STACKED

books

Display This: Sibling Stories

|

Over the last year or so, there have been an exceptional number of YA stories about siblings published (or ones that will be published soon). Besides just stories of brother-sister, brother-brother, and sister-sister relationships, there have also been a number of stories about twins published/to be pubbed soon. What makes these stories engaging is that, despite tackling sometimes similar subject matter, they still show the differing dynamics that occur within these family bonds. These sorts of stories fascinate me to no end because I didn’t grow up with my siblings so these are stories about experiences I’ve never had nor never will have.

The bulk of these stories explore somewhat standard sibling relationships, so I would love any suggestions you might have of stories about siblings which aren’t as common. I’d love stories about step/half siblings, about sibling bonds that don’t necessarily form naturally or smoothly. Some of these books tackle the sibling relationship as the plot while others make use of that relationship as a major subplot — it’s more than just a relationship that exists but one that advances both the character and the story in some way. All descriptions are from WorldCat and all of these are titles published/publishing in 2011 and 2011 (I snuck in a couple late 2010 titles, too). These are YA titles only, as I think the sibling relationship trend is much less prominent in YA than it is in middle grade or younger titles. I know I’m missing a bunch, so as always, feel free to add any others you can think of in the comments.

For extra fun, I’ve starred titles that feature twins.

Irises by Francisco X Stork: Kate, eighteen, and Mary, sixteen, must make some adult decisions about the course their lives should take when their loving but old-fashioned father dies suddenly, leaving them with their mother, who has been in a persistant vegetative state since an accident four years earlier.

Sisters of Glass by Stephanie Hemphill: When a new glassblower arrives to help in the family business, the attraction Maria feels for him causes a web of conflicting emotions to grow even more tangled.

Split by Swati Avasthi: A teenaged boy thrown out of his house by his abusive father goes to live with his older brother, who ran away from home years ago to escape the abuse.

Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma: Two years after sixteen-year-old Chloe discovered classmate London’s dead body floating in a Hudson Valley reservoir, she returns home to be with her devoted older sister Ruby, a town favorite, and finds that London is alive and well, and that Ruby may somehow have brought her back to life and persuaded everyone that nothing is amiss. (Review)

The Things a Brother Knows by Dana Reinhardt: Although they have never gotten along well, seventeen-year-old Levi follows his older brother Boaz, an ex-Marine, on a walking trip from Boston to Washington, D.C. in hopes of learning why Boaz is completely withdrawn. (Review)

Never Enough by Denise Jaden (July 2012): Sixteen-year-old Loann admires and envies her older sister Claire’s strength, popularity, and beauty, but as Loann begins to open up to new possibilities in herself, she discovers that Claire’s all-consuming quest for perfection comes at a dangerous price.

*All These Lives by Sarah Wylie (June 2012): Convinced that she has nine lives after cheating death twice as a child, sixteen-year-old Dani tries to forfeit her remaining lives in hopes of saving her twin sister, Jena, whose leukemia is consuming their family.

Perfect Escape by Jennifer Brown (July 2012): Seventeen-year-old Kendra, living in the shadow of her brother’s obsessive-compulsive disorder, takes a life-changing road trip with him.

Thou Shalt Not Road Trip by Antony John: Sixteen-year-old Luke Dorsey is sent on a cross-country tour to promote his bestselling spiritual self-help guide accompanied by his agnostic older brother and former girlfriend Fran, from whom he learns some things about salvation. (Review)

* Happy Families by Tanita S. Davis (May 2012): In alternating chapters, sixteen-year-old twins Ysabel and Justin share their conflicted feelings as they struggle to come to terms with their father’s decision to dress as a woman.

* Bumped by Megan McCafferty: In 2036 New Jersey, when teens are expected to become fanatically religious wives and mothers or high-priced Surrogettes for couples made infertile by a widespread virus, sixteen-year-old identical twins Melody and Harmony find in one another the courage to believe they have choices. See also Thumped. (Review)

Brother/Sister by Sean Olin: Told in alternating perspectives, Will and Asheley relate the events of the summer and explain how their lives became violently out of control.

Rock On by Denise Vega: High school sophomore Ori Taylor, lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter in a nameless rock band, has always been known as the easily-overlooked younger brother of Del, a high school sports star, but when Del suddenly returns home from college just as Ori is starting to gain some confidence in himself, Del expects everything to return to the way it used to be.

Stick by Andrew Smith: Thirteen-year-old Stark “Stick” McClellan’s brother has always defended him against those who tease him for his thinness and facial deformity, so when Bosten, having admitted he is gay, must leave home and their abusive parents, Stick sets out to find him.

Without Tess by Marcella Pixley: Fifteen-year-old Lizzie Cohen recalls what it was like growing up with her imaginative but disturbed older sister Tess, and how she is striving to reclaim her own life since Tess died. (Review)

Zen and Xander Undone by Amy Kathleen Ryan: Two teenaged sisters try to come to terms with the death of their mother in very different ways.

* Pretty Bad Things by CJ Skuse: When they were six years old, twins Beau and Paisley were famous for surviving on their own after their mother died of a drug overdose, and now, at sixteen, they escape from their abusive grandmother to look for their father, who is out of prison and, unbeknownst to them, has been writing them letters since he was put away.

Pieces of Us by Margie Gelbwasser: Four teenagers from two families–sisters Katie and Julie and brothers Alex and Kyle–meet every summer at a lakeside community in upstate New York, where they escape their everyday lives and hide disturbing secrets. (Review)

Between Here and Forever by Elizabeth Scott: When her older, “perfect” sister Tess has a car accident that puts her in a coma, seventeen-year-old Abby, who has always felt unseen in Tess’s shadow, plans to bring her back with the help of Eli, a gorgeous boy she has met at the hospital, but her plans go awry when she learns some secrets about both Tess and Eli, enabling her to make some decisions about her own life.

The Space Between Us by Jessica Martinez (October 2012): Seventeen-year-old Amelia feels like her life might be getting back on track after a bad break-up when her younger sister’s pregnancy gets them both banished to Canada, where new relationships are forged, giving Amelia a new perspective.

Personal Effects by EM Kokie (September 2012): Ever since his brother, T.J., was killed in Iraq, seventeen-year-old Matt Foster feels like he’s been sleepwalking through life — failing classes, getting into fights, and avoiding his dad’s lectures about following in his brother’s footsteps. T.J.’s gone, and the worst part is, there’s nothing left of him to hold on to. Matt can’t shake the feeling that if only he could get his hands on T.J.’s stuff from Iraq, he’d be able to make sense of his death.

Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma: Sixteen-year-old Maya and seventeen-year-old Lochan tell, in their separate voices, of their confusion and longing as they fall in love with one another after years of functioning as parents to three younger siblings due to their alcoholic mother’s neglect. (Review)

I’m Not Her by Janet Gurtler: Brainy Tess Smith is the younger sibling of the beautiful, popular, volleyball-scholarship-bound Kristina. When Kristina is diagnosed with bone cancer, it drastically changes both sisters’ lives. Sometimes the things that annoy us the most about our siblings are the ones we’d miss the most if we lost them.

Then I Met My Sister by Christine Hurley Deriso: Summer Stetson has always lived in the shadow of her dead sister, knowing she can never measure up in any way, but on her seventeenth birthday her aunt gives her Shannon’s diary, which reveals painful but liberating truths about Summer’s family and herself.

Sass & Serendipity by Jennifer Ziegler: Unlike her romantic sister, Gabby is down-to-earth and does not put her trust in relationships, but when the richest boy in school befriends her, she discovers that emotional barriers might actually be getting in the way of her happiness.

Saving June by Hannah Harrington: After her sister’s suicide, Harper Scott takes off for California with her best friend Laney to scatter her sister’s ashes in the Pacific Ocean.

The Summer of Firsts and Lasts by Tera Elsa McVoy: When teenaged sisters Daisy, Violet, and Calla spend their last summer together at Camp Callanwolde, the decisions they make–both good and bad–bring challenges to their relationship as well as opportunities to demonstrate their devotion to one another.

Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks: After an idyllic childhood of homeschooling with her mother and three older brothers, Maggie enrolls in public high school, where interacting with her peers is complicated by the melancholy ghost that has followed her throughout her entire life.

* Gemini Bites by Patrick Ryan:  When their parents announce they are taking in a fellow student for a month, 16-year-old twins Kyle and Judy sit up and take notice. Kyle has just come out of the closet to his family and fears he’ll never know what it is like to date a guy. Judy is pretending to be born-again to attract a boy who heads a Bible study group. And Garret Johnson is new in town– a mysterious loner who claims to be a vampire. Both twins are intrigued.

Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood: In an alternate New England of 1900, where the Brotherhood dominates and controls society, sixteen-year-old Cate Cahill has struggled since her mother’s death to keep secret that she and her younger sisters are witches, but when a governess arrives from the Sisterhood, everything changes.

* Beautiful Lies by Jessica Warman (August 2012): Eighteen-year-old identical twins Alice and Rachel have always shared a very special bond, so when one is abducted the other uses their connection to try to locate her.

So You Want to Read YA?: Guest Post from Victoria Stapleton

|

We’re changing it up a little bit this week and have invited someone from the other side of the book world to share her picks for our “So You Want to Read YA?” series. 

Victoria Stapleton gets to be Director, School & Library Marketing at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, which she modestly thinks may be the very job in all of publishing anywhere, in all times. She likes 2:25 AM, Hendricks Gin, and fat novels. She prefers not to think about puppies (unless it’s corgi’s), vampires (still doesn’t get it, don’t try to explain it to her), and suede (impossible to keep nice). She asked Kelly to pick out a lovely shoe to represent her — does it get better than flamed-out, sparkly Louboutins?

So You Wanna Read YA Do Ya?

I came to YA through my job. When I was a chronological teen we had few books: Flowers in the Attic (gack), Sidney Sheldon (urp), Scruples (BRILLIANT!!!!!). Hah! None of these are YA books, though the combined maturity level of all the characters in all these books does not exceed that of a four-year-old, much less an actual teen. The point is, there was not a lot out there. Also I was a strange child with unhealthy fixations on Nixon, Canadian Mounties, and acquiring the power to achieve total clothes closet security.

So I understand, you’re interested, but you don’t have a history with YA. Also you might feel a bit shy of being seen with a dreaded “teen book.” But YA is one of the most interesting places to explore psychology, morality, sexuality, spirituality. A good YA novel, whatever its window dressing, really gets at those moments when individuals begin to become fully realized autonomous beings. Since this is truly a ginomongous topic, there are so many paths to explore. A good YA novel does this bravely, passionately, and truthfully. Here are a few and, believe me, I had a very, VERY hard time narrowing it down. That’s how rich this field is now.

Diana Wynne Jones. Holy Toast with Marmelade this woman, such an amazing writer, over so many titles. There might be a few “less good” ones, but I defy you to find a bad one. Not gonna happen. One of my favorites is Conrad’s Fate. Is Conrad a person or a tool? Does he have a choice or a program?

Sara Zarr. I was finally able to write this post by thinking about Zarr, who is one of the keenest observers and explorers of teen morality and psychology. I’m going to suggest Sweethearts because it goes straight to the heart of the teen need to hide and be noticed at the same time by the same people. Personal expression or camouflage?

Nancy Farmer. One of the single most fascinating women on the planet. A dinner at a Portuguese restaurant in Toronto lives in my memory. Also she uses the word “cathouse” in casual conversation. Try The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. Holy Canoli.

For my final pick, Darren Shan. Yes, Darren Shan. If you think his books are only about grossing you out, you are not paying attention. Loyalty, Revenge, Family, The State, Sacrifice, Forgiveness, Faith, Honor, Courage, Cowardice. This is what Darren Shan is writing about. Teens reading his books are thinking about these issues while someone’s head gets lopped off, but they’re thinking about them nonetheless. If you don’t want to commit to one of his series, I strongly encourage you to read The Thin Executioner. I hated Huckleberry Finn in high school, so tiresome, but I loved The Thin Executioner, which is a mediation on Twain.

I could go on and on and on and few on’s after that. Sherman Alexie, Paolo Bacigalupi, Libba Bray, Malinda Lo, Cindy Pon, David McGinnis Gill, M.T. Anderson (author of the single best book of existentialism ever), Laurie Halse Anderson, A.S. King (truly a boss lady), Barry Lyga, Holly Black (oh my GOD, so good), Laini Taylor, Michael Lawrence, Catherine Fisher, Walter Dean Myers (bow down to the man).

You get the idea. I am almost metaphysically certain I will never read Johnathan Franzen and I have no regrets for I have these voices, these stories, to flat out smack me in the gob.

Dammit! I forgot the Antipodeans: Garth Nix, Karen Healey, Margo Lanagan, Marcus Zusak…

Congrats, giveaway winners

|

Thanks to everyone who joined us in celebrating our three year blogging anniversary (and for entering our contests — that was our biggest turn out to date!).

Congrats to Sophie, who won a copy of Pete Hautman’s Obsidian Blade and Alexandra O., who won a pre-order of Courtney Summers’s This is Not a Test.

Don’t forget, we’ve got a giveaway of Blythe Woolston’s Catch & Release and audiobook version of The Freak Observer running through the end of the month.

Here’s to at least another three years of blogging!

Binky Under Pressure by Ashley Spires

|

I was introduced to Binky the Space Cat last year and was utterly charmed. As a space cat, it is Binky’s job to protect his family from the “aliens” (bugs) that threaten the “space station” (the family’s home). It’s a tough job…but somebody’s gotta do it. In Spires’ third installment, Binky must contend with an interloper in the space station – a foster cat named Gracie who is more than she seems.

I quite enjoyed the story. The first two books were were pretty solitary – Binky interacted with his family (only a little, and they never understood him) and his best friend Ted (who is a stuffed animal), but no one on his own level. With the addition of Gracie, he’s given another animal to socialize with, and they get up to some fun hijinks.

Although the gimmick of Binky being a “space cat” is no longer new, each additional book in the series has maintained the same high quality as the first. The stories are clever and fun (with just the right amount of farting) and the art continues to delight. While Binky himself doesn’t talk, he does make some hilarious noises. His facial expressions are probably my favorite – Spires communicates so much with just a little re-positioning of the mouth or narrowing of the eyes. There are enough details that a second reading is just as enjoyable as the first.
Previously, on Binky the Space Cat…

Since much of the story is told through captions rather than dialogue, thought-bubbles, or pure action, I think these books work well as read-alouds, which can’t be said for most comics. Of course, the art is still wonderful – those expressions on Binky’s face kill me – and adds so much to the story, meaning it’s best shared with one or two little ones so they can each get a good look. (Or you can have your grown-up boyfriend read it and giggle with you, whichever.)

Binky isn’t sure how he feels about the new addition to the space station. Look at his expression in the last panel! Precious and sassy.

Three debut reviews

|

I made it a goal to read 35 debut novels this year, and as of the time I’m writing this post, I’ve already finished 23. Rather than settle on reading my favorite genre, though, I’ve been pushing myself to read outside my comfort zone with debut novels. Here are three of the recent debuts I’ve read and I think you’ll see what I’m talking about. All three of these novels also share an element of government conspiracy to them.

Hemlock by Kathleen Peacock is a paranormal featuring werewolves — something way outside my usual fare. But this story is so much more than a paranormal werewolf novel; it’s a mystery full of heart, with a great main character who doesn’t fall into the trappings I find to be too-common in these sorts of stories.

Mac’s best friend Amy died, and it’s believed her death is related to the outbreak of the werewolf disease hitting the town of Hemlock. The town’s under surveillance, and even though Amy wasn’t the first to die, the circumstances relating to her death are suspicious enough that the government wants to get to the bottom of the disease. They want to protect their citizens and put an end to the fear once and for all.

Kyle and Jason are Mac’s other two friends — Kyle had always been her closest friend, the one everyone thought she should get together with romantically and Jason is the guy who had been dating Amy before she died. There is a love triangle developing, but the way Peacock handles this is fantastic. Never once is Mac the girl figuring out which guy she should be with. Instead, this is a story where the male leads are the vulnerable ones, where their feelings are the ones we have to sort out. Mac has great agency and a brain in her head; this allows her to pursue things as she wants to pursue them. All three of these characters are flawed, and when the mystery surrounding Amy’s death amps up, with Mac at the helm, these flaws become more apparent.

Maybe what I appreciated most about this, aside from the mystery woven through the werewolf lore, was that these characters have no super powers. These are your average teenagers, and because of that, they’re so limited in how they can behave and act. They aren’t going to solve the mystery easily and part of that is because the truth is there is a political conspiracy afoot.

The biggest weakness to Hemlock for me was that the secondary characters were challenging to keep apart and when one of them ended up playing a pretty significant role in the story, I kinda had forgotten who he was. Hand this one off to readers who like paranormal stories but are looking for something fresh, as well as those readers who are looking for a different kind of mystery. Obviously, this one will also go over well with your werewolf fans. I give Peacock some major props for sliding a great reference to Ginger Snaps into the book too. Hemlock is available now.

SD Crockett’s After the Snow hooked me with the dialog, which reminded me a lot of Moira Young’s Blood Red Road (which I really liked) but ultimately, this post-apocalyptic/dystopian novel left me somewhat unsatisfied.

Willo, a half-wild, nature-driven teen, comes home after a day of trapping to discover his father and his father’s wife have disappeared. They’ve resided deep in the wilderness, far away from the city where the government has strapped down control and power over the citizens. The entire world is very, very cold (figuratively and literally). Willo wants to find his family so bad, and so he takes off on a journey away from his home, in hopes of tracking them down. Along the way, he stops at another home, where he finds Mary, and together, they are going to survive and find their families.

Of course it’s not that easy, and they end up being transported right into the city where the government has taken control. They’re lucky to make it inside, since they don’t have papers to identify them. Once there, though, Willo ditches Mary in hopes of being able to seek out his father (he’s gotta look out for number one). People here are not nice, and they all want to steal the coat off his back because it’s a luxury none of them have seen in a long time. But he’s taken in by an older man and woman who put his creation skills to the test, and they’re able to sell apparel with his talent. The woman who has been buying his creations, though, knows where his father is and when she begins to tell him how he can get to safety, all hell breaks loose.

The problems with this story were two-fold: Willo as a character was very hard to follow. His dialect isn’t problematic because it gives us a great sense of his education, his class, and his wildness. He’s very much nature-driven and very much about the survivalist method employed by wild animals. Except his heart is driven in finding his father and that’s where it becomes challenging to connect with him or understand what he’s doing. We don’t get a sense of what’s going on in Willo’s mind, and when he makes choices, they aren’t logical to us as readers. This in and of itself wouldn’t be a challenge, except it is made that way because readers are not given a sense of what is at stake in the city. It’s never clear what the government is doing that’s so bad. We’re never clear why Willo or anyone should be fearful. We don’t know what it is they need to escape from. Part of this has to do with Willo’s lack of knowledge, since the story’s from his perspective, except since we don’t know much about Willo, the tactic falls flat. It leaves the reader confused and unable to emotionally connect with him.

The ending was also unsatisfying. It was too obvious from the beginning and made the journey — the long and frustration journey — even more a question of why? Why did we follow it?

That said, After the Snow has earned three starred reviews from readers who figured out the world much more than I did, but browsing non-professional journals, it appears many others had the same challenges I did. Hand this over to readers who are ready for a challenging read that’s more about style than about world-building. It’s at heart a survival story. After the Snow is available now.

Emmy Laybourne’s Monument 14 is another post-apocalyptic/dystopian novel and it hooked me from the premise alone: 14 kids, ranging in age from elementary school students all the way through high school students, are on their way to school when the sky opens up and starts destroying everything. They have to take refuge in the nearest safe place, which is the Greenway store (think big box, like Walmart). The employees from the store have died because they went outside and were crushed by the massive hail. Their bus driver — arguably the most interesting character in the story — goes out and never comes back. Now they’ve got to fend for themselves in a world that is falling apart before their own eyes.

All of these kids are trapped in what is probably the best place to be stuck during a catastrophe. They’ve got everything they could possibly need all in front of them. They have things they can sleep on. They have food they can eat. They have electricity (which they have to conserve). I guess it stunk they didn’t have water, but they did have it in bottles, and they figured out how to handle the bathroom situation (in far too much detail, I think). They can’t communicate with the outside world because the Network is down.

Apparently, there is some sort of government conspiracy going on in this story, too, but it is never explained. There are snatches of it — the knowledge that something being released into the system causes people to exhibit certain physical problems, based on their blood type — but it is so minimal. The story focuses much more on the minutia of life inside this store. That’s to say there’s no apparent external threat in this story. For a moment, there’s a crazy guy outside who wants to get in, and when the kids choose to allow two men come in from the outside, there are small moments of wondering what could go wrong. But otherwise, Monument 14 suffers from being boring because there’s not really anything worth worrying about. Likewise, this is also a future world, but never once did it feel like that was the case because that plot line was never explored.

More than that, though, what Laybourne’s story doesn’t offer us is any good character development. There are 14 characters, and most of them get little to no page time. The teen characters get a little more time, as they should, but they offer us no reason to worry about them. Two of the main female characters are depicted in very problematic ways, too: one is given the reputation and storyline of being a slut (and it’s done in a very disturbing manner, in a scene that made me very, very uncomfortable to read because it objectified her terribly) and then she’s raped later on in the story but the characters don’t necessarily buy this from her because of her reputation; the other girl, who we get to meet in a very intimate moment (one where she ends up hurting a boy pretty bad) we find out is expecting a baby. There is a third girl, but she’s given so little time it’s hard not to walk away wondering what the message about females and males was in this story.

Monument 14 is the first in a series, and I am pretty certain I won’t be picking up the next title. This one didn’t offer me any reason to because it didn’t offer me compelling characters or a world worth caring about. The ending is very much first-in-a-series in terms of being a cliffhanger, but it was more disappointing than hooking. If characters in the story aren’t going at this with their whole heart, I can’t either. I left this one feeling bored, disinterested, and deeply unsatisfied as a reader. Other books have taken this concept of teens trapped together and offered up not only strong characters, but also great external threats. Monument 14 will be available June 5.

Review copies provided by the publishers.