Noah's Castle

Townsend, John Rowe. Noah's Castle. 1975. Seattle, Wash.: October Mist Publishing, 2010. Print.
[Book cover credit: Provided by publisher]

Awards:
A Horn Book Fanfare Best Book (1977)

Booktalk:
When a financial crisis makes it impossible for England to import food, the country begins to fall apart. When Barry's father starts hoarding food in the basement rather than helping those in need, those on fixed incomes such as the elderly and the infirm, the Mortimers begin to fall apart as well.

Review:
It took me a long time to get into this book. Barry's father is just so horrible, even before he starts hoarding, that I didn't think I could handle a book full of him. For example:

"You always used to be at work all day until we moved here," Mother pointed out.
"That was before the present crisis," said Father. "Now I have the shopping to do."
"It was you who insisted on doing it," Mother said. ... "I sometimes wonder what I'm for. Just cooking and cleaning, I suppose. I might as well be a servant."
"A servant would need wages," Father said -- unaware, I was sure, of any cruelty in the remark.

p.43

Except that he is aware. He spends the entire book making belittling comments about Barry's mother and older sister Nessie, mostly about their inferior, womanly minds. And, for the most part, they just took it. Nessie gets all riled up about it, but only in front of Barry. No one stands up to Father. It wasn't until Barry started to doubt his father that I started to get into Noah's Castle. Then Nessie started actively defying her father and it really started to get good.

Of course at the same time, problems much bigger than a horrifically controlling and sexist head of household are looming all around the Mortimers. As food goes beyond "scarce" right to "rare," people around them start to starve. Barry, Nessie and their mother have to deal with the guilt of knowing that they have plenty when so many other people are suffering and dying of want. Father, on the other hand, feels no guilt. Those people are ill-prepared and none of the Mortimers are allowed to share with them, not matter how hungry, elderly, young, or sick they are. This conflict is the core of the novel. As much as you want to help the needy around you, how do you give away all of your food, not knowing when you may get more, knowing that it means your sickly little sister may go hungry? It's an impossible question with no rights answer, and none is given in the book. But the rights and wrongs of everyone's actions are explored.

Of course, the wrongness of the sexism isn't explored to its fullest, but maybe that would be a bit too much to ask of a book originally published in 1975. Luckily, Nessie struggles against her father's beliefs and bullying and seems like she'll escape the Mortimer house unscathed.


Book source: Review copy provided by the publisher.

The Plain Janes

Castellucci, Cecil and Jim Rugg. The Plain Janes. Lettering by Jared K. Fletcher. New York: Minx - DC Comics, 2007. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/2335288]

Booktalk:
After being injured in a bombing in Metro City, Jane's parents move her out to the 'burbs where it is safe. Trying to come to grips with what she's been through and make a difference at the same time, Jane falls in with a group of misfits. Together Jane (Main Jane), Jayne (Brain Jane), Polly Jane (Sporty Jane), and Jane (Theatre Jane) form P.L.A.I.N., People Loving Art in Neighborhoods. By pooling their talents the PLAIN Janes stage art "attacks" all over their town, engaging their high school and creating the community Jane needs to get over the real attack in Metro City.

Review:
This is a really cute, girl power type graphic novel. The Janes really grow together as they learn to accept each others' different quirks and even use them to the advantage of the group. (Main) Jane, being new and from Metro City, is courted by the popular girls, but her insistence on staying loyal to the rest of the Janes, without Mean Girl-ing the popular chicks, is highlighted a few different times. It's her ability to be nice to everyone, even when she's blowing off the popular crowd, that makes the Big Unifying Art Attack possible.

Running underneath this light storyline is (Main) Jane's attempt to cope with the attack she lived through in Metro City. After the attack she grew attached to a John Doe who also survived but has been in a coma ever since. His notebook, full of his admiration of everyday art, is what inspires her to start P.L.A.I.N. She writes him letters, which she sends to the hospital, about the art "attacks" and her new friends. Though this relationship is entirely onesided, it gives Jane the outlet that she needs for her feelings regarding the attack and her parents' newfound fear of Metro City.

The artwork is entirely in black and white, which I found a bit strange at first considering it is a book about public art. The artist uses the black and white drawings to highlight the emotions of (Main) Jane and later of her friends, rather than to highlight the art they create, as color work would do. It lends some levity to the lighter, surface storyline.

Overall, this is a quick and fun read that has a bit more heft and substance to it than you'd guess at first glance. I highly recommend it.


Book source: Philly Free Library

The Splendor Falls

Clement-Moore, Rosemary. The Splendor Falls. New York: Delacorte Press - Random House Children's Books, 2009. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/8463434]

Booktalk:

"It's a test," I said. "If I'm crazy, then the power of suggestion will make me see something when I open this door. If there's nothing there, then I am still in control of my senses."

Unless there really was such a thing as ghosts, in which case, my test proved nothing either way.

Ghosts, Sylvie? Really?

No, not really. But it would explain a lot.

"I could stand here all day at this rate." And sooner or later someone was going to come by and wonder why I was standing with my face to the door, talking to myself.

p.122-3

Sylvie might be depressed, she might have PTSD, she might be going crazy, or she might just be a rich spoiled brat with an active imagination. Whatever is the case, she can't be left alone. While her mother enjoys her honeymoon and their New York City apartment stands empty, Sylvie is left to recover from the serious leg break that ended her ballet career just as it was starting. She's been sent to stay with her late father's cousin, in Alabama, in a mansion that her father never mentioned. A mansion that may or may not be filled with ghosts.

Review:

Stacked on top of each other, The Splendor Falls and War and Peace (which is finally picking up now that I'm only skimming the War parts...) look about the same size. This kept me from reading The Splendor Falls for quite a little while, even though I knew I would probably love it. It's a paranormal romance about a ballerina in the Deep South! What's not to love? 500+ pages, I always told myself. Do not make the same mistake I did! The Splendor Falls is a wonderful and gripping story that you will fly right through. I read it in two days.

Sylvie is sent to Alabama to deal with the aftermath of a fall that has left her limping, unable to ever dance again. The way that she has to learn to physically, mentally and emotionally deal with this is masterfully woven into the ghost story that is the thrust of this book. For example, she tries to run from what she thinks is a ghost, but has to slowly go down a spiral staircase in reverse, slowing up her escape. The way that she relives the fall seemed painfully realistic to me, and I was glad that the author kept this reminder throughout the story. It's obviously not a common experience, but it kind of kept the whole story grounded in the real world. This had the dual effect of pulling me out of scary moments sometimes and making things that much scarier at others. Sylvie has actual problems that she is dealing with and she is mostly rational, but she still sees ghosts, hears screaming by the river, smells lavender where there is none, etc. Creepy.

Also, there is no shortage of swoon-worthy gentlemen in this story. I was worried for a bit that Sylvie would fall for her new step-brother. Luckily an older British guy, complete with an endearingly bumbling father, and a Southern teenager, who the whole town would love to see paired up with Sylvie because of some old superstition involving both their families, arrive on the scene. They nicely relegate the step-bro into friend territory. The romance part of this paranormal romance is a lot of getting hit on by one guy while lusting after the other, but both guys in this equation take on mythical significance when the real paranormal activity starts in.

That's right. There's a lot more going on here than ghosts.

I don't want to get too spoiler-y and tell you what's going on here (neither does Clement-Moore, for that matter. The more-than-ghosts stuff doesn't make an appearance until the last third of the book at the earliest), just believe me when I say that there is some real magical payout by the end. It is totally worth the wait.


Also, this is a stand-alone book, and I don't mean the start of a series or the suddenly popular trilogy that just happens to stand alone. There is just this one book. No cliffhanger. No waiting to find out what happens. You only need to commit to reading (500+ pages of) a single book to get the whole story. Bliss, I tell you. Bliss.

Book source: Philly Free Library

Once

Gleitzman, Morris. Once. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2010. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/820104]

Awards:
KOALA, Fiction for years 7-9 (2007)
YABBA, Fiction years 7-9 (2007)
CBCA Honor Book, Younger Readers (2006)

Booktalk:
Once there was a boy named Felix who lived at an orphanage in Poland, only he wasn't an orphan. Almost four years ago Felix's secret alive parents left him with Mother Minka, at the orphanage, so they could travel and find out why their bookstore had to close.

Once Nazis came to the orphanage and burned all the Jewish books in the library. Then Felix knew the answer to his parents' problem. See, Felix not only has secret alive parents, he's also secretly Jewish. Maybe if his parents sold more books that the Nazis liked, their bookstore wouldn't have to close.

Armed with this revelation, Felix leaves the orphanage to find his parents. Instead of them helping and protecting him, maybe Felix can save them, just this Once.


Review:
Doesn't the whole premise of this book stress you out? It stressed me out. For a book of 163 pages* I had to put it down more than a couple of times because I was just too nervous for Felix. He was so young when his parents left him at the orphanage. This is, presumably, why they didn't tell him why they were really leaving him in the hands of a bunch of nuns, and the nuns certainly didn't tell him either. How could they? How could they explain that to 6 year old Felix when he entered the orphanage? Besides, if Felix didn't pray to God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Pope and Adolf Hitler like the rest of the orphans, he'd stand out.

It was heartbreaking to watch Felix do things like return to his family's home in what used to be a Jewish neighborhood, try to flag down a truckload of soldiers when he needs help, or pray to Adolf Hitler to keep him safe, as he's been taught to do. He really has no idea what is going on in Poland and the rest of Europe. He has no idea that at ten years old he is a hunted man. His realization that it is not Jewish books that the Nazis hate, but Jews themselves, is painfully slow, and yet I never once doubted the authenticity of Felix's thought processes and take on the situation around him. As Felix's naivety lessens to make room for the huge weight of his new knowledge, it is sometimes hard to believe that he is only ten, or even that he is the same boy that I met at the beginning of the book. This is not to say that Felix's voice lost any of its authenticity, he is just aged so much by what he has to go through.

Even given the subject matter, and the violence does get a bit graphic by the end, this is a beautiful book. The stories that Felix makes up for himself and others to get them through the really hard times, the people that help Felix along the way, and the hope and compassion that Felix just never loses make this an (almost) uplifting story. The ending is not horrific or magically happy. It has that Living Dead Girl or The Giver factor (Does he make it to a better place or to a "better place"?) that is a bit open to interpretation. ETA: Except that it isn't. The sequel, Then, is available in the UK and will hopefully be available in the US soon.


Once will be available for purchase in the US on March 30th, next Tuesday!


Book source: Review copy from publisher, via the yalsa-bk listserv.

*This page count is from an uncorrected proof and may not match the published copy.

Scars

Rainfield, Cheryl. Scars. Lodi, NJ: WestSide Books, 2010. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/9445693/book/57675127]

Booktalk:
Kendra is full of secrets. She let one big one out six months ago, when she started to remember and told her parents about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. Now she's struggling to keep the rest of her secrets in: she wishes her therapist, her art teacher, almost anyone else, was her real mother; she's been cutting herself to deal with the pain that remembering the abuse has brought on; she has a crush on the toughest girl at school, who also sleeps with boys like it's her job; and the biggest secret of all, one she can't even tell herself, somewhere deep down in her memory, she knows who raped her and she knows that he'll kill her if she tells.

Review:
This book is wonderful and powerful. It is a book I read in a day and then took two days to digest. I highly recommend it. That said, this is a book about prolonged sexual abuse and self-injury, in addition to being a book about a girl whose mother is not happy about her daughter's new girlfriend. It is not for everyone, but it will undoubtedly be really important for more than a few someones.

Throughout the course of the book, the bulk of which spans what feels like only a week, Kendra relives her abuse, through flashbacks that hit her out of (almost) nowhere and with her therapist, as she tries to remember the identity of her abuser. She also cuts herself, repeatedly, to cope with the pain and the panic that these memories bring on. Rainfield portrays all of this realistically and sensitively. She lets us inside Kendra's head to see her pain, shame, insecurities, fear and more. More importantly, she shows how much Kendra appreciates and depends on those who support her, even if Kendra doesn't always show it herself. It is Kendra's chosen family, her therapist, her art teacher, her mentor, and her girlfriend, that make it possible for her to face her abuse and ultimately her abuser.

There were some moments in the book when the dialog seemed less than authentic. Using Carolyn, Kendra's therapist, Rainfield can realistically work phrases like "you're not the one who deserves to be hurt, Kendra. He is," into a conversation about Kendra's self-injury. Instead when Meghan, Kendra's girlfriend of a day, says it, it can be a bit jarring (139)*. However, it is the right things to say and important for readers to, well, read. While the few exchanges like this between Kendra and Meghan pulled me momentarily out of the story, they are easily outweighed by the cute wow-you're-pretty moments that these two more often share. Their budding relationship adds the happiness that Kendra so desperately needs and the normalcy that the average reader will need in order to relate to all the Kendra is going through.

Cheryl Rainfield has also included an annotated bibliography of web resources, help lines and crisis support, books, articles, and videos for victims of sexual and ritual abuse, those who self-harm, teens thinking about suicide, and teens in the process of coming out or dealing with homophobia. She also highlights resources specifically for friends, family, and other vital supporters of people dealing with these issues.


To read more about Scars, including a statement from the author and blurbs from some very well-known authors, check out the Cheryl Rainfield's website. Scars will be out and available to purchase March 24th.


Book source: Review copy from publisher.

*All quotes were taken from an uncorrected proof. Exact wording and page numbers may not match the final copy.

Academy 7

Osterlund, Anne. Academy 7. New York: Speak-Penguin Group, 2009. Print
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/6686310]

Booktalk:
Aerin Renning is picked up by the Envoy, an Alliance ship, when her own proves to be working only well enough to help her escape her planet, but not well enough to take her to another one. Now, because of the kindness of the Envoy's captain, she is on her way to the most prestigious school in the Alliance, Academy 7, where she'll have to compete with the other students, academically, for the right to stay without the benefit of the a formal Alliance education up to this point. And without letting anyone figure out that she's not an Alliance citizen and has no right to be there in the first place.

Review:
I LOVED Academy 7. While a lot of this love may spring from the fact that this book is neither dystopian nor paranormal, just science fiction in a United Federation of Planets sort of way, it also tells a really great story. Osterlund manages to introduce us into this new world (which includes lots of "worlds") without a lot of exposition or traditional world building. We get to learn about the Alliance, its history and its downfalls along with Aerin, who spends a lot of time in the library in order to keep up with her classmates.

And then there's Dane, Aerin's rival in just about every class. Their relationship takes a long time to evolve, especially since they are both hiding BIG SECRETS from one another, even after they move from enemies to friends. Without switching back and forth between Dane and Aerin's POV, we manage to get a real feel for each of their personalities and back stories (all hail the return of the omniscient narrator!) while they maneuver through trying to figure out what they can trust each other with. Their relationship is clearly the main focus of most of the book, just in a sci-fi setting, but every once in a while things become very tech savvy or very space age (the ending is ridiculously unexpected and awesome on both counts). I think this balance will appeal to readers of the less swoony paranormals out there and budding (or closet) sci-fi fans.

Book source: I bought it.

TwentyTen Reading Challenge

http://www.bartsbookshelf.co.uk/my-challenges/twentyten-challenge/

Young Adult

1. What Happened to Lani Garver by Carol Plum-Ucci
2. Gringolandia by Lyn Miller-Lachmann

T.B.R.

1. Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go by Dale E. Basye
2. My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up by Russell Brand  

Shiny and New

1.  Academy 7 by Anne Osterlund
2. Bad Faith by Gillian Philip 

Bad Blogger's

1.  Year of the Horse by Justin Allen
2.  Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Charity

1.  
2.  

New in 2010

1.  Scars by Cheryl Rainfield
2.  Crossing by Andrew Xia Fukuda

Older than Me

1.  Noah's Castle by John Rowe Townsend
2.  

Win! Win! - Graphic Novel Challenge

1.  Isadora Duncan: A Graphic Biography by Sabrina Jones
2.  The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg

Who Are You Again?

1.  Once by Morris Gleitzman
2.  The Splendor Falls by Rosemary Clement-Moore

Up to Me! - Paranormal YA 

1. Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception by Maggie Stiefvater
2. The Dark Divine by Bree Despain

What Happened to Lani Garver

Plum-Ucci, Carol. What Happened to Lani Garver. 2002. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, Inc., 2004. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/68056]

Awards:
ALA Best Books for Young Adults (2003)
ALA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults (Own Your Own Freak, 2005)

Booktalk:

"You need to go out in the waiting room and find yourself a floating angel."
"A what?"
"They come with you on visits like these. They hold your hand and they tell you good stuff and make sense of this world so you realize it's not so bad--"
"Oh, I came with a friend. He's out there." I jerked my thumb toward the waiting room. "Thinks he's at a family reunion. Not much help."
"That's cuz he's a friend. Floating angels aren't friends; they're real angels. They're real. Didn't you see any of 'em out there?" His beaming smile flashed, and I gathered he was pulling my leg, the other option being that he was nuts. I decided to be polite and not hate myself more.
"Uh, no. What do they look like?"
"Like faggots. ... Angels don't have a gender. So what they gonna look like?"

p. 89

Because Lani Garver looks like he might be one and because he makes Claire's life, which she's losing grip on, sane, Claire thinks Lani might just be her floating angel. Unfortunately, the rest of Hackett, a small island off the Jersey Shore, sees nothing angelic about a young, clearly queer boy invading their little island. Just as Lani brings new complications to Claire's life in the midst of all the goodness, his friendship with her is his lifeline on Hackett Island, but her popular cheerleader status makes it impossible to fly under the radar the fish frat, this small island's crew of good ol' boys.

Review:
This book was hauntingly good, in my opinion. You know right from the start that something horrible is going to happen to Lani, so everything in the book feels like foreshadowing. Watching Lani and Claire hurdle toward this inevitable end is heartbreaking, even as you cheer on Lani's continual "I don't care what they think" attitude. Claire is a bit more cautious than he is. As she grows and changes over the course of the novel she cares less and less what her friends and the fish frat think of her, but she knows what they are capable of doing to Lani and herself. However, her growing sense of the injustice of it all, in combination with her new-found temper, still trips her up. The way things end up happening in the end is not how you would expect, at least it wasn't the way that I had put it together in my head.

The best thing about What Happened to Lani Garver is its honesty. For example:

I shook my head, embarrassed by my curiosity but more embarrassed by how none of this made sense to me. "We're talking about a guy with a girl, who propositions you once, and then called you a faggot. What is a person like that?"
"Do you mean, is there a clinical name for someone like that?"
"Well...yeah."
"Dunno. I think they call it 'hypocritical.'"

p81

It's an honest question, one that I'm sure more people than fictional Claire would like an answer to. Small teaching moments like this are peppered throughout the book in a natural and conversational way. Also, the language, as I'm sure you noticed in both of the quotes, makes me cringe, but, as the girlfriend pointed out, this was how we all talked in high school, before we knew it wasn't PC. The dichotomy of the way words like "faggot" are used by the fish frat and the way they are used by Lani and his friends is very striking. And though the feeling that we can say it about our own but you can't say it about us is confusing (which is true of a lot of words about a lot of groups that are considered either derogatory or familiar depending on who is saying them to whom), it appears naturally here without forced explanations of why it is or isn't okay.

My only complaint about this book are the floating angels themselves. They're made up by the author. She explains in an interview at the back of the paperback version that she didn't want to alienate any followers of a specific religion by pulling from the traditions of another. While that is awesome, the concept of floating angels is an interesting one and I wanted to know more about them, but, of course, nothing else exists.

Warning: There are three chapters worth of the bad thing that happens to Claire and Lani. It's told from Claire's perspective and she goes in and out of consciousness for a lot of it, so it doesn't end up being graphic. It is still pretty upsetting and might be downright detrimental reading for someone who has gone through this type of experience themselves.

Book source: Philly Free Library

Who needs resulotions when there are challenges?

Happy New Year Everyone!

Please excuse this obligatory post with all of the challenges I'll be striving to successfully complete this year. Maybe I'll see more than a few of you on the challenge pages!

Because I thought I should join at least one challenge that might actually be a challenge for me, I'm joining the Graphic Novels Challenge. I'm not a huge graphic novel fan, but I'm not entirely against them either. Hopefully this will help me get a bit more into them. Read the rules here:

http://graphicnovelschallenge.blogspot.com/2009/12/graphic-novels-challenge-2010.html

I'm going to go for the Intermediate Level, 3-10 graphic novels or comic books over the course of 2010.

GLBT Reading: The Challenge That Dare Not Speak Its Name. I'm looking forward to this challenge and getting reading suggestions from everyone else's reviews! Read the rules here:

http://glbt-reading.blogspot.com/2009/11/glbt-challenge-2010.html

I'm signing up for the Rainbow Level, 12 or more books.

I'm hoping the TwentyTen Challenge will help me to mix-up what I'm reading this year. With 2 books from 10 different categories, I should have a bit more variety! Read the rules here:

http://www.bartsbookshelf.co.uk/my-challenges/twentyten-challenge/

My Win! Win! category will go to the Graphic Novels Challenge and my Up to You category will give me an excuse to read some paranormal romance without committing to a year's worth of a paranormal challenge.

This challenge from Miz B is just what I need to counter-act the aftermath of the going-out-of-business sale last week at my local Borders Express. And counter-act, you know, being me. Read the rules here: 

http://readerchallenges.wordpress.com/ryob-read-your-own-books/

I'm hoping to read at least 50 books from my own shelves in 2010.

Once again, I'll be participating in J. Kaye's Local Library Challenge. Also, again, only books from my local public library will count, as the libraries where I currently work are at a privately funded institutions. Read J. Kaye's rules here:

http://j-kaye-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/11/2010-support-your-local-library-reading.html

I'm going to stick with the Just My Size level, 50 books checked out and read from the public library in 2010, which will hopefully help me keep the focus on the books I already own.

I'll put up posts to keep track of my progress as I actually start reading for these challenges. 

Good luck with all of your challenges and Happy New Year!