FINISHED:

Choldenko, Gennifer. (2004). Al Capone does my shirts. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

[Ok, well, I wasn't completely WOWED by this one. Not even sure that I would consider it a Newbery Honor book. Parts just seemed a bit overwrought and overly dramatic, and I never really ever got the sense that it was truly 1935 in San Francisco. There was one mention of brushing his teeth with his finger after mixing some kind of toothpaste powder in his palm, but, otherwise, I never felt like it was taking place in the past. Pretty interesting touch to have a character with autism, since I doubt that has ever really been explored in a historical children's book, and I appreciated the main character's dedication (and utter frustration) to his autistic sister, but still wasn't really won over that much. Great recommendation for kids who live in the area, though.]

STARTED:
Hale, Shannon. (2005). Princess academy. New York: Bloomsbury.

[Keep hearing about this one and seeing it come and go at the library. Hate to be sexist, but I just felt like reading something a little "girly"...]

*

FINISHED:

Babbitt, Natalie. (1975). Tuck everlasting. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

[Been thinking about the future and what it holds for me lately and writing keeps coming up as a possibility - that said, this one is pretty close to the kind of novel that I could see myself writing, especially odd since I just mentioned to someone the other day that I'd likely write in the "magical realism" genre. I love the fact that it's about the Tucks, who can live forever, but is told through Winnie's eyes (except for the Prologue and Epilogue...) and the fact that it is incredibly IMPRESSIONISTIC - meaning that the writing leaves the reader with a lot of room to write in details for themselves. I watched the movie (Disney, 2002) last night and really like it as well. A great adaptation that stayed really true to the themes of the book and actually, for me, expanded on certain themes. The bad thing about the movie is that it took away from the impressionistic sense of the text by filling in some details that the book left out, but is still one that I would show in conjunction with the reading of the book. The language is marvelous, and the interviews with Babbitt on the DVD and at the end of the paperback version that I read made me LOVE her and feel a real connection with her as an (aspiring?) writer and human being. Will definitely pick this one up again and explore her other works.]

STARTED:
Choldenko, Gennifer. (2004). Al Capone does my shirts. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

[I've had this one checked out to me for WAY too long - it's been on the list to read for awhile and it's time has finally come.]

*

FINISHED:

Baccalario, Pierdomenico. (2007). Ulysses Moore: The house of mirrors. New York: Scholastic.

[There's just something about these books (this is the 3rd in the series) that is compelling to me. Can't really articulate it, though. The amazing thing is that this books is 244 pages and it took me NO TIME AT ALL to read. And, honestly, I'd have a hard time telling you exactly what happened in it because, well, not a whole lot happened. It all took place in a day, and the 3 kids (it's ALWAYS three kids - 2 boys and a girl) ran around town trying to figure out who this mysterious clockmaker guy was and what the deal is with all the doors and keys in Kilmore Cove - a place that they are finding out wants to be kept hidden from the world. The book is called The House of Mirrors but the house was in one chapter and in that chapter it got demolished. Of course, the sequel is coming and I will read it because these things are like candy - just quick and satisfying even though, like I said, nothing really happens in them.]

STARTED:
Babbitt, Natalie. (1975). Tuck everlasting. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

[Classic that I've always wanted to read - and have known that I should read.]

*

FINISHED:

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

[REALLY pleased with this one. Will definitely push for it to be on this year's Distinguished List with ACL. Thought that Balliett did a FANTASTIC job of working the concept of Calder sculptures into the RELATIONSHIPS between characters and the TEXT itself. The three main kids, Calder, Petra, and Tommy, are jockeying for position amongst each other and their individual relationships with games, words, and found objects (respectively) all play as delicately balanced, always in flux, Calder mobiles. The language is much richer than Balliett's previous two works, and there's still a sense of magical realism here that Balliett does so well.

p.s. It took me SO long to read because I'm a real fan of this series and wanted to savor every word. It paid off.]

STARTED:
Baccalario, Pierdomenico. (2007). Ulysses Moore: The house of mirrors. New York: Scholastic.

[Clearly the publisher has given up much hope for this series. While the first two books in the series were little hardcovers (think: Series of Unfortunate Events) and filled with great illustrations, this one has gone straight to mass market paperback and there really aren't ANY illustrations at all. We'll see if the text holds up with the previous entries...]

*

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...]

*

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.]

*

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.]

*

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...]

*

FINISHED:

Stewart, Trent Lee. (2007). The mysterious Benedict Society. New York: Little Brown.

[.]

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

[Reading for ACL review.]

*

FINISHED:

Wild, Kate. (2007). Fight game. New York: Chicken House.

[Will post my ACL review once I have it written. Click on the link above to see a "trailer" for the book. The cheesy "trailer" kind of says it all, though...

And, here's my review:

Freedom, a gypsy with a “Hercules gene” that makes him a web-footed super-fighter, is reluctantly enlisted by Phoenix organization (an undercover government agency that investigates the paranormal) to infiltrate an underground fighting operation. While debating what he should do, the sister of a missing teen who has likely been taken in as a fighter in the club attempts to get Freedom to assist her in her search. Freedom is your typical “rebel without a cause” – conflicted and torn between wanting to do what’s right for his gypsy family and what’s right for himself – never really being drawn as a complex character with any depth that might make us sympathetic to his “struggle”. Somewhat laughably, the novel ends with a fight between Freedom and a malformed creature that turns out to be “related” to Freedom, having been created as a super-fighter using some of Freedom’s DNA. Moreover, an inconsistency involving the walls of the underground fighting chambers is a further example of the lack of care and thought put into this tome: Freedom finds out from young orphans that the walls emit mind-control signals, yet, only two pages later, Freedom stealthly presses himself against the walls to avoid being seen – with no reference at all this time to the walls’ mind control properties. Careless. This is a slow-paced yawner with, despite the title, VERY little actual fighting that might have actually been a way to entice reluctant male readers to pick it up. A concluding sequel is in the works for release in Summer 2008, but the ending is such a non-cliffhanger (Oh! The fight club leader is actually a woman… and she’s getting away!) that this reviewer ponders if there really was even a need for another episode in this dim tale.]




STARTED & FINISHED:

Reinhardt, Dana. (2007). Harmless. New York: Wendy Lamb/Random House.

[Read this for ACL - it was on the Distinguished list and I read it so that I can write an annotation. Three high school girls make up a lie about where they were one night so that their parents don't find out that they were actually making out with some older boys. Their lie, that they were attacked by a stranger down by the river, takes on a life of its own and tears them apart. Good character building and interesting home life situations make this a compelling read.]

STARTED:
Stewart, Trent Lee. (2007). The mysterious Benedict Society. New York: Little Brown.

[Another one that's been on my radar for a while because I've heard so many good things about it. I'm still only on the first chapter and already it's made me laugh out loud a couple of times. Promising, indeed.]

*