52. Tales from Outer Suburbia - Shaun Tan

Arthur A Levine Books/Scholastic,
Australia 2008, US 2009
$19.99
96 pgs, YA
Rating: 4
Endpapers: Tiny grey-pencil sketches from the stories on cream background

Fifteen bizarre short stories - all that make you think, look further and deeper, put two and two together to make seven or fifty-four.....

Contents: a different postage stamp for each story - the denomination is the page number and the illustration is the same as within the story.

Illustrations: all distinctly different from each other, in most cases they either tell the story or are needed to tell part of the story.

A sampling of stories: ERIC: a foreign exchange student comes to stay with a family. He is the size of a large nut and lives in the pantry. One day he leaves without saying goodbye, but has left a garden planted in tiny bottlecaps , boxes, and found-things.

BROKEN TOYS: An Asian man dressed in a deep sea diver's garb (see cover) arrives mysteriously with a broken wooden horse and is allowed to mysteriously enter the grouchy next-door-neighbor's house.

DISTANT RAIN: A collaged story of lost bits of poems adding themselves to an enormous ball of poems that rains all over the city.

GRANDPA'S STORY: A weird pre-wedding trip...both in pictures and words.

All quite bizarre, using weird parts of the brain to decipher, a book of stories that will really grow on you.

41. Savvy - Ingrid Law

Published: May, 2008
Newbery Honor Award
Grades 5-8 (Tween)
348 pages
$16.99
Dial Books for Young Readers

Hmm. This was a fun book. However, it seemed endless. It took forever to read it, and I had to force myself to go back to it every time I put it down. But I enjoyed it - its quirkiness, and it's great storytelling. I guess it was just a little too long-winded for me. It's been out for over a year and none of my students has read it, or even talked about it. I wonder how one of them would enjoy it? I'll have to put it "out there" next year, see what comes of it.

What I call a "realistic fantasy" that takes place in the Nebraska/Kansas area. Good setting. I wanted a map to go along with the story, and one of the websites below has a good one. And why a map? Because Mibs Beaumont, two of her four siblings, and the two teenaged "preacher's kids" sneak onto a bus and go for a RIDE. Mibs is hoping to get down to Salina, Kansas, where her poppa is in a coma from a car accident, but Lester, the driver, had other stops to make before Salina. And quite the riproarinest adventure ensues.

And why realistic FANTASY? Because everyone in the Beaumont family, upon their 13th birthday, has been given a SAVVY. They never knew what it would be, and as Mibs' birthday approached she was quite excited about it. Her mother's savvy that she did everything perfectly. Her brother, Fish, created hurricanes, winds, rains. Her oldest brother Rocket's savvy was electricity, which he had a difficult time controling. Of course Mibs' savvy is nothing she ever dreamed it would be. And as it appears, she and her companions are on the pink bus, making the world a much more memorable place.

For more details, take a look at one of the websites below. They're very well done. In the meantime, I'm gong to have to decide how to rate this book. I wonder if I would have liked it more if I'd listened to it? Another hmm.

Official Savvy Website (the audio review is particularly good) including a downloadable teacher's guide.

Listen to the book! (Or at least the beginning of it) and play games - an interactive site.

Kid's Read Review

19. The Loud Silence of Francine Green - Karen Cushman

Read by Anaka Shockley
2006
Unabridged Cd/Random House Audio
Rating: 5
for: Middle School and older

This was a totally delightful story. I listened to it, and the reader, Anaka Shockley, was just wonderful, portraying the voice of Francine beautifully. The setting is 1949 Los Angeles, California. Francine is in the eighth grade at All Saints School for Girls and loves Montgomery Clift. Her best friend, Sophie Bowman, is an unspoken questioner of all things wrong. But Francine has been taught to not question her parents or the nuns or the government. And it is the McCarthy error. Everyone is afraid of “the bomb” and “commies” and the end of the world. Sophie speaks out about free speech and asks lots of wonderful questions, but the girls are being rasied in the age where kids just don’t ask. The nuns put outspoken Sophie into the waste basket. She is taunted and bullied by Sister Basil AND the other girls in the class. Francine wants to stand up for her, but can’t seem to take herself past the upbringing that has taught her otherwise. And then when friends who have emigrated from Russia for the rights and freedoms found in the US and not in Russia are terrorized and threatened, Francine finally decides to take a stand.

What is freedom of speech? What is friendship? What is fear? This is the first time I’ve read a historical fiction about the McCarthy era. It’s magnificently done, too. Needed. How else are kids going to understand that part of America’s history?

I’m rereading Cushman’s Catherine Called Birdy and have fond, fond memories of The Ballad of Lucy Whipple. I’ve now decided that Karen Cushman is pushing her way to the top of my favorites list.

This is a book that is very, very Catholic. I understood it just from stories (horror stories....) I’ve heard from friends and family. Saints. Confession. Sin. I wonder how much my Jewish middle schoolers would understand about this aspect of the story. They’d certainly understand a lot just from the way it’s written, but there’s a lot they won’t understand, too.

18. Leap - Jane Breskin Zalben

for: Tweens
Published: 2007
272 pgs.
Rating: 4
AUDIO 6 cd's (7.5 hours)
Recorded Books
Female reader: Jennifer Ikeda
Male reader: Jonathan Todd Ross

A story in two voices, Krista and Daniel, have been best friends until about a year ago. They're in middle school now, 6th graders. Daniel, a star swimmer, during a routine anesthesia for a tooth removal, has a reaction that leaves him partially paralyzed. Krista, who has a major crush on Daniel's best friend, Bobby, volunteers to help him practice swim. He can only shuffle around using a walker, needs to take a special bus to school, has a full-time aid. But, as we watch the year unfold, not only does he begin to recover, but they both grow up. A lot.

Krista's "journey" includes the friendships of her three closest friends, all very different (of course). Three stereotypical personalities - the gorgeous girl who all the girls envy and roll their eyes at and about, the sweet one, the jock who doesn't like anything frilly, and the protagonist. Nothing wrong with this, I guess, the story has its merits, its problems, its many things for readers to think about. What do you do with a 12-year old friend who has a fake driver's license and gets a tattoo? First kisses, first boy/girl parties, lots to think about.

17. 3 Willows - Ann Brashares

The Sisterhood Grows
For: young YA
Published: 2009
320 pgs.
Rating: 3.5
Finished: Mar. 15, 2009

The subtitle is a little misleading. The "original" four girls of the sisterhood are referred to briefly in a couple of spots within the book, and Effie makes an appearance, but otherwise it's about three brand new girls who have been best friends since third grade. They live in Bethesda, Maryland. They've grown apart throughout eighth grade and now, the summer before high school, they have little to do with each other. All three are in different places during the summer and we hear their stories from their points-of-view. Brashares really gets into their heads and develops their characters well. She tells their stories in prose without using the device of letters and emails like she does in the Sisterhood books. A few paragraphs to a few pages for each girl, then it's on to another - but not in a disconcerting way. It flows well, and makes sense.

Jo, pretty and popular, is spending the summer at Rehoboth Beach with her mom. She's working hard to fit in with the cool crowd. Her brother, Finn, was killed two years before, and it's been particularly difficult for her mother - so much so that her parents have decided to separate. She feels almost estranged from her dad.....

Polly, thoughtful, helpful, feels unnoticed by everyone, including her tatooed and pierced artist mom. The only way she can think of to feel "seen" is to go to a modeling class for the summer. She's not modeling material - she's short, curvy, and needs orthodonture. Her mom spends all day, every day at her art studio, and by the end of the book Polly finds the reason for that....

Ama is a brainiac. She thinks mainly of getting into Princeton like her sister (even though that's four whole years away!!!) The library and grades are the biggest quests in her life. When she applies for a summer internship, instead of some sort of study and research in a higher institution, she is sent to hike through Yosemite for the summer. This is the last thing in the world that appeals to her. When she discovers she's the only black in her group, that she cannot have any hair products to tame her unruly hair, and that to pass she'll have to rapell down 350 feet.....

Each chapter is preceeded by a bit of information about willow trees. Roots and trees are twined throughout the book - one of the first things the girls did when they met was to plant three willow trees in the woods. This frames the story, and ends it, too.

7. Pieces of Georgia - Jen Bryant

For: Young adults, gr. 6-9
Published: 2006
166 pgs.
Rating: 4
FInished: Jan. 25, 2009

Georgia McCoy is a shy, thirteen-year-old seventh grader whose mother died when she was seven. Her father has been withdrawn and won't even talk about her, but keeps her art journal in his pickup with him at all times. Georgia is a gifted artist, like her mom, but it is not until her guidance counselor gives her a journal and she begins "talking" to her mother that things start to come together for her. At the same time, she receives an anonymous membership to the nearby Brandywine River Museum. She can get there by bus, and begins once or twice weekly excursions there, loving the art of the Wyeth family - N. C., Andrew, and Jamie. Her art teacher encourages her to enter a contest to received an art grant, so Georgia begins creating a portfolio.


The story is simple, the theme is simple, the writing is in verse - so it's an easy-to-read and understand story that will give teenagers plenty to mull over. There are 62 journal entries. I'm not quite sure why they were written in verse form, but the diary, first person telling is very effective. It was a very good read.

Here are paintings by the Wyeths - Pumpkinhead by Jamie Wyeth, Helga by Andrew Wyeth and a Pirate by N. C. Wyeth, all mentioned in the book.

Addendum on Monday, January 26, 2009: I finished this book yesterday, and Jen Bryant's book: A River of Words, the Story of William Carlos Williams today won the Caldecott Award for its illustrations by Melissa Sweet. Sweet!

2. Hurricane Song - Paul Volponi

A Novel of New Orleans
For: Middle School/YA (Language in a few places)
Published: June, 2008
136 pgs.
Rating: 4
Finished: Jan. 3, 2009

This is, I think, a very important book. Miles has just gone to live with his dad in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina strikes. The highways are clogged, the car breaks down, and they are forced to go to the Superdome to take shelter. What happened inside the Superdome was a nightmare - and reading this story takes you there. The filth, the smells, the lack of food, water, toilet facililties, the death and sickness, the heat, the violence - all from a 14-year-old's point of view.

Miles' father is a jazz musician, his trumpet is his life. Miles' life is all about football. They've never been close. But this book takes us through the changing of their relationship as well as watching what happened instide the Superdome during the raging of Katrina. Wow.

53. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

For: Tweens & YA
Published: 9-14-08
ARC: 407 pgs.
Rating: 5/5
Finished Sat. Oct. 25, 2008

This was one of the many ARC's I got in May at the BEA Conference in LA. I couldn't wait to read it, and once I finally got the chance and started, it was really hard to put down. A real page-turner for sure. Its premise is really horrible, but fascinating. It leaves me with this question: Where are the abundance of reality shows we've been watching multiply in the last few years leading us?

Katniss Everdeen lives in the future, in what is now considered Appalachia, coal country. It's called District 12. America is no longer America, it's called Panem, with a new capital called...The Capitol. She is 16 and has been the food provider in her family ever since her father died in a coal mining accident years before. However, before his death he'd taught her how to sneak into the woods (strictly forbidden) to trap and kill game. She has become an outstanding archer, and with her friend, Gale, is able to provide their critically impoverished, very hungry families with food and supplies, though not much. The entire district is poor, poor, poor.

Every year Panem holds "The Hunger Games". Two young people between the ages of 12 and 18 are chosen by lottery each year to represent their district. Thus, 12 boys and 12 girls leave their homes to take part in the "games", televised throughout the entire country, mandatory to watch, and, like any sporting event, bet upon. The goal? Fight . to . the . end. Be the last person of the 24 left and you become the winner, the hero of Panem. Brutal? Yup. Scary? Yup. Unbelievable? You'd think so, until you read this story.

Of course, because this is the story being told, Katniss becomes the female competetor for District 12. The boy chosen is Peeta, the baker's son (who we find, has had a crush on Katniss since he first saw her as a five-year-old). In a way there are no suprises, since this is the first book of a series of three, we're almost certain that Katniss is going to win. But what about Peeta, who we come to care about and route for? And how will her family survive without her? And what's going to happen in the next two books?

Suzanne Collins has created an intricate story with twists and turns (I kept asking myself :how many ways is she going to have kids die?) Creatively. Expressively. Violent, but not devastatingly so. Sounds really horrible, grizzly, ridiculous - especially to me, an extreme peacemonger. But I couldn't put this book down. It's like Twilight - I hated that the young girl could become so lovestruck that she would do anything to be with a young man, but I couldn't stop reading. Romance? Yes, The Hunger Games also has romance, but a romance with a lot of question marks. I can't believe how much I enjoyed a book with so much violence. But how many of us, in our own minds, ask: What is this world coming to?

Stephen King has written a great, detailed review of the book in Entertainment Weekly, which is also on the Amazon website for the book. If you want to know more, read it at this address: http://www.amazon.com/Hunger-Games-Suzanne-Collins/dp/0439023483/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225039782&sr=8-1

This book has had quite a few starred reviews, but I think it's going to be viewed in the same way as Twilight. I may be very wrong (I usually am), so we'll see. Happy reading!

47. Waiting for Normal - Leslie Connor

For: Middle Grades
Pub: 2008
290 pgs.
Rating: 5/5
Read: Sept. 3, 2008 (Happy Birthday, Gail!)
"Pollyanna for the 21st Century" OR "a modern-day survival story"

Oh. My. I just finished The Rules of Survival. Now this. So similar. Mothers who should not be mothers. What is the definition of mother? Addie would figure that out, using Websters and her great dyslexic brain, and add it to the vocabulary book that she keeps. She wishes she had the "Love of Learning" like her mother and younger sister. But because she has reading and spatial problems, she thinks this can never be.

Addie's "Mommers" (this was, for some reason, a very irritating name for me) is, I'm sure, bipolar. It's all or nothing. Totally all or absolutely nothing. She's had two husbands, three children, and before the story is over will have lost them all, but have another kid on the way. Dwight, the stepfather that has raised Addie as his own, is not able to take custody of her when he divorces her mother, although he does take the two "Littles." He takes Addie and her Mom to live in the only place he has, an old, tiny trailer on a busy street corner in the city of Schenectedy, NY. He takes the two Littles and goes to reconstruct an inn in nearby Vermont.

Mommers meets up with a man and spends more and more time with him, leaving 12-year-old Addie alone in the trailer. Addie makes close friends with the people who own the mini-mart across the street (one dying of cancer, the other gay). She learns to love to play the flute, and takes great care of her hamster, Picolo. Things get worse and worse until she unwittingly, while alone for an extended period, burns down the trailer.

This IS a very predictable book. But it's predictable in a good way, I think kids need more happy endings. Connors has included a little bit of everything in the story, major timely issues. But instead of being TOO much, everything she brings up touches all of our lives....a little cancer....friends or family members who are gay, or struggle with a mental disorder, or have very little money...sad people, happy people, neglected people, all or nothing people.....Snow storms and broken-cars and feeling helpless and alone.....

One review I read said that this book is a great example of "showing, not tellling." Exactly! Beautifuly writing. A smart, witty protagonist. A plot that keeps you hooked. A great read. If only I hadn't needed tissues!

44. Bronte's Book Club - Kristiana Gregory

For: Middle Grades
Pub: 2008
150 pgs.
Rating: 3.5/5
Read: Aug. 31, 2008

Bronte has just moved from the desert of New Mexico to a house on the water in southern California, where her parents will run a restaurant on the pier. The summer drags before her and she knows no one. She loves to read. Sunbathing will be hampered by her red hair, fair complexion, and lack of a binkini-body. Then she has a brainstorm.

Bronte posts posters (hey, I see where the word POSTER comes from) around the pier and beach advertising a book club for girls who like to read. Eventually four girls join her and friendships form, are tested, and strengthen. They read Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell together, and some of their field trips are prompted by what happens in that book. One of the girls, Nan, lives on a sloop where they gather frequently. Willow, whose mother wants her to be a model or actress, is a slow reader, which she tries to keep secret. Lupe's family owns a bakery, and Jessie harbors a secret that makes her sad and sullen. We watch their friendship and the summer unfold together.

I've gotten so used to reading edgy YA novels that this seemed tame and bland at first. However, its message about being a good friend is strong and each girl's story is compelling. The setting; on the beach, surfing, on the ocean, and on the pier, are well-drawn. At one point they disobey parental instruction and almost drown, but working together they all pull through.

I have a fifth grader who loved Because of Winn-Dixie and is constantly looking for a book much like it. I'd say this fits the bill perfectly .