Book Bites: Expectations Failed and Expectations Exceeded Edition

Here's a set of 3 quick reviews in an attempt to catch up on all the reading I've been doing summer vacation!

Island's End by Padma Venkatraman

Uido is thrilled to be chosen as her tribe's next oko-jumu--spiritual leader.   Living on their beautiful and isolated island, the community's connection to and understanding of spirit world is critical to their survival.  But while Uido is excited with her new role, others (like her older brother and her best female friend) do not respond as positively.  Meanwhile, strangers from another island have begun to visit their shore, bringing with them gifts that tempt the tribe to leave in search of different life.  When Uido's little brother becomes deathly ill, she will have to use all her abilities to save him while also finding a way to bring her tribe into the future without losing their past.

I picked up Island's End earlier this month as part of a hunt for middle grade/young YA books with young female protagonists taking traditionally male roles.  The summary blurb sounded as though it might fit into my general theme and the setting was unique and intriguing.  However, I found that my overall reaction to this novel was disappointment.  Venkatraman writes elegantly, providing rich and loving descriptions of Uido's world, bringing the lush island's diverse landscapes and Uido's visions of the spirit world to life for the reader.  The series of events portray the issues of cultural growth and shifts and the need to balance the values of long established traditions with survival in the modern world without harshly villifying or deifying any particular group.  Yet despite the technically exciting events that form the plot, the novel's pacing felt a bit off to me.  The climax and conclusion felt rushed, especially since the situation had the potential to be very thrilling.  Finally, I also had a little trouble feeling fully connected to Uido despite her first person narration.  Overall, the interesting setting didn't add up to an equally thrilling story.  

Deadly by Julie Chibbaro

Prudence Galewski wants something more out of life.  She wants more than her education in feminine refinement offered by Mrs. Browning's School for Girls and more than the meal ticket of a job as proper governess, secretary, or (ideally) wife that education will buy her.  Prudence is not like other girls; she's fascinated by the human body, by the emerging science of disease, and by the reasons that some people survive illness or injury while others do not.  When she takes a job as secretary at the growing Department of Health and Sanitation, Prudence gets her chance to be part of something bigger than her own limited daily grind.  Soon Prudence finds herself entangled in the Department's revolutionary and complex investigation of New York's quickly spreading typhoid outbreak.  

I'm a lifelong fan of historical fiction so I was intrigued by Deadly from my first glance through the inside flap summary.  A novel exploring the lesser known details of a significant historical event through the eyes of a unique protagonist?  Yes, please! In some ways, Deadly lived up to my hopes.  Prudence is an exciting protagonist, a young Jewish woman in early 1900s New York City with an interest in science and a determination to challenge the status quo.  As a librarian at a girls' school, I'm a big fan of interesting stories about women in science.  The diary format works well generally, especially because Prudence's anatomical sketches are woven into the novel as well.  The elements of real historical events including the experimental methods of the Department of Health and Sanitation to track the spread of disease and the experiences of the real 'Typhoid Mary' are fascinating and provide a decent amount of tension throughout the narrative.  However, despite all of these positive aspects, I would have difficulty recommending this one to a large number of students.  The pacing occasionally felt off, especially during the conclusion.  The narrative wound up too abruptly and much of the potential excitement was lost.  The promising premise just didn't pan out into a consistently interesting reading experience.  I might recommend this to some historical fiction fans or young scientists.                

Close To Famous by Joan Bauer

Foster McFee has big dreams: she dreams of becoming the next big celebrity chef and having her own inspirational cooking show.  Her mom Rayka dreams of using her big voice for more than backup singer gigs and they both dream of finding a new life after Foster's dad's died in Iraq.  But so far, neither of their dreams seem to be working out.  After fleeing Memphis in the middle of the night to escape Huck, Rayka's mean Elvis impersonator ex-boyfriend, the McFees find themselves starting over in the tiny town of Culpepper, Virginia where nearly everyone seems to have a big, unfinished dream.  Now, Foster's undefeated optimism and exceptional baking skills will truly be put to the test as she works to make her--and everyone else's--dreams come true.

As my username here may indicate,  I have a pretty big cupcake obsession.  I spend as much time trolling my favorite baking blogs and messing around in my very tiny kitchen as I do reading YA novels or prepping book talks.  So I was obviously drawn to Joan Bauer's newest middle grade novel from the moment I spotted the cover.  However, I soon found that the story and the character were even more delightful than the baked goods on the cover!  Foster is a great young protagonist whose narration illustrates her unique combination of optimism and realism;  she's already experienced some really difficult, frightening, and discouraging parts of life but although she recognizes that happiness and personal success aren't easy, she remains firm in her belief that both are possible.  Foster's embarrassment about her dyslexia and her worries about her mother are achingly real; she jumps right off the page as a wonderfully complex and likable middle school heroine.  The plot is full of interesting little twists and turns and emotional highs and lows; the supporting cast of characters are quirky and diverse, as usual with Bauer's work.  I thoroughly enjoyed Close To Famous and am working on a book trailer of it to share with my 7th graders this fall!        

The Kids Are Not Alright: Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers & Wringer by Jerry Spinelli

photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/conspirator/

From the surface, these two books appear to have more differences than similarities.  Courtney Summers' Some Girls Are was published more recently and it focuses on the intense social world of high school girls while Jerry Spinelli's Wringer is a middle grade novel exploring boyhood and boys.  If I hadn't happened to read these novels within a week of each other, I likely would never have connected the them.  However, reading one after the other, I couldn't help be see a relationship between these two novels: both stories clearly explore gender and bullying behavior among children and young adults in different but equally disturbing ways.

Only a few days ago, Regina lived an ideal life.  She was second in command of the Fearsome Fivesome, the most popular and powerful girls at Hallowell High; she had a boyfriend Josh and a best friend, Anna--queen of the school.  Then one night, at a party she didn't even want to attend, something happens.  And on Monday, Regina finds that her whole life has fallen apart, shattered by nasty rumors about her and Anna's boyfriend.  Having her friends completely freeze her out of their lives is horrible enough.   But worst of all, the rumors about what happened at the party aren't true--in fact, they don't come anywhere close to the terrifying reality.  Suddenly Regina finds herself on the receiving end of the kind of relentless daily torture her former clique has perfected from years of practice.


This mean girls tale is a chilling and intense examination of high school power dynamics, especially the complex relationships between young women. Exploring themes similar to those woven through both the now ubiquitous film  Mean Girls and Lauren Oliver's popular novel Before I Fall, Some Girls Are stands out as a dark and starkly realistic demonstration of how delicate and poisonous the intense power structure within groups of girls can become.  Regina is the ideal character to demonstrate the anxious tightrope teens might walk to maintain power among their peers; she has been on both sides of the popularity line and she has a full knowledge of the torture in store for her as Anna's designated enemy--because she has been the torturer in the past.  She understands that the bullying will be carried out through strategic silence and cruel actions carried out by Anna's allies; she knows that she will be erased.  Regina's narration is key to the novel's intensity and emotional power;  her painfully clear perception and her realistically turbulent emotions immerse readers in her experience immediately and allow us to empathize with her, especially as she confronts her own mistakes and her inability to completely correct them.  In very positive ways, her voice reminds me of Melinda from Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, another great novel dealing with some similar topics.   

 

In the small town of Waymar, the annual Family Fest's pigeon shooting contest is the highlight of the year and the day a boy turns ten years old is the greatest moment of his life.  Because when a boy reaches his tenth birthday, he can at last become a wringer--a boy trained to run onto the field and wring the neck of injured pigeons at the annual event.  Being a wringer is the ultimate honor and tradition of Waymar boyhood.  But unlike his classmates, Palmer LaRue views his approaching tenth birthday with intense dread.  Because Palmer has a secret: he absolutely does not want to become a wringer.

After being mostly immersed in the world of older teenage characters, entering the world of children on the verge of adolescence through Jerry Spinelli's skilled writing was a simultaneously exciting and heartbreaking experience.  As Courtney Summers is able to delve into the adolescent female experience with great clarity in Some Girls Are, so Spinelli provides the readers of Wringer with a painfully realistic window into the experience of children as they begin to understand the ways that gender affects their lives.  Palmer is both a very universally relatable kid and a unique boy.  He wants to be part of a group--to be a 'normal boy' with a solid and safe place in his social world.  Yet Palmer is also unique because he has begun to question the way the people in his town define boyhood.  He struggles to balance his internal disgust for the wringer tradition with the continuous external pressure from others (especially his 'gang') about joining the tradition.  Spinelli's focused third person narration gives Palmer a very genuine voice, intelligent and perceptive but still very much shaped by a child's developing understanding of the world.  The other characters are equally well crafted and Palmer's relationship with his parents is a particularly wonderful piece of the story.  Wringer is ideal middle grade literature--a meaningful story with great character development and very relevant themes told with an elegantly simple writing style.

While Regina and Palmer's stories differ in many key ways (their ages and genders, for example), their experiences have more in common that it might appear on the surface, especially when viewed side by side.  Both Regina and Palmer have worked hard to fit into powerful, gendered peer groups; Regina found safety within the Fearsome Fivesome while Palmer gains some form of acceptance within the local gang of boys.  Some Girls Are begins when Regina makes a fatal mistake--trusting another ambitious member of their clique--and leaves herself open to attack; she loses her place among the powerful girls and slides to the outer edges of the social hierarchy.  The novel depicts Regina's struggle to deal with her unwilling dislocation and carve a new place in the world.  Meanwhile Wringer mostly deals with the earlier phase of the toxic group dynamic, describing Palmer's attempt to gain and retain a place among the boys in the neighborhood before he moves towards a decision to voluntarily transgress the established social order.  Additionally, both characters act as aggressors towards weaker peers at certain times before finding themselves as victims of harassment or bullying.  Through emotional resonant and technically well crafted storytelling, both novels demonstrate the cycle of bullying and the ways in which our peers enforce rigid expectations (especially those related to gender roles and behavior).  

Both Some Girls Are and Wringer would be interesting books to use for discussions among teens in high school and middle school respectively;  they also might be fascinating discussion starters for faculty or youth services staff book groups.  

The Spell of Sisterhood: Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood

Cate Cahill made a promise.  She promised her dying mother that she would protect her sisters--no matter what.  The task would be a lot easier however if their family didn't have quite so many dangerous secrets.  Their small New England town already finds the Cahill sisters' over-education and reclusive behaviors suspicious but if anyone were to discover that the three girls are honest to goodness witches, their lives would be over.  The priests of the Brotherhood are rounding up more and more girls accused of witchcraft to be sent away to the asylum and their nosy neighbor has convinced their absent father to hire a governess.  


As if that weren't enough to preoccupy Cate, her seventeenth birthday is fast approaching, which means that in just a few months Cate will have to decide if she's going to get married or join the Sisterhood.  Neither option seems appealing right now, especially since both might separate her from her sisters.  


Then the discovery of her mother's diary throws Cate's world even more off balance: it turns out that being witches isn't the Cahill girls' biggest secret.  Now Cate must race to discover the truth about her family's destiny before powerful forces find ways to use her or her sisters for their own interests and in the process perhaps finally take the time to discover the desires of her own heart.

I didn't quite know what to expect from Born Wicked.  I heard pretty good buzz and the brief publicity summaries sounded interesting but I still didn't have a clear picture of its particular hook or genre.  So I started reading without many preconceived ideas or expectations.  The story begins a little slowly but I was quickly pulled into Cate's world.  As teenager facing the transition into adulthood and a sudden, unusual influx of responsibilities, Cate will be a familiar figure to many readers, both young and old.  She tries so hard to balance and protect her sisters' safety and happiness but she's also forced herself to ignore her own desires and potential.  But Cate is limited by more than her own family responsibilities and worries; she lives in society where women's power and independence have been extremely curtailed by a male dominated religious order led by the Brotherhood priests.

The world imagined by Jessica Spotswood is one of the highlights of the novel.  She seeds the information about the society and history into the narrative, allowing the full picture to emerge gradually and through the characters' pertinent experiences.  This method, as usual, works well and avoids weighing down the pace of the story with too lengthy descriptions of traditions or historical events.  My only problem was that I found the fictional world so intriguing that I keep wanting more detail!  Born Wicked takes place in an alternative universe in which witches and magic truly exist and the United States began when witches left other areas of the world to avoid persecution and colonized the eastern coast of the current U.S.  As a result, the population is even more ethnically and racially diverse.  However, the religious Brotherhood gained influence and wrested control from the female-run  Daughters of Persephone; now, women must either get married or join the female monastic branch of the Brotherhood, in order to control their potential evil.

However, it was not just the intriguing setting and the strong protagonist that drew me into this novel.  The supporting characters and the relationships between the characters are well drawn; the complicated relationship between the three sisters is especially realistic in its portrayal.  The plot's mysteries and tension grow increasingly exciting as the story moves forward and the novel's pacing pulls the reader in quickly.  The romance is sweet and swoon-worthy; Cate's understanding of her own romantic and sexual desires emerges naturally and her realizations happen as part of her larger awakenings about her world, her magical abilities, and her options for the future.  The tension reaches a dramatic peak near the novel's conclusion that will leave readers eager for the next installment of Cate's tale.

I would recommend Born Wicked to readers who enjoy supernatural or paranormal tales (especially those with witches) and fantasy, especially historical fantasy.  It might pair well with other historical fantasy novels such as A Curse Dark As Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce and The Faerie Ring by Kiki Hamilton or with fantasy novels depicting similar family situations (Entwined by Heather Dixon springs to mind).

4/5 STARS

A Complex Cowgirl Comes of Age: The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth

The moment twelve year old Cameron Post learns that her parents have been killed in a car accident, her initial reaction is relief: relief that now they will never find out that only a few hours ago she was kissing her best friend Irene.   Somehow the two seemingly unconnected events become intertwined as they mark the simultaneous moment when everything in Cameron's life shifts forever.  Her beloved parents are dead and her old fashioned grandmother & her Christian evangelical aunt become her guardians.  And while Cameron & Irene's friendship falls apart, Cameron can't forget how right it felt to be kissing a girl.  A few year later and Cam has survived her grief and started to quietly figure out the girl she's becoming when the arrival of beautiful cowgirl Coley Taylor throws her tenuously balanced world out of whack.

 After reading a variety of reviews, including an extremely positive one by great YA lit author and blogger Malinda Lo, I was highly curious and eager to read this coming of age novel from debut author Emily M. Danforth.  Happily, my high expectations were far from disappointed.  Miseducation is a gorgeous, heartbreaking, and hopeful story about girl stumbling her way through adolescence and into the brave new world of adulthood.  Every piece of Cameron's life growing up in Miles City, Minnesota during late 1980s and early 1990s comes to life through Danforth's evocative and detailed prose.  From the first page, the reader is fully immersed in the sounds, smells, images, and emotions buzzing through Cam's external and internal worlds.  Danforth excels at capturing moments and moods; the whole novel evokes the experience of looking through a series of beautiful, spare photographs--sepia toned with slightly curled up edges.

Cam is a wonderfully developed character with fresh and unique voice.  She is perceptive, sarcastic, defensive, sensitive, and passionate;  I loved her from the novel's opening chapter and found myself completely absorbed in her story, cheering for her fiercely the whole time.  The supporting cast of characters are all equally well crafted but it's Cam's story through and through.

While the Miseducation has been marketed as a young adult novel, it reads more like adult fiction with a highly authentic adolescent protagonist and narrator.  This fact can be viewed as both an advantage and a disadvantage.  The novel might be more challenging to promote to a mass audience of teen readers or it might instead simply have a great deal of crossover appeal to adult audiences.  However, I feel sure that for the right readers--both teens and adults--Miseducation's complex characters, rich story, and emotional depth will resonate powerfully.

5/5 STARS

A Kitchen Interlude: Gingersnaps

Gingersnaps are one of my all time favorite cookies for a whole bunch of reasons.  They work in all seasons; their cinnamon-ginger-molasses goodness tastes just as delicious at a summer tea with lemonade as it does with hot cider at cool autumn picnic or chilly winter cookie swap.  When they're just right, they are simultaneously soft, chewy, and crisp.  I also love gingersnaps because, like many of my best cookie recipes, I learned to make them with my dad--a master cookie baker.  Recently, my gingersnaps had not been up to snuff.  They were too flat or too hard and they simply could not compare to my dad's perfect batch of fluffy and chewy cookies I munched on over the winter holiday.  But, at last, after consultation with the cookie master himself, I finally sorted out the correct flour amount and crafted the most gorgeous gingersnaps.

For a BIG batch of several dozen cookies:

3 sticks of butter (softened to room temperature)
2 cups sugar ( + 1/2 cup for coating cookies)
1/2 cup molasses
2 eggs
2 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. ginger
2 tsp. cloves
4 tsp. baking soda
4 3/4 cups flour

1.) Blend together butter, sugar, and molasses with an electric mixer (or if you're so lucky to possess one, a standing mixer) until fluffy and fully mixed.
2.) Add eggs and blend in.
3.) Add and blend together cinnamon, ginger, and cloves.
4.) Add and blend in baking soda.
5.) Gradually add in the flour, pouring in a 1/2 cup to a whole cup at a time and mixing between additions.
6.) Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or transfer the dough to a plastic bag.  Place the covered dough in the fridge to chill for a few hours.
7.) When you're ready to bake, heat the oven to 350 degrees F.
8.) Cover your trays with parchment paper.

9.) Form dough into balls and roll them in sugar until fully coated.
10.) Arrange the balls of dough on the trays in rows, usually about a dozen per tray.
11.) Bake the cookies until they puff up and become mostly solid but do not get too dark on the bottom. Take them out and let them cool on a cooling rack before storing them.

These can be frozen for weeks or months or stored in covered containers at room temperature for a week or so--if they last that long!

Making Latin Translation Sexy & Scary Again: The Book of Blood & Shadow by Robin Wasserman

"I should probably start with the blood." After all, there was so much blood on the night that Nora's suddenly perfect life crumbled and twisted into a nightmare.  Before that night, Nora had two best friends.  She had a fresh new storybook romance of her own.  She was working on a senior year independent Latin project at the local college with a quirky professor and one of her best friends, Chris, now a college freshmen.  Everything in Nora's life was finally falling into place.  Now Chris is dead and  his girlfriend and Nora's other best friend Adrienne has withdrawn into a state of catatonic shock.  Max, Chris'  sweet and nerdy roommate and Nora's new boyfriend, has disappeared and the police are convinced that he's the killer.

Determined to prove that Max is innocent, Nora begin to immerse herself in the strange occurrences and cryptic clues surrounding the Book of Blood and Shadow--the mysterious manuscript at the center of their shared research project.  Nora's search for the truth leads her deep into a dark world of ancient secrets spanning centuries of bloodshed and terror as she traces the clues hidden in another desperate young woman's centuries old letters across the ocean and into the twisting street of Prague.

This new novel has been described as the YA Da Vinci Code and rightfully so.  Full of mysterious documents, hidden history, elaborate codes, secret societies, and thrills & chills galore, The Book of Blood and Shadow has all the necessary pieces for an excellent intellectual thriller.  However, Wasserman goes several steps further than just gathering all the pieces;  she's combined those pieces with interesting characters, rich description, and elegantly built suspense.  It has all the compulsive readability of The Da Vinci Code but with better writing and more sexy, on the spot Latin translation.  Nora is a smart, sarcastic, and fierce narrator.  Her relationships with Chris, Adrienne, and Max are complex; she consistently keeps an emotional distance from both Chris and Adrienne yet remains intensely loyal and somewhat dependent on their threesome's stability--especially after Chris' murder.  Her romance with Max is sweet and thrilling, which makes the confusing web of revelations about him and his potential involvement in the Book's mysteries even more emotionally fraught. Elizabeth Weston, the stepdaughter of a medieval alchemist who devoted his life to decoded the mysteries within the Book, emerges as an equally fascinating character through Nora's revelatory translation of her letters.

I was immediately drawn into the story, both by the appealingly human characters and the ever increasing mystery.  The plot was full of twists and turns that kept me guessing right up to the final page.  I would heartily recommend The Book of Blood and Shadow to readers of intellectual thrillers and mysteries (such as The Da Vinci Code), especially Latin students and Indiana Jones fans.  

4/5 STARS

*review written based on an advanced e-galley obtained from the publisher via Netgalley

Space Age Cinderella: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Once upon a time, in a distant future where Earth's borders and technologies have shifted after a devastating Fourth World War, a young orphaned cyborg named Cinder trudges through life trapped under the thumb of her unkind stepmother.  Cinder, who holds a lesser place in society because her human body has been augmented with robotic parts, happens to be one of the best mechanics in New Beijing but she never expected that her reputation would lead the handsome heir to the throne,  Prince Kai, to visit her booth at the market and ask for her help fixing a broken android.  Then the mysterious and deadly plague sweeping the nation infects two very important people: Prince Kai's father, the emperor, and Cinder's beloved younger stepsister Peony.  Suddenly Cinder becomes intimately involved in the dangerous international and interplanetary struggle for power that forces her to dive into her unknown past and its connections to the plague and the entire future of the planet Earth.

I first came across this futuristic Cinderella retelling when I signed up for the 2012 Young Adult & Middle Grade Debut Authors Challenge and began browsing around the connected Goodreads list.   The premise alone was enough to get me interested: Cinderella is a cyborg with a dark past in a future Chinese-influenced empire? Sign me up!

Generally, Cinder lives up to its fun premise.  It combines popular sci-fi/futuristic fiction concepts (another world war, cyborgs, interplanetary/alien communication, unknown plagues, etc.) with the ever popular fairy or folk tale retelling.  The result is a fresh and enjoyable novel with broad appeal to a variety of readers.  The setting of New Beijing is unusual and absorbing, combining elements from different time periods and cultures in a way that fits into the version of the future Meyer has sketched out.  The traditional fairytale royal family and special ball seem a little out of place in a world where cyborgs and robots exist and the government is negotiating with a civilization from another planet but somehow it works.  Cinder is a lovely protagonist, determined and smart but also vulnerable and intensely aware of her subhuman status in society.  The mystery of the plague and its connections to Cinder and the extraterrestrial Lunars are full of exciting, if occasional predictable, twists and turns.  Overall, a delightful debut novel that will have all your fantasy, fairytale, and dystopian fans begging for the sequel!

3 STARS