FINISHED:

Conford, Ellen. (1976). The Alfred G. Graebner Memorial High School Handbook of Rules and Regulations. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

[Hilarious - I mean, laugh out loud - stuff from someone that I will need to read more from. There were times where I really thought that I was reading a David Sedaris short story... Vignettes about a girl in high school and the crazy stuff that happens to her. In one story she's recruited to sell contraband school supplies, in another she's trying her hand at writing for the school literary journal - edited by a couple of radicals who only want material that questions "the Man", and in another she's pretty sure that her Home Ec teacher is uncomfortable talking about sex because she isn't getting any herself. Really pleased with this one - great, timeless humor from a novel that came out in 1978 (there are more than a couple references to the main character's distrust of computers...) and one that I would recommend and read again.]

STARTED:
Balliett, Blue. (2008). The Calder game. New York: Scholastic.

[It's not even on the shelves in stores yet!! I saw a review copy come in to the library and put a desperate post-it on it saying that I wanted to read it. The only bad thing is that it is an uncorrected proof - thus, it's not the final layout and the Brett Hellquist illustrations are sketches of what the finals will look like...]

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FINISHED:

Wiles, Deborah. (2007). The Aurora County all-stars. New York: Harcourt.

[Read it to see if I thought that it was one of the best books of last year. Um, I REALLY liked the messages and the focus on Walt Whitman's words and the statements about racism... and those pushed it over the edge for me. It all felt the tiniest bit underdeveloped - as if the book could've been a few dozen pages longer, beefing up some of the characters and their motivations - but I'd definitely recommend it.]


STARTED & FINISHED:

Venable, Alan. (2008). Take me with you when you go. San Francisco: One Monkey Books.

[A woman that I've met at the library knows the guy who wrote this and got him to send me a free copy. It's about two young siblings, a brother and sister, who are on a quest to find their parents. Told in a folktale style that made me HUNT for an author's note in the book - SURE that this must be an adaptation of an existing tale - this one REALLY surprised me. At first I wasn't sure that I could make it through it, but then I couldn't put it down. It all seems a bit random, but is really sweet and quite clever.]

STARTED:
Conford, Ellen. (1976). The Alfred G. Graebner Memorial High School Handbook of Rules and Regulations. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

[Shelving at SFPL Main Children's Center, I see books come and go and this one has continually caught my eye. The title, the jacket, the summary on the jacket flap - just sounds pretty funny.]

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FINISHED:

Price, Charlie. (2007). Lizard people. New York: Roaring Brook.

[Here's my ACL review - it was OK, but lacked a certain something:

While high school student Ben is checking his mother into a mental hospital ward after she claims that lizard people are taking over the Earth, he meets another young man, Marco who is doing the same with his mother. Through ongoing storytelling sessions, Marco tells Ben how he has traveled through time to the year 4000 via a wormhole in the trunk of a tree in his backyard, all in an effort to gain insight into mental illness and bring a cure back to 2007. The author does a solid job keeping the reader guessing as to the authenticity of Marco’s tale, especially when details of Ben’s own life start to show up in the story, and things get even more intriguing as no one else seems to have even heard of Marco causing Ben to question his own sanity – could his mother’s mental illness have been passed on to him? Not for the faint of heart, this is a young adult novel that refuses to shy away from the gritty and awful side of drug abuse and mental illness giving us a gritty picture of one young man’s struggles with his drug addicted, bipolar mother, his absentee/alcoholic father, and, ultimately, his own sanity. Fairly satisfying overall, but one wonders what the novel could’ve really been like if some of the supporting characters – especially Ben’s father and his best friend’s sister, Z – were more thoroughly fleshed out and their reason for being more thoroughly stated.]

STARTED:
Wiles, Deborah. (2007). The Aurora County all-stars. New York: Harcourt.

[A much lauded book from last year - I'm reading it to see if I feel the same way about it.]

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FINISHED:

MacLeod, Doug. (2006/2007). I'm being stalked by a moonshadow. Honesdale, PA: Front Street/Boyds Mills.

[Will post my ACL review when it's finished. And, here it is:

While “rendering” their house out of animal manure, Seth, an Australian teen, and his hippie parents find themselves at odds with the town environmental health officer, Mr. Raven, setting off an ongoing feud between Seth’s father and the official. Naturally, Seth, a budding playwright who is unnaturally preoccupied with muscles on women, falls for Mr. Raven’s daughter, Miranda, hoping to woo her by following a list of “22 Ways to Know If He Is Mr. Right” (included in an appendix at the end of the novel) which he finds in a copy of a girls’ magazine. Though this is little more than a typical “wacky stories in a teen’s slice of life” novel, it should be noted that the humor here is often wonderfully dry and some of the supporting characters, especially Seth’s brother – a fingernail-painting hypochondriac who believes he may be a nudist – and members of Seth’s drama class, are humorously drawn with consistent wit. Hardly anything out of the ordinary, this is still a charming little novel, first published in Australia in 2006, that ought to leave any reader occasionally chuckling out loud. Included in this U.S. edition is a forward from the author titled “A Warning to Americans” explaining some Australian colloquialisms.]


STARTED:
Price, Charlie. (2007). Lizard people. New York: Roaring Brook.

[Also reviewing for ACL. Trying to actually get them done well before the next meeting...]

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