Teen Review: The Book Thief

Today we're featuring our first Virtual Volunteer* book review from teen volunteer Jacob. Read on for his thoughtful review of The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak.

In Mark Zusac’s charming novel, The book thief, he is able to capture and captivate his audience throughout the entirety of the novel. Creatively, yet concisely, Zusac details the life of Liesel Meminger whether her family is harboring a fugitive or she’s stealing another book; You will always comprehend what he’s writing. The book begins with a little girl who faces tragedy immediately (among other tragic things happening such as the holocaust and the many events of the holocaust); she has to move to a foster family with her brother, and on the trek to the foster family, her brother dies. This death of her brother sets the theme for the rest of the book: tragedy, triumph, and the importance of books and reading (you’ll see how these connect later!) Fittingly, this novel is narrated by the end himself, Death. Death being the narrator adds a much needed playful (“yeah, right.” You’re thinking right now.) and cynical tone. Overall, this book was great, believe it or not I was sobbing by the end of the book (not sure if it was because I was tired or if it was genuinely sad.) I rate this book 9.4 out of 10. The .6 is missing because of the tears that were shed reading this, and because the book ended on a solid note, leaving no room for cliffhangers (darn!). This book may have caused me emotional turmoil, but it was worth the read and do not regret taking the time out of my day to read it.

*Interested in becoming a Virtual Volunteer? Fill out an online volunteer application, indicating an interest in Virtual Volunteering, then email our volunteer coordinator, Ray Ceo at rceo@glendaleaz.com for more information. We look forward to your reviews!

Kearsten's Book Club: Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King

Once again, we teens (and teen librarian) met to discuss an awesome teen book.  This Monday, we talked about the sad and wonderful Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King.

When her best friend, whom she secretly loves, betrays her and then dies under mysterious circumstances, high school senior Vera Dietz struggles with secrets that could help clear his name.

Vera was a troubling character for some book club members. She's had a rough time over the years: her mother took off for Vegas when Vera was twelve, her dad has very strict ideas about how teenagers should pay for themselves (by getting a full-time job ASAP), and Vera's been keeping secrets for her best friend Charlie for YEARS.  So, yes, Vera's struggling, and she makes some heavy mistakes in her choice of coping mechanisms.

BUT: Vera changes.  She makes mistakes, she does the wrong things, and she ignores signs she shouldn't, just like we all have.  What makes Vera awesome is the way she works towards righting her wrongs without compromising who she is.

This story, with its grief and death and guilt and humor and strangeness, led us down all sorts of thought-provoking paths. We talked about abuse, about magical realism, about rape culture, about third-person omniscient narration, about littering (and its environmental impact), and about the utter wrongness of 'blaming the victim'.

RUN to the library to pick up a copy of this beautiful, funny, and sad novel. Already shed some tears over it? Why not try one of these similar titles?

Shine by Lauren Myracle. When her best friend falls victim to a vicious hate crime, sixteen-year-old Cat sets out to discover the culprits in her small North Carolina town.

The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney. When Alex, a junior at an elite preparatory school, realizes that she may have been the victim of date rape, she confides in her roommates and sister who convince her to seek help from a secret society, the Mockingbirds.

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.

The Perfect Shot by Elaine Marie Alphin.  Brian uses basketball to block out memories of his girlfriend and her family who were gunned down a year ago, but the upcoming murder trial and a high school history assignment force him to face the past and decide how far he should go to see justice served. Includes facts about miscarriages of justice in American history.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.  A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school.

Kearsten's Book Club: Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

On Monday, February 27th, Kearsten's Book Club settled in with chocolate and lemon pie to discuss Gabrielle Zevin's teen book, Elsewhere.

"After fifteen-year-old Liz Hall is hit by a taxi and killed, she finds herself in a place that is both like and unlike Earth, where she must adjust to her new status and figure out how to 'live.'"

Our fearless Destinee led the discussion, which ranged from "If you could choose any avocation, what would it be?" to "What are you looking forward to most?" to "What on Earth did all this symbolism mean?!"

As usual, feelings about the book was mixed: while some us us enjoyed the book for it's philosophical aspects (What does it mean to have lived? Can you choose to be happy?), others found it frustrating, or even boring, due to its slower pace and lack of action.

This is definitely a quieter sort of book, one that asks its reader to wonder what it might mean to die young, and miss out on a lot of the life experiences about which adults reminisce. Is a life lived differently than what you'd expected worse somehow? Or can it be just as worth living as that 'other' life?

If you've already read Elsewhere and would like to read something similar, try some of these teen and adult titles. (I've linked to a mix of print, ebooks and audiobooks, all in the interest of getting you to summaries quickly!)

• Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
• The Fault in our Stars by John Green
• The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
• How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
• If I Stay by Gayle Forman
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Any I missed? What did you think of the book?

Fault in our Stars

I have a confession to make. As a teenager in between my reading of Stephen King and Christopher Pike, I read the maudlin tales of Lurlene McDaniel. These tearjerkers all had the same thing in common--someone died--usually of some horrific cancer that the character struggles through while the supporting characters rally around her.

What does this have to do with John Green's newest book, The Fault in Our Stars, you ask? Simply that the main character, Hazel, is a cancer kid. That alone would have made me want to read it, but then add in that it's John Green (and as some may know--pretty much all teen librarians love John Green), and it's set in Indianapolis (I'm an uprooted Hoosier). I had to read it. I figured it would be a hard read for me to do right now for reasons I'm not going into, I decided to try and if it became too upsetting, I'd stop. I didn't have to stop. I read it all day yesterday.

Hazel is a sixteen year old teen who has thyroid cancer that has metastasized to her lungs. She lugs around an oxygen tank because as she puts it her lungs suck at being lungs. Her mother forces her to attend a support group for cancer kids. She's been terminal for three years and has accepted that her cancer is going to be the death of her. But then she meets Augustus at the support group. He lost part of a leg to bone cancer. He only came to support his friend Isaac who is losing his only functioning eye to cancer, but when he sees Hazel he can't look away. He calls her Hazel Grace and compares her to Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta. They begin a friendship with tentative flirting and then a full fledged romance that is doomed from the start.

I figured that I would know how the story ends before it even began, but I was pleasantly wrong. Hazel and Augustus are the type of intellectual teens that banter back and forth about book quotes or philosophical issues that only facing death truly brings up in conversation. They poke fun at the maudlin cancer kid problem novels. And yes, this is a cancer kid problem novel at the heart of it, but it's hilariously funny and bitterly sad at the same time. Only a truly talented author can balance that fine line. As someone from Indy, I have to say that I knew exactly where they were throughout the book, which tickled me to death. The side storyline trip to Amsterdam to meet a reclusive author as their Wish was a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed all of it, but it felt like it was tacked on because the author got a grant of some sort to write about it. It wasn't necessary to the story for me, but that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy it because I did.

And for those people who are wondering if this is a massive tearjerker--it wasn't for me. I choked up when Hazel compares herself to a grenade and that she wanted to save others from the collateral damage of knowing her. I choked up when her father spoke to her about his love for her (FYI--awesome parents in this book all around. I love that the parents were real!!). But for the rest of the sad parts, I didn't really get upset as a reader. That says a lot for me since I tear up at the mention of anything sad usually. Now that I said that--I hope the other teen librarians who have read this book will chime in with their take on the book. I know that there are at least two or three in our libraries that have read it too, so I'll see if they'll post their thoughts here as well!

Some reviews are saying that this is John Green's best yet, but I still favor Looking for Alaska over this one. It's a second place for me. Still fabulous and highly recommended--I just wanted a little more. This book is for those realistic fiction readers looking for some fun dialogue, great characters, and a bit of sadness thrown in.

The Sky Is Everywhere

"I don't believe time heals. I don't want it to. If I heal, doesn't that mean I've accepted the world without her?"

In this beautifully written novel about grief, family, and love, seventeen-year-old Lennie does not know how life can go on after her older sister, Bailey, dies. Len is consumed with sadness and anger and loss. Months pass and food still tastes like ash; the world has lost its color. Her quirky family--Gram and Uncle Big--try to fill the void left behind but only Bailey's boyfriend, Toby, really seems to understand. United in grief, Lennie and Toby find themselves drawn together and suddenly their relationship has become romantic--a guilty secret they try to resist but can't. The more Lennie tries to stay away from Toby, the stronger the attraction becomes. In the meantime, she's pulled away from all the other people in her life who want to help her, not only her family but her best friend too.

Then a new boy moves to town and into Lennie's music class. Joe Fontaine is the most alive person Lennie has ever met and his charming persistence finally begins to wear down Lennie's staunch refusal to play her music seriously since her sister's death and also her refusal to take part in a world that continues to go on even when the most important person in her life has disappeared. Joe becomes more and more dear to Lennie as each day passes. . . so why can't she stop meeting up with Toby?

A friend recommended this novel to me as the best book she's read all year. I can see why she enthused about it so much. You can tell the author is a poet--her way with words is magical. One of the most compelling parts of this book are the poems scattered throughout it, all written by Lennie on scraps of paper, the undersides of benches, discarded cups and the like, poems Lennie abandons to the world in a effort to reach her sister or simply trying to deal with loss. Strong characters populate this book, each of them fully developed, with a story of their own to tell. You'll want to take your time with this novel and drink it in. This is a spot-on portrait of grief, in all its confusing emotions, and a reader is unlikely to find another that tells the tale of loss and love so well.

Where She Went

Did you read If I Stay by Gayle Forman? And did you just love it? If you answered 'yes' and 'yes" to these two questions, then you need to run to the library and pick up Gayle Forman's latest book, Where She Went. In the first book, high school senior, Mia, has been in a terrible car accident that claimed the lives of both her parents, and put her younger brother and herself in critical condition in the hospital. While her body lies in a coma, Mia's "spirit," for lack of a better word, hovers above the scene, observing her friends and remaining family who desperately try to reach her in the Intensive Care unit where Mia's traumatized body undergoes frantic attempts by hospial staff to revive it. Mia, in spirit, must decide--in the famous words of The Clash--should I stay or should I go now? Is life worth living without her beloved family? The novel is poignant, a tear-jerker, and a page turner. And so is Where She Went. But in case you haven't read the first book------------------------------------------

*********SPOILER SPACE***********************


















Mia decides to stay--after her boyfriend, a musician like Mia, plays her a cello concerto, reminding Mia of her gift for music and of the people left in her life to love. He also makes her a promise that if she lives, he won't ask anything else of her; he will even let her go, just so long as she lives.

And Mia leaves him. Without a word, without an explanation, after Mia recuperates and goes off to her scholarship at Juilliard, she abandons Adam, an action that throws him into a terrible depression. Adam quits his band, Shooting Star, just as they're beginning to get widespread notice from record labels. Adam only climbs out of his depression by writing some of the angriest, rawest music of his life---the songs that skyrocket the reformed Shooting Star to insane celebrity status. As the book opens, Adam Wilde cannot walk down the streets without being mobbed. He's an MTV icon, known for his moodiness, called "the Wilde man." He's dating a beautiful and popular movie actress, Bryn, and his relationship with her only accelerates his fame. Adam seems to have it all--celebrity, money, a movie star girlfriend--but the good life isn't what it seems. A chasm has opened between him and his band members. They rarely speak and the alienation has gotten so bad that they book separate hotels from Adam while on tour. Adam hates his celebrity. He suffers panic attacks, and every day his face and Bryn's are on the covers of tabloids. His relationship with Bryn is fraught with tension because a ghost stands between them--the ghost of the girl who lived. Adam has never forgotten or gotten over Mia. Bryn knows it and is insanely jealous. Adam tries to love Bryn but can't. Now he's facing months on the road touring and he's closer than anyone knows to an utter breakdown.

And then he sees a poster in New York and realizes that Mia, who has gained her own fame in the music world, is playing cello that night in the city. Adam goes to see her play and the two of them meet face-to-face after years of silence. Finally, Adam has a chance to ask Mia "where she went," and, most importantly, why she left.

Another amazing, heart-wrenching read from an incredible author. You will find yourself thinking about these characters every time you have to put down the book for awhile, not to mention after you finish the last page. I don't know how Gayle Forman does it. These people seem so real. Their conflicts are so utterly believable. There are no easy ways out in her plotting, and just like in real life, there are no easy ways out for her characters.

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.

Broken Soup

Oh, dear. There has been little to no time to blog this summer, but seeing that there hasn’t been an update in over a month I feel compelled to post. Also, I just got back from the ALA convention in Chicago with an armload of advanced reading copies, most of them teen books. So stayed tuned for new posts coming soon.

The last teen book I read was Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine. The title is explained about midway through the novel when the protagonist’s little sister tries to make a meal. She drops the tray and cries out, “I tried to make things all nice and now look at this broken soup.” This is a metaphor for how life in general is going for the family in the aftermath of the drowning death of their brother/son. Rowan (the teen protagonist) is trying to keep things together after her brother dies, her father leaves, and her mother breaks down into depression. Suddenly Rowan is responsible for her little sister and for hiding the truth of their increasingly desperate home situation. In the meantime, a handsome boy comes into Rowan’s life after he hands her a photo negative he claims she dropped. Rowan knows the negative isn’t hers, but he insists it is so she takes it. A new friend helps her develop the photo and Rowan is shocked to find that it’s a candid shot of her dead brother. Where did this photo come from? Who took it and how is the handsome boy involved? What kind of secret life did her brother live?

I liked this though I found that some parts dragged ever so slightly. Rowan's story is less compelling than the story of the other characters she tells, which might explain the slow bits. Still, Rowan is likable as are all the characters. I saw some of the plot twists coming but it didn’t spoil the story. This is a well-written, realistic novel about how difficult it is for life to go on after the loss of a loved one.

He speaks to dead people and they talk back...

That is the premise of the book I finished waiting for blood work to be done. Dead Connection by Charlie Price focuses on Murray Keifer, a loner teen with an unfortunate name. His mother has gentlemen callers all hours of the day and night, so he spends most of his time in the town cemetery talking to the people who had died young. When he concentrates he can envision what they looked like when they died and hear them talk back to him. The dead get lonely with no one to talk to.

While in the cemetery one day, he can hear the voice of a girl garbled and scattered as if she were beyond upset and incomprehensible. Could this be Nikki Parker, the missing high school cheerleader? And if so, where is she in the cemetery? With the caretaker's daughter, Murray will have to search out the voice and try to convince police to listen to the dead.

The book is broken down into different viewpoints--Murray, an alcoholic cop who has it out for Murray, a sheriff investigator obsessed with Nikki's disappearance, and a schizophrenic young adult who may or may not have witnessed (was involved in?) her abduction. Each viewpoint is in individual chapters that range from one to five pages long. Short chapters have always appealed to me as I love built-in stopping points for breaks. If I have to put a book down, then I want it to be at the end of a chapter. Granted, this book I read in a waiting room and finished with no breaks.

It's a fast read. If you like crime mysteries or ghost/supernatural stories I think you'll find this one quite enjoyable.

death manga

There are several nominated manga titles for the death and dying popular paperbacks list. including
Bleach, Death Note, Vampire Knight, Zombie Loan, Chibi Vampire, Line, Canon, and Yurara. I've been re-reading these titles to see how well they fit the list. Not all of them will end up on the list for sure. The main idea of the booklist is that death or dying has to be prevalent within the book for it to fit the list. As I've been reading them, I've been trying to figure out if killing the undead counts as death. Or does just being undead count? If so, all of these fit for me.

Death Note and Line are the most dramatic titles and they both fit the list pretty well. Bleach, Zombie Loan and Yurara deal with the undead and spirits left in the world after their human bodies have died. At least in Zombie Loan there is an actual dying moment in the first volume. Vampire Knight and Canon are the two more problematic titles. There is no death or dying, but the characters are already undead.

I guess we won't know until the middle of January. I'll let you know what we decide to vote onto the list and what doesn't make the cut then!

Oh and by the way, Line is a really well done single volume manga. You should check it out!

The Day I Killed James

How do you do penance when you're responsible for the suicide of an old friend? If you're seventeen-year-old Theresa you shave your head and tattoo his name on your body. And you never, not for one minute, forget that he loved you and you were careless with his heart. So you beat yourself up about it, and no one--not your therapist, not your best friend, not your father--can change your mind. Everything is now measured in before and after the day you killed James.

Theresa never meant for James to get hurt. She just wanted to stop the hurt she felt when her boyfriend, Randy, dropped her for another girl. To get even, Theresa brought James to the biggest party of the year and made out with him. The jealousy tactic worked all too well. Randy wanted Theresa back, and she forgot all about James, the slightly older guy, the next-door-neighbor who had carried a torch for Theresa so bright it would rival the Statue of Liberty's. After Theresa's cruel rejection, James drove away on his motorcycle . . . and over a cliff to his death. Leaving Theresa with survivor's guilt, and an incredible story.

The Day I Killed James is the first book I've read by Catherine Ryan Hyde, probably best known for her best-seller, Pay It Forward. This is her third book for teens, and it's very good. Theresa's voice is what carries this novel. Her guilt is palpable, and the lengths she goes to try to atone make for a wonderful plot. The author really hits her stride when Theresa leaves home, tries to assume a new identity, and finds herself unable to run away from the massive hole James has left in her life. Then she meets a young girl with problems of her own, and the book takes off in directions I never expected. This is a novel of a journey, away from oneself and back, a novel of survival, and and a novel that questions if it is possible to forgive oneself for a carelessness that resulted in another's death.

Now that I've read this one, I am eager to try more of Hyde's work, and I can only hope that the other books are as good as this one.

Remembering Raquel

This novel is a departure from Vivian Vande Velde's usual supernaturally themed fare. A very brief read, (honestly, it can be read in an hour or less) it switches points of view from high school student to teacher to father and more as all try to come to terms with the presumably accidental death of fourteen-year-old Raquel Falcone. One minute Raquel was alive, joking around, excited from having just seen a movie. The next she stepped off a curb into the path of an oncoming car, and she was gone. Whose fault was it? Did Raquel do it on purpose? Her few friends, her suddenly interested classmates, her family, and witnesses to the accident each get their say, and each of them wonders about his or her role in the death. Through these assorted recollections, the reader gets the brief story of Raquel, and the reader knows more than all of the others.

I liked this. The author managed to give a broad range of reactions and it was pretty clever how she wove together the disparate ideas to give the reader the full picture. When the reader finds out why Raquel had a DNR (do not resusicate) order in her purse and how the ambulance crew reacted to it, it's one of the most poignant parts of the book. There wasn't a whole lot that VVV could do with the plot--her main character is dead, after all--and yet she manages to tell an arresting story, one that ended a bit abruptly for me, but a good story nonetheless. And although I wondered if Raquel would get her say--a voice from the dead wouldn't be unusual for VVV--the author didn't tread that ground. This is a straightforward reality based book. It isn't until you reach the last page that you understand the meaning of the cover, and I really liked how the author used that last page to make a final emotional impact.