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books

Over at Book Riot

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I’ve got two posts over at Book Riot from this week and wanted to share them both here before the link roundup next week.

First . . .

I rounded up some of the coolest libraries and book stores in LEGO form. Doing the research for this one was a blast.

My other post at Book Riot was for the regular 5 Books to Watch for feature, and I got to talk about 5 books to keep an eye out for in September. And . . . maybe I mentioned more than 5. September is a busy month.

Also, in the event you want to see your to-read piles grow even higher (of course you do), make sure you read this month’s Riot Roundup of everyone’s favorite reads from August. It’s a really fabulous mix of books of all shapes and styles.

Son by Lois Lowry

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I put off reading Son for a long time. The Giver is one of those book that holds a special, partly sentimental, place in my heart. I was just the right age for it when I first read it – right around Jonas’ age – and it was a revelation for me. It was the first dystopia I ever read. I was entranced. I still am. As an adult, I can see the plot holes, and if I had not read it first as a child, I most likely would not be as forgiving of its faults. But that doesn’t matter. This is a book that speaks to kids first and foremost. Each time I pick it up and dive in, I remember what it was like to be 12 years old and read that book for the very first time. It’s something akin to a feeling of transcendence.

Reading sequels to books like that as an adult can be challenging. I remember finding Gathering Blue as a young teenager and loving the discovery I made, all on my own, that it was connected loosely to The Giver. I felt that sense of wonder again, though not as deeply. As an older teen, soon after graduation from high school, I picked up Messenger, knowing it was the third in that set of books. Alas, I was disappointed with it. I wonder if I had grown too old for this very particular kind of story, or if the book simply wasn’t as strong. Possibly both.

All that long introduction is to say that I’m of two minds about Son. While reading it, I had flashes of those transcendent moments I felt as a child, but I also felt disappointment and, at times, tedium.

It’s divided into three sections: Before, Between, and Beyond. The first part focuses on Claire, a child who has been assigned to be a birth mother in the same community Jonas lived in. This is the section most similar to The Giver, and it is by far the strongest. The second part follows Claire to another place reminiscent of Kira’s community in Gathering Blue. The third and final part follows her to the setting of Messenger. As the final volume in the series, Son’s structure functions as a very literal way of tying everything together. Unfortunately, drawing such close parallels between Claire’s story and Kira’s in the second part and Matty’s in the third part also subjects it to the same criticisms of those stories. This is especially true for the last third, which suffers from multiple weaknesses I also felt were present in Messenger. If anything, the third part actually builds upon those weaknesses, diving too far headlong into strictly metaphorical territory and sacrificing a logical plot with concrete explanations.

I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about Son from adults, but not much from kids. The book isn’t wildly popular in my library, though it’s not a shelf-sitter either. I wonder how kids who have read the other books feel about it. If you’ve gotten feedback from kids, I’d love to read about it in the comments.

Like in all the previous books, the language is beautiful and strange at at the same time. It’s the type of writing that is simply stated but resonates more strongly because of its simplicity. I expect it is divisive among adult readers who had differing interpretations of the ambiguous ending of The Giver. I expect it is also divisive simply because it is not The Giver, and I’m not sure anything can be. It’s still lovely and different and certainly worthy of acclaim. It’s imperfectly done, but we should all be glad it exists.

Finished copy borrowed from the library.

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

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One day, as humanity is going about its routine existence, an alien spaceship appears in the sky. While no one ever sees the aliens, it quickly becomes apparent that they are not friendly. In quick succession, they unleash a series of attacks that kill off over 90% of the world’s human population. Billions of people.

The 1st wave: an EMP that knocks out all electricity
The 2nd wave: manufactured earthquakes
The 3rd wave: a deadly disease carried by bird droppings
The 4th wave: surviving humans are picked off
The 5th wave: to be determined

Cassie lost her mother to the 3rd wave, but her father and little brother Sammy miraculously survived. By now, people have long abandoned the idea that the aliens hoped to coexist and they now recognize that humanity is being wiped off the planet systematically and purposefully, most likely to make way for an alien colonization.

Cassie’s family finds their way to a place they call Camp Ashpit, which is basically a tent city where survivors have huddled together, waiting for what is going to happen next. When official-looking people in uniforms with humvees show up, they think it’s the answer to their prayers. The uniformed people take all the children up to age 13 or so (including Cassie’s brother) away in a school bus to a refugee camp where, according to them, they’ll be “perfectly safe.” They say they’ll be back to pick up the teenagers and adults, and they leave a few soldiers behind to look after them.

I’m sure you know where this is going. Cassie quickly learns that the soldiers don’t necessarily have their best interests in mind. She survives the subsequent events, and she fears for her brother’s life. He’s only five, and he’s all she has left. Though she now believes that the aliens have somehow found a way to inhabit the bodies of humans, she’s determined to rescue Sammy. She sets out across alien-infested terrain toward the refugee camp.

This is a Book for Me. I love sweeping stories about the end of the world, and it’s extra special if the end is brought about by aliens. This is the kind of book that is filled with what I loving describe as “crushing despair.” (And hey, it doesn’t involve rape! At all! Imagine that.) It’s nearly as awesome as I wanted it to be.

As with any acclaimed novel, there are a number of readers who gave this a vehemently negative review. Most cite the writing, which is strange for me. It’s not a straightforward narrative; it’s told in a slightly more conversational style with a great deal more fragments and run-ons than you’d find in the average book. It’s nothing close to stream of consciousness, but I suppose this type of writing doesn’t suit everyone. Still, I’d hardly call it bad writing, in an objective sense.

Yancey excels at making readers second-guess what they already know. Very early on, Cassie is rescued from certain death by a human boy who says his name is Evan. Evan has a secret, of course, and we know what it is. Cassie only suspects, but we know. And yet, over the course of many pages, Yancey sows a seed of doubt in our minds. How do we know, really? Isn’t it possible that Evan is exactly who he says he is? Isn’t it likely? This line of thought shows the strength in Yancey’s writing: despite the fact that he’s shared everything we need to know beyond a doubt, we still do doubt, because Cassie does. The book is full of plot points like this, and it’s part of what makes the story so engaging.

The romance between Cassie and Evan is a little hard to buy – a blip on
an otherwise stellar book. Cassie is suspicious of him from the
beginning, and Yancey relies too heavily on her falling for him due to
his rescue of her. The problem is, it doesn’t seem in Cassie’s nature to
do this. By now, she’s jaded, she doesn’t trust anyone, and she’s
gotten pretty good at taking care of herself. It’s possible she may not
want to kill him, but romance is another thing entirely.

Only half of the book follows Cassie. The other half shows us events from Ben Parish’s perspective, and his situation is much different, though their stories do converge by the end. He’s at a refugee camp, being trained by surviving adults to fight back. They don’t think they can win, but they plan to take down as many aliens as possible when they go. As with Cassie, things are not what they seem, and Ben’s struggle to sift truth from lies propels the story forward.

The pacing is a little strange. It’s not all breakneck, and at times it does start to drag…except just as I began to think “Hm, this may be getting a bit slow,” Yancey threw something completely new at me that had me fully engaged once more. Consequently, though the book has over 500 pages, it never seems long.

Cassie’s fear is palpable, but so is her drive to survive, particularly when she sets her mind on rescuing her brother. She and Ben both waver between hope and despair, between the need to seek safety and the need to exact revenge. They both witness and perpetrate horrific things. They doubt the humanity of others, quite literally, but they also doubt their own humanity in a more metaphorical sense by the end.

If you’re looking for a happy book, this is not for you. But it should have huge appeal for fans of apocalyptic or alien invasion stories, particularly those readers looking for a different kind of alien, a type that doesn’t necessarily look or act like us. Highly recommended and deserving of its accolades.

Finished copy borrowed from the library.

Review Roundup: Recent Reads

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Because I’ve gotten a bit behind in writing lengthier reviews, rather than skip out on writing about a few books I’ve read lately, I thought it’d be worthwhile to write up a few shorter reviews. There’s no theme or connection among any of these books except that I read them all around the same time. 

The Golden Day by Ursula Dubosarsky originally published in Australia a couple of years ago, and it’s out in the US from Candlewick now. This is a slight novel at under 200 pages, and the primary action of the story happens with the main characters being not-yet teens. 

Eleven girls went to the park with their teacher, but eleven girls came back from the park without their teacher. What happened to Miss Renshaw? Did Morgan, a guy who was avoiding the war and lived in the park and with whom Miss Renshaw was wildly smitten, kill her? Or did they run off together into the vast lands of Australia? 

Why do the girls share collective silence over what they did or did not see that day in the cave? Why does it take eight years for them to talk about that day together again and share something which they may have constructed entirely for themselves? And is something automatically true if it’s been written down? Or do we get to write down what we want the truth to be?

This is a heck of a little book. The story seems quite straight forward, but it’s rich with depth, and the writing is strong. The main characters are very young — late elementary or early middle school — and the story thus reads through that lens. There is loss of innocence here and it’s particularly tough watching that pain happen to the characters as an adult. But I suspect it is precisely at the right level FOR middle grade readers. That’s not to say there’s not good appeal here for YA readers, but I suspect it might be one of those books advanced middle grade readers would appreciate very much. 

The historical setting works — Australia during the Vietnam War — and makes sense, even as an American. I was struck especially by what it was Icara hid from her peers — Cubby especially, who she saw as a “friend” — because it really felt perfectly in the time period and perfectly what someone her age would do. 

I keep thinking, too, about what Miss Renshaw said to Icara. She was “too practical” and wasn’t enough of a dreamer, and her father’s career as a judge also made her resented by Renshaw. This was yet another layer upon a complex line of questions, particularly about truth, innocence, and the imagination.

The Golden Day explores the idea of history and the idea of collective memory and experience. There’s not a solid answer to this story, nor does there need to be. In fact, part of what makes this book so good is that it leaves more questions than answers. Those are the take aways: what happened and what did we make up? Ultimately, do the answers matter? I think Duborsarsky’s novel is one to keep an eye on for potential awards early next year. It’s a dark horse that I hope more people pick up and experience. 

Dead Ends by Erin Jade Lange (available September 3) will feature plenty of spoilers in the review below, so be prepared. This book left me feeling less-than-enthusiastic, and I want to lay out exactly why that is. 

Dane’s a bully. He has no friends, a long-gone father, and he and his mom are poor. She’s an expert at winning the lotto but she doesn’t ever cash in the tickets. She frames them on the wall. But her luck might be running out as her job teaching yoga classes continues to be cut back due to low class participation. Worth noting, too, she had him as a teenager and everything since then has been hard times.

Billy is the new kid in town. He just moved in next to Dane, and on the way to school, he follows Dane. Eventually, he makes Dane talk to him. Eventually, he’s the reason Dane has another chance at school after yet another fight sends him to the principal’s office. 

Because Dane has standards — not hitting girls or people with disabilities — he’s been “kind” to Billy. And that kindness is now an obligation, as the principal declares that in order to keep in school and not be suspended or expelled, Dane has to be Billy’s ambassador to his new school. Billy has Down Syndrome, and he fears he might get beat up regularly (a lie, kind of) and Dane can prevent this from happening. Oh, and Dane also has to agree to doing one thing that Billy asks of him. 

So what is that one thing? 

Dane has to help Billy find his father. The father who disappeared. Who made a “goodbye” gift of a map of strange-named towns scattered throughout the US. Billy wants to help Dane find his dad, too, even though Dane wants nothing to do with finding that man. He’d rather get Billy reconnected with his dad and put it all to bed. Oh also, Billy wants Dane to teach him how to fight, so they practice in the park every week. 

Then there’s Seely. She’s the girl who bumps into them, who wears her hair short and proud, and who is the daughter of two gay men (non-biological daughter — she had surrogate parents). She wants to help both boys out in her own way.

If you’re counting up the issues in this book, you’ve likely lost track at this point: there’s the bully; there’s the social class situation; there’s the forced companionship between Dane and a boy with Downs Syndrome; there’s the romance; there’s the two-boys-missing-fathers; there’s the boy who wants to find his dad; there’s the girl who is herself a story and a half. But wait, there’s more! Billy is a LIAR. He makes up stories. He’s mislead Dane time and time again about why his parents split. His father was abusive and a hitter and that is why his parents split and his mother moved him away from dad. But don’t worry — there will be misadventures as they seek out this father, and when Billy finally gets in touch with his dad, then he has to move again. Not to mention at the end of the story, Dane finds his dad, too, happy and with another family.

There’s too much packed into this novel, and much of the middle sags beneath the idea of the story. For much of the time, I felt like Billy was depicted as very juvenile. He has Down Syndrome, and he’s high functioning. The problem was that Dane talked to him and treated him like a child — and through Dane’s “bully” lens, it makes sense. However, this felt so much like a cliche: the bully befriends someone who is Different and therefore becomes a better person because of it. There’s very little depth to their relationship, even as it progresses towards the ultimate revelation of what happened to Billy’s dad. The depth comes later, when it is revealed that Billy isn’t reliable or forthright, and then in that moment, he’s suddenly got more depth to both the reader and to Dane. Which is a weird, uncomfortable way for his character to be fleshed out — I wanted to actually know this boy. I wanted him to be a real person. Instead, he is flat, one-dimensional, and only ever comes to life when it’s revealed he’s lying. Isn’t there more to him?

And maybe it wouldn’t have been so frustrating as a reader for that to be the big character development moment if the story wasn’t set up in the somewhat cliched ideal that a bad person can be made a better person by being forced to spend time with someone who is “different.” Because in this instance, Billy’s “differentness” is what makes Dane a better person. It’s what forces him to reconsider his bullying tactics and what forces him to reconsider the power of actual, meaningful human relationships (that comes in the form of Seely). Which Seely herself is also flat and underdeveloped. 

I get it — Dane would see these people that way. But it felt like a cheap way to prove a point, by offering up two very Unique characters. They felt shoehorned into a bigger story about bullying that was itself unsatisfying. I wanted Billy to be a full character, rather than a tool. And he is a tool, since the story begins with his first arriving at the school and it ends with him being whisked away — all within a matter of weeks.

Where Lange wrote an incredible story of bullying in Butter, here that thread gets short shrift to the missing father/social class issues. And it’s weird, too, how social class is depicted. Dane is very bitter that he can’t have a car like everyone else at school because everyone knows all sixteen year olds get cars (not true in the least, but I buy his hyperbole since he is a 16 year old boy). Poor in Columbia is the trailer park. He is one stop away from there in terms of financial issues at home. And if that is the case, then it makes no sense why his mother is as she is. She works an unsteady job (okay, could buy it, since it’s likely her passion) but the lottery tickets she buys, ends up winning, then hangs on the wall rather than cash in? She’s SELFISH. It’s not a sign of economic struggle; it’s a sign of SELFISHNESS. It may be worded as pride, but that pride here evolves into sheer selfishness. In many ways, this is the weakest plot point in the story, and it’s what Dane’s character and story really hinge on: he bullies because he’s jealous. He calls it that eventually, and he owns it — which I commend — but I never found myself sympathizing for his situation or WANTING to sympathize, either. Maybe I don’t need to, but given how much emphasis he places on social class, it should have actually made a bigger impact than it did. The show of class here was superficial.

In many ways, this felt rushed. It could have been stronger with a few more rounds of editing, with some tougher questions being pursued and explored, and richer characterization of both Dane and Billy beyond their “labels” as bully and boy with a disability who then turns out to be a liar.

The Color Master by Aimee Bender (available now) was a book I looked forward to for a while because I love Aimee Bender’s signature style (The Girl in the Flammable Skirt is in my top ten all-time favorite books). 

These short stories are glimpses into worlds so different from our own and yet completely, utterly our own. They are all very sad and very aching. As soon as one ends, it lingers in your chest. These are heavy, meaty stories, even though they feel as though they are not. They are about loss and loneliness, about death and never connecting, never relating to the world and those within it. Of course because these are fairy tales for adults, many — most — involve sex and the mythical and mystical power of the act and what it may or may not mean. “On a Saturday Afternoon” perfectly encapsulates this. 

Most of the stories in here are excellent, though I felt the lead story “Appleless” was by far the weakest. I was also less impressed with “A State of Variance” (I skimmed the last portion of the story). My favorites were “The Red Ribbon,” “Tiger Mending” (perhaps my favorite, with the killer lines Bender is so careful at weaving in that just cut to your core — “That’s the thing with handmade items. They still have the person’s mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in.”), “The Color Master” (which depicted feelings — chest-pounding anger and frustration — in such an honest way), and “Lemonade.” 

And this is one of my favorite scenes in one of the stories because it captures precisely what it is what Bender does that makes her work so, so good: “But just beyond his sandwich, and the four TV shows he watched back to back, and his teeth brushing, and his face washing, and his nighttime reading of a magazine, and his light switching off, just the faint realization that there were many ways to live a life and some people were living a life that was very different than his, and the way they lived was beyond him and also didn’t interest him and yet he could sense it.” — The Doctor and the Rabbi.

Readers who love magical realism and are okay with heavy sexuality in their short stories will appreciate Bender’s collection. I wouldn’t necessarily hand it over to a teen reader, though there will be teen readers who appreciate and love The Color Master. It’s the kind of book you give to those with a deep appreciation for the way that language works both with a story and on its own separate from the story at hand. 

What Goes Around by Courtney Summers — A Giveaway

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Back in January of 2010, I was lucky enough to be part of the judging panel for the Cybils award in YA fiction (which if you are a blogger and want to take part, there are still a few days left to apply). This was my first time ever being on a book-related panel like this, and it was really neat to be a part of a process of working with a handful of other well-read bloggers discussing, debating, and ultimately choosing one book from among seven to be “the best” in terms of literary quality and teen reader appeal as the Cybils winner.

The winner we picked that year was:

Almost immediately upon finishing it, I ordered Some Girls Are. I then sat on the Cybils reading panel the following year (in the fall of 2010) and after reading a lot of books, Some Girls Are ended up on our short list of titles, too.

I’ve since been a huge fan of everything Courtney’s written because her characters are honest. They’re not made to be pretty or to be friendly and appealing to anyone in the story nor to readers. They’re sometimes harsh, sometimes brutal, and always complex. The stories are sharp and unrelenting, with writing that complements them — that’s one big reason that Cracked Up to Be was a Cybils winner.

If you haven’t read her books, perhaps you remember Courtney from one of her guest posts here at STACKED, either as part of our So You Want to Read YA? series, our Horror series, or as our very first Twitterview victim way back in 2010.

St. Martin’s Press is publishing a bind-up of Courtney’s first two gritty books, Cracked Up to Be and Some Girls Are titled What Goes Around next Tuesday, September 3. This is the perfect opportunity for those who haven’t checked out her books yet to get a taste of two of her books in one place.

Readers who love Ellen Hopkins’s books for their gritty, edgy topics or who love Laurie Halse Anderson for her ability to write raw realistic fiction will find much to appreciate in the two books in What Goes Around.

So what are they about?

Cracked Up to Be is about perfect Parker Fadley falling from the top of the social hierarchy, head cheerleader, do-gooder to being the girl who wants nothing more than to fade out and keep what happened to cause this sudden change in her attitude hidden as much as possible. She feels tremendous guilt and angst over an event she witnessed, but she lets it out in snark and bitterness. Inside, though, she’s being eaten alive.

Some Girls Are follows Regina Afton as she, too, falls from being at the top of the social hierarchy, but what causes her downfall isn’t what’s eating her up inside. It’s what she reveals to her best friend that causes her to become cast out and attacked — but Regina, unlike Parker who retreats inward, takes her pain and hurt externally. It’s Mean Girls with actual mean girls.

You can read a 70 page excerpt from What Goes Around right here, which includes a sample of both books.

I think any reader who will find these two stories together for the first time will see a lot of interesting parallels between them, though they are far from the same story. Parker and Regina are very different girls, but the way they each process pain is fascinating to watch (even — especially — if it’s completely unpleasant).

In honor of the release of What Goes Around, I’ve got a giveaway. St. Martin’s Press has generously offered up two copies of the bind-up for me to pass along to interested readers. It’s limited to US and Canadian residents only.

But Wait.

Because I’d love to see more people reading these books and talking about them, I’m also going to give away a set of all of Courtney’s books to one reader. The caveat is this: I want this set of four books, which includes Cracked Up to Be, Some Girls Are, Fall for Anything, and This is Not a Test to go to a teacher or a librarian who will get these books into the hands of their teen readers. This can mean putting them in a library or classroom collection OR giving them away as a prize to a teen. All I ask is you use your work email address and click the little box in the form telling me you’re a teacher or librarian and are interested in being entered into the giveaway for this set of books.

Ciara, who runs the blog Lost at Midnight, is hosting a read along for new readers and those who have read but want to reread or share a blog post in response to any of these books (I’m cooking up a guest post myself!). You can sign up to take part and read or blog about one of Courtney’s books each month this fall. Check it out. You can also find Courtney on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.

Recapping: 2 copies of What Goes Around are up for grabs to anyone in the US or Canada, and one set of all of Courtney’s books are up for either a teacher or librarian. Two chances to win for anyone and three chances for those who may be a teacher or librarian. I’ll pull winners on or around the second week of September.