Another good YA month.  Maybe I always have so many good YA reading experiences because I read so much YA.

Top recommends:
Picture: Nothing blew me away
Chapter: Betsy & Tacy Go Over the Big Hill.
J-Graphic Novels: Lowriders in Space
Young Adult: Gabi, Girl in Pieces; My True Love Gave to Me; Like No Other; How it Went Down
Grownup Nonfiction: Anatomy of an Epidemic

Picture Books

Brother Hugo and the Bear
Beebe/Shindler
Read for Librarian Book Group
Another book I had trouble remembering two weeks later.  I think the younger me would have enjoyed the illuminated manuscript aspect of this story though.  And the current me enjoyed looking for the bear hiding in the illustrations.

My Grandfather’s Coat
Aylesworth/McClintock
Read for Librarian Book Group
Lovely illustrations. The story has been done a lot.

Chapter Books

Betsy & Tacy Go Over the Big Hill
Maud Hart Lovelace
The one where they visit Little Syria. Also has a great escalating fight between the sisters that feels very true-to-life.

J-Graphic Novels

Lowriders in Space
Cathy Camper
Read for Librarian Book Group
I loved both the lowrider and the art.  Really fun use of both Spanish and English.

Young Adult

Papertowns
John Green
A re-read for the upcoming movie, was surprised to realize that what I remembered most about the book (the road trip) took up a very small amount of the story.  On second reading, I still dislike Margo Roth-Spiegelman as a character, but loved the friendship between everyone who wasn’t Margo Roth-Spiegelman.  I’m very much looking forward to the movie.  Will it still be called the Omnictionary? 

My True Love Gave to Me
ed. Stephanie Perkins
My favorite part of winter break 2014 was giving myself the present of one story per night from this book.  All were different, but all centered on the thing I like most in stories: falling in love.  I may put this into regular December rotation.

Gabi, a Girl in Pieces
Isabel Quintero
Read for Librarian Book Group
Quality YA written in diary format I found hard to put down. Incorporates poetry, zines, and great narration.  I really loved this main character and this book.

How it Went Down
Kekla Magoon
Read for Librarian Book Group
Multiple perspectives of an event that has become familiar to us: white guy shoots black teenager and claims self-defense, gets off with no charges.  Fascinating to see who thinks what and to piece together your own picture of the victim based on others accounts.  Very well written and recommended.

Five Flavors of Dumb
Antony John
Solid YA about a deaf girl who becomes the manager of a band called Dumb.  Unbelievable in places, (I never got on board with the idea that a band who couldn’t keep time would win the Seattle Battle of the Bands) but a nice story nevertheless.

Like No Other
Una LaMarche
Sheltered Hasidic Jewish girl meets nerdy Black boy when she is trapped in an elevator at the hospital.  They fall in love, which is both delightful and worrying. I greatly enjoyed this novel both for glimpses into cultures I’m not part of, but also for the characters.

Nonfiction:

The Talent Code
Daniel Coyle
How can you develop a talent more quickly?  Is it just in the genes?  A music teacher I know recommended this as a short, fascinating book that has changed how he instructs students to practice.  Very interesting to learn about why the Brazilian soccer teams are so good, why the Russians are producing tennis champions like mad and why South Korea has such good women golfers. (I know no sports knowledge, so I’m assuming all those things are true).  How you can become a better musician, skateboarder and encourager of children?  The answer lies in this book.

Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph
It’s interesting how Arbus managed to capture “normal” and “uncomfortable” in one frame.  I’m sure many of her images were even more disturbing back in the 60s and 70s when we weren’t used to images of transvestites, nudists, etc.

Men Explain Things to Me
Rebecca Solait
Short book of essays, also a book of short essays.  Solait makes good use of words and I especially appreciated her putting a fine point on maybe looking at rape as a cultural thing men do rather than a series of random isolated events.

Anatomy of an Epidemic
Robert Whitaker
Read for Kenton Library Book Group
I hate this book because me telling people what I’ve learned from it will make me sound like a crazy person.  But so it goes with life-changing books. 

The first three-quarters is a slog with each chapter following the format of:  list a psychiatric disorder.  Look at outcomes pre-psychiatric drugs.  Look out outcomes post-psychiatric drugs.  The drugs make things worse.  Repeat that several times until you’ve covered all psychiatric disorders.

After that it really gets rolling.  Medicating children, lack of long term studies, the pharmaceutical industry, psychiatrists rescuing their profession by tweaking the DSM.  The book takes most of what we “know” about mental health conditions and exposes just how little research there is to support that “knowledge.” 

It’s not the most gripping read, but an important one. 

The Printz Award, like the Newbery Medal or Caldecott Award, is given every year for excellence in young adult literature.  Also every year, the Multnomah County Library puts on a Mock Printz workshop so interested parties can read and discuss YA books and vote their own winner.  I am an interested party and this is my fifth workshop.

We discuss ten books in small groups and part of the fun is if your group gets to go to the conference rooms on the fifth floor.  For the first time since my first year I got to go to the fifth floor.  Mt. Hood was beautiful in the distance.

We had nine minutes per book and I was the time keeper.  I used a watch, which I find better for these activities than timers on devices.  Because those don’t stay on and the end of the time comes as a surprise.  This way we could flex a minute or two if the discussion was running hot.

Our ballot.  I voted for Story of Owen, Crossover, and (surprisingly and only due to discussion) Noggin.

After small discussion comes large discussion.  The small group discussion are reported out in light blue on the right-hand side of the sheet.  After large group discussion we voted again and those are the results tallied on the left.  We Were Liars was our big winner, followed distantly by Ava Lavender (which I loathed) and Glory O’Brien (which I loved).

Youth attend and discuss too.  After, they get to take home ARCs (Advance Review Copies) of books.   The young man on the right was in my discussion group.  He and four of his friends came from Jefferson County (about 120 miles away).  Such dedication.

To find out if we picked correctly (I don’t think we did.  We Were Liars is fantastic, but more of an “event read” than a sterling example of Young Adult literature) tune in on February 2 at 8:00am CST to the webcast.  Sadly, I will not be listening live as I was last year as I have to work that morning and 6:00am PST is when my entire morning routine happens. 

Though it has occurred to me that I could get up at five, do my morning routine from five to six and then listen live to the winners. Hmmmm.

This month’s theme:  books that did not tidy up the story before ending, thus leaving me grumpily anticipating the sequel.

Winners this month:
Picture.  Nothing wowed me.
Middle Readers:  Greenglass House, Ambassador
YA: Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, Girls Like Us, Vango, 100 Sideways Miles, Hold Me Closer Necromancer, Necromancing the Stone.  (And yes, I just listed every single YA book I read this month as recommended.  Because they were all awesome.  It was a very good YA month.  If you are going to just pick one I would go with either Glory O’Brien, or 100 Sideways Miles)
YA nonfiction:  Dreaming in Indian
Grownup nonfiction: Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher.

Picture
Have you heard the nesting bird
Gray/Pak
Read for librarian book group
This is your book if you ever want to read a lot of bird calls out loud.

The Princess in Black
Hale, Hale & Pham
Read for librarian book group
Beginning chapter book for princesses who sometimes like to wear black and save the day.

Middle Readers
Greenglass House
Kate Milford
Read for librarian book group
Very thick, which bugged because it was in the company of other very long middle readers on the reading list.  However, unlike many of its contemporaries, this one was good.  Great for anyone who likes to imagine the fun they would have if their family owned a hotel so remote it needs a funicular to get to.  Mysterious visitors appear, stories are told, things happen.  It reminded me of a favorite from my youth, The Westing Game.  Very well done.

Ambassador
William Alexander
Read for librarian book group
Yeah, so this was an excellent half of a book.  I was all in for the whole thing, which is only part of the story.  My number one rule of writing a series?  Each book must stand on its own, with the successor being a nice surprise.  You can’t just leave major plot lines dangling and call it good.

When he publishes the rest of the story, I will be interested to see how our main character balances being the Earth’s ambassador to the universe’s diplomatic corps and see what happens with his mother and father and their impending deportation for being illegal aliens.

Get it?  Aliens/Aliens?  Very clever, that Mr. Alexander.  If only he had finished his book.

Young Adult
Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future
A.S. King
Read for Mock Printz
Super fabulous feminist-forward novel of a girl just graduating from high school.  She’s struggling with a lot of things: the continuing ramifications of her mother’s suicide when she was four, her best friend’s distraction by a relationship, her father’s ongoing depression.  Oh, and thanks to drinking the remains of a bat (long story) she can see the future.

I was underwhelmed by King’s previous novel Ask the Passengers, and was ready to be similarly underwhelmed by this.  But I loved it, from the strong main character, the conundrum of what to do with her life, and the expert weaving of all the future sci-fi stuff.  Recommended.

Also?  Great title, no?

Girls Like Us
Gail Giles
Read for librarian book group
Were this not on my reading list, I would not have read it, being one of those assholes who isn’t interested in the lives of Special Education students.  And that’s why reading lists are great.  This was a quick read featuring memorable characters and a very solid story. Recommended.

Vango
Timothee De Fombelle
Read for librarian book group
Translated from the French, so I’m not sure if it’s a French thing to not really wrap up the book.  Although William Alexander didn’t bother to do so in Ambassador, so maybe it’s this year’s new thing.

Anyway!  Until the end, which seems to be more of a pause, this was a classic rip-roaring adventure story with our young hero a boy with a mysterious past, people chasing him, a love interest with a love of fast cars, cool 1930s things like Zeppelins,  chase and fight scenes, and shadowy figures.  I really liked it a lot.

100 Sideways Miles
Andrew Smith
Read for librarian book group
Packed full of the hilarious teenage boy humor that I’ve come to love in Andrew Smith’s work and was a great read.  It was good enough that part of it was read aloud to the boyfriend, who laughed gleefully. Great boy friendship, great differing readiness for sexual activity, great story in general.

Hold me Closer, Necromancer
Lish McBride
Set in Seattle, the story of a college dropout who discovers he just happens to have powers to bring things dead things to life.  This is troublesome, and not only because who wants to reanimate the dead?  There’s this already established necromancer, who isn’t too thrilled to discover someone with the same powers.  Luckily, our hero has an excellent group of friends to help him with all this new-found stuff.  Great fun.

Necromancing the Stone
Lish McBride
I had this book on hold before I was done with its predecessor.  Because Lish McBride can write.  More necromancing powers, more friends, more trouble.  Just as much fun as the first.

Young Adult Nonfiction
Dreaming in Indian
Charleyboy/Leaterdale
Read for librarian book group
Contemporary Native American Indian youth talk about what it is to be a contemporary Indian youth.  Uneven in tone, but I liked it for that.

Tomboy
Liz Prince
Read for librarian book group
Graphic novel memoir about a girl who only wants to dress like a boy.  And people have a lot of problems with that.

Grownup Fiction
Hmmm.  Apparently none.

Grownup Nonfiction
Stieglitz: Camera Work
Taschen
This book wasn’t exactly what I thought I was getting, being a compiling of the photography magazine Alfred Stieglitz produced in the early 20th century.  Thus, it featured many different photographers, not just Stieglitz.  There was also a very wordy essay (published in three different languages!) to read.  It did give me the names of a few more photographers to investigate, so that was good.

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher
Timothy Egan
Read for Kenton Library Book Group.
A long and engrossing book about the dude who took pretty much every Native American Indian portrait we think of as classic.  For instance, the image of Chief Joseph I grew up with?  That was an Edward  Curtis.  Egan’s not overly (or at all) critical of Curtis asking the Indians to pose in traditional gear, which I know a lot of people have a problem with.  Instead, he focuses on Curtis’s dedication/obsession with trying to record as much of native culture and customs as he possibly could, before they became extinct.  In doing so he paints a portrait of a talented man never appreciated in his time.

Overall, a pretty depressing book, but well written and a good read.

VACATION!  I had one.  I read  a lot.

This month’s highlights:

Picture:  The Right Word, The Farmer and the Clown, Viva Frida.  (It was a good picture book month)

Middle Readers: Sisters

YA:  The Story of Owen, Firebug.  Both are really excellent quasi-fantasy-but-not-in-the-lame-way books. (Where She Went is good, but I’ve already read that)

Grownup Fiction: Work Song

Grownup Non:  In the American West, the Eugene Atget book.

Picture Books
The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus
Bryant/Sweet
Read for librarian book group
Picture book about the man who invented the Thesaurus.   Interesting story (did you know that the original versions of the Thesaurus weren’t alphabetical? They were arranged by idea.) and really fabulous illustrations.  I love this author/illustrator team.

The Farmer and the Clown
Marla Frazee
 Read for librarian book group
Worldless picture book that I enjoyed, and even laughed aloud at one point.  Although I’ve had a song from Oklahoma stuck in my head for days now. (Territory folks should stick together, territory folks should all be pals…)

Digby O’Day in the Fast Lane
Hughes/Vullamy
Read for librarian book group
Okay early reader.  I wasn’t a fan of the woman being spoiled and liking pink, though I’m certain spoiled women who also like pink exist.

Best observation made by person in librarian book group:  I feel like someone pulled out the manuscript  from 1952 from the cushions in their couch and published it.

Viva Frida
Yuyi Morales
Read for librarian book group
Beautiful picture book.  One I finished and thought, “I might buy this.”

Middle Readers
The Red Pencil
Andres Davis Pinkey
Read for librarian book group
Another tale told in free verse and yet another tale told in free verse that I found rather so-so.  None of the poems stood out on their own and I didn’t find the story as told, compelling.  The story itself was quite compelling, but the writing didn’t grab me.

Sisters
Raina Talgemeier
Read for librarian book group
Graphic novel that accurately captures that particular form of trapped feeling one gets when one has to continue living with one’s siblings, simply because they are siblings, even if they drive one crazy. Also great with portraying the awkwardness of transitions.

YA
The Story of Owen
E.K. Johnston
Read for Mock Printz
You know what sold me?  The first two paragraphs.  Here they are, so you can read for yourself:

Before the Thorskard came to Trondheim, we didn’t have a permanent dragon slayer.  When a dragon attacked, you had to petition town hall (assuming it wasn’t on fire), and they would send to Toronto (assuming the phone lines weren’t on fire) and Queen’s Park would send out one of the government dragon slayers (assuming nothing in Toronto was on fire). By the time the dragon slayer arrived, anything not already lit on fire in the original attack would be, and whether the dragon was eventually slayed or not, we’d be stuck with reconstruction. Again.

Needless to say, when it was announced that Lottie Thorskard was moving to town permanently, it was like freaking Mardi Gras.

Do you need more than Canadian dragon slayers, witty commentary, and a lively tone?  How about a female narrator who is intensely musical and thinks in symphonic tones, but is rather stunted when it comes to friendships?  How about fun retelling of history through the alternate reality of carbon-eating dragons?  How about  savvy commentary on all sorts of modern phenomena?  How about life as the nephew of the most famous Dragon Slayer in Canada?  How about a title that doesn’t really tell the whole truth of the story?

I’ve given you enough reasons to read this. Now go find a copy and read!

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ada Lavendar
Leslye Walton
Read for Mock Printz
I’ve read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and the joke that goes with that title is that in Dave Eggers’s family they would always over exaggerate really mediocre things, lay the praise on thick.  Thus, a title mentioning both heartbreaking and genius was perceived by its own author to be a so-so piece of literature.

I do not think that Leslye Walton comes from the same school of thought.  I suspect that Walton thinks her book actually is full of the strange and beautiful sorrows of Ada Lavender.  However, what it is full of is a torpid plot that I don’t think ever really got going, magical realism done very badly, strange jumps in POV that I can’t figure out why they were ever acceptable.  Plus an eerily unfortunate plot device that is shared with a very popular Disney movie released just this year.

I don’t often find myself reading first novels and thinking, “whew!  This is very much a first novel!” but this was one of those times.  Each page I read made me want more than ever for it to be the last page.  However, I was tasked with reading to the end and read to the end I did.

Dirty Wings
Sarah McCarry
 Read for librarian book group
I never could quite put my finger on what made me uncomfortable in this book.  Both main characters were interesting, sympathetic and well written.  The plot was solid, if nerve-wracking.  I’m not sure, but maybe the woo-woo aspects didn’t work for me?

Interestingly, my copy of the book included the first chapter of the continuation of the story and I responded quite well to the switch in narrators.

Also, I’m not really seeing this is as retelling of Persephone.

Egg & Spoon
Gregory Maguire
Read for librarian book group
This book is a great example of an established author getting to do what no new author would be allowed to, namely natter on and on about things that are not vital to the plot.  His nattering, while well written, made this book a slog.  If moves were ever made about 13 year-old girls, this would make a fabulous film as the multitude of paragraphs of description could be absorbed by a few panning shots in each scene.  Fun story, fun growth of all, fun setting, just too much writing.  It was like being force-fed a delicious 10-layer cake.  A slice would have been quite satisfying enough.

Also, it didn’t work for me that Baba Yaga made references to things both in the future (Cheerios, etc) and her many amusing asides to historical figures/events had me wondering just why, exactly, this was published as a children’s book.

Isla and the Happily Ever After
Stephanie Perkins
I found the set up rather unbelievable (a US Senator sends his only son to an elite Paris boarding school for high school?) but enjoyable.  The Paris setting was very fun, the romance interesting and I though Perkins did a great job of capturing a very specific style of breakup.

Also, just so you don’t go pronouncing the main character’s name wrong like I did, it’s Eye-la. It derives from the word Island.

Where She Went
Gayle Forman
Having reread If I Stay in preparation for the movie, I needed to even things out and read the sequel.   I sped through it when I read it for the first time a year ago, so it was good to go back and catch details.  I really liked how the second half of the two-book series fleshed out the first one and tied everything up in a very nice way.

Firebug
Lish McBride
Read for librarian book group
Looking for a fun quick read with snortingly good humor sprinkled throughout?  Looking for an alternate world with fire starters and were-foxes and a dryad?  Looking for a magical mafia?  Looking for a quick and feisty plot?  This is your book.  It is a solidly really great read.

Grownup Fiction

Work Song
Ivan Doig
True confession time.  I’ve always stayed away from Ivan Doig because his last name made me think his books would be way too smart for me.  However, this came highly recommended by a book-reading friend (thanks Ben!) so I requested it from the library and opened the cover with much trepidation.

The verdict?  You shouldn’t judge an author by his last name.  This was a fun story set in Butte Montana just after WWI.  It’s full of all sorts of rollicking mining town details and has a gratifying plot that rolled right along.  I greatly enjoyed it and perhaps will be checking out more of Mr. Doig’s work.  

Grownup NonFiction

In the American West
Richard Avedon
Very large photos (maybe 12″ by 18″ inches?) of run-of-the-mill people living the “the west” in the late 70s/early 80s.  Simple portraits, great details.  Apparently when the photos were first shown, there was general hue and cry of outrage that “those people” were not the true westerners.  But they are and he captured them well: drifters, carnies, ranchers, coal miners, farmers, teenagers, mental patients, waitresses, what have you.

A really excellent book.

In Focus: Eugene Atget. Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum
Gordon Baldwin
I enjoyed this “In Focus Series” because it used the very accessible format of putting the photo on one page and an analysis on the facing page.  I learned a lot about Atget, who was a great photographer of buildings in early 20th century Paris.  He created these photos to sell to designers, painters, anyone who needed photos of buildings.

This month’s selection provides good examples of how to write children’s books in verse (Brown Girl Dreaming) and how NOT to write children’s books in verse (Miss Emily).

Top contenders:

Picture books: Nothing really blew me away, though all are fine.
Middle Readers:  El Deafo
YA: Brown Girl Dreaming
Grownup:  American Wife. (But I’ve been recommending this for years, so I assume y’all have read it by now.)
Nonfiction, children’s: Tiny Creatures
Nonfiction, grownup:  Bad Feminist, Many Are Called

Picture Books
 In New York
Marc Brown
Read for Librarian Book Group
Mostly I had the following sour grapes thought while reading this book:  “How nice that you found fame and fortune by creating Arthur and can afford to live in your lovely part of New York.”  But that’s just me.

Chicken Squad
Doreen Cronin
Read for Librarian Book Group
Amusing beginning reader.

Little Elliott, Big City
Mike Curato
Read for Librarian Book Group
Nice retro illustrations.
 
Middle Readers
Upside Down in the Middle of Nowhere
Julie T. Lamana
Read for Librarian Book Group
Another forgettable/not right title (perhaps I should have a running list).  Forgettable title aside, I very much enjoyed this tale of Hurricane Katrina experienced by a 10-year-old.  It’s an interesting contrast to the other Hurricane Katrina book (Zane and the Hurricane) I read recently, and I thought this one was much more gritty and “real” in details.  I had trouble getting started, but once the hurricane got going, I wanted to keep reading.

Leroy Ninker Saddles Up
Kate DiCamillo
Read for Librarian Book Group
DiCamillo’s writing is good, but her illustrator is better.  Very fun story of a cowboy without a horse who acquires one.

*starred review*
 El Deafo
Cece Bell
Read for Librarian Book Group
Highly recommended.  The graphic novel story of how author Cece Bell lost most of her hearing and the way her hearing loss shaped her childhood.  Full of really fun and funny details and gently heartbreaking.

Through the Woods
Emily Carroll
Read for Librarian Book Group
Super awesome and creepy stories, richly illustrated.  I couldn’t read them before bed.

Miss Emily
Burleigh Muten, Matt Phelan
Read for Librarian Book Group
Rather twee and treacle-y story of Emily Dickinson having an adventure with some neighbor children.  It was written in verse.  I was not a fan.  The illustrations were disappointing too.
 
YA
*starred review*
Brown Girl Dreaming
Jacqueline Woodson
Read for Librarian Book Group
Books written in verse seem to be a thing now, but most of the stories could be told just as well if they weren’t written in verse.  Not this one.  The poetry could stand alone and the story that flowed from the verse was compelling.  Very well done.
 
Grownup
*starred review*
American Wife
Curtis Sittenfeld
Read for Kenton Library Book Group
This was a re-read for me and I loved it just as much as the first time I read it.  
Nonfiction, children’s
 *starred review*
Tiny Creatures: The World of Microbes
Nicola Davis
Read for Librarian Book Group
I really loved the way this book talked about scale of things.  It was helpful to this reader who is much older than the intended audience.

Nonfiction, grownup

*starred review* 
Bad Feminist
Roxane Gay
Some essays read like a bit too much like a comparative literature paper, but most are insightful and funny and manage to hit both high and low.  My favorite was “Typical First Year Professor.”

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
Alexandra Fuller
Kenton Library Book Group
The story of a woman of English descent growing up in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe.  The writing was fine, the details were spectacular.  There were a lot of things to discuss at book group and it was the first book in a long time that we all liked.

50 Photographers You Should Know
Peter Stepan
I greatly enjoy seeing the works of good photographers and have decided to check out books of good photographs on a regular basis.  But which books?  Enter this handy guide to expose (hah!) me to many interesting photographers.  I especially loved the timeline feature.

Foodist
Darya Pino Rose
Pino Rose wants us to stop dieting and instead work on improving our food habits.  There is a lot of solid advice.

*starred review*
Many Are Called
Walker Evans
I didn’t even finish reading 50 Photographers You Should Know before I put this on hold. Evans concealed a camera in his coat and took surreptitious pictures on the New York City Subway during the late 30s and early 40s.   I loved seeing older women before plastic surgery became a thing and also the many hats people wore as a part of daily life.