Pink Me

Oh my living room is such a mess and I haven't even been to BEA yet! Middle grade boy books, Spring 2013

 

I know it's a losing battle, keeping the place in some kind of tidy shape, and it's certainly not all the fault of my kids. The books, lord the books. But sometimes I am just in a GET IT ALL OUT OF HERE mood, and such is the mood that descended tonight.

I haven't had the time to read hardly anything lately, so as we picked up books and shelved them or put them in the Back to the Library bag, I got Milo (11) and Ezra (nearly 10) to talk about the books they've read.

 

 

Ezra: Battle Bunny is the result of a ten year old who just watched a whole lot of apocalypse movies making his mark on a cute little Birthday Bunny tale. It's terrifically funny - there's a picture on Battle Bunny's wall that shows a bunny mama leaning over a bunny baby and the ten-year-old added the words "Drink your poison."

NB: The overstimulated ten-year-olds actually responsible for Battle Bunny are Jon Scieszka and Mac Barnett, with illustrations by Matthew Myers... 

Tools of the trade - Two books that are making me better at the things I do

You might think, if you know me from reading Pink Me, that I am a children's or teen librarian. I'm not - at my system we are all generalists. So while I love fixing kids up with great books, the fact is I also enjoy helping grownups. I spend most of my time drumming up copies of just the right David Baldacci, or helping readers find Amish romance novels and car repair manuals.

 

Which, um... Amish romance novels? Right. I'm going to need a finding aid for that.

Trash Can Days by Teddy Steinkellner - review

 

I am sorry that Teddy Steinkellner was dumped in a trashcan in middle school. Truly I am. Nobody deserves to be humiliated like that, and I hope the boys who did it look back on that episode and feel gut-wrenching, ball-twisting shame. I hope they grow up and have children and experience the fear that some little pack of fourteen-year-old pricks is going to do something like that to one of their kids.

And I have to praise a book about middle school that gives us an episode of upside-down in a garbage can. The clarity of the prose, the observational exactness as the garbage juice trickles into the boy's hair - it is necessary to hear this. If it happened, and especially if it is likely to happen again, we need to know what it is like. It's a little like climbing Everest - if a person has been there, they owe it to the rest of us to tell us what it's like.

Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts - review

 

Dark inside, dark outside. Dark on top and down below. Dark in a box. Dark with a fox. Dark in a house. Dark with a mouse. I'm sayin - this book is DARK.

Hee hee hee. I stayed up til 4am to finish it.

Cover that up! Some recent book covers and the books inside them

 

I just finished reading The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy by Nikki Loftin. This is a damn fine book, a creep-up-on-you book. It has a devil-in-the-noonday-sun quality that many have compared to Roald Dahl. Me, I didn't see the Dahl in it so much - there's little to laugh at, for one thing - and I'd compare it more to creepy-banal British village horror. Love that stuff.

The main character in this book carries a heavy emotional burden, and the book, in addition to being a great, suspenseful fairy tale retelling, goes about hip-deep into the braided stream of villainy and its causes. There's a lot of Mayor Mills in Splendid Academy's Principal Trapp.

But look at that cover. Spunky blonde and tubby sidekick - looming, slightly comic haunted-house-looking building in the background? All that alliteration in the title? Does this cover make you expect emotional redemption as a theme?

It didn't for me anyway. I assumed, judging from the cover - and don't say don't do it, we all do it - that this was a book for fans of The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls. I would have handed it to any kid who goes for the new Gothic Humor genre that we're seeing so much of. And don't get me wrong, some of those kids will like it - but it is not Gothic Humor. It's not terribly funny, and it goes very dark. It's a bit reminiscent of Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat, actually.

Weirdly, this is only one of many books I have read recently (and I have read about a dozen books in the past four days) (don't ask) (influenza B) (I don't recommend it) with a cover that is more than a little bit misleading.

Adaptation by Malinda Lo - review

 

Crash your car miles from nowhere on Nevada's Route 375, aka Extraterrestrial Highway, after a series of strange events have led to airplane crashes and highway closures, and what do you expect? Recover from life-threatening injuries only to be handed a non-disclosure agreement and be escorted home by two agents in black suits... oh yeah, this can't be good.

What happened to debate partners Reese and David in the month following inexplicable bird attacks that shut down the nation's air traffic? How have they recuperated so quickly from their crash? And what's with the strange vertigo that Reese feels whenever she touches David, or her mom, or even total strangers? Then there's the free-spirited pink-haired girl to whom Reese is irresistibly attracted. Well, ok that part is completely understandable ;)

Malinda Lo sets up an intriguing situation for her appealing, believable characters, and does a particularly nice job communicating Reese's discomfort as the unusual things she experiences and observes after she attempts to resume her normal life in San Francisco grate against everything she knows. The book loses some steam in the last third, as other characters drop away and we are back to just Reese and David, but by then it is too late for the reader - how's it going to end?

Suspenseful, girl-powered, contemporary science fiction full of realistically diverse characters making realistic contemporary use of technology. Plus hot kissing! Hard to resist.

Adapted from a review originally published in VOYA. 

Rookie Yearbook One edited by Tavi Gevinson - review

Here's something I would not have expected, certainly not on a night when I have a deadline looming on another project - I opened the mail after work and found a copy of this fat book, the first print product of Tavi Gevinson, aka The Style Rookie, and I opened it up and read the first couple of pages... and then I read the whole thing straight through for like five hours.

Tavi - don't you know who Tavi is? Tavi is this wonder-child. Only 16 years old now, she started blogging about style and fashion when she was like eleven and quickly became a fashion world darling. She wore her hair in a faded blue-gray bob, sometimes with a giant bow. She was, by all accounts, enthusiastic and questioning, eager to learn, a total fashion fan, but always with a point of view. I never read The Style Rookie, though. Really, I spend so much time keeping up with children's lit, all I have time for is Go Fug Yourself and sometimes Lainey.

 

The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee by Tom Angleberger - review

I swear these Origami Yoda books just keep getting better. The current crisis at Ralph McQuarrie Middle School is... how will everyone get by without the guidance of Origami Yoda, now that Dwight has transferred to fancy Tippett Academy? And by the way, what is going ON with Dwight? Reports are filtering in that he is no longer digging holes and sitting in them, speaks in complete sentences, and, strangest of all, has stopped bringing Origami Yoda to school!

While The Strange Case of Origami Yoda was about accepting and appreciating Dwight and his weirdness, and Darth Paper Strikes Back was about accepting - while not exactly appreciating - Harvey's oblivious jerkiness, each book also has seen the kids gradually gaining consciousness of how their actions affect other people. In other words, Tommy, Sara, Kellen, and their friends are developing - naturally, spasmodically, at different paces (the girls are quicker) - the emotional intelligence of teens. And listen, if you think teens have no emotional intelligence, try spending time with a bunch of 5th graders. Secret of the Fortune Wookie continues this progress, in a way that I can't reveal without spoiling the Fortune Wookiee's actual Secret.

All this emotional growth is delivered in a way that is subtle as hell, though, and conveyed with so much humor that no child will put down this book feeling like he has been Shown How To Be A Better Person.

BONUS: Han Foldo
THING THAT MADE ME SNORT: Mr. Good Clean Fun's puppet sidekick Soapy the Monkey
SEQUEL I CAN'T WAIT FOR: At the end of Fortune Wookiee, we get some big news about big changes afoot at McQuarrie Middle, and I am going to LOVE seeing Tommy, Kellen, Sara, Rhondella, Harvey, Quavondo, Cassie, Remi, Amy, Tater Tot, Lance, Dwight, and even stuck-up Brianna band together to take down the Evil Teaching To the Test Curriculum. I also can't wait to see the Star Wars puns Tom Angleberger will come up with for standardized testing.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - review

Do you know what a lich is? If someone taunts you with, "Answer the question, Claire," who are you being compared to? (Extra points: what's the question?) What will an oscillation overthruster allow you to do? And have you ever found yourself in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike?

A stray facetious comment worked its way into a discussion about the popularity of teen fiction among adult readers a while ago. "What about YA novels that are written just for adults?" I'm paraphrasing, I don't remember the exact wording. Just an offhand jokey comment, right?

But then I read Ready Player One. Ready Player One is a virtual reality adventure with a teen protagonist, a love interest, and a wing man. Our isolated, socially awkward hero must work his way through riddles and duels to win keys, open gates, and sort of save the world; and along the way he will develop leadership skills, learn to work with others, and listen to his instincts. Classic YA plotline.

But this book is not for teens.

Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn - review

I am violating my own rule here. My rule is I don't review books by people I know well enough to hug.

I know Mary Hahn well enough to hug, and to kiss on the cheek. Both of which things I did last time I saw her, the day after I finished reading this book. I think you would, too.

Mary's an old friend of my parents - I think her first husband and my dad went to college together? Maybe mom was a bridesmaid? She and my mother were pregnant with their first children at the same time, and compared notes. Some time after those girls (one of them me) were born, she and my parents more or less lost touch.

Mary started working as a school librarian, and in the mid-1970's started writing novels for children. Mysteries. Ghost stories. And though most of these stories stay well within the range of "comfortably spooky" - excellent choices for middle-grade readers who crave just enough chill to keep them turning pages, but not enough to keep them up at night - that's still thirty-some years' worth of haunted houses and restless spirits, guilt, revenge, and loss.

And now we know why.

Librarian to the Stars: What to Expect When You're Expecting... Your Movie to a. Be Awful and b. Tank

Do you know what I get tired of? I'll tell you what I get tired of. I get tired of these over-30 (or over-40, or even over-50) actresses calling me up on the phone, complaining about the parts they're being offered. "They keep sending me MOOOMS!!" Nicole will whine. "When it's so OBVIOUS I am still Sexy Secret Agent material!" Or it'll be Kristen Wiig: "Do I look like a MOMM to you?! Why don't they get Catherine O'Hara?"

 

 

Those pants are really a sweater - and Catherine O'Hara makes 'em look good.

 

Sigh. Catherine O'Hara is 57 years old. The poor woman's been carrying the "funny mom" baton since the late '80s - time for her to move on to "funny mother-in-law." Jane Fonda and Candice Bergen can't be expected to handle all those roles by themselves.

Although - it's kind of a fact, besides the gay moms and Kevin's poor mother, mom movie roles have been a bit lame lately. Movie moms generally are participating in some kind of horror story in which they have to protect their child/get back their possessed child/never had a child to begin with; or they are present only as comic obstructions to the teenager or adult male saving the world in some way. Julie White, the mom in the Transformers movies? Totally underutilized.

 

Those Transformers movies would have been so much more fun if the mom were the hero instead of the kid. Look at her with her baseball bat. Let 'em have it, Judy!

 

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.

BZRK by Michael Grant - review

 

You have got to hand it to Michael Grant - the guy has CHOPS.

I started reading his stuff with the first GONE novel. "Terrific premise," I thought. "Great staging of the classic civilization-reboot-in-the-hands-of-the-children plot." And then, "Jeez that's some STRONG horror. This guy pulls no punches."

Then I read The Call, the first entry in his middle-grade series, The Magnificent 12. I described that book as "Michael Grant popping the top off his can of funny." It's like entry-level Douglas Adams: I hand The Call and The Trap to any kid who answers 'yes' to the questions, "adventure?" and "funny?"

Now for BZRK. This is sci-fi set in the real world: non-dystopian secret-agent-type sci-fi, gritty, dark, and extra-violent. Teenagers are recruited to fight battles so surreptitious that they are invisible to the naked eye.

 

Nonfiction Monday - High Riders, Saints, and Death Cars: A life saved by art by Nicholas Herrera - review

 

It's the fortunate teenager who will come across this beautifully produced art book and its subject, self-taught folk artist Nicholas Herrera. Not only does Herrera describe his process, inspirations, and technique, but he speaks frankly about his wild youth, bad behavior, and the consequences thereof.

 

 

The Wreck, Mi Vida de 25, 1999

 

 

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:

 

Boy21 by Matthew Quick - review

Finley is the only white kid on his basketball team. He's not the tallest, or the most talented, but he is the hardest-working player, and that has earned him his position as starting point guard. That hard work might just one day propel him out of his crime-infested ruin of a hometown.

So is Boy21 a sports novel? Not exactly.

Finley has played and trained - obsessively, single-mindedly - since he was ten years old, when something bad happened to his family and he found that shooting 500 free throws in a row allowed him to not think about it.

Is Boy21 a coming-to-grips-with-crisis novel? Not exactly that either.

Finley has time for only one thing in his life besides ball, and that's his girlfriend, best friend, and only friend, Erin. She is beautiful and the star of the girls' team and has a lot of patience. She gets along with Finley's drunk grandfather, his sorrowful father, and she loves Finley, even though he speaks rarely and breaks up with her every basketball season.

So it's a young love novel? Ok I know I'm getting annoying with this - I'll stop.

Nursery Rhyme Comics: 50 Timeless rhymes from 50 celebrated cartoonists - review

FIFTY ARTISTS FIFTY! It's like a Ziegfeld chorus line up in this fine large-format comic anthology, except hairier. And less able to walk and sing at the same time. Probably really bad at doing anything in unison.

 

From "Hush Little Baby" by Mo Oh. I love her line and her delicate colors.

Fifty of your favorite comics artists have taken on 50 old-fashioned nursery rhymes, resulting in an anthology that is funny, strange, sweet, and surprising. Some of the artists, like Nick Bruel (Bad Kitty) and Marc Rosenthal (Phooey!), are familiar names in children’s publishing; others, like the talented Mo Oh (Lily Renee, Escape Artist, which is not a good example of her sweet and funny style) and Jen Wang (Koko Be Good), are relative newcomers.

Buried Thunder by Tim Bowler - review

The Rowan Tree Inn has sat placidly under its thatched roof at the center of a picturesque forest village for centuries. "Has sat." That hits me wrong. I don't think there's anything incorrect about it, but... I know I don't like it. "Has satten" sounds better, but "satten" is not even a word. All right, I'm going to leave it. This book's not worth fussing over.

When fourteen-year-old Maya moves into the Inn with her parents and older brother, she experiences that same kind of unease. Disturbing visions, eviscerated foxes, and sinister townspeople seem to conspire with scary nighttime noises to keep her thoroughly freaked out. Is she psychic? Is she imagining things?

Nonfiction Monday - Miss Etta and Dr. Claribel: Bringing Matisse to America by Susan Fillion - review

 

Art and history intertwine in the story of Claribel and Etta Cone, two sisters from Baltimore whose intellectual openness and love of art–not to mention tidy personal fortunes–brought them into contact with many pioneering minds of the early 20th century. More than mere art patrons, the sisters forged decades-long friendships with Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo, Pablo Picasso, and especially Henri Matisse.

 

The collection of art that they amassed, which includes many masterpieces of Postimpressionism as well as works from Asia and Africa (now at the Baltimore Museum of Art), liberally illustrates the gracefully designed pages of this book. So too do the author’s colorful Matisse-inspired illustrations, most of which are based on archival photographs. The book is a pleasure not only to behold but to hold, too - prestige paper and meticulous attention to color honor the author, her subjects, and the art.

 

Painting by Susan Fillion based on a famous photo from 1903.

An art educator in Baltimore, Susan Fillion has obviously spent untold hours with the Cone Collection and with the voluminous correspondence and other papers of the sisters. She frequently describes a scene or situation from Claribel’s or Etta’s perspective, an effective and engaging device. In the hands of a writer less intimate with the sisters, this might feel false or presumptive, but Fillion keeps it simple and convincing. A beautiful and accessible gateway to a study of Postimpressionism, and a moving portrait of two extraordinary women.

Adapted from a review that originally appeared in School Library Journal.

 

Today's Nonfiction Monday Round-up is at Emu's Debuts.

 

12 Things to do Before you Crash and Burn by James Proimos - review

Short. Raucous. Undiluted. Pungent. Sneaky. Foulmouthed. Bright.

These words describe one of two things - your favorite uncle or James Proimos's first book for young adults.

Sita's Ramayana by Samhita Arni, illustrated by Moyna Chitrakar - review

The Ramayana is the ancient epic story of the exiled prince Rama and his beautiful wife, Sita. When Sita is kidnapped by a love-struck demon king, her husband’s efforts to rescue her result in a war that eventually involves not only demons and mortals, but also gods, monsters, and even animals. This story has been told and retold, painted, performed and translated in every medium imaginable. 

 

High tech.

 

Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet - review, plus bonus Battle of the Books prediction

Clem was born premature, when his pregnant mother was startled by a heartbroken Nazi pilot shooting her chimney to pieces at the end of World War II in rural Norfolk, England.

Using this birth as a pivot point, Mal Peet tells us the story of Clem's family from the time his grandmother was a girl to nearly the present day. We see the twentieth century work its changes on this family, as wars take men away and bring them back, social movements carry Clem's family out of their indentured hovel and into estate housing and allow Clem to attend an exclusive school, and romantic love finds a foothold.

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...

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys - review, plus Battle of the Books prediction

 

We are well shut of the twentieth century, I think. That was the first thing that crossed my mind as I closed Between Shades of Gray at about 1:30 in the morning last night. Good god. This is historical fiction that grabs you by the throat.

Where are we? We are in Lithuania in June of 1941. Stalin has annexed the country and part of his strategy for integrating it seamlessly into the Soviet Union is to round up anyone who might object and send them to Siberia. 

Who are we? Fifteen-year-old Lina, upper middle class, a gifted artist, with a ten-year-old brother and a beautiful mother. Papa, a university administrator, has already disappeared when soldiers pound on the door and throw Lina's family into a truck.

Chime by Franny Billingsley - review, plus Battle of the Books prediction

 

What is happening to 17-year-old Briony Larkin and the miserable fenside village of Swampsea? Briony is beautiful and intelligent, neglected by her father after the death of her beloved stepmother. Possessed of a supernatural gift that allows her to see and converse with the nature spirits that surround her village, before she died, her stepmother commanded Briony to avoid the swamp where these spirits live lest something terrible happen.

To make an already joyless life considerably worse, Briony is responsible for her difficult twin sister Rose, who, due to a blow to the head when the girls were seven, exhibits symptoms and behaviors similar to those associated with autism spectrum disorder.

Then a handsome boy comes to the village, and with him progress: the swamp is to be drained and Swampsea to become the terminus of a London rail line. As Swampsea struggles to - belately - join the twentieth century, Briony struggles with new roles that she both fears and desires. I'm always looking for neat coming-of-age metaphors, and the advent of the modern age is a good one. Will Briony allow herself to fall in love? Will she learn to control her power? Will she figure out the deceptions that have been perpetrated upon her, leaving her full of frustrated, self-abasing rage? 

Pink Smog by Francesca Lia Block - review

Louise at thirteen is friendless and flat-chested. Bad luck and worse decisions have torn apart the cozy canyon life she shared with her parents, B-movie director Charlie Bat and starlet-turned-homemaker Brandy-Lynn, and now she lives in a courtyard condo down below the smog line. Instead of her tiny, hippie elementary school, she's attending a big public junior high where everything seems like a competition. And then, after one too many drunken arguments with Brandy-Lynn, her dad leaves.

Pink Smog: Becoming Weetzie Bat is the prequel to Francesca Lia Block's popular Weetzie Bat stories - this is Weetzie before she becomes fully Weetzified: not yet blonde, only partially sparkly, showing barely a hint of the wistful siren to come. With some of the glitter swept away, the emphasis is on Louise's feelings and encounters, which have always been well-written, but can be overshadowed by the feathered, flowing, Mod Podge fabric of Weetzie's later life. Heartbroken, teased, neglected, and possibly hexed, Louise begins to learn about risks that are worth taking and people who are worth cherishing. She is a peaceful child who, when faced with cruelty and loss, develops into a young woman who is pliant but not wimpy, strong but not aggressive.

A fresh gem for Weetzie's fans, Pink Smog stands comfortably alone as well. It would serve as a Gateway to Francesca Lia Block (which is an arch a lot of us are happy to have passed through - Jezebel once called Weetzie Bat ""The Book for Girls Who Ended Up Taking a Gay Dude to Prom" - I myself took my best friend's much-older brother), and although marketed to grades 9 and up, this book could be wise comfort to a reader as young as 5th grade whose family has undergone sudden change.

A version of this review appeared in VOYA a few months ago.

Pink Me: Librarian to the Stars! Jennifer Lawrence Edition (special appearance by Brad Pitt)

I feel like Tony Shalhoub's character in Galaxy Quest: "Heh heh," he chuckles, mentally adding up the squad of enemy alien soldiers guarding the [whatever], the rock monster the crew had encountered on a recent visit to a desolate planet, and the ship's transporter mechanism. "I just had this really interesting idea."

I've just done a little idle internal arithmetic myself. I read a lot, right? Mostly kids' and YA books. It's ridiculous. And it's gotten to be I kind of feel like I'm cheating when I take time out for the essentials: Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue, September Vogue, and Go Fug Yourself. Your essentials may not be my essentials. There's room for all of us here.

 

But my consumption of gossipy fashiony stuff means that I do kind of keep an eye on the traffic at the intersection of these two interests of mine - namely, when YA (and sometimes kids') novels are made into movies. Like... Ooh there goes Oscar nominee Viola Davis again - she's going to be in the movie they're finally going to make of Ender's Game. Hm. I wonder just exactly where Viola Davis fits into Ender's Game. Ugh here's another mouth-breathing Hemsworth: which YA heartthrob part is he going to be panting all over this time? You know. Everybody does that.

And you can't help wondering, you know, if you somehow found yourself sharing a First Class row with say Brad Pitt (I could get bumped up, it could happen!), what would you end up talking about?

 

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. 

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews - review (plus bonus rant, again)

 

Rules are for sissies. Yes, yes they are. Especially, I would say, in Young Adult fiction. All this hoo-ha and malarkey about people debating What is Young Adult lately - with so many grownups reading adventure fiction like The Hunger Games, why is one novel with a teen protagonist (let's just say Going Bovine) marketed to teens and why is another (call it Huge) marketed to adults - and as far as I'm concerned the fastest, funniest, most wrenching, most challenging stuff is YA and all the rest is non-age-specific genre fiction.

Mad at me yet? Read more!

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 Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler - review

I spent the weekend without Internet access. Yup. No service where we were staying, no bars on the phone, and a 3G indicator that winked in and out when the wind blew through the pines.

As it happens, I needed to get ahold of someone, and so I was a little infuriated by this lack of connectivity. But I was also reading The Future of Us, a sort of post-dated YA sci-fi novel set in 1996, so it was kind of apropos.

The Downside of Being Up by Alan Lawrence Sitomer - review

Given all the news recently about the inconceivably arrogant, morally chthonic behavior of certain people in central PA - people who make me type in all caps, people whose f-ing job it was to teach teenage athletes about discipline and integrity and in the process turn them into admirable men, and yet who somehow valued winning or the status quo or... something - I mean, I just can't fathom what possible motive there could be for keeping silent - over the safety and well-being of a legion of children...

Yes. Given that, I would like to offer up a healthy, happy novel about a healthy, normal boy, a boy fortunately unmolested by predatory old men - a boy whose only real tormentor is the tail that wags his dog.

That's right - I'm talking about Bobby's boner. Allow me to relate a conversation I had with my boys.

Gossip Girl: Psycho Killer by Cecily von Ziegesar - review

 

I have a few things to confess before we begin.

1. I picked up this book because I saw it on Go Fug Yourself.

2. I like serial killers. I mean I like BOOKS about serial killers - do not start writing me from jail, you murdering fiends. And I like clothes. So I decided to read this book because I was in the mood for some uptown Serial Mom action.

3. Errr... you know what I mean.

4. I decided to review this book in order to show that I am not all Snobby McTyraHater and I bow to no-one when it comes to a healthy appetite for escapist kitsch.

5. Lastly, I have never previously read anything written by Ms. von Ziegesar, and I've never seen the show. But you knew that.

Modelland by Tyra Banks - review

Books can be badly-written in any number of ways. The characters may be poorly defined, the plot predictable. The pace may stutter. The author may have O.D.-ed on simile, or rely too heavily on certain phrases ("His scar prickled like fire"). Or the author may assume that his or her readers are total idiots, and load the text with unnecessary clarification. ("'What are YOU doing here?!' she exclaimed, a look of surprise on her face.") A Tragic Overuse of Capitalized Nouns may strangle the reader in Unwarranted Portentousness.

Tyra Banks doesn't really do any of these things. FYI. I mention this in case you, like me, had some kind of suspicion that a person with no apparent experience writing fiction might be, I don't know... TERRIBLE at it. I'm terrible at it, and I write all the damn time.

 

But she's not good at it, either.

 

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.

Even librarians have a lot to learn

I actually took a whole lot of notes at the SLJ Leadership Summit in Alexandria this week. Do I sound surprised? I'm kind of surprised. I've been doing the same thing for kind of a long time now - 7 years at the public library, 5 years writing kidlit book reviews, and I guess I've gotten pretty complacent. Arrogant. Lazy. You pick. So these two back-to-back conferences I've been to, KidLitCon and the SLJ Summit, with their arrays of high-functioning, extra-smart, thoughtful and energetic speakers, kind of rocked my world.

First of all! Mary Ann Scheuer has posted about the apps presentation that we did at KidLitCon with Betsy Bird. She's going to be writing quite a bit more about what makes a good app in the next few weeks, and I will be following avidly.

Next, here are a couple of things I took away from the SLJ Leadership Summit, so ably and affably hosted by Brian Kenney and Rocco Staino. Rocco had to do some inspired vamping for time when presenters suffered the waking nightmare known as Why Won't The Tech Work I Tested it Just This Morning Dammit. The number and variety of devices the projector in that ballroom had to hook up with, I hope it took a Valium and a dose of Flagyl afterwards.

 

The accidental genius of Weasel High by Rick Detorie - review

Slipping into the boy-friendly spot between Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a new young adult novel by Rick Detorie, creator of One Big Happy, a strip you may have seen on your newspaper's comics page.

Not a graphic novel but in fact a liberally illustrated prose novel (with extremely short paragraphs), The accidental genius of Weasel High is about a 14-year-old boy named Larkin navigating his freshman year of high school. Larkin's not too bad off - he has a couple of good friends and nobody picks on him much. He has a dreadful sister who manages to throw things into sharp relief, when she's not actually throwing things, and parents who are basically ok even if they are generally clueless and embarrassing.

 

Bigger than a Bread Box by Laurel Snyder - special guest review!

 

I love my friends, and when I think of the friends I have, I realize what a fortunate person I am.

First: A few years ago, I got to chatting with a brilliant, funny author at the annual KidLitCon - Laurel Snyder. It turned out that in addition to sharing certain opinions, vices, and an inappropriate sense of humor, we share weird geographic coincidences: she grew up a couple blocks from where I live now, and in high school she moved to the neighborhood where I grew up. Her friends were the younger siblings of my friends. When she lived in freakin' Iowa, her downstairs neighbor was a woman I've been friends with since birth. We might actually be the same person.

So I can't review her book.

Next: Also a few years ago, we got a new librarian at work. Yes I know that's a weird construction, but that's how we say it. We got a new librarian. She had the same name as me! Then we found out that we both have a kid the same age, a kid who loved to read and went to a Baltimore City charter school; and we also discovered that we both read a lot of teen fiction, and have almost the same taste! In books, accessories, food, you name it. We might actually be the same person. On Pink Me, I call her Eerily Similar Paula, and she's helped me out before.

Today, she and her Eerily Similar Kid, Thespian Girl, have contributed a mother-daughter review of Laurel's new book, Bigger than a Bread Box.

 

 
 

ESP: How did you get your hands on an advance copy of Bigger Than a Bread Box, Thespian Girl?
Okay, so me and Daddy were walking around at the ALA conference, and the lady at Random House said “Oh honey, I have a few books that you might like!” and I picked one up and started reading the back of it. Meanwhile, Daddy poked me in the ribcage and said “You have to get this book. Look at the dedication. It’s for Baltimore.” I said okay and I took it even though I didn’t really like the cover. I thought it might be a murder mystery or something about wizards.  

ESP: What made you read it anyway?
Well, it was on my shelf and you told me I needed to read the next day and not watch any “stupid TV shows”. I read the first page and I was like “huh.” Then I read the next page, and the next page and the next page….”

ESP: I remember you read a part out loud to me. You said “this author really is from Baltimore. I can tell because of the detail when she describes Rebecca’s row house.”

There weren’t doors or walls between the downstairs rooms of our row house. The flooring just changed colors every ten feet or so. You knew you were out of the kitchen/dining room when the fake brick linoleum stopped and the pale blue carpet started. Then you were out of the living room and into the front room when the blue carpet changed to brown. That was like a lot of row houses were in Baltimore, like tunnels.

ESP: Kind of like our house?
Yes, quite!  

ESP: So that made you keep reading? What’s it really about?
Yes. And the book got better and better as it went on. I read it mostly in one day while you were at work. It’s about a twelve year-old girl named Rebecca. She lives in Baltimore with her mom and dad and her toddler brother Lew. Her mom and dad have been arguing a lot, and then her mom decides it’s time to “take a break.” She drives Rebecca and Lew all the way to Atlanta, Georgia to stay with their grandmother. She doesn’t bother to tell Rebecca that they’ll be staying for a long time and that she’ll have to go to school there too. During the first night her and her mom get into an argument. Rebecca misses her dad. She gets mad and runs upstairs to the attic, where she discovers a collection of bread boxes. She only knows that’s what they are because they say “bread” on them. While she’s poking around up there, she says she wishes she had a book. She starts opening the bread boxes. They’re all empty except for the last one, which, coincidentally, has an Agatha Christie book in it. She brings the box down to her room.  

ESP: Does she know right away that it’s magic?
No. She figures it out that night when she’s feeling homesick. She’s crying about all the things she misses about Baltimore. She says “I wish there were gulls” into her pillow, and then she hears a skreeeee noise coming from the breadbox. There are two seagulls inside! 

ESP: So what does she wish for next? Is it a unicorn?
No, and I don’t want to ruin the story. She can only get things that are real. And that fit inside the bread box.  

ESP: So it’s a book about a magic bread box? Is that how you would describe it?
Not just about a magic bread box. It’s about school drama, family, and how unfair it is when adults make decisions for you that you don’t like.  

ESP: How did the book make you feel when you were reading it?
I was excited and on edge! I couldn’t guess what was going to happen at all. She (Laurel Snyder) did a great job with the entire story. There wasn’t too much of anything or too little of anything. It was a perfect book. The ending is a good set up for a sequel, hint-hint!

 

Paula is a good friend and I want to thank her and Thespian Girl thoroughly for this thoughtful take on a terrific book. My only regret is that when either of them starts writing books herself, I won't be able to review them. Maybe I'll get Laurel to do it!

Here's some more help, from 12-year-old kid named Lily, who made this beautiful book trailer for Bigger than a Bread Box:

 

I swear, tween girls should be running this country. They are so smart!

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.

 

Ghetto Cowboy by Greg Neri - review

 

What does it take to break a cycle? To pluck a kid from a life hemmed in by poverty and lack of opportunity and show him wider horizons? What does it take to convince a kid that cultivating respect and demonstrating responsibility are worth the trouble?

In some communities it's chess. Or ballroom dancing. Debate. Not infrequently, it's song - a low-overhead activity, not a lot of equipment needed. But in the Fletcher Street neighborhood of Philadelphia, deep in a bad, bad neighborhood, it's horses. Dedicated adults tend an improbable set of stables and barns, teach the neighborhood kids how to care for the horses and how to ride, provide a safe place and a sense of usefulness for children who might otherwise find themselves in trouble or in danger or both.

Into this backdrop Greg Neri drops Cole, short for Coltrane, a teenager from Detroit who has been quietly falling into truancy and other bad habits. Not a fighter, nor a criminal, he has merely been losing touch with school and with his single mother. Cole's overwhelmed mama makes the difficult decision to send the boy to live with his father, a father he's never met.

You see where this is headed, don't you? Cole's dad is one of Philadelphia's cowboys, a gruff, uncompromising man who lives for the horses and is unprepared for family. A crisis looms as the city attempts to close down the stables. But in the end, Cole and his dad come to terms over caring for the beasts, prove themselves to each other, and even develop a certain amount of affection. Cole learns about hard work and self-respect.

We have been down this trail so many times before that I am a bit torn: does the fact that this time we are in the city and on a horse make up for the fact that almost any reader will have seen its resolution from a mile away? Am I more interested in the stables and the adults who frequent them than I am in Cole's rather muted sorrow and rebelliousness? Does the sheer unlikeliness of a crowd of cowboys in urban Philadelphia distract from the family drama?

Maybe. But. In the end, I will recommend Ghetto Cowboy, partly because we are low low low on realistic YA fiction for boys nowadays, partly because the horse thing is so damn unlikely, but I think mostly because I think boys will recognize gentle Cole, a boy who could have dropped out of school and faded carelessly into idleness, who only needed one extraordinary thing to wake him to his potential.

Ghetto Cowboy is Greg Neri's follow-up to last year's grim but great graphic novel Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty. They share a little sense of detachment and a sharply observant main character. Both books are also inspired by real people, in this case the black urban cowboys of Philadelphia and New York City.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and read it on my Sony Reader.

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.

Nonfiction Monday: Flesh and Blood So Cheap by Albert Marrin - review

In all the brouhaha over last week's Wall Street Journal article about the apparent excess of darkness in young adult literature, I didn't see a lot of people admitting the fact that some kids - and some adults - just like to read about dreadful stuff. The sweetest looking old lady in the library will come to me inquiring about Chelsea Cain's next book. The mom with a toddler on one hip and a five-year-old trailing behind is on a Jack the Ripper kick. The lacrosse goalie in her polo shirt and bouncy ponytail is looking for "something like Isaac's Storm."

Serial killers, natural disasters, industrial accidents - I should do a display or something: "Secretly Freaky Readers Recommend."

 

The Shattering by Karen Healey - review

 

Oh, the pleasures of an old-fashioned Something Is Not Right in the Town of Stepford/Sandford/Antonio Bay/Milburn/Celebration novel. It's a premise that allows an author to explore themes of conformity and artifice while creating a claustrophobic, paranoid atmosphere in which the protagonist becomes increasingly convinced that the familiar, friendly fixtures of his or her youth might be harboring Terrible Secrets.

Not a bad metaphor for a teen novel, wouldn't you say? And perfect reading for a hot summer night.

Spoiled by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan - review

 

Deathbed confession!

Long-lost sibling!

Exclusive private school full of duplicitous bitches carrying designer bags!

Hot guys - gorgeous girls!

Shopping!

And you know, that's really all I need to do to booktalk this book to teen girls. Teen girls? Sure. Also tween girls, grownup girls, and a select few guys I know. We kind of love all those novels with fancy clothes and scheming.

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: