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 HollowKingdom (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.
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