Author: booknutgirls

booknutgirls http://thebooknutdotcom.wordpress.com I read. I blog. I sell books. I chauffeur my kids. What more do you need to know?

Linger

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by Maggie Stiefvater
ages: 14+
First sentence: “This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf and a girl who was becoming one.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Linger picks up where Shiver left off (so if you’re one of the few people on this planet who’ve not read that, then be forewarned, there’s no getting around spoilers): Sam and Grace are an item, since it seems Sam has been cured of werewolfism. Or so they think. As winter slowly turns into spring, Grace is sick for the first time in her life. Her parents have (finally, however unbelievably) decided to be parents, and are clamping down on their relationship. And, in order to complicate things, the new wolf that Beck turned last winter, Cole, is adding his own problems, especially considering that he used to be the famous, yet self-destructive, lead-singer of the hip band, NARKOTIKA.

Told in the same evocative prose as her first book, Steifvater takes us to some of the same places that Shiver did. But not always with the same results. Falling in love is always more interesting than being in love, and for that reason Sam and Grace felt stale, while Cole and the attraction he holds for Isabel took front-and-center in my book. It really didn’t matter that both characters were very unlikable; their attraction was immediate and one of those destined to destruction. It was fascinating to watch. Granted, Cole is also brilliant, and may have figured out the trick with the whole werewolf thing. That always helps any relationship, I think.

I didn’t find it as compelling as Shiver, but it was still good. Stiefvater knows how to turn a phrase, a way to evoke a setting that makes you believe you are there. (Someday, books will come with smells and tastes, too.) And for that (and because it’s the next book in the trilogy), it’s worth reading.

I Shall Wear Midnight

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by Terry Pratchett
ages: 13+
First sentence: “Why was it, Tiffany Aching wondered, that people liked noise so much?”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Tiffany Aching has discovered that she was a witch, gone through training, accidentally joined a dance she shouldn’t have and had to kiss the winter as a result. Now, she’s back at the Chalk, a sixteen-year-old girl, trying to manage her stead as a witch. It’s not going too horribly: she’s managing to get the things done that need doing. Until one day, things start to unravel. It began with a beating of a young girl by her father, and the rough music started. Then it morphed into something grander: Roland’s engagement to Letitia, daughter of an uppity Duchess, the Baron’s death, and a growing resentment and fear of witches. It turned out that Tiffany had accidentally let out something quite evil, something which, if left to roam, will result in the demise of all the witches. And it’s up to her to make things right again.

I know it sounds dark, and there are some dark moments, but this book is so wonderfully affirming, so incredibly hopeful, that it isn’t the dark bits that stand out. While it’s not as hilarious as some of the other books in the series, it’s still quite amusing. And Tiffany really, truly grows into her own. She has to give up some things, and learn some things, and make some difficult decisions, but she does it all. And she makes some new friends, looking past prejudice and bad first impressions to see that everyone is wonderfully more complicated and interesting that we give them credit for at first.

A perfect ending for an excellent series.

Library Loot 2010-39

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I tell myself that I’m reading for the Cybils, and I need to put other books on hold. Then I actually do put them on hold, and then they come in, and then I need to read them. I am reading for the Cybils, I promise. I’m just squeezing in other books, too….

Picture Books:
The Wild Swans, by Susan Jeffers
Moon Dreams, by Ruth Martin/Illus. by Oliver Latyk
Lyle Walks the Dogs, by Bernard Waber/Illus. by Paulis Waber
The Day the Cow Sneezed, by James Flora
Corky Cub’s Crazy Caps (Animal Antics a to Z), by Barbara deRubertis/Illus. by R.W. Alley

Middle Grade:
The Archaeolojesters, by Andreas Oertel
A Million Shades of Gray, by Cynthia Kadohata
Zora and Me, by Victoria Bond & T. R. Simon
Mallory Goes Green!, by Laurie Friedman (Illus. by Jennifer Kalis)

Adult Fiction:
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, by David Sedaris (Illus. by Ian Falconer)

The roundup is either at Adventures of an Intrepid Reader or The Captive Reader. Obligatory FTC note: the links are provided through my Amazon Associates account. If you click through and actually purchase one of these books, I’ll get a teeny, tiny payment. But, since no one ever does, and it’s SO much easier using the associates account to put up these links, I’m going to keep doing it.

Clementine, Friend of the Week

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by Sarah Pennypacker
ages: 8+
First sentence: “I couldn’t wait for Margaret to get on the bus Monday afternoon.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Dear Clementine,

I will be very sad if you ever decide to grow up. You are what is most wonderful about kids: eager, curious, meaning well, and yet with a stubborn streak that makes me believe that you’ll go places when you get older. I love that you call your brother by vegetable names, in protest for your name (which is quite cheery, by the way; I hope you like it when you get older). I think your boundless creativity — Moisturizer for your cat’s name; Flomax for your friend’s iguana? Priceless! — and energy is amazing. I admire your parents for being as patient and indulging at they are. (They are pretty cool, too.)

As for your adventure this time, I feel your pain. To lose your best friend, due to a fight that you have no idea what it’s about, is a tough thing. And then to lose your cat, too? Ouch. But, you get through it, and I think you realize, at least a little bit, what a great girl — and good friend — you are.

Don’t ever change.

Best,
Melissa

P.S. And Ms. Pennypacker? Keep the books coming! My girls love having someone like Clementine to read about!

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

(Not Quite) 10 Questions for Jackson Pearce

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Jackson Pearce is one difficult woman to get a hold of. Seriously. It’s because she has her fingers in so many pies, I think. There’s her blog, and her presence on Twitter and Facebook. And don’t forget her vlog, on which she recently tacked a 30 days of vlogging series. Oh, and she writes books. Her most recent one, Sisters Red, was a captivating take on Red Riding Hood, and the companion book, Sweetly, is out in June 2011. It’s no wonder that I had to beg and plead (and become an annoying email/Twitter presence) to get her to answer a few questions. And it’s a good thing she was gracious enough to squeeze me in.

MF: Which character of yours was easiest/most fun to write?
JP: I think, oddly enough, Scarlett was the most fun to write. She’s so focused, so intense…it was like being on one of those haunted-house-carnival-rides that happened entirely inside her head. Even though it was super dark sometimes, it was always interesting. She was NOT easy, however. I think Jinn, in AS YOU WISH, was actually the easiest to write. He’s so fun and wry and sarcastic, it was always a blast.

MF: How about the most difficult?
JP: The most difficult to write was Gretchen, in my upcoming book SWEETLY. I think I started the first draft of that book before her personality was fully formed in my head, and thus I had to write and rewrite and rewrite. I finally found her voice, but it took a while!

MF:You spend a lot of time with Twitter and Facebook, not to mention your blog and vlogging. How does social media affect your work? (or does it?)
JP: I love twitter/blogging/vlogging/facebook, and did it long before I sold my first book– that said, I do think being able to so easily connect with readers is wonderful. It doesn’t necessarily affect the writing directly, but it certainly affects the “author” side of the job in that I get to have fun, meaningful conversations with readers instead of wondering if anyone out there in the world is reading my work!

MF: Who or what inspires you to write?
JP: Nothing specific inspires me to write– I write because if I don’t write my stories down, no one else is going to! Writing is the only way I can get what’s in my head out into the world.
MF: Since this was going around the interwebs recently, I’m curious: why do you write for a YA audience?
JP: I feel like this is similar to asking “Why do you like ice cream?” Because it’s delicious, and well, I just…DO. It’s simple. I write for YA because it’s awesome and I just DO. It’s not a conscious choice, it’s just the stories in my head are YA. Equally simple.
MF: What are your top five books (at least right now)?
JP: This is always, always, always changing, but:
THE VESPERTINE by Saundra Mitchell
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE by Beth Revis
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN by Mark Twain (yep, I’m a nerd)
MOCKINGJAY by Suzanne Collins
Hm, I can’t think of a 5th! I’ve been doing a lot more writing than reading lately, it seems…

MF: Thank you for your time, Jackson!

October Jacket Flap-a-Thon

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Happy Halloween!! And, on top of that, it’s the end of another month, and time for another wrap up… there wasn’t much that jumped out and grabbed me, but here’s a few that caught my attention.

Howl’s Moving Castle (Greenwillow Books): “In the land of Ingary, such things as spells, invisible cloaks, and seven-league boots were everyday things. The Witch of the Waste was another matter. After fifty years of quiet, it was rumored that the Witch was about to terrorize the country again. So when a moving black castle, blowing dark smoke from its four thin turrets, appeared on the horizon, everyone thought it was the Witch. The castle, however, belonged to Wizard Howl, who, it was said, liked to suck the souls of young girls. The Hatter sisters–Sophie, Lettie, and Martha–and all the other girls were warned not to venture into the streets alone. But that was only the beginning. In this giant jigsaw puzzle of a fantasy, people and things are never quite what they seem. Destinies are intertwined, identities exchanged, lovers confused. The Witch has placed a spell on Howl. Does the clue to breaking it lie in a famous poem? And what will happen to Sophie Hatter when she enters Howl’s castle? Diana Wynne Jones’s entrancing fantasy is filled with surprises at every turn, but when the final stormy duel between the Witch and the Wizard is finished, all the pieces fall magically into place.”

It gives away more than I would like, but it makes the story seem so… fun. Which it is.

Geektastic (Little, Brown Books): “Acclaimed authors Holly Black (Ironside)and Cecil Castellucci (Boy Proof) have united in geekdom to edit short stories from some of the best selling and most promising geeks in young adult literature: M.T. Anderson, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, John Green, Tracy Lynn, Cynthia and Greg Leitich Smith, David Levithan, Kelly Link, Barry Lyga, Wendy Mass, Garth Nix, Scott Westerfield, Lisa Yee, and Sara Zarr. With illustrated interstitials from comic book artists Hope Larson and Bryan Lee O’Malley, Geektastic covers all things geeky, from Klingons and Jedi Knights to fan fiction, theater geeks, and cosplayers. Whether you’re a former, current, or future geek, or if you just want to get in touch with your inner geek, Geektastic will help you get your geek on!”

No, I didn’t really like the book overall, but this jacket flap copy did its job: it made me want to read the book.

Happyface (Little, Brown and Company): “Just put on a happy face! Enter Happyface’s journal and get a peek into the life of a shy, artistic boy who decides to reinvent himself as a happy-go-lucky guy after he moves to a new town. See the world through his hilariously self-deprecating eyes as he learns to shed his comic-book-loving, computer-game playing ways. Join him as he makes new friends, tries to hide from his past, and ultimately learns to face the world with a genuine smile. With a fresh and funny combination of text and fully integrated art, Happyface is an original storytelling experience.”

Ugh. Seriously. Ugh. It makes the book sound cloyingly sweet, but it’s the furthest thing from it. It’s a dark book, and it doesn’t have a happily-ever-after ending. Someone didn’t really read the book.

One Crazy Summer (Amistad): “Eleven-year-old Delphine has it together. Even though her mother, Cecile, abandoned her and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, seven years ago. Even though her father and Big Ma will send them from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to stay with Cecile for the summer. And even though Delphine will have to take care of her sisters, as usual, and learn the truth about the missing pieces of the past. When the girls arrive in Oakland in the summer of 1968, Cecile wants nothing to do with them. She makes them eat Chinese takeout dinners, forbids them to enter her kitchen, and never explains the strange visitors with Afros and black berets who knock on her door. Rather than spend time with them, Cecile sends Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern to a summer camp sponsored by a revolutionary group, the Black Panthers, where the girls get a radical new education. Set during one of the most tumultuous years in recent American history, one crazy summer is the heartbreaking, funny tale of three girls in search of the mother who abandoned them—an unforgettable story told by a distinguished author of books for children and teens, Rita Williams-Garcia.”

It isn’t the best copy ever, but it did make me curious about the book. That and the cover is *so* cute.

Other books read this month:
Girl in Translation
Dream factory
Bogbrush the Barbarian
The Graveyard Book (audio)
Extraordinary
Countdown
The Fool’s Girl
Marcelo in the Real World
Crossed Wires
Touch Blue
The Red Umbrella
Rocky Road

Running total: 146 books
Adult fiction: 23
YA: 54
MG: 44
Non-fiction: 15
Graphic Novel: 10
Didn’t Finish: 7

One Crazy Summer

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by Rita Williams-Garcia
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Good thing the plane had seat belts and we’d been strapped in tight before takeoff.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

This book is many things. It’s a picture of Oakland in 1968, though it’s not as turbulent as I expected it to be. It’s a picture of an independent girl who looks after her younger sisters thrust into a new environment. It’s a picture of a neglectful artist mom (why are all the neglectful moms artists? Are all artists naturally flaky?) learning to accept and love her children again? It’s a picture of the clash between southern African-American mannerisms (pre-civil rights, of course) and more progressive, more earthy west coast sentiments.

It’s all of these things, and which you would think would overwhelm a 215 page book. But, through Williams-Garcia’s writing and plotting, she makes it all work. Delphine, our eleven-year-old main character, has it all together: she keeps an eye on her sisters, Vonetta and Fern; she’s responsible, dependable, if a bit plain. And so when her Pa decides to send them clear across the country to Oakland to see their mother who left when Fern was a baby, she figures it’s more of the same. And, for a while it is. Their mother isn’t terribly happy to see them — though she did pick them up at the airport, which must count for something — and sends them off every morning to a summer camp run by the Black Panthers. It’s there that Delphine — and Vonetta and Fern, to a smaller extent — learn about the horrid things that have been happening to their people, and about how the traditions that Big Ma (who’s from Alabama) have been teaching them, are keeping them from reaching their full potential.

It’s a good, solid book, for the most part. There are some interesting questions raised about place and race and belonging. But I didn’t absolutely love the book. Perhaps it has something to do with my bias against crazy/neglectful mothers (though I didn’t mind the mother in Rocky Road; perhaps that has something to do with her medical diagnosis?). Perhaps it was that I didn’t think there was enough growth portrayed to justify the hopeful ending. That may just be me wanting more from a middle grade book. Or it may be the opposite: there wasn’t enough of a happy ending to suit me; it almost felt like they were spinning in the same place all summer. The growth that does occur is very, very subtle. I sit and think about it, and the pieces fall together… and yet there seems something a bit off. Nothing earth-shattering: it’s definitely a good book,and there’s definitely lots to talk and think about.

It’s just not as great as I was hoping it would be.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

Crossed Wires

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by Rosy Thornton
ages: adult
First sentence: “
I’ll still tell you to support your local indie bookstore, but you can’t buy it there. (Maybe you can order it? Or buy one of her other books?) Check it out on Amazon.
Review copy provided by the author.

It started off uneventfully. (Don’t all good love stories begin that way?)

Single-mom Mina, who works the phones at a Sheffield call center for auto insurance, just happens to get the call where single-dad (and Cambridge professor) Peter reports that he’s crashed his car into a stump. You wouldn’t think anything would come of this one-time, chance encounter. Especially since Mina has her hands full with her 10-year-old daughter, Sal, and her younger sister, Jess, who’s never around. And Peter, with his 9-year-old twins, is still kind of mourning the death of his wife several years back. But, when Peter (who tends to be incredibly accident-prone) crashes his car yet again, he calls and asks for Mina which begins a phone relationship that slowly develops into something more.

It’s an understated little book; both Peter and Mina dance around their relationship. It’s really only a friendship, but one of those friendships that mean something. Someone you come to rely on and find comfort in. It doesn’t matter that they live miles apart, have completely separate lives. In fact, as a reader, you don’t really care that you’re reading a fluff romance book in which there is, in fact, no romance. It’s more a life book: watching Mina deal with her ups and downs; watching Peter as he muddles through, and then how they reach out to each other to try and find something to hold on to. The writing is charming, the characters are ones you want to move in next door to. It’s Britishness at its finest, where you want to grab a cup of tea and a comfy blanket and curl up with a good book.

And it’s just the book to do that with.

Library Loot-38

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More Cybils books… this will be a theme for the next couple of months. The non-fiction is for M’s English class, and the one, lone non-Cybils book is next month’s read for C’s mother-daughter book club. M was SUPER excited about the Riordan (C’s grumbling because she hasn’t read it yet, but M got to it first), and I’m excited about the new Wendy Mass. And the rest of them look really good, too…

Picture Books:
Small Florence, Piggy Pop Star, by Claire Alexander
The Eensy Weensy Spider Freaks Out (Big Time), by Troy Cummings
Buy My Hats, by Dave Horowitz
Brownie & Pearl See the Sights, by Cynthia Ryland/Illus. by Brian Biggs

Middle Grade:
The Lost Hero, by Rick Riordan
Nobody Was Here: Seventh Grade in the Life of Me, Penelope, by Alison Pollet
The Candymakers, by Wendy Mass
My Life as a Book, by Janet Tashjian
The Dreamer, by Pam Munoz Ryan
The Kneebone Boy, by Ellen Potter
Blessing’s Bead , by Debby Dahl Edwardson
Nuts, by Kacy Cook
The Wonder of Charlie Anne, by Kimberly Newton Fusco
Emily’s Fortune, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
The Pickle King, by Rebecca Promitzer

Non-Fiction:
How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines, by Thomas C. Foster

The roundup is either at Adventures of an Intrepid Reader or The Captive Reader. Obligatory FTC note: the links are provided through my Amazon Associates account. If you click through and actually purchase one of these books, I’ll get a teeny, tiny payment. But, since no one ever does, and it’s SO much easier using the associates account to put up these links, I’m going to keep doing it.

Rocky Road

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by Rose Kent
ages: 10+
First sentence: “‘Pleeeez stop singing, Ma.'”
Support your local indie bookstore: buy it there!

Tess is not happy with her mother. Sure, life in San Antonio wasn’t all that terrific: their Pa walked out on them years ago, Ma’s grand ideas for making money kept flopping, and the rent was overdue. But was all that a reason to uproot the family — Ma, Tess and her younger, deaf brother Jordan — to Schenectady, New York? Especially in January, the dead of winter. And the grand plan this time? To open an ice cream shop. Tess is less than pleased, to say the least.

Adjusting to the snow, ice, and a whole new middle school isn’t a piece of cake; it’s cold and she doesn’t quite feel like she fits in. Jordan keeps resisting his new school, he’s not learning new signs, which worries Tess. Ma’s spending all her time (and money) getting the new shop ready, which really worries Tess, since Ma’s prone to high ups and crashing lows, and Tess knows they can’t afford to have that happen.

It’s only as the winter wears on, and Tess finds ways to reach out: in the Senior Center community that they live in, at school with peer mediation, and eventually at the ice cream shop, that Tess finds out what community, friendship and surviving the rocky road of life is really kind of sweet.

It’s a sweet little book; very distinctive in its voice: the clash of Texas and New York is just oozing out of it. The characters, though perhaps a bit stereotypical (deaf younger brother provides challenge, crazy mom, well-meaning neighbors who offer up home-made charm, strange Zen-vegan new friends, crusty ex-Navy man with a heart of gold), still are quite enjoyable and engaging to read about. The conflict is all with Tess and her mother; Tess feels so much older than her twelve years, mostly because her mother — due to an eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder — is so unreliable. And the whole crazy mother thing is often so overdone. But in this case it worked to make it a true Middle Grade novel: Tess took the initiative, got help from friends, including adults, and worked to make things — like this book — a success.

The ice cream recipes in the back are just an added bonus.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)