Tag: books

I was finishing up Mock Printz reading this month.  I will attend two Mock Printz discussion groups in January.  (For those of you not in the know, the Printz Award is the YA equivalent of the Newberry Medal).

Picture Books:  Juana & Lucas
Middle Grade: Frazzled (and not because it’s the only one)
YA: The Sun is Also a Star
Young Nonfiction: Animals by the Numbers

Ape & Armidillo Take Over the World
James Strum
Read for Librarian Book Group
I think if I were a kid today, I’d totally be into these TOON books.

The Princess and the Warrior
Duncan Tonatiuh
Read for Librarian Book Group
More of Tonatiuh’s really fun illustrations (love those ears that look like 3s) and the story of how two mountains came to be.

Maybe Something Beautiful
Campoy/Howell
Read for Librarian Book Group
A girl makes something a little beautiful and suddenly everyone is pitching in to brighten the neighborhood.

A Child of Books
Jeffers/Winston
Read for Librarian Book Group
I enjoyed how the text morphed into many things.

Juana & Lucas
Juana Medina
Read for Librarian Book Group
Juana loves her dog Lucas.  But she doesn’t want to learn English. Very fun early chapter book.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we in the United States started learning another language when Juana does?

Frazzled: Everyday Disasters and Impending Doom
Booki Vivat
Read for Librarian Book Group
Abbie Wu is starting middle school and it’s a problem.  All sorts of things about middle school are hard, from picking an elective to navigating the school lunch room.  It’s also a problem that no one else sees what a big problem it is.  The level of drama resonated strongly, I loved the illustrations and am incredibly jealous of author Booki Vivat’s neat handwriting.

The Sun is Also a Star
Nicola Yoon
Read for Mock Printz
O! Such a wonderful swoony love story! I practically sells itself:  Girl meets boy , boy says they are going to fall in love, cue a day wandering through New York City.  The twist?  It’s her last day in America. Her family is being deported back to Jamaica.  He’s on his way to interview for college to please his Korean parents.  We see glimpses of the lives of the people they encounter as their story winds its way to its conclusion.  Yoon is a crazy romantic, and it shows, in the best ways.

The Reader
Traci Chee
Read for Mock Printz
After happily gobbling down Nicola Yoon’s The Sun is Also a Star, I ran smack into this book, which took me 12 days to get through. Granted, I’m not the biggest fan of fantasy, but I am a big fan of stories that move along.  This one takes its time to get going.  And when it gets going, it’s more of an amble.  There’s also a very detailed map at the beginning which seems to have little relevance to the narrative.  It was page 125 before I successfully located a place name mentioned in the story on the map.

I think it was a mistake to use multiple perspectives to tell the tale, and a mistake to wait so long before switching narrators.  Though the way the different stories came together at the end was interesting, at that point I didn’t care.

In addition, books eligible for the Printz Award must stand on their own, which I don’t think this one (Book One of the Sea of Ink and Gold Series) qualifies.

The publisher seems to have great hopes for this novel. It’s got the series announcement on the front cover, the annoying edges that make it hard to turn the page, and many effects–drops of ink, faded text–scattered throughout the book. Plus that mostly useless detailed map.  I’m interested to see who the fans of this are, and what about this story appeals to them.

The Head of the Saint
Socorro Acioli
Read for Mock Printz
Fantastically weird story of a young man who, in fulfilling the last wish of his mother, travels to his father’s hometown and takes refuge in the head of a statue of Saint Anthony  That there’s a statue-sized head available for shelter is strange, but even weirder is that, when inside the head, the young man can hear women’s prayers to Saint Anthony.  All sorts of things happen after that.

Our Chemical Hearts
Krystal Sutherland
Read for Librarian Book Group
What happens when the right girl appears at the wrong time?  Henry Page is a high school senior who has never been in love.  Nothing about the drama of teen romance has seemed appealing to him until Grace Town walks into his classroom.   Grace is amazing, but also clearly going through something.  Their attraction is palpable, but complicated.

For the vast majority of people, their first love isn’t someone they will spend much of their life with. I appreciated the story’s exploration of when that amazing first love finally happens, and when it doesn’t go quite as the first-love narrative proscribes.

I found the level of parental chill annoying enough to be distracting.  Henry Page and his two best friends all have incredibly laid-back parents, unlike real life, when friend groups inevitably include some people whose parents are sticklers about curfew, drinking and girl/boyfriends staying the night.  There were also a ton of pop-culture references, which are a particularly annoying peccadillo, as I know in five years this book will be dated and in 10 years, from another time entirely.  Which is too bad, because I think it’s a kind of book that I don’t run across often.

Beware That Girl
Teresa Toten
Read for Librarian Book Group
Things I liked:  psychological thriller for the teen set, by which I mean the gross stuff is present, but lightly touched on. Interesting characters and a plot that clips along.  Katie O’Brian had just the right amount of scrappy and manipulation.

Things that didn’t work well for me:  I wasn’t convinced by the end, especially given what had happened a few chapters before.  There was no need to render the housekeeper’s speech in dialect, it was very distracting and came off as marginalizing.  I think I read the word dry-swallow (in reference to pills) more times in this book than I have in all other print sources this year.  This is the second book in two months I’ve read with main characters perspective told in first and third person.  This technique is, thus far, jarring, and feels like an attempt to avoid making the voices distinct.  It also feels very trendy.

Biggest Flirts
Jennifer Echols
There’s a particular phase in ones life where two people in mutual like can’t keep their hands off of each other.  This often happens in adolescence and results in headlocks, much wrestling and the like.  Echols nicely captures that phase of like/like in this book.  I enjoyed her spot-on depictions of back-to-school band. The standing.  The sweat.  The boredom.  I also enjoyed Tia, with her purposeful noncommittal nature.     Thanks to friend Sara for recommending this book.

ps.  Book cover gripe:  Tia is half Puerto Rican.  Was it too much to ask to get a cover model who looks like she might be something beside Celtic?

Animals by the Numbers
Steven Jenkins
Read for Librarian Book Group
Many infographics of animal facts.  They are quite fond of the pie chart, which isn’t the best way to present information, (humans have trouble dissecting degrees of pie in pie charts) but there are also bar charts and many fun facts.  The tongue one was my favorite.

This is one of those stories where I can see the misfortune that will befall the protagonist coming from the first page. It also seemed like an excerpt from a novel, rather than a short story on its own.

Bonus points for unique setting, though.

This story blew me away!  Megan Cummins had things going on several levels and I read the story while practically cackling at how good it was.

Note that we will not be hearing great voices like Megan Cummins in the revamped OTS, which will only feature stories written by actual teenagers.

Conference logistics in general were much smoother this year.  It seems Literary Arts learned from the 2015 debacle.  The venues were spread over a large portion of the Park Blocks, and there were more of them, which alleviated the crush of people that made last year’s event uncomfortable.

If you had registered for a workshop (I had) you could even check in at an alternate location.  My workshop with Kari Luna took place in a classroom at Northwest Film Academy.  I was amused by this diagram.

After my workshop, I attended a session titled “Sports Hour,” mostly because I wanted to see Jason Reynolds and Karen Karbo.  Though Lisa Congdon’s The Joy of Swimming also sounded like an excellent book.

Jason Reynolds in his silver shoes.  Just like his character in Ghost.

Lisa Congdon also possesses a mouth, you just can’t see it due to microphone.

Karen Karbo’s wrote the book Hound of the Sea with surfer Garret McNamara.  She had a lot of good stories.  She was not as tense as she looks in this photo.

It was weird seeing Geoff Norcross, as he’s a radio dude.  I learned his sport is crew.

Next was the session “Women First” with Chandler O’Leary, Jessica Spring and Laurie Notaro.  Elly Blue was the moderator and she informed us of the real title of this was “Feminists First,” but that somehow didn’t make it into the program.  We heard about the book Dead Feminists and Laurie Notaro discussed her novel Crossing the Horizon.  I enjoyed the way moderator Elly Blue handled the question and answer period.  Instead of inviting people to the microphone, she asked for people to raise their hands and then called on one person at a time.  This made for a better selection of participants, rather than just the people who could get to the microphone fastest.

The “Out Past Curfew” panel was my favorite.  It helped that I’d read books by (nearly) all the authors.  It also helped that Jay Asher and Jennifer Niven are friends in real life as are Nicola Yoon and David Arnold.  There was great rapport among the panelists and Alicia Tate’s moderation contributed to a spirited and convivial conversation.

The best part was when a young audience member asked  a question about how best to become a writer.  David Arnold invited her onstage, so she could see what it’s like to be on a panel of authors.  Everyone gave their advice (“write stories you want to read,” “write all the time,” “read all the time.”) Jay Asher brought down the house with his advice of, “Writing is a lot about who you know.  So when it comes time to start submitting your things for publication, be sure to say you sat on an author panel with Jay Asher, Jennifer Niven, Niciola Yoon and David Arnold.”

Jennifer Niven made sure there was a selfie of the panel and the audience. She made sure to get all three sides of the room.

My last panel of the day was called “Family Drama” and included Peter Rock, Paula Stokes, Cat Winters, and was moderated by Alison Kastner.  They discussed different aspects of writing their books

Overall, I can say that Literary Arts learned a lot from 2015 and put on a very good conference this year.  Hooray!

The story of a woman with a BRF who enters a hands-on-a-RV contest was perhaps one of my favorite reads this year.  It was saucy in the best ways.

A story of a teenager, two pivotal moments, and the food item that connects them.

Holy schnikies, Batman, I read books in every category this month! That’s unusual, especially the three grownup nonfiction books. Though two of them I had been reading for a while and just happened to finish them in September.

Picture books: Best Frients in the Whole Universe
Middle grade: Full of Beans
Young adult: First & Then (even though was a re-read)
Young nonfiction: Tiny Stitches
Adult fiction: Leave Me
Adult nonfiction: Maud Hart Lovelace’s Deep Valley (admittedly, a niche book)
Smart smut: Say it Louder

Best Frients in the Whole Universe
Antoniette Portis
Read for Librarian Book Group
I giggled through this book and enjoyed its general exuberance.

Coyote Moon
Gianferrari/Ibatoulline
Read for Librarian Book Group
Travel with a mother coyote as she searches for food for her family.

The Sound of Silence
Katrina Goldsaito
Read for Librarian Book Group
Yoshio looks for the sound of silence in Tokyo, Japan.

The Storyteller
Evan Turk
Read for Librarian Book Group
Fantastically illustrated tale about the importance of listening to the storytellers.

Lucy
Randy Cecil
Read for Librarian Book Group
I remember liking this, but I can’t remember why.

Full of Beans
Jennifer Holm
Read for Librarian Book Group
Probably my favorite character voice of the year.  It was fun to be transported back to 1930’s Key West, Florida.

The Inn Between
Marina Cohen
Read for Librarian Book Group
Clever book that is slightly too obvious about showing its hand.

First & Then
Emma Mills
Read Aloud with Matt.
I really enjoyed hearing this the second time; the first time through I was enjoying it so much I skimmed.  Matt liked it too.

Jackaby
William Ritter
Good historical fiction/fantasy where the young Miss Abigail Rook, having fled her family’s Victorian expectations, arrives in New Fiddleham, New England. There she encounters R.F. Jackaby, a sort of Sherlockian character. Gaining work as his assistant, she helps investigate a serial killer in this fantastical mystery.

Tiny Stitches: The Life of Medical Pioneer Vivian Thomas
Hooks/Bootman
Read for Librarian Book Group
Illuminating nonfiction about the man who developed a procedure to help blue babies survive.  It does not shy away from the racism Thomas faced in his quest to be a doctor.

My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante
When friends on Goodreads give books five stars, I notice.  So I was very interested to read this book, the first in the Neapolitan Novels  I found it rough going.  Though I had been warned to power through until the main characters hit 13, I found I had to power through the entire book.

I found the fierce, stark, angry prose too confessional for me. The plot was meandering.  This is a good read for those interested in the frenemy relationships between girls, or those who would like to be transported to a poor neighborhood in 1950s Italy.  Be warned though, that this book ends abruptly.  Almost as if someone needed to make a very long book into two very long books.

Leave Me
Gayle Forman
Can a woman who is a mother leave her children to save her own health?  My observations of the current climate say the answer is no.  And thus, I’m guessing Gayle Forman will get a lot of aggro about her main character, Maribeth, who suffers a heart attack in her early forties and flees her young twins and husband so she can mend.

I happen to think women have completely overextended themselves trying to fulfill today’s version of “mother” and so I was interested in Maribeth’s journey which involved the city of Pittsburgh, a rouge heart doctor, a search for her birth mother and (my favorite) healing through swimming.

As I have with Forman’s other books I  devoured this and enjoyed the way she plays with alternate paths that lead to greater understanding.

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States
Sarah Vowell
I enjoy Sarah Vowell books with a lot of Sarah Vowell in them.  When she weaves herself into the story while telling us about the history she’s interested in.  This book had a lot of history and not as much Sarah Vowell.  Thus, it was slow going.

The Tiredness Cure
Sohere Roked
I was feeling tired and this book offered a range of potential fixes, all from an English naturopath’s perspective.

Maud Hart Lovelace’s Deep Valley
Schrader
For those who want to know the inspirations of Mankato people and locations from Lovelace’s many Deep Valley books.  This well-researched book includes photos, biographies and clippings of Mankato/Deep Valley’s people and places.  It’s good to read before taking a Betsy/Tacy visit.

Say it Louder

Heidi Joy Trethaway
Finally we have Book Four in the Tattoo Thief Series.  I’ve waited a long time to see what happens with drummer Dave, who has just discovered how terrible his longtime girlfriend is.  In kicking her to the curb (a kick that was quite well-deserved) he finds himself interested in Willa, a scruffy tattoo artist by day and graffiti artist by night.  Can Dave, with his not-quite-professional drumming skills–keep himself in the band and convince Willa to trust him?  Many complexities ensue, and the path is laid for a fifth book (hooray!) in the Tattoo Thief series.  Bring on the babysitter drummer!

 

I really enjoyed this story about kids on a choir trip.  It stuck with me.