Sunday, December 23, 2012

FINISHED:
Tolkien, J.R.R. (1937). The hobbit. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.


[.]


STARTED:
Rowling, J.K. (2012). The casual vacancy. New York: Little, Brown.

[.]

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Thursday, December 13, 2012

FINISHED:
Phillips, Helen. (2012). Here where the sunbeams are green. New York: Delacorte/Random House.


[(Reviewed from ARC.)  Madeline (Mad) and Ruby (Roo) travel with their mother to a high-end, ultra-green spa (La Lava) located in a remote area of  Central America to investigate the lack of communication they’ve had with their father, an ornithologist there to study a rare bird once believed to be extinct.  There’s something (sinister) going on at the glitzy resort, however, when the girls’ mother seems to be falling under a spell, their father is acting out of character during the few glimpses they’ve been allowed to have of him, and they are told that to catch a Lava-Throated Volcano trogon (LTVT) would drive a person insane and that when the last LTVT dies the local volcano will erupt.  A hint of magical realism elevates this ecological mystery, and a Stepford Wives-ish tension surrounding La Lava – as if the sheen of perfection must certainly be hiding something sinister – keeps the reader exceedingly engaged.  Mad is a believably depicted tween who belittles herself next to her spunky and outgoing little sister, and her dealings with the crush she is developing on local Kyle are true-to-life:  “I mean, now I know he likes me, but why?  How?  What did I do?  I just really want to ask him this before we never see each other again.”  Throw in a plot from the girls to expose the REAL La Lava at a swanky, black-tie event with the help of a famous actress and an ailing LTVT, and Mad having to, ultimately, be the one to save the day, and you’ve got a compellingly rich tome, with a strong sense of family and place, that refuses to be genre-defined.  An Author’s Note includes a discussion of extinction, Lazarus species (animals believed to be extinct but are sighted again), and the author’s trip to Costa Rica which inspired the novel.]


STARTED:
Tolkien, J.R.R. (1937). The hobbit. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

[Um, I think there's a movie version coming out soon...]

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Sunday, December 2, 2012

FINISHED:
Fairlie, Emily. (2012). The lost treasure of Tuckernuck. New York: Katherine Tegan/HarperCollins.


[Sixth-grader Laurie is mortified to have to do her middle school years at her parents’ alma mater, Tuckernuck Hall, a private school with a clucking chicken for a mascot, while the rest of her friends get to stay together at the local public school.  The school year gets interesting, though, when Laurie is named “gerbil monitor” in her classroom, and she embarks on a mission to solve the unsolvable hidden treasure puzzle in the school created by Maria Tutweiler, eccentric school founder and principal, 80 years earlier.  This serviceable mystery has a bit of humor, mostly revolving around the gerbils that Laurie, and her co-gerbil keeper and treasure seeker classmate Bud, are tasked with keeping watch over, as well as some poignancy involving Bud and his demanding father who are mourning the loss of Bud’s mother.  Unfortunately, the characters are fairly one-dimensional, there’s the familiar “our school is being torn down so we need to find the treasure ASAP” plotline, and the clues leading to the titular treasure are specific to places, objects and people around the school, thus shutting out the reader who may hope to help solve the mysteries along with our protagonists.  As such, the sleuthing gets a bit tedious as Laurie and Bud continually run around to different parts of the school dodging staff members and nosy students.  The only thing that really makes the text stand out amongst the crowd of other treasure-hunting mystery stories is the liberal scattering throughout of notes, lists, emails, and letters created by the book’s characters – though these don’t always serve to move the plot forward, they are still a fun diversion and help to break up the somewhat lengthy chapters.]

STARTED:
Phillips, Helen. (2012). Here where the sunbeams are green. New York: Delacorte/Random House.

[Reviewing for ACL...]

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