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.

What would you tell yourself?

Once Devi gets her younger self to believe that it’s actually her on the phone, she sees the connection as her chance to fix everything that’s gone wrong in her life. She convinces YoungerDevi to do everything from study harder (so they get into a better college) to convince OlderDevi’s former best friend to not get plastic surgery. And, most importantly, she convinces YoungerDevi not to go out with Brian, the boy Devi spent her entire high school life with; the boy she lost all of her friendships over; the boy who just broke her heart.

But there’s no perfect way to mess with time, as both Devis quickly discover. Even as the college acceptance letter tacked to the wall morphs into one from a better school several times, the tiniest actions on the part of YoungerDevi affect OlderDevi’s life in unexpected (and often horrifying) ways. Now she needs YoungerDevi to fix her present as well as her past – but how far is too far? Will she ever be content with things as they are?

I thought this was a great read. Like OlderDevi, I have a list of things I’d like YoungerMelissa to go back and change – in theory. What would I give up from my present life in order to have some things I missed out on because of what YoungerMelissa chose to do? (What a great book club book this is.) The most interesting part of the whole thing, to me, is that I infinitely preferred YoungerDevi to OlderDevi, and definitely saw the merit in YoungerDevi getting to make changes in time to fix her future.

There’s a lot of humor here – sometimes YoungerDevi’s decision whips OlderDevi out of one life and into another with absolutely no notice, to hilarious effect. I wish that OlderDevi had had a more indepth realization that she really screwed up her life – that she did it to herself – rather than just insisting that YoungerDevi fix everything. There are moments of reflection, but I wanted them to go farther than they did.

Overall, though, this is a really good read (especially for summer) that will make anyone think about the choices they’ve made and are making in their life. And with the exception of a little underage drinking, it’s clean. I definitely recommend it.

Despite all of this, when I opened the box of ARCs from my Little, Brown sales rep, I was compelled to crack open JANE first. JANE – a modern retelling of JANE EYRE, one of my favorite books of all time. I have no idea where this compulsion came from. Perhaps I wanted to get what I thought might be a book that would tick me off out of the way? Perhaps I wanted to read through it, nodding to myself about how right I was that no one should ever mess around with anything I love? Whatever my motivation, I picked it up earlier today and read through it in a couple of hours.

And, surprisingly, I really, really liked it. A whole lot.

Lindner repackages Jane as Jane Moore, a 19 year old college student forced to drop out of Sarah Lawrence after the death of her emotionally distant parents. Jane’s only real job experience has been babysitting, so she applies for jobs through a nanny agency. She accepts a job as a nanny at Thornfield Park, the palatial home of rock star Nico Rathburn. Recasting Rochester as a rock star works surprisingly well, as it gives built-in charisma to the hero and provides a credible basis for Jane’s attraction to him. The story tracks the plot of JANE EYRE pretty closely from there, with Lindner managing to give her characters enough of their own stories and personalities to keep the book from feeling anything even close to a tired retread of a classic. There are times during the book where minor plot points seem a little contrived in order to stick to the basic original story, but nothing large enough to overshadow my overall enjoyment of the book. I have read JANE EYRE upwards of fifty times in my life, and I hope that two things will happen with JANE: other fans like me will enjoy it, and people who have never read the original will after they finish this.

This is Lindner’s debut novel, and rumor has it that her next will be a retelling of WUTHERING HEIGHTS. I’m fond of that story as well, but Lindner’s writing is good enough that I’m looking forward to the day when she’s fully telling her own tale. Until that time, I can wholeheartedly recommend JANE – with a warning for those who have kids or students who are reading up: Jane and Nico are adults and their relationship does take a sexual turn. It’s not particularly graphic, but it’s impossible to mistake it for anything else. There’s also a little profanity, but it’s not overused.

A not so side note: the cover picture in the Little, Brown catalog says “not final,” which I think is really, really good news. I hope the cover is changed completely. Right now it shows a girl in a short jacket and a long skirt standing in a misty field and the title is in tall pink letters. It’s boring, boring, boring. This is a retelling of JANE EYRE set at least partially in a rock and roll world, and the cover looks like…JANE EYRE. There is nothing about this cover that’s going to make someone want to pick it up. There’s nothing about this cover that says “Jane Eyre in love with a rock star.” This cover says “generic girl-centric fiction, possibly set on the prairie.” Little, Brown: please, please change this cover; this book deserves better.

(But don’t think that lets you off the hook, Ms. George.)

1. CITY OF GLASS by Cassandra Clare, which I reviewed here. You may remember that in that particular review, I ate some crow over having originally rolled my eyes at hearing that a fanfic writer got a book deal. After spending almost the whole year reading other books, I still think that Clare’s Mortal Instruments trilogy has one of the best YA series endings I’ve ever read. I definitely wanted more Clary and Jace and Simon, but all of my major questions were answered and all the ends were tied up well enough. We consistently sell this series over and over again, and I’m always happy to put it in someone’s hands.

2. THE LAST OLYMPIAN by Rick Riordan, which I never did get around to reviewing because it came out at a really busy time and I barely had time to read it, let alone write about it. There are probably one or two reviews of this tiny little series roaming around the internet. You may have heard of it – Percy Jackson and the Olympians? (About to be made into a movie that I am skeptical about because the actors are so much older than their kid characters?)

Anyway. I knew going in that this was the last book, so I was prepared. I was prepared for it to end, and from reading the other four (and meeting Rick once), I felt that he would not let us down with the ending.

I was right.

I would like more of Percy’s story, but I feel that Rick did him justice, and did the readers justice. That story is over, and I am satisfied. I also knew very, very early that there would only be five, so I had a long time to get used to that fact. Also Rick has a new book coming next year, and while I have no idea what it’s about, who’s writing it is really what matters in this case.

3. FRONT AND CENTER by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. Catherine lives close by to Children’s Book World, where I worked (and Sarah still works), so I was lucky enough to get to know her a little. We got in on the ground floor, so to speak, with the D.J. Schwenk books – and we were so lucky to discover them so early.  Sarah reviewed FRONT AND CENTER back in July, and when I finally read it in October, I learned that it was every bit as good as Sarah said it was. It is an incredibly satisfying close to D.J.’s story. And if you’ve yet to discover D.J. and her family and her world, the good news is that all three books are out so there is no waiting for you.

4. DRAGON SPEAR by Jessica Day George.

Pull up a chair, Jessica. (Can I call you Jessica?)

Okay, look. Here’s the deal. I know that you can finish DRAGON SPEAR and see that Creel’s story has a resolution, and that the dragons got a resolution and we have a happy ending and blah blah blah. And a trilogy is a nice round set of three, so you dotted your i’s and crossed your t’s and wrapped it up without staying at the party too long like so many others tend to.

COME BACK TO THE PARTY, JESSICA.

(I’m going to talk to the readers now. Try the appetizers!)

Back when I read the ARC of DRAGON SPEAR I insisted that you all go and read this series if you hadn’t yet. I am expecting, of course, that you listened to me, and that you’re all ready with your teeny tiny picket signs to wave at my little internet protest, right? “What do we want?” “MORE CREEL!” “When do we want it?” “NOW!”

I know that we have an uphill struggle here. Jessica’s got other stuff to contend with, like her publisher, and the fact that she’s been writing other awesome books, blah blah blah. But I believe that if we all hope with all our hearts we can influence this outcome. YES WE CAN.

(Okay, back to Jessica now.)

How are the pigs in blankets?

Look, Jessica – I’m going to read anything you write. (I just finished PRINCESS OF THE MIDNIGHT BALL and now, almost 12 months after publication, it has to go on my best of the year list.) If you write a fantasy where a bowl of oatmeal comes to life, I’m going to read it. And I’m going to read it whether there’s ever any more about Creel or not. I’m just saying, if you’re hanging around sometime in the future and you’re bored and don’t have anything else to write, I’d like some more, please. It was a really good party. I’d like to stay.

But if you move on to another party, I’ll come too. (Not in a stalkery way.) And thanks for Creel, because I really do love her, and I can’t wait to share her with my daughter in seven or eight years.

~

And that’s it – the endings to four series I loved, all hitting in the same year. I’m leaving these characters behind with a great deal of sorrow, but I can’t wait to see what these authors do next.

It is hard to know where to begin when talking about Octavian Nothing. I guess the first thing I’d like to say is that the less you read about it in advance, the better. (I won’t be giving away anything here, not even the most basic summary.) I’ve started to avoid reviews and even book jacket blurbs of books before reading them. I can’t tell you how much it’s enriched my reading experiences lately. Even a one-line summary often gives away too much.

So … Octavian Nothing. It carried me away. It just took me out of my body and mind and placed me squarely on Octavian’s journey with him. It was a sucker punch to my gut and my heart. People would ask me what the book was about, from family members around the fireplace to strangers standing nearby at baggage claim, and I felt at a loss. The first volume takes its sweet time in letting the story unfold, and before I was really sure what was going on, I said, “I’m not really sure. But it feels — sinister.” And it did feel sinister, a lot of the time. It felt shocking and horrifying and terrifying and sad. But it also felt hopeful and moving and ultimately profound. This book is profound. It just — is. It’s not only a thoroughly engrossing and gripping and epic story with characters who spring to life with an insane degree of vividness, it’s a book about ideas. About science and faith. About the nature of humanity. About good and evil. About revolution. About freedom. I don’t even know how to explain it. I will never be able to do it justice.

This book just crushed me, and it took my breath away. I don’t say that lightly. It also made me laugh out loud sometimes, even though you’d never describe it as “funny.” But there is humor — not often, certainly, but every now and then, and lightness. There has to be, otherwise you might pull the covers over your head while reading and never come out again. But you see — that’s the thing. You will come out, because you will want to keep reading. You probably won’t be able to put this book down.

It’s not a page turner in the sense that the words fly by you — the words are hard, and strange, and there’s a rhythm/syntax to them that feels unfamiliar and takes some getting used to when you first start reading. (At least it did for me.) But it definitely became a page turner for me — at first just so I could figure out what in the hell was going on, and ultimately so I could find out what would be Octavian’s fate. And everyone else’s in the story that I soon fell in love with. (Or hated passionately.) Volume two definitely moves at a faster clip than volume one, but just be patient. It is all worth the wait.

God, this book — what a book.

I found myself wondering time and again how this book was ever marketed for teens. Obviously it has been, and successfully — bestseller, multiple prestigious awards, and so forth. The author himself has said he intended it for older teens, and I definitely think that’s the perfect audience for this book. It’s dark and frightening and violent, but it’s also totally a coming of age story — and it is, at its heart, so much about the questions older teens sometimes ask themselves as they find their ways in the world — What does it mean to be brave? What does it mean to be free? What are my special gifts? How will I ever become my own person? Why are we here? Does God exist? Does good exist? How can human beings treat other human beings like this? How will I survive this loss? Is war the answer? What is the value of a single life?

I also ask myself if I would have picked it up and read it as a teen. I think I might have, but I think it would have only been at someone’s urging. The urging that we hear that so often rocks our worlds:

“Read this book. Don’t give up, even if it’s tough at first. You will love it. It will change you.”

I guess that’s what I’m trying to say right now.

I can’t tell you much about this book, because just about anything I say will be a spoiler. I’m not going to tell you much more than the jacket does. Micah tells us immediately that she is a liar. She tells us that she is going to tell us, the readers, the truth. She promises. She says she means it.

She lies.

Or does she?

Micah’s boyfriend is brutally killed, and the series of lies that she has spun over the course of her life begin to pile up on top of her. She tells us a series of stories, each one beginning with a promise that this is the truth this time – yes, it really is.

You are constantly torn between believing her and not believing her. Between loving her and hating her. And while you are torn, you are turning pages like a giant freak, racing and racing and racing to get to the end. Racing to try to figure out what is true and what isn’t.

This book? Is (insert massive string of expletives here) awesome. This book is everything everyone has said it is. This book, with its much more accurate cover, is sitting on the shelf at my store waiting for me to sell it. Now that I have finally read it, I shall.

A couple of quibbles. The profanity is extremely erratic, and seems to show up mostly in the last quarter. I wish it had just been left out altogether OR been more consistent throughout. Also, just a few different word choices when describing sexual acts would have allowed me to handsell this to more teens; as it is it definitely skews to the upper end of the YA range. (At least in an independent bookseller handselling category.)

Those quibbles are entirely from a bookseller perspective. As a reader?

I wouldn’t change a word.

Larbalestier is doing a signing at my former employer, and I am incredibly sad that I won’t be there for it. (Come to St. Louis!) But I’m definitely getting a hardcover copy signed, because I want this one on my shelf for keeps.

(If you’re one of the few people left on earth who hasn’t read this book, I encourage you to pick it up without reading about it first. This is one where being spoiler-free is key. Trust me. Don’t read reviews, don’t read about the book on the author’s website, don’t Google anything about the book. Just read it.)

I won’t spoil this book for you. What I can tell you about it is this: It’s about an 11th grader who leaves home to attend boarding school, by choice. In his words: “I came here looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends and a more-than-minor life.” He finds the Great Perhaps he is seeking in many forms — in a roommate named The Colonel, who quickly becomes his first Real Friend, and who nicknames him “Pudge” because he’s so skinny. In taking up covert sessions of smoking cigarettes and drinking Strawberry Hill. In thinking deeply for the first time about world religions and what happens to us when we die. In eating fried burritos and being the victim and mastermind of complicated pranks. In seeking to identify what is the most important question humans beings must answer, and in trying to figure out how to answer it. In wondering how we get through life’s labyrinth of suffering. And in meeting a girl named Alaska, who changes everything.

I spent a lot of time when reading this book trying to picture Alaska in my mind. It felt important somehow. The only image I could settle on was an intellectual version of Kim Kelly on Freaks and Geeks. She smokes too much and drinks too much and sometimes seems to be filled with sorrow and rage. I was bothered by the fact that I wasn’t sure if I really liked Alaska, and it’s hard when you think you might dislike the person your hero loves the most. But then I realized that maybe I wasn’t supposed to like Alaska all the time … she can be obnoxious and mean, after all. But she is also brilliant and loyal and wildly adventurous and fun. She’s a real person, wounded and angry and wonderful and lost, and of course Pudge loves her. As he explains, “She taught me everything I knew about crawfish and kissing and pink wine and poetry. She made me different.”

When I look back on this book, I see moments and images in my mind. I see the Colonel climbing into Pudge’s bottom bunk with him when he returns, freezing, from a very long walk. (Not in a seductive way, in a “I just need to be next to my friend who can help warm me up” kind of way.) I see firecrackers being set off in the night and a group of friends making a ritual out of throwing cigarettes into a stream. I see blue hair and a boy in a fox hat and a vase of white tulips and the tears of a strict dean of students and the wheezing breaths of an ancient teacher talking about how what different religions share are messages of radical hope.

Above all, this is a story of friendship. What really got me in the heart was the relationship between Pudge and the Colonel. They just love each other, and they have each other’s backs, and they’re not afraid to admit this and always come back to this truth no matter how profound their struggles. This portrayal of male adolescent friendship was so moving to me. It’s also about how drastically your life can change in the course of a single year and how opening yourself to new experiences and people can rock your world in the most wonderful and terrible ways.

In reading a little more about it, I’ve learned that along with its many accolades, the book has been challenged as “pornographic,” which I dismiss as patently ridiculous. (Watch the author’s awesome video response to one challenge here. It will not spoil anything in the book for you. However, I’d avoid other posts or sections of the author’s website until you’re done, just in case.) (P.S. That video will cause you to develop an instant crush on John Green. And by “you” I mean “me.”) So there’s drinking, smoking, and sexuality … welcome to high school. This book is so much more than that.

I’d happily slap this book into the hand of any teenager, or even any tween, because in addition to being a great read, it teaches what I think are some invaluable lessons: that the most important questions are the hardest to answer, that some mysteries can’t be solved, and that life is beautiful and ugly and always infinitely worth living.

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.

Preorder the book from an independent bookstore!

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.

Order this book from an independent bookstore!

(I wish this review was better timed, as this book takes place in the summer and was in fact published in May, but I love camp books year-round and I hope some of you do too.)

Ah, camp books. How I love you!

Sam’s best friend Mal is revolting head over disgusting heels in love for the first time. Loathe to spend her summer playing third wheel to Malomark (her name for them – ha!), she applies to be a CIT (that’s counselor-in-training) at Whispering Pines Camp. She promises Mel that she’ll make her tons of their trademark video messages to one another, and soon enough she’s off for her first summer at camp ever.

When she arrives at Whispering Pines she learns a few important things: she’s the only CIT who’s never been a Whispering Pines camper OR a camper at all; there’s a really hot fellow CIT named Hunter, who begins flirting with her almost immediately; her mother and the camp director seem uncomfortably (to Sam) attracted to one another; and for some reason, the camp director’s queen bee CIT daughter, Ashley, seems to develop an instant dislike for her. That could have something to do with the fact that Sam receives the most coveted CIT post: she’ll be spending her summer working with Ashley’s sister, Alexis.

If nothing else, it will certainly make for an interesting summer.

Sam makes fast friends with three fellow CITs who are also on Ashley’s bad side, and those friendships help her forget – at least for brief periods of time – that she’s getting no video messages from Mal. That hottie Hunter seems to be more than a bit of a player. That Ashley seems determined to ruin Sam’s summer and reputation at any cost.

I love Sam. She’s so imperfect. What gives Ashley’s vendetta against her an extra dramatic edge is that Sam is more than a bit of a mess.  She’s too much of a people pleaser. She can be incredibly wishy-washy. She’s completely blind to the player-ness of Hunter (at least for awhile). And, because she’s a camp virgin, she has a whole lot to learn.

I think everyone’s experienced “in the trenches” friendships. Friendships that develop fast and hard because you’re thrown together in some way – in the cast of a play, for example, or on the same dorm floor at college. I think it’s hard to portray those friendships realistically, because sometimes, even in real life, they feel a little unrealistic. They happen so quickly. Sometimes you don’t have that much in common, or maybe you wouldn’t be friends if you met anywhere else. It’s because of the circumstances that you bond, and after that bond forms, it doesn’t much matter how alike you are. You’ve become alike.

Calonita does an excellent job of making Sam’s camp friendships realistic.  Even though I never went to camp, I felt a familiar pang while reading about their conversations and their pranks and their arguments because that’s the kind of relationships I had with my high school theatre friends. I’m guessing some of my pang was that I was dying to go to camp when I was younger, despite the fact that I hate campING, but no one really did that where I grew up.  I think I was mostly dying to jump into a camp book rather than attend actual camp. But part of me will always wonder what would have been if I had been able to go to sleepaway camp, and that part of me will continue to seek out books that take place there. This? Is a good one.

Buy this book from an independent bookstore!