15 days through the rest of this fiscal year, and another 15 days next fiscal year.
On the other hand, no libraries are closing, no full-time employees were let go, and in terms of this blog, I’m hoping this will mean that with the extra time off (albeit unpaid), I’ll have more energy to post.
Anyway, I’ve had a post comparing the writing styles in Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith and Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice sitting as a draft for a couple of weeks because I’m having trouble articulating exactly what I want to say.
As far as YA fiction goes, there hasn’t been anything so spectacular that I’ve just *had* to blog about it. The best was probably Shooting Star by Fredrick McKissack Jr., only it was so well-written that I couldn’t actually bring myself to finish reading it. (Also, the half that I did read were more really good than spectacular.) Jomo Rodgers is a high school football player who is starting to attract some attention from recruiters, but he is not quite big enough to be a real blue chip recruit. The only way he can bulk up, Jomo starts to think, is by using steroids. McKissack had me rooting for Jomo and made me so attached to him that I couldn’t bear to read the entire book and see his life unravel.
In brief, here are some books that I did finish reading and which I meant to blog about but never got around to reviewing, starting from back in August.
All the Broken Pieces by Ann Burg
The cover, I have to say, is perfect for the book. I can’t see many teens picking it up with a lot of pushing, but it is beautifully written and very much deserving of all the praise it’s received.
Gray Baby by Scott Loring Sanders
Started off strong, then became muddled, overly ambitious, relied on too much coincidence, and concluded with a resolution that wrapped everything up too neatly and prettily.
Exclusively Chloe by J. A. Yang
A good pick for Robin Palmer fans.
Blood Promise by Richelle Mead
Long. Way too long.
Dragonfly by Julia Golding
I just read this last night, then saw Tasha’s rave review of it at Kids Lit this morning. I am on the fence about this book right now, because there were parts that I liked (royals with a sense of responsibility and duty!), parts that I didn’t (the evil king being just Eeeevil, and his sister, who is cruel, ferocious, can handle a sword, and did I mention ugly?), and a rather slow start (for reasons I can understand) before lots of action and adventure. In some ways, I found it more reminiscent of fairy tale retellings than anything else.
And, um, I know I also read other YA books, but I can’t remember what they are right now.
Finally, two links:
“There is a very big difference between writing for children and writing for young adults. The first thing I would say is that “Young Adult” does not mean “Older Children”, it really does mean young but adult, and the category should be seen as a subset of adult literature, not of children’s books.” – Garth Nix, in an interview at Tor.com
So here’s the deal with me and weather.
I grew up in Hawaii distrusting the weatherpeople on the news because it seemed like they were wrong more often than they were right. All their talk about low pressure systems and fronts and other things I knew nothing about didn’t seem to improve the accuracy of their predictions. I went to college in Ohio, where I was initially impressed by the weather forecasts (it rained when it was supposed to! And stopped when they said it would!), before deciding the weatherpeople on television news, at least, really were idiots, it didn’t matter where you were, because they’d say things along the lines of “Stay indoors if you can because of the windchill” while reporting from…outdoors. Watching other weatherpeople broadcasting live on location from the outdoors in the midst of some hurricanes a few years later did not improve my opinion of them. (Meteorologists who didn’t forecast weather on the news, though, they were okay.)
In other words, my meteorological literacy was next to nil and I was therefore the perfect audience for Dennis DiClaudio’s Man vs. Weather: How to Be Your Own Weatherman.
DiClaudio is a comedian, not a meteorologist. He’s the kind of guy who writes things like “Do you know how many different gases make up our atmosphere? Do you have any idea? I personally do not. But I have a feeling it’s a whole, whole lot. Anyway, we’re going to focus mainly on the important ones that people care about. The other ones can suck it.” (p. 14-15) Acting as a sort of tour guide, and anthropomorphizing things like water molecules, he begins by leading readers through the water cycle and atmosphere, knowledge you need to understand, well, weather. Or, Weather, as DiClaudio writes it. Because you need to know about the water cycle and how wind impacts it, and how the atmosphere affects the wind, and therefore the water cycle, before you can move on to things like fronts and tornadoes and so on. And although DiClaudio’s chart of the Fujita Scale for measuring tornadoes claims that, in addition to “devastating damage,” during an F4 tornado, you can expect “cows turned into deadly projectiles; portal to Oz beginning to open,” there is a lot of actual scientific knowledge to be found in the pages of Man vs. Weather.
Weather turns out to be just as complicated as it seemed before I read Man vs. Weather, and, yes, it only makes sense that weather forecasts sometimes are not accurate. It operates on different scales (in an air circulation kind of way, though I suppose the phrase does apply to things like the metric system), does weird things, and there are still weather events scientists don’t fully understand. The humor occasionally wore thin, especially in the latter chapters, but DiClaudio does a good job explaining things, and doing so in a logical order. He acknowledges that Weather is complicated and confusing, so certain sections may require multiple readings before things really start to make sense.
The one disappointing thing about the book is that it lacks both a glossary and an index. Seriously, for a book that comes across as a slightly demented version of the Magic School Bus for older readers, with a sarcastic Mr. Frizzle teaching the class without a bus—and I mean this as a compliment because the Magic School Bus rocks—a glossary and index would come in handy.
Book source: public library.
Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.
In case you missed any of the WBBT interviews, here they are for your reading pleasure.
Monday, November 16
Courtney Sheinmel at Bildungsroman
Derek Landy at Finding Wonderland
Mary E. Pearson at Miss Erin
Megan Whalen Turner at Hip Writer Mama
Frances Hardinge at Fuse Number 8
Jim Ottaviani at Chasing Ray
Tuesday November 17
Ann Marie Fleming at Chasing Ray
Laurie Faria Stolarz at Bildungsroman
Patrick Carman at Miss Erin
Jacqueline Kelly at Hip Writer Mama
Dan Santat at Fuse Number 8
Nova Ren Suma at Shelf Elf
Wednesday, November 18
Sy Montgomery Pt 1 at Chasing Ray
Jacqui Robbins at Bildungsroman
Sarwat Chadda at Finding Wonderland
Cynthia Leitich Smith at Hip Writer Mama
Beth Kephart at Shelf Elf
And BONUS – an interview with Annie Barrows at Great Kid Books.
Thursday, November 19
Sy Montgomery Pt 2 at Chasing Ray
Laini Taylor at Shelf Elf
Jim DiBartolo at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Amanda Marrone at Writing & Ruminating
Thomas Randall at Bildungsroman
Michael Hague at Fuse Number 8
Friday, November 20
Lisa Schroeder at Writing & Ruminating
Alan DeNiro at Shaken & Stirred
Joan Holub at Bildungsroman
Pam Bachorz at Mother Reader
Sheba Karim at Finding Wonderland
R.L. LaFevers at Hip Writer Mama
we’re going to get a Christopher Pike mystery collection next, right?
[Um, what am I supposed to mention here as a disclaimer? The only link and picture I can find for the book is Amazon.com, but I am not an Amazon affiliate. Way back in the day (okay, the '90s), I'm pretty sure I bought my copies of the first two books from Waldenbooks.]
We won’t be participating in this tour (sad 
), but I’m looking forward to reading these interviews.
Monday
Jim Ottaviani at Chasing Ray
Courtney Sheinmel at Bildungsroman
Derek Landy at Finding Wonderland
Mary E. Pearson at Miss Erin
Megan Whalen Turner at Hip Writer Mama
Frances Hardinge at Fuse Number 8
Tuesday
Ann Marie Fleming at Chasing Ray
Laurie Faria Stolarz at Bildungsroman
Patrick Carman at Miss Erin
Jacqueline Kelly at Hip Writer Mama
Dan Santat at Fuse Number 8
Nova Ren Suma at Shelf Elf
Wednesday
Sy Montgomery Pt 1 at Chasing Ray
Jacqui Robbins at Bildungsroman
Sarwat Chadda at Finding Wonderland
Cynthia Leitich Smith at Hip Writer Mama
Beth Kephart at Shelf Elf
Thursday
Sy Montgomery Pt 2 at Chasing Ray
Laini Taylor at Shelf Elf
Jim DiBartolo at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Amanda Marrone at Writing & Ruminating
Thomas Randall at Bildungsroman
Michael Hague at Fuse Number 8
Friday
Lisa Schroeder at Writing & Ruminating
Alan DeNiro at Shaken & Stirred
Joan Holub at Bildungsroman
Pam Bachorz at Mother Reader
Sheba Karim at Finding Wonderland
Robin LaFevers at Hip Writer Mama
One of the points Bill Schutt makes in his book Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures is that there is much we don’t know about sanguivores, or creatures that feed on blood. They are small and rare, shrouded in misconceptions, but also remarkable in the beauty of their evolutions. Schutt, a bat biologist, proves to be an ideal guide in demystifying lives of sanguivores and explaining their impact on our lives.
Beginning with vampire bats, Schutt explores the world of sanguivores, which also includes leeches, ticks, chiggers, bed bugs, and candiru. Among the many things I learned from reading Dark Banquet are that there are three species of vampire bats, the leech Hirudo medicinalis actually received FDA approval as a medical device (not to mention probably much more than I ever wanted to know about the historical uses of leeches), and there is a species of candiru known as Vendellia wieneri. More seriously, these sanguivores evolved for a reason. In describing how they feed, reproduce, and interact with their ecosystem, Schutt also explains why they are so important. Many people think the various sanguivores are scary and/or dangerous, but Schutt elucidates why this should not be the case.
Schutt does assume some degree of scientific literacy among readers. Not as much as I thought, say, Carl Zimmer’s Microcosm requires, but definitely more than something like Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. (Which is not a knock on Bryson, since I enjoyed his book.) While passionate about his subject, Schutt does not take himself too seriously, writing with ease and humor. (Schutt also uses parenthetical asides even more often than I do, she adds parenthetically.) The illustrations by Patricia Wynne illuminate Schutt’s text as well as often providing additional humor.
Dark Banquet has a mostly a North American and European focus, but then, the narrative begins with a discussion of vampire bats, which are only found in Mexico, Central America, South America, and two Caribbean islands. Still, I can’t help but wish there was more information about medicine and beliefs about blood in other parts of the world, particularly in Part Two, which takes a closer look at blood itself.
Overall, though, this is a sometimes disgusting (okay, so this is a personal judgment coming from someone who admittedly doesn’t like the sight of blood, but how else to describe some parts, like p. 163?), always fascinating glimpse at a few species who don’t receive the appreciation Schutt demonstrates they deserve.
If any of this sounds interesting, in addition to reading Dark Banquet, I highly recommend visiting Schutt’s website. There you’ll find basic information about and color pictures of the creatures described in the book, as well as extras, including a section on blood recipes. Bon appétit.
Book source: public library.
Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.
It had been Ellie and Corrie’s idea, going bush for a few days over the Christmas holidays. They gathered some friends and supplies, went camping, and returned to find their homes deserted, their families missing. A fax Ellie finds at Corrie’s house seems to confirm the group’s worst fear: Australia has been invaded by a foreign army. The country is at war.
The fax from Corrie’s dad tells them to go bush again, and, living in the country, Ellie and some others in the group do have the skills they need to survive. After a few harrowing trips into town to do some reconnaissance and check on their homes, they head back out to the place they had been camping when everything went down. But soon they feel the need to do more than just survive. They want to fight the invaders.
John Marsden’s Tomorrow, When the War Began, the first novel in the Tomorrow series, is absolutely riveting. It’s told by Ellie, elected by the group to write down what has happened as a way of “telling ourselves that we mean something, that we matter. That the things we’ve done have made a difference. I don’t know how big a difference, but a difference. Writing it down means we might be remembered.” (p. 2)
Ellie tells us from the beginning that she is recounting events in chronological order and we know from the back cover that the country had been invaded during the original camping trip, so I did not feel impatient as I read this first part of the book, waiting for the action to begin. And there is a lot of action. Marsden writes in a style that is immediate and accessible, making Tomorrow, When the War Began a fast-paced read, exciting and full of tension. Chilling, too, in how realistic and plausible everything seems, how people are forced to change, and with a lingering sense of fear as the group can only hope that all their families are still alive, held with the rest of the town in the Showground. That their actions will make a difference. That they will all survive.
Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire. A film version of Tomorrow, When the War Began is currently in production.
It’s another weird display from Gayle, your artistically challenged YA Librarian. I have to say making this display was quite fun. I haven’t utilized crayons in ages. Now that I’ve discovered glittery crayons my displays may all look like some random kid’s sidewalk chalk drawings. But then again, I think kids have more color sense than I do. And they probably could utilize a banner creating program like PrintShop (old school software) better than me.
So what are the books on display you’re probably wondering. The short list is at the bottom of this post, there’s many many more that could fit this theme. Feel free to add to my list in the comments section as all you wonderful, resourceful people always do.
If you’re as old as me you probably remember the REM song “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” When reading some of the books on this list, I can’t help but think of this song.
I like a good “what if…” scenario book as much as the next person. Watching cable programming about 2012 draws me back to the genre. I know it’s supposed to be make believe and entertaining, but I can’t help but check my cupboards for emergency supplies whenever I read one of these books.
Fever, 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Atherton series by Patrick Carman
Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
City of Ember by Jeanne Du Prau
Alphabet of Dreams by Susan Fletcher
Gone and Hunger by Michael Grant
Epic and Saga by Connor Kostick
The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
Encyclopedia of the End: Mysterious Death in Fact, Fancy, Folklore and More by Deborah Noyes
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett
Life as we Knew It and The Dead and Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Nation by Terry Prachett
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Unwind by Neil Shusterman
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
In spite of its abrupt ending, I enjoyed Reality Check, Peter Abrahams’ new YA mystery. While the voice occasionally struck me as being more like that of a middle grade novel than YA (and this is definitely a YA novel), it’s very easy to read, with a likable protagonist. I’ll be recommending it to teens, and not just those looking for a mystery.
High school classes are just a means to an end for Cody. He needs to pass his classes to play football, and said classes aren’t worth the effort of trying to get good grades when he finds it hard to comprehend much of what is being taught. Staying eligible is all that matters, especially now that sophomore year is over. Junior year, after all, is when Cody can really catch the attention of college football coaches.
Cody’s girlfriend, on the other hand?
“I got a B in calc,” Clea said.
“Wow,” said Cody. There were two kids taking calc in the whole school, Clea—a sophomore like Cody—and some brain in the senior class. No one thought of Clea as a brain. She was just good at everything: striker on the varsity soccer team, class president, assistant editor of the lit mag; and the most beautiful girl in the school—in the whole state, in Cody’s opinion.
But a real person, as he well knew, capable of annoyance, for example. When Clea got annoyed, her right eyebrow did this little fluttering thing, like now. “Wow?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. He himself wouldn’t ever get as far as calc, not close. “Pretty awesome.”
She shook her head. “I’ve never had a B.”
For a second or two, Cody didn’t quite get her meaning; he’d scored very few Bs himself. Then it hit him. “All As, every time?”
She nodded. (p. 5)
After a cheap shot injures Cody’s knee and ends his football season, Cody drops out of school and starts working full-time. One morning, the local newspaper’s headline catches his attention: “Local Girl Missing.”
Clea’s rich father has sent her to a boarding school in Vermont, and though Cody broke up with Clea, he is still worried. The next morning, Cody receives a letter in the mail. Clea sent it before she disappeared, and there’s something about the letter that bothers Cody. Is he reading too much into the letter, or is it really a clue? Determined to find Clea, Cody decides to go to Vermont himself in order to find her.
The mystery element of Reality Check does take a while to develop, but in the meantime, Abrahams fleshes out Cody, making him sympathetic and giving readers a great deal of insight into his character. I particularly liked how Cody doesn’t think of himself as a smart guy. Unlike many of the sleuths in children’s and YA mysteries, who are obviously bright and/or overachievers, Cody is an average guy—below average, academically—who gets involved in the investigation because of how much he cares for Clea. And where Cody’s poor grades and decision to drop out are concerned, the tone of the narrator is pretty matter-of-fact; they’re not presented as negatives or something to be ashamed of, just as part of who Cody is. (Okay, and the story wouldn’t work if Cody was in school, because then he couldn’t go to Vermont in the middle of a semester.) Once the mystery surrounding Clea’s disappearance emerges, it is suitably suspenseful and the motivations of the main players’ plausible. While I don’t think this is a great book, I did like it and would also like to see more YA books similar to it.
Among the reviews: The Compulsive Reader, Oops…Wrong Cookie, Reading Rants!, The Undercover Book Lover.
Book source: library.
Today’s One Shot World Tour travels to Southeast Asia. For a complete roundup, visit Chasing Ray.
Here are four mostly English-language books from the Philippines. The first book, and the only novel, is the weakest, so I probably shouldn’t start off with it, but I’m going in the order in which I read the books.
Tonyo’s family is poor. His mother becomes an OCW—an overseas contract worker—in Hong Kong with the hopes of earning more money for her family than she could have earned in the Philippines. And while she is able to send home money and gifts for the family, Tonyo is forced to drop out of school to take care of the chores his mother had previously been responsible for, and his father turns into a drunkard, beating Tonyo and making life miserable for Tonyo and his younger siblings. Tonyo decides that his only course of action is to find his mother in Hong Kong and bring her back home.
Carla M. Pacis’ writing in OCW: A Young Man’s Search for His Mother is smooth and easy to read, the story fast-paced with short chapters. Which makes its idealism and the depiction of most of the secondary characters that much more glaring and disappointing. On Tonyo’s first day alone in Manila, he’s robbed by three street kids, who then allow him to tag along with them and basically become part of the gang as they rob people and sell drugs. But despite all the robbing, heroic Tonyo manages to avoid the temptations the other boys fall prey to and his only desire is to find his mother. From this point on, practically every person he meets is goodhearted and helps him out on his quest. And don’t get me started on the ending.
The publisher says OCW is for intermediate grades to high school, but I think it’s most suitable for upper elementary readers, in the US, in terms of reading level, and there’s nothing inappropriate for that age level. Despite my criticisms, OCW is still noteworthy in that it tackles a subject rarely discussed in America, albeit in what is probably an unrealistic manner. A much better offering from Pacis can be found in Bagets: An Anthology of Filipino Young Adult Fiction.
Full disclosure: I have never been a fan of short stories. But I enjoyed many of the stories in these last three books, and actually finished all the English-language stories, something I don’t think can be said about any of the American anthologies I’ve picked up. Part of it probably comes down to length—the longest story in any of these anthologies was still under 20 pages, and many of the stories were around 10 pages or shorter. But there was also something pleasingly straightforward about the stories, a focus on story and a lack of pretension that I liked.
Bagets, which Pacis co-edited with Eugene Y. Evasco, is a collection of 16 stories, eight written in Filipino and eight in English. Pacis also wrote an introduction to the second half of the collection, the English-language section, called “From Behind the Bookshelf: Literature for Young Adults in the Philippines.” In it, she writes, “The genre of literature for young adults (YA) is still in its infant stages in the Philippines—even younger than its sibling, children’s literature—and not yet fully understood or integrated into the academic and literary circles.” (p. 87) In addition, “No subject is taboo or inappropriate in young adult literature. In the US and UK today, the line between YA and adult literature is almost invisible in terms of the themes and subject matter that authors choose. This is not the same with Filipino YA literature that can be characterized as being conservative.” (p. 89)
Pacis’ contribution, “There Was This Really Fat Girl…,” is one of several stories about prom night. Ana is overweight and has her eye on a prom dress that won’t look good on her unless she loses weight. It’s a brief story, but contains more toughness and harsh truths than did OCW.
The other two stories that deal with a prom are, respectively, the one I consider to the the strongest in the collection and the one that is my favorite. “Cinderella and the Night of the Prom” by Rachelle Tesoro I liked the most because of its bursts of sarcastic humor and several unexpected twists as Darlene relates the details of her prom night with the date a friend arranged for her. The standout, “Sweet and Tender Hooligans,” by Mae Astrid Tobias, is the only story written from a male perspective, and it’s also about the oldest protagonist, a college student named Martin who falls in love with a childhood playmate. Ann Louise is one year younger than Martin. Her strict mother does not want her to date, but Ann Louise has a boyfriend at school.
I don’t know how Ann Louise managed to convince me to play along, but I did. Together we arranged conspiracies to hide her relationship with Baseball Guy from her mother. Every time they arranged to go out, I would be her cover. (p. 147)
Even on prom night.
Other than the final story, “Girl Meets Girl” by Agay C. Llanera, in which Anya wonders if she is falling in love with another girl, there was a rather disappointing lack of diversity in Bagets. All the stories are contemporary realistic fiction and felt similar in authorial style and voice, as well as in terms of the characters and conflicts. I think part of the reason “Sweet and Tender Hooligans” stands out is because it’s written in a different style than the other seven stories. The pace more measured, the narration more deliberate and careful, and the span of time it covers is longer. As for the characters and conflicts, the female narrators seemed largely interchangeable, all from seemingly well-off families. (They all actually reminded me of Vicenza from Melissa de la Cruz’s Fresh Off the Boat.) Which is, perhaps, a bit harsh, because the stories were well-written overall. Perhaps the key is to not read all the English language stories in one sitting, like I did.
Neither Nine Supernatural Stories, edited by April Timbol Yap and Lara Saguisag, nor Afraid: The Best Phillipine Ghost Stories, edited by Danton Remoto, were put together for teens, but both can easily be read by teens interested in the supernatural. Nine Supernatural Stories and Afraid include the most diversity in style and setting. While Afraid is comprised entirely of ghost stories, the stories in Nine Supernatural Stories (only seven of which are in English) are not necessarily scary or suspenseful. This said, Afraid is a weaker collection than Nine Supernatural Stories because, even though the stories are all set in the Philippines, many will seem familiar, or at least predictable, to anyone who has read their fair share of ghost stories.
The best story in Nine Supernatural Stories is the first one, “Beggar of Description” by Adel Gabot. This is a slowly building story with fantastic writing, like
He wore tattered, blackened clothes that were more hole than fabric, held together by grime. Old and thin, the man had long, wet oily hair plastered to his head like a greasy shawl. He was veined with light brown lines where the rain had eroded the dirt on his skin. I suppose I should be thankful that the downpour had washed him off a little. He clung to the bars at the back of the jeepney, leaving grease marks on them. (p. 8 )
The other story I found noteworthy was Emil M. Flores’ “Ghosts of Infinity.” If there is no mystery series featuring Arturo Ganigan, NBI, there really should be. I would read it, at any rate, because of how much I enjoyed the rather hard-boiled writing style and the entertainment factor of this story (at least, until the ending, which got a little crazy).
I borrowed all four books from the library, so I don’t know how readily available they are in the US. But if you can get your hand on them, give them a try, even if you don’t usually like short stories. You may be surprised.
