Chiaroscuro in Tween Fiction, or 12-Year-Old Girls with Moxie

I'm not quite sure how I ended up reading two books nearly simultaneously about families threatened with homelessness, but there it is. I do usually have two books going at a time, one downstairs and one upstairs, and usually they are different enough that I can keep them straight. This pairing was a bit too close for comfort to start, but they differentiated themselves soon enough.

Yesterday I finished My Life in Pink & Green, by Lisa Greenwald. It sounds sweet, doesn't it? And it is. It's a good book for intermediate grades, with strong messages about empowerment. Lucy, a seventh grader, wants to save the family business, but has a hard time persuading the adults in her life that she can actually do anything.

Today I finished Almost Home, by Joan Bauer. This one is also pretty sweet, which is perfect given that the main character is named Sugar and there's an adorable puppy on the cover. Bauer usually writes about girls who've got a lot on their plates and this book is no exception -- deadbeat dad, mom in denial, and a home in foreclosure. Bauer's characters have other strong adults around them, though, and that's what helps them through the tough times. While Almost Home is also appropriate for intermediate grades, the stakes are higher. Sugar and her mom lose their home and wind up in a shelter.

Spoiler alert, both books end well. My Life in Pink & Green is Greenwald's first book and it shows. She's got talent and will learn to trust herself and her reader, but Bauer knows that you've got to have some bitter with the sweet. Either book would be a good choice for your 9-12 year-old reader.

Imaginary Friends

Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A few plot holes mar this otherwise excellent kick-ass girl mystery. Kami is a great main character -- fearless, smart, funny AND she has had an imaginary friend all her life! (I wish I could have held on to mine. I miss you, Suzanne Davis!) She and Jared talk to each in their minds all the time and it's great. Okay, so they don't think too much about it, because doing that makes them wonder about their sanity . . . as in "really? I have apparently made up a whole life for my imaginary friend?" As long as they don't think to closely about it, it's cool -- there's always someone to talk to, to comfort and commiserate with.

And then they meet IRL. Oh dear.

Isn't that a terrific set up? I'm in awe -- what an absolutely brilliant concept for a paranormal novel!

But honestly, if you were told about some sinister happening in an abandoned mansion out in the boonies which no adults will tell you about, would your first step be to go there? Or might you check the local archives in the library or the newspaper office? Especially considering you do know that you can check local history in the library and the newspaper office? Hmmm? Aside from the creep factor, this is why I have trouble with reading scary books -- the characters do such stupid things.

I'll take off my grinchy hat now and admit that I have already looked up when book 2 is scheduled for publication -- next October! Woo-hoo!!


View all my reviews

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.


View all my reviews.

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.


View all my reviews.