Another independent minded girl

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book just won a Printz Honor Award from the American Library Association, and it well deserves it. Frankie is one terrific fifteen-year-old -- smart, brave and mind-bogglingly independent. As brilliant a strategist as she is, however, I loved that glimpses of being 15 shone through. Her world as she has known it has just ended, and she wonders for a few minutes if she could be the mindless, adorable arm candy that her boyfriend loved (past tense very important!), and then rejects that choice. She knows herself, but is young enough to yearn.

But that's not all: along with the excellent main character and the suspenseful, clever plot, there is very astute social commentary on boy-girl relationships, power and rebellion, surveillance, and language. Another title (and the best so far) for the indie-girl list!

Meanwhile, I just finished Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves, a fun romp through alternate worlds, fighting bad guys and getting lost. Yes, I admit it, I'm throwing a bone to you boys out there.


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Winter Reading

Here in Seattle we were snowed in for several days around Christmas. It was divine! Especially after Christmas (and all the sewing and baking and cooking fun) I probably read a book a day. I noticed two trends: as mentioned before, the girl who falls in love but realizes that allowing a boy to save her is probably a bad thing, that she may need to grow and mature before acting on her love. The Revolution of Sabine is one and Climbing the Stairs (by Padma Venkatraman) is the second I've read recently. Both were surprising and thoughtful historical novels. In Climbing the Stairs, 15-year-old Vidya and her family move in with her father's more traditional family. It is the eve of World War II and all over India people are responding to Gandhi's call for civil disobedience in the face of British rule. The title comes from the traditional Brahmin house in which women live on the first floor and men live on the second -- with the books, which is what Vidya is after. Following up on this theme of independent young women, I think I need to read Tamora Pierce's Beka Cooper novel, Terrier.

The second trend was of people getting unexpected windfalls. In Lottery, by local author Patricia Wood, a slow-witted man wins the lottery and has to fend off his unscrupulous family. I occasionally laughed out loud at Perry's different way of looking at the world, and was charmed and surprised by the ending, including how he copes with said unscrupulous family. In Everything You Want, by Barbara Shoup, 18-year-old Emma is unhappy her freshman year in college. She has no social life, her former best friend is acting like she's poisonous, and she spends all her evenings with her science project, a goose she's named Freud. When her parents win the state lottery, she can have everything she wants, but money can't buy happiness, can it? Now I'm anxious to read The Fortunes of Indigo Skye, by Deb Caletti, another YA novel about unexpected windfalls. I wasn't able to finish Caletti's Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, so we'll see.

I resolve to do better

Okay, my last post got interrupted and I never got back to it, so I am completely embarrassed and resolve to do better. Here's the book I most recently read and wrote about on GoodReads. Do you know that site? It's like Facebook for readers! I love it. I use it to keep track of what I have read and what I want to read, to check reviews on books we might get for the library, and to check up on my kids. It's totally invaluable!

The Revolution of Sabine by Beth Levine Ain

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
I enjoyed this book set a few years before the French Revolution, but thought it filled with sterotypes -- the fop, the good peasants, the evil aristocrats, the charming, but clumsy, princess who is more at ease walking on cobblestones than dancing in a ballroom -- proof of her essential goodness. That said, I very much appreciated the ending. It's a pleasure to read a book about a teenage girl who recognizes that being parted from her "true love" might be the wisest thing for her, that it might actually help her grow.


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Mysteries

I'm not normally a big mystery reader. I like them okay, but for some people mysteries are like potato chips. For me, they are more like popcorn. Great every once in a while, but I can leave it be. Now, potato chips, specifically those Kettle Salt and Fresh Ground Pepper ones.....I will eat those until I'm sick, but I digress.

Recently I found myself with two mysteries going. Not only that, they were both historical and with women protagonists. That took some mental aerobics, I can tell you! Anyway, it all got me thinking about mysteries and how fun they are.

So I just finished The Serpent's Tale, by Ariana Franklin. This is the second mystery about Adelia Aguilar, a Salerno-trained forensic pathologist. Turns out Salerno in the 12th century was a well-known center of "modern" medical knowledge, allowing Jews, Arabs and women to study in their college! The first novel is The Mistress of the Art of Death, in which the Henry II has sent to Salerno for a master of the art of death to investigate the murders of some children in Cambridge. He's upset because the Jewish population there is incarcerated and therefore, cannot pay their taxes, a major source of his treasury. Both novels are exciting, surprising and fun, a decidedly macabre way.

The other one I'm reading (not quite finished) is The Tenderness of Wolves, by Stef Penny. This one is a gnarly murder mystery, filled with people who are not what they seem, characters with suspicous backgrounds, and the cold and unforgiving Canadian north in the 19th century. Also exciting, surprising, but not so sure about the fun part.

For kids, I'd recommend Carolyn C. Cooney's Janie series. It starts with The Face on the Milk Carton. What would you do if you saw a picture of your 4-year-old self on a milk carton under the word Missing! Janie can even remember the dress she's wearing in the photo. What Janie does is question everything about her comfortable life, uncovering some hard truths.

Interludes

Check it out! The list of summer reads that we put together every spring is now online at http://library.bush.edu/news/summerreading08.htm

This year the theme is Interludes. I picked it inspired by my daughter Kitri. She called me one recent morning (before 9, in itself an amazing event) as she was sitting on the porch in the sun reading The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy, by Jeanne Birdsall. She was thoroughly enjoying herself and the only thing she was missing was her mommy to read it to her.

As I thought about how gratifying the phone call was, about my love for that particular book with its vacation theme, and about the wonderful respite that summer is, the light bulb went on: Books about interludes, books expressing a certain suspension of the mundane. So armed with a theme, we put together a terrific collection of suggested books! From fishing to Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest, from that creative trance of crafting to travel stories -- there's something for everyone here. With some titles you might have to reach a little to see how the theme fits, but I couldn't leave off Garth Stein's new book, The Art of Racing in the Rain, for example.

Mary Ann Gwinn, The Seattle Times book editor, recently referred to "that trancelike state you achieve when you get deep into a book"* -- may your summer be filled with trancelike interludes.

*Gwinn, Mary Ann. "Literary blogger Mark Sarvas ventures into the receiving end of critique." The Seattle Times, May 25, 2008. Accessed online 5/29/08

Funny books

Where are all the funny books? What -- people don't like to laugh anymore? And teens, in particular. I mean, have you read any teen fiction lately? It's all about angst, abuse, and anger. I just read Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, by Gary D. Schmidt. It's a Newbery Honor book and a Printz Honor book, and there are 5 deaths in it, including two father figures and a best friend. Geez, you think maybe we could all just lighten up a little?

So, here is my list of books that are actually fun to read:
First, since I picked on him, is Gary D. Schmidt's newest book, The Wednesday Wars. It's great. It's funny and smart and has a boy protagonist. Eleven-year-olds and up should enjoy this story about how one kid starts to make sense of the world in 1968.

The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex is also great fun. Tip and her alien friend J.Lo (he just likes the sound of it so he gave himself the name) take a road trip across America in the wake of an alien invasion. Also for eleven-and-up.

The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchit, is brilliant! Tiffany Aching is smart and self-assured, with a good head for cheese and a great vocabulary. She is also overwhelmed by a tribe of 6-inch-tall wild men who want to help her save the world.

For adults, Good Omens, also by Terry Pratchit with Neil Gaiman, is a total hoot. It's time for the Apocalypse, but somehow the Anti-Christ has gotten misplaced. Someone's head's going to roll over that, I can tell you!

And doggone-it -- read Pride and Prejudice! It is the ultimate romantic comedy. Cute young woman meets handsome man; gross misunderstanding at the beginning; tentative friendship derailed by obnoxious friends and relatives; ends in wedding bells. Nora Ephron couldn't have done it better! Jane Austen is the snarkiest!

Well, that gets us started anyway. What are your picks for when you just need a good laugh?

One Ugly Book

Okay, I haven't been tagged by someone and forced to reveal ten things about myself that no one else knows, but here are two things you should know in order to understand this post.

1. I love, love, love post-apocalyptic fiction.

2. I hate, hate, hate sloppy writing and certain grammatical errors. So, although I took home Scott Westerfeld's Uglies with great anticipation, because it portrays a world in which everyone gets an extreme makeover on their sixteenth birthday and goes to live in a special, super-groovy place, my hopes were soon dashed.

My first 'uh-oh' occurred when I read this little inscription: "This novel was shaped by a series of e-mail exchanges between myself and Ted So-and-So ..." AAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH! First of all, you never come first, the other person does. Second, it's 'me', not 'myself'. That usage has become almost ubiquitous, but it's wrong. The sentence should read: "This novel was shaped by a series of e-mail exchanges between Ted and me..."

Go ahead, call me petty. Or point out that I used 'their' to modify 'everyone' instead of 'his or her'. And then tell me you couldn't do better than New Pretty Town, the name of the super-groovy place the newly-pretty sixteen-year-olds go to. I managed to get through a few chapters before exercising my option to put down any book that just plain annoys me.

I know this series is hot, hot, hot. Good on ya, Scott Westerfeld. I'll keep buying your books as my students ask for them. But as for me (not myself), I'd rather read The Boxcar Children.