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

Booktalk Breakdown: Secrets, Lies, and Spies

So when I'm not wandering around the internet, reading young adult books, or indulging in my many random t.v. obsessions, I'm a librarian working with 7-12 grade students at an independent all girls school.  As part of my job, I visit both the 7th and 8th grade classes during their weekly grade-level meetings approximately once every three or four weeks with a booktalk.  As I say in my little bio in the sidebar here, I am a rookie librarian; I finished my graduate program in August and started my job a few weeks later.  Booktalking, when librarians or teachers use their creativity and wits to tease and sell books to students, is a standard tool in the youth services librarian's tool belt.  So I was fairly nervous for my first booktalks this fall.  However, I've been pleasantly surprised at how well most of my booktalks have gone so far this year.  Now that I've settled in a little bit, I wanted to try and change up my pretty basic booktalking methods.  Ally Carter's fabulous and fun novels are incredibly popular with our 7th and 8th graders; her newest Gallagher Girls novel comes out in March so it seemed like perfect opportunity to try out a more ambitious booktalk.  Since I'd like to include more library programming posts here, it also seemed like a great opportunity to try out a new occasional blog feature, breaking down my process of developing, creating, and implementing a booktalk.

The Gallagher Girls series, for those who might not spend lots of time with 12 and 13 year old girls, is about an elite school for young women with unique gifts--specifically, gifts for international intrigue. Cammie "The Chameleon" Morgan, our protagonist and narrator, is the headmistress' daughter, a CIA legacy, and a specialist in disappearing into the crowd--hence, her nickname.  So, first I gathered together other fun novels with spies, mystery, and intrigue.

I settled on three novels, all of which are the first in series.

The Liar Society by Lisa and Laura Roecker


As I noted in my review a few months ago, this debut is a fun if imperfect mystery that combines elements from E. Lockhart's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (elite private school with secret societies) and Veronica Mars (angry outcast teen sleuth searching for the truth about her dead best friend).  It opens with a great hook--a cryptic email from the protagonist's dead best friend.  I typed up the email on my own account and took a screenshot, which I placed into the Power Point slideshow that I used with the booktalk.  A little set up, flash the email up on the screen, and then a final hook sentence and this book was sold!

Inside The Shadow City (Kiki Strike #1) by Kristen Miller

Ananka Fishbein lives a very ordinary life--until one day she sees someone or something creeping out of a sinkhole across the street from her family's New York City apartment.  Ananka decides to investigate and discovers a hidden city underneath Manhattan's streets, an awful lot of rats, a group of renegade girl scouts, and the mysterious Kiki Strike.  Suddenly Ananka's life has been transformed from ordinary to extraordinary.  I did a second person sell with this novel, starting: "You have lived an very un-extraordinary life..."  It certainly helped that as soon as I held the novel up and clicked my slideshow to the cover image, a student yelled out: " Oh my God, I read that--it's soo good!"   

A Spy in the House (The Agency #1) by Y.S. Lee

After a sudden rescue from the gallows, young orphan Mary Quinn is surprised when she's offered an unusual opportunity: an education at Miss. Scrimshaw's Academy for Girls.  Now seventeen years old, Mary learns that her education has prepared for more than a career as a mere governess.  The Academy is actually a cover for The Agency, an independent group of female investigators who take advantage of the Victorian assumptions about women to solve cases when the police can't.  For Mary's first case, she must infiltrate the household of a wealthy merchant suspected of international smuggling and dig through his family's many dangerous--and deadly--secrets.  I was a little unsure about the reception I would get for this novel; historical fiction is frequently a bit of a gamble with a mixed group of middle schoolers.  But I was happily proved wrong and this one sold quite well!


Once I had selected these readalikes, I began working on the other portion of my booktalk.  Recently, I've been working on creating my own book trailers using iMovie.  This booktalk proved the ideal opportunity to try and work in one of my experiments.  I didn't want to do a traditional booktalk for the Gallagher Girls books because so many of the students have already read at least the first novel in the series.  So instead I made this little trailer that acts as a introduction to the premise of the whole series, with a hook at the end for the new title coming out in March.

I then embedded the Youtube version of this trailer into a Power Point presentation.  I decided to add slides with the cover images of each book as well, a practice that I might try to use in many of my future booktalks since it allows more students to see the cover and cover images are key selling point with my students.  The room used for the seventh grade class meetings has a Smart Board and I just hooked my laptop up, tested everything out beforehand, and got the presentation cued up for the start of the meeting.  Considering this booktalk was my first with any kind of media other than my own voice, I was more nervous than usual.  However, it went incredibly well and I had even more trouble than usual deciding how to distribute the one or two copies of each book among the ten to twenty kids who wanted it.

So there's my first Booktalk Breakdown!  I'm beginning to work on another slightly more adventurous booktalk on dystopian fiction for my Hunger Games-obsessed eighth graders and if it comes together, then I'll post another breakdown!