FINISHED:

Sanderson, Brandon. (2007). Alcatraz versus the evil librarians. New York: Scholastic.

[Will post my review for ACL after I write it. Here it is:

After burning down the kitchen of his umpteenth foster family’s house, Alcatraz Smedry, prone to breaking things, is whisked away by an old man who shows up at the door claiming to be his grandfather. Grandfather Leavenworth (all Smedry males are named after prisons), after explaining that librarians are in control of all information and hope to keep “Hushlanders” in the dark about certain facts, leads Alcatraz on a mission to break into the downtown library (evil librarian headquarters). They’re on a mission to retrieve a box of sand that Alcatraz received for his 13th birthday – sand, that if melted into glass lenses, may hold the key to a long forgotten secret language. The first in a series, Alcatraz is packed with wise-cracking humor, brisk action, and introduces young readers to a new world of intriguing gadgets, heroes, and villains.
Each chapter begins with editorializing from our protagonist narrator – chatter, though often quite humorous, that tends to interrupt the flow of the action and, by the end, grows a bit tiresome (especially when it suggests that novels about the Great Depression “rot the brain”). A surprising highlight, however, is a moving, introspective passage in which Alcatraz comes the realization that maybe he has pushed people away all his life – that his talent for breaking things extends to not letting anyone get to close to him. This is a light, often quite funny, book – the first in a series – which teases and tickles from the first line to the last. Fans of light fantasy and humor will find this one quite satisfying.]

STARTED:

Schmidt, Gary D. (2007). The Wednesday wars. New York: Clarion.

[Getting a lot of pre-Newbery buzz, and I'm REALLY liking it so far. It's not super often that a novel can make me laugh out loud.]

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