Eighth Grade Bites

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The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, #1
by Heather Brewer
ages: 11+
First sentence: “A tree branch slapped John Craig across the face, scraping his skin, but he kept on running and ignored the stabbing of pine needles on his bare feet.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Vlad is not your typical eighth grader. Well, he is in many ways: he’s got a massive crush on Meredith, who seems to like his best friend, Henry. He doesn’t do spectacularly well in school, but manages okay. His parents died in a freak accident three years ago, and so he has that to deal with.

Oh, and did I mention? He’s a vampire.

His mom was human, and his dad was a vampire and (without all that messy Twilighty swoony vampirey stuff) Vlad’s been raised as a vampire. Granted, he’s a humane one: aside from biting Henry when they were eight, he’s never actually fed upon a human, but rather eating donated blood (in very creative forms) or raw meat. (This book was written in 2007, before the Twilight phenomenon, so no unfair Breaking Dawn comparisons, please.) As if his life wasn’t complicated enough — it’s no fun being a creature of the night when you’re forced to go to school during the day! — it looks like his substitute English teacher — brought in after his teacher, the Mr. Craig of the opening sentence, disappears — is figuring out Vlad’s secret.

It was billed as “ghoulishly funny”, but I didn’t really find it that. I did find it fascinating, and I liked Brewer’s take on the vampire world from the get-go. But, I guess I wanted more than a sullen eighth-grade boy (do all vampires need to be sullen?) trying to get over his dad’s death. Stick with the book, though: the ending few chapters are quite exciting. Enough so that I’m willing to give the other books in the series a try. Maybe Vlad will perk up a bit.

I do have to note that the library copy I read had pages with dried blood on them. Creepy, yes, but also very annoying. Can we make it a policy to not bleed on vampire books. Please?

I Need to Get Out More

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Because I’m positively giddy about being able to go to this (stolen from Mother Reader):

It is officially time to sign up for the KidLitosphere Conference taking place on October 17th, 2009 at the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel. The conference is open to bloggers – and wannabe bloggers – in children’s and young adult literature. Yes, this includes YA/Kidlit authors, illustrators, editors, and publishers who blog or would like to blog.

So what’s the conference like, other than awesome? The day starts with breakfast from 7:00 to 8:00 a.m, where you can catch up with old friends or meet new ones. The sessions go from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and will cover:

-The Blog Within: An Interview With Your Inner Blogger
– Building a Better Blog: Best Practices, Ideas, and Tips
– Split Reviewer/Author Sessions:
Better Book Reviews/Writing Ideas for Blogging Authors
– Split Reviewer/Author Sessions:
Social Networking for Fun (and Profit?)
– Authors, Publishers, Reviewers (and ARC’s): A Panel Conversation
– Coming Together, Giving Back: Building Community, Literacy, and the Reading Message (KidLitosphere CentralPBS/RIF/Literacy)

There will also be a Meet the Author time at the end where writers and illustrators can bring their books. A fun dinner to mix-and-mingle is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. to 10 p.m. with the continuing party moving to the hotel bar. The registration fee for all of this – including the breakfast and dinner – is only $100. It’s a total bargain.

Informal outings will take place on Friday and Sunday. We’re hoping to arrange a Library of Congress tour for Friday afternoon and we’ll gather for dinner near the hotel around 6:00 p.m. Sunday’s expedition may involve a local DC bookstore, Politics and Prose. If I can get some authors to register soon, we may even be able to arrange a reading.

Rooms are currently on hold at the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel for the amazing rate of $109 a night. They will only be held until September 16th, and if our block is filled before that low rate may not be available. Book soon. Since I’ve held rooms with two double beds, you could bring your family along to visit DC or share with a blogger buddy.

It should be noted that the hotel is a mile from National Airport and free shuttle service is available. A Metro Station is on the same block and goes to Washington DC in minutes. In fact, Downtown DC is only two miles away. The hotel is right next to the Crystal City Shops and a few blocks from the upscale Fashion Center at Pentagon City. If you want more information about the hotel, visit the website of the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel.

The registration form is available at KidLitosphere Central. There are a limited number of spaces available, so please sign-up soon.

My goal? To enjoy my time there, and to meet as many people as I can. Which means y’all have to come… right?

Library Loot #30

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Summer’s winding down: the library was positively quiet today. (Which meant everyone kept glaring at my loud children…) On the plus side: more books and movies were actually there. I think I like it better when it’s quiet. 🙂

For A/K:
Go, Baby Jaguar! (Go, Diego, Go! Ready-to-Read) (the downside of summer being over: there are Dora books in!)
Pizza Kittens, by Charlotte Voake
Duck Soup, by Jackie Urbanovic**
Which Puppy?, by Kate Feiffer/Illus. by Jules Feiffer
Wombat Walkabout, by Carol Diggory Shields/Illus by Sophie Blackall**
Our Marching Band, by Lloyd Moss/Illus. by Diana Cain Bluthenthal
Thing-Thing, by Cary Fagan & Nicholas Debon
What do you do When a Monster says Boo?, by Hope Vestergaard/Illus. by Maggie Smith
Is There Really a Human Race?, by Jamie Lee Curtis/Illus. by Laura Cornell**

For C:
The Model President, by Brian Tacang
Bad Kitty Gets a Bath, by Nick Bruel
Raucous Royals: Test your Royal Wits: Crack Codes, Solve Mysteries, and Deduce WhichRoyal Rumors are True, by Carlyn Beccia

For M:
She — remarkably — didn’t pick up anything this week!

For me:
Faith, Hope, and Ivy June, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Someone Like You, by Sarah Dessen
Eighth Grade Bites (Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, Book 1), by Heather Brewer

The roundup is either at Reading Adventures or A Striped Armchair.

*Ones that M eventually read.
**Picture books we really liked.

Darkwood

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by M. E. Breen
ages: 10 to 14
First sentence: “The sun sets so quickly in Howland that the people who live there have no word for evening.”
Review copy sent to me by the publisher.
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Hmmm. This book has an interesting premise: an orphan girl, Annie, is sold by her “Uncle” to the Drop, the mine where all the kingdom’s jewelstones are mined. Except, Annie — who has learned that she can see in the dark — gets away. She makes her way to the main city, gets into the palace, and begins to discover that the fact that the Drop is exploting children is only the tip of the iceberg.

But, the premise — complete with twists and turns and prophecies — wasn’t quite enough to make this book soar. With all it’s evocative language and descriptions, and Annie running about here and there and everywhere, I found myself slightly confused with what was exactly going on. And when the big reveal came at the end, I was completely underwhelmed. Maybe this has something to do with being an adult, but I’m not sure. The plotting felt uneven — too little happened for too much of the book, then it all came crashing down in the last 1/3. Which is too bad, becuase, really: it was an interesting premise.

Shug

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by Jenny Han
ages: 10+
First sentence: “It is the end of a summer afternoon and the sun will be setting soon, our favorite part of the day.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Ah, first love. Generally speaking, I’m pretty jaded about the whole first love thing — especially if it morphs into True Love — but I found this book by Jenny Han to be exceptionally sweet and poignant as it looked at a girls first “real” crush, as well as the bumps and joys of growing up.

Twelve-year-old Annemarie Wilcox — Shug for short — has just realized she’s is in love. Unfortunately, it’s with her best friend, Mark, who increasingly — now that they’ve started the 7th grade — won’t admit that she exists. On top of that, things are getting increasingly worse between her parents, her best friend Elaine has a boyfriend and is spending less time with Shug. Not to mention that she’s being forced (for the sake of a grade) to tutor her mortal enemy. Increasingly, Shug just can’t seem to find where she fits in all of this change.

There is so many things to love about this book, from it’s genuine Southernness (I’m a sucker for Southern books), to the affection Han has for her characters, to Shug’s voice throughout the book. Shug is a charming character, torn between hanging on to childhood and yet entranced by growing up. She’s easy to relate to: everyone has a first crush, and, for me at least, I found the awkwardness Shug has to be completely believable.

In short, Han has captured a perfect slice of pre-teen life. And done it in a quiet, yet completely charming, way.

The Handmaid’s Tale

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by Margaret Atwood
ages: adult
First sentence: “We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I read this book in my early 20s, sometime soon after I finished college. I remember thinking that this was a Great Warning; plausible enough to become true, and thus making it that much more powerful to me. I was moved to anger by the treatment of women as objects, and considered this one of the Best Books I’ve Ever Read.

This time around — 15 years later — I am still moved by it, but in a completely different way. The basic plot, for those who are unfamiliar with this dystopian classic, is that the U.S. falls apart after an attack which kills the president and Congress. The country is put into a state of emergency, which evolves into this warped religious state. Offred, our main character, is a handmaid: a woman whose sole purpose in life is to have babies for the Commanders. She is told that it is her religious duty to do so; the Wives and Marthas (the maids and cooks) tolerate her presence because her “duty” is so important. Offred — we never learn her real name — longs for her former life: the one where she had a job, money, husband, child. And it’s all she can do to put one foot in front of the other in her life.

I found this all monstrous. I’m thinking of it in a different light — I could very easily be Offred — and it’s monstrous what Attwood has dreamt up. Not only for the handmaids, but for the wives and commanders, too. (Maybe those books on polygamy are influencing my reading of this, too, because there are definite parallels there.) And I was depressed by it. I don’t think we — as a country — would ever head that way (though there was this one passage that struck me because of its similarities to 9/11 and the Patriot Act), but it’s depressing that there is that awful potential in people to control other people in that way. There are also Taliban similarities, as well — something which wasn’t even on the radar when I read this the first time around — that saddened me.

I can’t imagine — more like, don’t want to imagine — a world where women are treated as nothing more than the sum of their bodies, where men get excused for their behavior because of their position, where women hate and loathe each other because of their roles. Wait… that, too much, describes what our world is like now. Without the religious framework, without the robes, without the martial law, there are elements of this world around us.

And that really depresses me.

11 Birthdays

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by Wendy Mass
ages: 9-12
First sentence: “The oddest thing about Angelina D’Angelo was that no one could remember a time when she didn’t live in Willow Falls.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

When I saw this book over at Shelf Elf a while back, I knew I had to put it on hold if only because Wendy Mass wrote my favorite middle grade book of last year.

And, while I don’t think I loved this one as much as Every Soul a Star, it’s still charming and magical and sweet, and well worth the time to read.

Amanda and Leo were born on the same day. Their parents met, and nothing more was thought about it until a year later, when they both scheduled the same party place at the same time and on the same day and ended up celebrating their birthdays together. Thus a tradition was born. Fast forward 10 years, when Amanda overhears Leo trying to be cool with his friends, telling them he’s only her friend out of pity. The tradition end, the friendship broken.

Then comes her eleventh birthday, which really isn’t all that grand. It’s not, particularly, that anything goes wrong. It’s more that nothing quite feels right. And that evening, when her party is a spectacular flop — because Leo is having his across town instead of with her — it seems that nothing will ever be right again.

And then, the next morning she wakes up and it’s her birthday all over again.

It’s kind of a Groundhog Day for middle grade readers: Amanda and Leo are stuck in the loop together and have to figure out how to get it to stop looping their birthday. I have to be honest: this idea worked well enough as a movie (except for Andie McDowell, who sucks the life out of the movies she’s in), but I had little confidence that it would work as a book. Thankfully, Mass is skilled enough to pull it off. It’s amusing and gratifying to see how the enchantment all plays out, from the realization that they’re stuck in the loop (not only individually, but together), to their working out their differences, to the way they figure out how to get out of the loop. Mass has used the right amount of whimsy and magic to make this story believable, without overburdening it with charms and spells. Amanda and Leo are perfect friends, tentative at first because of the fall-out, but in the end making a perfect team.

It’s a cute story about finding and remaining friends even when it seems impossible. But then, with Wendy Mass, nothing is impossible.

July Jacket-Flap-a-Thon

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I had a list of books I wanted to get to this month, and I managed to get to almost all of them. Only four left sitting on my bookshelf. Hopefully, I get to them next month.

As for the ones I did read, there weren’t too many captivating jacket flaps. The two I did like (sort of):

Beastly (HarperTeen): “I am a beast. A beast. Not quite wolf or bear, gorilla or dog but a horrible new creature who walks upright—a creature with fangs and claws and hair springing from every pore. I am a monster. You think I’m talking fairy tales? No way. The place is New York City. The time is now. It’s no deformity, no disease. And I’ll stay this way forever—ruined—unless I can break the spell. Yes, the spell, the one the witch in my English class cast on me. Why did she turn me into a beast who hides by day and prowls by night? I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you how I used to be Kyle Kingsbury, the guy you wished you were, with money, perfect looks, and the perfect life. And then, I’ll tell you how I became perfectly . . . beastly.”

Clever; you don’t often see a jacket flap in the first person. It caught my attention, and made me want to read the book.

My Life in France (Knopf): “In her own words, here is the captivating story of Julia Child’s years in France, where she fell in love with French food and found her true calling. From the moment the ship docked in Le Havre in the fall of 1948 and Julia watched the well-muscled stevedores unloading the cargo to the first perfectly soigné meal that she and her husband, Paul, savored in Rouen en route to Paris, where he was to work for the USIS, Julia had an awakening that changed her life. Soon this tall, outspoken gal from Pasadena, California, who didn’t speak a word of French and knew nothing about the country, was steeped in the language, chatting with purveyors in the local markets, and enrolled in the Cordon Bleu. After managing to get her degree despite the machinations of the disagreeable directrice of the school, Julia started teaching cooking classes herself, then teamed up with two fellow gourmettes, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, to help them with a book they were trying to write on French cooking for Americans. Throwing herself heart and soul into making it a unique and thorough teaching book, only to suffer several rounds of painful rejection, is part of the behind-the-scenes drama that Julia reveals with her inimitable gusto and disarming honesty. Filled with the beautiful black-and-white photographs that Paul loved to take when he was not battling bureaucrats, as well as family snapshots, this memoir is laced with wonderful stories about the French character, particularly in the world of food, and the way of life that Julia embraced so wholeheartedly. Above all, she reveals the kind of spirit and determination, the sheer love of cooking, and the drive to share that with her fellow Americans that made her the extraordinary success she became. “
Long, long, long. But it gives you a good overview of the book. I just wish they’d tried harder to capture the spirit of Julia Child.

Other Books Read:
Need
Echoes From the Dead
Fire
20 Boy Summer
Story of a Girl
Oh. My. Gods.
Previously Engaged
Why Darwin Matters
Sprout
The Sisters Grimm
Goddess Boot Camp
Fragile Eternity (DNF)
Fiction
Coffeehouse Angel

Book To Movie Friday: Half-Blood Prince

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The point of these Book to Movie Fridays is not to judge a movie on its own merit, but rather to compare it to the book to see how it holds up.

If it were the former, Half Blood Prince would be okay. It holds together on its own for about the first 2/3. Lavender Brown is spot on, Luna is her charming self, Harry is… well… dark-haired and British (even though that’s still really quite creepy on my part), and Draco sulks marvelously.

Then, about the time of the Sectumsempra curse, and the wand fight in the bathroom, the movie — as a movie — derails. It heads down into maudlin and kind of confusing territory, doesn’t hold water, and completely disregards Snape. Again. (Will the screenwriters ever learn?)

And, while it’s an okay movie as movies go, it’s really hard to compare the book to the movie because while it’s a similar story that shares names, places and plot elements, it’s really not the story Rowling was telling. Rowling — if I remember right ; I didn’t get a chance to reread it before we went — was exploring and explaining Voldemort’s past, giving us glimpses into the path Riddle took and the choices he made in becoming Voldemort. Yes, there was a lot of teen angst and romance in the book, but there was a lot about friendship and trust as well, some of which came through in the movie, but not as strongly as it did in the book.

And then there’s Dumbledore. When I read the book, I remember bawling. Sobbing. How could he be gone? What will Harry, or Hogwarts, or me as a reader do without Dumbledore?

And, honestly, I didn’t care when he died in the movie. It was ho-hum, Dumbledore’s falling off the balcony, that’s nice, what now?

What a disappointment.

Verdict: the movie’s OK, but really (if you didn’t already know), you should read the book.

Library Loot #29

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It’s library day! *doing the library happy dance*

We picked up some good loot, today, too.

For A/K:
Book! Book! Book!, by Deborah Bruss/Illus. by Tiphanie Beeke
Rita and Whatsit, by Jean-Philippe Arrou-Vicnod/Illus. by Olivier Tallec
Paddington Bear, by Michael Bond/Illus. by R. W. Alley
Jack the Tripper, by Gene Barretta
Princess Pig, by Eileen Spinelli/Illus. by Tim Bowers**
Pie’s in the Oven, by Betty G. Birney/Illus. by Holly Meade
Dora’s Starry Christmas (Dora the Explorer) — Argh. A Dora book was in!
One Day, Two Dragons, by Lynne Bertrand/Illus. by Janet Street**
The Beckoning Cat: Based on a Japanese Folktale, by Koko Nishizuka/Illus. by Rosanne Litzinger
Rotten Ralph Feels Rotten, by Jack Gantos/Illus. by Nicole Rubel**

For C:
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5), by J. K. Rowling — this is the audio book; we discovered with Inkheart, that C really likes listening to long books in audio form. We told her she could watch the Order of the Phoenix movie if she read the book…she’s very excited.
Thora and the Green Sea-unicorn, by Gillian Johnson

For M:
Chronicles of Faerie: The Hunter’s Moon (The Chronicles of Faerie), by O. R. Melling — we discovered that the book she picked up last week was the third in a series. Well, of course we had to get the other two!*
Chronicles of Faerie: The Summer King (The Chronicles of Faerie), by O. R. Melling*
Long May She Reign, by Ellen Emmerson White — Help! Is this the first in a series? Or a later one? We can’t tell.*
Flavor of the Week, by Tucker Shaw*
Chalice, by Robin McKinley*

For me:
Mark Twain: The Gilded Age and Later Novels: The Gilded Age / The American Claimant / Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective / No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (Library of America), by Mark Twain. Lest you get all intimidated: I’m only planning on reading The Guilded Age, but this was the only copy in at the library.
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, by Jacqueline Kelly

The roundup is either at Reading Adventures or A Striped Armchair.

*Ones that M eventually read.
**Picture books we really liked.