Mexican retellings of these fairy tales, and to ascribe a "Latino" label to the book ignores the diversity of the cultures encompassed by the word "Latino." I don't get the sense that the author had that intent, rather it seems more like a slick plan of some PR person at the publisher who came up with the selling angle. But the hypocrisy of it does twitch me.

The Illustrated Mum, by Jacqueline Wilson

Marigold has always been an unusual mother. For one things, she's practically covered in tatoos. But she also has her moods. And Dolphin and Star have to be careful when their mother gets into her mood swings and starts freaking out. As Star gets older, she's less and less willing to put up with her mother or with trying to protect her younger sister, and when Star's father appears and offers to take care of both girls, the delicate balance of their family is tipped.

Not entirely sure why I picked this book out as it is the old (very) tired plot of the mentally-ill mother and the co-dependent children who refuse time-and-time-again to get help from any other adults. Frail thin subterfuges are invented by the author so that page after page we are presented with one harrowing incident after another, and the children needlessly suffer. I've grown to believe that this plot device is sadistic and exploitative and not dramatic at all and I wanted seriously to throw this book against the wall and burn it in the grill out back. What rubbish!

Fly on the Wall, by E. Lockhart

Gretchen Yee feels completely unnoticed, an outsider, yet also obsessed with that alien race of BOYS at school. In sum, she is your stereotypical teen. But then, for some mysterious reason, she becomes something special. One days she tells her friend that she would love to know what the boys are saying about them, that she would love to be "a fly on the wall of the boy's locker room." And then she wakes up the next morning to discover that her dream has been answered!

An extraordinarily clever and funny story from the fabulous writer who gave us The Boyfriend List (already one of my fav books of 2005). Lockhart gets better and better. I was all laughter with her description of grading the boys' bodies and their "gherkins." And while the idea of a heroine who spends half of the book as a bug is a bit hard to take (even with its great Kafkaesque forerunner), this book really runs with the idea to reach for some higher greatness. Definitely recommended. A breezy and really fun read!

Like We Care, by Tom Matthews

A story of two high school students, Todd and Joel, who get themselves in the midst of a consumer revolt against the obnoxious cable music station R2R and its attempts to shove commercialized rock music down their throats. What starts as a boycott of convenience stores blooms into an attempt to affect grassroots politics and destroy commercial rap.

This rather preachy book suffers from two major flaws: written by a guy it has a male writer's typical penchant for violence and unnecessary roughness (and a consequent lack of interest in emotions, feelings, and motivations). It's second flaw is that it's written by a guy who believes that HIS generation's music was less commercialized than the current generation (and hence, more "authentic"). This is a good lesson for teens to read (if they don't realize the extent to which they have been had, they will), but for a read, it comes off pretty thin and pretentious. And the novel itself bears the hype stamp of a commercialized YA book industry that is only slightly on higher ground than the industries that the book does attack.

My Mom and Other Mysteries of the Universe, by Gina Willner-Pardo

Arlie can't stand her moth, and it's no wonder! No matter how hoard Arlie tries to please her, her Mom only has a critical word to say. Meanwhile, Arlie's little brother gets away with murder. But then two events happen (one tragic and one very peculiar): her parents are in a card accident and her mother falls into a deep coma and a new girl comes to school who looks and acts strikingly like Arlie's Mom (but as a 10 year-old).

From the title, I assumed this would be a nice mother-daughter struggle to get along book, and the supernatural twist that the author put in took me completely by surprise. But what might seem a bit derivative of Freaky Friday, actually works quite well as an original take on a fairly tired story line. And while the story is not exactly enthralling reading and suffers from some of that typical middle reader preachiness, this one was actually a bit fun.

Rules for Life, by Darlene Ryan

Izzy's Mom left her with a rule to cover any situation, and in the absence of a living mother, these rules guide Isabelle through life. But when her father decides to remarry, and Izzy's older brother falls off the wagon, the rules don't seem to cover the situations she is facing.

A rather irregular and uneven book, with trouble creating an authentic voice. There are times when Izzy seems too petty to be the older high schooler she is supposed to be, and other times when she is far too worldly and well-spoken to be a plausible adolescent. And the story plods along in somewhat melodramtic fashion from one crisis to another, without large amounts of linkage between events.

Crank, by Ellen Hopkins

In free verse, we learn how Kristina (the good grades-receiving and model student) became Bree (an unwed mother and meth addict). Along the way, this is a story about addiction, drugs, danger, sexual violence, and ideals gone awry. Nice uplifting material.

But more than being dreary, it's awfully repetitive. The verse falls into two basic catgeories: pieces that advance the story (by revealing a key new plot point) and reflective pieces (that all basically state that meth has a terrible hold on people). No denying that, but how often do we need to read about it? What is missing in so much of this is what caused Kristina to start. The motivation is muddy and the escalation equally unclear. And the result is that the exercise sounds a bit sermonizing. The author's message: if you do meth, you'll get raped and beat up and lose all your friends and lose your respect...and, oh yeah, it's bad for you too.

Perfect, by Natasha Friend

Isabelle doesn't understand what the big deal is. She just throws up from time to time, especially after she's eaten a lot of food -- an awful lot of food. But this is the only way she can cope with her annoying little sister, and her depressed mother, and the memory of her Dad who died two years ago. And from a distance, Ashley seems like the most perfect person in the world, until Isabelle gets to know her better. And until Ashley shows up at Group.

Pretty much a by-the-numbers story of eating disorders, with the requisite kids who don't succeed to counterpose against the heroine who (of course) starts on the road to recovery. It's satisfying, albeit more than a little predictable.

Just Listen, by Sarah Dessen

When Annabel sees herself on TV in the Kopf's fall fashion commercial, she doesn't recognize her own image. The girl in the commenrcial is so happy and has it all, but life since she made that ad has been anything but, and Annabel feels lost. The trouble, Annabel learns, is that every lost opportunity (lost friends, lost happiness, lost life) is a result of her own inability to communicate. She'd like to think that it is because no one listens to what she wants to say, and that she should scream "just listen!" to them, but she realizes that the reality is much much more complicated.

Sarah Dessen scores again with a deeply moving story of a teen struggling to find her own voice and her own way of coping with the world. And aside from a very nasty (and frankly unnecessary) digression about 2/3 through the story, this is a wonderful read. There are so many things that are wonderful about Dessen: she's a great observer of human relationships and of the world in general, she writes beautiful flowing prose, and she has a tremendous understanding of what growing up is about. Beautiful. Haunting. Highly recommended.

Harry Sue, by Sue Stauffacher

Harry Sue is one mean-talking joint-jive-fluent young lady. She needs to get the lingo down, because she means to spend her time in the slammer as soon as she can. The problem is that she first has to start her life of crime, and she just doesn't have the heart to do what must be done. Maybe once she rescues the kids from her grandmother's day care center or gets her "road dog" and quadraplegic Homer to start trying to live again, she'll be able to become the hardened criminal she longs to be.

Harry Sue is a fun character but the writing style drains after a while and the novel is written in a madly unlinear style that makes you want to skip ahead a few pages to figure out stuff and then jump back. Sometimes, that makes things interesting, but mostly it's annoying. And in a book this long, it takes out the fun.

Rx, by Tracy Lynn

Thyme Gilcrest enjoys Ritalin. It gives her the edge she needs to do well at school and keep up with the smart kids (not quite enough to BE one, but enough to come close). The problem is that she doesn't have a prescription for it, and she starts to trade others with the drugs she can get for the drugs she wants. Before she knows it, she's dealing.

Lynn does a great job of pointing out the hypocrisy of an adult society where adults medicate themselves freely and easily, and become so unaware of their surroundings that they don't recognize the way it destroys their lives and the lives of their children. The novel can get high marks for avoiding the easy sermons and cliche events that a more moralistic writer would choose. Instead, this is a pretty taut story.

What isn't so good about the book is all of the topical references. This book is packed full of very contemporary cultural references which will ensure that the book has a shelf life of no more than five years. In general, YA writers avoid this, and they should.

The subject matter had more than a passing interest to me, as I dabbled in a bit of prescription drug swapping when I was in high school (trading Valium for Darvoset and their ilk). We didn't quite have as many fun drugs to choose from or as much readily available anti-depressents and uppers, but I could very much relate to the rather exhaulted place of "legal" drugs (and its higher ground than acid and hash). This is a story that will give parents the willies, but it has a ring of truth to it.

Talk, by Kathe Koja

Through alternating viewpoints, Kit and Lindsay tell the story of putting on a controversial play at their high school. But it's also a story of misplaced affections, as Lindsay falls in love with Kit. Kit meanwhile is in the process of coming out and taking the risks of how the school will react to him. In the midst of all this, is the text of the play itself which is about freedom and societal attempts to impose order.

Koja gets a lot of critical acclaim but I simply don't get her style. I had problems with The Blue Mirror for its incomprehensible narrative, but this one is far worse. If it wasn't for the plot synopsis on the jacket, I would have completely lost track of the characters or what they were up to. And the snippets of the play thrown in confuse matters more. They are there, of course, to underline parts of the main story, but they don't really perform that function. Skip this one.

Mermaid Park, by Beth Mayall

Amy's family (especially her step dad) is driving her nuts, so a summer in Wildwood NJ away from them is just what she needs. And when she discovers the swimmers at Mermaid Park, she knows that she has found her calling. During the summer she learns to deal with the anger she feels towards her family and how to transcend it as a "mermaid."

I wanted to like this novel very much, but it was all over the place. It took nearly 100 pages just to develop a sense of the characters and their relationships to each other. In the end, I didn't find myself terribly moved by any of them.

Crooked, by Laura and Tom McNeal

The Tripp brothers are bad news and when Amos runs across them on a vandalism spree, trouble escalates. What starts as bullying takes a violent turn and drags in Clara and Amos's friend Brook as well.

Another trashy teen exploitation novel. Some interesting character development and misplaced signals, but overall this is a violent and unnecessary novel.

Crunch Time, by Mariah Fredericks

Daisy, Leo, Jane and Max meet by accident at an SAT prep class and decide to form their own study group. Alternating between them, each kid shares their feelings about the SATs, and the person who ends up cheating on them.

Fredericks portrays the high stress world of SAT prep and the pressures surrounding kids in landing a good college. the rotating narration is sometimes interesting and effective, but it does make it hard to get a fix on the characters and understandwhat makes everyone tick. The story ends with lots of loose ends and some rather convenient solutions to others.