So you can imagine my delight when I opened the mailbox one day and discovered that a visitor had come to see me, all the way from the actual Academy!

It was time for the spring holidays at Knightley, and the WeeKnight decided to make a trip all the way here to St. Louis to see me. Apparently he’d gotten word of my fondness for the Academy, and decided to come and thank me in person. I decided the least I could do was show him a good time.

We started our time together with breakfast at the best bakery in St. Louis, Sweet Art. WeeKnight was a little perplexed about how to eat something that was just about his height. (He did much better with the cupcakes we bought for later.)

He was also a little startled to be handled by us, but soon got used to being carted around. (The armor gets very heavy, apparently.)

(He rejected Molly’s offer to loan him a purse, however.)

Before we went on with our exploring, the WeeKnight wanted to see if anything was going on at the Academy, so we pulled up the webpage on the iPhone for him. Fortunately all seemed to be calm, so we went on with our day. First stop: the St. Louis Zoo.

He decided to observe the elephants from a distance.

He did agree to get on the carousel with Molly, however.

He claimed to find it pretty tame, but I think he might have been covering his alarm over the size of the cat on which he was perched. Not too long after that, our day was done. We started his second day off with breakfast, of course.

We tried to warn him away from the caffeine, but just after this picture was taken, he overturned the cup and had the waitress fill it. That accounts for the sheer volume of things we did the rest of the day. First stop: the St. Louis Science Center.

The WeeKnight was glad to orient himself on a map after being carried around by me for almost two days.

He tried the musical hopscotch board, but couldn’t jump high enough to make the music play.

He made a new friend, though!

He tried to make some others, but they kept ignoring him.

He finished our time at the Science Center by playing in the Duplo blocks instead.

Our time with the WeeKnight was almost over, but we had one more stop to make: he wanted to see the book about his school up close, so we swung by – where else? – Pudd’nHead Books.

First he checked out the current bestsellers:

Then he got a little confused by a card:

Finally, though, he found what he’d been searching for:

He was ecstatic, especially after watching me handsell a copy to a customer.

Soon enough it was time for us to bid one another farewell. He had two other stops to make before heading back to the Academy, and he wanted to get on the road. Our visit with the WeeKnight was one we will not soon forget, and hope that you’ve enjoyed this chronicle. He and I both recommend purchasing and reading KNIGHTLEY ACADEMY as soon as humanly possible, preferably from your local independent bookstore.

(Final note from Melissa: I don’t usually do this sort of thing. I don’t have a lot of time for things like blog tours and interviews; bookselling takes up most of the time that used to be used on blogging. However, for books I really love, I’m going to try to make an exception. KNIGHTLEY ACADEMY is the first of those. I highly recommend it.)

]]> http://www.kidliterate.com/2010/04/11/special-report-the-weeknight-tour-of-st-louis/feed/ 2 http://www.kidliterate.com/2010/04/02/fablehaven-by-brandon-mull/ http://www.kidliterate.com/2010/04/02/fablehaven-by-brandon-mull/#comments Sat, 03 Apr 2010 02:59:58 +0000 Melissa http://www.kidliterate.com/?p=442 There’s this thing we booksellers do all the time: we sell books we’ve never read. We’re pretty sure they’re really good, and we’re pretty sure we’d enjoy them if we ever got to them, but for one or twelve reasons or another we haven’t. However, they seem to fit a niche, so sell them we do.

FABLEHAVEN was in that category for me until yesterday. And now it is not!

Brandon Mull is one of the authors Pudd’nHead has coming this spring, and I would like to review something by each of them on this blog between now and their appearance. Brandon’s not the first author we’re having, but I’ve actually chosen this book to kick off my new fantasy/otherworldly book club at the store, so I read it first and am thusly reviewing it first!

Now that I’ve read it, of course, I honestly can’t believe I missed out on it for four years. (And I want to read the sequels, which is a problem, because I barely have time for the first book in a series.) I’m really looking forward to discussing this with the kids (and having Brandon at the shop).

Kendra and Seth are being packed off to grandparents they barely know while their parents go on a cruise. They’ve never been to their grandparents’ house; no one in the family really has. They’re told their grandmother is away; their grandfather is a little odd and has a lot of rules they have to follow. When Seth breaks the rules (something he’s going to do a lot), they begin to learn the truth about their grandparents: they are caretakers of Fablehaven, a secret sanctuary for mythical creatures. Their grandfather brings them into the fold, but Seth’s continued overactive curiosity soon puts not just Fablehaven in danger, but also their family…and, possibly, the world.

I love the characters here. Kendra and Seth have an awesome, believable relationship, with exactly the right amount of bickering and affection. Lena, their grandfather’s housekeeper, may be my favorite character – except she has to vie with their grandfather. The setting unfolds slowly, with a great balance of secrecy and surprises. There are awesome moments of humor (wait until the fairy broker shows up). There ARE a lot of secrets here, so I don’t want to say much if you too have missed out on this great series. But this would be a great read-aloud for families – good adventure, good characters, a little mystery, a little creepiness, some humor, and some wonderful plotting. It’s good for kids reading up and for anyone who loves the SEPTIMUS HEAP books, GREGOR THE OVERLANDER, CHILDREN OF THE LAMP etc.

Now that I’ve read it, I’m even more eager to sell it.

(Incidentally, how I would handsell it was basically like this: “FABLEHAVEN is about what happens when siblings learn that their grandparents run a secret sanctuary for mythical creatures.” A lot of handsells are exactly that short; that one worked a lot. )

These reviews are also going to be pretty short.

There will also be hardly any nonfiction, because I sell very few nonfiction picture books in the shop, so I haven’t had the same experience with those as I have with the fiction this year.

1. OTIS by Loren Long

2. THE SLEEPY LITTLE ALPHABET by Judy Sierra; illustrations by Melissa Sweet

3. THE CIRCUS SHIP by Chris Van Dusen

4. ARE YOU A HORSE? by Andy Rash
This book has one joke, but it’s a good one (which I will not reveal, because it’s on the last page). Roy is given a saddle for his birthday, and he has never seen one before (which is a little odd considering he’s basically dressed like a cowboy). Fortunately said saddle comes with instructions: 1. Find a horse. 2. Enjoy the ride. So Roy goes off looking for a horse, working his way through many different living creatures in the process (and learning something from each one). I LOVE Rash’s art, too. This one’s a favorite in my house as well as in the shop.

5. THE LION AND THE MOUSE by Jerry Pinkney
I am assuming that you have all seen this magnificent, beautiful achievement by one of the finest children’s book illustrators to ever walk the earth. If this doesn’t (finally, belatedly) earn him the Caldecott Medal he has long deserved, I suspect I will not be the only unhappy reviewer/reader/blogger/bookseller out there.

6. THE CURIOUS GARDEN by Peter Brown
A quietly lovely book about a little boy who discovers a small patch of green on top of the railroad tracks in the dingy, brown place where he lives. He begins to tend to the green, eventually growing a garden, which inspires others to grow their own. Slowly, across the city, the gardens spread. With its basic message of “act locally,” this book is very close to my heart.

7. ALL THE WORLD by Liz Garton Scanlon; illustrations by Marla Frazee
This is such a beautiful book. My 3 year old daughter wasn’t enraptured by it, but I think it works best either with someone younger (who is listening more to the cadence than the story) or someone older (and a little more capable of conscious thought about the world at large). This is the kind of book I often sell to a grandparent – often grandparents come in asking me for “something new and beautiful” that might be saved forever. This is definitely that book. This is also the perfect book to give your picture book-loving adult friend or relative.

8. 14 COWS FOR AMERICA by Carmen Agra Deedy; illustrations by Thomas Gonzalez
This book is based on the true story of a Masaai man named Kimeli who returned to his Kenyan village after 9/11, bringing with him the story of what happened that day. The villagers are so moved by the story and wonder what they can do for the people of the US. Kimeli offers his prize cow – a generous, symbolic gift as to the Masaai, the “cow is life.” In the end, fourteen cows are given as a gift. This is one of those stories that we don’t often hear about, making it the perfect story to be turned into a picture book. “No nation is so powerful it cannot be wounded, nor a people so small they cannot offer mighty comfort.”

9. THE CHRISTMAS MAGIC by Lauren Thompson; illustrations by Jon Muth
Jon Muth’s illustrations alone are enough to get just about any book into one of my “best of” lists. When you pair them with Lauren Thompson’s delicate story, this book becomes my favorite “pretty” Christmas book of the last…well, several years, at least. Santa Claus (dressed all in midnight blue in a lovely variation on what has become tradition) is preparing for the arrival of the Christmas magic, and the book takes you step by step with him through everything that leads up to Christmas Eve. He selects a toy for each child, because he knows what each wants most, and loves them all (there’s no “good list” and “bad list” here). He grooms the reindeer, and polishes the sled, and carefully, quietly, lovingly welcomes in the magic of the season as he always has and always will. This got added to my personal Christmas book collection immediately.

10. PRINCESS BESS GETS DRESSED by Margery Cuyler; illustrations by Heather Maione.
There is always a need for a sparkly pink princess book, but I truly cannot abide selling them if the sparkly pinkness masks a mediocre story. Not the case here – this is delightful, and my customers agreed with me. Princess Bess has a day filled with obligations, and must change her clothes for each one. Finally at the end of the day she is free to retire to her room, where she strips off her finery and dances around the room in her favorite outfit of all – a set of simple cotton underwear. The rhymes are good, the art is good, and the extensive fashion display is sure to please fans of FANCY NANCY as well as little girls who just love dressing up.

11. LLAMA LLAMA MISSES MAMA by Anna Dewdney
I am a big fan of the LLAMA LLAMA books, both as a bookseller and as a mother. This one was especially timely for me as my daughter started preschool this past fall, and that’s what this book is about. We got a lot of mileage out of “Don’t forget when day is through, she will come right back to you!” which is what the teacher tells Little Llama when he gets sad and misses his mama. Also, it’s just fun to say “llama” over and over and over and over again.

12. RHYMING DUST BUNNIES and HERE COMES THE BIG, MEAN DUST BUNNY! by Jan Thomas
I think you either think Jan Thomas’s books are hilarious, or not. There’s no in-between. I am definitely in the former category. (A BIRTHDAY FOR COW is so beloved in our house that every family member can be heard yelling “A TURNIP!!” occasionally.) I LOVE the dust bunnies. In the first book, Ed, Ned and Ted, the dust bunnies, rhyme all the time: “What rhymes with car?” “Far!” “Jar!” “Tar!” “Look!” says their friend Bob. As the others try to educate Bob on proper rhyming technique, it becomes apparent that Bob is trying to deliver a message to the others. Will they listen before it’s too late? The second book has the dust bunnies attempting to placate (and, eventually, befriend) the big, mean dust bunny they’ve encountered.

The illustrations might have you thinking that these books are best for younger toddlers, but the humor’s more sophisticated than that. Molly liked hearing A BIRTHDAY FOR COW when she was 2 1/2, but now that she’s a little past three, she truly finds it funny.

13. FELICITY FLOO VISITS THE ZOO by E.S. Redmond
Redmond tells the tale of little Felicity Floo, who infects an entire zoo full of animals because she uses her hand to wipe her runny nose rather than a tissue, and for some reason (you must suspend your disbelief here), you are allowed to pet every single animal in this zoo. She leaves teeny tiny little green handprints all over the animals, and begins an epidemic so large they name it after her. The whimsical Edward Gorey-esque illustrations fit the story perfectly, and, of course, it sends a very timely message in a brand new way.

14. THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS by Clement C. Moore;  illustrations by Rachel Isadora
Isadora pairs her awesome African-inspired art (LOVE Santa’s white dreadlocks) with Moore’s classic poem to create yet another book of hers that had to go on my home shelf immediately. Bonus: as I said to one of my favorite customers (who shares my sarcastic sense of humor): “I didn’t know that people of color celebrate Christmas too!” (This customer is African-American and we often discuss the dearth of books for children that aren’t about slavery or civil rights or athletes or drugs.) Never is the whitewashing of children’s publishing more evident than when the Christmas books start to arrive. I’d like to think that many more will follow this, but history has me rolling my eyes at the very idea.

15. NEVER SMILE AT A MONKEY by Steve Jenkins
This book has the creepiest back cover of any picture book, ever. Jenkins uses his trademark paper collage art to instruct the reader about what not to do should you encounter certain animals. Since he often has more than one book published per year, I feel like Jenkins must have a sort of picture of Dorian Gray, asleep, in his attic – how else could he make so much art out of teeny tiny pieces of paper? I have never been less than impressed with his art, and the information contained within the books is always top-notch as well. This book is no different and will certainly please animal lovers, especially those who have a taste for the slightly scarier side of nature.

16. DINOTRUX by Chris Gall
Honestly, this idea is so obvious that I can’t believe no one ever thought of it before, but that’s also what makes it brilliant. This imagines that before dinosaurs roamed the Earth, there were Dinotrux! The Dumplodocus…the Semisaur…the Blacktopadon. So simple, so clever, so funny. Absolutely fantastic, bold art. Great cover. This was on many, many in-store wish lists this past holiday season, and I love the way little boys’ eyes light up when they see it.  Dads are also usually pretty gleeful when they pick it up, like the little boy inside of them can’t wait to turn the pages. Sometimes a book is pure fun to sell and this book has been one of those for me.

And…that’s it! I am sure I forgot something, and if I remember what it is, I will add it to this post another time. Let me know if I seem to have missed something that you think is amazing!

The authors let you know from the very beginning just how different these identical twins are. A taste of that, first from Payton:

I was seriously excited. I’d spent the last six years in a small girls’ school. And by small I mean there was only class in each grade. It was the same people over and over every year. But not this year…because I was switching to public school! Heck yeah, I was psyched. Switching classes! Different teachers! After-school activities! My own locker! New people! CUTE GUYS!
And the flip side, from Emma:

I wish it were last year. I loved our small school: I knew everybody, and I knew what to expect. Everything was under control. In elementary school I knew who I was. Emma the Brain. Emma the Achiever. Emma with the near-photographic memory. But in middle school there would be kids from all over. Smart, talented students. More competition. The pressure would be ON. This middle school was huge. It had three stories and four wings. I’d looked at the website and found out there were 655 seventh graders and 710 eighth graders.

655
+
710
____
1365
- (me + Payton) = 1363

1363 total strangers in this school!

I shuddered.

Unfortunately, Emma’s fears (rather than Payton’s hopes) come true. School is an unequivocal disaster for both of them. Instead of impressing the teachers and her fellow students with her smarts, Emma makes a series of unfortunate mistakes that send exactly the opposite message. Payton had hoped to impress the popular girls with her fashionable clothes, which she obtained at summer camp by basically serving as a slave to a girl who had awesome clothes and agreed to give them to Payton in exchange for services. It’s going fairly well until she accidentally dumps a giant burrito on the shirt of one of the popular boys.

Payton flees the lunchroom and sends a desperate text to Emma, who comes up with a surprising solution: she will switch clothes with Payton and pretend to be her for the afternoon. Hanging out with your friends is all about faking confidence? I can do confident, Emma says. She’d been very confident in herself before making an idiot out of herself at this new school; surely she could pull out her confidence again to fake it as Payton. So the girls switch clothes, and off they go for the afternoon.

Suddenly everything is different. As each pretends to be the other, they find themselves standing up for their twin. Emma decides to give Payton a slightly more academic reputation than she’d had at their old school. She gives the burrito incident a brushoff in the gym locker room, and her savvy memory earn her some unexpected fashion points with the very girls Payton wants to impress.

Payton gets off to a slower start, as she spent the afternoon in the nurse’s office. However, once she talks to Emma at home, she begins to see what Emma has already realized: switching places is fun.

And now we’re off to the races.

This is a fun book. It is absolutely a fun book. The language explodes off the page (especially when the voice is Payton’s). The switching, as you can imagine, brings much hilarity; it evokes THE PARENT TRAP without duplicating it. It’s hard to get anyone to step out of their comfort zone, so having twins do it for one another (at least at first) is a clever plot device that is executed well here.

However, DeVillers and Roy also give their readers a lot to think about. Payton and Emma learn some very valuable stuff about themselves and each other during (and after) their little experiment. What I appreciated is that they don’t learn these lessons in a sort of hammer-to-the-head kind of way that a lot of “message” stuff can be dropped into books that are supposed to be more on the fun side. The lessons kind of sneak up on you. Good lessons, lessons that tweens can never hear too often – lessons about popularity, and being true to yourself, and standing up for the people you love, and what kinds of things to value.

Also, the things they learn don’t fix everything. They don’t end the book as perfect people, having learned everything they need to know to live successful lives from that point on. The lessons occur, and some take effect and some don’t. Some will probably need to be learned over and over again.

But those lessons are wrapped in a giant pile of fun, which is apparently to be continued in at least one sequel. I can’t wait to see what Payton and Emma get up to next.

I don’t know if Roy and DeVillers each wrote one character (the book is told in alternating chapters), but the voices are distinct enough that I’m thinking they did.

Whenever she feels frustrated or angry with something that happens at school because of her skin color, she comes home and fires questions at her mother:

I still don’t get why you wanted a black baby. Did you ever think that maybe it should have been a Chinese baby, or why not a white one? It seems to me a white baby would have made a lot more sense. Two white parents sending their daughter to a white, private girls school in New Clarion, Connecticut, would definitely make more sense than two white parents sending a black girl there…But I want you to explain to me again why you picked me to adopt! Whose idea was it – yours or Dad’s? Didn’t you think you’d be asking for a lot of trouble, considering you didn’t know anything about black kids?

Her mother’s calm, measured, heartfelt assurances that Lahni is the daughter they wanted assuage her anger and reassure her temporarily, but do little to soothe the rising feeling inside her that she just doesn’t belong anywhere.  Her discomfort at school is paired with a growing discomfort at home, as her parents’ marriage seems to be falling apart before her eyes. And now not only are they fighting about their relationship, they’re fighting about whether or not Lahni belongs at her school or should move to a more integrated public school. So how can she talk to them about the boy who seems to be stalking her, or the classmates who seem obsessed with boys and bodies? To make it all worse, just as she’s concluded that flying under the radar is the only way to go, she’s been nominated to compete in a school singing competition. Singing isn’t something that Lahni does alone – she’ll do it in a group, at school, and she used to sing with her dad, at home, in happier times – but singing alone? On a stage? In front of everyone? Not in her plans.

When she comes home from school one day, her mother shows her an ad she’s circled in the paper:  Church of the Good Shepherd. Interdenominational. We welcome all–regardless of race, creed, or sexual orientation. Her mother tells her that she’s been wanting to get back to church for a long time, as she hasn’t been since her wedding day. Lahni agrees to go. And it’s at that church that Lahni finds what she’s been looking for:  when she hears the choir’s amazing soloist perform, she knows that she wants to sing in that choir too. When Carietta, the soloist, and Marcus, the choir’s director and pianist, take her under their wings, Lahni finds the courage to confront all the demons in her life and figure out who she really wants to be.

There’s a lot of fantastic stuff here. There’s not a lot of action; this is mostly a character piece. The characters are compelling enough that the relatively simple plot is in no way boring. Wright surrounds the plot with a lot of smaller conflicts that keep you eagerly turning pages.

Despite living in New Clarion for years, Lahni is still stared at when people see her with her parents. A lot of her classmates still treat her like an oddity. Despite being their child for most of her life, she still has long moments of not understanding why her parents chose her. Were they trying to make a statement? Were they trying to prove something? Didn’t they understand how difficult it would be sometimes, for all of them? She struggles with these questions off and on throughout the book, and I’m sure she’ll continue to struggle with them for years.

There are a number of scenes where Lahni’s mother is having some emotional difficulty because of the trouble in her marriage, and at those times Lahni almost seems to be parenting her mother. These scenes had so much truth in them. Everyone’s had those moments, I think, when they saw their parents as human, as breakable, and had to step up and shoulder some extra maturity. Those moments are both empowering and terrifying. They become signposts on the road to adulthood; after you pass one, it is impossible to go back and see your parents as anything but incredibly human.

Wright does an excellent job with the character of Lahni’s mother. She is imperfect in a million ways, but her love for Lahni is at the forefront of everything she does. She freely admits that she adopted Lahni because she wanted her, and doesn’t seem to have done much advance thinking about what the racial differences between them might hold in the future. But she faces each problem with Lahni head-on, and doesn’t shy away from her daughter’s barrage of difficult questions. She acknowledges Lahni’s fears and doubts and lets Lahni’s anger wash over her, and then reaches out her hand to help her daughter through it all. Sometimes her efforts are clumsy and sometimes they are not, but they always come from obvious love. It’s a fully realized relationship and it is the heart of the book, I think.

I also loved the character of Marcus, the choir director who becomes a musical mentor to Lahni. He has some particularly moving dialogue, like this piece of advice he gives to her:

You got to remember, Lahni. When they call your name, it will be your time to tell your story. It’s not a race, you don’t have to hurry through it. But you don’t want to sing like you’re crawling through mud, either. Ride the music. Listen to the signals I give you on the piano and don’t just hear ‘em with your ears. Hear ‘em inside. What part of your story is this? He played a few chords from the beginning. And what part of your story is this? He played a few chords from the chorus. Can you feel ‘em touch different parts of you?

Bil Wright lets Lahni tell us her story, and every piece of it will touch a different part of you.

This book was read as part of the Color Me Brown Book Challenge.

Order this book from an independent bookstore!

Kara Martinez’s Mexican father was killed in an accident when she was eleven, and ever since then her mother has driven every ounce of evidence that he ever existed out of their lives. There are no signs around their house of their Mexican heritage – not even in the food they eat. Ever.  She expects Kara to dress and act a certain way, and because her mother’s moods control the household, Kara has learned over the years to suppress her opinions, her bad moods, her deep emotions, and everything that makes her who she is. Because when Kara told her mother that she was seeing ghosts in the hospital during her accident recovery, her mother had her sent to a psychiatric ward.  Only after years of therapy and medication and never speaking of the ghosts again has Kara been able to have some measure of freedom in her life.

So it’s understandable that she wouldn’t mention the signs to her mother either.

Not too long after the ghost incidences, Kara began seeing signs – clues to a person’s future. They appear on the person, usually around the chest area, and only in flashes. Sometimes there are a series of signs and Kara is driven to puzzle them out, to figure out the possible future in time to change it positively. Her first sign was fairly benign:

The first signs I actually followed came to me at the age of twelve, and the first puzzle had been simple. I’d seen signs before my first puzzle, but I hadn’t understood until then what I was supposed to do.

Not until one day in school, when I’d read a story about cats. Later, when I got home, I’d seen a television commercial about cats. Then Mom had come home, holding a magazine with a cat on the cover. When I went out to get something from Mom’s car, a cat walked past me, an image of a car on its fur as it strolled into the street.

I heard a car coming. The cat had stopped in the street to lick its paws. I ran forward, stomping my feet. The cat startled and rushed to the sidewalk. The car missed it entirely.

Kara hid the signs from everyone – not just her mother and brother, Jason, but also her best friend, Danielle. Everyone, that is, but the readers of her anonymous online blog, Secret Fates. She began the blog because she had to have some outlet for her secret.  It gets harder and harder, however, to hide who she really is from the world – especially when she sees a flash of a gun on a classmate’s chest.

Her investigation of that sign leads her to an accidental meeting with Anthony, a Mexican former gangbanger from “the wrong side of town.”   Encounters with some of Anthony’s friends and family bring her flashes of other signs, until she no longer knows who she’s actually supposed to be protecting. Complicating the matter is the chemistry between Anthony and Kara, which leads them to a romance that’s disapproved of by just about everyone they know. Kara refuses to give him up, though, even as the signs get more confusing.

Then one day notes start appearing in her locker. Someone knows that she’s the anonymous blogger behind Secret Fates. What do they want? Can Kara keep her secret? And if she can’t, what happens if she doesn’t figure out the recent signs before it’s too late?

One of the things I like best about this book is that Kara just…has the signs. She just does. The book isn’t really urban fantasy; she doesn’t uncover a secret world of magic under the streets of Valdez, California. She doesn’t have any other powers. Her family doesn’t have powers. And there’s no lengthy descriptions of the signs, or investigation into why they started. They just did. They just are. They’re not really what the book’s about.

What’s really important in this book is what happened to Kara’s FAMILY after the accident, not what happened to her, because it’s what happened to her family that drives many of the events. You are really going on a personal journey with Kara. You’re following her as she tries to figure out the signs, sure, but the whole time she’s trying to figure out herself. Trying to figure out how to balance the person she wants to be with the person her mother expects her to be. Trying to live a life where her father is remembered. Trying to eat the occasional forbidden carne asada taco. Trying to be more open with her best friend, to figure her brother out, to fall in love for the first time.

And to a certain extent it’s about race relations, especially the divisions that can arise between people of the same heritage who are separated by economic status or location or the portion of their heritage that’s full-blooded. It’s about being in a gang, and then not being in one anymore. It’s about breaking free of what’s expected of you and reaching out for everything you want.

I’m looking forward to more from Kelly Parra, and I’m going to need to read GRAFFITI GIRL now. However, I would appreciate it in the future if authors could refrain from using the titles of bad Genesis songs for their books. Intentional or not, it gave me a Very Annoying Earworm. So thanks for that, Ms. Parra.

I also want to say at the end here that I feel like Simon and Schuster has some room for improvement in promoting the MTV imprint with kids’ booksellers. (Penguin has the same problem with their teen books that are published under the Berkeley imprint.) I feel like I’m constantly missing MTV books.  I’m going to start looking a little closer in the future – I’ve read several now of very high quality, and I don’t want to miss any more.

This book was read as part of the Color Me Brown Book Challenge.

Order this book from an independent bookstore!

Junebug is almost thirteen, and she spends every summer at the Blue Moon Playhouse, a summer stock theatre that her parents own. Her dad is the director (and sometimes the star), her mother designs costumes, and her sister is stepping into her first major role. And Junebug? She’s been just about every sort of backstage worker there is, and is longing to tread the boards herself.

Even more than that, however, she’s longing for her family to return to normal. Her mother’s moved out of their house and back in her mother’s house, three miles away on the other side of the farm where Blue Moon sits. Her parents let them choose where they would spend the summer. Stella and Junebug, both theatre-mad, chose to stay at the Playhouse, while their brother, Beck, always more interested in farming than acting, went with their mother. Junebug’s father has cast himself in the leading role in every play and seems to be eyeing up one of the leading ladies. Stella’s moved into her role as a teenager fully and no longer seems interested in spending any time with her younger sister or doing her share of the chores they are supposed to split.

And to top it all off, Junebug’s father agreed to take on an intern – a weird boy named Trace with a stutter – and has given Junebug the task of “showing him the ropes.” He seems to be an endless resource of theatrical knowledge, which Junebug considers mostly useless and annoying, and privately nicknames him Thespis. Her father makes things even worse when he suggests giving Junebug’s properties job to Trace for one of the plays, leaving Junebug with…nothing. Her mother’s left, her father hardly talks to her, her sister ignores her, her brother’s elsewhere, the Playhouse has smaller audiences than ever, and the new intern takes over the last part of her summer that was going well. Junebug’s familiar, comfortable world seems to be collapsing, and she doesn’t like it one bit.

It will take a lot of changes for Junebug to begin to recognize her world again.

Henson navigates those changes, Junebug’s varying moods, and the dynamics of a family in trouble deftly. The book is written partially in a clever manner that never feels contrived. Several times in each chapter, passages like this appear:

HERE’S HOW I SEE IT:

The curtain falls for the night on my huge Broadway hit. Flowers rain down on my head. Friends gather in my dressing room after the show to congratulate me. Fans wait for me outside the stage door.

“Ms. Cantrell, you were magnificent tonight!”

“Ms. Cantrell, you are an inspiration!”

I try to sign as many autographs as possible before my agent hurries me to my waiting car.

“Ms. Cantrell must rest now,” she says to the crowd. “You must understand. The play is so very demanding.”

My driver takes me home to my hip downtown loft. There are flowers everywhere, from my countless admirers. There are close friends everywhere – actors, directors, artists – and we sit up all night long, talking about life and art and theater.

HERE’S HOW IT IS:

The house is dark and empty. And so I go through every room.

“Lights up!” I command in a Coleman voice, flipping switches, illuminating every dark space.

I hate the dark.

In the kitchen I search the fridge and cabinets, hungry as any MARINER alone on a storm-tossed sea, but (alas, alack) the shelves are bare, except for some old milk and moldy cheese and an inch of peanut butter.

When I began reading, I feared that this stylistic choice might quickly get on my nerves. I was relieved to find out it was just the opposite. Junebug is unhappy for a lot of this book, and also does a decent job of making some of the people around her unhappy. The book could have been pretty depressing. However, she has a real flair for the dramatic (a combination of her background, of course, and of being almost thirteen) so her literary histrionics often lighten the mood considerably.

Henson also has Junebug introduce each new character in a fun, theatrical way:

RAY MONDELLO, character actor; round and jolly; a “hail-fellow-well-met” (that’s Shakespeare for “cool dude”).

COLEMAN, one name only; a light in the dark, Dad calls her, because she was named for a lamp, but also because she’s like a lighthouse on a stormy sea; as Stage Manager, she is the one who keeps everything running smoothly during the show.

I’m a big fan of books set in the theatre. I was in the majority of the school shows from 5th grade on, and during the summer between my junior and senior years, a new summer theatre for young people started up. I attended for two years before becoming first an assistant director and then a director, and when the theatre became year-round, I performed many, many roles there, both onstage and off. Henson gets the theatre stuff dead-on right, which is no surprise – she spent a great many of her childhood summers at a summer stock theatre. You definitely get a full picture of what the experience is like, in a very accessible way.

Highly recommended.

Order the book from an independent bookstore!

I appreciate that Simon has been trying to differentiate the high school books from the younger books by publishing them with different cover styles. Young readers are not easily fooled, however, and as the Alice books have gone through different cover styles over the course of their publication (and so many series change cover style partway through), the changed covers aren’t going to keep 11 year olds (and their parents) from purchasing the high school books, thinking that they’re just getting the next book in an innocent middle-grade series. Also: on the “books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor” page, all of the Alice books are grouped together under the heading “The Alice Books.” But on the facing page, there’s a list of “books for young readers” as well as “books for middle readers” and “books for older readers.”

But the Alice books are all listed together? (Anyone know if the whole list is printed inside the middle grade books as well?)

In this installment, it’s the summer before Alice’s senior year. During the first half of the book, Alice is consumed by her plan to go and visit her boyfriend Patrick at the U of Chicago where he’s taking summer classes. She decides before going that she wants to have sex with him, and procures some fancy underwear at Victoria’s Secret for just such an occasion. Her (uncharacteristically) naive parents believe her when she says she’s staying in the girls’ dorm and let her go off without really checking into the situation. Aaaand thus occurs what I like to call “the content.”

I really don’t think that the fifth grader reading LOVINGLY ALICE should be reading passages like the following: (spoilers ahead, and sexual language, leading to my first-ever cut on this blog)

His fingers moved gently, slowly, back and forth on the bare skin above my waistband, and I sat up for a moment and leaned forward so that he could unhook my bra. When we resumed the kiss, his hand moved up under the bra, over my bare breasts, and I could feel my nipples stiffen under his caresses.

A flood of warmth spread along my inner thighs. Patrick was breathing harder too.

I turned around and put my hand on the fly of his jeans. Patrick withdrew his arm and unzipped them. Slowly I put my hand under his boxers and gently stroked him, the first time I had ever touched a boy like this. And suddenly his lips parted, his head jerked back once, twice, then again, and I felt warm wetness as he ejaculated in my hand. He leaned against me, murmuring my name.

I could feel my own wetness and wanted his hand on me.

“I need you,” I whispered, and lay back in his arms again, my legs stretched out on the bench, and worked at unzipping my jeans. Patrick helped me tug them down a little, then gently slid his hand into my underwear and touched me. My throat seemed to be swelling in my excitement. I guided his fingers just where I wanted them, showing him how hard to press and how fast to do it, and a few minutes later, in the dark of Botany Pond, I came.

Okay. 3 problems here:

1. The entire passage just reads too…old. This is their first time doing this, but she’s able to touch him just right, and show him how to touch her? The wording feels like something out of a Johanna Lindsey novel rather than a YA book. And it’s so in-depth! Couldn’t we gloss over some of it?

2. I’m trying to think of another contemporary YA book that uses words like “ejaculated” and phrases like “I came.”

3. I don’t care how much you try to make this book look different, middle school girls are going to read it. They are. They’re going to read the quite in-depth tale of Alice and Patrick getting to third base on a public bench. (At night, sure, but not exactly in the middle of nowhere.)

And I really, really don’t want them to. Are they going to be scarred? Probably not. Will some of them self-edit? Sure. But why go there?

This is the problem when a series starts with characters of one age and then takes those characters years into the future over the course of a very long series. I don’t know what to do about it. I personally, as a reader, don’t want there to be fewer Alice books – I love the Alice books. But as a bookseller (and a parent) I want 11 year old girls to be reading about 11 year old girls, not 17 year old girls. They’ve got years yet to read about 17 year old girls. I am perfectly aware teenagers are having sex and cursing and making dirty jokes, and I never complain about those things in YA novels. But I think this situation is different, because we’ve “known” Alice since she was 10 (and aren’t they publishing some even younger books now?).

I think if this scene really needed to happen, maybe we could have faded to black.

I also can’t post this review without saying that I am very annoyed by the fact that Naylor advises fans to order through online bookstores:

My bookstore doesn’t have your most recent Alice book and neither does my library. How can I get a copy? Ask your bookstore if the book is on order. If not, ask them to special order a copy for you. You will find that online bookstores often get a book to you faster than a local bookstore.

Considering that we can order a book and have it for a customer in two days, that’s just not true. Perhaps online bookstores can get you a book faster than a CHAIN bookstore, but not faster than a good independent. I really, really wish more authors had prominent support of indies on their websites. Also, don’t we all (especially young people) spend far too much time online anyway? Why encourage an online transaction over one done face-to-face?

There is a deluge of supernatural fiction coming into the YA market these days, so much so that even a fantasy/sci-fi/speculative girl like myself can get a little jaded. As the advanced reader proofs start stacking up on my shelf, each promising to be “the next Twilight,” I admit I’ve become a bit wary. What I’m looking for isn’t the next anything; what I’m looking for is something different, something clever, something daring. This is why THE DEMON’S LEXICON works for me. It’s more of a family drama, where a mother driven mad keeps all the family secrets, and brothers Nick and Alan divide the meager scraps of her affection as they seek to protect her. They live in a darker reality than ours, where magicians use demons to work their magic, and these magicians have been pursuing their family since their father’s death.

Alan’s the good cop to Nick’s bad cop, and when schoolmates Jamie and Mae show up on their front porch in deep supernatural trouble, Nick wants them out the door. Alan feels an obligation to help Jamie, who has been marked by a demon (which means very nasty, bad things), though a sudden brutal attack by a group of magicians causes him to cross a dangerous line. Suddenly Nick regards his brother anew, and he doesn’t like what he sees. Has Alan been lying to him all along? Who is the woman in the picture he keeps hidden? Why does Nick’s mother hate him so much? When is it time to stop running and face your demons (literal and otherwise)?

Sarah Rees Brennan makes her debut with THE DEMON’S LEXICON, and she writes like someone with a much longer bibliography. I also appreciate that the publisher, McElderry Books, recommends the book for ages 14 and up, as there are some violent moments (demons, you know) and a few sexual references. If you’re looking for kick-butt fight scenes, seriously cool magic, a girl who’s stronger than she thinks, a family twisting under the weight of its own lies, and yes, two (delicious) brothers who might destroy the world in the process, then look no further.

I have to confess to a sort of fascination with beauty pageants. I have known some super-smart girls who participated in them (and won), so I know they’re not all glitz and glamour, but there does seem to be a sort of…seedy underbelly to a lot of the more local contests. That seedy underbelly is on full display in Julie Linker’s CROWNED.

The game is ON from the moment Presley finds her boyfriend, Gabe, making out with her archrival, Megan, in the school hallway. It is obvious to Presley that Megan (the nastiest girl on the local pageant circuit) is trying to unnerve her right before the Miss Teen State pageant, and Presley isn’t going to let it happen. Presley needs the scholarship money that winning Miss Teen State will bring her and is determined that rich, spoiled Megan will not walk away with the crown. But can Presley beat her without stooping to her level?

There’s a lot of great stuff in this book. Linker’s nailed the teenage voice here, for one thing – the characters don’t sound like what adults think teens sound like. The writing is tight and Linker obviously knows her way around a pageant (or did some really good research). Presley is likable and believable, and her poor-daughter-of-a-single-mother is portrayed matter-of-factly rather than being milked for every ounce of sympathy it might evoke.

I particularly enjoyed a subplot that has Presley volunteering at a nursing home, where she encounters one of the hottest boys in school and begins a sort of Beatrice/Benedick sparring match with him. Presley’s brilliant, anal best friend Justine is awesome, and so is the deadly sincere, over the top captain of the cheerleading squad that both Presley and Justine are members of.

This book isn’t going to teach anyone a valuable lesson, or change the world. It’s just a good time. A good time is not to be lightly discounted. Sometimes, that’s just what I need; I’m guessing a lot of teens feel that way too. When they do, hand them CROWNED – I don’t believe they’ll be disappointed.