Pink Me

Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs - review

Grace is feeling kind of out of place at her new high school in San Francisco. Newly arrived from a small town, she is hoping to find a friend.

Tough Gretchen has no need or desire for friends.

And snooty rich girl Greer doesn't have friends so much as she has acolytes, minions, and social rivals.

What do these three have in common? Besides first names that start with G? Well, they were all adopted, for one thing... and since this is a teen novel, you might as well guess: they're long-lost triplets. Not just any triplets, either. Descendants of a mythological monster slayer, they have a duty and abilities and there's a prophecy and all of a sudden Grace's GPA is in danger and Greer's Stella McCartney top is going to get mussed.
 
Part Percy Jackson, part Beverly Hills 90210 - with an acknowledged debt to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Grace has moved to San Francisco from a small town called Orangevale, where she attended a two-story school with stucco-covered walls), this is good fun, marred somewhat by writing that hammers home every expressive nuance ("'What are you doing here?' she demands, clearly unhappy to see me.")

Boy characters are amusingly decorative - entering the action with portentious fanfare, all eyelashes and biceps, only to disappear for long stretches with nary a ripple, reappearing - or not - several chapters later. Although they may have some role in later books, in Sweet Venom they appear to be nothing more than gratuitous romantic interest. A not-too-serious paranormal action novel along the lines of the Maggie Quinn, Girl vs. Evil books.

Adapted from a review originally published in VOYA.

Anticipation - new books to look forward to

Ah, spring! My neighborhood is foaming over with dogwood and azalea, sketched pink scribbles of redbud branches and nodding lilac. Driving the kids to school is like a trip through some wretched YA fairy forest. Except it's also roadkill season, so the smashed rats and opossums on the side of the road give it a little gory, edgy aspect. Again, much like a lot of recent YA. Sigh.

I am totally, happily mired in reading for the YALSA committee I'm on, Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults (go nominate your favorite! do it now! I'll wait!), and I can't in all conscience post reviews of books we're considering for the list - but I can take a break from teenage immigrants and rock stars from time to time in order to cleanse my palate with a new book.

Here are some I have waiting in the wings for me:

 

Librarian to the Stars: At the Governor's Ball

 

 

Providing reader advisory services to movie and TV stars may sound like it's all glamor and glitz - private screenings at Matt Damon's place, long walks with Taylor Kitsch, tequila shots with Cameron Diaz - but in reality, it's hard work. It's a year-round, always-on-call job that requires constant monitoring of tons of information sources. You should see my office - a dozen laptops and giant flatscreens feeding me 24-hour updates from Cynopsis Kids, Early Word, Rama's Screen, and the Hollywood Reporter.

But that's what it takes. What would happen if, out of the blue, Hailee Steinfeld chased you down in a hallway at NBC panting, "I have to read a science fiction novel for English but I hate science fiction!" It wouldn't do to flail around until you lamely suggest she reads Virus on Orbis 1. Nooo. That kid, she needs more action. Not so much character development. Black Hole Sun is the book for her. She'd be perfect as the voice of the AI that is the main character's advisor, conscience and best friend. Or she could be the kick-ass love interest Vienne.

Tune in to my wave as I provide book advice to the attendees of the 84th Annual Academy Awards from my perch by the bar at the Governor's Ball...

Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway - review

Here's a rare thing: a review of a bona fide adult book on Pink Me. Suitable for teenagers? You decide. (There's a breakdown at the bottom of this review.)

 

I wish I could write the review this book deserves, as Nick Harkaway (not his real name) wrote the review that Neal Stephenson's Reamde deserved - the one I was in the process of writing in my head. Stephenson's book was an action novel taken to absurd lengths, a nonstop global car/boat/bike chase firefight populated by real characters, most of whom you had to fall in love with. Ergo, I think it's no coincidence that Harkaway (still not his real name) felt he had some solid ground upon which to stand while surveying the fatness of Reamde. 

Angelmaker is leaner, sprawls less, but is similarly packed with spies and murderers and gangsters who run and drive and use weapons, and they're all real people. Well. Some of them are not. A few of them are... but no, I'm not going to say. 

Cold Cereal by Adam Rex - review

 

Sometimes it is hard for me to respond to a book as a reviewer. Some books hook me just the same way a book would have hooked me when I was ten years old, and I am in, along for the ride, imagining myself sleeping in Anne Boleyn's bed at the Met, or confronting an evil horseman in a snowy lane in Wales.

I think that's why I do this.

And do you know how kids recommend books to each other? Have you heard them try? It's no use trying to teach them to sketch the main character and then set up the situation - they're going to either tell the entire plot in minute detail or they're going to reproduce a run of dialogue, bafflingly out of context and unintelligible due to their uncontrollable excitement.

Possibly they're going to try to relate the mood of the book to an experience they've had - my friend Rabbit, who is thirteen, does this all the time, and I love it. I can never follow his parallels: "You know how like you could be in the desert, but it's cold, except it doesn't look like it could be cold? This book is exactly like that," but I could listen to him all day.

Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore - review

Just a quick YA book review today, pumpkins - I am up to my [pick a body part you don't mention in polite company] in holiday crafting and carding and cocktail recipes.

What? Cocktail recipes are not part of everyone's year-end frenzy? Huh. What do you guys do?

 

 

Rosemary Clement-Moore delivers two things that have become the normal main features of YA books for girls: cold supernatural thrills and hot boy romance. What makes her hot boys and cold thrills stand out from all the rest are the girls that navigate the spaces between them: they are aggravated and amused, intrigued and insulted, cool but occasionally klutzy. They may find themselves covered in bat crap, but they will likely leave with an awesome exit line. Their narration conveys the knowing but self-conscious tone that is native to all teenage girls.

In Texas Gothic, strange doings are afoot at a big ol' cattle ranch in the west Texas Hill Country. Has an archaeological dig disturbed a centuries-old ghost? Or are nefarious humans taking advantage of local folklore to scare people away, and if so... why? Teenaged Amy Goodnight, the only intentionally "normal" member of a family of benign but powerful witches, seems to be the only one who can get to the bottom of The Mystery of the Mad Monk... but not only is she mortified at the Scooby Doo-ness of the whole "Mad Monk" thing, she is also nearly literally mortified by the ghost's overtures.

If you enjoyed Nancy Drew's The Secret of Shadow Ranch as a kid (yum, cowboys!) but are too self-aware to let yourself get caught up in silly stuff like The Ghost Whisperer, this is the book for you. Gotta love gothic.

The Cheshire Cheese Cat by Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright, illustrated by Barry Moser - guest review by Zhou, bonus rant by me

 

It's been a very Dickensy week here at Ye Olde Crumbling House of Bookes. Not Dickensian, thank goodness - we've all been getting three square meals and wearing actual shoes most of the time. Admittedly, you might catch my children looking doe-eyed and pathetic when asking for a fourth bowl of cereal (four bowls the other morning! I might as well serve it in a trough!). And if you've been following the other blog to which I contribute, you might detect a scent of Scrooge in our posts about drinking one's way through the holidays.

But, you know, I don't hate Dickens. No, nope, I don't. I hate fake Cockney accents, Barbie(™) in A Christmas Carol, I hate animatronic carolers and a hell of a lot of things that are inspired by Dickens, but I will give the man his due. Although a run like this past week is pushing it:  

 

The Biggest, Bestest Time Ever! by Stephen McCranie - review

 

Gr 3-6–Fans of Calvin and Hobbes will gravitate to this graphic-novel chapter book featuring an inventive kid and his talking dog.

Mal has typical social trouble at school, hiding his intelligence and struggling to make his feelings known to a cute girl while trying to avoid the class blowhard. His single mom doesn’t seem to be very supportive, sending him to bed without supper, threatening to ground him, and spanking him in the first three chapters, but these travails set him up as an underdog who will prevail in the end.

In Defense of the Realm by Sanjay Deshpande, illustrated by Lalit Kumar Sharma - review

 

The Akkadians of Central Iraq, hungry for new lands to conquer, have set sail for the great cities of Sind, in what is now southern Pakistan. Prince Meluha and his teacher Chandrayaan are out hunting when the invaders launch their assault upon Meluha’s city, and so it becomes the handsome (and quite often shirtless - hell, everyone's shirtless in this thing!) prince’s responsibility to travel to the other Indus Valley cities and rally their rulers to stand together against the hostile armies of Akkadia.

 

Numbers by Rachel Ward - review

Here is the trick with magic realism: if you're going to add a little magic to your realistic story, just drop it in there and don't futz with it. Like cold butter on warm bread, if you try to even it out you will just tear holes in your plot and make yucky little crumb-butter tumbleclots. In other words, if Grandpa can fly, he can just fly, ok? Don't start rattling off a long and involved explanation about curses or fairies or mitochlorions - people will get suspicious.

If your main character can see the date of a person's death when she looks into their eyes, you should just tiptoe out on stage, hand her that little piece of business, and then back off real nonchalant-like.

Like Rachel Ward does. Oh, Rachel Ward. Nicely done.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner - review

 

I cannot get behind this book. I wanted to, I did - oh, and based on recommendations by other people, I have been recommending it to teens and tweens who like action for a good year now - but I think it is poor science fiction.

Thomas is a teenage boy who wakes up one morning in a windowless metal room, unable to remember much more than his name. When the room opens up, he finds himself in a community of several dozen boys, all of whom arrived in what they call the Glade just as he did, devoid of memory. The Glade is a sizeable square area surrounded by tall stone walls. Behind the walls, on all sides, is a gigantic maze. In the two years since the first boys were delivered to the Glade, they have formed an extremely functional, organized, (mostly) self-sustaining society, and have set themselves the task of solving the giant maze - looking for a way out.

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde - review

 

"Who, exactly, is the Mysterious X?"

"They're more of a what than a who. It won't be in a form you'll recognise, and there is something other about X that defies easy explanation. It's more of a sense than a person. A shroud, if you like, that confuses their true form. It also smells of unwashed socks and peanut butter. You'll be fine."

Tiger looked at the note, then at the Quarkbeast, then at where the moose had been but suddenly wasn't, then back at me.

"This is a test, isn't it?"

Yes, little children, this is a test. Are you going to grow up to be the kind of person who not only reads all the books of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but who also seeks out the radio recordings? Will the Discworld become a second home to you? If you cut yourself shaving, will you always claim that "it's just a flesh wound!" in a defensive tone and a British accent?

If so, The Last Dragonslayer is your brand of silly.

Secrets of Tamarind by Nadia Aguiar - review

 

The scientist in Simon wished there was time to study the animals he was seeing and catalogue all the quirks of nature and environment that had driven their strange evolution. A herd of spotted marsupials, almost impossible to see, moved in shifting camouflage as they chased the shadows of clouds. A small, horselike animal with gigantic ears that swiveled like saucers was the first to hear him coming, and when it took off across the plains its drumming hooves alerted dozens of lumbering, slow-moving tortoises who vanished into their shells, leaving a sudden rock bed. Mice-like rodents leaped dozens of feet into a stand of cactus, fleeing from birds that veered away from the unforgiving spikes at the last second. Simon watched in fascination as these dramas unfolded around him.

We went to Costa Rica last summer, and now I think I understand where Nadia Aguiar's prose comes from. The ruby-red birds and flowers, the emerald landscapes, the fruit that is sweet but complex. The dark jungle, the bright hillsides. Roseate spoonbills and strawberry frogs. Honest-to-god toucans. It's all astonishing, but it's real.

 

The miraculous island of Tamarind, where siblings Simon, Maya and Penny washed up after a shipwreck in The Lost Island of Tamarind, reads like that. Deep in the Bermuda Triangle, its startling beauty is murky or brilliant, misted with cloud or sunlit, lush, decadent, fragile... and likely to twist into violence at any moment.

Rotters by Daniel Kraus - review

I have been staring at this book for a while.

Thanks to Charlie Higson's The Enemy, I rescinded my No Zombies proclamation last year, and so, thinking Rotters was about zombies and emboldened by the Scott Westerfeld cover blurb, I brought it home.

Stared at it, thought the cover was bad, passed it off to my friend Chelsea to read. Chelsea is a fast reader and likes zombies just fine. When she finished it and passed it back to me, I asked her opinion. She said, "I don't know. I think you'd have to read it for yourself. It's not zombies though." Then I returned it to the library. Upon learning that I need to write a list of novels to suggest to readers who liked The Monstrumologist, I checked it back out.

And now I've read it. And I'm still staring at it.

Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick - review

 

Ok I have like, maybe, THREE things to say about this:

1. Last night at 2AM I was three-quarters of the way through Ashes. I had suffered every holy-crap-what-next moment right alongside sixteen-year-old Alex, and I had to put the thing down because my head hurt from staring into the dinky screen of my Sony Reader. I went to bed. Where, thanks to the good works of Ilsa J. Bick, my dreams were lousy with suicidal deer and ominous empty roads and carrion birds. The worst dream I had last night, however - by far - was that I was still reading Ashes, and that it had turned... lame.
2. It doesn't turn lame. Nooooo. No.
3. Sixteen-year-old orphans are the new eleven-year-old orphans.
4. If you are looking for your "next Hunger Games," I got your "next Hunger Games" right here, BABY. Very tough. Weapons, hot guys, camping. A scrappy kid. Subtle social criticism.

 

The novel begins as an intimate first-person narrative from Alex's point of view - she is worn down by sorrow and pain, and craves isolation. When two other campers appear on the scene, she is annoyed, but the reader is not surprised. When all of a sudden there is blood and pain, the reader is surprised. And then when she figures out...! and then meets up with...! and almost...! Like that. Every corner turned in this book was a surprise and sometimes a shock, but we never lose touch with Alex - she never turns into a superhero. The aches that sent her into the wilderness never go away, she just gets new ones.

Ilsa Bick writes her weapons and outdoor skills and scenic Michigan wilderness with authority. She has a real feel for timing, building tension to the point of crisis, then sometimes breaking off and picking up days later amid the consequences of the crisis. Her characters are convincing when they're being stubborn and whiny, convincing when they're in psychic or physical pain, convincing even when they're not convinced of their own selves at all.

In fact, I have made a folk song about this book. This doesn't happen very often, given that I hate poetry and I don't know how to play even the guitar... so you know this is going to be good. SING IT:

 

Here we are again,
It's the end of the world again,
I lost my gun I found my gun I lost my gun again.

Dontcha hate it when
You're just looking for a little privacy,
Just trying to scatter the ashes of your parents on the shores of Lake Superior and maybe come to terms with the inoperable brain tumor that's turned your life to shit,
I mean you're just out camping.
And whaddaya know...?

Here we are again,
It's the end of the world again,
I lost my gun I found my gun I lost my gun again.

It's a good thing I
Can stand a little physical pain
Cause I get beat up kind of a lot before I fall in love and find a truck and take care of a kid and then lose everything again and smack the crap out of a bunch of teenage cannibals,
And while the cannibals scare me
The Christians scare me worse.

(Which should come as no surprise because...)

Here we are again,
It's the end of the world again,
I lost my gun I found my gun I lost my gun again.
I lost my gun I found my gun I lost my gun I found my gun I lost - somebody give me a Winchester!
I found my gun again.

 

What do you think? Downright anthemic, I'd say. I can't decide whether I sing it like Woody Guthrie or Kurt Cobain or Gang of Four, though.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs - review, including the story of Flat Pach, the Heroic Elephant Spy

 

The dour child dressed like a vaudeville tap dancer does not belong in the muddy woods.

In her tiara and satin flapper dress, she frowns at you accusingly before a scabby-looking canvas backdrop. Just about the only consolation for this displeased moppet is that her shiny Mary Janes do not actually have to touch the scattered dead leaves and packed dirt beneath her feet.

She is, of course, merely a figure in an amateurishly faked photograph.

Or maybe she is Olive, a girl who can levitate.

 

Why this ruined Earth? Pure by Julianna Baggott - review

 

Pressia's world is a scary world. Eight years after the bombs went off, food and water are in short supply. Many of the inhabitants are mutated cannibalistic beasts. Infection is prevalent, due to the fact that most people have had objects or creatures blasted into their bodies during the nuclear cataclysm. And if you make it to age sixteen, as Pressia has just done, the militia is going to come in a truck and capture you.

Partridge, who lives inside the spick-and-span Dome that was constructed in advance of such a catastrophe, has his own worries. His brother has committed suicide, his mother is missing, presumed dead, having not made it into the Dome on the day of the bombs; and his autocratic father, one of the architects of the Dome plan, seems to be coming a bit unglued. Partridge comes to believe that his mother is Out There, and resolves to leave the Dome in order to find her in the ruined outside world.

And here we go.

This is Pure by Julianna Baggott, who writes under a number of names. Readers of kidlit will know her as N.E. Bode, author of The Anybodies, a fun, imaginative trilogy for middle grade readers. Grownups who like funny books about relationships (excuse me if I borrow from Netflix's increasingly lowbrow genre labels) may know Ms. Baggott's Bridget Asher books, like The Pretend Wife and The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted.

Pure is Ms. Baggott's first sci-fi novel. It is long. It is weird. Fox 2000 has already bought the film rights. This review will contain a ton of spoilers, because a) I write my reviews for grownups selecting books for children, so I don't shy away from spoilers generally and b) there is no way for me to critique this book without them. Because I have issues with this book.

 

Books in the beach bag - leisure reading for middle grade

 

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 (Click each thumbnail to see this photo assemble.)

 

Adult Swim at our pool is fifteen minutes, and I swear, that can be the longest fifteen minutes ever in the history of time. Longer than the fifteen minutes it took you to figure out the new remote. Longer than the fifteen minutes it took Jane Austen to describe who rode in which carriage on that crucial twenty-minute journey to the ha-ha. Way longer than the fifteen minutes you had to stand in line at the DMV, because at least then you could fantasize different options for blowing the building up.

NO you can't have more money for the snack bar.

NO you can't go to the baby pool.

NO you can't play Angry Birds on my phone with your wet hands.

Who likes saying no all the time? Not me. Far better to give the kid a seat in the shade, a cold water bottle, and a just-for-fun book to read. I asked all the kids who had assembled for my younger son's birthday party to grab a book and cram onto the couch for this month's Pink Me banner. Here, amid a long list of entertaining summertime reads, are the books that caught their eye:

 

Divergent by Veronica Roth - guest booktalk by Milo

 

Librarian Nancy Pearl, author of Book Lust, NPR personality, action figure and role model, once told me that I don't have to read the books that everyone is going to read anyway, unless I want to. We were talking about Twilight at the time, and it was a big relief to be let off the hook on that one.

Today's big book that it appears everyone is going to read is Divergent by 22-year-old Veronica Roth. Billed as "the next Hunger Games," it has been passed from hand to hand by aficionados of YA sci-fi action fiction with genuine fervor.

So I brought it home, but, as often happens with exciting-looking books, it got snagged off the coffee table by my man Milo* while I was busy reading something else. He read it in a day, which tells me something already, so I figured I'd get him to booktalk it to me, see if it was something I wanted to read.

Guys Read: Thriller, edited by Jon Scieszka - review (plus bonus rant!)

 

The first book in the Guys Read Library, Guys Read: Funny Business, is one of my favorite shortcuts when I'm at work in the children's section. When I see Mom hauling her cranky middle grade boy over to the shelves, I will grab a copy of Funny Business, crack it open to the Christopher Paul Curtis story or to Jack Gantos's The Bloody Souvenir, and start to read. When I get to the part about the blood poisoning, that's when our young man usually stops farting around and looks at me.

I hand him the book, and say, "When you come back - if you come back - come find me and I'll give you something else disgusting to read." Mom looks at me and can't decide whether she's repulsed or grateful.

The Boy at the End of the World by Greg van Eekhout - review

So it has come to this, you say: post-apocalyptic fiction for middle grade readers. Really, you say? We're not going to wait until they're at least twelve or thirteen before giving them main characters who have to make their way by scavenging the wreckage of our world's bad decisions?

Yup. And about frickin time, I say.

I could refer to an REM song here but I am NOT GONNA

This morning, I'll be talking to host Tom Hall on Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast, sometime between 9 and 10AM, on Maryland's NPR station, WYPR 88.1 FM. Later in the day, the audio of our conversation, plus my usual exhaustive booklist, will be up on the program's web site. Listen in!

Tom and I will be talking about movies that are being and have been made based on children's and young adult books - good, bad, and whether or not the book is always better.

While I was researching that conversation, I made some terrible and grotesque discoveries about the movies and young adult literature. Like for instance: OMG YOU GUYS APPARENTLY THERE'S AN APOCALYPSE COMING!! And love triangles! With some reincarnation and a few throwback vampires.

Thankfully, few zombies and no mermaids. YET.

But check it out, there are like a million YA series that have been optioned for movies - some of them, even before print copies have kissed sunlight - and half of 'em Look Like THIS:

Are you going to kiss me now? by Sloane Tanen - review

All that really has to happen here - if you're me, at least - is to see the words "Sloane Tanen."

 

 

"Samantha looked around the playground in amazement. Her mother had been right. She really was the smartest and the prettiest."

 
"Goodnight moon, hello, martini."

 
"It's dad calling about the birth control prescription I took out of your backpack and taped to his cell phone."

 

At least, that was all I had to see when my friend Sarah messaged me on Facebook: "Have you heard of my friend Sloane's new book? Do you want to?"

I have the coolest friends.

Brass Monkeys by Terry Caszatt

 

Couple weekends ago we fired up the fire pit for the first time this year. Fire good.

Fire is convivial and pretty and warm and often smells spicy and smoky and exciting. Plus it's good for roasting marshmallows. And since this is Jesus season, we had PEEPS to roast on our fire. If you've never tried it, may I recommend. I don't like Peeps, but a roasted Peep is like a bite-size crème brûlée. A vaguely poultry-shaped, distinctly trailer-park crème brûlée. Or in the case of the bunny-shaped ones, a vaguely tumor-shaped trailer park crème brûlée. SO GOOD.

Electronic Thursday - Nancy Drew: The Secret of Shadow Ranch for iPad by Her Interactive

Ah, Nancy. So accomplished, so self-possessed. Is it any wonder that Carson Drew's baby girl has successfully piloted just about every new media vehicle that she's come across? In another life that girl would be a test driver for Car & Driver magazine. Wow, that might actually be a ridiculous-but-cool premise for a TV series - Nancy Drew Behind the Wheel. Every week Nancy puts a new fancy car through its paces while solving a mystery and being chased by thugs! She'd get kidnapped all the time, of course, and she'd end up rating cars on the roominess and comfort of their trunks, and also the ease with which they can be unlocked from the inside.

 

In this new iPad app based on an old old book (originally published in 1931!), Nancy solves mysteries and rides horses, rescues a failing dude ranch, debunks a ghost and pals around with BFFs George and Bess. All that never gets old, I swear. I haven't read a Nancy Drew in decades, but the story in The Secret of Shadow Ranch kept me turning pages just like I was ten years old and reading my mom's copy.

The text has been somewhat updated, of course - Bess carries a cell phone, although it doesn't impact the plot, as she can never get a signal out the desert. There are some choose-your-own elements (tip: don't try to wrassle the rattler by yourself), and although Ned Nickerson is mentioned, apparently he's off at college rather than hanging around the girls being dopey.

And regardless of the very entertaining sound effects, music and animations; seek and find games and word puzzles that decorate, punctuate, and illuminate this text, it is in fact the text that gives The Secret of Shadow Ranch staying power. Every child I handed it to (boys as well as girls) quickly became immersed in the suspense, and kept returning to the story, choosing time with Nancy over time spent killing zombies, slinging birds at hogs, or driving muscle cars.

Some things I liked:

• game allows for multiple players so that each reader can preserve his place
• the music, which is blessedly not constant, is appropriate to the story in mood and instrumentation - harmonicas and fiddles and guitars
• the art is all weathered wood, saddle leather, and dusty rocks, all the surfaces we love about the West (although the pictures of people come straight out of a box)
• when the gang takes turns singing campfire songs, George's rendition of "Home on the Range" is truly and comically awful

I'd like to see a progress bar or page numbers (although given the choose-your-own-adventure sections I can see that page numbers might be difficult) so that players can assess how far they have to go to reach the end of a chapter - in this age of rationed "screen time" that information is important for children, both in order to prioritize their activities and to negotiate with a parent. "Can I have until the end of this chapter? I'm 80% through."

This is an excellent book/game hybrid, a rarity for middle graders, and an exceptional incentive to read. Even kids who at first hurry through the text to find the special items that let them play games get caught up in the narrative once Nancy and her friends go hunting luminescent scorpions, or when the ghost horse shows up.

Bonus: hapless, boy-crazy Bess gets into trouble every time she separates from the other girls: at my count, she is menaced by a rattlesnake, tarantulas, and a cougar, gets thrown from her horse, freaked out by a necrotic-looking doll, and falls down a hole.

 

I'd rather be a kid! Recent and forthcoming graphic novels for kids and teens - Part One

The number of graphic novels on my coffee table right now is a lot. It's a flock of graphic novels, a mountain of graphic novels, a herd, a murder, a gaggle. In fact, I am going to make up a collective noun for graphic novels RIGHT NOW.

What I have on my coffee table right now is a CATASTROPHE OF GRAPHIC NOVELS! It is so great a catastrophe that I have had to split this roundup blog post into more than one part. Today's entry:

 

Graphic Novels on My Coffee Table Early April 2011, Part One: The Early Years

One graphic novel that I don't have on my coffee table right now - but I'm going to fix that, even if I have to arm every mutual friend Dan Santat and I have with Peep guns and malted milk bombs and send them to (nicely) threaten his editor - is Sidekicks. It's a full-length kids' graphic novel from the man who illustrated the Barnett-penned Oh No! Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World and Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo by Milo and Inky's mom. Mutual friends, see?

There's a trailer. Even if you're not a book trailer person, watch this one. Dan Santat always has the best trailers.

Nonfiction Monday: Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities by Chris Barton, illustrations by Paul Hoppe - review

 

When I was a kid, I didn't really like children's literature. Sure, I read Five Little Peppers and How They Grew and Judy Blume (especially the spicy ones!), but mostly I would sneak books off my parents' shelves. I read Saki and All Quiet on the Western Front. I read Tropic of Cancer at about age ten. (BO-RING!)

What I liked the most, though, were the books my dad would bring home from traveling. Airport paperback crime novels and true crime. Oh, how I ate up that true crime.

Now that my job is helping kids find books that they'll want to read, I have noticed that there's not much true crime for kids. I can't give them what I read at that age - Helter Skelter gave me nightmares for years - decades! So along comes Chris Barton (The Day-Glo Brothers, Shark vs. Train) to fix this flaw.

Ice by Arthur Geisert - review

Maybe I should save this one for the hot weather that is to come. Because right now I have heard that it's going to snow one last time in our neck of the woods before Spring (and, immediately on its heels, Summer) shows up for good. Sigh. Quit, already!

Meanwhile, I have the sunny skies and sepia tones of a new Arthur Geisert book to keep me warm. Arthur Geisert is an etcher of pigs, a devotee of hot-air sailing ships, a contraptionist if there ever was one, and yes I just made up that word in his honor. Hogwash and Oops and Lights Out delight kids and adults who enjoy cause-and-effect, who dream of a better mousetrap, who can't see a stream of water in a gutter without building a tiny dam.

No Passengers Beyond This Point by Gennifer Choldenko - review

Sometimes I just have to keep a review short and sweet. This book? This book is very very excellent.

Pilot & Huxley: The First Adventure by Dan McGuiness - review

 

This book was handed around the living room this morning. I finished it, then handed it to my oldest son, "Stop what you're doing and read this book." He read it, and then handed it straight to his 2nd grade brother. When they both finished, I asked their opinions.

"Outrageous!" said my nine-year-old.

"I can't believe there's a whole city made of snot!" said the seven-year-old.

"The rat-vomit dipping sauce was -- awww!" added the older one.

"Are you sure we're supposed to be reading this?" asked his little brother.

YES. I AM SURE, little ones. At least... this unsubtle yak-fest of a graphic novel is certainly not meant for anyone more than it is meant for you, you independent readers under the age of ten of the boy persuasion. Although I can think of A LOT of little girls who will similarly love this randomsensical grosstastic South Park/sci-fi hip rude funny mashup comic.

The Adventures of Sir Gawain the True by Gerald Morris, illustrations by Aaron Renier - review

I never considered manners to be of any real importance until I had kids. Or before I started working the reference desk. Adults tend to be a bit lazy, after all. We say "uh-huh" and we grunt and generally we manage to communicate and not offend too many people regardless. But kids - kids don't know that the "please" is supposed to be there and so they don't apply that deferential vocal inflection or body language or one of the ingratiating facial expressions that adults can use as shortcuts around saying "please." They are unschooled in the "thank you" nod-and-smile.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Graphic Novel, Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, adapted by Tony Lee, illustrated by Cliff Richards - review

How many trends can you cash in on with one slender book? I mean - sure, nobody'd much heard of Quirk Books before Seth Grahame-Smith audaciously armed Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy with samurai swords and rifles, and now the indie publisher is huge, able to make distribution deals with whomever they want, so who can blame 'em for trotting out as many sequels, t-shirts and ancillary works as they can? Heck, I'm surprised they haven't put out a series of branded Easy Readers.

So it is with perverse pleasure that I announce that my cynical preconceptions about this graphic novel adaptation of a mashup classic were WRONGGGG. WRONNNGG like the clock that bongs out the time in the Hotel Denouement. WRONNGGG like Bella and Edward. Like Bruce Willis and Nancy Botwin in Red (god, that actress will kiss anybody, won't she?). WRONGGG:

 

The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable by Dan Gutman - review

 

There are some authors, I freely admit, whose books I don't read. Not because I don't think I'll like them, or because I don't think I'd be able to recommend them, but because they are already appreciated and sought out by children. Dan Gutman is, of course, like this. Very few kids need my help discovering Dan Gutman.

When you check a kid's prior reading to get a bead on his/her likes and dislikes, there are certain books you can refer to. "What did you think of Harry Potter?" is a fair question - most every kid will at least know who Harry is. The Magic Tree House books (god bless 'em but don't make me read 'em) are in this category, but not a whole lot else. Wimpy Kid. And, of course, My Weird School. You can triangulate a kid's response to these known series to find where he falls on the axes of funny / mystery / fantasy. Hm. That graph would be an interesting thing to draw. Sounds like a job for xkcd.

The Night Owls by the Timony Twins - review

 

You know, there is so much right with this book, I'm just going to cut to bullet points.

• Single-page comics that work separately but legitimately hang together as a book-length arc. No, legitimately. I'm serious. Like a season of really good TV. And, like a season of really good TV, there are mini-arcs and single-pagers interspersed between and nested within the larger arcs. Comic books have always done this, but not all comic books have done it this well.

• The mashup of the supernatural and the Roaring Twenties is fun. Al Capone goes up against a guy with an enchanted lead pipe. A chorine in a Marx Brothers show is haunted by her dead husband. The Pied Piper of Hamlin is gigging at the Cotton Club (making him the Pied Piper of Harlem?).

Those That Wake by Jesse Karp - review

 

Oh I loved the first hundred pages of this book. Hundred-thirty, maybe. Paranoid and muffled, like a thriller in slow motion, like a ghost story set in the cement landscape of Roosevelt Island, it called to mind the frightened, frightening work of Philip K. Dick . Like Mulder's quieter, more desperate X-Files moments. The characters - and the reader - don't know what's going on, why everything around them keeps breaking and why everyone they encounter seems so hostile. The atmosphere is chilling and hopeless - magnetically written, it seeps into the reader's head like silence and inertia and entropy. Really good.

How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend by Gary Ghislain - review

 

Aaaand... this is a different type of YA novel. Another type that I like. There are no superheroes coming to terms with their newfound powers in it (except metaphorically), we are not living in a dystopic landscape (except metaphorically - the setting is mostly Paris), and there is no grief (not even metaphorically).

Instead we have an introverted, buttoned-down teenage boy who meets a fierce, wild-eyed girl, falls instantly in love, and is swept along by her insane momentum until he finds himself dog-bit, tattooed, guilty of criminal trespass, and listening to unfamiliar music.

Nonfiction Monday - Code Quest: Heiroglyphs, written by Sean Callery, illustrated by Jurgen Ziewe - review

 

Here's what I wrote when I reviewed this title for School Library Journal:

Fans of Ancient Egyptian history or readers of Rick Riordan's The Kane Chronicles will delight in learning to decode Egyptian heiroglyphs for themselves in this interactive work of nonfiction. A first-person mystery story narrated by an Indiana Jones-like archaeologist provides a slender thread upon which is hung multitudes of sidebars, factoids, captioned photos, graphic text elements, maps and diagrams. Photos of Egyptian artifacts and sites are reasonably plentiful, but of such small size they can be difficult to appreciate.

The illustrations that accompany the archaeologist's story are rendered digitally, employing exaggerated perspective and texture mapping, which gives the book a video game effect. The accompanying CD, however, includes a font for making one's own heiroglyphics on a computer - not a game. A determined reader will sift through the cacophony of clues to decode all the heiroglyphic and pictographic messages, but the design clutter and tiny typefaces will cause all but the most obsessed codebreakers to give up.

X Isle by Steve Augarde - review

When people express discomfort about the recent spate of dystopian novels for young people - books that feature a grim, brutal, ruined future in which children live by their wits (although often the wits are assisted by some kind of edged weapon) - they are pretty much talking about this book.

After the seas have risen and a series of hurricanes have devastated the planet and drowned the land, people are starving. The people of Baz's London neighborhood rely on a team of divers who trade canned food salvaged from submerged warehouses for items like rabbits, cigarettes, batteries and the like. Once in a while, the divers, who live on an island, accept a small, skinny boy to come to the island to work for them. The island is thought to be a paradise, and parents save up exceptionally rare items to bribe the divers to take their boys.

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride - review

I read a lot of books, right? I read a lot of books that are not necessarily for me. That's what Pink Me is for - I review books for people who choose books for kids. I'm happy with this state of affairs. I wouldn't do it if I weren't. And it's not too often that I have to read something that I truly dislike.

But. Even I have needs.

So, you wanna know what I love? You wanna know what I really, really love? I mean, besides the Spice Girls (obviously), and Peter Stormare? Besides Lou Reed's voice, the Pacific Northwest, fringe on just about anything, and making fun of Martha Stewart (have you ever read her blog? Consumption hasn't been that conspicuous since the Gilded Age!)?

The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan - review

I am sure that very little has to be said about The Lost Hero. Author Rick Riordan is rightly beloved of readers from 8 to 18 and beyond - I know many moms who have read the Percy Jackson books with their kids only to become slaves themselves to the exciting plot, likeable characters, and imaginative scenarios. I myself considered buying The Titan's Curse at Target one Sunday even though I knew the book was waiting for me at the library and I could pick it up when I went to work the next day. I needed to find out what happened next.

But something happened at our school's Lost Hero release party that made me appreciate Rick Riordan anew. Not a big thing, but an important thing to me.

The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea Campbell - review

Say you're writing a book about a teenage boy. You sit down, close your eyes, and start free-associating:

"Teenage boy. What do I think when I think teenage boy. Boners. Boners for sure, yeah. Aspirations. 'Why are my parents such idiots?' Okay, what else... stuck at home, but almost ready to fly away... good, good... Impatient for more autonomy, afraid of what he might do with it. Poor decision maker. Self-absorbed, defensive. Uncommunicative, distrustful. Wow. Teenage boys are kind of a-holes most of the time, aren't they?"

And I think it's this kind of honest introspection that has led to many of the most believable teenage boy narrators in realistic YA fiction of late. You've heard of the Unreliable Narrator? Well, I'm calling these kids the (Mostly) Unlikeable Narrator.

Archvillain by Barry Lyga - review

One-line summary? It's Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog for middle grade, without the singing or the penis jokes.

Our protagonist is Kyle Camden, playing the NPH Dr. Horrible part - formerly the most popular boy in school, Kyle was extra-smart even before being blasted by some kind of interstellar radiation that gave him supersmarts, flight, superstrength and invulnerability. Kyle is thoughtful and sensitive, not at all evil. The same interstellar blast that changed Kyle's life also delivers a stranger to Kyle's small town. "Mighty Mike" is our Nathan Fillion/Captain Hammer in this book, strong and self-assured, a callous do-goodnik who is more than a little deficient in the brain box.

The Ghostwriter Secret by Mac Barnett - review

Transcribed from recording made on hidden micro-spy recording device. Subject: Mao (not his real name) age: 9. File: Barnett review 10-20-19-46. Indoctrination sequence begun...

 

Your Neighborhood Librarian: Ok, so Mao, here we have the The Ghostwriter Secret, the second of the Brixton Brothers books by the perilously undershaven Mac Barnett and compulsively undercapped Adam Rex.

Mao: Who?

YNL: The guys who wrote and illustrated the first one (ooh, new paperback cover). And Guess Again! What did you think of this book?

M: Well I think that it's good, and the cover gives you a really good idea of how it is -- exciting, but also like kind of suspenseful. On the cover, you see them underwater in a pool with bullets coming down, and that is really suspenseful.

YNL: Because?

M: Because, well, I don't want to ruin anything if you haven't read the book...

YNL: But I have.

M: Ok well then because THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS IN THE BOOK!!

YNL: The bullets raining down on them in the pool.

M: Yes!

YNL: And that's important to you because...

M: Kids do not usually get shot at in kids books! That part was great!

The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith - review

What is this?

I know about teen novels with alternate worlds. Usually those worlds are carefully mapped out, explained, lovingly explored by the author.  And I know what is a book with a teenage protagonist who endures a terrible, traumatic experience. Although usually those are girls. It can be rough these days to be a girl in a YA non-fantasy novel. You might get buried alive, or raped, or raped a lot, or accidentally kill your parents, or be in a coma or die, and you will almost certainly be kidnapped. I even know horror. I have read a lot of horror, especially when I was a very young person, and very unsure about things.

So I think The Marbury Lens is horror. But it is non-cheap, un-easy horror.

Songs of innocence and experience - adult weirdness for teens

Well, not just any teen. Teens with a taste for... for the unusual, let's say. Teens who are not satisfied with sports novels and vampire boarding school melodramas. Teens who have read Janne Teller's Nothing, who enjoy truly odd stuff like The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs and Madapple and then wonder why there aren't more books like those.

There are, of course - there are plenty of challenging novels in the YA section, but there's no shame in walking a kid through the adult section, and there's nothing immoral in handing a book about a serial killer to that kid.

With all your power / what would you do?

Is it just me, or is this The Year of the Superhero in middle-grade and YA books?

I'm all up in the Michael Owen Carroll right now of course, having just reviewed Super Human here on Pink Me; and The Rise of Renegade X is sitting on my to-read pile; I just finished Michael Grant's The Magnificent 12: The Call last night: plus we're listening to Mike Lupica's Hero in the car, and holy god - not since I took one for the team and listened to The Da Vinci Code have I been more appalled by an author's lazy writing, glacial pace, disrespect for the reader...

...oh wait, where was I? Ahead of myself, that's where. That's what happens when you try to write book reviews while listening to The Flaming Lips. "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song", off At War With The Mystics, is what inspired the title of this post. By the way, if you have food issues, don't click that link, just watch them perform on Letterman, below.

 It is also apparently The Year of Superhero Books Written by Guys Named Michael. Weird. Take that, trend trackers.

Super Human by Michael Carroll - review

This is the time. The time is now. Michael Carroll's Quantum Prophecy series has zipped beneath the radar like a low-flying caped crusader for far too long.

The Quantum Prophecy trilogy describes a world in which superheroes and supervillains were once a natural part of the world order, keeping the peace, trying to take over the world, doing their stuff. But ten years ago, one supervillain's dastardly plan went tragically awry, and all the superhumans disappeared. Now, a few young people are beginning to exhibit unusual abilities - only to discover that a world of peril and plots has been waiting for them. Dun dun DUNNN!

Let's catch a shark and I'll make us a pie

This is me cleaning off my desk prior to a TWO WEEK vacation in TROPICAL PARADISE.

Capital letters, yes! And not because I have been reading Kanye's Twitter feed, although I absolutely had to send Chris Barton (The Day-Glo Brothers) this picture of Kanye in his radioactive Pepto pink suit. I seriously doubt this is what the Switzer brothers had in mind when they invented those colors. Kanye is reputed to be friends with Aziz Ansari, can you figure it? I cannot. I reviewed a biography of Kanye for School Library Journal last year and I am still not quite over it. What is the what there? And Aziz Ansari is on Parks & Recreation, which my husband and I borrowed from the library because our friend TinkerCinderBelleAhontas recommended it, and she had previously recommended Firefly and Nurse Jackie, and so she is never wrong, but we sort of don't see the what in this either.

I have given up on reading kid books for vacation. (Oh you know that's not true) But. So. I bought GQ last night - Vanity Fair was not available - and it was there that I read that Aziz Ansari is friends with Kanye. And that Bill Murray respects Amy Poehler but cannot remember her name, nor the name of Jennifer Love Hewitt, about whose recent TV movie in which she plays I think an accidental prostitute Heather Cocks of Go Fug Yourself wrote THE most funniest thing I've read in a long time.

Also with the cleaning off of the desk: you may read Patrick Carman's Trackers if you wish. The Trackers are a group of four kids using technology to... well it's not too clear what they've been doing prior to the main conflict of the story. But that's not a big deal.

My son loved the banter between the four kids. Sat there cracking up while he read. The narrative unspools as the main character, Adam Henderson, is apparently interrogated by some kind of cop. That format is a natural for building and maintaining suspense, and it worked on my kid like a charm. Adam tells what happened, and shows the cop video and screen captures, all of which are available online using passwords from the book.

Me, I was a bit more meh than my kid. I thought some of the writing was sloppy. But I was truly charmed by the names of the gadgets Adam invents (one's called the Deckard, and anyone who tosses a Blade Runner reference into a kid book gets my respect) and the passwords he comes up with namecheck people like Babbage and Woz.

Good for kids who have gotten into the multiplatform, 39 Clues-type stories. Also for techie kids - as far as I can tell, the technology in this book all works. Likewise the Seattle landscape. Nothing worse than putting a kid on his bicycle in the U District and saying he makes it to Pike Market in 10 minutes. Carman dots those i's, and I appreciate the respect that signals.

Next! OMG did I mention I read GQ last night? Well listen if I hadn't already paid Todd a squinzillion dollars to draw my new banner up there, you know the one that makes me cry it's so beautiful? THIS would be my new banner image:

Tracy Morgan reading The Giving Tree crying til his balls shrivel up and retract into his body. (That's right, I said "balls". I'm going on vacation, ok?) Hey and you know what's really funny? For this photo shoot, GQ supplied classic clowny props like an exploding cigar, balloon animals, bubble shoes, wax lips... and The Giving Tree. Never not funny, The Giving Tree.

And check out Kat Falls on the TODAY Show talking about her book Dark Life! If I had to pick one book from this season that I think is the most exciting, the most intriguing, it would have to be that book. The TODAY Show! Holy crap!

How many orange books do you own? I'll wager it's not enough. For Pride Month, our library did our aisle-cap slatwall displays by color rather than by subject. The orange books and the green books were picked up, the blue and purple not so much. Hmm.

Oh and here we come to the Mac Barnett portion of our clearing off of the desk. Or in this case, the nightstand (imagine a smarmy chuckle). Dan Santat, Mac's partner on Oh No! Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World, reports that standing next to Mac makes any man 25% uglier. I will disagree - I think Dan is excellent looking, especially when you add the fake mustache. MmmmMMM! Nowadays all these kidlit guys look like hipster models, I swear. Whatever happened to guys that looked like Maurice Sendak? Or Shel Silverstein for that matter. Brr. Scaring kids for decades.

Ergo, you just know that this Oh No!-themed auction to benefit 826LA is going to be absolutely gurgling with delectability. Wish I could be there, but Dan's dramatic video will have to tide me over:

We bought The Clock Without a Face this week and my whole family fell deeply under its spell. I didn't introduce the kids to the web page - they had already spent half a day with the Trackers website. There had been a signing party at Atomic Books, our local superhip bookstore, but I missed it. SRSLY? I missed a chance to locally ogle Barnett and his penchant for linen? (I swear, this guy has his hand on the phone, looking up "restraining order" at this very moment. Dude, don't worry, I'm out of the country for the next two weeks. Plenty of time to get that thing lined up.)

Adam Rex gives up a Fat Vampire playlist on Largehearted Boy. Predictably heavy on the Beck, but also reveals Adam's love of Stephin Merritt. (Nods head in hipster appreciation.) If you ever listened to the audio versions of A Series of Unfortunate Events (and you SOOOO should, *cough*TimCurryIsStillEXTREMELYSexy*cough*), Stephin Merritt is The Gothic Archies, who did the romantically bleak original songs on those CDs. Verbs? Pronouns? I don't care about those things - I am going on VACATION!

In case you missed it, I liked Fat Vampire. Here's one of the promotional videos for it that I find particularly funny:

"Parents: learn to tell the difference between a hickey and a vampire wound." Please note MOAR MAC BARNETT. Guy is EVERYWHERE. It is not my fault.

Lastly but not leastly, I have been asked which books are on the table in the new banner... let's go to the original photo:

Ah! Zhou is reading Horrid Henry. Mao, if I recall, was reading The Search for WondLa. I was reading an ARC of Dreadnought by Cherie Priest. On the table I see family favorites like The Yellow Balloon by Charlotte Desmatons, a timeless wordless classic; The Incredible Book-Eating Boy; The Magic Chalk, which is an extremely cool Norwegian midcentury illustrated chapter book about a witch and a kid; The Ravenous Beast, which I am always pimping to parents; the brand-new and super-fun Oops! by Fromental et Jolivet, the team that brought us 365 Penguins; The Dumpster Diver; Do Not Open, a weird-fact book that the boys always have to have out; and a stack of YA ARCs that I frankly haven't gotten to.

So that's my house. That's my green wall. That's my (crooked) bunny painting, made by Margot Curran. I made Todd put shirts on the boys when he did his drawing.

But they will not be wearing shirts on vacation. I am OUT.

The Big Big Big Book of Tashi by Anna and Barbara Fienberg, and Kim Gamble - review

Zhou, rising 2nd grader, seven years old: So what's up, Mom?

Your Neighborhood Librarian: Tell me about Tashi.

Z: Tashi is a book for boys and girls, and it's kind of a fairy tale. It has fairy-tale creatures and not-fairy-tale creatures in the same book. I love how there's the big actual story, which is this little elf man called Tashi comes to a new country after he's been sold to this really mean warlord by his parents for some reason, and then Tashi meets Jack, his new friend, and this Jack has his own garden and when he goes up the tree he tells stories, at lunch, and he tells Jack stories, and Jack tells stories to his mom and dad, and his dad is all worried about socks in one story. That's why dad is kind of funny.

YNL: So there are multiple stories in one book, and some of them are told by Tashi to Jack and some are told by Jack to his parents.

Z: Yup. It's very common to see parents telling a bedtime story but in this one it's the parents saying, "Tell me a story! Tell me another Tashi story!"

 

The Enemy by Charlie Higson - review

It happens to just about everyone. Sometime in your early to mid-teen years, you wake up one day and realize that, gradually, every adult you know has become a stranger to you. You have begun to understand the fears, jealousies, and appetites that really motivate grownups, and you are appalled. They in turn suddenly do not recognize you as the child they have harbored lo these many years. And so your life becomes a series of surreptitious forays punctuated by skirmish - if your paths cross, there will be conflict, so you do your best to skirt their presence, to avoid their taint. You forge alliances with your friends or toughen up and go it alone, hoping against hope that you will make it.

Hmm. Maybe I'm overstating it. It's been a while, after all - all I can remember is being truly freaked out when my father threw my Kings of the Wild Frontier LP down the stairs because, I think, he was afraid I was on drugs. And my own kids won't be prompting me to mystifying moments of violence for a good 5 years yet.

Charlie Higson certainly sees adolescence that way, though. In The Enemy, all the grownups have turned into zombie-like cannibals. Some plague or something. The kids live in fortified big box stores and send out foraging parties to look for food and weapons. Yup. It's excellent.