Pieces of the Puzzle

Frannie in Pieces by Delia Ephron

4Q 3P; Audience: M/J

Frannie is devastated when her father dies. His house was a warm, comforting place, a place where she knew she'd always be understood. Her father saw the world through an artist's eyes, and he taught Frannie to see the art in everything. Her relationship with her mother isn't like that. Even her best friend doesn't get her the way her father did. That huge hole he's left behind - will she ever be able to fill it? It doesn't seem likely.

Her father left his house and its contents to her. It takes weeks before she's ready to face going back there, let alone choose which of his belongs to keep (as many as possible) and which to give away (not that, not that, definitely not that). It is in his studio ("It looks like he's just taken a break") that she makes her most significant find: a carved wooden box with Frances Anne carved on the top. Below her name is 1000. Inside the box are pieces of a handmade jigsaw puzzle. It must have been meant as a birthday gift for her. It is all the more precious because her father never planned ahead, and her birthday is weeks away. He'd been thinking about her.

Her father's death has sent Frannie into a significant depression. She pushes everyone away, including her best friend (who wants to listen to her talk about her new boyfriend when all Frannie can think about is how much she misses her father). All she wants to do is lie on the floor in her room and grieve. But the jigsaw puzzle calls to her. She takes it out and slowly begins to put it together.
Piece by piece, edge by edge, the picture slowly takes shape. It's a village. What village? Where is it? Frannie thinks she knows the answers, but she is in for more than one shock. The more she concentrates on the puzzle, the more real it seems to her. There are times she could swear she was actually inside the puzzle. Could that be? How could that possibly be?

Much to her dismay, Frannie doesn't get to spend all of her time locked in her room with her puzzle and her grief. Her mother has arranged a summer job for her. Something to keep her occupied. Something to keep her mind off death and dying. Something right up her alley: teaching arts and crafts at a summer camp. There is far more humor in this book than one might expect to find in a book about dealing with grief, and much of it comes from Frannie's experiences as a camp counselor. There are quirky campers, a dreamy co-counselor, and Frannie's unique take on how to make art with the under-ten crowd. Poison is a riveting subject, for instance. Wouldn't a collage of all the poisonous things in your home that look innocuous be eye-catching? Dishwashing detergent ("If swallowed...call a Poison Control Center"). Batteries ("May explode"). Toothpaste ("May be harmful if swallowed"). Mouthwash (ditto). Not surprisingly, Frannie's avant-garde art style raises a few eyebrows (parents) and gives rise to more than a few grins (the reader).

The dash of is-this-really-happening-or-is-she-a-little-crazy certainly will keep readers intrigued. Several well-placed pictures help underscore how important and omnipresent art is in Frannie's life and in her relationship with her father. And there's more depth here than may at first meet the eye. Using assembling a jigsaw puzzle as a metaphor for putting a life back together again after it falls apart works surprisingly well. Readers who enjoy fast-paced books may want to give this one a pass, but for those who like books that fold you in their arms and carry you gently away, it's a winner.

Quotes to give you a flavor of the book:

Do you know what it says on a tube of toothpaste? In small print? You have to read the small print because they never tell you anything scary in large print. Large print is what they want you to see. Here's what the large print says: FOR BEST RESULTS, SQUEEZE TUBE FROM THE BOTTOM AND FLATTEN AS YOU GO UP. But the important stuff is small. Tiny. If more than used for brushing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away. You can die from toothpaste.

I've been going to Cobweb since kindergarten. Every week the school holds a meeting, its word for assembly, about world awareness. At the last one a doctor spoke about all the orphans in Africa who had lost their parents to AIDS. The purpose of these meetings is to raise more sensitive human beings, but all that sensitivity didn't stop Sukie Jameson from bragging about her breasts or kids from staring at me when I returned to school. I stared right back...Perhaps they expected a mark on my forehead, like an outline of a man with line through him, kind of like a traffic warning sign.

All the counselors look to be my age. Well, I look old for my age in my opinion, because of my awesome maturity and possible air of tragedy...One counselor, a guy with a buzz cut, is doing push-ups...I guess you need to be in good shape to handle a bunch of kids under the age of ten. "Hey, I'm Simon, who are you?" He jogs a circle around me..."I'm Frannie." I give him a Mona Lisa smile...Jenna [her best friend] and I practiced Mona Lisa smiles in front of the mirror. When someone bugged us at school, we would say, Give him (or her) the MLS*. With the MLS, it's not clear if you're smiling, being secretive, or, in the case of me with Simon right now, acting superior. "Frannie," he repeats. "Frannie-bo-banny." Forget the MLS. A total snub is in order. (pp. 121-123)

(* I confess that I found Frannie's use of initials instead of whole words frustrating at times. I couldn't ever remember what ENP was supposed to stand for, but it was used repeatedly to describe another counselor. Turns out, I discovered just now, that it's an "Extremely neat person". Okay.)

I won't quote more, but I hope it's clear from these few that Frannie's voice is droll and a little wry, and quite worth spending time with.

Person Frances Anne

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Run, Don't Walk, to Get Your Hands on These!

I read three books over the past week that are the kind you finish with a groan because you don't want them to end. On top of that, they each end with, if not a cliffhanger, at least a heart-in-your-throat, what-happens-next question. Even worse, they're all the first book in the series, which means waiting months (I'm avoiding the y- word!) to find out. I'm absolutely positive it will be worth the wait, but it's going to be hard.

All of these rate 5Q 5P, Audience: J/S

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

In the Seven Kingdoms, there are those who are Graced, and they are marked by their eyes, which do not match. Graces vary. Perhaps the grace is knowing what someone will say, or perhaps it is the ability to tie knots. Some Graces are valuable, some are not. Some save lives. Some take lives.

Katsa discovered what her Grace was at the age of eight, when a relative made an improper advance and her instinctive response resulted in his death. Since then, her uncle, the king, has used her to teach a lesson to those who displease him. Those who are Graced have always made the non-Graced uncomfortable, but when one is Graced with the ability to kill, the discomfort turns to fear. Katsa's only friends are her cousin, her maid, and her trainer Giddon. Amost everyone else avoids even looking at her.

Katsa loathes her role as killer/enforcer to the King. She desperately wants to find a way to help people instead of hurt them. And so she creates the Council, a secret group of people determined to help those who have in some way been wronged. When the father of the king of Leinid is kidnapped, the Council tracks him down and Katsa rescues him. But who is behind the kidnapping, and why did s/he do it? Those questions are not so easily answered.

One person nearly foils Katsa's rescue, and that person comes looking for her. Is Prince Po, son of the Leinid king, a friend or a foe? Unsure of the answer, Katsa still joins with him on a quest to discover the truth behind the kidnapping. In all her years of training, only Po, Graced with combat skills, has ever come close to challenging her. His challenges don't come only on the training field. He challenges what she knows of herself and what she believes of herself. Is she really the cold killing machine she imagines herself to be? There are many discoveries ahead for Katsa, not least that she isn't as friendless and coldhearted as she imagined herself to be.

Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey

Told in two voices, this book is a book that will leave you gasping for air. The tension is that relentless. Sadima's story, told in third person, details a world in which magic has been forbidden and forgotten. Even so, those who can't afford real healers rely on fakes in times of need. Sadima's mother died giving birth to her with the aid of a "magician" who then stole the family's valuables and left newborn Sadima on the floor in her dead mother's arms. Understandably, Sadima's father and brother hate "magicians" and even the idea of magic. Sadima knows they will never believe her if she tells them the truth she's known since birth: she can communicate with animals. This bit of magic brings her to the attention of Somiss, a young nobleman who is determined to bring magic back to their world, and Franklin, his servant/friend. As soon as she is able, Sadima joins the young men. She dreams of being able to share her abilities freely, but she soon realizes that, as sympathetic and kind as Franklin is, he will always bow to his master, Somiss. And Somiss is not kind, and he is not sympathetic. His dedication to reviving magic is all-consuming and dangerous.

Hahp's first person description of a world in which magic now exists is chilling and unrelentingly grim. Though Franklin and Somiss dreamed of a time when magic would be used to help people, it is only the wealthy who seem to have access to it. Wizards have a fearsome reputation. Families who bring their sons to the wizard academy are told they will never see them again. Once the families leave, the boys learn why: in each class, only one student (if that) will become a wizard. The others will die. They are forbidden to help each other. Hahp learns to use the magic to get food, but will it be enough to keep him alive? His struggle isn't only physical. Can he bear watching the other boys slowly starve to death, knowing he could help them if only he dared?

The link between Sadima and Hahp slowly becomes clear, but both their stories are unresolved at the end. It was achingly hard to close the book and leave these two characters in their desperate straits behind.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Collins is well known for her Gregor the Overlander series for elementary and middle school students. The theme and level of violence in this book marks it for older readers (middle school and up).

Decades ago, the Districts rebelled against the Capitol. They've paid the price ever since, in the form of the Hunger Games. Every year, a boy and a girl between the ages of 12-18 from each of the twelve districts are brought to the Capitol to compete in the Hunger Games. This is Survivor for real. The players must outwit, outplay, and outlast the other twenty-three players, because this is a duel to the death. The entire country watches every move the players make. The Game creators manipulate every facet of the game to make it more exciting for the viewers. The uglier the kills, the better. The Game is brutal, and players do what they must in order to make sure they're the one to survive. Katniss and Peeta are District 12's contestants.

Katniss has years of experience hunting to feed her family. She's confident she can survive, at least for a while. Peeta is the baker's son. He's got the survival skills of a newborn kitten. Katniss doesn't know Peeta well, but she owes him: he once saved her family from starvation. And Peeta...well, Peeta had his reasons for giving Katniss the bread that day, even though it earned him a beating. He is willing to endure much more for Katniss. How can they kill each other? And yet, they must. First, though, the other twenty-two players have to die. What then?

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

Big Brother Is Watching You...What Are You Going to Do About It?

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
4Q 4P? Audience: J/S/Adult

This book won't be everyone's cup of tea, but for readers who are politically-minded and/or love technology and intrigue, it's ::ahem:: the bomb. It is certainly a book cause he won't give up his email passwords. Because he can't believe that the Constitution of the United States no longer protects him.

When Marcus is let out of prison a few days later, he leaves behind one good friend and most of his illusions. He barely recognizes the world he steps into. His laptop has been bugged. The government is tracking people through their debit cards and arphids encoded into transit system passes, so it knows exactly what people are buying and when and where they traveled. Closed circuit cameras are installed in classrooms, businesses, and on public streets. If more than three or four people gather together, the police force them to disperse. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has turned San Francisco into a police state.

Marcus isn't about to lose his civil liberties without a fight. What can one kid do? When you're as smart as Marcus, as technically proficient as Marcus, as scared as Marcus, and as determined as Marcus, you can do plenty. He creates Xnet, an underground computer society that the government can't monitor. Through Xnet, dozens of small acts of rebellion are launched, ranging from simple debates over government policies to disseminating instructions on how to disable arphids so the activities of innocent people can't be tracked. They plan peaceful protest gatherings. And they simply chat, game, and develop friendships and solidarity. When crisis time comes, Marcus is awed by just how powerful his movement has become. The government isn't awed. It's angry. In this battle, who has the stronger army, Marcus or Homeland Security?

Musings:

As I read and after I finished the book, I wondered just how much of the technology that Doctorow describes really exists. That's surely a sign of hooking the reader's imagination and interest. My web surfing proved that I was not the only one to be intrigued, but these guys aren't just wondering. They actually hope to create the Paranoid Linux operating system. Talk about a book making an impact on a reader!(In the book, Paranoid Linux is described thusly:)

*Paranoid Linux is an operating system that assumes that its operator is under assault from the government (it was intended for use by Chinese and Syrian dissidents), and it does everything it can to keep your communications and documents a secret. It even throws up a bunch of "chaff" communications that are supposed to disguise the fact that you're doing anything covert. So while you're receiving a political message one character at a time, ParanoidLinux is pretending to surf the Web and fill in questionnaires and flirt in chat-rooms. Meanwhile, one in every five hundred characters you receive is your real message, a needle buried in a huge haystack.
~Cory Doctorow (Little Brother, 2008)

Doctorow's writing is somewhat uneven. There are some gripping scenes. For instance, Marcus's terror is visceral when he begins to comprehend just how different a government interrogation is from being called to the principal's office. He can't bluff his way out of this, and brashness only makes things worse. Reading this section made me realize just how easily one can be reduced to feeling powerless and too afraid to fight back. However, he occasionally gets too technical, slowing down the narrative. He also repeats himself fairly frequently. I was caught up in the story enough that neither problem stopped me from wanting to read more, but less patient readers may not be able to overlook them as easily. Doctorow also stacks the deck by making almost every character on the side of Homeland Security one-dimensional cardboard villains. I can't help wondering if that's the mark of an overly confident author or one who isn't confident enough.

With questions to debate such as

• Do we sometimes need to give up some freedoms for the sake of a larger goal?
• At what point does civil disobedience become terrorism?
• Is Doctorow too extreme?
• Whether Andrew Huang's afterword on the virtues of computer hacking has merit

this book is an excellent choice for classrooms and book discussion groups.

If you like this book, you might also enjoy Hacking Harvard by Robin Wasserman. The setup: Can three accomplished hackers get a totally unqualified student accepted to Harvard? The stakes are high (higher than some of them know), but if they can pull this off, it'll be one of the greatest hacks in history. I recommend it to readers in high school and beyond.

Reading Roundup, Part Two

Here are a couple of books I had high hopes for when I started them. Unfortunately, I think neither of them quite holds up to their early promise. But your mileage may vary.

The Chaos Code by Justin Richards
3Q 3P; Audience: M/J

When Matt Stribling's mother breaks the news to him that he's going to be spending his vacation with his father, rather than at home with her, he's not happy. His dad is a nice guy, but he's so busy with his archaeological work that he barely pays attention to Matt. Sure enough, when Matt arrives at the train station, Dad's not there. But Dad's not at home, either, and little by little, Matt comes to the conclusion that something is seriously wrong. Maybe it's the mess (but Dad's place is always a mess). Maybe it's the sandy footprints leading through Dad's office and out onto the lawn. Maybe it's the rough, sandy fingers he feels closing over his face and cutting off his air until he passes out. Or maybe it's the missing mail that was on the floor when he arrived and wasn't there just a few hours later. Or maybe it's the coded letter from his father, telling him to go to his Aunt Jane's and to worry if he doesn't hear from him soon. Or maybe it's all of the above.

When Matt heads to his Aunt Jane's, he has no idea that he will soon be meeting some of the richest and most ruthless men in the world, or that he will soon be swept up in an adventure that will find him in remote jungles and ancient pyramids, and threatened by advanced technology he couldn't have imagined existed. He isn't facing these things alone, of course. Aunt Jane works for multimillionaire collector Julius Venture, and Venture has a daughter, Robin. They are just the kind of people you want on your side when things get tense. But that doesn't mean that Venture and Robin don't have significant secrets of their own. Can Matt and Robin stop what seems inevitable? They hope so, because the fate of the entire world depends on their doing just that.

I was hoping that the book would continue in the same vein in which it started, with Matt having to decode various puzzles and clues as he gets closer and closer to discovering what happened to his father. Instead, the book is more of a cat-and-mouse game, with lots of action (which is a good thing) and chases. But I felt the whys and hows of what was going on got muddled. It felt as though the author hoped that if he threw enough things into the pot, his readers wouldn't really notice that the recipe isn't quite as filling as it ought to be. I had a few too many "Didn't you already say that?" and "I didn't quite get what you were going for there" moments as I read. I'd also have appreciated a more nuanced villain and fewer lucky coincidences. But perhaps that's just me. Readers who like a lot of action and suspense may not care or notice those things as much as I did.


Bunker 10 by J. A. Henderson
3Q 3P; Audience: J

At 2000 hours on Monday, 24 December 2007, Pinewood Military Installation exploded. The blast ripped apart acres of forest and devastated the remote highland valley where the base was located. There were no survivors and no official cause was given for the incident. Inside Pinewood were 185 male and female military personnel -- a mix of scientists and soldiers. There were also 7 children. This is the story of their last day.

Okay, a story can't open with much more of a grabber than that.

Pinewood is a secret military installation. Very few people know what goes on there, and even fewer people know that the seven children in the installation aren't ordinary kids. Each of them is a genius, and each has an ability that the army prizes highly. As a result, they have each been conned, coerced, or invited to work at Pinewood, with the understanding that they will join the military when they turn eighteen. In the meantime, they study, work on their own special projects (time travel is a big draw), and follow the dictates of those in command. Those officers haven't gone out of their way to make the school particularly comfortable or welcoming to the kids. That they aren't allowed to go home for Christmas is a pretty good indication that their choice to come to Pinewood wasn't the best decision they ever made. The rules are strict, the barracks are barren, and their life is about their studies. Given the situation, it's not surprising that a couple of the kids are ready to break loose. All Jimmy and Leslie want is go on a simple date. Off campus. It's all fairly innocent, really, as far as treason goes.

Getting off the base involves jamming signals and locks (for these kids, that's child's play) and otherwise deceiving their military guards. What Jimmy, Lesley, and the other kids don't realize is that they aren't the only ones who have secret plans. Messing around with the security system might not have been such a great idea. The plans of the others are potentially a whole lot deadlier than sneaking out for a date.

Lieutenant Dunwoody and his special teams force are on their way to Pinewood. All Dunwoody knows is that he is being sent to a facility that specializes in advanced virtual reality technology (all the better to train soldiers in combat techniques) as well as things like three-dimensional mapping, biohazards, and alternative fuel resources. But those are not his concern. His concern is whatever is in the lower levels of Pinewood, an area so highly classified that nobody will tell him what it is he's about to encounter.

The third group prowling around Pinewood this Christmas Eve consists of Sherman, a virtual reality simulation specialist who works for the military; Madrid, a tall, athletic woman sent from High Command; Darren, a computers and electronics whiz kid; and Nulce. What does Nulce do? He kills people.

While Jimmy, Lesley, and the other kids are concentrating on their date, Dunwoody and Sherman's teams are about to learn about Bunker 10. What's in the super-secret Bunker 10? May-Rose. May-Rose used to be just one of the kids. Not anymore. May-Rose has...evolved. And if she breaks out of Bunker 10, the world is going to regret it. She must be stopped at all costs. At any cost.

Believe me, the costs are high (as if you couldn't tell, given how the book begins). This is a book for readers who like gore, violence, and mayhem. It also requires readers who have the patience for discussions about time travel, virtual reality, genetic manipulation and the like, as well as the ability to follow several storylines at once. One of the storylines has a neat little twist/premise that I don't want to spoil. Suffice it to say that it will leave you wondering what's really going on. Some readers will like that. Some won't. One aspect of the book that I found problematical was a mention that each of the kids in the story supposedly have the traits of various despots of the past. I spent a fair amount of time trying to identify those traits and looking for similarities with Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc., but I wasn't successful. It bothered me that that was presented but not (or poorly) followed through. If it wasn't important to the story, why mention it? (I do have a guess about that, but I don't like that answer.) If it was important, why wasn't it more developed? I was bothered even more (because it's constant) by the jive talking of Dave, one of the teens. I found it utterly unconvincing and increasingly irritating. I'm sure it was an attempt to individualize him, but the end result for me was a character that seemed fake rather than authentic. Other characters, including Lesley, May-Rose, and the colonel, are either barely developed or essentially play the same note throughout. Characterization is not the strong point of this novel.

Ultimately, I found Bunker 10 disappointing. It has an intriguing premise and a terrific start. Henderson is excellent at ratcheting up the tension and keeping the action going. But I found the parts more coherent than the whole, with the "what it's all about" ultimately confusing and unconvincing. However, readers who like a thrill ride of a read may be willing to overlook things that I could not.

As the Cassons Go Rolling Along (aka Rosy Pose Makes Me Laugh)

I'm not doing a proper blog entry on this book because (in our library, anyhow), it's not YA. But Hilary McKay's books about the Casson family are so much fun that it would be a shame for people to miss them just because of that. I really shouldn't quote from Forever Rose because it's the fifth (last? I hope not, but maybe) book in the series, and you really must read them in order, starting with Saffy's Angel. But I'm going to anyhow. But first, the cast of characters:

1. Bill (Rose's father) has been living in London for the past three books. I don't like him much, but I think he's trying to redeem himself in this book.
2. Rose's mother is an artist (though Bill says what she does isn't Art - just one more reason not to like him!) and a bit vague about an awful lot of things. Such as her children.
   
3. Caddy is the eldest. Much has been written about Caddy's love life. Caddy is lovely and sweet, but she's an idiot when it comes to love.
   
4. Saffy is Rose's sister/cousin. Very competent and intelligent and very down to earth, which is pretty much how you know she's not a full-on Casson. :)
5. Indigo is Rose's brother. Once meek and bullied, Indigo has come a long way.
6. Rose is Rose is Rose. Artistic, stubborn, independent, fiercely loving, unknowingly funny, and a keen observer. Age 11, but only chronologically.
   
7. Sarah, David, Tom: all friends of the family who might as well be family.
8. Molly and Kiran: Rose's friends, who are a bit more level-headed than she. Even if Molly does convince them to spend the night at the Zoo so that nobody will think she's boring.
   
9. Michael. See #3

This is how Rose observes the world:

School is no longer a peaceful place where you can catch up on your daydreaming, forget your family (or what is left of your family), and talk about things like Dr. Who and how to stop Global Warming (we all know how but we don't stop it) and if it is okay for boys to wear pink and all those other things we talk about. School, says Mr. Spencer, is an educational establishment...These new ideas do not stay in my head very well, they drift away and before I know it I am back in the good-old-days ways, staring out the window. (p.1)

But Mr. Spencer, who had swung round from the board to shout at me, turned his back in a very deliberate way and carried on writing. "I wasn't doing anything!" I protested to his back, because we have learned to put up with Mr. Spencer's bad manners here in Class 6. (p. 3)

(Rose, seeing David approaching the house, hides behind the couch instead of letting him in. But David comes in anyhow. He sits on the couch and begins to cry.) What a strange thing to do, to go to someone's house, and sit in an empty room that is not yours, and make such a noise. I crawled out to have a look. Poor David. His face was in his dripping hands. He was crying and rubbing away tears, but not as fast as they poured down his big red cheeks. Poor poor David. I tried very hard to make myself care as much as I should. It was very difficult, because he looked such a mess...I moved my favorite green cushion out of reach of the flood. (pp. 41-42.)

...I was able to get rid of the guilt by giving (David) a handkerchief with a pink rose in the corner to use to dab his eyes (I have a whole lot of rose handkerchiefs that I keep specially for crying with. I like to cry on something proper. It feels so sad and interesting, dabbing your eyes on a real white hanky. But they are no good for noses.) I gave David the downstairs toilet roll for his nose (Economy Peach). (p. 46)

(Rose, Molly, and Kiran are spending the night at the zoo. They have brought along a very thick book by naturalist David Attenborough.) I wished I knew where a tiger's weak point was. I asked Molly, as casually as I could, because I didn't want to frighten her, if she happened to have any idea. Molly said she thought she had read somewhere that they have very sensitive digestions.
Oh.
This means that if there is a tiger on the loose I am going to have to make him
Eat
David Attenborough.
Well
If you ask me
It's about time someone did. (pp. 215-216)

Also in fairy stories there are hardly any of those half-good half-bad people who crop up so constantly in real life and are so hard to believe in. (p. 246)

Tonight is the school Nativity play performed by Class 1 with an awful lot of help from the rest of the world because Class 1 can do nothing unaided. Mary and Joseph are the worst of the lot. If the real Mary and Joseph were anything like our Mary and Joseph there would be no Christmas because Christianity would have got no further than a big fight over who got the donkey somewhere along the road to Bethlehem. (p. 257)

If any of that struck you as funny, there's a whole lot more where that came from. At the same time, the Casson series isn't just funny. The Cassons deal with some real issues (divorce, bullying, adoption, love, children alienated from their families), sometimes with more bluntness than I expect (which may be one reason that some libraries place them in their YA area), but always with great heart. Honestly, you're missing something if you haven't read a Hilary McKay book.

My personal feeling, despite where they are placed in my library, is that the audience for this series is grades 5-8 and any discerning adult readers who aren't foolish enough to believe that they're too old for them.