Weeding the teen collection

Every year (or two) I have to go through the teen collection and withdraw books that no longer circulate, have fallen apart, are outdated, et cetera to make room for all the new and wonderful books I have ordered for the collection. Usually, I do so with a smile on my face. Yes, I can get rid of the Buffy the Vampire Hunter movie novelization! Yea! I don't need fifteen copies of Twilight anymore! Hip Hip Hooray! Meg Cabot books fit on two shelves again! And for a while I can even face out books on the shelves to market them to teen readers browsing in the area. (Confession: While "weeding" as librarians call it, I tend to display books that are borderline titles that need pushing.)

But this year, I have come across some titles that will break my heart if I withdraw them from the collection. Robert Cormier. I'm sure I've blogged about him and his wonderfully dark tales before, but I'm doing it again. A handful of his books are on the chopping block. And I don't wanna do it. I'll probably buckle down and withdraw a second copy, but I just can't get rid of the books that made me want to be a teen librarian and made me love teen literature and what it can showcase.

To whomever is reading The Chocolate War and I am the Cheese, thank you. While those are Cormier's two most popular and well known titles, he has some other great ones if you like novels that make you think about injustices, and the gray between black and white, and are pretty unpredictable. For example, After the First Death follows the events of a school bus hijacking told through the eyes of terrorist, a hostage, a general, and the general's son who is the go-between.

So please, do me a favor. Go check out his books from the library for me. And if you don't use my library--go to your local library and check them out there.

Guilty Pleasure Reading

I've been meaning to post since I don't know... forever ago. Why has it taken me so long? Busy at work, busy at home, busy, busy, busy. That's no excuse because I've been meaning to post about my current Guilty Pleasure Reading. What, you may ask, is my definition of Guilty Pleasure Reading (yes, I think of the words in capitalized)? Simply put, it's my escapist reading. I don't care how well written the title is, I don't have to justify my reading of it as literature or I'm reviewing it. Strangely enough, my Guilty Pleasure Reading runs the gamut of types of stories. It could be my Harry Potter fanfiction I read on my phone, my manga series that I still pick up on occasion, or that Robert Cormier novel that put me on the path of my career-- The Chocolate War.

Or it could be like the book series I'm currently Guilty Pleasure Reading -- the Jasper Dent series by Barry Lyga. The first book, I Hunt Killers. Jazz knows everything there is to know about serial killers because of his Dear Old Dad. Dear Old Dad was the most notorious serial killer of today. While Dear Old Dad (D.O.D.) wastes away in prison, Jazz fights D.O.D.'s voice in his head daily, hoping, praying that his conscience will be the thing that stops him from being a killer like D.O.D.--or an even better one. Then the murders start happening in his town. Jazz knows that before long someone will start pointing their finger at him, so he tries to help the police in their investigation to stop the Impressionist.

The key to the novel for me was Jazz. What an intriguing character. How does someone who was raised to be the best serial killer not use his brainwashing? How much is nature vs. nurture and really what chance does this kid have? It reminds me of a line from the TV show Criminal Minds about those who have had the horrible scarring childhoods can become the sociopathic killers or the ones who catch them. Jazz will be the hunter to the killers. Lyga kept him interesting through his inner monologue of Dear Old Dad and his own internal battle against said training. Lyga created the right mixture of darkness with a splash of humor to make this dark time easier to swallow. The novel definitely pushes the envelope in terms of graphic violence, but older teens and adults will most likely be fine with it.

I'm one of those people who silently mocks all of you readers who read the last few pages ahead of time to see what happens. I have to admit that this book made me do it. The first time Jazz flashes to the dream/memory "cuts like chicken" I had to know if he was made to kill his mom as a kid. Of course we don't know the answer, but I still had to look.

The second book. The Game, is out and available. I'm trying to get through my pile of books I have to review for review journals before  I pick it up, but it's a tough battle. If you enjoy dark novels about serial killers, which in the teen lit world I can't really think of one, then this one will be up your alley.

17 and Gone

Pure excitement to see a new book out by Nova Ren Suma, author of Imaginary Girls, one of my favorite reads from last year!  I gobbled up 17 and Gone, which was eerie and satisfying and a more than a little unnerving. In her newest novel, missing girls haunt the pages, all of them seventeen-years-old, all of them missing without a trace, all of them drawn to our main character, Lauren, herself only seventeen-years-old and suddenly able to see these missing girls, these--dead?--girls, not only in her recurring dreams but in waking life.  Lauren becomes obsessed with the missing, to the point where she drives her own boyfriend away and withdraws from everyone she knows.  Lauren doesn't care.  Because she's realizing how dangerous the world is, how vulnerable a teenage girl can be, how easily one can disappear, there one moment, gone the next.  The voices of the missing fill her head.  Can Lauren find them?  Why have they come to her and what end awaits them all, including Lauren?

Nova Ren Suma is an incredible writer.  She manages to go a step beyond in both of the novels I've read by her.  You won't find cliche here.  She goes deeper and she has a very accurate sense of the psychology of teen girls.  Imaginary Girls and 17& Gone are polar opposites in some thematic ways I won't get into here and now, but they both have the same deliciously dark factor coupled with beautiful writing that make them quality reads.

Highly recommended.

Gentlemen

What a great cover! Is that kid in a hoodie or a body bag? This sort of dark uncertainty--what is really happening?--is at the heart of Gentlemen by Michael Northrop.

The novel's main characters are four high school guys who make up a tight-knit, loyal band of friends. These guys are the bad grade makers, the delinquents, the trouble makers, but one thing they have down pat is loyalty to the group. When Tommy, one the four, hurls his desk over in class rather than answer the teacher's question, his other three friends assume he has been expelled. How else to explain his sudden disappearance? But when his mother hasn't heard from him and no one has seen him in days, the guys wonder if Tommy has run away again. Around the same time, their weird English teacher--a guy who snidely insists on calling the guys "gentlemen"-- brings a big blue barrel into class, inviting the students to guess what might or might not be stuffed inside. It's supposed to be a visual aid tied into their Crime and Punishment reading assignment, but when the three friends are forced to help the teacher move the barrel to his car, they become aware that the mystery item inside is as heavy as a body. The thing is unwieldy, strangely joint-like and wrapped up in a blanket. Only later does the horrible idea come to them: Could it actually have been a body they helped move? Could it actually have been. . . Tommy?

With an authentic voice, fifteen-year-old Micheal (his parents misspelled his own name) narrates this story of crime and punishment, guilt and suspicion. Thrown in for good measure, questions of loyalty and how far a person should go for friendship. At what point do the bonds of friendship constrict too tightly? What do you do when you suspect something awful has happened to your friend and especially what do you do if you've been implicated in the potential crime? No one is going to believe the ramblings of a bunch of juvenile delinquents, after all. So, how to get to the truth?

Great tension, eerie premise. What really happened to Tommy? Suspenseful and creepy, this novel keeps the reader guessing until its chilling ending.

The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs

Ivy loves her mother very, very much. She doesn’t know who her father is and she doesn’t really care. Her beloved mother is all that she needs. After school, Ivy is watched over by Abner and Adolph Rumbaugh, eccentric identical twin brothers who operate a pharmacy across the street from the hotel where she and her mother live. Ivy plays in a basement room of the pharmacy until her mother returns home from work.

One Sunday afternoon, Ivy makes a gruesome discovery while nosing around a restricted area of the pharmacy basement. The discovery ignites in Ivy a passion for taxidermy and is the first in a series of revelations surrounding dark family secrets of a love curse.

The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs by Jack Gantos is basically a tale of a girl who is torn between who she would like to be and who she may be destined to become. I’ve tried to be fairly vague in describing the plot because I don’t want to give away any surprises. However, to give a better sense of what to expect from this book, I have provided the following list of adjectives and relevant themes…

Adjectives: gothic, creepy, weird, dis-gus-ting, thought-provoking, tragic
Themes: taxidermy instruction, mother-love/obsession, twin connection, nurture vs. nature

Skin Hunger

Isn't Kristin sad in her attempt to take back her Blog Queen crown? What she doesn't realize is that her title has already been usurped. I am wearing the tiara now, and there are sooo many books I haven't even blogged yet. Well,-well-well, let's hope this coup doesn't turn bloody. (I'd hate for Kristin to suffer---she reads some good books, but I type faster than she does. I type faster!)

Childish playground games aside, today's Blog Queen's post is about a book that intrigued me but. . . I'm still not sure I really liked it. Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey is the first in a projected trilogy of fantasy novels called "Resurrection of Magic." Two parallel stories, divided in time, are told in alternating chapters. It took me a little while to understand that the second half of the story is being told years and years in the future from the first half, and that the elderly wizards are the much older versions of the young characters from the first half. Once the reader realizes this, it really adds to the story, in terms of comparing and contrasting the old versions to the young, and wondering and worrying about what has happened in the intervening years. Warning: this is a dark, dark world you're entering when you start reading this novel. It's not a happy world and even the characters who are trying to make a difference are contributing to that darkness. The old adage, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" comes to mind. . .

In the "youth" portions of the novel, two young men are fighting to restore magic to their world. They know real magic exists but charlatans and scam artists have destroyed magic's reputation. One young man is the indentured servant of the other, a son from a wealthy family whose drive to seek real magic becomes frightening in its intensity. . . and in the man's willingness to ignore morality since he feels the ends justify the means. Into their home comes Sadima, a young woman who can sense the emotions of animals, and she begins to temper the voltatile situation, but things become more difficult when she falls in love with the servant. As Sadima realizes the horror of the search for magic, she tries to convince her love to run away with her.

Flash forward several generations into the future. Hahp, another teenage son of another wealthy family, is preparing to go off to wizarding school. If this makes you think Hogwarts, think again. Most young men never return from this school. Exactly one member of each year's class graduates and becomes a wizard. The others? They die. Literally, they die. In the labrythine corridors deep beneath the earth, these hapless students of magic never see daylight. They also never see food, unless they learn enough magic to produce food for themselves. To my horror (and to Hahp's) I realized that several of the magicking students were starving to death. Kindness and a helping hand toward fellow students is strongly discouraged; one student is to become a wizard and it would be foolish to help a rival. But Hahp has a hard time not helping the others, and he needs help too. The wizards who run the school may be wise but they're not kind (again, no Hogwart's, no Dumbledore), and it all makes sense when the reader realizes that two of those teachers are the young men from the first half of the book. But what has happened to Sadima?

This book was greatly unpleasant in a number of ways. It's definitely dark fantasy in the darkest sense. That said, I absolutely have to read the next two volumes. It's a bit frustrating that the book ended without closure. (It is the first in a trilogy, after all. Think how frustrating the end of The Fellowship of the Rings was.) I was horrified by the wizarding school, and I was horrified by the search for magic. But the characters of Sadima and Hahp offer hope. I simply have to know what happened to Sadima, and whether or not Hahp will survive his elite boarding school. This is one of those books that makes the reader uncomfortable at times but stays in the reader's mind long after the book has been closed. Do the ends justify the means? Is love stronger than ambition? Can a person ever change who they are?

I have no idea when Book Two is due out, but it looks like I am in for the long haul now.

Looking for J.J.

What if you'd done something horrible in your youth? Something really horrible? Worse than shoplifting. Worse than lying to your friends or cheating on a school test. What if you'd killed someone? Another child, actually. If you'd done something like that could you ever expect to be forgiven? Could you ever expect to be loved?

Anne Cassidy considers these questions in Looking for J.J. The novel starts with the release of notorious child killer, Jennifer Jones, from the British juvenile facility where she has spent the last six years of her life. In that time Jennifer has taken on a new identity. No one connects "Alice Tully" with the specter of Jennifer Jones, a ten-year-old girl who murdered a friend in cold blood. Only her social worker and the warden of the juvenile center know "Alice's" true identity. But reporters and private detectives are stirring up the muck. The tabloids are foaming at the mouth to get the scoop on J'J's whereabouts. They see Jennifer as a monster. Little do they know that she's a different person now--or at least, she'd like to be. "Alice" is quiet, withdrawn, and most of all repentant. She deeply regrets what happened six years ago when "three children walked away from the cottages on the edge of town toward Berwick Waters [and] later that day, only two of them came back. . ."

This book appealed to me from the instant I picked it up. The ghoulish part of me immediately glommed onto the the creepiness of the plot and the law-abiding part of me wanted to see how the author would handle the themes of regret and repentance. (But I was mostly interested in the creepy plot, truth be told.) So, I was a little disappointed that the book began so slowly. After a fairly gripping first chapter, the book progresses through Alice's current life, taking us through her days at the cafe where she works, showing us her relationship with her controlling older boyfriend, explaining to us how Alice lives in fear of being exposed. This was all neccesary to understand, but it felt like a lot of the same information was getting repeated, and I found myself growing restless. Luckily, I kept reading and finally reached the point in the book where Alice begins flashing back to the events leading up to the murder. At this point I couldn't get enough of the book. I was eating lunch and trying to read and I had to choose between one activity or the other since I couldn't both hold the book open and shovel food into my mouth at the same time. I chose the book. There you have it! Giving up food for story is all the review a sensible person needs. (But in case you want more, allow me to ramble on. . .)


The flashback scenes were wonderful. The author sets up a totally believable string of events, culminating in tragedy. I wish the author had begun with the flashbacks because these were the chapters in which I felt I really understood Jennifer's motivations and psyche. Also, the story of Jennifer's lonely childhood with her mother, a washed-up model suffering from depression, made for generally better story than the chapters that belong to "Alice." One part couldn't exist without the other, of course, but the Jennifer parts were quite good to read.


This book won the Booktrust Teenage Prize and was short-listed for the Whitbread Children's Book Award and the Carnegie Medal. I guess I wasn't quite as taken with it as these prize committees. Although I liked it and would recommend it, I felt like the author could have explored the themes a little more deeply. The book ended quite abruptly (at least to me), and I was disappointed that the main character never met up with the other surviving child from the incident, nor really came to terms (or even began to come to terms) with her less-than-stellar mother. In essence, I enjoyed the novel, but I saw potential for even more to have come out of it, so I was a bit disappointed not to get it. Still, a worthy read.