Books about PKs

About a month ago I came home from the library and realized that, without looking to do so, I'd come home with three books featuring PKs (Pastor's or Preacher's Kids), Saving Maddie, Once Was Lost, and The Dark Divine. Since then I've been on the lookout for YA books (and middle grade but I can't find any!) about PKs. I'm trying to come up with enough to make July PK month here at lucy was robbed, in honor of my mom, who is a PK and will be celebrating her (number removed to protect the innocent) birthday.

I'm still a few books short of a whole months worth of reviews. Here's my list so far:
Saving Maddie by Varian Johnson
Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr
The Dark Divine by Bree Despain
Zora and Nicky by Claudia Mair Burney (not all that YA, but I think it'll work)
Catalyst by Laurie Halse Anderson
Nothing Pink by Mark Hardy
The Less-Dead by April Lurie (if I make it to the top of the hold list at the library in time, also about the kid of a religious radio personality rather than a pastor)

I'm thinking of adding The God Box (Sanchez) and Empress of the World (Ryan) to round out the month, but they're about queer teens and Christianity, not the PK experience. If you have any titles that might work, please let me know! So far, the only way I've found to search is to use the subject term "Children of clergy," which brings up most, but not all, of these and a bunch of Mormon historical fiction. I'm looking to stay in the present as much as possible.

Thanks in advance!

The Red Pyramid - for Tween Tuesday

Tween Tuesday was started over at Green Bean Teen Queen as away to highlight awesome books for the 9-12 yr olds or Tweens. Any book highlighted on Tween Tuesday also counts for the In the Middle Reading Challenge! This week's book is:

Riordan, Rick. The Red Pyramid. New York: Disney - Hyperion Books, 2010. Print. The Kane Chronicles 1.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/9277689]

Booktalk:
Carter and Sadie don't see each other often. When their mother died, their mother's parents were granted custody of Sadie, and Carter went with their father. Everywhere. Dr. Julius Kane, Sadie and Carter's father, is an Egyptologist who travels the world doing research and giving lectures. Living with him, Carter has had experiences other kids can only dream about. He's also missed out on some "normal" kid stuff, like learning that it's not cool, or even okay, to wear loafers. Sadie, on the other hand, has had her fill of normalcy and is dying (her hair at least) for a little excitement. When something goes horribly wrong during Carter and their father's annual visit with Sadie, Carter and Sadie must learn to work together and trust each other, an uncle they never knew they had, and a cat in order to save their father from Set, the Egyptian god of the desert. Oh, and the world. They have to save that too.

Review:
Rick Riordan has done it again! He's taken kids who could be normal, personality-wise if not in circumstance this time, linked them up with a deity and set them loose. This time, the kids are not children of gods, but the children of former members of a society (of magicians!) dating back to the time of the Pharaohs that is dedicated to serving/controlling the gods of Egypt. Carter and Sadie are more powerful than most because of their lineage, but there is a Harry Potter-esque it-could-be-anyone thing going on that will open up the rest of the series for a lot of interesting sidekicks. At this point in the series there are only a few kids still training in this society, one of whom is already set up as the girl Carter will embarrassingly and awkwardly crush on for probably the rest of the series, but I'm sure Riordan will bring in a whole cast of interesting kids by the end.

The whole story is told from both Sadie and Carter's points of view in, more or less, alternating chapters. I really liked getting to see the story unfold through both of their eyes. The changing point of view didn't bog down the story, really, since everything was still told in sequence with little to no instances of both characters covering the same event. I did wish, however, that their was a bit more of a difference between their voices. When they're actually talking, there is plenty of difference between proper, nerdy Carter and punky, spunky Sadie, but when they're narrating they're not all that different. Every once in a while Sadie, as narrator, gets riled up about something and it's really clear that she's the one telling the story (the name of the narrator is on every page to help with that as well), but for the most part both of them just sound like Riordan.

Something that is mentioned on multiple occasions but is far from a focal point of the story is that Sadie and Carter's father is black and their mother was white. Both of the kids are biracial, but neither of them looks it. They have that mini-me thing going on with their parents: Sadie looks astonishingly like her mother and Carter looks just like his dad. In the beginning of the book, Sadie talks about how, without her mother there, people question her relationship to Carter and their father because she's so clearly white and they so clearly aren't. She talks about how annoying it is, on the few days a year that they get to spend together, that people question whether or not she belongs in her family. This is, of course, complicated because she doesn't feel like she belongs due to the very limited amount of time they are actually on the same continent. Also near the beginning, Carter expresses his envy of Sadie's normal life with their grandparents. He feels hurt and rejected because his grandparents fought so hard for Sadie and not for him. While I was reading, I wondered about that; why did their grandparents only fight for the grandchild that looks like them? There is a magically influences reason for why they only went to court for custody of Sadie, but I didn't feel like Carter really processed that information when he found out. Maybe because he wasn't thinking about it in the same way that I was, he didn't need the cathartic breakthrough that I was looking for. It was enough, for him, to know that without magical influence his grandparents may have fought just as hard to hold on to their grandson as they did their granddaughter. This is all balanced out by Sadie's feelings of abandonment because she was left with their grandparents rather than being allowed on the road with Carter and their dad, so maybe I'm reading too much into the situation.

Family issues aside (and I'm paying more attention to them here than was paid in the book), I love that Carter and Sadie's race was a non-issue. I do wish that both of them had been presented as biracial characters, or that they even saw themselves that way, rather than one white and one black, but I'm glad that this did not pick up elements of a "problem novel" about a biracial family. It is simply a fantasy book with biracial main characters!


Book source: Philly Free Library

The Brimstone Key

Tween Tuesday was started over at Green Bean Teen Queen as away to highlight awesome books for the 9-12 yr olds or Tweens. Any book highlighted on Tween Tuesday also counts for the In the Middle Reading Challenge! This week's book is:

Benz, Derek and J.S. Lewis. The Brimstone Key. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010. Print. Grey Griffins: The Clockwork Chronicles 1.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/9250799]

Booktalk (for folks new to the Grey Griffins):
Harley, tall and buff, is a whiz engineer, especially considering he's a sixth grader.
Natalia, whose signature long red braids are always trailing behind her, is kind of a whiz in general.
Ernie, or Agent Thunderbolt, is currently part faerie, and the more he uses the power that comes with that, the more faerie and less human he will become. But Ernie's an upbeat kid and has decided to use his powers for good, you know, like Superman.
Max, the leader of the group, is the youngest in a very rich, very powerful family. With that comes certain responsibilities. Luckily he has his friends to help him out.
Together they are the Grey Griffins, and they assist the Templar in their quest to protect the innocent from what is evil in this world.

Booktalk (for Grey Griffin fans):
Iron Bridge Academy is finally about to open, and the Grey Griffins will be attending school with Templar kids like themselves. Though they've never been around other Templar kids, except Brooke of course whose father will be headmaster, the Grey Griffins are excited. Ernie, especially, is looking forward to recruiting more changelings to his super hero team. Before they can all be whisked off to school, they're visited by a clockwork bug that leads them to an underground vault. When they find an old set of Round Table cards (and almost die, of course), things start to get weird, even by the Grey Griffins rather warped standards. One of the characters on the card, The Clockwork King, just walks away.

Review:
The Brimstone Key is a great start to what looks like it will be a promising new direction in the Grey Griffins stories. As someone who has never picked up a Grey Griffins book before, I found this story easy to understand and catch up with. I may go back and read other Grey Griffins books now, while I wait for the next book, but I won't be going back to read them because I felt I was missing something here. That said, I probably did miss some things that devoted Grey Griffin fans will squee about. There were a few characters that were clearly making cameo appearances in this book, I assume from the previous Grey Griffin escapades, but they weren't so central to this story that I minded not really knowing who they were. Of course, there also might be a bit too much information and back story in the beginning of this book for someone who has just devoured the previous Grey Griffins series. Just because I appreciated all of the explanation and introduction of characters doesn't mean that everyone else will. BUT if you are a Grey Griffins fan, or are providing readers' advisory for one, rest assured that there is a lot after those first few chapters that Max, Natalia, Ernie and Harley were surprised about, so I'm sure you (or your reader) will be too.

This book was pitched to me as a steampunk novel for middle grade readers, and I wondered just how the writers were going to pull that off with established characters from a series set in current times. They did it wonderfully and pretty realistically. Well, maybe realistically isn't the best word given that this is a fantasy novel, but the writers did not require any ridiculous suspensions of disbelief of me in order to fit the steampunk elements into the story. The Grey Griffins nemesis is a man who has spent the last century trapped in a Round Table card. When he somehow escapes, he restarts the experiments and projects that got him imprisoned in the first place. And voila! We have clockwork machines running amuck in the modern day (Templar cloaked) world. Fashions at Iron Bridge Academy also run on the steampunk-y style. At first, this was weird to me, but parts of it get explained away pretty understandably:

• The Academy is not actually in Avalon, but in Iron Bridge, a Templar community outside of the "regular" world that has maintained Victorian sensibilities.
• All the kids wear goggles because they can act out their Round Table tournaments with them.
• A lot of the changelings are depressed about their lot in life, and so bring in the sort-of goth element.
• All the grown-ups have weird weapons strapped all over them, especially when things start to get dangerous.

Put all of that together with a bunch of evil clockwork machines and a "subway" restored to its turn of the century glory and you have a good old steampunk costume party at school every day, and because the Grey Griffins are woefully dorky, fashion-wise, all of this gets explained in great detail. And while I'm a fan of the steampunk elements throughout (clearly), I don't think they are overwhelming to the story. Readers who are just looking for a fantasy or just looking for another Grey Griffins book shouldn't be put off by them.

I really enjoyed getting to know all of the Grey Griffins (and a few yet to be named sidekicks, to avoid being spoiler-y). I'm sure that fans of the previous series will enjoy heading off to school with Grey Griffins here, and new readers are sure to be sucked in as well. There is definitely a Harry Potter vibe going on with the addition of Iron Bridge Academy to these kids lives that will appeal to a lot of readers.


The Brimstone Key came out yesterday and is available for purchase!


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

48HBC Wrap-Up

And my final stats are (drumroll please):
Networking/Blogging: 2hrs 20mins
Reviewing: 1hr
Actually Reading: 16hrs 5mins

For a total of 19hrs and 25mins! Just short of the (unspoken) 20hr goal I was aiming for.

Books:
The Brimstone Key (Grey Griffins Clockwork Chronicles) - DONE
Once Was Lost - DONE
The Bar Code Tattoo  - not feeling it; back to the library
Tithe - DONE
Saving Maddie - DONE
Stolen - just getting started

Of my six current library books, my goal for this weekend, that only leaves one untouched! Plus I read The Brimstone Key, which wasn't on my to-do list, but was great nonetheless. I didn't write as many reviews as I wanted, but I'll get to those soon.

I had a lot of fun, and I hope you all did too!

Refresh Refresh - Mini-Review

I have a bad habit of checking books out from the library, reading them, copying down quotes I think I might want to use in my review, and then returning them to the library. Given the volume of books I read, those quotes don't help me that much if I wait too long to sit down and write the review. The books that I'm "mini-reviewing" left an impression on me and I feel that I can recommend them without hesitation, I just can't remember enough little details to write full reviews.

Novgorodoff, Danica. Refresh Refresh. Adapted from the screenplay by James Ponsoldt; based on the short story by Benjamin Percy. Color by Hilary Scamore. New York: First Second, 2009. Print.

[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/8599085]

Booktalk:

A small town is turned upside down when most of the men, Reservists, are sent to Iraq. The local recruitment officer tries to work his magic on the remaining men in town, including about-to-graduate high schoolers Josh, Cody, and Gordon. They manage to avoid him while trying to deal with lives without their fathers. Home life is different for each but hard for all as they try to learn to be men without a wide range of role models around. They spend their days being as macho as they can in public, going as far as to start a fighting club and take on local bullies, while in private they're glued the their computers, awaiting emails from their fathers.

Mini-Review:

I don't really know how to write a review of this book, which I guess is why I haven't. It's so sad, all around, and so hopeless in so many ways. The three boys that are at the center of the story aren't the only ones affected by the war, most of the town is, so there isn't really anywhere for them to go to get away from the worry and fear that they themselves feel. Each of them deals with it in their own ways, coming together for their fights. The prevailing feeling is pain. The fights just make that pain physical, shared, and visible.

Most of the story is told through the artwork. The dialog and text are pretty sparse. It works so well in this graphic novel that I can't imagine the short story it was based on. The lack of words make the faces and feelings take on so much more meaning and, in the end, the feelings are what this book is about. And it's beautifully drawn. The images pulled me into the story in a way that I don't know if the short story would have.

Anyway, I really thought Refresh Refresh was very good, but I know that I'm not doing it any kind of justice here. Ninja Librarian's review made me check it out, so I'll let her convince you too. :)

Book source: Philly Free Library

48HBC Update #2

I got home late from work last night, then stayed up late reading, and then slept in longer than I meant to this morning. oops.

Here are my numbers so far:
Networking/Blogging: 50mins
Reviewing: 45mins
Actually Reading: 9hrs 5mins
Pages read:  480
Books:
The Brimstone Key (Grey Griffins Clockwork Chronicles) - DONE
Once Was Lost - DONE
The Bar Code Tattoo  - not feeling it; back in the pile
Tithe - just getting started

Clearly today must be my day to shine. I have until 10:30pm EST to really rack up some hours, and maybe even get some reviewing done.

Congrats to all of you who are finishing up today!

House of Stairs - Mini-Review

I have a bad habit of checking books out from the library, reading them, copying down quotes I think I might want to use in my review, and then returning them to the library. Given the volume of books I read, those quotes don't help me that much if I wait too long to sit down and write the review. The books that I'm "mini-reviewing" left an impression on me and I feel that I can recommend (most of) them without hesitation, I just can't remember enough little details to write full reviews.


 

Sleator, William. House of Stairs. New York: Firebird - Penguin Group, 1974; 2004. Print.

[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/25469]
 
Awards:
ALA Best Books for Young Adults (1974)
 
Booktalk:
When five teenaged orphans each wake up alone to find themselves trapped in a chamber of staircases that would rival an M.C. Escher print (or a David Bowie/Jim Henson hallucination), none of them are all that surprised. Being an orphan isn't easy, and they're used to be put through the ringer by the state. Peter, Lola, Blossom, Abigail, and Oliver find each other on the staircases and figure that they are being put through some kind of test. When it quickly becomes clear that to fail the test means to starve, they start to turn on each other in order to "win."
 
Mini-Review:
I checked this out because more than a couple people on the yalsa-bk listserv said that The Maze Runner, which I purchased months ago but haven't gotten to yet, is a redone version of The House of Stairs. I can't find the emails now, but I think I remember them saying it wasn't even that great of a do-over.
 
Gee, I hope they're wrong.
 
The House of Stairs did have a lot of weirdness and suspense, especially once the kids all figure out what the machine really wants them to do in order to get food (hint: it's not good), and I did care about the couple of characters that I was supposed to care about. I think where this book fell short for me was the complete lack of backstory and explanation. Those of you who've been reading along here know that I'm not all that into long expository passages; I'd really rather just get to the story. That's all The House of Stairs was! Just story! Still, it didn't work for me. I do need some explanation, and the answers that Sleator offered up at the end were just too little too late to make me like this book. I had too many lingering questions, and not in the good way.
 
That said, there is a reason this book has been continually printed since it's publication (although, the reason for the bad 80's cover on the 2004 edition still eludes me). It's short and suspenseful and it sucks you in. And it would be good for discussion. A lot of my lingering questions would work well in a group, such as "Why AREN'T these kids shocked to be used as lab rats? Is it because they're orphans, because they're kids, or because this might be some kind of post-apocolyptic world (There is a big discussion about the last time anyone had real meat and about the government living in a compound)?" One (more) caveat, though, for group sharing: there is some serious fat-phobia going on here. One of the orphans is overweight, possibly because she hasn't been an orphan that long and possibly because she wants everything for herself. The fact that this isn't clarified bothered me, as did the fact that she was much more obsessed with getting food than anyone else. These kids are actually starving; the fat girl shouldn't be the only one obsessing. But hey, you can talk about that in a group too.
 
 
Book source: Philly Free Library

48HBC Update

So starting late last night didn't work out so well for me. All of my lack of reading was because of this little guy:

I don't begrudge a minute missed reading. He was SO CUTE and SWEET, even if he was really really upset about the lack of mommy for a good portion of our evening together. More of my friends should come to town for conferences with babies I can borrow because, let's be honest, there is a serious lack of babies in my day to day life.

Anyway, here are my stats so far which bring me through this morning's commute (I'll count all the stuff I do on the sly while at work once I get home):

Networking: 15mins

Reviewing: zilch

Actually reading: 2hrs 30 mins

And I don't even want to talk about how few pages I got through in that 2 1/2 hours, as most of that time looked like some variation of this:

Not that I'm complaining. :)

Secret Keeper - Mini-Review

I have a bad habit of checking books out from the library, reading them, copying down quotes I think I might want to use in my review, and then returning them to the library. Given the volume of books I read, those quotes don't help me that much if I wait too long to sit down and write the review. The books that I'm "mini-reviewing" left an impression on me and I feel that I can recommend them without hesitation, I just can't remember enough little details to write full reviews.

Perkins, Mitali. Secret Keeper. New York: Delacorte Press - Random House Children's Books, 2009. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/7462206]

Booktalk:
When Asha's father moves to New York to look for work, he leaves his family in the care of his brother. Asha and her elder sister Reet are both pulled out of school, where Asha especilly excels, and are forced to live in a house that is much more traditional, and therefore restrictive, than their own. As they adjust to these changes, their mother sinks into depression and money begins to run out. When Uncle decides that a good marriage for Reet, who is beautiful and attracting a lot of attention, will fix both of these growing problems, Asha must take drastic measures to keep her family intact until her father sends for them.

Mini-Review:
The best part about this book is the descriptive language that Perkins uses throughout. Everything is so lush and easy to feel or visualize. At the same time, she doesn't coddle her readers, most of whom aren't familiar with 1970s Indian dress and customs; she does not go to great lengths to spell everything out. Because she lets you kind of figure things out for yourself as you go along (with the help of a glossary of Indian words at the back of the book) there were no obtrusive info-dumps to pull you out of the story. Some people may want more description of the customs and traditions acted out in the book, but I was happy to get on with the story!

Asha is young and chafing in her girl-hood. She had a pretty free and open childhood, learning how to do things like play tennis and cricket, but all of that stopped when she got her period and she had to become a proper young lady. Further restrictions are placed on her and Reet when they move to Uncle's house. The contrast of their lives inside the house (always inside the house) to that of her male cousin Raj is pointed, both to the reader and to Asha. Watching Asha come in to her own and start to make decisions for her family in this environment is all the more amazing. Because the story centers around this aspect of Asha's life, as well as how her growing confidence can or cannot save her sister and mother, I think that this would make a great middle grade read as well.

I really enjoyed Secret Keeper and look forward to reading more of Mitali Perkins' books in the future! She's also a prolific blogger over at mitali's fire escape.


Book source: Philly Free Library

48 Hour Book Challenge!

The 48 Hour Book Challenge is here again!

Last year I finished without roughly 14.5 hours and 4 books. I'm hoping to do a little better than that this year. I want to finish at least the 6 YA and middle grade books I currently have checked out from the library.

I'm also going to try to post some mini-reviews of books that have been sitting on my desk for months. They're all (well, mostly) great books, I just haven't gotten around to writing the reviews. If I haven't written full reviews of them by now, it's not going to happen, but they still deserve some attention! I have a bad habit of checking books out from the library, reading them, copying down quotes I think I might want to use in my review, and then returning them to the library. Given the volume of books I read, those quotes don't help me that much if I wait too long to sit down and write the review. The books that I'm going to "mini-review" left an impression on me and I feel that I can recommend them without hesitation, I just can't remember enough little details to write full reviews. This seems the perfect weekend to do some recommending rather than full on reviewing.


However you choose to participate in this year's 48HBC, have a great weekend everyone, and get reading!