Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

LIAR by Justine Larbalestier

4Q 3P; Audience: J/S (high school)

Micah started her high school career pretending to be a boy. That, she says, is one reason the other students shun her. Lying about her father being an international arms dealer didn't help. When her boyfriend Zach is reported missing and is later found dead, Micah can't share her anguish with anyone because nobody knew he was her boyfriend and nobody will believe her if she tells the truth now. Why should they believe her, after all the lies she's told? She also knows, or so she says, the horrifying truth about how it happened. Whether she should be believed is a completely different story. When a book is told by an admitted compulsive liar, then everything she says must be questioned.

Musings

I believe Micah is the liar she says she is. I also think she's telling the truth about being biracial and living in New York City. But pretty much everything else she says is open to question. I think she did know a boy named Zach, and that he really is dead. Exactly what her relationship was with him, exactly what she knows about his death, exactly how he died...I'm not willing to accept her word on those topics. I think she probably does have relatives who live a fairly secluded life up north, but are they really what she says they are? What she says about herself and the family secret...that's what has my head spinning the most. I think some readers will take it at face value, and for them, that will make this one sort of book. Other readers (me, for instance) will think there's something else going on entirely, despite what Micah says, and will therefore have a completely different reading experience.

Reading this book was a fascinating, frustrating experience. Because Micah constantly revises her story, each time saying that she lied before and this is the real truth, every event and every comment must be questioned. It's very unsettling. By the time she got to the big reveal about her family secret and what she really is and how that relates to Zach's death, I mistrusted her so completely that I can't accept her final say on the matter. I believe that not only is Micah lying to us, she's lying to herself. Her secret isn't the one she reveals to us. I think it's not so much a question of not wanting to tell the truth, but rather of not being able to face the truth. If she's what she claims she is, then she can't be held responsible for what she's done or may do in the future. But if she's not...

To be honest, I don't know what I think about this book. I finished it about two weeks ago, and I haven't written about it because I've been trying to sort out my thoughts. This is a book so open to multiple interpretations that it practically demands to be read and then shared with someone else. Whether or not that discussion changes the reader's interpretation isn't as important as exploring what those other possibilities are and why they do/don't work for the reader.

I expect this book to win awards, but I don't expect everyone will love it. Love it, like it, or hate it, it would make a terrific discussion book. For sure I'm going to try to sell my Pageturners group on reading it.

Comments are welcome on all my posts, but I'd especially like to hear what you think about this book.

(I haven't explored Justine Larbalestier's FAQ about Liar yet, but I'm about to. You may want to look at it too, but I gather you'll want to do it after you've read the book, as there are spoilers.)

Yeah, We Bad, We Dangerous, We Girls

Zombie Queen of Newbury High by Amanda Ashby
3Q 4P; Audience: J

I hear YA literature is branching out from the vampire craze to focus on zombies. There are several zombie books either recently or about to be published. The first one in this batch that I came across was Generation Dead by Dan Waters. His sequel, Kiss of Life, arrived in the library a month or so ago. I haven't read it yet, but I do hope he addresses all the holes he left wide open in Generation Dead. I'm a little curious to find out what happens with the Phoebe-Tommy-Adam triangle (what girl hasn't dreamt of falling in love with two zombies?), but I'm more inclined to flip through it rather than read it cover to cover. Generally speaking, zombies really aren't a big attraction for me. That being said, how could I resist a book with the title Zombie Queen of Newbury High? Simple answer: I couldn't.

Mia is not in the in-crowd, which makes it all the more surprising and thrilling when star football player Rob asks her out. What's not surprising is that the girls who are in the in-crowd are less than thrilled with the situation and that they intend to do something about it. What's a girl to do? Mia isn't sure, but her best friend Candice is: you go to the local magic shop and get a love potion, of course. Unfortunately, as is the way with such things, the love potion (which - caveat emptor - isn't exactly what it's advertised to be) goes awry. Suddenly everywhere she turns, students and even teachers are giving her cupcakes and kissing up to her. It would all be very flattering, if new boy Chase hadn't spoiled it all with the news that they're merely trying to fatten her up for the zombie feast they're planning. It seems that the entire school is about to be zombified, and it's all Mia's fault. If she doesn't find a way to stop the spell, the after-prom early morning breakfast is going to be her. ::ulp::

This is a quick, fun read. It's a great beach book or one to pick up when you're stressed with tests and papers and need something fun to relax you. It's not likely to be a book you remember as one that made a huge impact on your life. But who says every book has to be deep and significant?

The School for Dangerous Girls by Eliot Schrefer
3Q 3P; Audience: J/S


Hidden Oak is a school of last resort. If a girl has been thrown out of every other school, that's the kind of girl Hidden Oak wants. It's Hidden Oak's mission to take troubled girls and turn them into law-abiding models of society. They have a very high success rate. Many of their girls graduate and never step a foot out of line afterwards. They've learned to accept rules, maybe even to welcome them. But the girls who can't accept the rules, the girls who refuse to change...well, the world doesn't have to know about them. Those are the girls who disappear. They're never discussed, and they're never seen again. And you'd better believe that that makes them the really dangerous girls.

Mia is sent to Hidden Oaks after one too many incidents, culminating in one that leads to her grandfather's death. It's an eye-opening experience. Her cell phone is confiscated, there's no computer access, phone calls are not allowed, emails and letters are censored. Students are not to share the stories of their past indiscretions. The girls have individual and group therapy daily. Every rule of behavior must be strictly adhered to, or harsh punishment will swiftly follow. (Solitary confinement is a frequent option.) As the days and weeks go by, girls start disappearing, usually without explanation. Mia learns that some girls are promoted to the gold thread, where they live in a slightly less strict environment with regular classes and the chance to interact more normally with the other girls. But some of the girls just disappear. They're in the purple thread, and nobody want to talk about what happens to them. Is Mia purple or gold?

Mia winds up in the gold thread, but her rebellious nature isn't prepared to toe the line. That's especially true when she finds out about what happens to the purple thread girls and what the school's real intentions are. She's not going to take this sitting down. There has to be a way to close down this school. There may be indeed, but she'll never find it if the school succeeds in closing her down first. And they're going to do everything in their power to do just that.

I don't know why, but while I was reading this book, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I didn't know for a long time what kind of book I was reading. Was this a tongue-in-cheek book, full of girl power and twists and turns, or was it exactly what it appeared to be? I don't know why I expected it to be the former rather than the latter. Perhaps it had something to do with the title, which (as it turns out) is meant to be taken absolutely literally, but which I assumed at first was hinting at something more along the lines of Ally Carter's I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You or Michael Spradlin's Spy Goddess. But this is not those books. My bad. I don't know why it took me so long to accept that. It was definitely a problem on my end, not the author's.

What Schrefer does best is the way he keeps leading his readers on, intriguing them with a hint here and a scrap of information there. I couldn't help but want to know what happened to all those missing girls and just why the purple thread was such a fearful label. And the payoff to that is real. Other reviews make reference to The Lord of the Flies, and it's an apt comparison. These girls are truly feral, and their situation is desperate. I admired Mia for her passion to fight against the wrongs being done to the girls. But those wrongs are where I felt the book went a bit astray. At some point, I have to believe that much of the faculty would step up to say that enough is enough, and that there's a point at which discipline passes into mistreatment or worse. That nobody does was hard to swallow. The romance angle was stretched past believability. Nobody would step in and stop the one teenage boy from playing Romeo with the girls? In a school like this? I have similar problems with the ending of the book and the role of one person in particular. It didn't seem to follow from what is set up earlier in the book. So I give this book points for an interesting main character and for the suspense it builds in the early parts as well as for the pulse-raising sequences involving the menaces of life among the purple thread. But that early promise didn't hold up throughout the book for me.

Don't Read This One in the Dark of Night

Bliss by Lauren Myracle
4Q 4P; Audience: J/S

I'm actually not quite finished with this book, but it's Halloween, and that makes it the right day to post about it. A big part of the reason I haven't finished it yet is because I read a lot at night, especially once I'm in bed for the night. Well, I've gotten to the point in this book where I'm frankly afraid to read it within an hour or two of trying to fall asleep. The tension has been building and building, and I'm expecting a Carrie moment any time now. I'm a little twitchy and I'm discovering it's pretty hard to read when you're trying to avert your eyes from the page because you're dreading what you're about to see. In other words, Lauren Myracle has done a terrific job setting her scene.

Bliss IntheMorningDew has recently arrived in Atlanta to live with her grandmother. It's a far cry from the hippie commune she grew up in in California. Going to school is a new thing for her, let alone a preppy private school. But she actually finds it surprisingly easy to fit in. She even makes friends quickly, leading her to wonder which two of these girls might be the ones that her psychic friend from the commune told her she foresaw in her future. Even though Flying V warned her that the vibes aren't entirely positive, Bliss isn't at all thrown. Bliss herself has had occasional contacts with the other side, and they don't frighten her. No, Bliss is determined to make the most of her new situation, and making friends will be a welcome part of that. Flying V saw her caught between two girls, but doesn't that just mean she'll have at least two friends? Isn't that a good thing?

Bliss's commune upbringing has produced a strange blend of innocence and knowingness in her. She's not unfamiliar with sex, Grateful Dead concerts, and 'shrooms, but she has been sheltered in other ways. She expects life to be as uncomplicated as it is in Mayberry with Andy Taylor and Opie. It's not. Moving from the commune to Atlanta is eye-opening. She's grown up side by side with people of different races and it's never been important before. But Atlanta has the Klan and the school has one token black student ("so they can't force integration on us"). Everyone likes Lawrence - as long as he doesn't try to get too familiar. It makes no sense to her. Why is it such a big deal that he's black? But it clearly is a big deal, as becomes apparent when she catches Lawrence and Sarah Lynn, the most popular girl in the freshman class, in a clinch. Bliss also doesn't know anything about cliques and social groups, so she sees no problem in befriending Sandy, the school outcast. While her other friends don't exactly give her a hard time about that, it's clear they disapprove. She's okay with that. People with her background don't worry much about what others think. But Bliss has no clue how much danger she's inviting into her life when she ignores her new society's conventions.

Bliss's new school has a history. Rumor has it that a girl who lived there when the school was a convent jumped from a third-floor window of one of the campus buildings. "Some say you can still see the blood stains on the pavement" a student mentions casually. Bliss's sympathy for the poor girl turns to something else entirely when she realizes that she hears a voice...the girl's voice?...in her head whenever she passes by that building. And she does not like what she hears. The voice is insistent, demanding, and clearly evil.

Interspersed throughout are handwritten pages from S.L.L.'s journal. Just a little odd at first, the journal entries soon take a decidedly sinister tone. As we read on, it becomes clear who S.L.L. is and how her journal entries fit into Bliss's story. And that's when the creep factor started ratcheting up for me. Reading on and waiting for Bliss to catch on too has been like watching a mouse sniff its way to cheese and start to nibble. You know it has no idea that the cheese is attached to a trap that's about to snap its neck in two, and you want to look away before it gets caught. That the Tate-LaBianca murders committed by the Manson Family is a thread woven throughout the book does nothing to lessen this sense of dread. I don't have to finish the book to know that when the trap snaps, Bliss is going to be well and truly caught in it, and what happens next is not going to be pretty.

I have read that there is a link between this book and Myracle's Rhymes with Witches. If I'm not too unnerved when I finish this book, I'm going to have to check that one out. But I don't think I'm going to want to read that one late at night in the dark either!

Book of the Living Dead

Generation Dead by Daniel Waters
3Q 4P; Audience: J/S

It's not usually much of an issue if a new kid wants to join the school football team. He just tries out with all the other aspirants, and if makes the team, great. If he doesn't, no harm done. But at Oakvale High, it's not so cut-and-dried. It's complicated when the kid who tries out for the team is differently biotic. Living impaired. Dead.

There's a new phenomenon sweeping the country. Teens are dying and then reanimating. Nobody knows how and nobody knows why. This is not a horror movie come to life. The dead kids aren't flesh-eating zombies. They do most of the same things they did when they were alive. They think, communicate, and reason. They even go to school. Most of them just do it all much more slowly than the living do. A few, like Karen and Tommy, are much more animated and process things more quickly and clearly. When Tommy tries out for the football team, it's not just because he wants to play ball. He wants dead kids to be accepted into society, and he figures that taking part in things like the football team will help bring that to pass. But he knows it will be a long process, not something that happens overnight (think the Civil Rights Movement). He's right. The reactions to Tommy's decision are mostly negative. The coach wants him off the team at any cost, and Pete and his crew are only too happy to oblige. They hit Tommy hard, often, and as dirtily as they can in an effort to permanently disable him. Tommy doesn't crumble. If a living kid could take hits the way Tommy does, he'd be the star of the team. But Tommy's dead, and nothing makes him acceptable to people like the coach and Pete. Fortunately, not everyone feels the way they do. Adam, who used to be in Pete's crew, admires Tommy. It takes guts to do what he's doing. And Phoebe...Phoebe doesn't quite know why, but she's finding herself strangely attracted to him. It's not that she's into dead guys. He's just...interesting. And brave. She enjoys spending time with him. The feeling is mutual.

The dynamics between Tommy, Phoebe, Adam, and Pete drive the book. Old friendships are changing, breaking up, getting deeper, getting complicated. Past relationships color present ones and create dangerous tensions as new relationships are formed and observed. There are some people who just can't abide the thought of the dead freely mixing with the living. And they aren't going to stand idly by and let it happen. And that is not good news for Tommy and Phoebe and Adam.


Musings:

I enjoyed this book, but not as much as I expected to. Waters teases his readers with things he doesn't deliver. I don't know if that's on purpose (leaving room for a sequel, maybe?) or if he and his editor just lost track of things. But are the white van sightings significant or not? Is everything on the up-and-up at the Hunter Foundation, the group that claims they want to help integrate the dead into society? There's more than one hint that the answer is no, but there's no follow-through. I also felt the lack of any explanation as to who comes back from the dead and why. ONLY teens in the United States come back? That seems far too contrived to me. I also frankly needed to see something of Pete's relationship with Julie in order to believe it really existed in anything other than his own head. He was the one character who felt over the top. As a result, I found Pete just a psycho teen, and that made the book less effective for me.

On the other hand, Phoebe, Adam, and Tommy in particular all felt like real, three-dimensional people. Waters made me care about them as well as admire them. I also appreciated that he didn't go for the goth=angst-ridden/angry/depressed stereotype. The dynamic between the three worked for me as well. I felt for Adam! It's got to be pretty tough on a guy to know that your crush prefers a dead (sorry, "differently biotic") guy to you. I wonder, though, why Waters made such a point to tell us that Adam was a bit of a jerk before he took karate lessons but never showed us anything that proved it. I wish we'd met his karate instructor at some point, too. He's obviously been an important figure in Adam's life lately. I kept expecting Adam to want to talk to him about some of the things he's trying to deal with, but it never happened.

I'm not completely con/vinced that Waters knew what kind of a book he wanted to write, but it was still an enjoyable read. And although the metaphor for the Civil Rights/Gay Rights movement isn't exactly subtle, the book offers food for thought as well.

Reading Roundup, Part Three

I just finished reading Dragon Heir by Cindy Williams Chima. Most of you probably know that it's the third book in the Heir trilogy. What you're hoping to hear is that it was worth waiting for. I'm happy to say that it is. I confess it took me a little while to get back up to speed, since my recollection of all the people and events in Wizard Heir was slightly fuzzy. But Chima gives enough background on past events that I was eventually reminded of all the important bits. Still, you'll want to start reading this series at the beginning, with Warrior Heir, rather than jumping in at the end. While I was never in much doubt about the identity of the dragon heir, that never affected my enjoyment of the book. I'm probably in the minority in choosing it, but my favorite moment in this book occurs at the end, when a minor character does something immensely satisfying, both for me and, I'm sure, for her. I basically did a fist pump, grinned, and said, "Take that, you (ummm...fiend will have to do here)!" Though some readers may start to get antsy waiting for Jack and Ellen to do their stuff, I think they'll be satisfied when it happens. There's also a revelation at the end that I didn't expect. I think I'd find it quite interesting to read the books again with that knowledge. In terms of rating, I'm leaning on the plus side of 4, so 5Q 5P, Audience of M/J/S.

I also recently finished Beastly by Alix Flinn. It's an updated retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I liked this one, but I didn't love it. I prefer Flinn's grittier stuff. Kyle Kingsbury is the very handsome, very rich son of a very handsome, very rich, very inattentive (at best) father who has taught him that it's more important to be good looking and successful than it is to be kind or thoughtful. Consequently, Kyle is beastly to anyone he perceives as being inferior (and that's a lot of people). When he invites an unattractive girl to a school dance with the sole intention of standing her up and making her look foolish, she transforms him into the beast he's always been on the inside. He has two years to get someone to fall in love with him and break the spell. In the meantime, his father virtually abandons him, buying him his own building far away in Brooklyn and putting him in the care of an old servant and a blind tutor. Kyle occupies his time by building a greenhouse and growing roses. In a strange way, it is the greenhouse and roses that ultimately provide Kyle with his potential Beauty.


What worked for me:

• the chat room conversations, where Kyle (as BeastNYC) shares his problems with similarly challenged teens, such as Silent Maid (a mermaid who has fallen in love with a human) and Froggie, who used to be a prince, all led by counselor Chris Anderson (but, DUH! I missed the significance of that name at first)
  
• Kyle before transformation - thoroughly nasty and quite memorable
• Kyle's interactions with his tutor
• Kyle's manipulations of his father, post-transformation
• Parts of the "Lindy needs me" section (great action and energy)
  

What didn't work for me as well:

• Kyle's voice seemed less authentic to me after his transformation and acceptance of the reason for it. He's suddenly very mature and introspective, and I needed to see him grow into that more.
• The deal with Lindy's father.
• The rather heavy-handed way it got to the uh-oh, stroke of midnight point.
  
• Parts of the "Lindy needs me" section (a little sappy, a little forced)
  

Overall, I think this will please fans of fairy tale retellings and romance novels. Rating: 3Q 3P; Audience: J

Love & Lies: Even Harder Love

Love and LiesMarisol's Story by Ellen Wittlinger
4Q 3P Audience: J/S (recommended for high school students)

Warning: While this post doesn't reveal that much more than the synopsis in our catalog, it definitely is spoiler-ish in nature. I consider this book an "it's not the destination, it's the journey" type of book, but if the destination is what's important to you as a reader, come back and read this after you've finished the book.

I was thrilled to learn that Ellen Wittlinger had written a companion novel to Hard Love, one of the very first Printz Honor books. In that novel, Gio falls in love with Marisol, despite the fact that she's a self-described "Puerto Rican Cuban Yankee Cambridge, Massachusetts, rich spoiled lesbian private-school gifted-and-talented writer virgin looking for love." After Marisol breaks his heart twice over (at least), Gio finally realizes both that love is hard and that Marisol is not the girl for him, and the two go their separate ways. It is a beautifully written book, well deserving of all the praise heaped upon it. I honestly don't remember every detail of the book, but there are certain scenes that I've never gotten out of my head. Wittlinger creates characters I really care about, and often it is her secondary characters who capture my attention most. Two of her books left me with a sensation I don't often get when I read: I worried about what happened to the characters after the book ended. I'm still (very) worried about Razzle, but now I know that Marisol survived unscathed from what I thought was a very poor decision. She was lucky. But she doesn't walk away from this book unscathed. Not by a long shot.

Marisol has two goals in this gap year she's taking before she heads to Stanford and college: write a novel and fall in love. How hard could that be?

As it turns out, it's much harder than expected. Oh, not the writing thing so much. Marisol is a good writer, and she knows it. She feels only the slightest of butterflies when she signs up for an Adult Education class called Writing Your First Novel. She fully expects to be the star of the class, and she is. What she doesn't expect is the absolute swarm of butterflies she gets at her first look at the instructor, Olivia Frost. Olivia is stunning. She wants attention and knows how to get it. She especially gets it from Marisol, who is soon head over heels in love. And it's just possible...no, probable...no, definite! that Olivia has feelings for her, too. Bliss!

Not bliss? What kind of love is it that makes you lie to your friends, your lover, and yourself? And just who lying to who?

We get old friends and new here. Birdie, Marisol's best friend, is now sharing an apartment with her. He brings home Damon, a college friend/potential lover. Marisol doesn't see the attraction, either as roommate or lover. The interplay between the boys and between Marisol and the boys add humor and sweetness to Marisol's story. I confess that Birdie didn't make much of an impression on me in Hard Love, but I appreciate him more here. Like all true friends, Birdie isn't afraid to tell Marisol a few home truths now and then, but he also always has her back. Marisol also has a new friend, Lee, an Indiana fish out of water newly out of the closet. Lee is deceptively quiet, which makes it easy for Marisol to take her lightly at first. However, it becomes clear eventually that Lee is nobody's patsy. Lee probably isn't destined to be one of those stand-out characters for me (I found her a little too pale a character for a little too long), but I admire the way she stands up for herself. Best of all (though a little too conveniently for believability's sake), Gio is back . He seems to be in a much better place now, which I was very pleased to see. And I really enjoyed seeing him call Marisol on her stuff, partly because it was what she needed to hear and partly because it shows how far he's come. The relationship between these two characters works. It feels real and they feel real, and all of the stuff that came between them before just deepens their relationship.

Marisol goes through a lot in this book. Some of it she brings on herself. It can't be denied that Marisol thinks highly of herself and doesn't always think enough about the people around her. She enjoys being the center of attention, whether or not it's always deserved. But she truly is talented, and she does have a caring heart. And her yearning to be loved is familiar to almost everyone. As a reader, I wanted her to fall in love with someone wonderful, to have her first love be one that would always make her smile. My heart ached as I watched that not happen. As always, Wittlinger left me thinking about her characters and wondering where they were going next. But unlike in Hard Love, I wasn't worried about Marisol at the end of this one. She may be wounded, but I got the feeling that her own hard love will make her less self-centered, wiser, and stronger. She's going to be okay.

Check out TeacherTrenches for a really interesting interview with Ellen Wittlinger. (I'm linking to Part One. There will be a Part Two shortly.)

Boy Toy

Boy Toy by Barry Lyga
5Q 3P Audience: S

I usually try to come up with something a little quirky or at least more interesting than "title of book" for my subject lines. But I can't do that with this book. Boy Toy is too disturbing to treat it lightly. It was a hard book to read, not because of how it was written, but because of its subject matter. At times, I almost didn't want to pick it back up again, because it was so hard to read about Josh's experiences. But it is also a compelling read. You don't finish Boy Toy, close the cover, and grab the next book on your pile. You need time to decompress afterwards.

The topic, sexual situations, and language mark Boy Toy as a book for older teens. Lyga isn't coy about his topic. Though the writing is not explicit, it is abundantly clear exactly what Eve is doing to Josh. I was uncomfortable reading certain passages, as I think most readers will be. (It should be uncomfortable to read about sexual abuse.) Boy Toy is well written, thought provoking, and deeply unsettling. It deserves its place on ALA's BBYA 2008 list and its Cybil Award. But readers should know going in that it's also a book that will evoke strong reactions.

When Josh walks into his seventh grade history class, his instant reaction is that his teacher is HOT. He fantasizes about Mrs. Sherman in all the ways a twelve-year-old boy knows how to fantasize. But he is in no way prepared for what happens next. When Mrs. Sherman asks him to be a part of a study she is doing for one of her graduate classes, he doesn't realize where she intends it to lead. He just likes the idea, since it means they'll spend a lot of time alone together. At first, they work in the classroom after school, but soon they begin to work at Miss Sherman's house. It's cool. She has an X-box, a Playstation, and every kind of video game a twelve-year-old could ever want. He gets to spend time with a beautiful woman who treats him like an adult and play otherwise forbidden video games. Paradise must be like this. In fact, Mrs. Sherman's apartment becomes their own little Garden of Eden, right down to Mrs. Sherman becoming Eve. Ever so slowly, Eve lures him ever closer to tasting the forbidden fruit. First she offers him sips of wine and then she teaches him how to kiss. And then...then she gives Josh the whole apple, and nothing is ever going to be the same for him again.

Lyga deftly shows how this relationship affects every aspect of Josh's life. It affects his parents' marriage, his friendship with Zik (his best friend), and makes it absolutely impossible for him to have a normal relationship with girls his own age. But Lyga goes deeper than even that. Josh knows what happened to him. But nothing about it is as cut and dried for him as it seems to be for everyone else. After all, that apple was delicious. If he enjoyed eating the fruit, if he wanted to eat it, should Eve be blamed for giving it to him? Adding that question to the mix adds an even deeper layer to this book.

The only thing I'll quote from this book is a passage on forgiveness, because I thought it would be interesting to compare it to the forgiveness quote from Deb Caletti's The Fortune of Indigo Skye:

See, forgiveness doesn't happen all at once. It's not an event -- it's a process. Forgiveness happens while you're asleep, while you're dreaming, while you're inline at the coffee shop, while you're showering, eating, farting, jerking off. It happens in the back of your mind, and then one day you realize that you don't hate the person anymore, that your anger has gone away somewhere. And you understand. You've forgiven them. You don't know how or why. It sneaked up on you. It happened in the small spaces between thoughts and in the seconds between ideas and blinks. That's where forgiveness happens. Because anger and hatred, when left unfed, bleed away like air from a punctured tire, over time and days and years. Forgiveness is stealth. At least, that's what I hope.

Fey? Feh!

Hallowmere: In the Serpent's Coils by Tiffany Trent

I wanted to like this book, but I can't say I did. I found it a frustrating read, as it seemed to take forever for Corinne* to figure out what was going on. In a nutshell, she wakes up from a serious illness to discover that her mother is dead and she is living with her uncle, who she does not know and who dislikes children. She has started to have visions and see and hear things that do not seem to be of this world. Because of this and because she breaks his rules, her uncle sends her to a reform school for wayward girls. It is unclear what most of the girls there have done to deserve this fate, which I found annoying. Is Corinne the only girl there simply because she can see/hear the Fey? Even when I thought I had an answer to that question, later events made me wonder. The actions of the teachers in the school seem illogical and contradictory, especially later in the book. There's a story threading through the book that is intriguing, but it doesn't go anywhere. I can only suppose that it is continued and embroidered upon in the subsequent books. But because it's not resolved in any way in this one, the reader is left wondering what it has to do with anything, although I assume we are supposed to read between the lines and get the idea that all is not as it seems. I found the idea of setting the book in 1865 fairly novel (not many fantasies of this type are set in the past), but I thought it could have been done more effectively.

There are already several books in this series, and I gather there will be ten in the series, not all of them written by Tiffany Trent. Hmmm. Okay, so it's a series, but they won't all be written by the original author? I find that...interesting.

*Was Corinne really a popular girl's name in 1850, when she would have been born?

Oh, Say, I Don't Want to See!

PLATINUM by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
3P 4P J/S

This is a sequel to Golden, which sets up the basic situation: Lissa, her little sister Lexie, and her parents move from California to small-town Oklahoma. Lissa was popular at her old school, but one look at the Goldens in her new school and she knows she wants no part of that crowd. She'd rather be a Non, as in "your social life in this school is dead", than be a part of such a nasty group. But purposely Non-ing herself has frustrated Lilah, top Golden and the daughter of the woman her uncle is dating. Lilah's not happy, and Lilah's not someone you want to be on the bad side of. Unfortunately for both of them, there's some mysterious tie between them that keeps pulling them together when they really want to be miles apart. Lissa hopes that she's also leaving behind her color visions, but no such luck. Complicating that: her Sight has followed her, and it's going to get her involved in a life or death situation.

Well, as it turns out, Lissa's not the only one with Sight, and she's not the only one who really, really doesn't want it. Much to her dismay, Lilah, who got roped into Lissa's supernatural adventure in the first book, is suddenly seeing people who aren't there. She's even talking to them. And they're talking back. The guy is hot. He has an annoying habit of calling her Princess (well, maybe it's not that annoying). And he keeps making cryptic statements that she can't figure out. For instance, he keeps saying he's not dead, but he's most assuredly not really there, so he's got to be some kind of ghost, right? She doesn't just see him hanging around her in school or in her bedroom (can't a girl have a little privacy?). No, he's also one of the star players she's having in the visions she keeps getting. The deadly ones.

This is not good. She has a reputation to protect, after all. And when standing in the middle of a bunch of Goldens and you're caught arguing with thin air, that reputation is going to take a hit. Unless Lilah can do damage control. Lilah is very, very good at damage control. (Just ask Fuschia, her best friend, who makes the mistake of putting moves on Lilah's boyfriend. What happens next is not pretty.)

This second book in the series was pure fun to read. Lilah, while not the worst of the unholy trio in the first book (Golden) shows herself to have a little more heart and conscience than Lissa gave her credit for. Yeah, she runs roughshod over all the Nons in school. Yeah, she'll squash flat anyone who tries to get the advantage over her. And yeah, she doesn't go out of her way to be nice. But who would have guessed that she actually feels bad about almost all of that? Or at least, that she doesn't enjoy it much? And much as she tries to play the cool sophisticate who has no use for anyone who isn't a Golden, she's a sucker for Lexie, who is the epitome of all good things.

(Editorial note: The previous section was written two weeks ago, prior to surgery. In keeping with my recent blog post, I will add just a brief note or two so that I can publish the post in an almost-complete form.)

Despite how desperately, she doesn't want to know, Lilah is forced to See that Hot Guy is trapped in some sort of cycle, and it's clear that it's up to her to put a stop to it, or things will end tragically. And not just for him, but for people she is very, very close to. She also Sees that there's more to her relationship with Lissa and Lexie than meets the (normal) eye.

One of the fun things about this book are the chapter titles and the commentaries that follow them. A random sampling:

• Lying. The easiest way to lie is to convince people you're a bad liar and then prove them wrong.
• Me. If you want to be popular, it's not nearly as important that you know who you are as it is that everyone else does.
• Truth. Gossip. If I say it, it's true. And if it isn't, it doesn't matter.
• It. The It Factor. If you have to ask, you'll never know. And if you don't think you have it, then you're right.
  
• Information. It's not what you know. It's not who you know. It's what you know about who you know.
• Hurt. Once you feel it, it's real.

An Absolutely Truly Good Book

I was going to combine two books into one post again, but I went on so long on this one, I need to split the posts up. But both books are about boys coming of age. And because both authors well remember what it was like to be a teenage boy, both books have passages that may raise an eyebrow or two in some teacher/parental circles. Boys, on the other hand, won't bat an eye and will eat these books up. And both are also those rarest of things: books for older teenage boys that will make them laugh. Out loud, even. We don't get very many of those. (I don't know if they'll admit this, but they'll probably shed a tear or two, too. At the very least, they'll want to.)

The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
4Q 4P    J/S (recommended for 8th grade and up)

Let me introduce you to Arnold Spirit, otherwise known as Junior. He's a teenager growing up on the Spokane Indian reservation with an alcoholic father, a fantastically intelligent mother who gave up her college dreams, a wise grandmother, and a sister who spends her life in the basement dreaming (or giving up on her dreams) of being a writer. They are, like so many on the rez, very poor - in everything but love. That, they have plenty of. Junior is not a fine physical specimen. He has fluid on the brain, too many teeth, bad eyes, a stutter, a lisp, and seizures. He enjoys drawing cartoons, reading, basketball, and masturbating (he's upfront about that, so I might as well be, too). He is also very intelligent. The day he walks into his new geometry class and discovers that the textbook he is using was his mother's - which means it's at least thirty years old - is the day he decides he wants something more out of life than this. More than that, he deserves something more. The only way he can get it is by leaving the reservation and going to Reardon, the all-white school twenty miles away. His parents are supportive, but nobody else is. Even his only friend, Rowdy, is angry at him for betraying his tribe. When he gets to his new school, he's even more of an outsider than he is at home. Nobody knows what to make of this odd looking Indian boy. But slowly - very slowly - Junior begins to find a place in this new school. He's befriended by a boy who is even geekier than he is (he gets off - really gets off - on visiting the school library), he joins the basketball team, and he even gets a (lily white) girlfriend. But when he travels with his new team to play his old team on the rez, he realizes that some people will never forgive him for having dreams. But nothing they or life can throw at him will stop him from working to make those dreams come true.

This book is exactly what the title says it is: Sherman Alexie's slightly fictionalized version of his own life. There's a great deal of sadness and violence in it, which comes with the territory when you're writing about a life where everyone is poor, many are alcoholics, and most have given up their dreams. But there is also a tremendous sense of humor and hope.

A few random quotes:

[Rowdy] likes to pretend that he lives inside the comic books. I guess a fake life inside a cartoon is a lot better than his real life. So I draw cartoons to make him happy, to give him other worlds to live inside. I draw his dreams.

Prelude to a fight:

It was lunchtime and I was standing outside by the weird sculpture that was supposed to be an Indian. I was studying the sky like I was an astronomer, except it was daytime and I didn't have a telescope, so I was just an idiot. Roger the Giant and his gang of giants strutted over to me...I stared at Roger and tried to look tough. I read once that you can scare away a charging bear if you wave your arms and look big. But I figured I'd just look like a terrified idiot having an arm seizure.

Conversations with Gordy (his geeky new Reardon friend):

"Don't you hate PCs? They are sickly and fragile and vulnerable to viruses. PCs are like French people living during the bubonic plague." Wow, and people thought I was a freak.

"I draw cartoons," I said. "What's your point?" Gordy asked. "I take them seriously. I use them to understand the world. I use them to make fun of the world. To make fun of people. And sometimes I draw people because they're my friends and family. And I want to honor them." "So you take your cartoons as seriously as you take books?" "Yeah, I do, I said. "That's kind of pathetic, isn't it?" "No, not at all," Gordy said. "If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong." Wow, this dude was a poet. My cartoons weren't just good for giggles; they were also good for poetry. Funny poetry, but poetry nonetheless. It was seriously funny stuff.

I was trying to keep this short, and it's not. So I'll stop here and just add one more comment. This book has gotten a huge amount of attention, including winning the 2007 National Book Award in the Young People's Literature category. I predict it will win the Printz Award on January 14, 2008 (if it doesn't, it will certainly be an Honor book). I liked this book a lot, but I'm not really convinced that it's the best book of the year written for teens. There's a lot to like about it, and the characters, particular Junior, are unforgettable. I've been rereading it as I tried to write this up and look for appropriate quotes, and I got involved in the story all over again. There are parts that are screamingly funny and parts that are achingly sad. But still, there's a bit of a disconnect for me. I think something I read elsewhere pinpointed what it is: something about the writing style makes it seems as though it's aimed at a younger audience. Don't be fooled. This is definitely a novel for high school teens (adults, too).

TWISTED by Laurie Halse Anderson

Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson
5Q 5P (J)/S

For most of his school life, Tyler was a runty dweeb that nobody noticed. He didn't even have a gang of friends to hang around with. And forget girls. He was definitely not a babe magnet. By the end of his junior year, he was tired of being Invisible Man. So he decided to pull a prank that would get him noticed.

Get him noticed it did. His Foul Deed involved five cans of spray paint, the walls of the school, and the police. If you want to pull off a prank like this successfully, it's a good idea not to have your wallet on you. If you must bring it with you, do not leave it behind as a way to sign your artwork. It didn't take long for the police to come knocking.

Tyler has spent the entire summer serving his community service time working for a lawn care firm and helping the school custodians clean up the school grounds. He knows that all this work has put some muscles on him, but he's not prepared for the reaction he gets when he returns to school. Some kids ignore him (still), some kids scorn him for being a troublemaker, and some kids hail him as a hero. But the girls...all of a sudden, he's got their attention. Suddenly he's tall, good looking, and built.

That's Tyler on the outside. Inside, he's the same insecure, confused kid he's always been. Only now, he's angry, too. The anger comes from a lot of places, but number one has to be his father, who now treats him like a hardened criminal because of the Foul Deed. But it's more than that. His father used to be an okay guy, back when Tyler was a kid. But now he's just a total jerk who is in his face all the time. Nothing anyone in the family does is good enough. Tyler's mother copes with the help of multiple gin and tonics. Tyler and his sister just try to keep a low profile. In a way, it's Tyler's father who gets him into his next mess. His boss is having a party, families invited, and Tyler's father insists that his family attend. It's pretty clear (to everyone but Tyler's father) when they get there that they are out of place and not really wanted. But they stay, and that's when things really start going bad. The boss has two kids, Chip and Bethany. Chip is a grade-A jerk and Bethany is hot. Chip doesn't like Tyler. Bethany does. Chip pushes Tyler, Tyler trips, bangs into Bethany, and glasses shatter. Bethany steps on glass, Bethany gets a bad gash on her foot, Tyler swoops in to the rescue. Chip steams.

It wouldn't be right to say that Tyler and Bethany become a couple, but they're both very aware of each other. Eventually, they wind up together at a party. Bethany gets totally wasted, and Tyler knows that he could do pretty much anything he wants to her. Even though one part of him is urging him to go for it, he restrains himself, which doesn't make Bethany happy at all. Tyler leaves the party feeling pretty good that he didn't take advantage of her. But the next day, all hell breaks loose. He may not have taken advantage of the situation, but somebody else did, and whoever that was, he took pictures. But it's Tyler who is getting the blame. After all, everyone knows that Tyler is a bad egg. Everyone includes Tyler's dad and the police. It sure is a twisted world when you do the right thing and wind up looking like a criminal.

Musings:

I think this is Anderson's best book since Speak. Tyler is an utterly believable character, and your heart just breaks for him as he tries to deal with a false accusations, a little sister who is fourteen-going-on-thirty, a mother bordering on alcoholism, and a father who has forgotten that parenting is as much about love, understanding, and attention as it is about discipline. Throughout the book, Tyler plays a video game that takes place in Hell. Maybe not a subtle bit of symbolism, but it sure is dead on and effective. Anderson may be a woman, but she has her guy-antennae tuned to the right frequency. And, as usual, she writes a heck of a story.

I've never seen a book that has a page with a NOTE: This book is not for children. caution. I know Laurie has written some middle-grade books in addition to her YA novels, but I still found this odd. I'm wondering who decided it belonged in the book and for what reason. (For the record, I do agree. I recommend it to high school students, though some junior high school students will also get full value from it.)

Edited to add a link to Laurie Halse Anderson's blog post about the warning message.

I'm curious to know what's up with dad at the end. I thought at first that one thing was going on, but now I think it might be completely the opposite. It's not wrapped up at the end, which is actually not a bad thing. My suspicion now: The shoe might be on the other foot soon.

Quotes: (Oh, heck! It's taken me weeks to finish writing this up - lots going on at work - and I forgot to keep track of these! I guess I'll have to leave it at this one:)

• It got a little better in high school. I became invisible, your average piece of drywall who spent too much time playing video games. Girls would look straight at me and never see the writhing masculine beast hidden inside my hundred-thirty-five pounds of veal-white man-flesh.

Absolutely DROWNING in spies! (KIKI STRIKE)

Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City by Kirsten Miller
4Q 4P M/J


Of all the girl spy books, this is the one that's getting the notice and getting the raves. Maybe I'm more lukewarm on it than others because it was the third in the genre that I read pretty much right in a row. It's a good idea to mix things up a little so that books stand out from each other and things don't run together so much, and I didn't do that well this time. There is a lot to like about this book. It's just that it didn't stand out for me the way I expected it to after hearing so many excellent reviews of it.

Ananka Fishbein 's life changes the day she looks out the window of her New York City apartment to see that a sinkhole has appeared in the park next door. She also sees a small figure crawling out of the hole. The small figure turns and waves to her. It's a girl! Ananka has to know more about that girl and the sinkhole. She runs downstairs to explore the hole and discovers a hidden door that she eventually learns leads to the Shadow City. What's the Shadow City? It's a city of passages, tunnels, and secret rooms that lead all over the city. What's down there? Dead bodies, rats (big ones!), and treasure. But Ananka doesn't learn any of that until she discovers who the girl is: Kiki Strike.

Kiki, it turns out, is a student in her own school, but Ananka has never noticed her before. That's a surprising, because Kiki has the kind of looks that make her stand out in a crowd: she's only about four feet tall (but she's at least fourteen) and she has absolutely white hair. She also carries herself with a confidence few other teens can match. Kiki soon introduces Ananka to several girls with unusual talents: there's Betty (a master of disguise), Luz (an electronics genius), Dee Dee (a chemist who's great at explosives), and Oona (an excellent forger and thief). Together they form the Irregulars, and together they explore the Shadow City. All of those unusual skills come in very handy when you're doing something you don't want anyone else to know you're doing.

But Kiki has secrets she isn't telling the others, and when one of their explorations ends in disaster, Kiki disappears and the Irregulars break up. But that's not the end of the story. Ananka keeps getting glimpses and information that lead her to believe the Kiki hasn't gone far. Two years later, Kiki is back, and this time, things are serious. Kiki doesn't need them just to map out and explore the Shadow City. This time, teenage girls are disappearing, and the Irregulars know why and what the kidnappers want. They also know they have the means and skills to get the girls back and stop the kidnappers. But they don't know everything. And they most definitely don't know everything they need to know about Kiki Strike.

This book is chock full of girl power and advice for would-be spies that just happens to be potentially useful in real life, too. Check out the end of most of the chapters for items such as:

"The Benefit of the Doubt: Most people are willing to give young girls the benefit of the doubt. Girls are too sweet and innocent, they think, to be up to no good. A clever story--generally one involving a missing kitten--can get you out of trouble in nine out of ten situations. Remember, a tear or two will make any tale more believable." (page 16)

"Duct Tape: Take a roll with you whenever you travel. It can be used to immobilize criminals, fix essential equipment, and make a cute skirt if you're in a bind." (page 86)

You've got to like a book that can mix strong characters, a sense of humor, and adventure and do it well. This book does. Really. I admit it, it's not ever going to be on my favorite books list, and it's not likely to wind up on my Top Five or Top Ten of 2006 list (as it has appeared on others' lists already). But I will happily recommend it to readers who enjoyed the Sammy Keyes books and to kids who like interesting characters doing interesting things.