Tag: Fiction

One More 5-Star Read

by

December 31, 2011

9:38 am

1 Comment on One More 5-Star Read

Everything Else

, , , , , , , , ,

Welcome to Bordertown

Here’s the trouble with putting out that 5-Star List before the year actually ends. I should have known I’d end up adding one more!

Just as well, since I think Welcome to Bordertown deserves special attention, anyway.

The first three Bordertown anthologies – Borderland, Bordertown, and Life on the Border – came out in the mid-80s and very early 90s, just early enough to have passed out of print right at the time I would have loved them as a teen. (The Essential Bordertown came out later and is still in print, so I don’t really have any excuse for having missed it.) So, I’m a latecomer to the party. The one good thing about that is that I have some great books to track down and read now, and it looks like the editors are working on getting e-book editions out.

This is an absolutely fantastic collection. There’s a bit of everything: short stories, poems, a comic, even a faerie jump rope chant. My expectations were high going in, since the list of contributors includes some really big names, and I was not disappointed. My personal favorite was Tim Pratt‘s “Our Stars, Our Selves”. I love when an anthology introduces me to a great author I somehow missed. I love the whole world of Bordertown.

Book Review: Nerd Camp by Elissa Brent Weissman

by

November 1, 2011

7:00 am

1 Comment on Book Review: Nerd Camp by Elissa Brent Weissman

Everything Else

, , , , , , ,

Nerd CampNerd Camp by Elissa Brent Weissman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Problem: Am I a nerd who only has nerdy adventures?
Hypothesis: No.

Ten-year-old Gabe is finally getting what he always wanted: a brother. His soon-to-be-stepmother has a son, Zack, who is his age. Gabe is sure that he and Zack will be best friends, but their first meeting is less than promising. Gabe quickly realizes that all the things he likes – math team, reading, museums and libraries – Zack sees as “nerdy”. The only thing about Gabe that seems to impress Zack is that Gabe is about to go to sleep-away camp for the summer. What Zack doesn’t know is that the camp is the Summer Center for Gifted Enrichment, a gathering of nerdy kids from across the country. Over the course of the summer, in between kayak trips and Color War, logic proofs and poetry writing, Gabe keeps a list of his adventures as evidence for whether or not he really is just a nerd, or if he might be something more.

With an eye for quirky detail, Weissman develops Gabe as a sensitive, hyperintelligent 10-year-old boy. In the first chapter, Gabe recalls staying up on New Year’s Eve with his math team friends, when they calculated the number of seconds from 8:00 p.m. to midnight. He then thinks about calculating the number of seconds until his train in the morning, but he decides that it will just make him too excited to sleep. From his love of math to his cluelessness about girls, we hear Gabe’s perspective on everything. It’s a slyly funny narrative, with humor that even clever Gabe probably won’t pick on until he’s a little older. This is a fabulous contemporary realistic middle grade novel filled with humor and adventure, a great combination. A kid doesn’t have to think he might be a nerd to enjoy this book, although he might finish it thinking that such a thing might not be so bad.

Book Source: Checked out from my library

View all my reviews

Book Review: Darth Paper Strikes Back by Tom Angleberger

by

October 25, 2011

7:00 am

1 Comment on Book Review: Darth Paper Strikes Back by Tom Angleberger

Everything Else

, , , , , , ,

The truth is, I’ve been waiting for this book to hit my library pretty much since I heard it was coming out. The fact that I sort of had to read it now, since it was nominated for this year’s Cybils was just icing on the cake. A really good cake, I’m happy to say.

Darth Paper Strikes Back (Origami Yoda #2)Darth Paper Strikes Back by Tom Angleberger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It was kind of like that scene where Han and Leia think they’re going to breakfast with Lando. And they’re walking down the hall thinking, “I’d like some chocolate chip pancakes,” and then they get to the dining room and all of a sudden… there’s Vader. (And no chocolate chip pancakes.)

Welcome back to McQuarrie Middle School. Tommy, Kellen, Sara, Dwight, and their old nemesis, Harvey, have started the seventh grade. Dwight’s maybe-magical finger puppet, Origami Yoda, has a new nemesis as well: Harvey has introduced his own origami puppet, Darth Paper. And Darth Paper is on a mission: get everyone to admit, once and for all, that Origami Yoda is just a piece of paper. If Dwight gets expelled from school and sent to the Correctional and Remedial Education Facility along the way, well, that’s just how it is. Tommy is determined to save Dwight (and Origami Yoda), so he is compiling a new Case File of student accounts of how Origami Yoda (and Dwight) helped them since the events detailed in The Strange Case of Origami Yoda.

Angleberger puts the form established in the first book back to good use here. The voices of the different students are clear and distinct, and there is just enough explanation of previous events to bring the reader up to speed. The lively depiction of the drama and humor of middle school life will delight readers from the middle grades on up. While waiting for the next installment (predicted for sometime in 2012), they can work on their own origami skills at Angleberger’s website, OrigamiYoda.com.

Book Source: Checked out from my public library

View all my reviews

Book Review: Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard

by

October 20, 2011

7:00 am

Comments Off on Book Review: Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard

Everything Else

, , , , , , ,

Like MandarinLike Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The winds in Washokey make people go crazy.

At fourteen, Grace Carpenter doesn’t quite fit in anywhere. Her pageant-obsessed mother has never quite forgiven her for an incident during the Little Miss Washokey Pageant seven years ago and is now utterly focused on grooming Grace’s little sister, Taffeta, to win that same competition. At the beginning of her first year of High School, the administration moved her up to Sophomore status, separating her from her friends every hour of the day except homeroom and lunch. She spends her free time roaming the badlands, picking up interesting rocks, dreaming of getting out of her tiny Wyoming town.

Grace knows of one other person who doesn’t quite fit in: beautiful 17-year-old Mandarin Ramey, who moved to town seven years ago and has maintained a distance from everyone ever since. Grace has admired her from afar since the first time she caught a glimpse of her. When the two girls are thrown together for a school project, Grace finally has the chance to get to know Mandarin, to try to be more like her. But the more she learns, the less sure she is that she wants to be like Mandarin, and the more she realizes she needs to be like herself instead.

Self-discovery is a familiar theme in young-adult novels, and Hubbard explores it in fluid prose. Grace’s colorful first-person narration is peppered with unexpected similes: the flower pinned to her hair in that last pageant flew “across the stage like a paper boat caught in an eddy of rainwater” (3); during a big storm “the river brimmed over its banks and jumbled up all the boulders like a kid spoiling a marbles game” (22). Her observations are often dryly funny, the sarcastic wit of a smart teenager aching to break out of her everyday life. Her girl-crush on Mandarin is realistically and sensitively drawn, and the betrayals that only those closest can commit strike hard. While in the beginning, Mandarin is the one who seems to live her impulses out loud, it becomes clear that under even the quietest exteriors, passions run deep. (I, like several other readers, found myself wondering if there was more than friendship to Grace’s relationship with Mandarin. Hubbard has a lovely answer to this question on her web site.)

It is a poignant tale, beautifully told. Fans of contemporary realistic fiction will find much to love here.

This is Hubbard’s debut novel. I read it for the Debut Author Challenge, and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for her next book, slated for publication in 2012.

Book Source: Checked out from my public library

View all my reviews

Book Review: Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

by

October 18, 2011

8:00 am

Comments Off on Book Review: Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

Everything Else

, , , , , ,

WonderstruckWonderstruck by Brian Selznick

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ben wished the world was organized by the Dewey decimal system. That way you’d be able to find whatever you were looking for, like the meaning of your dream, or your dad.

With The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Selznick smashed open the category of “picture book”, using his fabulous pencil illustrations to tell the story of early cinema in an organic way. In this book, his innovative style is perfect for simultaneously telling two stories.

In 1977 Gunflint Lake, Minnesota, Ben Wilson is feeling lost six months after the death of his mother. He has never met his father, but a chance discovery makes Ben think he might be able to find him.

In 1927 Hoboken, New Jersey, Rose Kincaid is trapped in a lonely world. Her father keeps her cooped up at home, convinced the world is too dangerous for a Deaf girl to venture out alone. Determined Rose does just that, running away with no plans to return.

After an opening illustrated dream sequence, Ben’s story is told in conventional prose, alternating stretches with almost-wordless scenes from Rose’s life. The two tales, originally separated by 50 years and over a thousand miles, intertwine and become a single narrative by the end of the book.

Selznick appends a note on his inspiration and historical liberties taken, plus a bibliography for more information. He has clearly done his research on the various topics woven into Ben’s and Rose’s stories: the history of museums, the cities of Gunflint Lake and Hoboken, and Deaf Culture, as well as details specific to life in 1927.

It is a spectacular book, truly unlike anything else out there, with the possible exception of Hugo Cabret. Which is a bit of a shame, really, as it would be a mistake to come to Wonderstruck thinking, “Oh, yeah, I’ve seen this sort of thing before.” This is even better. Let yourself be amazed.

And, if you happen to find yourself in Queens between September 2011 and January 15, 2012, make sure to catch Wonderstruck in the Panorama: Drawings by Brian Selznick at the Queens Museum of Art. It looks like an exhibition not to be missed.

Book Source: Checked out from my Public Library

View all my reviews

Book Review: Taking Off by Jenny Moss

by

October 13, 2011

8:00 am

Comments Off on Book Review: Taking Off by Jenny Moss

Everything Else

, , , , , , , ,

On January 28th, 1986, the day after my 10th birthday, I was just one of millions of kids waiting to see the very first “Teacher in Space” broadcast from the shuttle Challenger. Some of the classrooms (though not mine) had televisions at the ready. The launch had been repeatedly delayed, and we didn’t know when it would finally happen.

That morning, there was an announcement over the loudspeaker: teachers in the classrooms with TVs should not turn them on. What was not announced, left to our families to explain at home, was that the launch had ended disastrously due to, in the words of public affairs officer Steve Nesbitt, “a major malfunction.”

Jenny Moss was a NASA engineer at the time, involved in the training of Challenger crew members Judith Resnick and Ellison Onizuka. In Taking Off, she evokes the atmosphere of late-1985 Houston, as seen through the eyes of a teenage girl, an aspiring poet in a town full of Science Geeks.

Taking OffTaking Off by Jenny Moss

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

No one labels me as an eccentric, but that’s because they don’t know what’s in my heart.

In the late Fall of 1985, Annie is a high school senior in suburban Houston, and her comfortable life is on the verge of being completely upended. Her best friend wants her to go to college in Austin with her. Her boyfriend of two years wants her to stay in town with him. Her mother wants her to be friendlier to Donald, her mother’s boyfriend. Annie isn’t sure what she wants, except that she wants to be a poet, an idea she keeps secret from the engineers and space program geeks who populate most of her town. Then, she meets Christa McAuliffe at a dinner party. She can’t help but feel inspired by the famous “Teachernaut”, so inspired that she decides to take a road trip to Florida to see the Challenger launch. And maybe, while she’s at it, figure out where she wants to go.

This is a quiet novel, with a lot of introspection. As it opens, Annie is caught between conflicting impulses and would really rather hole up at home than deal with making decisions about her future. While it is a situation many teens will recognize, the story lacks action, making it less than compelling. Even the romantic subplot, with its potential for angst and drama, ends up feeling underwhelming. The book might find its audience with adults who remember the Challenger disaster and will appreciate former NASA engineer Moss’s attention to detail.

View all my reviews

Book Review: Bigger than a Bread Box by Laurel Snyder

by

October 11, 2011

8:00 am

1 Comment on Book Review: Bigger than a Bread Box by Laurel Snyder

Everything Else

, , , ,

Bigger than a Bread BoxBigger than a Bread Box by Laurel Snyder

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Only people who don’t know seagulls think they’re prefect and pretty – all white and soaring and dipping and everything.

Rebecca’s parents haven’t been getting along too well for a while now. Still, it’s a shock when her mother suddenly packs her and her two-year-old brother Lew into the car and takes them to Gran’s house in Atlanta. There, in the attic, Rebecca finds a bread box that has the power to grant any wish… as long as the wish is something that can fit in the box. Money, an iPod, and a Baltimore seagull are all things the box can give her. But what she really wants is to go home and be a family again.

At twelve years old, Rebecca is old enough to know that things aren’t good between her parents, but still young enough to try to wish them into happiness. Besides her ruptured home life, she also has to deal with being the new girl in school. She wants to be a good kid and do the right thing, but she is just a kid, and sometimes she messes up. Sometimes, she even makes things worse by trying to make them better.

Snyder deftly blends the all-too-familiar reality of separating parents and middle school mean girls with the fantastic bread box. Although clever readers might pick up on the problem with the box well before Rebecca does, this is a satisfying tale of magical realism for the middle grades.

Book Source: I was sent a copy of this book by the publisher for review.

View all my reviews

Book Review: Ten Miles Past Normal by Frances O’Roark Dowell

by

October 6, 2011

8:00 am

Comments Off on Book Review: Ten Miles Past Normal by Frances O’Roark Dowell

Everything Else

, , , , , , , , ,

Remember the hare-brained schemes you came up with as a kid? Especially any that involved getting a pony? Remember how you wished people grown-ups your parents would take you seriously? Janie Gorman does. In fact, she can’t forget, no matter how much she wishes she could.

Ten Miles Past NormalTen Miles Past Normal by Frances O’Roark Dowell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Like all fourteen-year-olds, I used to be a nine-year-old. In retrospect, I was an annoyingly perky and enthusiastic nine-year-old. In fact, I’ve been enthusiastic my entire life, up until this fall, when high school sucked every last ounce of enthusiasm right out of me.

After a fourth-grade field trip to a farm, Janie Gorman came home and suggested to her parents that they move out of their suburban house an onto a farm of their own. Five years later, she’s still surprised they really did it. Now, her days start with a crowing rooster, goats that need to be milked, and the knowledge that everything her family does is fodder for her mother’s thrice-weekly blog. She only gets to see her best friend (and former neighbor) in one class a day; none of her middle-school friends even share her lunch period. All she wants is to be normal, have friends, maybe date a boy. But how can she blend in when everyone knows her as Farm Girl?

In her debut YA novel, accomplished middle-grade fiction author Dowell creates an utterly realistic teenage girl caught in an out-of-the-ordinary situation. Janie is frustrated with her life, and she relates her story with sarcastic humor. Short chapters, each with an amusing title, keep the pace brisk and breezy. There are quite a few threads weaving their way around each other: Janie’s feelings about farm life, her desire to both fit in and be noticed, and her shifting relationships with friends and family are all explored. Recommend this one to fans of light realistic fiction like Naylor’s Alice series.

View all my reviews

Book Review: The Secret of the Sealed Room by Bailey MacDonald

by

October 4, 2011

8:00 am

Comments Off on Book Review: The Secret of the Sealed Room by Bailey MacDonald

Everything Else

, , , , , , , ,

 

The Secret of the Sealed Room: A Mystery of Young Ben FranklinThe Secret of the Sealed Room: A Mystery of Young Ben Franklin by Bailey Macdonald

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In church of a Sunday when the parson preaches about the sins and failings of women, I would swear he gazes straight at me with a stern, disapproving look.

Patience Martin knows she is hardly the model of good behavior. But what incentive does she have? After her mother’s death three years ago, her father bound her as a servant to the wealthy Mrs. Worth. Then her father died in the same shipwreck that left Mrs. Worth a widow in the middle of a difficult pregnancy. She has four long years to serve a woman who never has a kind word to say to her. Of course, things are about to get much, much worse. Mrs. Worth is found dead, and her brother-in-law plans to sell Patience off with no concern for her well-being. Patience takes her chance to run away, but soon learns that she is suspected of stealing Mrs. Worth’s money, and there is a reward on her head. With the help of a smart young printer’s apprentice, she just might save herself and bring the murderer to justice.

As in Wicked Will, MacDonald sets the scene with period details.

Patience is a winning heroine – quick-witted and determined, clearly a girl ahead of her time. The young Ben Franklin is charming, depicted with just enough human faults to remind the reader that even such an American legend was once a teenage boy. Filled with humor and nods to historical events, this is a classic locked-room mystery for the younger set.

View all my reviews

Book Review: Forgotten by Cat Patrick

by

June 30, 2011

7:00 am

Comments Off on Book Review: Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Everything Else

, , , , , , ,

ForgottenForgotten by Cat Patrick

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Book source: ARC from publisher, by request

He’s not in my memory, which means he’s not in my future.

Every morning, London Lane wakes up with no memory of the day before. Or of any day before. Every night, she writes herself a note to prepare for the next day, because while her past is forgotten, she has memories of the future. It’s confusing, but she has learned to live with it. when she starts having some very dark memories, though, she begins to wonder both about her past and whether she can change her future.

Romance, mystery, and psychological thriller come together in this original tale, which has a paranormal feeling to it despite the lack of any actual otherworldly creatures. The details of London’s condition are revealed very slowly over the course of the first few chapters, with more background coming much later. London is a likeable character, striving to do the right thing (especially in light of her unusual knowledge) without becoming too goody-goody. Underdeveloped secondary characters and an abrupt conclusion are weak points, but the plot is engrossing, and Patrick’s smooth writing style aids the momentum through some sharp turns. Best not to question the details too much; just enjoy the ride.

View all my reviews