TURNING PAGES: FALLOUT by GWENDA BOND

Full disclosure: I've served any number of times with Gwenda Bond on Cybils panels and consider her a sharp cookie as well as a friend. As we've never had a slumber party or a trapeze act together, I'm fairly certain that I can review Gwenda's novel without undue bias.

The whole superhero thing during childhood was ubiquitous and inescapable - from The Greatest American Hero, that weird Automan series (what was THAT about, ABC?!) and endless Superman films on the big screen and rerun on the small, my entire childhood was informed by caped crusaders... which is why I was easily able to abandon all of that as baby stuff, and move on. Then Smallville came on, and ... well. *cough* Those are some hours I won't get back. But, it was all to the good, because all that teen angst sparked more imaginations than mine. So, we know the trope of The Chosen One from our hero-centric narratives, but what is The Chosen One like as a teen? The best gift we received to explore that, of course, was Harry Potter - and now, we've got Lois Lane. The not-exactly-chosen-one. The one who volunteers.

Summary: If she can just stick to the plan, Army brat Lois Lane will manage to blend in at Metropolis High. If she can keep from pointing out the fallacies in the principal's attitude toward bullying. If she can keep her nose out of what's going on with her new job at The Daily Planet's teen newsmagazine, "The Scoop." If she can steer clear of this troubling gang of... gamer nerds? If, if, if. Two little letters that mean failure, because nope, Lois can't do it. She's nosy, but it's because a good soldier always needs to know the lay of the land -- which is important if you're always The New Girl. Lois also knows what it's like to be alone - and lonely - and can't stand seeing anyone bullied, so it's pretty disturbing to see someone begging the principal for intervention on her first day... and seeing her not get it, and the bullying continue. Ugh. Since Lois will be in Metropolis for the foreseeable future -- unless The General puts her in military school, as he often threatens -- at the very least she's going to make sure Metropolis High is a decent place. With her online buddy-maybe-more friend SmallvilleGuy and the new friends at "The Scoop" behind her, not hackers, conspiracy theorists, VR games, barefoot elves or even a five-headed monster can stop her -- she hopes.

Peaks: I cringe to hear characters described as "snarky" or "wisecracking," because most of the time the dialogue that goes with those words seems staged to resemble air-brushed Movie Kid speech. However Lois doesn't JUST snark, she also deadpans, she quips, she digs, and she's really, really good at it. Lois shoots off her mouth like anyone does, and though she occasionally puts her foot in it, that just makes her sound like a normal, incisively honest teen saying the things everyone is THINKING. Since Lois isn't accustomed to having to worry about the fallout from speaking her mind ...she doesn't. Not a lot, anyway. She's a good faker, at the very least.

The appearance of Nerdfighters in this novel - slightly myopically immersed and either weeping or laughing at their books, phones at the ready to record their latest reactions via vlog - made me laugh out loud. The representations of "type" of persons is closely matched by a diversity of class and ethnicity - the teens seem to organically and naturally to transcend the "American Standard," which is nice.

And can we talk about the covers??? Both the hardback and the paperback have bags of style, and are just amazing, not only reflecting the colors of Metropolis High, but... well, our Kansas boy in a cape as well. Swoon!

Especially Apt For...: People who loved Smallville and Lois & Clark, people who are fans of the teen sleuth, a la Nancy Drew and Veronica Mars; people who love stories of intrepid reporters a la Fitzhugh's Harriet or Pratchett's William de Worde, and also for everyone who loves books about do-gooder sidekicks like Hermione Grainger and Wendy Watson, aka "Dub-Dub" from The Middleman.

Conclusion: This was such fun - more fun than even I expected. With over-the-top, truly scary villains, a conspiracy theory site, this series debut is fast-paced, tautly written, absolutely immersive yet imminently re-readable, and will leave readers greedily impatient for May 2016 when we'll get the next one.

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I sourced my own copy of this book. You can find FALLOUT by Gwenda Bond at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

Thursday Review: THE DIVINE by A. Hanuka, T. Hanuka, and B. Lavie

Summary: This story of ancient spirits in a war-torn Southeast Asian country—the fictional land of Quanlom—is a fast read, saturated with the brutality of war's aftermath and its effects on children who no longer are given the luxury of a real childhood. I'd deem it a crossover title in terms of content and characters both; the story's protagonist here is Mark, an explosives expert with a pregnant wife and a solid job, a steady life. That is, until his old buddy Jason offers him a top-secret military contract in Quanlom, rigging up some explosives. The money sounds too good to be true…and then Mark discovers that not only does he have to contend with the moral and ethical horror of child soldiers, he also must face a land imbued with—and protected by—ancient spirits… and then decide whose side he is really on.

A quick disclaimer for adult language with this one—there are a few instances of strong language, because one of the main characters is a military-type guy with a monster attitude. That's the main reason why I'd consider this a crossover title, good for YA and above but certainly not below unless you want kids to ask uncomfortable questions about the C-word (the female one). As a story of war, it's also got its share of violence.

Photo by Apichart Weerawong. Source: NY Times

Peaks: I love the fact that this story was actually inspired by a real-life photograph of two twelve-year-old twins from East Burma who had fought to defend their land by leading an army of refugees. Their story was surrounded by legends, but the kids were (and are) real, and the photo exists (it's reprinted at the end of the book). It's kind of a what-if-the-legends-were-real story, and it's also a painful reminder of the realities of what went on in Southeast Asia, the ground still seeded with land mines and permeated with past violence. It's a history that's easy to forget or ignore, and stories like this help us remember.

Click to embiggen

Valleys: As mentioned above, this one isn't for every reader, due to violent content and language. That aside, I found myself wanting to know more about the mythology—there's a dragon-like creature, his soldiers that look like Buddhist tomb guardian figures, but not much in the way of background culture. Nevertheless, the art in those sections is atmospherically rendered, and does reward those with some existing understanding of the visual references.

Conclusion: This is a great one for guy readers, and particularly, I think, reluctant guy readers. It's fast-paced and action-packed, with cool supernatural elements and video-game violence. From a moral standpoint, the ending was also quite satisfying. And if it gets readers interested in the story behind the story, so much the better.

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I received my copy of this book courtesy of the publisher, First Second. You can find THE DIVINE by Asaf Hanuka, Tomer Hanuka, and Boaz Lavie at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

TURNING PAGES: INTO THE DARK by J.A. Sutherland

A YA novel with an adventurous (note I did not say "strong") female protag in an unusual place is most often fun. That same YA novel written by a man is intriguing for the simple fact that there aren't as many of those. I didn't know the author's gender before finding this book - I just thought the premise sounded a lot like the early Mike Shepherd Kris Longknife books (or a much improved teen David Weber-esque Honor Harrington type) before the character (and in Weber's case, the moralizing) started to annoy me - more space opera than science fiction, more sea adventure (kind of) than steampunk: Young girl runs away (not exactly) to the (not really) sea - that sounded adventurous enough for me. Now I know that this is a debut from an author who has already put out three books in this series, so no waiting!

Summary: At fifteen, Alexis is a driven, hard-working and beloved granddaughter of a prosperous colony settler, but she knows the truth about her life -- that is, it's amazing, but she can't have it for much longer. The only way to have her grandfather's land and her easy relationship with the workers and the business for keeps is if she marries someone who will let her keep it. "Let her" is a particularly bitter pill to swallow, as Alexis IS the family business, having worked with her grandfather since she was tiny. And in a way, it's his fault that she can't have the land; as one of the original settlers of the space colony, he, too, feared the youth and vitality of the settlement walking away with its women as they married, and so agreed that only men can inherit. That was then and years later, as her grandfather ages and is terrified of the land reverting to the colony upon his death, Alexis is treated to a noxious parade of the greedy and the shallow who salivate at the thought of digging into what her grandfather has fought so hard to build - and who want to plow Alexis under, too, as part of the bargain. In a hated, frilly dress her grandfather bought her, Alexis tries to show up and play her part, but she's not stupid, and she's not going to put up with stupidity. When she sees her chance to make a life for herself - she jumps at it. There aren't any rules against women joining the Royal Navy; in the outer worlds, there are plenty of women! But not on the prosperous and originally settled core planets... never mind. Alexis didn't expect easy - she just expects to earn a future another way. And she's determined that she's going to do it...

Peaks: There's a very classic feel to this novel, possibly putting readers in mind of other books they've read from the 19th century that are Ye Olde Tales of the Sea. There's the desperate young person, yearning to break free of the Old Country, there's the limitless horizon beckoning... there's uniforms and discipline and being burned up in the fire of an institution, to emerge as one of the tall, shining, and proud. Yep, this is a story we know, and its very familiarity is lovely - and a bit deceptive.

Despite the old, old familiarity of a book set in a patriarchal society, this novel still has lots of new things per page - a whole new world, which has, surprisingly, gone backwards toward kind of the late 19th century in terms of technology (and ideology), Dark Space, which creates a need for ships far forward technologically, ships which sail with solar sails; Naval terms and Naval discipline which is a lot like the 16th - 19th century maritime obsessed British who were always running away to sea -- and the absorbing characterizations really make the pages pass quickly. Alexis isn't a whiner, nor is she particularly plucky or feisty or anything outrageously sexist. She is not ugly or beautiful, nor genetically gifted or magical; she is shorter than her thirteen-year-old bunkmate, but that doesn't bother her too much. She struggles, but none of her struggles are overly painful or dwelt on for too long. She does have a disproportionate sense of the universe needing to be fair - and it isn't - but this doesn't embitter her too much.

Science fiction typically has a bit of science in it and there is less hard science in this novel than many readers might expect. However, there are solar sails on the space ship Alexis sails on - and she has to learn to understand that technology, which was first introduced in science fiction by Jules Verne. It's completely fantastical and really complicated and I didn't get it -- but was tickled to remember Bill Nye's solar sails experiment this past summer. It's that wonderful "what if" in science fiction that keeps me coming back. Adding to that an interesting female protagonist who is sometimes lonely, sometimes terrified, and sometimes overwhelmed -- new planets and the romance of the (kind of) sea, and you have a winner of a book.

I also thought it was a positive that Alexis notices that she's a girl, surrounded by boys. It would have been ludicrous if she didn't have a tiny, brief frisson of interest in someone!

Valleys: While these aren't true valleys, there are some spots where emotional resonance is missing for me; Alexis is assaulted early in her Naval career, and later in a maneuver has to kill someone - she is able to engage in violence and do what needs to be done, but I expected it to affect her more emotionally, as it would anyone, male or female, and felt that the author let her off with artificial ease.

While Alexis is thoroughly run off her feet, in other ways, she is not very challenged by the Navy; her first time on ship, while difficult in terms of what she's required to know mathematically (and I really felt for her there!), is largely a job she can push through by being her usual focused self and seems not much harder than the work she's been doing on her grandfather's tree farm. For instance, she doesn't witness her fellow troops being particularly gross, they're not that interested in her femininity, they limit their slurs and sexism to manageable, unsubtle confrontations. No one seems to be trying to pack her in cotton and protect her, people doubt her ability, but are shown in brilliant fashion that They Are Wrong. Fortunately, I cheated and read the jacket copy for the next book and know that this is actually lulling the reader into a false sense of security, which is all to the good!

I'll be interested to see if a richer diversity of background is included in subsequent volumes; I'm thinking back and can't really remember if the characters in this are anything other than American Standard characters, which would usually take me out of a story a bit, but didn't this time. I'll make note of that for next time.

Conclusion: A fast-paced, tautly written capital 'A' Adventure, this is another independently published gem I'm happy to discover.

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I picked up my copy of this book on Amazon. You can find INTO THE DARK by J.A. Sutherland at an online retailer, e-tailer, or check out the audio version.

TURNING PAGES: THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER by CAROLINE STELLINGS

The second "episode" in the Nicki Haddon mysteries continues Chinese-born heroine Yu Fin's adventures with MI6, the FBI, and other super secret agencies that this sixteen-year-old manages to infiltrate and outthink.

Summary: Since her involvement in the Ming vase case crossed her path with law enforcement agencies in Canada, Nicki's been recruited and sent to London for training. Her not-a-butler friend, Fenwick, has set her up to live outside of London with his sister, Emma -- a middle aged punk rocker with a band who pretty much hates her on sight. He can't go with her - Fenwick is on the trail of a theft from Buckingham Palace, and looking for a book that's missing... about a certain golden flower.

Nicki's in an uncomfortable situation that gets worse -- at the airport she was photographed and followed. The guy who followed her turns out to be a gang member who peers into Emma's windows. And the spy school Nicki was looking forward to turns out to be odd as well -- Nicki runs into one of her suspicious-acting instructors at a museum where a docent preparing to speak on the history of the opium trade is found poisoned. Nicki fears her teacher has been compromised by drug dealers... and maybe it all ties to that book no one can find. It's time to pull out her Fu Yin persona and get to work.

Peaks: Nicki Haddon's wealthy upbringing gives her a great many advantages, and though she doesn't know a great deal, she's flexible and finds out. She is also always finding ways to help the people she sees as overlooked; this time it's a punk rock band. Nicki's merely supposed to be a student in this book, but is dragged away on a fast-paced, over-the-top adventure which includes Buckingham Palace, Balmoral Castle, a stuffy butler, opium poppies, East End London rhyming slang, and general comic-book style insanity. This series is like popcorn, and readers seeking diversion will return for another quick read.

I had a little trouble suspending disbelief about some of the plot elements in the novel, but I can see this being enjoyable for kids looking for wish-fulfillment reading. Adults may find it unlikely that a sixteen-year-old girl, even a smart one, would be taken seriously by various international spy agencies to the point of impressing them and being the only one on hand to save the day!

Valleys: The difficulties of plotting a mystery include suspicious adults, but Nicki meets few, since her caretaker is in a punk band and she fends largely for herself. Nicki even without her Fu Yin persona is incompletely characterized and remains mildly mysterious. Readers may find it hard to warm up to her, as the narrative voice explains a lot of her actions and emotions but the novel lacks emotional resonance. Some of the relationships in the novel seemed rushed and underdeveloped, and Nicki's search for her birth parents, which should be personal enough for her to keep close to her heart, and to endear her to the reader, she seems afraid to tackle. Readers may wonder why she isn't more direct, talks to her parents about what she wants and needs, and uses their prodigious money and reach to find out what she can. While the transracial adoption element keeps the novel interesting, emotional development is shortchanged in favor of action in the plot, as we are told and not shown who Nicki is, what she cares about, and what drives her.

Conclusion: Like a compact Chinese superhero, Nicki outthinks, outfights and outsmarts the villains around her in this over-the-top standalone sequel.

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I received my copy of this book courtesy of the publisher. You can find THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER by Caroline Stellings at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

Thursday Review: THE WAY BACK FROM BROKEN by Amber J. Keyser

Summary: Full disclosure: Amber Keyser is an author I met at a past KidLitCon; her editor Andrew Karre at Carolrhoda Lab I also know from KidLitCon (a different one) and I'm in contact with both of them online. They sent me my review copy of The Way Back from Broken.

OK, business now out of the way.

When I sat down to think about it, there really aren't that many "guy books" that deal with emotional issues. There are general "issue books" with male protagonists, but compared to the number of books with female protags that place emotional recovery front and center? The guy books aren't as numerous, that's for sure. The Way Back from Broken is one of those rare books with a male main character that foregrounds grief and recovery, friendship and love, and does it in an authentic and believable way, because yes, teenage boys deal with their emotions differently, but that doesn't mean they don't HAVE them.

Rakmen Cannon, the protagonist, is a good kid who's had bad things happen to him. He's still recovering from the grief of his baby sister's accidental death, his parents' marriage is crumbling before his very eyes, and he has to suffer the indignity of going to art therapy in a basement with a bunch of other grieving kids while his mom goes to the mother's support group upstairs. Things get even worse when ten-year-old Jacey, the new girl at art therapy, latches onto him and seems to think he can help her somehow. Oh, and Jacey's mom is one of Rakmen's teachers at school.

Rakmen has no idea what he could possibly do to help. He doesn't even want to talk about his own feelings; what can he do for a ten-year-old girl? And yet…she seems to look up to him. Almost like a brother. He hasn't had that feeling in a long time, but he's forced to confront it when his mom sends him along with Jacey and her mother on a summer wilderness trip. It's when the three of them leave the cabin and go au large--French Canadian for "on walkabout"—with just their packs and canoes, that they are forced to really start depending on one another…and that's when the walls start coming down.

Peaks: Besides what I already mentioned about how it's great to have another book for boys (and girls) that delves into the inevitability of both grief and recovery, another thing I found noteworthy about this book is that the protagonist Rakmen is of mixed race—he has a black father and Latina mother—and it's clearly portrayed but also just as clearly Not An Issue. It just is, and Rakmen is who he is, and there are a few ramifications there, but this isn't the central plot point by any means. (Did you hear that? His race doesn't define him! He is a Complex Individual!) That was really well done, in my opinion. And the girl he kind of likes, Molly—a girl in his support group—happens to be white, but that isn't a Thing. What hangs over them isn't race, but sadness.

Ironically, it's what they share that keeps them isolated. Being able to open up can't just be done on command, though, and in this case, it takes an experience that gets Rakmen outside his own head. I've seen this to be true so often, and I like that it happens in this story. I also like that everything isn't tied up in a neat bow at the end, but is realistically a bit messy. Progress is made, there is hope, but you can't bring back the dead, and some things can't ever be quite healed.

Valleys: I have to admit, I wanted this to be a bit more of a survival story, when they got to their journey au large in the Canadian wilderness. There are scary moments and physical danger, but I never quite felt that life-threatening terror that I was, for some reason, expecting. I don't know that it's a problem with the book so much as with my expectations, though. And there's certainly enough emotional tribulation to go around without having to take their physical endurance to its limits.

Conclusion: This is the kind of story I'd put in the hands of a Chris Crutcher fan—because that's whose books this reminds me of. It's about love and loss and that elusive "learning to be a man" that can be so difficult and confusing, especially when you feel like you're supposed to control or hide your emotions. It's a really heartfelt story, with believably flawed characters, including the adults. This was a debut, and I look forward to reading more of the author's books in the future.

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I received my copy of this book courtesy of the author and publisher. You can find THE WAY BACK FROM BROKEN by Amber J. Keyser at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

TURNING PAGES: THE SCRATCH ON THE MING VASE, by CAROLINE STELLINGS

Since a "cozy" is a subgenre of crime fiction where the mysterious doings (murder/mayhem) are off-screen and the sleuth is usually funny (either amusing or odd), this novel straddles the line between being cozy and being plain YA - because the sleuth is neither amusing nor strange, only an average over-achieving teen -- but neither is she warmly personable nor cozy. The main character is lightly drawn - so lightly sometimes that we don't get a sense for her personality, but the detail and setting are vivid. This is a first novel in a series with a bit of potential. It's kind of Hawaii 5-0 - the original "book 'em, Danny" one, not the recent makeover - meets Nancy Drew -- again, the 1940's original, not the new one. By that I mean the adults are kind of slow, and the teen runs rings around them, of course.

This novel also has a transracial adoption subplot, as the Chinese-born protagonist was adopted by North Americans.

Summary: Sixteen-year-old Nicki Haddon isn't Hawaiian, but lives there - when she isn't competing in martial arts around the country. A child of very wealthy property owners - wealthy and clueless, as they call all of their butlers by the same name - Nicki has all that she wants but their attention. At the moment, she's in Toronto on her way to train with one of the premier kung fu masters in the country at Fire Dragon Academy. But bored and alone in Hawaii, she's arrived early - and finds she's arrived just minutes after the Master has been stabbed. Her timely call for help saves his life, but his incoherent mumbling about a Ming vase has her worried and intrigued. First, what Ming vase? And, why is it up to her to get it? Through a fast-paced series of slightly improbable events, Nicki, who was born Fu Yin, tracks down the whereabouts of a fake vase, a real vase, and the culprits behind its theft and the attempted murder.

Peaks: This is a mostly bloodless mystery, fast-paced and appropriate for older middle graders to young adult readers. As in most cozies, it's easy to tell who the suspicious folk are, but less easy to tell why we should suspect them. Nicki is young and Asian and has a lot of agency, and we learn a bit about the Chinese dynasties, Ming vases, and the emporium.

Valleys: I found the characterization very light in this novel. The narrative is well-plotted, but there's not a lot of emotional resonance with the character for me. I want to like Nicki much more than I do; I want to feel she's genuinely lonely and bewildered by her absent parents. I want to feel these things for myself, rather than having the facts handed to me. Nonetheless, the pacing being quick glosses over the fact that we don't know the character, and pulls the reader through the story, but if readers are looking for a relatable and warmly drawn character, they will instead find a sketch.

Conclusion: I think there need to be more YA mysteries and am always on the lookout for books which include characters of color so I'm glad I ran across this one. Despite some unevenness, the detailed setting, fast pace and over-the-top plot made this a light, quick read.

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I received my copy of this book courtesy of the publisher. You can find THE SCRATCH ON THE MING VASE by Caroline Stellings at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

TURNING PAGES: TIMBER CREEK STATION by ALI LEWIS

The best thing about reading is the opportunity to observe, discover, and reflect about somewhere else, and someone else, and maybe begin to imagine yourself in someplace else, with another situation. Some of the very best "old-school" YA novels from 1970's and 80's like A DAY NO PIGS WOULD DIE, by Robert Newton Peck, or Beverley Naidoo's THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TRUTH, or MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN, by Jean Craighead George, these books gave me this kind of informational vibe, told me about things I had no idea about, and just showed me... a piece of the world. TIMBER CREEK STATION reminds me of those slice-of-life first person narratives. Unusual for a contemporary YA novel, this novel is all narrative, a tunnel vision, first person point-of-view - which means that we're treated to the protagonist's opinions on everything, with little deconstruction. Deeper questions about what any of it means are simply not answered, for good or for ill.

This book was first published in 2011 as EVERYBODY JAM (that flavor of jam that "everybody" likes, which is apparently a bizarre way to refer to apricot), and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.

Summary:First his fifteen-year-old brother, Jonny, had a fall from the roof. Six months later, his fourteen-year-old sister falls pregnant - and won't tell anyone how. Thirteen-year-old Danny Dawson is stuck with his sister Emily, who is seven and "useless," and a lot of disturbed, angry, confused feelings about how life is falling apart. Too young to really be of much use to his tough guy, cattleman father, still torn up about his brother's death, conflicted and confused about a new baby, Danny is a ragey, adolescent mess. Add to that the fact that a drought has parched the desert and dried the cattle's watering holes, everyone is stressed, including his parents, who are having major blueys - or fights, and even though they don't have the money to hire more help, really, Mum hires a "house girl" to help out with things while she tries to hold down her job at the clinic, deal with her angry son, and help her too-young and pregnant young daughter to cope. Danny doesn't think he needs a minder, like useless Emily. According to Danny's father, Pommies are useless, too, and Danny wants not one more new person in his life. But Liz, with her "Pommie" - English - ways, her twiggy thin legs and weak arms and her vegetarian diet seems is the only one who talks about Jonny, the only one who asks questions and thinks thoughts that no one else on the station thinks. Danny's not really sure he likes Liz... but sometimes, you just need someone to listen.

The Scoop: Danny is a clear reflection of his rural roots. He has a name for everyone - the English people "Pommies," (a name derived from the joke that they're "Prisoners Of Mother England) the Aboriginal people, or "gins" are, to his mind, always into the grog, bumming, or begging. Sometimes he refers to them as "blackfellas." Danny is an echo of the thoughts and opinions of the menfolk around him and while he attends school with his siblings and a county teacher, he hasn't yet learned to think. Danny's racism and nascent sexism is countered by the presence of the house girl, Liz, an English backpacker who is helping out at the cattle station during the muster, or when the cattle are brought in from the open desert to the market. Though Liz mostly just observes Danny's world with shock, she additionally asks endless questions for clarification - and this allows the reader second thoughts on Danny's problematic version of the world.

The action in the novel is a series of subplots which revolve around getting through the muster and Sissy giving birth. Danny wants to prove himself man enough to fill his brother's shoes, and help his father, but his general immaturity gets in the way. What Sissy wants is unclear. As all things must end, the muster ends and the baby comes, and the English girl goes back to England, and it's just another day in the life of a cattle station, and a growing boy.

NB: While I'm not a fan of glossaries in children's books, nor of the Americanizing of British Commonwealth English, I do think that a fair to say that readers may flail a bit with the Australian slang. There is a great deal of it, and it's only partially explained, as Danny impatiently relates things to Liz. This will call for patient reading.

Readers should know going in that this book has a bit of violent death, a very teen pregnancy, underage drinking, and a very different feel from the sanitized suburban lives most YA novels depict. There are offensive moments which would be disheartening to an Aboriginal person.

Conclusion: This is a difficult book to characterize - it's an absorbing, masterfully written bildungsroman, which depicts a moment in time in the life of a grieving family. It's also a painful, angry story of recovery told from the point of view of an ignorant, racist boy.

The novel shines a light on how each one member of the Dawson family with grief and hard times - Mum and Dad withdraw then blame each other, Sissy finds comfort in a friend, Emily seems too young to do anything but she carefully names each of the orphaned calves and worries about them. Danny makes a shrine of his brother's things until that shrine is lost. Questions like, "Is this family going to recover? Is Danny going to ever be anything but a small-minded racist?" or "Is this junior high education and this cattle station going to be Sissy's whole life?" and "What happens if babies don't really fix everything?" don't really get space in the narrative. Because of this, I suspect this book would be best for older readers, as it will be fodder for a lot of discussion.

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I received my copy of this book courtesy of Lerner Books. You can find TIMBER CREEK STATION by Ali Lewis at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

TURNING PAGES: CHERRY BLOSSOM BASEBALL by Jennifer Maruno

Mid-autumn might seem like a weird time to start reading about baseball again, but since the World Series victories are still echoing in our ears, I think it's a fine time to start thinking about spring training again. One of the first books my brother got as an audio book to support his reading was BASEBALL SAVED US, by Ken Mochizuki, published by Lee & Low. That book was a big deal to ME because it reminded me of other books I'd read about life in Japanese internment camps during WWII, and tied baseball's popularity to both historical and contemporary Japan. I was pleased to find a book about a female baseball fan - I'm all about the sports books for girls - and even happier that it's a Canadian book - but was shocked to learn a piece of history that I'd discounted. I was unaware that Canadian citizens of the Japanese race were interned from 1941-1945 and some were deported after the war.

This is a quiet and slow-paced but vivid and absorbing slice of life for a girl called Michiko - or Millie, depending on who you are - who lived when the world was in flux, Italians and Japanese people weren't trusted in the Western world, and baseball was the one thing you could count on.

Summary: Michiko hasn't had a portrait of herself for years - because it's illegal for the Japanese to own cameras. The rowboat her Uncle George made? Has to be hidden, and eventually given away to a friend. From their normal lives in gorgeous, coastal Vancouver, the Minigawa’s have been pushed further and further inland -- until their only choice is to live West of the Rockies - or go back to a Japan that Michiko has never even seen.

Ontario is freezing, and worse, not filled with the familiar sighs and smells of Japanese-Canadian families. Here Michiko stands out so much that she takes refuge in being quiet Millie, doing her best to just fit... but the siren song of baseball urges her to break out of her shell. In time, her successes remind her family that success can still be had, and there are reasons still to be proud.

Peaks: Like most of my favorite historical fiction stories, this is an intergenerational tale. Though Michiko's entire family doesn't live together, the neighboring Italian woman, a serviceman uncle with whom she corresponds and the other adults in the small farming community color her perspective and inform bits of the story, filling in history and culture in ways the author might otherwise have found onerous. Michiko relies on her aunt's fashion sense to help her be the best-dressed girl at a party where she's mostly ignored while the Italian neighbor introduces her to lasagna and shares with her a pair of trainers which enable her to play baseball. I also love that this is multicultural -- the Italians and the Japanese are unlikely survivors, thrown together, and in this story that makes them tentative, then strong friends.

Though some of the adults in the novel are bitter and everyone is grieved, there are a variety of responses to being interned and Michiko is able to observe the adults in her life acting and reacting, and draws her own conclusions on how best to behave in the small but painful interactions she struggles with in her own life.

Valleys: I felt that there were no valleys, but would like to offer this book to a child with its companion volume, WHEN THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS FELL, to get the whole scope of Michiko's story.

Conclusion: We need diverse books which allow reader to compare and contrast experiences of the world war in various nations. I love that this book is about a girl who plays baseball against the odds, who tries to take pride in her culture when others would rip it away, and who does her best to keep faith with what she believes in.

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I received my copy of this book courtesy of Dundurn Press. After December 15th, you can find CHERRY BLOSSOM BASEBALL by Jennifer Maruno at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

Oz Books (and not the L. Frank Baum kind)

This post comes from the Land Down Under...which is why I've been absent. Too little time, slow hotel Internet, yadda yadda. But! Besides the amazing scenery, cool visit with half-sis and family, and incredible food, I happened upon this in the Queensland Art Gallery bookstore:

Yay, Liz! :) 

Here's one more photo from our first week in Brisbane, and one from Sydney:

More anon...assuming the internets cooperate.

Thursday Review: THE ORPHAN QUEEN by Jodi Meadows

Summary: When we meet Wilhelmina, she's a top player in a gang of orphans called the Ospreys, former nobles all, who were displaced when their country of Aecor was overrun by the neighboring Indigo Kingdom. Now they live on the fringes of the Indigo Kingdom's capital, Skyvale, thieving and deceiving in order to survive, all the while scheming to gather their scattered countrymen and take back their nation. And Wil is destined to be queen of Aecor. But she's got a secret: she can do magic. Magic is all but verboten in their world—they're living post-magical-apocalypse. Doing magic leads to the creation of wraith, a misty, creeping substance that's toxic and that…changes things. Makes small animals large and vicious. And the wraith and its creatures are spreading.

Against this tense backdrop, the Ospreys' success is riding on a daring plan to infiltrate the castle, with Wil and her friend Melanie posing as refugee noblewomen from a neighboring kingdom fleeing the wraith. But the more Wil learns about the reasons for the fighting between her own Aecor and Indigo, the more she sees of her new home, the less clear-cut her cause becomes…

Peaks: This was a wonderfully crafted book with respect to the political intrigue—there's plenty of it, but there's also a fair bit of magic, a lot of action and disguises and creeping about, and just enough romance to really foul things up for the protagonists and make everything tense and suspenseful. The key characters are all complex and everyone seems to have some sort of ulterior motive, even the narrator, Wil, who must keep her magic under wraps as well as her disguise intact. I really enjoyed this one. Even though I kind of guessed the identity of the mysterious Black Knife part of the way in, there was just enough uncertainty that I was still feeling the anticipation of the final reveal.

Valleys: Well, for me, this one had the distinct disadvantage of NOT HAVING A SEQUEL I COULD READ RIGHT THIS MINUTE. It's not out for MONTHS. Sigh. Time to look for a digital galley…

Conclusion: Fans of fantasy with strong, courageous, intelligent female protagonists will want to check this one out. It's kinda gritty, I suppose, so I'd definitely recommend it for a YA audience and above. If you like Tamora Pierce's YA stuff, if you like Graceling or The Winner's Curse, check this one out. But don't say I didn't warn you about that sequel not being available yet!!

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I received my copy of this book courtesy of my library's ebook collection. You can find THE ORPHAN QUEEN by Jodi Meadows at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

TURNING PAGES: THE TOYMAKER'S APPRENTICE, by SHERRI L. SMITH

Full disclosure: I consider the author a friend of mine, though we've never yet managed to meet in person. (Darn it.) I read this book out of affection, but am raving about it, because I found it to be flat out astounding.

Summary: Stefan's whole world cracked, at the death of his mother. He's been his toymaker father's apprentice, but now, bereaved, his father has vanished into mindless woodworking, not even seeing his son anymore. Old enough now to try for his journeyman status, Stefan is determined that his path in life lies elsewhere. He's just leaving when his cousin Christian, the royal Boldavian clockmaker, and his mysterious partner - jailer? - Samir, show up and decide that if he's already leaving, he can come along with them on their quest for a mythical nut that's supposed to save a princess. Their quest sounds like a ridiculous children's story -- somehow, everything with Cousin Christian does -- but soon Stefan is swept up in a crazy world of amazing people, mechanical steeds, rodent royalty and secret places between the walls and bridging the known universe with the wholly unknown. And then, suddenly, everything is up to Stefan -- the world is broken, and his father is gone, and the city of Nuremberg - and maybe all of humanity - is running out of time...

Peaks: The sheer scope of this creative madness in this book is just amazing, but Smith does not invent it entirely alone. She takes for her source material the 1816 E.T.A. Hoffmann original story, "Nutcracker and Mouse King," and spins her fancies from there. The well-known Christmas ballet owes its tame, family-friendly sweetness to Alexandre Dumas and a Russian corps de ballet who interpreted Tchaikovsky's score and the story in their own way, but I like Hoffman's dark, spooky, straight up weird, which is reflected in Smith's version -- and it is quite dark, and very weird indeed. Yet, Stefan is a character whom we immediately love - while I'm less sure about Cousin Christian - and though we're not sure what we should want to succeed -- should they cure that nasty princess? Should the mouse prince, Arthur, win? -- we're gathered up and swept along into adventure, and we're brilliantly entertained. There is just so much to wonder at -- and so little I want to give away as spoilers -- but the clockmaker guilds are awesome! I'm reminded of THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET, by Brian Selznick -- that level of towering inventiveness. Stefan is kind of spirited away into a cross-country trip (Hmm, "Spirited Away" is also a great comparison story to this, as is "The Wizard of Oz") -- from Germany to Mongolia to Boldavia and back, he's whiplashed through worlds and returns, totally changed. As the novel ends, his world is beginning to knit itself back together.

Valleys: This is not a valley, honestly, but a fact: I was entranced by the language and the smoothness of the narrative - and find it unequivocally positive that this novel does not talk down to its audience. This is a novel for the middle grader who would assay Harry Potter and not be intimidated by Britishisms. This is a novel for a lover of language, and a fearless adventurer, who stopped by the Phantom Tollbooth, visited with the madams Whatsit and Whosit, who followed the yellow brick road, and never looked back. This being said, the length and language may be a little challenging for some younger middle graders - Drosselmeyer is already just a mouthful of a name - but then, this book also lends itself handily to being read aloud. At 400 pages, Stefan and friends will keep a kid occupied for the entire Winter break, and even in its very brand-newness, there is a whiff of "classic" about it.

Reader advisory: This being a fairytale, there are some dark themes, and some folk die - so be aware that this is one of stories a la Grimm, where the good guys sometimes have painful setbacks, and the wicked are punished. The emotional arc of the story is fulfilled, however; Stefan's loss at the beginning of the novel isn't "solved" - that would be awful - but he is seen naturally beginning to feel like living again.

Conclusion: The language is rich, the story is strange, the journey is long -- dive in! You'll be glad you did, and you'll never look at sweet, tame little Nutcracker ballet the same way again.

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One of the weird things about being a writer of color is the Requirements. They're in five point font, but all caps, breathing down your neck, telling you that it's not enough that you're you, and that you have stories: your stories must REPRESENT. It's a voice I've actually heard out loud, in the corridor outside of an MFA class. And, at the end of the day, it's a voice writers must learn to ignore. Not everything which comes from your keyboard must be about earnestly revising history or promoting the truth. Sometimes, you've just got to give in and write a story with a seven-headed rat... which is why I've chosen my friend Sherri's story as my pick for this year's A MORE DIVERSE UNIVERSE. Cheers, everyone, and all hail the #Diversiverse. I hope you pick this one up.

Don't forget - you can read more about the book, including interviews with the author, etc., - on THE TOYMAKER'S APPRENTICE blog tour. Check it out right here.

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I received my copy of this book courtesy of Putnam Books. You can find the wildly creativeTHE TOYMAKER'S APPRENTICE by Sherri L. Smith at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

TURNING PAGES: SEE NO COLOR by SHANNON GIBNEY

I don't often get a chance to read a book before my librarian friends hit it. True fact: they are some voracious people with a book. I saw a couple reviews for this going by in my blog and Twitter feeds, and did my best to not see them until I had had a chance to read and digest this work for myself, and -- wow. WOW. As a writer of color, I find this book honest, tremendously brave, and cutting edge in a way that many of us don't yet have the courage to write. To me as a reader, SEE NO COLOR is a powerful, difficult book and it is beautifully painful. The novel ends with a splintered jaggedness to the protagonist's life that is a lot like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope; constantly shifting, but coming together to create something beautiful.

Summary:Alex Kirtridge, sixteen, believes she's made for baseball. It consumes her as it consumes her father, a Minor League player whose dream of the Majors was taken from him, but which he's passed along to his kids. Alex works hard to catch hold of the dream, but a packet of letters shared by her sister, Kit, reveals a family secret. Once brought out into the open, this secret pulls other, uglier things she's been able to ignore into the limelight. Suddenly, every single incident of not blending in, fitting, or belonging to her self or her family seems enormous. Alex - neither fish nor fowl - doesn't have the language or the knowledge to help her navigate this new sense of her identity -- and neither the boy she's beginning to love, nor the family she's beginning to wonder if she really knows. The novel doesn't provide easy answers - or any answers, as readers grapple with the reality of who Alex thought she was, who she is as a transracial adoptee, and who she will become - yet still provides a achingly hopeful conclusion.

Peaks: Just. Too. Many. Good. Things. The language, the graduated awareness of the protagonist, the confusion, the longing, the realistic highs and lows of her emotional state -- this character just jumps off of the page. The father's deferred dreams. The rules of the game. The HAIR. Also very real and significant, the continual specter of the discomfort of her adoptive family -- the way they privilege their right to ignore pieces of her identity, the novel's articulation of the discomfort which people of color often encounter just by existing, and how it is shown to shape what Alex allows herself to see about herself, and how she behaves. Each of us goes through a painful tearing down and building up of our essential selves in adolescence, but possibly people lacking whatever privileged labeling do it more than once. Finding out you don't is like being knocked down to your foundations, all over again. We don't see Alex being entirely rebuilt in this novel, but we see some pretty darned strong re-bar and a sure foundation.

And while my comments on this are more from very technical perspective, I would feel comfortable handing this to a teen reader (heck, ANY reader), knowing that they would come away with a great many emotions and thoughts that would take them new places.

See also Hannah's thoughtful review.

Valleys: No valleys. I am not a baseball player, but that really is the only thing that caused me to need to read more closely, to follow baseball-ese. This did not deter me.

Conclusion: Simply a powerful narrative of identity, its loss, and the triumph of deciding who you are for yourself. While necessarily a shorter review than usual, to prevent spoilers in this very short novel, I nevertheless say this novel is worth its shiny Kirkus star, and needs to be read by and talked about by many readers.

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I received my copy of this book courtesy of the publisher. After November 1, you can find SEE NO COLOR by Shannon Gibney at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

TURNING PAGES: ARE YOU STILL THERE? by SARAH LYNNE SCHEERGER

This book is both a quiet coming-of-age novel, and a suspenseful mystery, making it somewhat difficult to review without providing spoilers. In some ways, it was a fairly typical YA novel about a high school girl - yet, there was a lot else going on.

Summary: The book opens with Gabi Mallory worrying about the loudness of her pee. She's crouched on a toilet seat during a lockdown, too scared to finish up "normal" things like her bathroom break, because the siren and loudspeaker have indicated that it's a lockdown. She's supposed to stay where she is while they locate and dismantle a bomb. Eventually, busted in on by police and rescued (and, after having a teensy accident), Gabi joins her classmates on campus. She and her sister are relieved to see each other, both having been terrified. But their fear is nothing in comparison with their mother's fear, when they get home. She, a detective's wife and tired of fearing for those she loves, wants her girls out of that school, and essentially placed on a high shelf, where nothing can touch them, not even dust. If her parents knew that the bomber - who is still at large - has been leaving her notes in her locker on playing cards, Gabi knows she'd be yanked away as soon as possible -- so she tells no one, and makes it her business to stop bullying when she sees it, intervene with the depressed, and join the school peer counseling hotline. But, is any of that really going to make a difference?

Peaks: This book will keep your attention, and the writing in some places is evocative and beautiful. The journal entries from the Stranger's Manifesto, as the bomber's diary is called, would themselves make the beginnings of a whole different novel. Someone so disturbed and yet so articulate in his pain has its own kind of beauty. The sibling relationship in this novel, and the way Gabi changes - becoming less focused on perfecting herself for college and in changing the world around her, even if it meant losing a friend, spoke to a kind of determination that rarely shows up in real life. The mysterious element in the book came partially from the identity of the dangerous Stranger, yes, but also from the multiple unknowns calling the helpline. This is one of the stronger elements of the novel, and gives us a great deal of insight into Gabi, as she learns compassion, and how to truly listen, not just on the phone, but in her life. It was satisfying to find them resolve - by the end of the novel, the reader knows almost everyone who called the peer-to-peer hotline, and feels that they earned their happily ever after. So much about this novel works emotionally.

The story has two distinct plot arcs - the fraught relationship between Gabi, her mother, and her sister, and the suspenseful side with the school bomber. I loved both sides, but wasn't as satisfied with the resolution of the relationships; Gabi's mother is brittle and difficult throughout the novel until one day... she isn't. I wanted to be shown a little more the mechanics behind this, but felt the inclusion of their mother growing as a person was important.

Valleys: My overall frustration was the protagonist's inability to identify actual danger from drama in her life, which leaves the reader perhaps unclear about what real danger is... A bomber at your school presents actual danger. Getting separated from a potential boyfriend, not actual danger. Going out of her way to conceal clues from the police, break into her father's safe and handle evidence and otherwise break repeated promises to tell him if she knew anything seemed beyond foolhardy. It seemed disingenuous that the character just didn't want to change high schools, so she was willing to die and/or be responsible for her fellow schoolmates being maimed or dying if the bomber slipped past the police. That... annoyed me a great deal.

Other things left me with questions which weren't sufficiently answered in the novel. I wondered why Gabi and her fellow schoolmates would shelter in place indoors when a bomb threat had been called and why the administration of the school would allow students to work wholly unsupervised on peer-to-peer hotlines, but these are minor considerations. I was disappointed that when Gabi confronted her boyfriend about gratuitous violence and his machismo, domineering and aggressive attitude, that though she was frightened by his behavior, she stayed away from him for punitive reasons for a day, but returned. It seemed a little odd that she never once had the thought that if she displeased him, he might hit her - she seemed only disappointed in him for not being civilized, apparently?

Also, Gabi's Latino boyfriend is the son of her white family's house cleaner. Gabi, on discovering this fact called it "complicated." That single word felt like an opportunity missed, and I wished heartily that the issues of ethnicity and class and the realities of coming to grips with this and other aspects of how she personally - not her mother - dealt with this would have been further explored.

Conclusion: Despite some unevenness in the plotting, and the fact that an observant reader will figure out the bomber before Gabi does, this is an absorbing slice-of-life contemporary coming-of-age novel with a message about bullying and school violence that has a disturbing relevance to today. Readers who enjoy ripped-from-the-headlines novels will probably eat this one with a spoon.

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I received my copy of this book courtesy of Albert Whitman. You can find ARE YOU STILL THERE by Sarah Lynne Scheerger at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

...Anticipating

The Toymaker's Apprentice!

...which just arrived at my house via late UPS delivery. Thank you after 6 p.m. people!

Honestly? I'm not a huge fan of the whole Nutcracker thing... in part because (Shhhh!) I've never seen the ballet. I also don't really like ballet, as its history is steeped in... *cough* upper class Eurocentric elitism and all that sort of thing. I know, I know, that is its history and a lot in the field is changing, thanks to some amazing folks, and doors finally squeaking open a crack for people of color, but that's where I come from. Though I longed for the yearly traditions wealthier families shared when I was a kid, when I got older, I realized I wasn't interested anyway. HOWEVER. Despite the fact that this story is a re-imagining of the Nutcracker tale, I adore Sherri L. Smith writing ANYTHING and will read it all, forever. Also, there is so much that is completely BIZARRO about the whole Nutcracker schtick anyway. What is with the rat with all the heads? Why are inanimate Christmas decorations moving, anyway? How is such an allegedly happy holiday filled with so much vague menace? Whose fault is it? I suspect this book may have The Answers. Or, at least be really, really beautifully illustrated, have a fab cover typeface, and entertain me in some other fashion entirely. Looking forward to it.

TURNING PAGES: BURN GIRL by MANDY MIKULENCAK

The relationship in dysfunctional families between kids and parents isn't something often directly discussed in YA novels, but this one, from the first paragraph, is all about what happens when a kid is accustomed to taking care of a parent. Eventually, the instructions run out... and the caretaker is on their own, no one taking care of them, no one to care for, and no idea how to live.

Summary: Arlie's flushed the drugs, washed the bottoms of her mother's feet and checked that she had on underwear... and, so that's it. Mom's dead, and she's not quite sure what to do next. Eventually, she calls the police, and the world rushes in -- social services, counselors, schedules, high school, and an uncle she never even knew she had. Order is being imposed on the chaos of her world, and though not too much changes at school -- she's still the girl with the horrible burn scar on her face and only one friend -- everything else changes. Arlie's not handling things well.

Living in a retro Airstream with her Uncle Frank, who drops everything and comes to Durango to build them a house, is ...surreal. He looks like he's trying to win father of the year, and for what? He's not her father, and where has he been? Sometimes, Arlie is furious, other times, claustrophobic. Even her best friend, Mo, doesn't understand why she sometimes goes back to the run down motel where she used to live, to see the old lady who lived down the hall, who was almost like family. Even Frank doesn't understand why she goes off by herself sometimes -- and no one will understand why it's so important to her to see her mother's old boyfriend, Lloyd, whose meth cooking is responsible for the horrible scar on her face, and who just might be the one responsible for her mother's death. Arlie has handled everything herself for so long it feels perfectly normal to keep this to herself, and deal.

Peaks: This book had an absorbing, arresting storyline, and despite the emotional distance the reader has from the protagonist, her strong character draws the reader on. Arlie makes choices the reader would not, and puts herself in danger, yet the reader can't help but keep following Arlie down the rabbit hole.

Valleys: There are myriad books out on kids in the system, and it seems an easy trope to make foster families uniformly lazy, out for money, abusive and overall bad. Being in the foster care system is no picnic for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is if you're in a "system" you're in a county monolith of paperwork and rules and that's impersonal at best. But, it can be livable and positive, and I wish more people would at least acknowledge this.

The romance in this story didn't ring quite true for me; for someone who had been so insecure - food insecure, physically insecure, etc., and utterly dependent on a female best friend, the almost immediate acceptance of physical intimacy and the L-word with a boy seemed to happen really quickly, especially since Mo held hands with Arlie and was comfortable hugging and kissing her, and they had been for so long two-against-the-world, it seemed improbable that anyone else would be welcomed as quickly into her charmed circle.

Conclusion: For those teens who enjoy reading the gritty, ripped-from-the-headlines types of novels depicting kids in trouble, this one is going to be catnip. A strong voice, absorbing details and a life utterly unlike the world of most will make this a good window to look through and give readers a sigh of relief at the happier ending.

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I received my copy of this book courtesy of the publisher. You can find BURN GIRL by Mandy Mikulencak at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

Monday Review: THE SCORPION RULES by Erin Bow

Summary: While you can certainly characterize all of Erin Bow's books so far as speculative fiction, they aren't easily categorized within that, nor are they similar to one another in any way—and I like that. Her first book Plain Kate (reviewed here) was a Cybils finalist, and her second book, Sorrow's Knot (reviewed here) was equally unique and enjoyable in my opinion, working with recognizable mythology and folk tales to weave a new, relevant, and gripping story.

The newly released The Scorpion Rules, like those two, creates a world that is recognizable as based on our own, but unlike the previous two, we are plunged not into a mythical past or present but a frightening dystopian future ruled by an all-too-humanlike AI. That AI, Talis, is the voice which starts the story, in an excerpt from his "Holy Utterances" describing how he all but destroyed humanity in order to save it. In the aftermath, Talis created the Children of Peace: 400 years later, and the heirs of the remaining human nation-states are kept sequestered in safe, pastoral Preceptures—not for their own safety, but as hostages.

And if human nations are presumptuous enough to defy Talis and go to war, their hostages' lives are forfeit. Too bad the newly created nation the Cumberland Alliance, dry and desolate, is willing to start a war over water with its northern neighbor, the Pan-Polar Confederacy. Too bad, in particular, for the confederacy's Princess Greta. Greta's really only known life at the Precepture, going to school and farming for food under the AI's watchful panopticon. Until, that is, the Cumberland Alliance's hostage Elian suddenly appears and changes the way she sees her circumscribed world…

Peaks: One of the interesting things about this book is that the POV characters are not necessarily the "us" characters in the story. Elian, who we only see through the eyes of Greta, is the character "most like us," whose life and outlook is the most similar to the reader's. This keeps us fully immersed in the world setting, understanding it, at the same time as there's this little voice that keeps us (and Greta) questioning it. It's an interesting storytelling strategy, one which makes the reader question oneself and how easily we ourselves might be led into acceptance of a morally murky reality.

Another fascinating aspect of the story harkens back to older hard sci-fi of the Asimov era: the question it poses that perhaps we humans are unfit to govern ourselves and would be better governed by an emotionally impartial entity. And yet, as always, this begs the question of the extent to which such an entity, having been created by humans in the first place, will still mirror our flaws as much as we want it to mirror only our ideals. And Talis, the AI in this story, is in many ways all too human. I do love stories that are not afraid to pose difficult philosophical problems—but at the same time, The Scorpion Rules doesn't allow theoretical questions to impede the telling of a good story, about the indomitability of friendship and love and human connection, and the survival of the HUMAN spirit and self against impossible odds, even our own determination to destroy ourselves and each other.

Valleys: I won't lie; this is a pretty strange world Greta and her companions live in. Because we are told the story primarily through Greta's viewpoint, we are given an automatic entrance into her world, but it's a rather alien one in many respects. And because Greta IS a child of her world, her reasons for doing things, her emotions, reflect that recognizable-but-fundamentally-altered worldview. For me, this meant a certain automatic distance from the narrator and the story itself, because of her rarefied existence. It's extremely well done—appropriate to the story, certainly—but part of me kept wondering what the story would have been like if we'd also gotten Elian's viewpoint, if we'd gotten to be the "us" character, even if only here and there. But maybe that would have been too much telling us what to think.

I guess what I'm saying is, if you are bothered by ambiguity, whether narrative or moral, this might be a difficult one.

Conclusion: In many ways this story reminded me of some of the most thought-provoking of adult spec fic novels—the dystopian A Canticle For Leibowitz, say (reviewed here); the more recent Station Eleven; or, of course, the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey with its rogue AI Hal. It doesn't give the reader easy answers OR easy questions, but it will make you think hard, and wonder.

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I received my copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley; all comments are based on the advance review copy. You can find THE SCORPION RULES by Erin Bow at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

TURNING PAGES: NIGHT ON FIRE, by RONALD KIDD

I review this book with mixed emotions. It touches on an important piece of history, using fictional characters to give eyewitness accounts to a fictional and nonfictional events. In many ways, it is successful; its Kirkus and Booklist stars attest to this. The voice is strong and the action riveting. In other ways, though well-intentioned, the subtext is nonetheless problematic. I've tried to avoid major spoilers, but... reader beware.

Summary:The newspaper account of the CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) ride in May 3, 1961 in The Montgomery Advertiser starts the book in such a way that readers who know a little history can't help but know what they're in for -- another Civil Rights story. This version is told from the point of view of an Alabama girl named Billie Simms, white, well-to-do, and on the cusp of womanhood; thirteen and imagining flying up past the stifling atmosphere of small-town Anniston, and seeing the world. Maybe she'll go to New York City. Maybe she'll go to space. Either way, she longs to take part in the larger world in a real way. History, however, is coming to Anniston, Alabama. Her neighbor, Grant, who always has his camera up to his face, is there to record it, while Mr. Grant is at the newspaper, writing it all down. May of 1961 is a year of changes and challenges, a year that Billie wakes up and realizes that the whole world isn't like her... it's a year she will never forget.

They were just watching. It seemed harmless, but I can see now that it was a weapon. Watching can hurt. It can be painful, even if you don't lift a finger. It has weight. I felt it now, heavy against me, pushing us back, enforcing the rules. I had used it myself without even knowing it.

The passengers watched. The little girl played. The bus rode on, bound for Birmingham.
- NIGHT ON FIRE, by Ronald Kidd, from an Advanced Reader's Copy

Peaks: This is one of the nicest covers I've seen in the past little while; I'm a big fan of silhouettes, and the stylized broken glass around the edges and fire and the bell in the middle are all drawn nicely from the text. It's ironic that such a terrible night made such a gorgeous cover.

The storytelling here is vivid, and Billie's voice is very clear, as she grapples with her blind acceptance of her world as it appears, and her slow realization that All Is Not Well With Everyone. Readers will be curious about her world and intrigued by the historical circumstances surrounding this ordinary girl from a small town. Billie is a go-getter, adventurous and headstrong, and though the reasons for her journey seem more happenstance than reasoned and heartfelt, many readers will travel happily with her.

One of my favorite parts of the story was the inclusion of Janie Forsyth McKinney, the twelve-year-old girl who in real life carried water to the victims of a firebombed bus, and defied her Klansman town (which later declared her mentally incompetent, though the story doesn't get into this). I wished very much that she had made more than a cameo appearance; how she became who she is would to me have been a deeply fascinating tale, one I think any kid would have wanted to read. How does one get that kind of courage? And, where can we all get some?

All of them had baskets. It was a way of traveling I'd never noticed or thought about - proud, self-contained, able to take care of yourself. Just add wheels. Oh, and a seat, preferably up front. The view is better. The door is closer. The bumps aren't as bad.

Valleys: This is a tightly written narrative with a strong voice but also a very strong narrative presence. In some instances, it feels as if the author is speaking for the characters, and some of their conclusions seem unusually mature and more thought out than their interaction in the text supports. For instance, Billie is brave enough to join the Freedom Riders, yet has no deep realizations about equality, though her epiphanies about the family maid, Lavender being more than her job seem genuine enough once she meets Lavender's daughter. Still, she asks no pertinent questions such as, "If the Colored folk get their way, what will change in my world?" Because people are inherently selfish, for this perky, plucky little miss to throw in her lot behind her single African American friend (not counting the maid, who is not her friend although she is confused on this issue) and follow the Freedom Riders, who were nearly burned to death in front of her, bleeding and beaten -- rang a little false for me.

The character frequently talks about her uncomfortable feelings, but they're largely glossed over in favor of action. Equally, the mixed reactions of African Americans at this time are also blended into homogeneity. It is a fact that not everyone thought the Freedom Rides should continue, especially because the riders were young and in serious danger. Many folk wanted to "go along to get along," and not make waves with the white people, but the author has created in this book an entire state full of strong civil rights supporters, which is improbable at best, as individual people of color, even within a single state, hardly constitute an African American monolith. It is implied that their pursuit of civil rights, as depicted in their positioning in the front or back of the bus, can be boiled down to "better view" and "not as many bumps." This is as disingenuous as a book I read as a child which described Rosa Parks as not giving up her seat to begin the Montgomery Bus Boycott because she was tired.

At one point, a gentle African American man on the bus to Montgomery explains that the security guard who harasses Billie and Jarmaine is "caught in a vise - heart on one side, rules on the other." Billie somehow immediately knows that her father, whose casual unkindness to Lavender has already drawn the reader's notice, and whose bystander participating in the Anniston bus firebombing shocked Billie to her core - her father obviously must just have this vise on his heart, so he's excused from being part of a mob attempting to kill people...? That and other moments of egregious oversimplification gave me pause. Although I understand wanting to let young readers feel at ease with the subject matter, the inherent unfairness of the laws reflected in Alabama in 1961 can't be understated. Yes, this is an uncomfortable subject; I believe we must let readers feel a little discomfort so that they can learn empathy. Especially since middle graders aren't babies and can understand unfairness perfectly, the depth of the wounds inflicted by one segment of the American population on another should not be muted for the sake of not upsetting anyone. As a reader hoping for a deeper look at the civil rights movement from the other side of the fence, I was really disappointed.

Conclusion:As writers, we sometimes try to put readers into the moment and our modern sensibilities - what we "should" think instead of what people truly did think back then, and what the law and social mores supported in the past - inform us so strongly that they can't let them go. Especially in books intended for middle grade readers writers seem strongly led to teach and shape opinion and sometimes this interferes with the text. In this case, a hesitance to get into the ugliness of the history doesn't detract entirely from Billie's story, and most tweens and middle graders will not notice - but adults reading this with students should take a moment and talk about some of the deeper issues of being an ally for an underrepresented group, and how important it is who gets to tell the stories of that group.

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I received my copy of this book courtesy of the publisher, Albert Whitman & Company. You can find NIGHT ON FIRE by Ronald Kidd at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

Cybils Nominations, and Are Banned Books Passé?

Are yooouuuuuu ready to NOMINATE? ...for the Cybils Awards? Nominations are officially open to the public (that means YOU, readers) for ten categories of children's and young adult books. You have between Oct. 1-15 to nominate your favorite book in each category. So GO! Do it! And if you really want to support Cybils, buy some great official swag with this year's colorful 10th birthday logo designed by yours truly.

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I almost missed the fact that this week is Banned Books Week, during which we can all thank our lucky stars that very, very few books actually make it from challenged to outright banned any more (although I feel like it's sort of over the top to title one's article "Banned Books Week is a Crock" in order to make that legitimate point). It sort of feels like saying we don't need the Voting Rights Act since we don't have racist prejudice any more. But ANYWAY, enough of my snark. There's plenty of fun to be had for readers during Banned Books Week, especially for readers who like the annual reminder that we've come such a long way, and still might have a little way to go.

For one thing, you can check out the list of 2014's most challenged books, which includes (yet again) Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Reasons: anti-family, cultural insensitivity, drugs/alcohol/smoking, gambling, offensive language, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group, violence. Additional reasons: “depictions of bullying”), which I reviewed here. The list also includes two graphic novels: Marjane Satrapi's wonderful Persepolis and Raina Telgemaier's Drama (which I think is on my TBR pile from ages ago...oops.)

And, just for fun, check out Powell's Books' blog post on 10 Strange Reasons for Banning a Book, pulled from 35 years' worth of Oregon school and library records. True, the vast majority were not ultimately removed from the school or library in question, but the reasons for challenging the books were...well, let's just say that 50 Harlequin romances were challenged on the basis that "Teenagers already have trouble with their emotions without being stimulated by poorly written books."