Review of Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story by Adam Rex

Well, there are only two things I didn’t love about this book, and unfortunately, one of them was the ending.  What a disappointment!  I wanted to say that up front, because if a bad ending makes a book not worth reading for you, you should give this one a miss.  The premise of the book is hilarious: Doug Lee, a fat, unattractive, geeky 15-year-old is attacked and turned into a vampire.  Since he is now undead, he seems to be stuck being a fat vampire forever.  One of my favorite quotes from the book kind of sums it all up –“I think sometimes you think you’re the hero of the story, and sometimes you think you’re the victim…but you’re not either.”  There are some funny scenes where Doug desperately tries to find something he can feed off of without actually having to bite a human.  He mostly makes do with cows, but his best friend Jay (who Doug has confided everything to) tries to help him out by breaking into the zoo with him to find something a bit more, well, cuddly (but not endangered) to bite.  Eventually Doug is approached by  the local vampire group, and as the book progresses, he discovers that if he drinks the blood of humans, his appearance improves.  In fact, he becomes downright good-looking.  However, he sort of loses his nice guy personality, too.  The other thing I didn’t like about the book is that the passage that describes Doug’s attack that turned him into a vampire is very dark and graphic compared to the rest of the book.  The tone of the book is so light and funny that it was quite jarring to read that part, and, to tell the truth, I pretty much skipped over it.  I think the book is still worth reading –I did a fair amount of laughing out loud.  Review by Stacy Church

Review of The Cardturner by Louis Sachar

The subtitle of this book is: A Novel About a King, a Queen, and a Joker.  As I’m sure you know, Louis Sachar is the author of Holes, its sequel Small Steps, and the old favorite Sideways Stories from Wayside School.  The Cardturner is such a different kind of book, and I kept forgetting who the author of what I was reading was –it felt more like a Chris Crutcher book (Whale Talk, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes).  Even if you don’t think you’ll like reading about the game of bridge (Do most kids even know what that is?  My son and I once tried to learn to play by following an instruction book –it’s complicated!), you should give it a try.  The author alerts you to the passages that include detailed bridge talk by preceding them with a drawing of a whale (you’ll find out the significance of this if you read the book) so that you can skip over them if you want to.  I always felt too guilty to skip them, even though after a certain point I don’t think I absorbed too much of it.  During the summer before Alton’s senior year of high school, he is forced by his parents to drive his wealthy great-uncle Lester to his bridge club 4 times a week and be his cardturner (Uncle Lester, in addition to being wealthy, is blind).  Alton doesn’t really know his uncle or the game of bridge, but his parents have been trying to get him to suck up to his uncle for years, in the hope that he will leave them his fortune.  Despite his intentions of despising this duty, and Uncle Lester’s treating him like an idiot, Alton becomes intrigued with the game of bridge.  It helps (or doesn’t help) that he meets and is attracted to Toni Castaneda, who his only previous contact with was when he was 6 years old and she ran up to him at his uncle’s 65th birthday party, covered her ears and yelled, “Shut up!  Leave me alone!” and then ran away.  I found The Cardturned to be a pageturner (sorry, I couldn’t help it) and very funny.  Review by Stacy Church

Summer Reading Program Reviews

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Nory Ryan’s Song by Patricia Reilly Giff

I read Nory Ryan’s Song. It was much better than I expected. It takes place in Ireland during Gorta Mor, the great hunger of 1845 – 1852. Nory and her family live in Maidin Bay, Ireland, a small town that has never been as populated since as it was during the great hunger. Nory is an eleven-year-old girl who was not very brave before the great hunger. She reminds me of Hope from Hope’s Crossing. Both were not brave at the beginning, but towards the end their bravery made them stand out among others. The other main character is Anna, the older and wiser town healer. She had no one to pass her knowledge on to until Nory owed her a favor, so she worked it off and as they worked they became friends. The plot of this story is like a train. If you take one part out it still works. There are two big problems and one far-off solution. One problem is that there is no food because the potatoes went black. Also they had to pay rent and if they didn’t pay right away the English would take their goods and the only food they had. But after so long without paying, they’d be kicked out of their house. One of the few choices was to move to America. So Nory’s family slowly moved to Brooklyn, New York, to solve the problem of no food or money. But Anna, her dearest friend, decided to stay in Ireland in her warm house with her loving dog. This is a great book because now when I say, “I’m Irish,” I know why I’m in America. I will suggest it to every girl that loves history and a sad, loving story that shows what it means to be a good friend. Review by Shauna

Girl of the Moment by Lizabeth Zindel

“It’s amazing how one summer can change your life forever.” Lily is exasperated when her summer internship at the Museum of Modern Art is canceled, but her summer lights up again when her dad meets an old college friend who finds her an internship with teenage celebrity Sabrina Snow. Lily thinks her future life is going to be glamour, fun and parties, but once she starts her internship, she finds that being Sabrina Snow is not easy, and neither is being her sidekick. With dozens of commands to obey, millions of fan letters to reply to, lots of lists to make, and more than a few parties to plan, Lily discovers the ups and downs of Hollywood life. But there are still quite a few embarrassing but funny mishaps occurring in this star summer. When Lily is sucked into stardom life, she needs to find a clever way to get out of it… Girl of the Moment is a good book for middle-aged children readers who want to get a glimpse of a teenage actress’s life. It is a romantic book filled with funny mistakes, decorated goody bags, and lots of exaggerated magazine articles. The age range of this book should be ages 12-up because of the overfilled romance and some of the words they use. So if you like books with a lot of mishaps, fun, flirting, parties, and famous people, Girl of the Moment is a good book for you. So read Girl of the Moment now!!!!!!! Review by Anusha

The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd

A boy whose brain works on a different operating system pieces together the challenging mystery of where his lost cousin is. Wow! This book is fantastic. It tkes you around London while you learn weather terms and about the Coriolis Effect. It really describes characters like the main character Ted. It always tells you what he’s thinking in his different operating-system brain. The London Eye Mystery is puzzling and a great book. Review by Jordan

Another Summer Reading Program Review

The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet by Erin Dionne

8th grader Hamlet Kennedy does not have your average life.  She has a genius 7-year-old sister that is in her 8th grade class and she has Shakespeare-obsessed parents.  Dezzie (her genius sister) is ruining her life!  Hamlet is failing pre-algebra and it doesn’t help that Dezzie is “tutoring” Hamlet’s secret crush, Carter.  In English, their Shakespeare unit is just starting, and when Mrs. Wimple asks Hamlet to read aloud to the class from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she finds an unwanted talent.  Hamlet gets assigned the lead role in the Shakespeare play, and trying to hide it from her parents isn’t working.  Especially when Mrs. Wimple invites them in to teach the class about Shakespeare.  Find out what happens to Hamlet by reading the book!  Review by Caitlin

Reviews from the Summer Reading Program

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Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

I read Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli.  I picked this book because the cover intrigued me --simple but powerful.  A plain yellow star with a green stick-figure girl.  This story is very interesting.  It is about what you would do for someone you love and how doing something for someone else will help you in the end.  I thought Stargirl would be about a popular girl who was always the center of attention, but it turned out to be a book about the ups and downs of friendship.  Stargirl Caraway is strange, but in a good way. She is strange because she looks through newspapers to find out birthdays, weddings, deaths, etc.  Sometimes when she is learning something, she breaks down and acts like a little kid.  Leo Borlock is shy and outgoing –he stands out in the crowd by his actions, and only opens up to certain people.  This book takes place in modern-day Mica, Arizona, located in the middle of a desert.  It was an amazing book.  You can tell that Jerry Spinelli spent a lot of time on the characters.  The way they acted and the way they connect flowed perfectly.  I wouldn’t change one thing, because if you change something it wouldn’t sound as good as it did before.  I would recommend this book to anyone who is sick and tired of the same thing every day.  Even though you’re not in Mica, Jerry Spinelli makes you feel like you are.  I can’t wait to read the sequel to this book.  Review by Shauna

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

A girl in New York City starts receiving many strange notes.  She starts to think that writing back is the only way to save her friend’s life.  But when Disaster strikes, she thinks it’s too late.  This book is very mild.  The characters never really leave the city and it’s more about the main character making new friends than solving the mystery.  The book had really short chapters that were about 3 pages long, which was nice.  I thought When You Reach Me was very mild, but an okay book.  Review by Jordan

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

I did not like this book.  I was originally attracted to the idea of a teenager’s point of view with a “Groundhog Day” type of plot.  However, it just made me feel like I was reading a mess of a life happening over and over again with no change.  Samantha was an annoying person, and the fact that we had to read about her stupid mistakes repeatedly while she didn’t have a clue what she did wrong was excruciating.  The rest of the characters were not a joy to read about either.  They were mostly drunks, drug users, or just plain selfish.  Yes, there were the exceptiosn of Juliet and Kent, but the main character and her group almost destroyed them both.  The book was tiring to read because there was almost no pause in the constant drama that filled their “typical” high school life.  The author tried to make the ways Samantha spent her death day dramatically different to keep the audience interested, but I was just tired of it by the second death day.  There were a few good moments in the book, but that was about it.  This was a decent debut book, but even though the author is aiming for the teenage audience, she doesn’t need to dramatize everything.  Teenagers are meant to read between the lines.  Review by Hillary

More Reviews from the Summer Reading Program

Hoot by Carl Hiaasen

When a boy named Roy Eberheart moves to Coconut Cove, FL, he thinks his life is doomed.  One day on the bus ride to school, Roy finds himself faced against the bus window being pushed by Dana Matherson, the worst bully in school.  To a lot of kids that would appear like bad luck, but for Roy, if it weren’t for Dana he wouldn’t have seen the strange running boy who was shoeless, with no back-pack, and wearing dirty old stained clothes.  After a couple of days of thinking, and seeing the odd boy, Roy decides to follow him to wherever he may go.  But as usual, things go from good to not-s0-good.  After a couple of weeks without seeing the strange boy, Roy was just about to give up on ever finding out out who the mysterious boy was.  Then one day, as Roy was sitting on the bus looking at his comic books, he looked out the window, and to his disbelief, on the other side of the road was…the running boy!  After that sighting of the odd boy, Roy knew there was still hope to find and talk to him.  After some more weeks passed, Beatrice Leep, one of Roy’s new friends, tells Roy what she knows about Mullet Fingers (the mystery boy), and what she tells him is a bit surprising.  This is a great book about friendship and standing up for what you know is right.  You might even learn a thing or two about burrowing owls.  Review by Olivia

Missing Persons: The Rose Queen by M E Rabb

In this book, two girls named Sam and Sophia Shattenberg are forced to run away fromt heir home after their father dies and they are only left with their stepmother, Enid.  Enid is going to inherit all the money that their parents had and is going to send Sophie to boarding school.  The two sisters cannot bear to be apart from each other for that long, so they decide to run away.  But, it’s not that easy.  In order to not be found, they need to go from Queens, New York, to Venice, Indiana.  There they meet Delfriggio, who is another big part of not being discovered.  He helps with tips on not being discovered.  Felix back in Queens makes them fake ID’s, birth certificates and driver’s license.  In Venice, there is the big Rose Parade and there is a Rose Parade Queen.  The Queen of the Rose Parade was going to be Noelle McBride, but she has gone missing!  The night before, Sam and Sophie had given Noelle a ride home from karaoke.  No one had seen her since, so Sophie or “Fiona” and Sam “Scott” are the prime suspects!  Normally it would still be a problem, but it’s an even bigger problem for Sam and “Fiona.” That’s because if the police find out too much information about them, the police could send Sophie and Sam back to Queens and Sophie would still have to go to boarding school, never mind all the trouble they would be in.  There are many accusations, drama with boyfriends, love, and more.  Eventually, they are free of the possible murder because they actually solve the mystery. Review shortened to avoid SPOILER! Review by Elizabeth

Summer Reading Program Reviews

Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz

Fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is tired of working for the MI6 and needs a break. So they get him a summer job at Wimbledon. The only thing is that he has to keep an eye out for a group called the Red Circle. But Alex gets more than he bargained for when they start following him everywhere. Alex needs to get far away when the Red Circle becomes a danger to the people he is with. So, for his safety, Alex joins the CIA and joins two spies on a “vacation” to Skeleton Key, pretending to be their son. Troy and Carver say they are after something a salesman sold to the Russian president, but he starts to get suspicious. When Troy and Carver go scuba diving for Devil’s Cave and don’t come back up, he goes down to search for them. When Alex is down there, he finds more than just the answer to why they didn’t come back. In doing so, he meets a Russian army general from World War II who wants to change the world for the better. Find out how in this third book of the series: Skeleton Key. If you’re interested in thrilling mysteries with all sorts of twists and turns, then this is the book for you. Review by Nadia

Taken by Edward Bloor

I have been reading Taken by Edward Bloor for the past week. Overall, I thought it was a very well-written book that I enjoyed reading. I think that Edward Bloor did a great job describing this book in very great detail, since this book’s setting is the future –2035. This book is based on a different topic: kidnapping. Kidnapping is a major issue in this town. Kidnapping is up 50% in this small, little city. They actually have high tech security and guards surrounding their city. One day a 13-year-old girl named Charity called for an ambulance. She was not that sick; she simply wanted to see her parents, who were working at the hospital. When the ambulance came and took her away, they didn’t take her to the hospital, but kidnapped her. Charity was trapped in an ambulance with nothing to do until the kidnappers came in to remove her metal chip. A metal chip is a chip that is hidden somewhere inside every kid’s body. No one knows where they are hidden. Kidnappers have a machine that can detect where the chip is. For Charity it was in her braces. Now, after Charity had been stuck in the ambulance, she figured out an escape plan. The plan was for her to go to the bathroom and the kidnappers would go inside, and then she could make a break for it. The kidnappers found out her plan and she quickly tried to escape from their trap. She now got home safely with much to talk about. Review by Kathryn.

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Becoming Naomi Leon by Pam Munoz Ryan

Naomi Outlaw is having a great life. Living with her Gram and younger brother Owen, Naomi still is missing part of her: her parents. When she was four and Owen was one, her parents took them to this shelter during a storm. Mysteriously, Naomi’s father disappeared and her mother no longer wanted her and her brother, so they went to live with Gram, their mother’s grandma. Now 11 and 7, Naomi and Owen have learned to love Gram and Baby Baluga (the trailer they live in). Suddenly, out of the blue, Naomi’s mother shows up at their trailer door. At first she is nice and sweet to Naomi and Owen, but soon things change, and Naomi sees the true side of her mother. Mean and harsh, her mother tries to take Naomi back to Las Vegas to her boyfriend and his daughter without any signs of wanting Owen. When Naomi stands up against her, her mother starts to threaten Naomi. As soon as Gram finds out the plan, she begins to arrange taking both children to safety. Gram and their loving neighbors travel all the way to Mexico where Naomi’s father lives. If they find him then Naomi has a chance at staying with Gram. Full of adventure, Naomi sets off on a search to find her father in the big country of Mexico! A great adventure story that proves family means more than anything else in the world. Review by Olivia

Gilda Joyce: The Dead Drop by Jennifer Allison

“But when she turned around, she found herself staring into the barrel of a gun –the lipstick gun. The face behind the gun was featureless –a dark shadow.” This is just one phrase in this intriguing mystery. When you pick up this book, you will be sucked into a psychic investigator world of spies, dark shadows, ghosts, and surprises. Gilda Joyce is a spunky almost-15-year-old with a hankering for spying. That’s why she really wanted to get a summer internship at the Washington, D.C. International Spy Museum. It will give her the perfect chance to sport her vintage spywear, cavort with real C.I.A. agents, and expand her knowledge of gadgetry and surveillance. But Gilda never expected some new cold war objects in the museum to stir up some trouble. Suddenly, Gilda’s dreams keep on getting haunted with Abraham Lincoln’s Ghost, and a mysterious woman with a bloodstained star keeps on showing up in the museum, fascinating Gilda to investigate. But when a doe shows her a loose brick in a cemetery wall, uncovering an encoded message, she finds that she jumped into a deeper mystery than she thought. If you like suspense, mystery, or tension, I bet in the first five minutes of reading you will be buried in this book! Gilda isn’t the perfect spy, but she is very unique –how many girls do you know that have psychic powers, type on a typewriter instead of a laptop, and wear vintage clothing all at once? I don’t think many girls do. As you can probably tell, Gilda Joyce books are for girls ages 9+ because of the complicated plot and humor. They can make you shiver with fear, and laugh out loud both at once! These books are suspenseful but funny at the same time. If you like this book, check out the other Gilda Joyce books: Gilda Joyce: Psychic Investigator, Gilda Joyce: Ladies of the Lake, and Gilda Joyce: The Ghost Sonata. Read them all!!!! Review by Anusha

Book Reviews from the Summer Reading Program

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Dial “L” 4 Losers by Lisi Harrison

Dial “L” 4 Losers by Lisi Harrison is a great book.  It is a part of the Clique series.  Claire, the unpopular new girl, Massie, a very popular girl and Alicia, also a very popular girl, all get invited to audition to be in a movie.  When they go to audition far away from home, Massie obviously thinks she is so awesome that she will end up getting the role, but after auditions end, Claire ends up getting the part.  When Claire finds out she will be the star in the movie she is psyched!  Massie and Alicia are so jealous that they can’t stand it.  They start packing their stuff to leave.  As they are leaving, they get a call to be behind-the-stage reporters for a hit show.  They take the jobs and start embarrassing Claire.  Read the book to find out what they do and how it will get solved.  Review by Caitlin

 

13 by Jason Robert Brown and Dan Elish

This book all starts with a boy named Evan who is turning 13, and is Jewish, so he will be having his Bar Mitzvah.  To make matters worse, not only does Evan have to memorize Hebrew and write a speech, but he has to deal with moving to Indiana as a result of his parents’ divorce.  Evan isn’t happy about the move because his dad is dating another girl, and he has to leave his friends, Bill and Steve, along with his lifetime crush Nina Handelman behind.  Once Evan moves to Appleton, his mother and her friend Pam (who they are living with) search the internet for a Rabbi to help Evan prepare for his Bar Mitzvah.  Evan find this torturous!  Evan also meets people like Archie and Patrice, who are considered freaks by Brett, Kendra, Lucky, Fudge and Eddie.  Patrice and Archie despise all of these people except for Kendra.  Archie loves Kendra.  Evan starts to blend with the “cool” gang and gets into some trouble.  When he sends his Bar Mitzvah invitations, someone’s invitation was not going to go in the mailbox, and that someone found out.  I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.  It was fun to predict what would happen next, because there were so many downfalls.  I really liked this book.  Review by Rose

 

Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

I read this book Hush Hush, a fantasy teen romance novel about a boy whose nickname is Patch, and an ordinary girl named Nora.  Nora is attracted to Patch, but she’s scared of him, too.  He knows so much about her, but she knows so little abouthim.  Patch is always making cute jokes, and she’s always trying to avoid him.  Elliot is also trying to win her heart, but after she figures out he was part of a suicide investigations, she backs away from him, too.  This book is truly amazing, and it will leave you with an “awhh” at the end.  There are all these surprising uncoverings throughout the book, you will not want to stop reading.  I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a good thrill, love story, or even a fantasy!  Becca Fitzpatrick’s first novel Hush Hush will leave you breathless.  Review by Heba

 

Evermore by Alyson Noel

Evermore is the first book of the intriguing Immortals series.  Evermore is about a girl named Ever whose family died in a car accident.  She did, too, but somehow came back to live left with psychic powers that she can’t control.  She used to have a wonderful life when she lived with her family.  She was popular, but now she lives with her Aunt Sabine and only has two friends, who are not popular.  They’re called names like “Goth Freak” and “Gay Guy.”  Damen comes along and changes everything in her life, but Ever knows Damen is hiding something about his past and maybe even hers.  Alyson Noel takes you through an enchanting adventure throughout the Immortals series.  i would recommend this book and this series to anyone who likes a mystical adventure through a teem romance.  Review by Heba

Review of Viola in Reel Life by Adriana Trigiani

I’m sorry that I looked at any reviews of Adriana  Trigiani’s first young adult novel, because although I enjoyed reading it, I realize that some of the criticisms are accurate.  On the other hand, I’m glad I didn’t read the reviews before I read the book, because I probably wouldn’t have liked it as much.  Viola is a teen who has grown up in Brooklyn, NY, with all the benefits of living in such an ethnically diverse community, so she’s not too pleased when her parents drop her off at the all-girls school, Prefect Academy, in Indiana, for a year while they travel to Afghanistan to make a documentary film.  Viola is a budding filmmaker, and her relationship with her camera is one of the things that sustains her when she feels she’s lost everything else.  She does adapt a little too easily to living in a quad dorm room for someone who professes to be such a loner, but of course you’re happy that she finds such good friends.  There’s a little bit of a supernatural element to the story, too, that I really liked.  When Viola is looking at the footage she first shot when she arrived on campus, she notices a flash of red in the background.  When she looks closer, she sees it is a woman in an old-fashioned red dress, who she is sure wasn’t there when she was filming.  One of her friends back home assures her that it is a ghost who has something to tell Viola.  Later in the book, Viola decides to make a short film to enter in a student film contest, and the identity of the red ghost-woman gives her the personal interest slant that she needs.  During the course of the book, Viola gets her first boyfriend (who turns out to be too good to be true), finds out the real reason why her parents sent her to the academy for a year, and spends Christmas on the almost empty campus with her Broadway actress grandmother, who brings along her latest, much younger boyfriend.  All in all, the book was a lot of fun.  Review by Stacy Church

Review of Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr

This is a book about a young woman questioning her faith --and she has good reason to question it.  Her father is the pastor in a small town with one post office, one hardware store, only one restaurant that’s open on Sundays, but seven churches.  Even though everyone knows pretty much everything about everyone else, something no one seems to know is that Sam’s mother is a drunk.  Then Sam’s mom is in rehab, court-ordered after a drunken-driving accident, and Sam is left alone with her father, who seems to have infinite time for his parishioners’ problems, but no time for his own daughter or to visit his wife in rehab. The author describes Sam’s disillusionment perfectly when giving Sam’s reaction to a poster in the youth group room that shows a bunch of happy, multicultural-looking teens and the slogan: Community Happens! “I stared at that poster and pictured myself in it, smiling, knee-to-knee with the other youth group kids, who would be my best friends…Because, as we’re reminded all the time at church, community happens through sharing…I believed in  the theory, and expected that once I hit high school my life would be filled with all this understanding and friendship and spiritual bonding, and my faith would come alive, just like the poster promised.  It hasn’t really happened that way.”  Then, as if things couldn’t get any worse, a 13-year-old member of the youth group, Jody, disappears.  Sam’s lack of faith intensifies, and it’s clear that part of the problem is her lack of faith in her own father. As he’s getting ready to leave to visit the family of the missing girl, this is how Sam sees him: “He was strangely calm-looking, his tan face smooth, his hair in place, jaw set. It dawned on me that in a way he’s been prepping for a tragedy like this all his life; he’s like an actor getting his ultimate role.  For someone whose career is believing in God and convincing other people to, this is exactly the kind of thing that would give him a chance to really prove that everything he’s been saying is true.”  I absolutely love this book.  It’s a perfect combination of characters, setting and plot.  Review by Stacy Church

Review of Chasing the Bear, a Young Spenser Novel by Robert B. Parker

If you haven’t read any of Robert Parker’s Spenser novels, you might be confused by the chapters of this book that are set in the present day, where Spenser is talking to his girlfriend Susan, and being prodded by her to recall episodes from his childhood.  But you certainly don’t have to have read the Spenser books to appreciate the great stories that he tells.  Spenser grew up in a completely male household.  When his mother died, his father’s two brothers moved in to share the parenting duties, so Spenser grows up being taught to think for himself, to cook, and how to throw a mean right hook.  When Spenser’s best friend, Jeannie, drives by in a car driven by her mean, drunken father, and mouths “Help” at him out the window, he knows he has to go after her.  He’s scared, but he knows that if he goes to get help he’ll lose them, so he follows them to the jetty, and then out onto the river in a rowboat, with only his dog Pearl for help.  It’s an exciting story, and my favorite one.  Throughout the book, Spenser tells Susan that he spent his life looking for his one and only love, and she is it.  The book is truly an adventure book for boys, but it doesn’t hurt to hear such a heartfelt message from so tough a guy.  Review by Stacy Church

Review of Wings by Aprilynne Pike

I have to say that despite what might be the most outlandish concept for a plot in the history of literature (ok, that’s overstating it a bit), this book is actually pretty good. Laurel is just starting to attend the local high school after being homeschooled all her life. She’s not happy, but things haven’t gone too badly on her first day –she’s made some friends, she’s not too far behind the other kids in her classes, and she even gets a cute guy named David to eat his lunch outside with her. But then she feels a strange lump in between her shoulder blades. For some reason, she doesn’t tell her parents, even though every day it gets bigger and bigger. Finally, one day it opens up into a huge….flower. That’s right, flower. She still doesn’t tell her parents. She binds the petals down and wears loose clothes. Wait, it gets even weirder. She goes back to visit her old house with her parents, and when she goes into the woods for a walk, she’s approached by a strange-looking green boy, who tells her that she’s a faerie, and that faeries are not animals/humans, they are plants. So if you’re willing to suspend disbelief long enough to accept that Laurel never noticed she doesn’t have a heart beat, or blood in her veins, and never thought it was that unusual that she doesn’t eat food except for canned peaches, you will enjoy this book. It has an exciting ending that involves trolls, Laurel and David being weighted down and thrown in the river, saving Laurel’s dad (who was poisoned by the trolls), and Laurel telling her parents the truth about her faerieness. Oh, and by the way, one of the pieces of information that the green boy passed on to Laurel is that, for faeries, pollination is for procreation, sex is just for fun. Review by Stacy Church

Review of Eli the Good by Silas House

There is so much sadness in this book. The first paragraph kind of tells it all:

“That was the summer of the bicentennial, when all these things happened: my sister, Josie, began to hate our country and slapped my mother’s face; my wild aunt, Nell, moved in with us, bringing along all five thousand or so of her records and a green record player that ran on batteries; my father started going back to Vietnam in his dreams, and I saw him cry; my mother did the Twist in front of the whole town and nearly lost us all. I was ten years old, and I did something unforgivable.”

Whew. The story lives up to all of that, too. In fact, there’s even more sadness. Eli’s best friend, Edie, is abandoned by her mother, and has to live with her alcoholic father. Eli finds out (by eavesdropping, which he indulges in whenever possible) that the reason his Aunt Nell moved in with them is because she has cancer. His mother and Nell are very close, but Eli's father and Nell --not so much. While Eli’s father was off fighting in Vietnam, Nell was protesting the war, and because of one very famous photograph, everyone in the country knows her, which Eli's father takes as a personal affront. Eli watches everything, and, despite the closeness of Eli’s family, he doesn’t really feel taken care of by anyone. He’s never forgiven his mother for something he overheard her say to his father once, “I love you too much. More than anything. More than anybody.” Eli’s great sadness is that he feels his mother doesn’t love him or his sister as much as she loves their father. The writing in the book is so beautiful, and it really captures the essence of the time (1976). Review by Stacy Church

Review of After Ever After by Jordan Sonnenblick

I couldn’t wait to read this new book by one of my favorite authors, Jordan Sonnenblick, who also wrote Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie (see review on Book Bits June 1, 2006) , and Zen and the Art of Faking It (see review September 16, 2008).  After Ever After tells the story of Jeffrey Alper, the main character from Drums, Girls…, when he’s in 8th grade.  If you read Drums, Girls…you know that in 4th grade Jeffrey was being treated for cancer.  That book was mainly the story of his older brother, Steven, and how Jeffrey’s cancer affected Steven’s life.  Sonnenblick’s books are funny, even though the things the characters are dealing with are not funny at all.  Jeffrey as an 8th grader has some physical and mental problems that are after-effects of his illness and treatment.  His right foot kind of drags due to nerve damage, and he has some learning and attention problems from the powerful drugs he was given in chemotherapy.  All right, enough with the bad stuff.  Jeffrey’s best friend, Tad, is a somewhat bitter, angry person, maybe because of the cancer that he has survived twice, but maybe just because that’s the way he is.  Jeffrey has terrible trouble with math, and the school district has just enacted a rule that says if you fail the new standardized test, you can’t pass 8th grade, even if your grades have always been good.  Jeffrey knows there’s no way he’s going to pass, and after getting busted for hiding the letter from the school to his parents, he accepts Tad’s offer of tutoring.  In exchange, he challenges Tad, who’s in a wheelchair, to work out enough to be able to walk across the stage at graduation.  Jeffrey also gets his first girlfriend.  She is sort-of a little too perfect to believe, but you have to feel happy for Jeffrey.  Lindsey and Tad hatch up a plan to protest the standardized testing, and since Jeffrey is grounded for months, they are able to hide it from him right up until the last minute.  This book is a quick but fun read.  Review by Stacy Church

Review of The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin by Josh Berk

This is the funniest book I have read in quite a while, and I just couldn’t put it down.  Will Halpin is deaf.  He has finagled his way out of the “deaf school” and into the local high school, even though he will have to completely rely on his lip-reading skills.  The public high school doesn’t have a closed-captioning system, or interpreters like the fancy private schools.  He bumbled his way through a hearing test by guessing, lip-reading and promising to wear his hearing aids, which he usually just carries in his pocket.  On the bus, he learns that if he sits in the seat behind the bus driver, he can watch the other kids in the bus driver’s mirror and read their lips to see what they’re talking about.  People mostly ignore him, even though in every class he gets seated in the front corner of the room so that he can read the teacher’s lips, if they keep facing him, that is.  His math teacher, the sexy Miss Prefontaine, turns her back on him so she can make snide comments about him when she catches him reading his history textbook in math class (other bad things come out about her later in the story).  There’s the usual pecking order, and the only kid who befriends Will is the second-least-popular student, Devon, who knows very basic sign language.  Later in the book, he gives Will a PDA so they can text each other, even when they’re together, which I thought was brilliant.  During a class field trip to a coal mine, the most popular kid disappears, and then is found dead at the bottom of a mine shaft.  Is it murder?  Will and Devon decide to team up like the Hardy Boys to try and solve the murder, but when they break into the school to look at the footage of the police interrogations, Devon has them fast-forward through his.  Is he somehow involved?  Some funny things from the book: Will calls the school bell a sound-impairment discriminator; instead of et cetera, Will says et crapera; when his mom signs to him during dinner, he tells her not to talk with her hands full; once when his mom asks him, “What’s that noise?” he says, “You’re asking the wrong guy.”  Review by Stacy Church

Review of Watching Jimmy by Nancy Hartry

I love Carolyn, the main character of Watching Jimmy. She feels a lot of regret about what happened to her best friend Jimmy. She thinks she should have yelled at her Aunt Jean not to leave them alone with her brother, Uncle Ted, or that she could have run faster when Uncle Ted went zooming off down the street with Jimmy sprawled out across the trunk of his fancy car, or maybe if she had screamed, someone would have come and stopped the awful thing that happened next. The worst thing is that Uncle Ted told everyone Jimmy fell off a swing at the park and that he tried to wake him up and then carried him to his car to get help. Carolyn knows it won’t do any good to tell, so she tries to protect Jimmy as best she can after he comes home from the hospital. She never leaves him alone with Uncle Ted, and she coerces Uncle Ted into helping Aunt Jean by threatening him in a way that only he will understand. Carolyn has her own troubles, but she knows they’re nothing compared to Aunt Jean’s: Ted claims ownership of her house and says she’ll have to move out; Jimmy could have surgery to help with his brain injury but there’s no money to pay for it; and she has the great sadness of having lost her older son in the war. Carolyn has a couple of talents. She has a beautiful singing voice (but she’s careful not to let anyone hear her), and she’s a moving public speaker (which she’s not shy about showing off at all). This is a story where good triumphs in the end, even though things can never go back to the way they used to be. Review by Stacy Church

Review of Salt by Maurice Gee

It’s been a while since I’ve read a fantasy I liked as much as this one. The opening scene where Hari’s father, Tarl, is being taken away to be a slave could be straight out of a historical fiction, except for the part where the guards use “their electric hands” to shoot “fizzing bolts” into the air. Is this science fiction? Then comes the part where Harl “sent a questing thread out from his mind to the horses, found them and whispered silently: Brother horse, sister horse, the black fly stings your rump,” causing the horses to lurch forward. Harl has been learning from Lo, an ancient prisoner, how to communicate with animals without using words and although he is unable to prevent his father being taken away, he does manage to escape himself. Another story is unfolding at the same time: Pearl, the daughter of a privileged family runs away to escape an arranged marriage, taking with her Tealeaf, the maid who has been teaching her to communicate wordlessly. It is inevitable (for the story, anyway) that two young people fleeing the same city should meet up in the countryside; what isn’t so obvious is that they would meet when Hari kills Pearl’s brother (who is seeking Pearl, but is only too happy to be sidetracked by hunting and killing a Burrows boy). And so the great adventure begins. Tealeaf knows that the children need each other, but she won’t tell them why. Tarl’s father has been taken to the most dangerous of the mines, Deep Salt, from which no one has ever returned. The quest to save Tarl turns into a race to save mankind from itself. In this first book of The Salt Trilogy there’s plenty of adventure, suspense, fighting and romance to keep most readers happy. Review by Stacy Church

Review of Love is the Higher Law by David Levithan

It feels so strange to read a book about what happened on 9/11.  It’s been a while since I thought about what it felt like that day to be watching events unfold on the TV, but it sure came back when I started reading this book.  There are 5 parts: What Just Happened, The Next Hours and the Next Days, The Drown of Things and the Swim of Things, Hold Dear, and After; and each section is told in 3 voices: Claire, Jasper and Peter.  After awhile I did get tired of the sort of mystical-speak of one character in particular.  But, at least at the beginning, the voices of the kids rang very true and, like I said, brought back a lot of memories.  Definitely worth reading.  Review by Stacy Church

Review of King of the Screwups by K.L. Going

This is the latest book by K.L. Going, the author of one of my favorite YA books, Fat Kid Rules the World.  Liam Geller is the son of a fabulously wealthy and successful CEO and a formerly fabulous supermodel.  He himself, as the title says, is the King of the Screwups.  His father is abusive and neglectful, seemingly  seeing Liam as an extension of his wife, who he seems to loathe.  The only real insight into this situation comes from the short chapters recounting past events in Liam’s life.  Reading them makes you want to shake Liam and tell him to pay more attention to what has brought him to this point: being kicked out of the house after being caught by his father about to have sex on his desk while he and Liam’s mom are right downstairs.  Instead of getting shipped off to his grandparents (who seem to hate him as much as his father does), Liam’s mom arranges for him to go to his dad’s brother, who was ousted from the family 17 years ago for some unnamed transgression.  And so Liam finds himself living in a trailer park with a glam-rocker/night DJ he calls “Aunt Pete.”  Liam proves to himself that he’s still a screwup by immediately becoming popular in his new school despite his best efforts at being nerdy (joining the AV club, befriending the outsider girl who lives in the next trailer).  I love the description of Liam getting dressed for the first time in the trailer. “…I make a hundred trips back and forth to the tiny, filthy bathroom at the other end of the trailer.  I consider rushing, but getting ready is a ritual, so I do each thing carefully.  I shower, shave, moisturize, and choose cologne –the one that matches my mood – then put together the right clothes.  Nothing high fashion or anything –those are best left for the runway –just the brands and designs that will fit in but are interesting enough to catch people’s attention.  Getting ready is the only part of my day I can be sure I won’t screw up.”  It’s hard to believe that anyone could be so oblivious to the true nature of his situation as Liam is, but Pete and his friends do their best to get him to see his good qualities.  The book has a satisfying ending (which I won’t hint at, except to say that the dad loses out).  Review by Stacy Church