When it comes to Cornelia Funke, I have no critical faculties.  I can’t lie; I love what she does.  I love her picture books, I love her middle-grade novels, and I love her young adult novels.  I marvel at how she writes in German and then really smart, clever people come along and translate her words, and then she reads the translations, which just boggles my mind.  I adore how she allows her novels to unfold, sometimes even somewhat slowly, which is the antithesis of so much of what I read in contemporary children’s fiction.  Cornelia will make you wait, but she will make the wait worthwhile.

Our dear Melissa very bravely stormed the crowds at BEA and snagged me a gorgeous hardcover ARC of RECKLESS, which is Cornelia’s first novel published by Little, Brown.  Although I was dying to read it, I chose to wait until a week arrived where I had ample time to not just read it, but to savor it.  Remember Charlie Bucket and the Wonka Bar he got for his birthday, and how he made it last for weeks?  Well, I’m not as patient as Charlie, but I swear I made myself dole out the last hundred pages of RECKLESS over several days, which took great self-control on my part.  Why did I love it so much?  What is RECKLESS all about?  Read on, but I may drop a spoiler or four along the way, so consider yourself warned.

The setting:  modern-day-ish Europe.  Doesn’t really matter where.  We meet Jacob, a young boy exploring his father’s study.  Everything is covered with dust; his father is long gone.  (’Gone’ is the operative word here, as his father is missing, not dead.)  Jacob examines a curious mirror in the study, and through the mirror, he discovers another world on the opposite side.  Funke fans may feel echoes here of the INKHEART books, where the world beyond ours seems all the more real, but just as the Inkworld was a dangerous place, the Mirrorworld holds its own temptations as well as nightmares.  We flash forward to years later; Jacob is now a very experienced treasure-hunter in the Mirrorworld (and has the scars to prove it), and his younger brother, Will, seeks to leave the real world to follow Jacob in the fairy-tale-esque land beyond the mirror.  Their time together takes a disastrous turn, however, when Will is attacked by a Goyl, a humanoid race made of stone.  The vicious blow starts a chain reaction in Will’s body; he is slowly turning to stone.  Jacob, who has always felt responsible for his younger brother, seeks to find a cure, but in the Mirrorworld, nothing comes easily, and everything has a price.

Jacob is immediately likable; he, like his last name suggests, is reckless, and has a bit of an Indiana Jones/Han Solo thing going on.  He’s smart, charming, worldly-wise, and yet he’s tormented by a childhood without a father, and runs away from conflict.  Will, on the other hand, stayed in the real world with their mother until her death, and he blames Jacob for leaving them for months at a time with barely a word.  Will also is in love with a young woman named Clara, who is swept along by the Reckless brothers into the Mirrorworld, and she displays a remarkable amount of courage on the journey.  What’s interesting is that Jacob and Will aren’t really even teenagers anymore; they’re actually young men, and I was really impressed with Cornelia’s choice to make her characters a little older than one usually finds in a young adult novel.  Their ages suited the dark, strange Mirrorworld, and gave me confidence as the novel went along that Jacob especially had the chops to handle the hurdles he faces.

I will say I’m not quite sure what age RECKLESS is for.  I believe it’s YA at its heart, but that said, I know well-read twelve-year-olds who would read it and love it, and I think I could easily give it to twenty-or-thirty-something friends too.  It’s grim at times, and did feature a minor villain with knives for hands that scared the crap out of me.  RECKLESS takes its fairy tale inspirations very seriously; there are indeed witches who eat children, there are spells that will turn you into a tree for hundreds of years, and the unicorns will gore you if you get too close.  Beyond that, there’s an entire political struggle (i.e. war) going on between the humans of the Mirrorworld and the Goyl, which culminates in a climactic battle scene for the throne, and even Jacob’s connection to a powerful Fairy may not be enough to save his brother.  Will’s situation, that of slowly turning into a Goyl, is painful to watch, as he slowly loses his memories of those he loves, as his heart is gradually turning to stone (jade, in his case).  I was entirely invested in Jacob’s journey, and Funke’s gift for writing supporting cast (particularly Fox, who really intrigued me with her motivations) really shone in RECKLESS.

Here’s my bottom line:  nobody writes like Cornelia Funke, as far as I’m concerned.  I love her voice because it doesn’t sound like anyone else.  She has a remarkable gift for description, and I love how she uses iconic imagery to give insight into her characters (the black moths for the Dark Fairy, the Bluejay for Meggie’s father, etc).  I love how she makes me fall head over heels with her stories every time, and even though I never know what she’s going to do, I trust her implicitly.  I have been assured by our Little, Brown rep that a sequel is indeed in the works, and for that I’m very grateful, because I’m not ready to let go of the Reckless brothers anytime soon.

Note from Melissa: I was hoping Sarah would review this, because I consider her a Cornelia Funke expert in addition to being a super fangirl. I didn’t love the INKHEART series, but I love her picture books and THE THIEF LORD and I really, really loved RECKLESS a lot. As an indie bookseller I am very concerned about the price point – it’s $19.99, and I can’t afford to discount it 33% like the online retailer who would like to put everyone out of business can. $19.99 is a lot to ask a parent to shell out for a novel their kid will likely read in one day (the kind of kid who will read this is the kind of kid who plows through books like a freight train, no matter their length or complexity). Kids’ books seem to be increasingly creeping toward this price, and I think it’s a big mistake. I also didn’t understand Little, Brown’s decision to make this ARC a limited edition bound hardcover. Every single shop was going to carry this book anyway, and it was already going to be a bestseller. It’s Cornelia Funke. I wish if they were going to spend this kind of money they’d spend it on debut authors who get overlooked.

Reviewer: Sarah

Middle school, for many of us, was a time of great confusion.  There were training bras, and zits, and oops I forgot my deodorant, and oops the boy who used to be my friend is now my crush, and what do you mean I need glasses and braces and STIRRUP PANTS (why, early nineties, why?).  I had a lot of bad hair and bad clothes, but what I did have was lots of good books.  That said, if I had been able to read THE POPULARITY PAPERS, I think my middle school years might have been just a little easier.

Meet Lydia Goldblatt (sometimes called “Goldbladder” by the mean kids), a blond curly-girl with glasses and lots of gumption.  Her best friend, Julie Graham-Chang, is the quiet one, the artist/cartoonist, the short one who’s easy to overlook.  Junior high is looming, and Lydia realizes that neither she nor Julie are anywhere in the vicinity of popular.  They decide to spend sixth grade in the pursuit of popularity, but not in the traditional way.  Like the National Geographic explorers of old, Lydia and Julie begin a notebook of discovery, wherein they can document their findings after extensive observation, and then, Francis Bacon-like, apply the scientific method to test and see what works.  Case in point:  our heroines discover many popular girls have a blond streak in their hair.  Lydia attempts to lighten a swath of hair with bleach.  Under the sink bleach.  Burn your skin off bleach.  (Luckily she can hide the bald spot until the hair grows back.)  Lydia, as the outgoing one, has more interaction at first with the glitterati of her school, but Julie finds her own chances to mingle once she joins the field hockey team.

What really works in this painfully funny (graphic?) novel is the core friendship of Lydia and Julie.  The sincerity with which Ignatow writes is just wonderful to read, and there is such loving care in the crafting of their personalities, even down to the differences in their handwriting.  As this book is truly a journal of sorts, it reads like an intimate dialogue between two girls that you can’t help but root for from page one.  Sometimes they give each other their best, and sometimes they let each other down, but what remains is the truest element of friendship:  change will happen, but true friends will grow alongside you, and give you room to grow in your own way.  I love that Lydia and Julie both try things that are new to them, and both attempt things that are scary (and not always together), because junior high (and oh yeah, real life) is full of those moments.  Our heroines both have family issues as well:  Lydia lives with her high-strung single mother and emo sister, while Julie lives with her two dads, and both girls are trying desperately to transition out of “little kid” mode.

THE POPULARITY PAPERS will invariably draw comparisons to DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, and I hope that anyone who does will make the same connections I did.  Both PP and WIMPY utilize a lot of comic-style art.  Both PP and WIMPY take place in that shadowy land between kid-dom and adolescent-dom.  Both PP and WIMPY feature two best friends.  Both PP and WIMPY have a journal-like construct.  This is all very true.  You’re missing the point, however, if you don’t make this last connection, which I think is the only one really worth mentioning:  both PP and WIMPY are utterly HILARIOUS.  Lydia and Julie are comedy gold together, and I laughed out loud over and over again.  I have written before about how publishers and writers need to bring the funny if they want to reach kids today, and THE POPULARITY PAPERS delivers hard-core.  I am going to LOVE selling this book.  (If I had a time machine, I’d send one back to myself in 6th grade.  I mean it.)

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Today’s video is a lament over the gone-out-of-printness of FOX MAKES FRIENDS by Adam Relf.

It would be wrong to categorize FOOD, GIRLS, AND OTHER THINGS I CAN’T HAVE as simply a book on obesity.  While Andrew Zansky, the novel’s protagonist, does weigh in at 307 pounds, his weight is simply one facet of his struggle as a teenage misfit.  He isn’t the fattest kid in school; he’s the second fattest.  He isn’t friendless; he’s got Eytan, skinny as Andrew is big.  When Andrew meets new girl April, he’s instantly smitten, but he tells her he’s a jock, which is a complete lie.  In an effort to impress her, he tries to make a soccer goal during gym class, and he ends up putting a few kids in the emergency room…and he loses his gym shorts in the process.  Utterly embarassed, Andrew expects to sink to the very bottom of the social plane after this fiasco, but a chance encounter with O, the star quarterback of the football team, changes everything.  Instead of joining Model UN with Eytan, Andrew decides to try out for football (where April is coincidentally going out for cheerleader).  Andrew goes from being the fat kid to becoming the secret weapon of the team, and he suddenly finds himself invited to parties, and even getting private football lessons from O (in exchange for tutoring).  His crush on April only intensifies when he discovers that she too was once heavy, and she has further altered herself through tinted contacts and teeth whitening in an attempt to become pretty.

What I love about Andrew is that as a narrator, he’s emotionally available.  Yes, he’s a teenage boy who thinks about sex constantly and is distracted by breasts and makes “your mom” jokes and stuffs his face to cover up his sadness over his parents’ divorce.  Yet he is honest in presenting himself, and that vulnerability makes the reader root for him all the more, as he is surrounded by false faces and ulterior motives.  This isn’t a novel about Andrew going from a size 48 to a 32 and getting the girl and winning the big game.  It’s about a kid who realizes that there is a space between the person he is and the person he wants to be.  It’s about a boy truly becoming a man as he stands in the shadow of his cowardly father.  It’s about someone who tries something new, falls down a lot, reaches for things he can’t have (or shouldn’t have) and eventually discovers that perhaps the path that those around him choose to tread–the path that says do whatever it takes to be who others want you to be–is not the path for him.  I also appreciate the fact that his high school is populated by kids of various backgrounds–Latino, Korean, Jewish, African American, Chinese–and that ethnicity affects way these characters definte themselves.

Author Allen Zadoff makes his YA debut here; he wrote a memoir called HUNGRY about his own journey from obesity to a healthy weight.  Andrew, unlike Zadoff, does not emerge from the fat cocoon a skinny butterfly.  He’s still very big as the novel ends.  That, however, isn’t really the point.  What matters is that Andrew faces some of the demons in his life–from bullies to mini bagels–and he makes choices.  One of my favorite authors, Gary Schmidt, says that writing for young people is all about characters making decisions, and that is why this novel works so well.  Andrew wants things, and he is denied them, and yet he has the courage to try for them anyway.  That is the stuff of good fiction, particularly teen fiction, and that is why I heartily recommend this book.

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Eddie lives in small-town New Mexico with his family, which includes a large group of cousins, some of which are in and out of jail on a regular basis.  His family has lived in New Mexico for three hundred years–his abuelo says, “We didn’t cross the border, mijo.  The border crossed us.” He’s had some issues with the school system, and he’s enrolled instead in Bright Horizons alternative school, where the students pride themselves on getting rid of teachers in record time.  The lure of his cousins’ illegal lifestyle is strong, but he’s promised his mother he will get a diploma.  While Eddie privately devours The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and the collected works of Sherman Alexie, he feigns apathy in his classes and refuses to engage, even though his mind is constantly wrestling with the issues he’ll face once he graduates.  What kind of future can he possibly achieve when even the brightest kids from his neighborhood can’t go to college?  Why bother getting a minimum-wage job when he could make easy money now selling with his cousins?

Everything changes on the day Eddie starts taking ballroom dancing to fulfill his fine arts credits, and because his teacher tells him, “You’ll meet lots of girls.”  He is partnered with Lupe, a new girl at Bright Horizons, and he is initially drawn by her looks and the sweet smell of her hair, but upon speaking with her over lunch, he discovers she is brilliant, and funny, and unlike any other girl he’s ever met.  Lupe dreams of being a doctor, and slowly, Lupe’s own desires for a future of her own choosing fuel Eddie’s passion to be more than what he is.  He decides to write her a poem:  I wish I could be Lupe’s rosary/ so she could hold me in her hands/ and tangle me up in her fingers/ and press me to her lips/ and pray me into being a good man/ one bead at a time.

Eddie is no longer simply a secret reader; he becomes a secret writer.  His poems are scattered throughout MUCHACHO, and they lend a wonderful intimate quality to the story.  What I love about Eddie’s character is that despite the front he has to maintain for his peers, his family, and sometimes even for Lupe, as we read his story from his point of view, he’s actually being open with us.  His voice is sincere, and he bares his thoughts and emotions to us as readers, because he can’t bare them to anyone else in his world.  We become his confessional, and it is a privilege to spend time with him on the page.  His journey is not an easy one, and a misstep with his cousin leads to confrontation with Lupe’s father, and Eddie is faced with a choice about the kind of man he wants to be.  Without revealing any crucial plot elements, I will say there are a few wonderful scenes in the book set at Black Cat Books and Coffee, which is a real independent bookstore in Truth or Consequences, NM.  My hope is that teens and adults alike will read MUCHACHO, because Eddie’s story is so compelling, and its telling so lovely, that it shouldn’t be missed.  There is so much beauty revealed in the midst of his chaos, and there are amazing connections to be made across social and racial boundaries.  This is exactly the sort of book that should be read in 11th and 12th grade, but very rarely is.  This is the kind of book that Eddie himself would like to read, and one that librarians and teachers and parents and volunteers should slip into the hands of the secret readers in their lives.

Note from Melissa: I am fairly desperate to read this book myself, and am ordering it at work tomorrow.

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Here’s the bottom line:  THE DEMON KING rocks.

High fantasy is often driven by plot, but at the end of the day, if you don’t fall in love with the main protagonists, it’s game over.  There’s certainly plenty of plot to be had here, from scheming wizards to political chicanery, from street lord wars to ethnic blood feuds, and there’s a rich thousand year history that serves as a glittering backdrop for it all.  While the worldbuilding is lovely, what really seals the deal are her main characters.  Han, a former thief, is trying to reform his criminal ways and take care of his mother and sister.  While riding with his friend Dancer, a clan boy, they encounter a group of wizards setting fire to the grassland.  They engage in a bit of a scuffle, and Han takes an amulet from charmcaster Micah Bayar, who is a bit like the Draco to Han’s Harry.  The amulet turns out to be more than just a family heirloom, as it exhibits terrifying power, and Han knows he must keep it out of the Bayars’ hands.

As Han struggles to figure out what to do with the amulet, the princess heir of the Fells, Raisa, is in the midst of her own personal turmoil.  Her mother, the Queen, is becoming more and more distant, making strange decisions on her behalf, and she is torn between Micah Bayar’s forbidden affections (the princess cannot marry a wizard) and the attention of her handsome friend Amon, who is a member of her personal guard.  As she lived for several years among her father’s clan, she feels cloistered and trapped inside the palace walls, and makes a concerted effort to find out what’s happening in her queendom behind the facade.  Raisa hopes to be like her legendary ancestor, Hanalea, who saved the world by slaying the Demon King.  Her coming of age ceremony looms, however, and that means a potential political marriage, which is a loathsome idea for her.

The novel follows the stories of Han and Raisa, usually swapping every other chapter between their points of view, and somehow Ms. Chima manages to weave their tales together in such a way that five hundred pages simply fly by.  Both Han and Raisa are on a journey to become the adults they are meant to be, and both must find out, often at a price, whom they can trust.  Along the way, Han and Raisa are surrounded by a host of secondary characters, from clansman to princes, and although the supporting cast is quite large, they all fit seamlessly into the framework, making the world of the seven realms seem all the more believable.  Raisa and Han are both in relationships of some romantic degree at various points in the story, and while mature themes are alluded to, there is no explicit content.  (That said, I believe this belongs in the young adult category; make of that what you will.)  My only complaint is that I’m going to have to wait another year for the next installment of this trilogy!  I am thrilled to have a new Chima series to recommend to my customers, and very grateful that both she and Hyperion books have put forth such a strong offering to the high fantasy lovers of the world.

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Yet imagine a world with no charities at all.  This is a world where there are no free lunches, no good deed without recompense.  This is the kind of world where everything costs, and I mean everything.  It’s the sort of place where you can sell your own child to buy medicine for yourself, or even sell your own emotions for food and lodging.  This is the city of Agora, and it’s the setting for THE MIDNIGHT CHARTER, a compelling first novel.  Mark and Lily are two such inhabitants of Agora, and each of them have been sold.  When Mark wakes from an illness that nearly took his life, he discovers he is now owned by Dr. Theophilus.  The quiet doctor lives in a strange old house owned by his grandfather, Count Stelli, an astrologer.  Mark’s presence in the house is a secret, as Count Stelli would never allow a plague survivor under his roof, and when the secret spills, it is Lily, the girl Count Stelli owns, who comes to his rescue.  Lily wants to see the world, and when Stelli kicks out his grandson, she goes with the doctor, and Mark takes her place as Coun Stelli’s servant.

The stars play a role in THE MIDNIGHT CHARTER, as Mark is trained by Count Stelli to make astrological predictions.  He learns the constellations, studies the charts, and learns from his Master’s gruff, cruel ways.  On Agora Day, the celebration of the city’s founding, Mark is called upon to make a prognostication before the crowds, and on that very same day, Lily decides to put a very daring plan into action.  While Mark attempts to predict the future using rather unorthodox methods, Lily does something that she’s never done before.  She very deliberately and purposefully does something for the benefit of two others, and when they try to barter back the value of her kindness, she refuses.  Her rebellious act of kindness starts a ripple effect inside of her, and it becomes large enough that it spills out into the people around her, and a revolution of attitude begins to take root.  At the same time, Mark’s predictions miraculously come true, and thus begins his meteoric rise to fame and power in Agora.

Mark becomes the star rising up into the heavens, and Lily, the star falling low enough to see the hurt and need in her city.  Both stand poised to change Agora for good or for ill, and they are unaware they are being watched.  A secret society exists in Agora, one that owns a document with contents that can drive the reader to madness.  What is the Midnight Charter?  The answer may be more than Mark or Lily can bear to know.

THE MIDNIGHT CHARTER does what all good speculative fiction does:  it makes us examine our own world through the lens of another.  This is a powerful debut, and one complicated enough to make both young adult and adult readers fall under its spell.  There is a richness of place in Agora, and yet one that is quietly frightening (Miss Devine’s shop is enough to make me shudder!).  I have no idea where Mr. Whitley intends to take Mark and Lily once the book ends, but I do know I’m very interested to follow them into another book.  THE MIDNIGHT CHARTER will likely challenge you, but in keeping with Agora’s bartering system, it will give you a truly unique story in return.

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As I started reading NERDS, my current situation gave me a lot of immediate sympathy for Jackson Jones, who, on page 4, is having a conversation to one I had five months back with my orthodontist.  (However, Jackson is a bully, and popular, and athletic, so our similarities pretty much end at the braces).  The braces cause a huge ripple effect on his life, and overnight, he becomes a shadow of the kid he used to be.  Friends ignore him, and his enormous headgear is too big for sports helmets, so his athletic career comes to an abrupt halt.  He accidentally gets stuck in a locker and discovers that it’s a passageway into the headquarters for NERDS:  National Espionage, Rescue, and Defense Society.  NERDS is a government-run organization that uses kids (with supercharged “upgrades” that turn their weaknesses into strengths) as secret ops, mainly because kids are so at ease with the technology the job requires.  Also, the fact they’re kids makes them less likely suspects.  When the scanners come upon Jackson, they find his weakness is his teeth, and so his braces are upgraded, making them into offensive and defensive weapons.  When the currently employed NERDS from his school discover he’s found his way into their lair, they are incensed.  Jackson was, until quite recently, the bane of most of their lives, and forgiveness for his bullying ways is slow in coming.

NERDS is a fun middle-grade romp, with a great multicultural cast.  Boys and girls are equally adept using their extraordinary “upgraded” skills, and a girl leads the team (code name Pufferfish, who is allergic to lies and betrayal).  The art, by Ethen Beavers, is wonderfully Cartoon Network-esque, and the chapter breaks are fun takes on ID scanners:  fingerprint, optical scan, and one where the scanner demands cash.  Michael Buckley has already proved his ability to manage a large cast of characters in his Sisters Grimm novels, and that comes in handy here, as there are a lot of names to remember, and code names to boot.  The book does weigh in at over 300 pages, so that may deter less confident readers.  NERDS gives the geeks and underdogs of the world a chance to shine, and that’s something this current Braceface is glad to see.

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There are times I read books and I want to slap myself upside the head and say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”  There are also times I read books and I think to myself, “I would never have come up with that in a million years.”  INCARCERON is one of the latter.  The sheer originality of concept in this novel is breathtaking, and I’m going to have to be careful with this review so as not to spoil the beauty of it for you.

The story begins with Finn, who lives inside Incarceron.  Incareron is, without a doubt, the most perfect prison concieved; it has no passages in or out, and in its centuries-long history, only one man is rumored to have ever escaped.  Finn clings to the belief that somehow he did not begin his life inside Incarceron like everyone else there, and his intermittent fits of visions give him brief glimpses of another life.  It’s difficult to know what to believe, however, because Incarceron isn’t just a building.  Incaceron is alive, and it determines the fates of the creatures that live within it.  Are his visions real, or are they simply falsehoods, another way that Incarceron tortures him?

Claudia lives in splendor under the watchful, cruel eye of her father, the Warden of Incarceron.  Though she is intrigued by her father’s vocation, she has never seen Incarceron herself.  Quietly defiant of the rules of her house, Claudia spends much of her time with the sickly Jared, a Sapient (think scholar), and they have concocted a scheme to sneak into the Warden’s study in the hopes of understanding what it is exactly that he does.  While their heist works, and Claudia is able to steal a strange key from her father’s desk, the Warden is at work on his own plans, and he has made arrangements for his daughter’s marriage.

Their worlds meet when Finn steals a crystal key in Incarceron, which is an exact match of Claudia’s.  Through the keys, they can hear each other speak, and Claudia discovers through Finn that Incarceron is not the paradise her government told her it is.  She promises to help him escape, but her time is running out, as her impending marriage will essentially seal her within its own kind of prison.  A lovely addition to the main plot are the small boxed quotes that begin each chapter, which are excerpts from songs, poems, and secret documents regarding Incarceron.  My favorites were the legends about Sappique, who is the only prisoner said to have escaped.  INCARCERON is layered like a dark, twisted flower, and as the petals turn back and you come to the secrets at its center, you’ll likely do the same double take I did.  I literally had to go back and reread the sentences at the moment of revelation regarding Incareron itself, because I couldn’t believe what I was reading.  Like all good first novels in a trilogy, INCARCERON can only take us so far, and we now await the next part of the tale, but I am anxious to see where Ms. Fisher takes Finn and Claudia after the conclusion.  Highly recommended for young adult readers of both fantasy and sci-fi, and I believe fans of THE HUNGER GAMES would find much to love here.

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