FINISHED:
Snicket, Lemony. (2012). Who could that be at this hour? (All the wrong questions #1). New York: Little, Brown.


[.]


STARTED:
Barrows, Annie. (2012). Ivy + Bean make the rules (Ivy + Bean #9). San Francisco: Chronicle.


[.]


*

FINISHED:
Palacio, R.J. (2012). Wonder. New York: Knopf.


[.]


STARTED:
Snicket, Lemony. (2012). Who could that be at this hour? (All the wrong questions #1). New York: Little, Brown.


[.]


*

FINISHED:
Levithan, David. (2012). Every day. New York: Knopf.

[LOVED LOVED LOVED this one.  "A" is a being who wakes up in a different body every morning and doesn't identify as male or female.  One day, A wakes up as the boyfriend of Rhiannon and shares such an incredible day with her that he ends up falling in love.  From then on out, regardless of who A wakes up as s/he makes an effort to contact Rhiannon, eventually revealing to her the situation of his/her life.  A FASCINATING premise that, with only a hint of preachiness, brings up a multitude of issues.  AND, this is one that called up so many questions surrounding the premise (such as:  What do the teens whose bodies A takes over remember from that day when A is inside them??), but, amazingly, addressed all of the questions I had.]


STARTED:
Palacio, R.J. (2012). Wonder. New York: Knopf.

[So much buzz...]


*

FINISHED: 
Kinney, Jeff. (2012). Diary of a wimpy kid: the third wheel. New York: Amulet.

[.]

STARTED:
Levithan, David. (2012). Every day. New York: Knopf.

[.]

*

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


[.]


STARTED:
Kinney, Jeff. (2012). Diary of a wimpy kid: the third wheel. New York: Amulet.

[.]

*

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.

[.]

*

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...]

*

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...]

*

FINISHED:
Martel, Yann. (2001). Life of Pi. New York: Harcourt.

[.]


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

[Reviewing for ACL...]

*

FINISHED:
Meloy, Colin. (2012). Under Wildwood. New York: Balzer + Bray.


[Prue and Curtis are reunited in this sequel to Meloy’s own Wildwood (Balzer + Bray, 2011), with Prue being drawn back to Wildwood by the voices of the vegetation there (a newly-discovered ability that she has), and Curtis having become a full-fledged Wildwood bandit-in-training.  The two of them embark on a quest to unite a fractured land by finding a just and rightful leader for Wildwood, along the way finding themselves underground and assisting mole people in a war to regain their throne from an usurper.  Meanwhile, Curtis’s parents leave his two sisters at an orphanage to watch the girls while they are away in Istanbul, having received a tip that Curtis may have been spotted there.  In typical fashion, the orphanage turns out to be a factory sweatshop run by a faded Russian movie starlet and her inventor boyfriend who is obsessed with finding a way into the Impassable Wilderness, sure that it’s potential as an industrial site is untapped.  There’s A LOT going on here, and it’s not until 400 pages into the novel that things begin to overlap and you understand how all of the storylines are related, but the language is rich and it does flesh out the woods more, exploring new terrain and expanding upon the world-building in the first book.  In addition, as with the previous tome, this one comes with fanciful and striking spot art illustrations (as well as a couple of full page, color plates) by Meloy’s wife, Carson Ellis. One of the major storylines deals with the topical issue of the growing economic disparity in the world and rise of rampant corporate growth:  after the Russian starlet Desdemona sees The 1% Journal on a desk, Meloy writes, “She didn’t understand the industrialist sensibility…  She’d fallen in with the crowd because she’d been attracted to the money… though she understood now that there was more to success and satisfaction than just blindly following the money.”  Whereas the first book could work as a contained story on its own, this one feels like a “middle book” – a bridge between stories – which, at the end, leaves all of the characters with things left to do and concludes with, “Their daily struggle, the tenuousness of their lives in the vacuum of power that has remained in the wake of a revolution, can wait until tomorrow.  Winter is passing.  A Spring will soon arrive.”  And the next installment can’t come soon enough.]

STARTED & FINISHED:
Kibuishi, Kazu. (2012). Prince of the elves [Amulet: Book 5]. New York: Graphix/Scholastic.


[.]


STARTED:
Martel, Yann. (2001). Life of Pi. New York: Harcourt.

[Re-reading before the film is released.  One of my favorites, so I'm glad to read it again...]

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