Into The Wild Nerd Yonder

Jessie is a girl who doesn't really like her friends. At least, she doesn't really like what her friends have turned into, because somewhere between Freshman and Sophomore year, her two best friends, Bizza and Char, have transformed themselves into wanna-be punks -- multicolored dreads, shaved heads and combat boots. Jessie has no desire to be a punk poser, drinking bad coffee in the smoking section at Denny’s; she'd rather listen to audio books and work on her collection of whimsical skirts. Bizza and Char seem to want to spend more time with the band that Jessie’s brother plays with than with Jessie. Things don't come to the breaking point till Bizza "hooks up" with the guy that Jessie has been crushing on for years. Finally breaking free of the "posuerettes" puts Jessie on the lookout for new friends, and finds them in the local D&D players. But will hanging with the nerds make her a nerd too? And does it matter if it does?

I really liked Jessie. She seems like the kind of girl I'd like to hang out with, and she has excellent taste in books. Plus, she made herself a skirt with Wonder Woman on it, which I now totally covet. Julie just seems very comfortable in her life, and has great relationships with her brother and parents. As an adult I was annoyed with her preoccupation with looking like a nerd. However, I know that being "cool" is something that takes up a lot of teenager's mental energy, so Halpern probably got that right. What I really liked was how excited Jessie was about D&D, how much she enjoyed the game. Role playing isn't an area of the geek forest that I ever really explored much, but anyone who's watched as much Doctor Who or read as many comics books as I have has no right to judge anybody. One thing I do wish is that this book has a better cover. For some reason, this one reminds me of paper dolls.

Purple Heart

A young soldier, Matt, is injured in an ambush. His memory is faulty as to what actually happened and his keeps seeing an Iraqi boy he befriended as part of the ambush. Matt is so terribly afraid that he killed the boy. Matt comes to realized that things are not what they seemed. Once Matt finally realizes what happened, he still has a very hard time accepting the circumstances. It still makes no sense, yet he must go on and try to live with his memories and his actions.

McCormick wrote a very realistic novel. It unrelenting in its portrayal of what life is like for our men and women in the Middle East. My nephew served in Iraq and reading this book made me want to cry knowing what he went through and what other soldiers go through now. I also mourn the kind of life the civilians and other living beings have to endure.

It is a hard novel to read, not very long, but I kept wanting to read that Matt and his squad had served their time and were going to go home in one piece. War is dirty, tiring, heartbreaking and senseless. All of these emotions are played out on the pages of Patricia McCormick's Purple Heart. I wish this was a fantasy book instead of a well researched book that used actual experiences of soldiers who gave their lives and of civilians who also died while we occupied their country. It is well written and I would certainly recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a good book.

Hate List

Ordinarily I do not read these kind of novels. I read to escape because there is too much of this kind of stuff in the papers, on the radio and on television. However, the synopsis inside the dust jacket got me curious. It was a little slow getting into the book, but I was definitely glad I stuck with it.

On a May morning at Garvin High School, Nick Levil leads his girlfriend Valerie Leftman into the Commons looking for a girl who broke Val's MP3 player. Val thinks that Nick is going to make Christy Bruter give her the money for a new player. Instead, to her horror, Nick pulls out a gun and shoots Christy in the abdomen. He then proceeds to shoot other students. As Valerie begins to realized that Nick is not going to stop, she runs to him so she can make him stop. As she shields another student, Nick shoots her in the leg. Perhaps the shock of seeing her shot, makes Nick turn the gun on himself, but at any rate the shooting stops.

I cannot even imagine how I would react if I experience such a traumatic, horrific event. The author seemed to capture the atmosphere of Garvin after the shootings. How the whole community was affected and how the people were changed. No one was left unscathed.

The journey that Valerie began after that tragic day is mind boggling, extremely painful (both emotionally and physically) and emotionally draining. Alternating between despair, guilt, loneliness and need for forgiveness and acceptance, Valerie barely makes it through the school year. She was very troubled and confused. Perhaps if she hadn't been so angry, she might have been able to prevent Nick from killing anyone. She gets help from a psychiatrist and unexpected help from someone she would never have thought would give a damn about her.

The other characters who run the gamut of those who want her in jail to those who see her as a hero, seem to be true-to-life. It was interesting to get to know the characters before the shooting in flashbacks and see how much they have changed. I could identify with each one of them and could understand why they felt that way. And yet I abhorred those that hated her because hate was the very reason so many had died.

The end is bittersweet. I guess I wanted a happy ending, but how could something like this be a live happily ever after kind of ending? Perhaps this is as good as it can get. At least there is some hope. Jennifer Brown wrote what seems to me to be a realistic novel. Too bad this one has played out way too many times not only at schools but at too many other places in the world.

Hate List makes you think about how fragile life really is and how all to easily anyone could make up their own hate list and do something about it. This is a book that should read and discussed. Perhaps if we looked more closely at our own feeling and tried to come to terms with our bias, we could prevent some of the tragedies that occur all too often in this world.

Going Bovine

Who knew mad cow disease could be so hilarious? Going Bovine by Libba Bray is one of the funnier and more satisfying books I've read this year. First off, great cover. That's always a plus in my shallow book. Second off, what an adventure, one that might be taking place only in the main character's mind but that's not for certain. Basically nothing is for certain in this book.

Sixteen-year-old Cameron finds out he has mad cow disease before he's even lived enough of his life to lose his virginity. There's no cure. His brain is slowly falling apart and as a result he's suffering hallucinations. While in the hospital, Cameron is visited by Dulcie, a pink-haired, punk rock angel, who sends him on a quest to save the world. Is she simply a product of his fevered mind? Who can take the chance when a black hole threatens to swallow the world, fire giants are on the loose, and finding the mysterious Dr. X who has set this all in motion might mean finding the only cure for your fatal disease? Cameron heeds the call and escapes from the hospital along with his classmate, Gonzo, and joined by an enchanted yard gnome who's really an immortal Viking warrior. As Cameron follows the random clues he finds along the way--it's all connected, as Dulcie explains--he goes on the advenute of a lifetime--a life that will end far too soon if he fails in his task.

There's been a lot of buzz about this book and the buzz is merited. Fabulous, funny, and fun, though not without its sad side this book is good for those who like road trip fiction, humor, adventure or all three, narrated by a lovable-though-possibly-doomed teenage hero.

Love You, Hate You, Miss You

Elizabeth Scott continues to impress me as a writer. I first read her work when I got my hands on an advanced reading copy of the amazing though emotionally devastating Living Dead Girl. (I doubt anything can compare to the emotional punch of that novel.) Love You, Hate You, Miss You will be a much more palatable read for a general audience although it too deals with Big Issues—teenage drinking, drug use, and death. Amy survived the car accident that took her best friend, Julia’s, life. Amy blames herself for reasons the reader understands only as the plot develops. The reader can see what Amy cannot, mainly that she isn’t really to blame for the accident though she did play a role in the events leading up to it. Amy, who usually functions through life by drinking booze, goes dry in order to feel all of the bad things the alcohol usually deadens. Amy thinks this should be the least of her punishment—to experience the pain. As she returns to home and school from a teen treatment center, Amy’s work is only just beginning. Socially, she’s isolated. Julia was her closest friend and now she’s gone. Her parents have always seemed like a couple who didn’t need a child and Amy feels like the third wheel. At school, she hears the whispered rumors about her and she’s also stuck in a group project with Patrick, a guy she almost slept with at a party and now can’t face, for reasons that are more sophisticated and complex than shame. This is the strength of Elizabeth Scott’s books—she really gets into the psychology of her characters. There are no easy fixes. Characters’ motivations are complicated, the way human motivations often are.

I liked this one a lot and have very few criticisms of it, the general criticism being that lots of information was repeated, particularly Amy’s notion of her parents not really wanting her. I often felt I was reading the same sentence about the parents, stuck into different parts of the book. Other than that--and my wish for a better title-- there was little to quibble over. It’s a read that captures your attention from the start. Both Amy’s voice and her situation are authentic. This is no morality tale “issues” novel but one that goes deeper than the surface in portraying Amy’s pain and guilt.

A graphic novel memoir

David Small, a Caldecott winning illustrator, recently published his memoir, Stitches. Instead of writing a prose book, he created a graphic novel to tell the story of his dysfunctional family, growing up in the Midwest in the late 1940-1950s.
His father was a radiologist and his mother was the dutiful housewife in a home filled with silence and passive aggression.

While the family life is the focus of the first part of the book, the second part is much more intriguing. When he was eleven, a growth was discovered on his neck. When he was fourteen he was operated on twice and half of his voice cords were removed rendering him virtually silent. He had cancer and he wasn't told. He didn't need to know they said when he confronts his parents later on.

I can totally understand how this memoir received all starred reviews in the library journals.Small's fantastically rendered world is both enthralling and creepy at the same time. His over active imagination comes to life in his drawings of his dreams and nightmares. His images turn from cartoony to realistic from panel to panel but completely works to tell his story. I have panels marked as some of my favorite individual panels of all time.

I'm not sure I'd be reading Small's story if he had written it as a prose book. The imagery is so strong that I don't think I could visualize the family life in as good of detail as he provided in the artwork. A fascinating read--not specifically for teens, but I think given the chance they will become just as horrified at the family as I was!

After

This novel tells the tale of a teenage girl jailed after dumping her baby in a trash can. Deep in denial, soccer star, Devon, can barely even admit that she was pregnant at all. She refers to the baby as IT (a tactic that grows a little old throughout the course of the novel) and wants to know when she can go home. Charged with attempted murder, Devon enters the juvenile court system while her attorney fights to keep her client from being prosecuted as an adult.

It's an extremely interesting topic, torn from the headlines. How does this kind of situation happen? The author spends a great deal of time establishing Devon's denial. Too much for my taste. I think the book could have benefitted from some serious editing in the first half. I grew very impatient with Devon who I couldn't help but think was awfully dumb for a smart girl. I knew she was in denial, but I wanted the pace to pick up a bit. Devon's slowness to answer even the most rudimentary question ("here" is the proper response during a roll call, for example)instead delving into flashback wore on me after awhile. 100 pages into the novel I almost gave up on Devon, not because she'd committed the crime but because it was taking so long to move forward in the story. Right about the point I reached maxmimum frustration, more interesting characters saved the day (the defense attorney for one; Karma, a fellow juvenile offender with an eye-rollingly bad name, for another) and suddenly Devon got it together (or more together than she'd had it) and the story grew more compelling by leaps and bounds. I was definitely hooked by the time the trial began and most readers will be too.

Looking for Alaska

The last book I'm highlighting this week is Looking for Alaska by John Green. Susan wrote about this book way back in 2006 on Book Obsession. Here's a link to her blog post.

Anyway, this is one of the books that has had challenges this year and last year. All due to one scene taken out of context. On John Green's blog, he discusses the most recent challenge and links to his vlog about a former challenge. Watch the vlog, it is one of the best explanations about why you shouldn't take one scene out of context. here's his blog--the post to read is called "Banned in My Hometown: What's a Kid to Do."

And if you're interested in Looking for Alaska, it's about Miles and his first year at a boarding school in Alabama. Miles discovers great friends, pranks, and love in Alabama, particularly with his friend Alaska, a girl who is so over the top you can't help but love her. The book won the Printz Award for a good reason. Check out the book, you won't be disappointed.