Oh, unreliable narrators, how I love you. LIAR’s protagonist, Micah, is the ultimate unreliable narrator, and I have been blown away by her.

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.

I bought Looking for Alaska at a recent book festival because it had a nice shiny round gold Printz Award sticker on the cover that gleamed up at me invitingly from the rows of books on the table. At the cash register, two college-aged cashiers, a boy and a girl, gasped in unison, “We love this book!” They sighed, they clutched their hearts. The girl said, “I get so jealous when someone gets to read a really great book for the first time.” I thought to myself, “Self, these are your people,” and I instantly trusted their judgment.

(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.

I hope to post an actual review later today, but first I wanted to ask:

HOW IN HECK do those of you who blog, have jobs, and have families actually get all of this done?

I’m just going to talk at random about what’s going on right now, mostly to make myself feel better about being unable to write any reviews for a couple of weeks, and partially to take a good hard look at it all.

WORK: I am the children’s and young adult book buyer (and, actually, the entire department) at Pudd’nHead Books (celebrating our one year anniversary on Saturday!). I work in the store about fifteen hours a week, although that is about to double because of the holidays. I work at home probably another 2-5 hours depending on what’s going on. I work out of the store if there’s an ongoing event.

Between now and Christmas I will be selling books at five performances each of three children’s theatre performances at a local performing arts center. After each of these shows have ended, I need to immediately return any unsold books that were ordered specifically for that show.

I have Heather Vogel Frederick coming for two school visits and an in-store signing. We are having an evening with Hank Steuver and Curtis Sittenfeld, and a rescheduled signing with Ron Currie. I have at least three, possibly more book club meetings to facilitate. We are having two in-store book fairs. For one I need to make short video book talks for the librarian to show the students; for the other, I need to pick some special targeted books. For each I will need to rearrange the department to accommodate special shelves for each school (and then dismantle them immediately following). I am having two educator evenings, a picture book night and a chapter book night, to reach out to area educators and talk to them about what we do. I am having a Fancy Nancy party and a Polar Express storytime.

I need to place backlist orders with Simon and Schuster, Candlewick, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Random House, HarperCollins, Disney/Hyperion, Little Brown and Scholastic. Some of those I need to do immediately either because the trade show special is about to expire or because I need the books for an event. I can only do that at work, and if it’s a backlist order of a book we’ve never had before, an inventory card needs to be created for it.

I need to place Spring 2010 frontlist orders with everyone except Scholastic. In order to do that, I need to read a mountain of novels. I’m pretty well set with Penguin, but not remotely ready for the others. I’ve read Random House’s and Penguin’s picture books but no one else’s. (AND SPECIAL TO SCHOLASTIC: SENDING A BOX OF SUMMER 2010 GALLEYS WAS NOT REMOTELY AMUSING.)

I need to decide on sidelines for stocking stuffers and special holiday purchases, place the orders, and figure out where in heck I’m going to put more stuff.

Oh, and I need to read all the new books that have come in that I ordered on the strength of recommendations and other reviews but haven’t actually read yet. Because I haven’t read them, I can’t handsell them or write shelftalkers for them.

HOME: Greg (my husband) is in Shanghai for two weeks. My mother lives with us and is currently not working, so that is an enormous help, but I have a three year old who both misses and is mad at her father, and has a completely unpredictable nap schedule. Over the coming weeks we have Halloween, several days in Milwaukee for Thanksgiving, and a quick overnight to Chicago. Greg is a law professor and is on a semester-long teaching sabbatical, and when he comes back from China he needs to try to finish up a law review article. And did I mention the holidays are coming? And the three year old? And that I owe about a thousand emails and phone calls, and I don’t know how much more understanding my friends have?

BLOG: Suffers. One of the biggest issues is that I can no longer just read what looks interesting to me – I have to read EVERYTHING. I can’t buy the books if I haven’t read the books. So I’m reading a lot of stuff in genres I don’t really enjoy, and a lot of bad books, and a lot of nonfiction, and it would be really, really nice if publishers could just consider publishing fewer books. I have read at least fifteen terrific books I haven’t had a chance to review, as well as piles of picture books. I haven’t even had time to format and post any more of the video reviews Sarah and I made together.

So since *AHEM* my other contributors seem to *AHEM* be busy as well, posting here may well continue to be sporadic until the New Year. I have no idea. Perhaps a burst of energy will produce a small stockpile of reviews I can stagger; perhaps not.

Clearly I am taking one! It turns out I am too busy

1. selling books

2. setting up author visits

3. selling books at a children’s theatre

4. buying backlist books on special

5. reading books

6. buying spring (!!!) books for the shop

7. planning three store parties

and oh yeah

8. spending time with my family, including my husband who is going to China for two weeks and my daughter who is about to turn three and is torn between being delightful and being a hellbeast to

9. review books.

So unfortunately, I think 9 has to wait just a weeeeeee bit longer.

(However: thumbs up on LEVIATHAN; books I love like THE COMPOUND and THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX being out in paper; and HOW TO SAY GOODBYE IN ROBOT being out, period.)

In honor of the early release of Chris’s new book THE CIRCUS SHIP, we are posting this video in which we ramble on like besotted maniacs about his books (for about six minutes). We made the video before the book had come out, thinking it wasn’t going to be released until mid-October, but we were clearly wrong!

Order THE CIRCUS SHIP from an independent bookstore!

We make assumptions about our writers sometimes, don’t we? We imagine what they look like, how old they are, and how much of a story they’ve taken from their own life experiences. When I was in graduate school in the summer of 1997, studying secondary English education, I was assigned a book called Make Lemonade by a writer named Virginia Euwer Wolff. It’s the story of an African American girl named LaVaughn, and LaVaughn became so real to me that I assumed quickly that the author was once an African American girl who must have written this story based on her own story, or based on some part of the girl she was growing up. I never read up much on the author of this book … I wasn’t super Internetty at the time, and I fell so completely in love with the book that it lived and breathed totally on its own for me, and I never ventured beyond its pages to explore its history or the author’s background.

Eleven years later, last January, I picked up this little book to read again, and it packed the same emotional punch that it did a lifetime ago. A quick Google search told me two things. The first was that Virginia Euwer Wolff looks like this, which blew my mind. I have read enough books and am not such a dummy that I think that writers never create stories completely from their imaginations or that every novel is semi-autobiographical. Even though I know this intellectually, I was still surprised to realize that the voice of this African American girl came from this white woman. I’m not sure why I’m going into this, but there it is. It just made me even more impressed by her talent. (Although I read an interview with her today in which she says she wants to leave the characters’ races up to the imagination of the reader … okay. This is also making me reel a bit. But not necessarily in a bad way. In a thought-provoking way.)

The second thing I learned, which was even more stunning, was that this book had a sequel. True Believer. Which was published in 2001. And was a Printz Honor Book. AND WON THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD. WHAT?! I seriously thought I might fall over into a dead faint. I ordered it immediately, and I loved it completely, just as completely as I’d loved Make Lemonade.

A few days ago, after finishing my second read of True Believer, I told Melissa that the next two books I wanted to review for Kidliterate were these two. And again, I headed to Google and was bowled over to find that the third book in the trilogy was published in February of this year. I really need to get with the program because I don’t know how I keep missing these major literary events in the lives of these characters I love. Anyway.

Make Lemonade tells the story of 14-year-old LaVaughn, who takes a babysitting job to earn extra cash. LaVaughn has a single mom and is also babysitting for one — her client, Jolly, is not much older than LaVaughn, and she has two small children, each with a different deadbeat dad. Jolly is like a living example of everything LaVaughn is striving not to be — LaVaughn WILL go to college, even if it kills her, and even though she doesn’t have much, she has an engaged and formidable mother who loves her more than life and demands excellence from her. Jolly is what LaVaughn might be in a parallel universe without that mother as her life’s backbone, and this never escapes LaVaughn as she tends to those precious kids, Jilly and Jeremy, and cleans Jolly’s squalid apartment over and over again. Jolly’s situation is so unimaginably difficult and seems so impossible, but there it is, staring LaVaughn in the face every day. LaVaughn becomes much more than Jilly and Jeremy’s babysitter — she becomes like another parent, even like Jolly’s parent — like the responsible adult in the family, even though she’s still a child herself. There is so much passion between LaVaughn and Jolly — so much anger and resentment and sometimes even hate.

In her excitement to say it all she’s starting to yell
and her hair is shaking at me
and she says, “You come here just to make me feel like a
cockroach. LaVaaawwwnnnn. You come in here with your
homework, you got your Goals–” she says it sneering.
“You got your Cay-pa-bulls–” she says it to ridicule me.
“You’re Miss Perfect and my kitchen floor is too DIR-tee
for you to walk on
and you tell me how cuuuute Jeremy rides the bus,
and you stole his toilet training,
you stole it from his own mother,
and you have your little Jeremy-songs
you can make up out of your head,
you’re such a good little mama I could PUKE.”

But sometimes, every now and then, there are laughs between LaVaughn and Jolly. And moments of understanding.

And I want to put my arms all the way around Jolly
in congratulation
and I’m happy she’s so angry
and I’m proud of her …

But I don’t go hugging Jolly.
She’s too angry to hug.
And that’s the day Jilly chooses –
it’s like she just lay on the floor and chose –
she ups and walks.
Jolly and me we’re being mad together in the kitchen
and Jolly’s picking up the mess of banana
that Mr. Jeremy left on a chair.
and up comes Jilly
on her two feet
looking like somebody on a boat deck,
with her surprised face
not knowing whether she’s gonna fall down
or fly.

What LaVaughn is able to cope with under the circumstances while loving and teaching these kids is astounding, and you realize quickly that LaVaughn is one fiercely tough and smart cookie. There are moments of real sadness and desperation and fear in this book that will leave you with your heart in your throat.

It’s written sort of in verse, which could be annoying but isn’t. I underlined so many passages in this book that it almost looks like I underlined the entire thing. Because I keep everything, I went back and found my assigned reflection on the book in my graduate school papers. I wrote this in 1997: “I LOVE THIS BOOK, I really do. I feel I should cut myself off before I sit here about talk about every part I love, because I’d write myself armless.” (My professor’s comment: “When I chose this book, I wasn’t sure how everyone would respond; I just knew I had to include it! I’m glad others had profound responses!” God bless Flo Durway, that magnificent professor who gave me this book and so many wonderful other ones!)

In short: this book cracked my heart wide open.

In book two, True Believer, LaVaughn is a little older (15) and a little wiser. (Jolly & co., so prominent in Make Lemonade, are not central figures in the sequel — which made me really sad at first after becoming so attached to them — but they’re still present in LaVaughn’s life to some degree and thankfully do make a few key appearances here.) The sequel’s story (told in the same verselike form) mainly centers on major changes in LaVaughn’s life in terms of her friendships, her coursework, and her first love. 

There’s a growing rift between LaVaughn and her two oldest and closest friends, Myrtle and Annie. While they fervently embrace church activities, LaVaughn isn’t so sure how she feels about God, and it divides them in a way that deeply wounds and confuses LaVaughn. 

I want to say, “Yes! I’ll be in your club!”
But I don’t do it,
it doesn’t feel right.
I don’t think that it is the job of Jesus, to keep me pure.
And I don’t mean to be mean to Jesus in my thoughts
that little baby born in a manger…
I spend hours in my room
going over it all …
going over it all again.
There was too much of it.
Besides everything else,
all those people in Hell
if Myrtle & Annie’s church is right:
All those people I love.
I keep trying to think it through.

LaVaughn enrolls in more challenging classes at school and is a bit overwhelmed by the head-spinningly exciting new knowledge she’s absorbing, especially in terms of grammar and the wonders and mysteries of science. Patrick is her lab partner.

If I do well in the new class like he says,
will that make me have a good life? …
I’m thinking: Poor Myrtle & Annie.
Lucky Patrick, Lucky me.
But they have Jesus.
But I have my new class.
Insects evolved wings 350 million years ago.
Bird bones have a honeycomb structure.
We have 98% the same genes as chimps and gorillas.
The synapses of that little Jeremy,
my sweet little baby-sitting boy from last year,
his synapses are already formed. He is 3.
Science is amazing. Patrick even says it’s beautiful.
One thing for sure: It’s so quiet in this room.
You can hear the teacher whenever you want to.
I think they even have more watts in the bulbs.

Her childhood playmate, Jody, returns to her building and her school, and her world is rocked to the core by her powerful romantic feelings for this boy who is now a gorgeous young man who swims every day and smells like a swimming pool.

A mature person
would not pretend her pillow
was Jody and kiss it
all crying wet tears all over it

even with stuff coming out her nose.
Somebody logical would not
wake in the middle of the night

and get up and go over to the chair
where the beautiful dress was draped over
and put her face down in it
to try to smell the delicious chlorine
and cry so confused
about everything being so spoiled.

LaVaughn is so completely and utterly 15. The big things and the small things are all catastrophic in some way … don’t you remember what that felt like? When you really started understanding how tiny you were in the scope of the universe, when you felt so raw and so lost and so alive? This book is so painfully realistic in its portrayal of those crucial moments in mid-adolescence that it makes you feel everything LaVaughn feels with the same intensity — when her heart soars, so does yours, and when she is mortified or hurt, you want to die a thousand deaths right along with her. And when you come to the part which explains the book’s title — oh, Lordy. There will be tears. (At least there were for me.)

I am beside myself with anticipation about the arrival of book three, This Full House, which I immediately ordered, of course, from my friendly neighborhood independent bookseller. I’m trying to carefully avoid spoilers, but from what I gather, it brings Jolly back into focus, which definitely feels right, as it was LaVaughn’s relationship with her and her children that started this journey. I cannot wait to see how the story turns out.

(Order Make Lemonade and True Believer and This Full House from an independent bookseller today!)

Sarah was here visiting this weekend, and we decided to make a bunch of video reviews. They all ended up being about picture books, and most of the picture books were older. We decided that we would post these videos (whether we did them together or separately) on Tuesdays and call it OLD RELEASE TUESDAYS, celebrating the picture books we love selling that might not be (or have been) on anyone’s radar. We had a blast making them, which you will hopefully see over the coming weeks!

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

Sometimes, an “issue” book is simply an “issue” book.  The protagonist is a cutter.  On drugs.  Pregnant.  Homeless.  Abused.  Et cetera.  The book revolves entirely around said issue, and things progress much in the same manner as an after-school special (which, come to think of it, do they even make those anymore?).  These books often serve as cautionary tales rather than actual stories, where plot trumps character and message trumps style.

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!

Grandmothers, mothers, teachers at all girls’ schools, listen up.

(Well, librarians and other teachers listen up too.)

Here’s that sweet little book that comes along once or twice a year and works its way into the hearts of its readers. That book that spreads itself out like the coziest of handknit blankets and wraps itself around you while you read it. That book that you open in front of a roomful of girls (or in front of your daughter, or granddaughter, or the little girl you babysit) and when you are done with the chapter you are reading, they beg you to read just a little more.

Sophie (11), Anna (9) and Trudie (7) live with their parents in an apartment on the Lower East Side in New York City. They live above the family business, Breittlemann’s Doll Repair. Bisque and china dolls are very expensive, so the girls don’t have any of their own, but they are allowed to play with the dolls that are waiting to be repaired by their papa. There are three dolls that have been waiting longer than most, unclaimed, and the girls have come to think of the dolls as “theirs.”

Anna is our narrator, and her story is tinged with the unique frustrations and tribulations of the middle child:

I listen to their footsteps as they go, but I don’t follow them right away. I want to be alone down here for a little bit. Sometimes it’s hard being a middle sister, and I just need to be by myself. Sophie is smart and pretty and good at so many things; Trudie (her real name is Gertrude, though we never call her that) is little and cute and cries to get her way. I’m just the one sort of stuffed in between–at nine I’m not old enough to do some things, like light the kitchen stove, but too old to do others, like snuggle in Mama and Papa’s bed on a cold morning.

Despite her feelings, though, and the family’s relative poverty, theirs is a happy life. It is a loving family, and the girls love what their parents do, so they are happy to chip in with shop chores. School is also a source of happiness, as is their friendly Jewish neighborhood.  And, of course, the time they are allotted to play with “their” special dolls is treasured. Anna often tells her private troubles to Bernadette Louise (the name she has given to “her” doll). The year passes, and is told in charming fashion.

On August 2nd, however, everything changes: Germany declares war on Russia. Although the war has not yet touched the United States, it begins to immediately affect Anna’s family: the parts that Papa uses to fix the dolls come from Germany. Because Germany has declared war on Russia, the US has stopped trading with them. No more doll parts. No doll parts, no work for the doll repair shop.

The family comes up with some creative ways to survive the war, and Anna and her sisters grow through the experience. “Their” special dolls play an important part in both their growth and the story, as McDonough brings us beautifully to a satisfying and hopeful ending.

The reader gets a very nice portrayal of the 1930’s Lower East Side and the experience of being Jewish at that time, in that neighborhood. It’s not as big a part of the story  as it is in ALL-OF-A-KIND FAMILY, but it’s done in a very matter of fact way that I always appreciate. There’s a lovely family relationship here, and the sibling rivalries, troubles and joys ring true. Most of all, we see Anna learn to be resourceful in some completely normal ways, which is refreshing. She’s not super gifted – she’s not a prodigy – but she’s clever and creative in a way that comes from love for her family and a true desire to contribute in a difficult time. She’s an excellent example for children without being obnoxious about it.

I think this book will have a long life.

(I also think it will sell better in paperback – this is one of those books that I wish had simultaneous hard and softcover print runs. Especially in this economy, it can be hard to get parents to spring for a $14.99 hardcover that’s 116 pages long.)

In addition to my fascination with camp books, I’ve always loved books about twins. Real-life twin sisters DeVillers and Roy have crafted a heap of fun with their novel TRADING FACES. The twin protagonists of this book couldn’t be less alike – we have Payton, the klutzy, overexcited fashionista dreaming of popularity and boys during this, their first year in public school; and Emma, the brain who is hovering on the edge of dorkdom without being fully aware of it, and worrying that she won’t be able to function without having Payton by her side constantly.

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.