Little Kids
Cork & Fuzz (Dori Chaconas) Cork is a muskrat. Fuzz is a possum. Cork only eats veggie stuff. Fuzz eats beetles and worms. Can they be friends? Yes!
Zen Shorts (Jon J Muth) Giant panda Stillwater tells 3 traditional Zen stories (framed as stories about his relatives) to 3 kids in the neighborhood. Gorgeous pictures, good retellings.
Toot & Puddle: Wish you were here (Holly Hobbie) Toot catches the violet virus in Wildest Borneo.
Charming Opal (Holly Hobbie) Opal visits and loses a tooth.
Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs (Andreae/Ayto) When Flinn enters the classroom art closet for supplies, he finds himself on a high-seas adventure filled with pirates, dinosaurs, mystery, swordfights and humor.
He Came With the Couch (Slonim) Totally cute.
If You Decide to Go to the Moon (McNulty/Kellogg) Reminiscent of Asimov’s moon book, only with a subtle “take care of Earth’s air and water, because they are what make us special” message. Very nice.
J Books
Aha! The most interesting book you’ll ever read about intelligence (Trudee Romanek) All kinds of cool stuff about how your brain works.
The Ballad of Sir Dinadan(Gerald Morris) Good again. This time a young noble who is fairly lousy at the fighting part of knighthood, but great at storytelling and playing the rebec. In spite of himself he develops the courage and nobility of knighthood.
Big Bang: the tongue-tickling tale of a speck that became spectacular (DeCristofano)
Cooking the Hungarian Way (Hargittai)
Cultures of the World: Hungary (2005)
Cultures of the World: Romania (2005)
The Dark Hills Divide (Patrick Carman) Decent story about girl helping tear down the walls surrounding her tri-cities. Ignores effect on her of leaving walls for first time.
Diary of a Fairy Godmother (Esmé Codell) Fun play on fairy tales, a bit preachy (but in a niceish way) about being your own self. Young witch Hunky Dory turns out to have a knack for – gasp!—granting wishes.
Finders Keepers (Robert Arnett) Dopey, unfocussed proselytizing story about the author’s trip to India.
George and the Dragon: and other saintly stories (Richard Brassey) 1-3 page comics spreads point up the hilarity in the traditional tales of the peculiar saints.
Gregor and the Warmbloods (Suzanne Collins) Good 3rd in the series. Dark. Doesn’t sound over yet.
The Horse and his Boy (C.S. Lewis) Good. Aslan is working in mysterious ways—but so logical once you can see the backstory…
How to Be a Pirate, by Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (Cressida Cowell) Another nice and funny adventure. This one, thankfully, has fewer fart jokes.
In Your Face: the facts about your features (Donna M. Jackson) Not a lot of info, but an interesting assortment of facts including “face blindness,” a rare brain disorder wherein people can’t remember/recognize faces, even of family.
Kensuke’s Kingdom (Michael Morpurgo) Excellent story. “When Michael is swept off his family's yacht, he washes up on a desert island, where he struggles to survive--until he finds he is not alone.” Old Kensuke (who survived a Japanese shipwreck at the end of WWII) lives there with his family of orangutans.
The Kid Who Named Pluto and the stories of other extraordinary young people in science (McCutcheon) A fun read. Includes the kid who invented TV; Mary Anning; Louis Braille; a modern math whiz; etc.
The Last Battle (C.S. Lewis)
Let’s Eat! What Children Eat Around the World (Beatrice Hollyer) “Explores what five children living in South Africa, Mexico, Thailand, France, and India eat at mealtime with their families, how their families obtain and prepare food, what kinds of food may be eaten at celebrations, and what their favorite food is. Includes recipes.” Fascinating! And great pictures.
The Lioness and her Knight (Gerald Morris) “Headstrong sixteen-year-old Lady Luneta and her distant cousin, Sir Ywain, travel to Camelot and beyond finding more adventure than they hoped for until, with the help of a fool, Luneta discovers what she really wants from life.”
Little Book of Fables (retold by Verónica Uribe) Quite nice Aesop retellings, with lovely odd pictures by Constanza Bravo.
Orlando Bloom Has Ruined Everything (Bill Amend) An okay Fox Trot collection.
Otto and the Bird Charmers (Charlotte Haptie)
Parsifal’s Page (Gerald Morris) Another good one, this time Piers’ point of view as page to the wild man who wants to become a knight.
The Penderwicks(Birdsall) A perfectly solid story about 4 girls, 2 rabbits, and the son of the rich woman on whose estate they are summering (in the cottage). Garnered the National Book Award by judges nostalgic for the Ballet Shoes books. I like The Exiles better.
Permanent Rose (Hilary McKay) Another fabulous entry in the Casson family saga. In this one 8-year-old Rose is pining for friend Tom, who hasn’t written after returning to America; Caddy is worried about becoming trapped by her impending marriage; Indigo is calm; Saffron wonders who her real father is; and former bully David finally gets a few things right. I think McKay does an amazing job of portraying children realistically, respectfully, and appreciatively, in all their complexity and intelligence. She also is wonderful at showing the way members of a family are entirely themselves yet still very connected to one another, and showing the range of loving irritation and fundamental loyalty that bind them all. Plus her writing is damn hilarious. And so are her characters. There is just something so real about them. She just gets better and better.
Princess Academy (Shannon Hale) “While attending a strict academy for potential princesses with the other girls from her mountain village, fourteen-year-old Miri discovers unexpected talents and connections to her homeland.”
The Princess, the Crone, and the Dung-Cart Knight (Gerald Morris) Yet another good one: Sarah (13), bent on revenge against those who burned her innocent mother for a witch, falls in with a surprisingly talented woodcutter (Sir Lancelot) to save the kidnapped Sir Kai and Queen Guinevere.
The Race to Save the Lord God Bird (Phillip Hoose) “Tells the story of the ivory-billed woodpecker's extinction in the United States, describing the encounters between this species and humans, and discussing what these encounters have taught us about preserving endangered creatures.”
The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf (Gerald Morris) Weaker than his other novels. Damsel character inconsistent and kind of twerpy.
The Silver Chair (C.S. Lewis) Okay; not the best one.
Sing a Song of Tuna Fish: hard-to-swallow stories from fifth grade (Esmé Codell) Really excellent (and funny!) stories of kid life in a loving but broke family in Chicago. Her brother playing air guitar: “He had a very original technique, making a crook in his arm and a stroking motion with his other hand, kind of like a robot comforting a baby.” (p. 47)
Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady (Selina Hastings)
Sixth-Grade Glommers, Norks, and Me (Lisa Papademetriou) Allie Kimball starts sixth grade—her best friend who ditches her for a mean trendy girl (this part is very true-to-life, painful and complex)—Allie gains confidence on the soccer team and discovers that she does have the strength to be herself. Funny, sweet, and true.
The Skull Talks Back (Zora Neal Hurston/Joyce Carol Thomas) Peculiar, short creepy tellable tales of a man who kills the devil and talking skulls and such.
So Yesterday (Scott Westerfeld) Mystery involving a teen “cool-hunter.” Had potential but fell flat.
The Squire’s Tale (Gerald Morris) Excellent, lively, historically aware, personality rich retelling of the legend of Sir Gawain (told from the point of view of his squire, Terence, who is hero of his own story as well).
The Squire, His Knight, and His Lady(Gerald Morris) Another excellent tale- this one Gawain (and Terence’s) quest to fight the Green Knight; also touches on the tragedy of Arthur and Guinevere.
The Tale of Despereaux (Kate DiCamillo) Mouse braves dungeon and rats to save princess. Clean writing, good characters, annoying addresses directly to “reader.” Newbery winner.
The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip (George Saunders) Very fun, weird, somewhat obnoxious parable with pix by Lane Smith. Anna loved it.
The Westing Game (Ellen Raskin) Reread. Still good.
Wonderful Houses Around the World(Yoshio Komatsu) Totally cool (if too brief) book featuring external photos and illustrations of the insides of fascinating human domiciles of all sorts.
YA Books
24 Girls in 7 Days (Alex Bradley) Surprisingly good (for a book with such an off-putting title). Jack Grammar is a real character whose friends feel he should have a date for his senior prom and so create an online personal ad on his behalf that nets him more dates than he can handle- but is everything on the up-and-up? Witty, sweet, realistic. Good HS read.
48 Shades of Brown (Nick Earls) (Australian.) While his folks are in Geneva for a year, almost-17 Dan moves in for the year with his young (22), hip university-student aunt Jacq, and creates elaborate plans to win the heart of Jacq’s love-goddess roommate, Naomi. Clever; all about Dan’s thought processes; a bit overwritten for my taste but pretty good. Gr. 10 & up.
Across the Wall: a tale of the Abhorsen and other stories (Nix) Uneven. Title story is good; the rest vary widely in style and quality. I didn’t even finish it.
Airborn (Kenneth Oppel) A terrific read! Really good galloping adventure tale, set in an alternate history, perhaps 150 years ago, when airships (zeppelins) are the primary form of air transportation. Great characters too, male and female, youth and adult. Just named a Michael Printz Honor book. For good readers in 6th-10th grade who like adventure and mystery. Jacket copy includes: "In a swashbuckling adventure reminiscent of Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson, Kenneth Oppel, author of the best-selling Silverwing trilogy, creates an imagined world in which the air is populated by transcontinental voyagers, pirates, and beings never before dreamed of by the humans who sail the skies.” 1/05
Alice, I Think (Susan Juby) Read out loud to Val. Still hilarious!
Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last (Susan Juby) This 3rd in the series is still brilliantly hilarious.
The Bermudez Triangle (Maureen Johnson) Excellent. Three HS girls have a long-standing best-friendship. Then Nina goes to pre-college for the summer, and Avery and Mel fall in love. But it doesn’t end there. It goes through the whole school year with Mel solidifying her sense of herself as gay, Avery still questioning, all three struggling with their friendship and with everything senior year throws at them. Witty and solid.
Best Foot Forward (Joan Bauer) Sequel to Rules of the Road. Didn’t quite come to life—various themes put forward (second chances, Al-Anon, integrity in the face of profiteering, salesmanship, expectations of family) but none thoroughly explored. The whole thing read like her outline for the novel.
Conrad’s Fate (Diana Wynne Jones) A play on Upstairs/Downstairs, with a satisfying hullabaloo at the end. Vintage (if not extraordinary) DWJ. Tag coda (6 years later) annoying and unnecessary.
Cruise Control (Terry Trueman) “Companion” to Stuck in Neutral. Very good. Paul, super-accomplished brother of Shawn (impenetrably disabled boy), has a LOT of anger to deal with, sort of b/c he feels like he can never leave home to pursue college and scholarships b/c he has to stay and take care of family. Sort of Chris Crutcher/Rich Wallace like.
Eragon (Christopher Paolini) Quite readable, hideously trite in parts, but also has some really creative ideas (I like how he describes magic as draining through the body and once you start a piece of magic it has to pass through you until it’s done).
Feeling Sorry for Celia (Jaclyn Moriarty) Quite similar to her “The Year of Secret Assignments.” Pretty fun read -- letters between wry and witty pen pals at neighboring schools, who shore each other up through a best friend who's always running away, crushes, uncertainty about sex with a boyfriend, increased confidence through long distance running. In both Y and Adult, and on cassette. Definitely a girl book. Quite good, and funny, but not fantastic. Feels more Y than adult.
First Crossing: stories about teen immigrants (ed. Don Gallo) Good.
Girl, 15, Charming But Insane (Sue Limb) A Teen Girl Book. Okay, not great.
Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood (Ann Brashares) Good soap opera.
Gotta Get Some Bish Bash Bosh (M.E. Allen) Skimmed it – pretty cute, sarky book about early teen dating, from boy’s point of view.
The Great Good Thing (Roderick Townley) “Twelve-year-old Princess Sylvie's storybook kingdom really is a storybook, where nothing ever changes, even the character's mad scramble to reach their places whenever the book is opened, until Sylvie discovers she can enter new worlds with the Reader, and find new adventures.” And her original reader grows up and dies, and she has to enter the mind of her granddaughter to survive. Pretty freaky.
Guys Write for Guys Read (ed. Scieszka)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (JK Rowling) Fabulous! She’s back in stride! Much better than the last two!
The Hollow Kingdom (Clare B. Dunkle) Another dopey faerie novel. Actually goblins. Skip this one and read The Perilous Gard.
How I Live Now (Rosoff) Amazing story of teens caught up in war. It sounds like this: “Then she showed me a bunch of sheep with long tangly coats and some chickens that lay blue eggs and she found one in the straw that was still warm and gave it to me and even though I didn’t know what to do with an egg straight from a chicken’s bottom I thought it was a nice thing to do.” (p13)
The Hunter’s Moon (O.R. Melling) Dopey faerie novel set in Ireland. Skimmed it.
I Am the Messenger (Markus Zusak) Terrific!! Strange and inventive use of language. Slightly forced ending. After acting bravely during a bank holdup, Ed Kennedy begins receiving cryptic instructions to deliver “messages” to strangers in ways (not always easy or pleasant for Ed) that improve their lives.
In Your Face: The Culture of Beauty and You (Shari Graydon) The author (a former president of MediaWatch) offers some media literacy tips about noticing and evaluating all the messages coming at us. A nice break-down.
Kira-Kira (Cynthia Kadohata) Japanese-American family in the 60’s in Georgia. Told by younger sister who adores older sister, who dies of lymphoma. Fabulous prose.
The Fire-Eaters (David Almond) Superb. Dyna: “In 1962 England, despite observing his father's illness and the suffering of the fire-eating Mr. McNulty, as well as enduring abuse at school and the stress of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bobby Burns and his family and friends still find reasons to rejoice in their lives and to have hope for the future.”
Perfect (Natasha Friend) Decent book told from the point of view of Isabelle (“Belly” to her sister) who reacts to her father’s death and her mother’s subsequent falling-apart with bulimia.
Pop Princess (Rachel Cohn) I expected more from this author of Gingerbread. Okay novel about a girl going the Britney Spears route and then leaving the madness and finding herself, all before age 17.
Princess Diaries (Meg Cabot) Quit fun.
Princess of Neptune (Quentin Dodd) Hilarious silliness! Like Hitchhikers’ Guide for 11 year olds. When Theora and her brother Verbert find out the local Burger (Boy?) is run by giant lunar cockroaches, it isn’t long before they are whisked off to an intergalactic beauty contest on Neptune to solve a mystery.
Prom (Laurie Halse Anderson) A sound and engaging story about “normal kids” (Anderson says “normal kids” have told her over the years that nobody ever writes a book about them.) Ashley (18) and her big, loud, supportive family are great characters, and so is the Russian grandmother of her best friend next door. Ash has almost too many detentions to graduate and no interest in the prom, but ends up helping out and deciding her boyfriend (who’s a skeeze) isn’t good enough for her.
Rainbow Road (Alex Sanchez) A weaker entry in the Rainbow series. Skimmed it.
The Sledding Hill (Chris Crutcher) Didactic “novel” that’s basically an essay on why adults shouldn’t censor books for teens. Readable.
So Hard to Say (Alex Sanchez) Very nice early coming out novel about an 8th-grade boy. Nice to have something for the younger set. A little tentative kissing happens, among various characters of various genders, but mostly it’s about friendships and feelings and figuring your young self out.
So You Want to Be a Wizard (Diane Duane) Science, ethics, magic, 13-year-olds with serious internal resources. Lovely.
We Beat the Street (the Three Doctors, with Sharon Draper) Three boys, from the tough neighborhoods of Newark, New Jersey, band together to leave the survival ethic of the streets behind and go to college and medical school.
The Witch's Boy (Michael Gruber) "A grotesque foundling turns against the witch who sacrificed almost everything to raise him when he becomes consumed by the desire for money and revenge against those who have hurt him, but he eventually finds his true heart's desire." On one level a convincing fantasy with remarkable writing (and familiar fairy tale cameos), and on another an exploration of the complicated love between parent and child.
Adult Books
Bridget Jones’s Diary (Helen Fielding) Hilarious turns of phrase and an amusement- and cringe-inducing view of life as a single, thirtysomething woman—like the Cathy comics but with a funnier edge, but still kind of a depressing view to perpetuate. The path not taken (by me, post-early-adolescence) and only vaguely recognized. But often very funny.
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (Helen Fielding) Still funny and painful and a somewhat irritating view of single straight women as needy and clueless (and alcoholic).
Buying Dad: one woman’s search for the perfect sperm donor (Harlyn Aizley) Two nice Jewish girls try to figure out whether to have a baby, and if so, how to get the ingredients. And then they go through with it. And meanwhile Harlyn’s mother is dying of cancer.
The Clocks (Agatha Christie)
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Cory Doctorow) Repercussions of immortalism in Disney World. Okay but kinda boring. Didn’t finish it.
Gaudí Afternoon (Barbara Wilson) Cassandra Reilly, itinerant translator, goes to Barcelona to help a woman find her husband. Turns out the woman is trans, her husband is her ex-girlfriend, they have a kid, and the novel fast becomes a gender-exploring farcical quasi-mystery. Pretty fun.
The Genius Factory: the curious history of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank (David Plotz) Interesting history of sperm banks in general. Also follows the particular stories of a few mothers and children turned up through his articles in Slate.
How I Paid for College (Marc Acito) A first-novel-y start but it warmed up and became quite hilarious in places. A warm and quirky portrayal of the sweet (and lusty) friendship of a group of drama club (“Play People”) HS seniors in New Jersey. Much teen sex (of various kinds) is had. I’d recommend it to teens except there’s a weird scene where they drug Edward’s evil stepmonster and take photos of themselves simulating sex with her for blackmail purposes, that for me crossed well over the line from funny to unsavory. Otherwise the innocent kinkiness of teens was fun reading.
I Had Brain Surgery, What’s Your Excuse?: an illustrated memoir (Suzy Becker) It was too disturbing—I couldn’t finish it.
Jennifer Government (Maxx Barry) A critique of the consumer culture written as kind of a send-up of a thriller. Fun.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke) A slow-starter but quite excellent once 200 pages into this 782 tome of Victorian-era magical history.
The Kid: (what happened after my boyfriend and I decided to go get pregnant): an adoption story (Dan Savage)
The Magyar Venus Totally dumb mystery novel that takes place for a few pages in Budapest.
The Nanny Diaries Ghastly view of the home life of New York’s rich elite, written by two women who nannied for the rich in NY. Good depiction of desperate preschooler, too.
Navidad Mágica en Oaxaca/ Magical Christmas in Oaxaca (Mary J. Andrade) Coffee-table book with photos, text and poems (in English and Spanish) celebrating the culture and craft of Oaxacan Christmas (including carved radishes, dioramas made of thousands of flowers and corn husks, traditional dances, etc.)
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (Alexander McCall) Fun mystery stories set in Botswana.
The Plains of Passage (Auel) Good! A real fur-ripper. Lots of tall grass on the periglacial steppes. Many lands traversed and peoples encountered.
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (Anne Lamott) Good.
Running with Scissors (Augusten Burroughs) Extremely disturbing, morbidly fascinating story of boy whose psychotic mom sends him to live with her insane psychiatrist in his house of horrors.
Shelters of Stone (Jean M. Auel) Ayla meets and wows Jondalar’s family and Cave, attends the Summer Meeting, is lured toward a career in the zelandonia, and finally gives birth do daughter Jonayla on practically the last page.
Tender at the bone : growing up at the table (Ruth Reichl)
Treehouses of the World (Nelson/Kurzaj) So tantalizing! Wonderful pictures of insides and outsides of cool treehouses, mostly in the States and England but a few others, most professionally made.
Trouble in Transylvania (Barbara Wilson) Cassandra Reilly, itinerant translator, gets the travel itch and winds up in Budapest for a while and then in the Carpathians at a mineral spa that’s seen better times, and where the proprietor has just died suspiciously. Lots of good modern history and linguistic speculations, plus Cassandra’s queer. Fun!
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