Best YA Books of 2010? You Pick!

In association with the Children's Book Council, TeenReads.com wants to know what your five favorite books published in 2009 were. The top five most nominated books will become the finalists for the Children's Book Council's 2010 Teen Choice Book of the Year. Why not go vote for your favorites? (It doesn't say whether the voters must be of a certain age, so I'm not sure whether the voting is open to everyone or just to teens. But the form doesn't ask how old you are, so...?)

By the way, TeenReads.com is a terrific resource. I find their reviews very helpful and as a fan of their Facebook page, I get weekly alerts about new books. If you aren't familiar with the site, do check it out.

By the way, once the finalists list is published, I'll try to post a similar link to that vote.

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.)

Choose This

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams

5Q 4P; J/S

At thirteen, Kyra is just beginning to realize that there are two things she loves almost as much as she loves her family: books and Joshua. But she needs to keep both of those loves secret, since both are strictly forbidden in her religious community. Books bring the outside in and expose readers to Satan's teachings. Boys...well, boys and girls aren't to look at each other or talk to each other unless the Prophet allows it. If a boy and a girl are found together, even if they are doing nothing but talking, the punishment will be swift and severe. Kyra and Joshua are doing more than talking. They are sneaking out at night to be together. They are sharing books and music. They are kissing and dreaming of being together forever.

The Prophet and his Apostles run everything in the Compound. They make the rules, and the God Squad makes sure they are enforced. The Prophet also decides who will marry whom, and there is no arguing with his decision. So when the Prophet decrees that Kyra is to marry Apostle Hyrum, her uncle, the family is in despair. Try as Father may, there is no way to avoid the inevitable. Kyra is devastated. Her family can only understand part of her anguish. There is no way to tell them that as much as she's revolted by the idea of marrying her sixty-year-old uncle and becoming his seventh wife, she's also shattered at the thought that she and Joshua can never be together. She wants to refuse, to say she just won't do it. But defying the Prophet means bringing his wrath down upon her family, and that thought is just as painful. She loves her father, her three mothers, and her twenty-one (soon to be twenty-three) brothers and sisters fiercely. What will the Prophet do to them if she runs away with Joshua, as she so badly wants to do? And what will he do to her?

Favorite quote:

(Kyra has just been informed that she and her mothers are going into town to buy fabric for her wedding dress. It's the final confirmation that there is no way out of this wedding.)

Outside, it is a lie of a morning. Everything is beautiful: The air fresh. The sky so blue it hurts my eyes.

Musings:

I've had the pleasure of reading a few beautifully written books lately, and this is another to add to that list.

Polygamist communities have been in the news lately. The idea of plural marriages is certainly foreign to most of us in this country. Among the things that struck me as I read this book was that although she fights against this kind of marriage for herself, Kyra doesn't actually seem to mind being part of a polygamous family. She views her family as loving and supportive and derives a lot of her strength from all of her parents and siblings, making  little or no distinction between them.

Family relationships in plural marriages must be very complicated things. Imagine having three (or more!) mothers to listen to and have to please! Mother Sarah, Kyra's birth mother, is caring and understanding, but her difficult pregnancy leaves Kyra as her caretaker rather than the other way around. And though Kyra views Mother Clare as "the mean mother" and sometimes resents her, it's Mother Clare who most clearly understands Kyra's feelings and tries to help her accept her fate. The moments she shares her own story with Kyra make her surprisingly sympathetic. (Mother Victoria rather fades into the background between Mother Sarah and Mother Clare.) I particularly liked the contrast between Kyra's relationships with her sisters Laura and Margaret. The love Kyra has for both sisters is undeniable, but they are very different people. Laura is the voice of the status quo and Margaret ...well, I suspect that Kyra is not the only  sister in the family who will give the Prophet fits. She's going to be a formidable woman.

I wonder how Kyra's story might have played out under a different Prophet. Would she still have hated her life and wanted to run? It's this Prophet that Kyra says she'd like to kill and leave for the termites to eat. He has very narrow and rigid ideas of what is godly, and he disallows many things (such as freedom to leave the Compound) that the previous Prophet allowed. He is running off the younger men and marrying the young girls to much older men. But the previous Prophet was not that sort of man, and the compound was not always run that way. I wonder if Kyra would have been content to stay under a Prophet who allowed his followers more freedom and allowed her to be with Joshua, even given that she would still have had to share him with other women.

Being a librarian, naturally I love that books give Kyra comfort and support and a means of escape in more ways than one, and I honor Patrick as a true hero.

While I wouldn't classify this as a violent book, there are violent incidents that were shocking and troubling to read. Those images stuck with me for a long time. I am frankly in denial about at least one probable death. Message received: It's hard to think this way about religious groups, but there's no denying that it can be dangerous to take a stand against them.

There are several important issues left unresolved at the end of this book. I found myself wondering what the fallout of Kyra's decision would be. I have no idea if Carol Lynch Williams intends to write a sequel, but I think it would be fascinating to explore the "what happens next?" in a situation like this.

To be honest, this wasn't a book I was dying to read. But I was curious to see if I agreed with all the positive, even glowing, reviews I'd seen and heard, so I decided to read it anyhow. I was caught at the very first page, and my interest never waned. I absolutely believed the people and the situation. I cared, and I think many of my teens will too. I highly recommend this book for both pleasure reading and as an excellent choice for a book group.

She Feels Pretty, Oh So Pretty...Sometimes, Anyhow.

The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han
4Q 4P; J/S

I finished this book two+ months ago, and details have faded, so I'm sure I'll forget to mention things I thought about at the time, and some of them will probably be important aspects of the book. It doesn't mean I didn't recognize those things. It just means I have to stop being lazy and procrastinating about writing until I get to the point where I've forgotten what I wanted to say!

For as long as Belly can remember, her summers have been spent at the beach with her mother, brother Stephen, and Susannah and her boys, Conrad and Jeremiah. Belly has always been the tag-along, wishing she could be a part of the boys' fun but always being just a little bit outside of it. She and Jeremiah are best buddies, but Belly knows that if the older boys invite him to come along, Jeremiah will go running. Stephen doesn't want his pain-in-the-neck kid sister hanging around, and Conrad doesn't even to seem to notice her most of the time. This is the way it's always been, and while she doesn't like it, she's used to it. But Belly lives for those rare moments when Conrad doesn't look right past her - those moments when he sees right into her and they connect in that special way that only she and he can. This is the summer she's turned pretty. Or so everyone says. So is this the summer that Conrad will finally notice her?

The beach house is the place where all her happiest memories were born. This summer, though, things have a different feel. Something isn't right. Susannah, who is always there to greet them with a big hug, doesn't come down to meet them when they arrive. Jeremiah seems a little distracted. And Conrad seems to be doing everything he can to pull away from them all. There are unspoken things hanging in the air. Belly can feel things coming to an end, and she can't bear the thought of losing her perfect summers.

The only thing Belly would like to change is her relationship with Conrad. But that doesn't seem likely to happen, what with the distance he's keeping and the new girl he's hanging around with. Maybe she should look elsewhere. Jeremiah? She and Jeremiah have always shared a special friendship, and she can tell he wants more.There's also Cameron, the boy she meets at her first real teenage party. Her mind boggles when he tells her he's liked her ever since he first saw her (eighth grade!) at a Latin convention. Back then she had a retainer and glasses, and she was hardly pretty. From the way he's looking at her, Cameron definitely thinks she's pretty now. Things are changing so fast for her. She doesn't know how to deal with this flirting business. She doesn't know how to deal with boys now that they are looking at her in that new way. She doesn't know how to deal with Cam and Jeremiah getting all over-protective and proprietary when they see her with another guy.  Things were so much easier before!

Unsaid things and love, unrequited and otherwise, all add up to make another summer Belly will always remember.

Musings:

I loved this book. I loved Belly. Even when you've been looking forward (or impatiently pushing ahead) to the moment when people start seeing you as a woman instead of a little girl, when it actually starts happening and you're forced to create and react to that new mindset, it's disorienting and a little scary. Han does a beautiful job of painting all those confusing, conflicting, exhilarating emotions and thoughts. I also loved the family feeling. It was easy to understand how much Belly looked forward to her summers, because I felt at home and comfortable the moment she got to the beach house. It made me wish I could hang out with the boys and Susannah and be a part of it. (Or maybe it just reminds me of my own childhood, since I can really relate to being the only girl in a bunch of boys!)

Every now and then we're treated to a brief vignette from an earlier summers. This really worked for me. It's like adding an underlay of color to make the tones of the present-day scenes that much richer and deeper.

This is not a major deal for me, but still, it's something I thought about throughout the book. I speak from experience here - there's no way a teenage girl is going to introduce herself to a cute teenage boy as "Belly". As a nickname, "Belly" is embarrassing enough, especially at that age. But when you factor in all the rhymes for it, the cringe factor goes sky high. Who would willingly risk being called "Smelly Belly"? No, Belly is the family nickname she reveals when she knows that this is a guy she trusts and wants to let into her world, not the name she gives when she first meets him.

Choosing between the nice guy and the edgier guy who needs you is a classic dilemma. There are those who love the Heathcliff-Cathy dynamic and those who prefer an Anne-Gilbert love story. Warning: What follows is a spoiler, so highlight the space below only if you're curious and don't mind knowing a piece of the ending. I'm still not convinced Belly wound up with the right guy. We're conditioned to root for the match up between the angsty guy and the oh-so-caring girl, but what makes us think the guy is going to become less angsty as time goes on? Are we supposed to think her love will turn his world from clouds and skunks to sunshine and roses? Do we really want her to spend months or years tiptoeing around the guy, always concentrating on what will make *him* happy at the probable expense of her own growth and desires? Don't get me wrong...Conrad's not a bad guy. But he's so wrapped up in his own issues that I wonder how much he can spare for Belly right now. Personally, I think a relationship with Jeremiah has more potential for happiness than a relationship with his handsome-but-tortured brother. Count me in the Anne-Gilbert camp.

Quotes

For me, it was almost like winter didn't count. Summer was what mattered. My whole life was measured in summers. Like I don't really begin living until June, until I'm at that beach, in that house. (p. 5)

[Conrad] had a smirky kind of mouth, and I always found myself staring at it. Smirky mouths make you want to kiss them, to smooth them out and kiss the smirkiness away. Or maybe not away...but you want to control it somehow. Make it yours. It was exactly what I wanted to do with Conrad. Make him mine. (p. 5)

The moment when she starts believing she really has turned pretty:

They didn't even notice me walk up at first. But then they did. They really did. Conrad gave me a quick glance-over the way boys do at the mall. He had never looked at me like that before in my whole life. Not once. ...Jeremiah, on the other hand, did a double take. All of this happened in the span of about three seconds, but it felt much, much longer. (p.8)

He jerked away from her, almost by accident. Susannah didn't seem to notice, but I did. I always noticed Conrad. (p.23)

What I Read and How It Felt So True

What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell
5Q 4P; J/S/A

It's 1946, the war is over, and life is beginning to get back to normal. For Evie, that means her stepfather Joe is home, Bev, her mother, can stop working, and Evie can just relax and enjoy being a young teenaged girl. While her best friend is boy crazy and ready to jump into romance, Evie's not interested yet. She lives in the knowledge that her mother is gorgeous and that she will never be able to attract a man's attention the way her mother can. All that changes when Joe impulsively decides the family should take a vacation in Florida.

They soon discover that summer is the off-season in Florida. They're practically the only people in their hotel, other than the Graysons...and Peter. While Joe quickly gets involved in business dealings with Mr. Grayson, it's Peter who captures Evie's attention. He's a young, handsome, utterly charming war veteran. They first connect when Peter finds Evie hiding in the shadows of the pool after being bitterly disappointed by an "is that all there is?" experience at her first real dance. Peter invites her to dance, and Evie is smitten. This is a man. This is a dance. She can't stop thinking about him, and for the first time, she understands what all this talk of boys and love really means. In the days that follow, she finds (makes!) every opportunity to spend time with Peter. And it's not her imagination - he seems to be seeking her out, too. He takes her for drives and to the movies. And sure, they often take her mother along, but that's just for cover. It's Evie that Peter is interested in.

Evie begins to blossom. She's been so sure for so long that she will never be as pretty or enticing as her mother is. But Peter doesn't seem to feel that way. And Mrs. Grayson takes her shopping to buy her clothes that are a far cry from the little girl dresses her mother always buys her, and Evie can't help realizing that she can do these grown-up dresses justice. Peter notices, too. The kisses he gives her are not the kisses you give a little girl.

But things take a darker turn when Evie realizes that Joe doesn't like Peter and doesn't trust him. Peter says they spent time together during the war, but Joe doesn't want to talk about it. There are hints, whispers, suggestions that there is more going on here than meets the eye, that Peter's presence at the hotel isn't mere coincidence. Peter seems to know something that Joe wants kept a secret. Joe and Evie's mother begin to fight, and Evie realizes that one of the things that they're fighting over is Peter and his relationship with her mother. Well, that's ridiculous. All those times that she and Bev and Peter went to the movies and out for a drive or to restaurants, they brought Bev along so nobody would give Peter a hard time for spending time with a girl her age. It's Evie that Peter is interested in. Isn't it?

Joe, Evie's mother, and Peter charter a boat and take it out on the open sea just as a hurricane starts up along the coast. Only Joe and Bev come home alive.

What really happened out on that boat, and why did it happen? It's not just Evie who wants to know. So do the police, the judge, the jury, and the tabloid reporters. And Evie has to decide what to tell them. What did she see, and how does she lie?

Musings:

It's easy to see why this book won the 2008 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. I'm awfully glad I wasn't on the award committe, because it was up against some wonderful books : Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson, The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharpe (just realized I have an unfinished post on this spectacular book), The Underneath by Kathy Appel (which I haven't read and don't have in our Teen collection), and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart (I never uploaded my post on this one, either). I would never have been able to choose a winner, though I know my vote would have gone to either Anderson, Tharp, or Blundell. All three books feature exceptional writing about characters dealing with heartbreaking situations, and they all really moved me.

Blundell does a beautiful job capturing the joys and miseries of leaving girlhood and innocence behind. I'm writing this up over a month after finishing the book, and as I try to write and capture what I felt so many weeks ago, the feeling of being pulled and stretched is what keeps coming back to me. Evie is reaching for something that seems at first to be just out of her grasp. Then it's in her hands, but yanked away so that she has to chase after it again. I picture her being pulled and stretched in all directions, at first welcoming the feeling, but then being stretched so far it's painful, wanting to pull back to her comfort zone but unable to do it. I wanted to shield her from the pain I knew was coming, and I wanted to give her support when she faced the hard decisions with her new-found and hard-won maturity. Evie's growth is a masterpiece of writing.

Though I'm focusing here on the girl-becomes-woman aspect, there's a lot going on in this book beyond that. Guilt and innocence come up again and again in various situations. There's food for thought on every page.

What I Saw and How I Lied is begging to be made into a movie. (Please, would-be producers, don't cast Dakota Fanning in it! This one needs a Jena Malone/Evan Rachel Wood/Clare Danes type.)

Quotes:

I loved these for the vividness of the descriptions, the traces of humor from a serious person in a very serious book, and the perfectly captured moments of stepping out of childhood and into adulthood.

...every time I saw a palm tree it was a little shock, like life was yelling in my ear that this was me, and it was really happening. (p. 113)

Mom took golf lessons, which proved tome how much a place can change you, because Mom's old idea of exercise was crossing her legs. (p. 119)

I don't know when it happened, but things started to turn, just a little bit, like when you smell the bottle of milk, and you know it's going to be sour tomorrow, but you pour it on your cereal anyway. (p. 119)

Squandered virtue was a sin, Margie told me. But she had eight kids in her family. It seemed to me that her mother squandered her virtue all over the place. (p. 121)

I wanted to of music, of dances, of falling in love and getting married before he shipped overseas. And the songs - (italics) I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places(/italics) - all that longing, all that waiting. It made sense to me now. Every lyric. It wasn't about just hearing it on the radio. The strings were stretched and quivering and going crazy inside me. If Peter and I had met during the war, would we have gotten engaged? Would things have moved faster? I knew girls who were pre-engaged at school. I used to laugh at their smugness. Now I wanted it. Time rushed at me like a subway, all air and heat. (p. 129)

I could have fought her. I could have taken what I knew about what he felt and thrown it at her, proved I was an adult now, just like her. But feeling grown up? I discovered something right then: It comes and it goes. I was still afraid of my mom. (p. 153)

I saw wanting in Wally's eyes. Now I could recognize it as easy as Margie waving at me across Hillside Avenue. What would happen if I got hold of that want and rode it like a raft to see where it could take me? Joe had left me behind like a kid. I didn't want to be a kid. (p. 171)

I didn't know where [Mom] had put her pizzazz. Maybe she had squashed it in that little lace-trimmed pocket of her dress. (p. 232)

Creepy, Creepy, Creepy

Frozen Fire by Tim Bowler
4.5Q 3P; Audience: J/S

Frozen Fire is creepy and atmospheric and had me completely engrossed. On a hot summer night, I got chills, and not just because of the suspense. You can almost feel the cold and the snow.

Imagine being alone in the house and getting a phone call (your number is unlisted) from a voice you don't recognize. The voice says, "I'm dying." The boy on the other end of the line sounds about your own age, maybe a year or two older. His voice is slurred and angry. He calls himself Josh. Your brother's name. Your missing brother's name. He's not your brother. But he knows things about you he should have no way of knowing. Creepy, right? Who is this boy? Why did he call her? What does he want?

He says he wants to die. But he can't die. Not yet. Not before he tells Dusty what he knows about Josh. He must know something about him. Why else would he have given her that name? How else would he know her secret nickname? How else would he know what Josh's last words to her were?

When Dusty rushes out into the snowy New Year's Eve night to find the boy, she discovers she's not the only one looking for him. Three vicious men with their equally vicious dogs are also after him. They threaten and terrify her. But they are all stymied in their attempts to find the boy. He has disappeared, literally without a trace. How could he have left no footprints in the snow?

Various people spot a mysterious figure on the paths, up in the mountains, and in and around town. The word is out: this boy is dangerous. He's responsible for horrible crimes. Stay away from him at all costs.

But Dusty can't stay away from him. How could she, knowing that he has the answers she's been desperate to find for so long? She finds him. Now she's more frightened than ever.

This isn't quite fantasy, and it's not supernatural, exactly, either. It's a blend of both, with suspense and mystery thrown in. It may not be everyone's cup of tea (some readers will be discomfited by some of the ambiguity and the British slang and style), but it's expertly told and a great choice for readers who like to be kept on edge. Readers may also want to look for Bowler's Storm Catchers. Bowler's books, including Frozen Fire, have won several awards in England.

Shall I Stay or Shall I Go?

If I Stay by Gayle Forman
5Q 4P; Audience: J/S

It's no secret that a lot of teens fight with their parents on a regular basis and are waiting impatiently to graduate high school and go to college, preferably someplace away. Mia is not one of those teens. Her family is close. They don't just love each other, they like each other and enjoy spending time together. So when there's a rare snow day in their little part of Oregon, Mia's parents decide it's a perfect day for a family car trip and Mia and her little brother Teddy enthusiastically agree. The snow's not the kind that amounts to anything, so they figure it's perfectly safe. It's not. The four of them are happily talking and listening to music when a four-ton pickup truck going sixty miles per hour plows into them so hard the force of it tears off the doors and pushes the passenger seat clear through the driver's side window.

You don't walk away from an accident like that. Except...Mia does. When the sounds of the crash stop echoing, she can still hear Beethoven's Cello Sonata no. 3 playing. She walks up the embankment and sees the devastation: the crumpled car, the pipe in her father's pocket and his brains scattered on the pavement, her mother's blue lips and red eyes that make her look more like a zombie than someone who was laughing and breathing and living just two minutes ago. But where is Teddy? She frantically searches for a sign of him. There! His hand, sticking out a ditch! But when she gets closer, she realizes the hand sticking out of the ditch isn't Teddy's. It's wearing her bracelet, and the body is wearing her clothing. The body isn't Teddy's. It's hers. No, you don't walk away from an accident like that.

Mia doesn't understand what's going on, why she and her body seem to be two separate things. What she does understand is that her parents are dead and her brother is badly injured. She understands that she can walk, invisible, among her doctors, her friends, and her relatives. She can hear their conversations, but she can't communicate with them. She can only watch them as they sit in the waiting room or by her bedside, grieving and loving. It is a nurse's comment that eventually gives her a clue. If she's "running the show", does that mean that if she lives or dies is up to her? If so, should she stay or should she go? How you make a decision like that?

Musings:
The love in this book is almost palpable. Reading Mia's flashbacks of times spent with her family made me wish I could be a part of their circle. Teddy is adorable, and Mia's parents, both music-loving former hippies, are wise, loving, and totally cool. Two weeks after finishing the book, Mia's father still feels real to me. I melted a little when Mia described his transition from hippie to middle school teacher, and I'm getting a warm feeling from just remembering how he and her mother talked Mia through her first-recital fears. These were good people. Mia's boyfriend Adam is just as likable. He's a rocker and she's a classical cellist. Despite that seemingly wide difference in sensibilities, music both brings and binds them together. The expression "She played me like a cello" has a whole new (and fairly erotic) meaning for me now. Mia is not a romantic. Even as she describes their tender moments and first kisses, she doesn't try to pretend that the relationship didn't have less rosy moments or that she wasn't always secure in it. There's a maturity to their relationship and the way she understands it that resonates.

Music is a constant thread throughout the book. Whether it's rock or classical, music is the common language, and it doesn't matter that they aren't speaking the same dialect. Music is love, and love is music. The book is music is love.

If I Stay is heartbreaking and poignant, life-affirming, and powerful in its simplicity and depth. I can't wait to share it with other readers.

Real Girl vs Winter Girl

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
5Q 4P; Audience: (J)/S

Horrifying. Mesmerizing. Shocking. Tragic. Heartrending. Devastating. Exhausting. Unforgettable.

Back when Lia was a real girl, her parents weren't divorced. She had a best friend. She wasn't a fat pig. She wasn't starving herself. She wasn't cutting. She wasn't a wintergirl.

Wintergirl. Dead girl walking. That's what the kids at school call her. Being a wintergirl is just fine with Lia. That way she doesn't need to feel anything. But it doesn't really work that way. Lia feels too much. She just wishes she didn't feel anything. That was easier before Cassie died, before Cassie started haunting her, leaving her scent of cinnamon, cloves, and sugar hanging in the air along with her accusations and her entreaties to join her on the other side.

Lia and Cassie were best friends, right up until they weren't. They played together, got crushes on boys together, hated their parents together, got drunk together. They made a pact together: they would be the skinniest girls in school. ("But I'll be skinnier than you," said Lia.) Cassie binges and purges. Lia starves herself. They'll stay strong together. And then one day, Cassie turns her back on Lia. She won't even speak to her. Which is why, months later, Lia doesn't answer the phone when Cassie calls and calls and calls. (1...2...3...8...10...15...18...22...25...29...30...31...31...32...33. Silence.) Cassie is talking to her now. Now that she's dead, Cassie won't stop speaking to Lia, creeping into her room at night, following her to appointments, haunting her. If Lia stays strong, maybe she can make Cassie go away. Maybe she can make everything go away.

Musings and Quotes:

This was an achingly difficult and utterly engrossing book. While making note of some of the lines I wanted to quote, I also wrote "I feel trapped." There were times I felt I couldn't breathe. I could read only thirty or forty pages at a time before I had to take a break from it. But not everyone will feel that way. I handed the book to my fifteen-year-old niece and she didn't pick her eyes off the pages until she finished it less than four hours later.

The use of strikeouts ("my parents Dr. Marrigan and Professor Overbrook" or (paraphrasing) "I just want sweet, creamy, delicious ice cream slipping down my throat dry toast") to show the difference between what Lia thinks and feels and what she'll allow herself to acknowledge is brilliant.

There's a quotable line on every page (every paragraph). The language is evocative and the imagery is stunning. I know that I'm going to get hundreds of hits on this page, because that's what happens when I quote from Laurie Halse Anderson. Please, do yourself a favor. Read the book. Let yourself be moved by it. Quotes can give you the flavor of a book, but they can't do justice to it.

"Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corner. We are trained not to see it, not to see any of it. (...body found in a motel room, alone...) Someone just ripped off my eyelids." (p. 4)

"If I weren't so tired, I'd shove trust and issue down the garbage disposal and let it run all day." (p. 6)

"Last week's Thanksgiving was artificially sweetened, enriched with tense preservatives, and wrapped in plastic." (p. 30)

"Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of strange little girls screaming through their fingers...I scroll through our confessions and rants and prayers, desperation eating us one slow bloody bite at a time." (P. 112)

" 'What words are in your head right now, Lia?' Pissed. Pig. Hate...Jail. Coffin. Cut...Hungry. Dead." (pp. 115-116)

"I'm sure she's [Lia's mother] waiting for me in the family room, temperature at fifty-eight degrees, her lecture notes neatly arranged with my faults and mistakes listed in order of priority. She has charts to prove everything I do is wrong, and that my only hope is to allow them to insert her stem cells in my marrow so she can grow a new her dressed in my skin." (p. 148)

"Cassie opens her Pandora's box every night and hitches a ride to my room. She doesn't watch from the shadows anymore. She attacks. Once the sleeping pill straps my arms and legs down to the mattress, she opens my skull and rips out the wiring. She screams holes in my brain and pukes blood down my throat." (p. 183)

Laurie Halse Anderson has done it again. Wintergirls is going to join Speak as one of the classics of YA literature.

Choose One: Safe vs Real

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
4Q 3P; Audience: J/S; recommended mainly to Gr. 9+

Wow. I started hearing raves about this book months ago from people had received ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies). I told one of my patrons about it and we've both been waiting impatiently for it to finally be published. Now that it's come in, I understand the high praise. It was worth the wait.

Marcelo doesn't operate in the world the way most people do. His condition can't be precisely defined, but he falls somewhere along the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. He has difficulty expressing himself and reacting spontaneously. It's easy for him to get overloaded by visual and aural stimuli, and it's hard for him to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. He is obsessed with music and religion. Marcelo knows exactly how he wants to spend the summer before his senior year: working with the horses at Paterson, his school. It's the perfect job for him. Working with animals is easier than dealing with people, and Paterson is a quiet, safe environment. He'll be interacting with kids like himself and the teachers and staff members who work with them. His needs will be understood and nobody will challenge him. But his father has other plans for him. Arturo has never really accepted Marcelo's diagnosis or believed that Paterson was the best place for him. He thinks it's time for Marcelo take his place in the real world, where he'll be challenged, not coddled the way he is at school, so he's arranged for Marcelo to work in the mail room of his law firm. And he thinks Marcelo should attend the local high school for his senior year instead of returning to Paterson. Marcelo is resistant, but he has to admit that his father has always been fair to him and he thinks he can trust him (if trusting him means believing him). He reluctantly makes a deal with his father: If Marcelo works in the mail room and succeeds in following the rules of the real world for the summer, his father will let Marcelo decide which school to attend in the fall. If he doesn't succeed, Marcelo will attend the local high school.

Marcelo's experiences at the law firm range from comfortable enough to deeply upsetting. Though he knows that his boss, Jasmine, wanted someone else to get his job, she is patient with him. She doesn't overwhelm him with talk and she trusts him to do the job properly once it is explained to him. It surprises him to realize by mid-summer that they've actually become friends. But there are other people who are less willing to accept Marcelo's idiosyncrasies, and they make it difficult for him. And Wendell, the son of the other partner in the law firm, intends to take as much advantage of him as he possibly can. Marcelo's been warned about Wendell, and it's advice worth heeding. Wendell wants something from Marcelo, and he makes it clear that if Marcelo doesn't come through for him, he'll make sure Marcelo comes out on the losing end of his deal with his father.

It's stressful enough for Marcelo to have to deal with the demands, both work-related and interpersonal, of his job. But his stress level gets unbearably high when he comes across information about a major lawsuit the firm is a part of and realizes that the world isn't black and white and neither are people's motives. What should he do with this information, and what will it cost him in the end?

Musings

Many things come into play in this beautifully written book, including friendship, love, trust, sex, good vs evil, and morality. Almost all of it worked for me. Whether it's by having Marcelo explain his own thought processes or in his conversations with his mother and his rabbi counselor/friend, I loved the way Stork illustrated how Marcelo perceives the world and why things that seem unworthy of remark to most of us cause Marcelo to question them. I was rather fascinated by how his mind worked and by what processes he arrived at conclusions. In an odd way, I felt privileged to be given this entry into his world.

I appreciated exploring the dynamics of Marcelo's various relationships. I just this moment realized that the people Marcelo finds easiest to relate to (his mother, his sister, his rabbi counselor, Jasmine) are all women. He's perplexed by his father and frankly frightened and confused by Wendell. Hmmm. I wonder if there's any significance to that.

Without going into specifics, I have some quibbles. I felt there was an inconsistency between what Jasmine says and what she does, mostly in regards to Vermont issues, and some of the scenes in that section of the book felt somewhat out of place with the rest of the book. And despite the growth Marcelo makes over the summer, I still felt that certain things play out too patly in the end, which made me change my initial rating from a 5 to a 4.

I'd recommend this book to high school readers, who will most appreciate Marcelo's struggle with moral dilemmas and following his own dreams vs his father's, and relate to his attempts to understand interpersonal relationships, including sexual ones. It will require a somewhat patient and mature reader who enjoys books that have as much to do with interior events as with outside action.
It is also a book that I would have no hesitation about recommending to adults, whether they self-identify as appreciators of young adult literature or not.

Quote: The world will always poke you in the chest with its finger.

That line really struck me when I read it. I liked the insight it gave into Marcelo and perfectly illustrates that he sees the world as threatening and oppressive. But in the larger context, it's just such vivid, evocative imagery.

There were other things worth quoting, but I had to give the book to my impatient reader before I really had the chance to search through it again for things I didn't write down when I should have!

Hey, Big Spender, Let's Dance!

Ten Cents a Dance by Christine Fletcher
5Q 3P; Audience: J/S (Grade 9+)


It's Chicago, 1941, and life is tough in the Yards. Money is hard to come by at the tail end of the Depression, especially if you're female and young. Ruby Jacinski's mother's rheumatoid arthritis is so bad, she can no longer work in the meat factory. Ruby has no choice but to drop out of school and get a job to support herself, her mother, and sister. She too goes to work in the hated meat factory, and she loathes every minute of the dull, smelly, bone-aching work. The only bright spot in her life is when she gets to dance. When Ruby hears music, her body wants to take off into it. When she dances, people stop to watch. That and her feisty personality bring her to the attention of Paulie Suelze, recently dishonorably discharged from the Army and a small-time hood on the rise. If her mother knew she'd talked to - kissed! - Paulie Suelze, Ruby's life wouldn't be worth a plugged nickel. But Paulie is exciting, dangerous, and handsome, and all three qualities are appealing to Ruby. Just as appealing to her is the new work he suggests for her. Why not earn money doing the thing she most enjoys doing? Why not teach dancing at the Starlight? Instead of $12 a week, she could earn $50. She could pay off their back rent and grocery tab, get her mother's wedding ring out of hock, and maybe even earn enough to get them out of the Yards and into a nice place. What's not to like about a job like that? As far as Ruby's concerned, this is a wonderful opportunity. But she knows that as far as her mother is concerned, Ruby's dancing with strange men for money is one step short of going to hell in a hand basket. It's just the first of many secrets she has to keep from her mother.

Ruby soon discovers that Paulie hasn't given her the full story either. She isn't a dance teacher. She's a taxi dancer. She dances with men who buy her time. And if she works it right, they'll buy her dinner, too. They'll take her out to night clubs. If she sets her line just right, these fish will show her a great time, and all it will cost her is a few dances and a few stepped-on toes. But Ruby is far more naive than she thinks, and before long, she's got herself caught up in a real mess, and the only person who can get her out of it is Paulie Suelze. Dangerous, charming Paulie, who makes her heart race. Dangerous, charming Paulie Suelze, who can't be trusted.

Musings:

Everything in this book is sharply drawn, from the characters right down to the details that bring the early 1940's alive. Ruby is a multifaceted protagonist, and there's no attempt made to make her look particularly good. She makes plenty of mistakes, she's headstrong, cocksure, and unwilling to listen to good advice. She's a naif who thinks she knows it all, and it takes several knocks for her to even begin to realize that she doesn't. Ruby knows how to stand up for herself, but doesn't always know when to lie low. And she most certainly isn't a good judge of character. But Ruby is loving, loyal, and good-hearted, and she can look past her prejudices to value an individual. You get the sense at the end of the book that Ruby has grown a lot and is becoming not only a woman to be reckoned with, but a woman who has learned from her mistakes and is the wiser and better for it.

Atmosphere simply oozes out of this book. With talk of iceboxes, cold water flats, one bathroom shared by an entire apartment building, one telephone in the neighborhood, dancing at the corner drugstore, "black and tans", and the knowledge that everybody knows everybody's business, the 1940's come alive. Period detail extends to the casual use of derogatory terms and rampant racism and male-female relationships. Ruby is at first appalled at the idea that she has to dance with black and Filipino men and her fish (men she has on a string) insist that she does not. Her friendship with a trumpeter in the band has to be their secret, and going to jazz clubs where blacks and whites mingle is scandalous and dangerous. Women are subordinate to men and most just want a man to take care of them. A man beating a woman on a public street simply means that people walking by avert their heads and continue on their way. Premarital sex is wrong, and once you've had it, you know too much to ever be a carefree girl again. Fletcher effortlessly blends all of these elements into her novel, letting period detail enrich rather than overwhelm her story.

This is a book that adults will read with as much enjoyment as teens. Highly recommended.

Liberty for All?

Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
5Q 3P; Audience: M/J

By all rights, Isabel and her sister should be free. That's what it said in Miss Mary Finch's will. But Miss Finch's nephew refuses to believe Isabel or even to read the will. To him, Isabel and Ruth aren't girls, they're money in his pocket. To their new owners, Master and Mistress Lockton, they are hands, feet, and strong backs. They certainly aren't people.

It is particularly galling to be a slave when all around you the talk is of liberty, freedom, and independence. In 1776, those words were on every American's lips, though some spoke them with passion and desire and others said them with scorn and fury. Isabel and Ruth are caught in the middle of the battle, in more ways than one. The Locktons are Loyalists, true to the British Crown and up to their eyeballs in plots to bring the upstart Patriots to their knees. Curzon, a slave in a Patriot household, coerces Isabel into spying for the rebels. It is the Patriots, he tells her, who will give the slaves their freedom. If she throws in her lot with them, the liberty she craves will be hers. It is not an easy decision. The Locktons are not kind masters. If she spies and is caught, she will pay in ways too horrible to imagine. She isn't concerned only, or even primarily, with herself. Ruth is only five and prone to fits. If anything happens to Isabel, who will care for and protect Ruth? Still, Isabel burns with the desire to be free. It is worth taking the risk.

With the stakes are so high, it is all the more crushing when Isabel is forced to realize that the Patriots' passion for liberty is limited. Despite their fine talk and promises, the freedom they seek does not extend to slaves. They will not help her, and they will not protect her. Has she put her life and her sister's in jeopardy for nothing?

Musings

It is easy to understand why this book was nominated for the National Book Award (Teen category). It is beautifully written. Anderson excels in both character and plot, and her writing is graceful and compelling. Isabel is feisty, strong, loving, rebellious, and determined. She is often afraid but always courageous. She's no paragon, which makes her seem all the more real. Mistress Lockton and Lady Seymour are two sides of a coin, one loathsome and one as good as the times allow her to be, and both evoked visceral responses. Images of Curzon stay with me, too, as I picture him first cocksure and confident and then diminished by betrayal and circumstances. Because these characters are so vivid, even readers who are neither fans of historical fiction nor interested in the historical period will be swept up in Isabel's story. Anderson has the wonderful ability to drop nuggets of information into her story in a way that never seems forced or obtrusive. I knew New York was important strategically, but I didn't realize what a hot bed of Loyalists it was or that a great fire destroyed much of the city. I certainly didn't know about the enticements both sides offered to slaves and indentured servants in order to coerce their support, nor how often those promises proved false. This book does, of course, present those promises from Isabel's point of view, and certainly not every army officer (or founding father) consciously used slaves' desire for freedom to their own advantage (consciously being the operative word here), with no personal regard for the slaves themselves. But Chains brought home to me forcefully and movingly the hope and heartbreak of having liberty so enticingly close, only to have it snatched away, as well as the irony of promising "liberty...for all" and giving it only to some.

I am glad that we will be hearing more about Isabel and Curzon in the future. I am not ready to leave them behind.

Nothing is Impossible, But Impossible is Somethng

Impossible by Nancy Werlin
5Q 4P; Audience: J/S

My familiarity with the folk song Scarborough Fair comes via the plaintive, hauntingly harmonized Simon and Garfunkel version. I like the song and usually sing along to the chorus whenever I hear it. But Impossible made me realize I'd never really listened to it. It's surprising enough to realize what's being sung under the melody, but how is it that I never wondered about the impossible tasks the singer is asking of his lover? Nancy Werlin is a far better listener than I, and she did wonder, which led her to write this book. What she came up with as an explanation makes for a rich, romantic read.

Though she doesn't yet know it, Lucy Scarborough's family has long been cursed. It is not wise for mortal women to spurn the advances of an elven lord. The price Lucy's long-ago ancestress paid for doing just that was madness, and that is the price all her descendants will pay until one of them successfully performs the impossible tasks the elven lord demands of them in retribution. Lucy doesn't realize the significance of Scarborough Fair, the song she has always associated with her mother. She only knows the fear and embarrassment she feels when Miranda comes around, never knowing when her mother will burst out into a tirade or publicly humiliate her. She does not realize that this song is Miranda's attempt to tell her how to break the curse.

Some girls would have found the stigma of an insane mother too much to bear. But Miranda has always had the loving support of her foster parents, Leo and Soledad. She has good friends, too, particularly next-door neighbor Zach and Sarah. Lucy needs that support system when she unexpectedly gets pregnant, thereby setting the curse into action. It is not until she finds a long-lost diary that she truly understands what that curse is: she will have a child before she turns eighteen, and then she will go mad. And her only way of saving herself and her child is if she can solve the riddles of Scarborough Fair.

I don't have anything profound to write about regarding my reactions to the book. I simply found myself utterly caught up in Lucy's story. I liked these people. Lucy's no superhero fantasy creature. She's just an ordinary girl you can't help rooting for. I admired her strength of will, her determination, and her courage in the face of a fearsome future. And while it's certainly not a ground-breaking move in a novel for teens to have two neighbors and former best friends fall in love, the development of the relationship between Lucy and Zach was deeply satisfying, even for someone who doesn't typically read romance novels. Zach is probably a little too good to be true, but he's also the kind of guy who should be the illustration accompanying "love/lover". This book is masterfully crafted and beautifully written, with characters who are ordinary yet memorable. It can be read on a surface level, but it can also be read more deeply. It is one of my favorites of the year.