Book Review: Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen by Donna Gephart

The only kind of music I remember Mom and Dad making together was loud fighting.

Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen
Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen by Donna Gephart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Synopsis:
Until her dad moved to California two years ago, Olivia Bean watched Jeopardy! with him every night. Now she watches it on her own, unless Mom’s annoying boyfriend insists on watching, too. Olivia dreams of competing on Kids’ Week; besides the money she could win, the trip to the taping would give her a chance to visit her dad. But even if she makes it, will her dad manage to make time to spend with her?

Review:
This sweet middle-grade contemporary takes on Parents Behaving Badly. Olivia adores her father, but it’s clear from the first chapter that he is not quite the man she wants him to be. She remembers how, when she was learning violin in the fourth grade, he would ask her to play “Over the Mountains and Far Away”, then says, “It took a bit of research to learn that Dad was teasing about my screechy playing. There is no song called ‘Over the Mountains and Far Away’; it was Dad’s fun way of asking me to practice somewhere else.” And when her father tells her that she “wouldn’t do well” on Jeopardy! because it would have “a ton of geography questions, and geography just isn’t your thing”, her reaction, even years later, is, “Dad was right, of course.” She follows her statement, “I am lousy at geography”, with her hope that she can overcome her weakness with lots of studying, but it remains painfully clear that she has taken her father’s careless comment to heart. Gephart slyly reveals the real character of Olivia’s father through these small observations over the course of the novel, and Olivia takes a long time getting to the realization that readers will have probably already reached.

Olivia gets a little help along the way to that conclusion from Neil, her mom’s live-in boyfriend, who provides an excellent foil for the absentee father. Gephart does an admirable job creating a realistic blended family dealing with familiar problems. The story is peppered with trivia factoids (including tidbits about Jeopardy! itself), a treat for readers who share Olivia’s passion. A light romantic subplot also helps leaven the mood. The only real weaknesses lie in some clunky narration and in the pacing, which occasionally drags before picking up again. Olivia repeatedly refers to an “unfortunate hula hoop incident”; by the time the details are revealed near the end of the novel, it seems like a let-down.

On shelves March 13, 2012.

Final Word:
Despite some clunky narrative and pacing, the realistic characters and situations make this sweet contemporary novel a good choice for grades 4-7.

Source:
e-ARC via NetGalley, provided by the publisher by request

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Book Review: Faking Faith by Josie Bloss

School was the same sort of hell every day.

 

Faking Faith
Faking Faith by Josie Bloss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Synopsis:
After a bad break-up and an ugly sexting incident, Dylan Mahoney is an instant pariah. She finds refuge in surfing the Internet, stumbling on the blogs of homeschooled fundamentalist Christian girls, quickly becoming obsessed with their clean, wholesome lives free of the kind of confusion and regret she feels. She makes herself a part of their world, blogging as “Faith”, sharing invented stories of her fictional life. Dylan even manages to get herself invited to visit Abigail – one of the most popular bloggers – at home. Abigail’s life is clearly more complicated than her blog suggests, and Dylan has to quickly decide whether to keep hiding behind “Faith” or to come clean about who she really is.

 

Review:
Worlds collide in this YA novel. In Dylan’s hyperconnected but emotionally distant home, both Mom and Dad are focused on their careers, hardly aware of anything going on in their children’s lives, trusting them to make good choices and somehow shocked when Dylan makes a bad decision. On Abigail’s family homestead, Mama is never far from the kitchen, while Daddy makes decisions for all the family members.

These are extremes, of course, but hardly outside the realm of possibility. Quiverfull families pop up in the news from time to time (usually when Michelle Duggar announces another pregnancy), and the Dean family is pretty clearly in that mold. (A quick web search will also net you a handful of blogs remarkably similar in tone to Abigail’s.) Meanwhile, Dylan’s workaholic parents’ dependence on overscheduling and/or nanny-care for their kids reflects a pretty common modern suburban set-up.

Despite their initial characterization as polar opposites, though, Dylan and Abigail are, of course, more alike than either would have thought. A striking example comes in their respective reactions to certain events. After topless pictures of Dylan and a video of her tirade against her ex-boyfriend go viral, the entire school body heaps daily abuse on her, she blames herself, saying, “The thing is, I deserved it. Even though I still couldn’t admit it out loud, I knew for certain that I deserved everything that came to me. I had been so stupid.”

Abigail’s echoes the self-blame when talking about an older man putting his hands on her, insisting that maybe she did something to make him do it. That incident, too, tells a lot about the safe and sheltered life Dylan believes Abigail leads.

Interestingly, the one thing Dylan never seems to quite realize is that when she hopped on a bus to meet her Internet friend, she could very well have found someone entirely different waiting for her at the station. (Kids: don’t try this at home.) Of course, that would have been a very different sort of book, too.

This is an engaging story about friendship and loyalty, belief and confusion, and figuring out which path to take. You know, the things teens are thinking about every day. Bloss uses a light touch in this girl-centered contemporary realistic fiction all the way through the hopeful conclusion. Recommended for 9th grade and up (due to language and references to sexual situations).

 

Final Word:
Friendship, loyalty, and honesty are the heart of this girl-centered light contemporary realistic novel.

 

Source:
Checked out from my public library

 

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Book Review: The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth

The afternoon my parents died I was out shoplifting with Irene Klauson.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
by emily m. danforth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Synopsis:
In the summer of 1989, twelve-year-old Cameron Post kissed her best friend, Irene. The next day, her parents died in a car accident. For Cameron, the two events would be forever linked, not that she could explain that to her born-again Aunt Ruth, who moves into Cameron’s house in Miles City, Montana to become her guardian. Cam knows enough not to talk about her attraction to other girls, let alone how she spends her time with them in the secrecy of haylofts and under the dock at the lake. But during the summer after her first year of high school, just when it seems that the girl she has fallen for might become more than a friend, her aunt finds out. Cam is packed off to God’s Promise, a “Christian School & Center for Healing” for an indeterminate stay. While the staff there tries to help her “break free from the bonds of sexual sin and confusion”, Cam realizes she risks losing herself before even finding out who that really is.

 

Review:
This is a beautifully written book. Danforth has the sort of polished style I expect from graduates of MFA Fiction programs (and she does hold an MFA in Fiction from the University of Montana, along with a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln). This is both a blessing and a curse, because it produces a feeling of distance between the reader and the narrator, despite the first-person voice, and between the narrator and the events. Maybe because Cam is clearly telling her story from some point in the future, it lacks immediacy.

Then, there is the setting. The rich description and attention to detail bring Miles City into clear focus, engaging all the senses. The location isn’t the only aspect of the setting, though. Equally important is the time period. The book is set two decades ago, when a teenager like Cam had to depend on letters through the postal service, access to the family phone, and the availability of movies for rent to pop into her VCR. Her world is limited by the boundaries of her small town and the people who live in it. The realistic portrayal of both the place and the time add to the feeling of distance from the events. It is all too easy to read this book and think, “Oh, but that was 20 years ago. That wouldn’t happen now.” But it could and it does, as Danforth reports in an author’s note at the front of the book. (At least, at the front of the Advance Reader Copy; I don’t know if it will appear in the final version.)

Cameron comes to terms with the wrong done to her by recognizing that these are deeply held convictions of people who truly believe they are working in her best interest, a realization that would seem to come with the perspective of time passed, and she refuses to outright condemn the sort of program that God’s Promise represents. Instead, she allows the reader to live through her experience, letting him form an opinion based on life on the inside of the program, the side its supporters rarely (if ever) really see.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is an expertly crafted work, a fine example of Literary Fiction that happens to feature a lesbian teenager as its protagonist. And that is a wonderful thing, a fantastic thing. I would love to see more literary fiction with queer characters. After all, must a protagonist be a straight white male for the work to be one that “explores universal themes of truths and/or humanity in general” or, perhaps more significantly, “broadens the reader’s impressions of the human experience”?

I would also love to see more lesbian YA romance.

When it comes to this book, my negative feelings aren’t really about the book at all. They are about the marketing of this book as a teen title, when, really, it feels like an adult novel featuring a teen protagonist. The book itself is lovely. I worry, though, that it will have trouble finding readers who will enjoy the style enough to finish the story and reach the absolutely perfect ending.

On shelves February 7 2012.

 

Final Word:
An expertly crafted literary coming-of-age tale set in Big Sky country.

 

Source:
ARC provided by the publisher at ALA Midwinter 2012.

 

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Book Review: Wonder by R. J. Palacio

Here’s what I think: the only reason I’m not ordinary is that no one else sees me that way.

 

Wonder
Wonder by R.J. Palacio

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Synopsis:
August Pullman has had 27 surgeries in his 10 years of life. Because of the hospitalizations and other health problems, his mother has homeschooled him. But now his parents have enrolled him in the fifth grade at Beecher Prep. He knows he is just an ordinary kid, but he also knows that his face is different, and it is the first thing anyone will notice. Will he be able to get his new classmates to look beyond his appearance and get to know the ordinary kid inside? Or is he, just maybe, more extraordinary than he thinks?

 

Review:
Auggie’s first year of mainstream school is described in short chapters from several perspectives. Besides Auggie himself, his sister and four other characters get a chance to tell their sides of the story. Palacio does a fantastic job giving each character his (or her) own distinctive voice. The multiple perspectives also allow the reader to know more than any one character does, even (especially) Auggie. As Mr. Tushman points out, “there are almost always more than two sides to every story.” The characters are complicated. No one, not even Auggie, is all good or all bad. The situations are realistic, from the bullying in the halls of Beecher Prep to the small family dramas in the Pullman home. This is an amazing story told with empathy and humor. Kids and adults alike will love this stellar debut. Highly recommended.

On shelves February 14, 2012.

 

Final Word:
A beautifully written, heart-breaking but uplifting tale of one (extra-)ordinary kid.

 

Source:
e-ARC via NetGalley, provided by the publisher by request

 

 

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Book Review: Cold Cereal by Adam Rex

He steered toward the local park, down the storm drain shortcut he’d discovered yesterday, dodging broken glass and a man with a rabbit head, up the embankment toward the gap in the fence, and — was that a man with a rabbit head?

Cold Cereal
Cold Cereal by Adam Rex
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Synopsis:
Life for Scott Doe has always been a little odd, from his full name (Scottish Play Doe) to his mom’s new job with Goodco (what does a cereal company need with a physicist?) and the family’s recent move to the company town of Goodborough. So, maybe he just should have expected to start seeing weird things, like a man with a rabbit head in the park.

Erno and Emily Utz have always lived in Goodborough, in the same house but with a series of foster parents. Their current foster father regularly gives them tests in the form of brain-teasing puzzles. (Emily always solves them first.) Erno has never really thought about the reason behind the tests, but he is just about to find out.

In the town of Goodborough, very little is really as it seems, and there are goings-on that (literally) the people don’t see. Erno, Emily, and Scott are more important than they know, and there are forces at work that would love to keep them from discovering the truth about themselves, the town, and Goodco.

 

Review:
Rex brings his trademark satiric sensibility to this fantasy mystery for the middle grades. From Scott’s dad – John Doe – to the Goode and Harmliss Toasted Cereal Company to Merle Lynn (C.P.A.), the puns come fast and furious, along with delightfully twisted takes on cereal commercials, conspiracy theories, and Arthurian mythology.  The shifting third-person perspective includes Scott, Erno, and an unnamed narrator who provides some background information and sometimes cracks just a bit too wise. When focused on the kid’s-eye view, Rex excels; when he zooms out, the lighthearted wit gets bogged down. (In The True Meaning of Smekday, Tip’s first-person “essay” narration keeps the story a bit more grounded, if I can use the word “grounded” in relation to a story of aliens coming to Earth and relocating the human population of North America to Florida.)

I thoroughly enjoyed trying to solve the riddles alongside Erno and Scott, although I wasn’t quite clever enough. My e-ARC includes incomplete artwork (as did the paper ARC I thumbed through at ALA Midwinter), so I am looking forward to seeing the final product. The illustrations I could see were just the right complement to the text; I expect good things to come. There are even a few sneak peeks available at the author’s blog (KoKoLumps, anyone?)! By the book’s end, the immediate crisis has been solved, but there is a wide opening for the next volume in the planned trilogy.

On shelves February 7, 2012.

 

Final Word:
Fantasy, mystery, and satirical humor all swirled together in a tasty treat for middle grade readers (and maybe some grown-ups, too).

 

Source:
e-ARC via NetGalley, provided by the publisher by request.

 

 

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In My Mailbox: ALA Midwinter Special Edition

Before we get to the good stuff, I think I have to address the elephant in the room. Since my first ALA Conference, the summer before I started Library School (lo those many years ago), I have loved getting the freebies. Who wouldn’t? Honestly, at that first conference, I was stunned when booth reps and panel organizers pressed free books into my hands. I had no idea what an ARC was. But I read the books and I talked about them to other people and I passed them on. That year, Annual was held in my home city, and it was easy for me to take a bunch of stuff home.

Over the years, I grew more selective about what I took. Posters almost never survived the trip home. Pens and sticky notes, on the other hand, were always useful. (One year, I won a bottle of wine, back when you could take liquids on a plane.) Books were a mixed bag, really. I loved getting them, of course, but they were heavy and took up a lot of room. As airlines have begun charging for checked baggage, I had to take a hard look at my options. I am unwilling to pay to ship a bunch of stuff I got for free. That’s just where I draw my personal line.

If you follow my twitter feed, you’ve already seen the first pile of books I picked up at the Midwinter Exhibits. And the second pile of books. And then the pile of books I was reluctantly giving away because they wouldn’t fit in my suitcase to go home.

Some of those books were unexpectedly hot commodities over the weekend. I got a few of them Saturday afternoon when I got trapped in a stampede at the Penguin booth. Their Book Buzz session had just let out, and I happened to be in the booth looking at books when the reps ducked behind the tables, pulled out boxes and began handing out ARCs. The crowd kept growing. After a while, I realized that I really had to get out, because there was a signing I wanted to get to in just few minutes. “If you let me out, there will be more for you!” seemed to be the magic words.

From other reports, what I saw was nothing. I am horrified at the descriptions of people literally shoving other people out of the way for an ARC. This is a professional conference, not the Running of the Brides.

I love using NetGalley, and I wonder if more publishers will be putting their material there rather than printing up bound galleys. I have noticed several houses tightening up their rules on who gets approved, which makes me wonder if their requests have increased a lot.

I don’t know what the solution is. Book Bloggers and Librarians are not enemies. We are (usually) on the same side. Some of us have a foot in both camps. But we shouldn’t have to tell people basic rules like “Don’t take the books that have a sticker that says ‘Do Not Take’ on the cover.”

Well. The Exhibits in Anaheim should be interesting.

While we’re all pondering what to do, I present what actually ended up coming home with me:

Here Come the Girl Scouts!Who Am I? Balloon Toons: The Super Crazy Cat Dance (Balloon Toons Early Readers) Balloon Toons: Doggie Dreams Big Bad Sheep Prairie Evers Racing The Moon The Moon Over High Street Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms: Magic, Mystery, and a Very Strange Adventure Remarkable The Paradise Trap The Case of the Deadly Desperados (The Western Mysteries, #1) The False Prince (The Ascendance Trilogy #1) The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook Neversink Between You & Me The Miseducation of Cameron Post The Difference Between You and Me Kiss the Morning Star In Darkness Gilt Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip Beneath a Meth Moon Ice, Mud and Blood: Lessons from Climates Past (Macmillan Science) Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

And four more with no cover art yet:

Most of them were ARCs, but there were a few free finished books in there: both Balloon Toons books (thanks, Blue Apple Books!), In Darkness (thanks, Bloomsbury USA!), and Ice, Mud and Blood (thanks, MacMillan!). I bought the copy of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (for $5 – thanks, Grove/Atlantic!) so that Jeanette Winterson could sign it for me along with the ARC of her new memoir. (I tweeted my excitement about meeting her – I’m entirely too amused by the “women” glyph floating above our heads.) The Balloon Toons and In Darkness have gone to the library to be processed into the collection. The others I’ll be reading, reviewing, and passing onward.

So, #ALAMW12-ers, what did you bring home?

Book Review: The Edumacation of Jay Baker by Jay Clark

Mom and Dad were in their room with the door shut. Again. Cautiously, I pressed my ear against the wooden frame. Hakuna Matata, no Discovery Channel-like sounds could be heard. Only two mammals speaking so quickly and intensely that their voices were nearly inaudible.

 

The Edumacation of Jay Baker

The Edumacation of Jay Baker by Jay Clark

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

 

Synopsis:
Jay Baker’s world is starting to crumble on all fronts. He has to face his mortal-enemy-since-the-seventh-grade in a Freshman Class Presidential debate. He only decided to run for class office to impress cheerleader Cameo Appearance Parnell, his best friend and unrequited crush, but she’s still dating the jocks who’ve been bullying Jay for years. His parents’ 19-year marriage is clearly not doing well; he just found out his mom has been sleeping with Some Dude Named Keith. It’s all enough to push a smart-mouthed, IBS-prone kid to the breaking point. Jay can try to cover up his worries with a fast-paced monologue of quips, puns, and pop-culture references, but, at some point, he’s going to have to figure out how to just be himself.

 

Review:
With a quick-paced narrative filled with snarky, coarse humor, this should be a hit with middle-school boys. Jay’s problems are instantly recognizable: he wants to impress a girl or two, he wants football-player Mike Hibbard to quit bullying him, and he wants his parents to get their act together. Jay and his older sister, Abby, make quite the sarcastic comedy team, leavening the mood whenever it seems in danger of turning serious.

Overall, this is a decent contemporary realistic novel with plenty of boy-appeal, appropriate for the younger range of YA. Jay’s heavy reliance on pop culture references will probably endear him to some teen readers, although they may date the book as pop culture moves ever onward. The narrative veers perilously close to “too clever” from time to time; maybe Jay is trying to impress the reader just as he tries to impress Cameo and Caroline. Clark’s debut novel won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but readers looking for light realism (no big issues here, just the everyday problems just about every teenager faces) served up with a heavy dose of snark will find it hits the spot.

On shelves January 31, 2012.

 

Final Word:
Middle school boys seem to be the ideal audience for this light contemporary realism that’s heavy on the snark.

 

Source:
e-ARC via NetGalley, provided by the publisher by request.

 

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Book Review: The Mighty Miss Malone by Christopher Paul Curtis

“Once upon a time…”

If I could get away with it, that’s how I’d begin every essay I write.

Those are the four best words to use when you start telling about yourself because anything that begins that way always, always finishes with another four words, “… they lived happily everafter.”

 

The Mighty Miss Malone

The Mighty Miss Malone by Christopher Paul Curtis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

 

Synopsis:
Deza’s family firmly believes that they “are a family on a journey to a place called wonderful”, but times are hard. The year is 1936, and in Gary, Indiana, there are few jobs to be had, and even fewer for black men. After her father sets out for his mother’s home in Michigan to look for work, things go from bad to worse. Deza, her brother, Jimmie, and their mother head toward Flint after him, but they end up in a Hooverville outside the city. Jimmie’s talent for singing offers him a way out, while Mother and Deza find a new home and keep hoping to bring the family back together.

 

Review:
I came to this book without having read Bud, Not Buddy (I know, I know. Bad Librarian!), where Deza Malone first appears. In a note to the reader at the beginning of the book, Curtis explains that one of his prompts to write the story was the question he was asked at a visit to a Detroit mother daughter book club: “… what we’d really like to know is what business that little girl in the Hooverville had kissing a stranger like Bud Caldwell the way she did.” In The Mighty Miss Malone, Deza tells her version of that night, along with events before and after. Despite the reservations about writing from a girl’s perspective that he mentions, Curtis does an admirable job bringing Deza to life. Deza is, of course, a born storyteller, and her personality shines through in her strong voice. Her story takes sharp twists and turns; just as I would settle in comfortably, a chapter would end with a sentence like, “I walked upstairs and got in bed to finish my last good night of sleep for a long, long time.” Still, her irrepressible spirit kept me going, believing, just as she does, that things will work out all right.

Deza refuses to give in to self-pity. Her life is what it is, and Curtis uses this to masterfully set the scene. Important details about the hardships faced by the Malones and the families around them are given freely and naturally, without the sort of extra explanation for modern readers that sometimes crops up to thoroughly destroy the mood in historical fiction. This title is getting some Newbery buzz already, and for good reason.

On shelves January 10, 2012.

 

Final Word:
Spirited storyteller Deza tells her own tale of hope and hardship in this companion to Newbery winner, Bud, Not Buddy.

 

Source:
e-ARC via NetGalley, provided by the publisher by request.

 

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Nook Freebie: Dangerous Angels

Nook readers, want a free copy of Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat books? Right now, for “a limited time,” Dangerous Angels is free in the Nook store.

All five books – Weetzie Bat, Witch Baby, Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys, Missing Angel Juan, and Baby Be-Bop – plus excerpts from Pink Smog (the Weetzie Bat prequel due out on the 24th), Pretty Dead (vampires!), and The Frenzy (werewolves!).

I don’t know how long it’ll be free, so if you want it, get it now! (Sorry, Kindle readers – I checked Amazon, but it wasn’t free there.)

Book Review: Jefferson’s Sons by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

When Mama told Beverly that Master Jefferson was his father, she called it a secret everybody knew.

 

Jefferson's Sons

Jefferson’s Sons by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Synopsis:
William Beverly Hemings is seven years old when his mother tells him an important secret. Though he is black and a slave now, when he turns 21, he will be free… and white. He, his two younger brothers, and their sister are treated differently from the other slaves at Monticello, but they must never speak of why. As Beverly, then his little brother Madison, and finally their friend Peter Fossett grow up, they each must find their own answers to one big question: Can a man be great and still participate in evil?

 

Review:
The idea that the men who wrote that “all men are created equal” and staked their lives on the formation of a land of freedom owned slaves is a tough one for grown-ups to reconcile, let alone kids. Bradley gives a nuanced look at the lives of two slave families (the Hemingses and the Fossetts) at Monticello as their children puzzle out what it means for one of the fathers of a free country to also be the father of slaves. Its length and its thought-provoking content make it a book for older kids; my library has it cataloged as YA, though I wouldn’t hesitate to give it to an interested fifth-grader. Bradley gets a tiny bit didactic sometimes, but never so strongly that it really distracts from the story. An afterword shares the known facts about the lives of the Hemings family and offers suggestions for further reading.

 

Final Word:
Solid historical fiction offering a clear window into a murky time.

 

Source:
Checked out from my public library.

 

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