Open Wounds

Lunievicz, Joseph. Open Wounds. Lodi, NJ: Westside Books, 2011. Print.
[Book cover credit: lunievicz.com/open-wounds/]

Booktalk:

"The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling
For you but not for me"
...
I met my cousin on the street. Sister Bernadette closed the front door behind me, her parting words echoing in my ears. "Mr. Leftingsham is your guardian by law of the state and by law of the Lord, Cedric. You are ours no longer. May the Lord be with you."

p.88-9*

Cid has always been the kid nobody wants. His mother died when he was born, leaving him with a father who could never forgive him for his fatal birth and a grandmother who could never forgive him for his Jewish mother. When he inevitably gets left at an orphanage, he thinks he'll be there forever. A man like Lefty, a cousin he never knew existed, is the last person he'd expect to claim him.

Review:
Cid's already lived a rough life by the time Lefty takes him from the orphanage. He's spent most of his childhood as his father and grandmother's punching bag, watched most of his neighbors be evicted from their homes, watched his grandmother kill herself to avoid the same, been taken in to a loving home and then left behind. And that's all before he really even hits teenage-hood (and before we hit the 100 page mark). But that's not to say that it's all bad. Cid has two great best friends, Siggy and Tomik, and he goes to the movies, "church," with his grandmother every Saturday. And out of that comes Cid's dream of becoming a fencer.

The bright and the horrible are wonderfully balanced in these opening pages. You never quite forget one while you're reading about the other. And they set things up perfectly for Lefty's grand entrance. The Great War left him horribly disfigured, crippled, and cranky, but life with him gives Cid opportunities he never would have had otherwise. Together they form a little family (aawww - but not that obvious. Lefty and Cid are both way too tough for all that), but more importantly, Lefty sets Cid up with daily fencing lessons with the crazy, drunk  Russian on the roof. Once Nikolai gets involved, Open Wounds quickly becomes a sports book. There's training and fighting and sore muscles and exhausted bodies. But there's also stage-fighting with a Shakespeare company, a cute girl, a reunion with Siggy and Tomik, and the reappearance of their childhood bullies. Again, the beautiful balance. There wasn't so much plot that the fencing stopped being important, but at the same time, I never felt lost in a book centered around the practice of a sport I've only seen in movies.

Now, I don't read a lot of fencing books (though I'm considerably more interested in them now), but I do read a lot of ballet books. I always try to comment on the accuracy of the dancing or the attitudes towards it. I can't do that here, but Richie can (sorry, his site doesn't do direct links). If he says Open Wounds is good, you can bet that it is and that the swordplay therein is up to par (and he does). This will be a hit with readers who are looking for sports books, but historical fiction and hard-knock-life fans will love it as well.


Open Wounds comes out May 25!


Book source: ARC provided by the publisher.


*Quotes and page numbers are from an uncorrected proof and may not match the published copy.

Links to Amazon.com may be affiliate links for the Amazon Associates program. If you buy something through this link, I may receive a referral fee.

Catching Fire

Collins, Suzanne. Catching Fire. Hunger Games Trilogy. 2. New York: Scholastic Press, 2009.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/book/50747618]

Booktalk:

"Even if you pull it off, they'll be back in another few months to take us all to the Games. You and Peeta, you'll be mentors now, every year from here on out. And every year they'll revisit the romance and broadcast the details of your private life, and you'll never, ever be able to do anything but live happily ever after with that boy."

p. 44

Now that they're not at war, they must pretend to be in love. After Katniss's stunt with the berries at the end of the Games, the eyes of all of Panem are on Katniss and Peeta, especially their lovesick fans in the Capitol. The show must go on or there will be consequences, as President Snow wastes no time in making clear.

It seems the non-lovesick (non-Capitol) residents of Panem have seen through Katniss's act and are ready to pull some stunts of their own.

Review:
There has been a lot of talk about the tug of war between Peeta and Gale, with Katniss in the middle. Put that way, this plot theme is very reminiscent of another recent YA hit, as EW has so astutely noticed. Unfortunately the wise writers at EW failed to notice that this triangle is not a lover's spat. Neither Gale or Peeta seem to be fighting very hard for Katniss's affection. (Peeta has the advantage of not needing to fight as everyone in Panem thinks he's already won and Gale has the advantage of looking angsty yet grown-up when displaying his righteous indignation over Katniss's new found "true love.") Katniss still feels she must choose. But is she choosing between Peeta and Gale? Or is she choosing between the one person in all of District 12 (besides drunk Haymitch, who is, delightfully as always, around a lot more in this installment) who understands what she went through in the arena and the one person who understands what she went through when her father died and she assumed the role of head of household?

This internal struggle is uber-important in beginning of the book, but it is quickly knocked out of both the limelight and Katniss's head by a BUNCH of other stuff that is too mind-blowingly spoilerish to reveal here. Ignore the lovey-dovey reviews and trust that there is another great action novel in Catching Fire that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

That said, this is a Second Book, but it happily does not suffer from Second Book Syndrome (you know, when you can really really tell that nothing important is going to happen because this second book is just a vehicle to get the reader from book 1 to book 3). It does open with a lot of "here's the fallout from everything that happened in The Hunger Games, hence the love triangle fixation. But then the plot really gets going.

The Victory Tour is a big fake love fest, but is also affords Katniss and Peeta the chance to see and be seen in every district, which makes President Snow very nervous, and he's not very nice when he's nervous.

And then, of course, there's another reaping.

And the story goes on. Catching Fire definitely takes us from The Hunger Games' pretty self-centered look at the Games with a touch of we-hate-the-Capitol-for-what-it-makes-us-do to whatever we're going to get in the third book. In the meantime, this book offers it's own excitement as well as Katniss's widening awareness of what's going on around her.

But it does leave us with a cliff-hanger, waiting for Book 3, where many loose ends (many from the last 10 pages in which most of Catching Fire is revealed to be a plot that Katniss, and therefore we readers, knew nothing about) will need to be untangled before they can even begin to be tied up.


Book 1: The Hunger Games
Book Source: I bought it.

The Hunger Games

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. Hunger Games Trilogy. 1. New York: Scholastic Press, 2008.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/4979986]

Awards:
Cybils Award - Fantasy and Science Fiction, Young Adult (2008)
A Horn Book Fanfare Best Book (2008)
Locus Recommended Reading, Young Adult (2008)
ALA Best Books for Young Adults (2009)
Amelia Bloomer List (2009)

Booktalk:
RAW is pretty awesome, and UFC is pretty hard core. Both look like tickling competitions compared to The Hunger Games: twelve boys and twelve girls, all 12-18 years old, thrown together to see who can live the longest, ie kill everyone else off. Actually kill them, none of this "no rules but play fair" crap that they pull in other extreme fighting arenas. Sounds cool, right? Well, it would be if The Hunger Games was played by a bunch of rich jerks with too much testosterone who train for it their whole lives. Those guys are there, of course, but other kids are picked at random to participate too. Kids like Katniss's sweet, barely twelve years old little sister, Prim. When Prim is selected, Katniss goes against all reason and volunteers to go in her place. With nothing but the desperate desire to survive, Katniss is going to play in the most important game of her life, The Hunger Games.

Review:
Seeing as how I'm the last person on the planet to read The Hunger Games, except for my mom who tried to steal my copy while I was home visiting last week, I don't feel like my review needs to be all that in depth.

This book rocks. Read it.

But if you take the dust jackets off books to read them like I do, don't read it on the beach or your beach buddy will get a really funky sunburn from the reflection of the gold mockingjay on the cover...

After the Moment

Freymann-Weyr, Garret. After the Moment. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2009.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/6759077]

Booktalk:
What is the most important? The moment you meet someone? The moment you realize you're in love with that person? The moment that tears you apart? The moment you realize that person will forever be "the one that got away"? Watch Maia and Leigh go through all of these moments, and then some, and decide which is the most important for yourself. Then see what comes After the Moment.

Review:
There is a lot going on in After the Moment. There is divorce, the bond between step-siblings, death, jailed parents, absent parents, emotionally over or under-available parents, anorexia, school bullies, a BIG fight, and more that is too integral to the main turning point of the plot to list. Because there is so much crammed into the barely-over-300-pages of this book, I don't think that any of these issues are given the attention that they deserve. In fact, I would hesitate to give this book to anyone who is actually dealing with the consequences of the situations discussed in the book. The characters recover much to quickly to offer any comfort.

The one exception to this is Maia's anorexia. When we meet her in After the Moment she is already in recovery and off of her meal plan, all of which is discussed openly and frankly in the text. Though she still struggles in the beginning with eating in front of people, she progresses throughout the book with her recovery. Whether this is because a million other things happen to her that take precedence in the plot or because she is actually moving forward in her recovery may be open to interpretation. By the time we see her again years later when Leigh is looking back on their relationship, there are no outward signs of her struggles, even at a dinner party. The life after anorexia is hopeful, as is the life after everything else the characters have gone through.

Even with all of this, it felt real to me while I was reading it. It wasn't until I finished the book and realized that Millie's grieving over her father's death hadn't been fully covered or resolved (along with a myriad of other BIG ISSUES that could have been more fully dealt with). My adult brain looking back on reading a YA novel wanted more from the treatment of the characters and their feelings from this book. When I was just reading it, however, it worked.

Tales from the Farm

Lemire, Jeff. Ills. Jeff Lemires. Essex County Vol. 1: Tales from the Farm. Atlanta: Top Shelf Productions, 2007.
[Book credit cover: www.librarything.com]

Awards:
Alex Award (2008)
Doug Wright Award, Best Emerging Talent (2008)

Summary:
After the death of his mother, Lester moves in with his uncle who lives on a farm. In between school, homework and feeding the chicks, Lester finds time to fight aliens with Jimmy LeBeuf, a local guy who used to play for the NHL and hasn't been the same since.

Review:
This Alex Award winner takes a mature look at child's play. Lester's pretend play mixes seamlessly with his real life, his and his uncle's, flashbacks of his mother on her death bed, and comics that Lester draws himself (actually attributed to author/illustrator Jeff Lemire's 9 year-old self). His growing, equal relationship with Jimmy is in sharp contrast with the relationship Lester has with his uncle, which is strained with the death of his mother, chores and a serious lack of understanding on both sides.

Though the illustrations are in black and white, they lend beauty and emotion to this all but wordless story. Unfortunately, for me at least, even the beauty of this string of events, especially the depiction of Lester's uncle's pain and effort to relate to his nephew, does not make up for the fact that there is barely a plot. This story covers the four seasons of the year on the farm, and though we watch how things change for Lester and how he and Jeff's alien fantasy evolves, I couldn't quite get over waiting for something to finally happen.

Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

Crutcher, Chris. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes. New York: A Greenwillow Book, HarperTempest, 1993.
[Book cover credit: www.librarything.com]

Awards:
ALA Best Books for Young Adults (1994)

Summary:
Tough Sarah (who has severe burns all over her hands and face) and doughy, frightened Eric (also called Moby, after another famous whale) have been friends for a long time, mainly because no one else wanted to be friends with them. High school changes everything when Eric starts to shed pounds as a result of joining the swim team and Sarah, who turns out to be not so tough, cracks and winds up in a psychiatric hospital.

Review:
A friend said in class the other day that talking to your best friend, at the age of 13, about the death of a parent is dumping so much on a kid, even if that kid is your age, that they can't possibly comprehend. Sarah Byrnes has been avoiding doing that most of her life, protecting her friends and also protecting herself. When the truth finally comes out about why she is in the psychiatric hospital and about her scars, she is more exposed than she has ever been and must learn to trust Eric as well as a small handful of adults that he trusts.

When Eric's best friend, who he was secretly afraid of because she's so tough, stops talking and is committed, his life changes dramatically while not changing at all. He still has to go to school, where he is taking a Contemporary American Thought, a class that erupts into dramatic and emotional debate on an almost daily basis. He still has to go to swim practice, where he and Ellerby are stars plotting to take out their fellow teammate. He still has to deal with his mother's new boyfriend, who is about as interesting as cardboard. He still has to deal with being a high school boy who wants to laugh and eat and joke and crush on girls and not talk nonsense to his best friend, who won't respond and possibly can't hear him, in a mental ward everyday. But he does.

This harrowing (yet hilarious at times) story not only touches on, but addresses so many touchy subjects: weight, image, abuse, abortion, religion, suicide, fault, what it means to be a victim and who can be a hero.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Alexie, Sherman. Ills. Ellen Forney. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2007.[Book cover credit: http://www.librarything.com/]
Awards:
Horn Book Fanfare Best Book (2007)
National Book Award, Young People's Literature (2007)
American Indian Youth Literature Award (2008)
ALA Best Books for Young Adults (2008)
Michigan Library Association's Thumbs Up! Award (2008)
And more!

Summary:
Infuriated by the state of the reservation high school and desperate to avoid the lack of future that so many of his friends and family members have already succumbed to, Junior makes a bold choice and decides to go to high school off the reservation, in town. As the only Native American attending Rearden High School, Junior, now called Arnold, must reconcile his reservation life at home with his image and friends at school.

Booktalk:
Junior, to his family and rez friends, or Arnold, to his friends at his all white, off-rez high school, doesn't take anything seriously. Not the constant ass-whippings he receives at the hands of his former classmates and neighbors, who think he is abandoning the tribe.

Not the fact that he's a basketball star at a school where the only other Indian is the mascot.

Not the fact that the adults in his life are plagued by alcoholism and that his father's best friend died fighting over the last sip in a bottle of wine.

Hiding behind his comics, Arnold or Junior has a lot to deal with and no one who can empathize except his diary. Read it, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, to see what he actually takes seriously.

Images are copyrighted by Ellen Forney and used with permission from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. They are from pages 45, 142 and 170.

.

Review for adults:

In this, Alexie's first novel for young adults, he cannot quite give up the ghost and talks to us no-longer-young adults directly. It's well hidden in the plot, so you don't have to worry that teen readers will think he's preaching to you or to them.

"Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together.

You can do it" (p189).

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a funny, funny book with serious implications about racism, alcoholism, peer pressure and a whole lot of masterbating, which is all well and good. These are things that young adults need to learn about and deal with, and humor is a great way to do it. Adults can also enjoy all of these lessons and laughs and comics, but we should take a good look at the adults in Arnold's life. Be the one who says, "You can do it."