Thursday, December 30, 2010

Want to read more books like The Gravedigger’s Cottage?

 

Here are some more books about life going on after a death in the family

Defining Dulcie by Paul Acampora

Boy2girl by Terence Blacker

Feels Like Home by e. E. Charlton-Trujillo

A Swift Pure Cry by Siobhan Dowd

The Key to the Golden Firebird by Maureen Johnson

Let's Get Lost by Sarra Manning

Girlhearts by Norma Fox Mazer

After the Wreck, I Picked Myself up, Spread My Wings, and Flew away by Joyce Carol Oates.

Cures for Heartbreak by Margo Rabb

A Gathering of Shades by David Stahler, Jr.

Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine

Me, the Missing, and the Dead by Jenny Valentine

‘tis the season…

I guess for me it’s ‘tis the season to be busy!  Sorry for neglecting the blog.  Interested in learning more about Chris Lynch? 

lynch

Some things you probably don’t know about him:

Before he became a writer, he worked as a furniture mover/truck driver and a house painter!

He went to Emerson College (right here in Boston)

His favorite television show is The Simpsons (why am I not surprised by that?)

If you want to read an interview with him, check out this link http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Chris-Lynch/16756570/author_revealed

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Review of The Gravedigger’s Cottage by Chris Lynch

First of all, I apologize for my delay in posting this review!

This a book full of sadness.  The sadness of losing a parent (or two).  The sadness of losing a pet (or a long list of pets).  The sadness of moving to a new house in a new town, and then finding out your new house is called “The Gravedigger’s Cottage,” and that you and your brother are referred to as “Diggers” or “Diggerkids.” The sadness of watching your remaining parent withdraw further and further into his own anxieties until it seems like he doesn’t have any space for you anymore.  Fortunately, the book isn’t all about sadness –it’s also quite funny.  Even the stories of the pets deaths have a certain black humor to them, although I have to tell you that I had to skip over at least one of them.  I love the way Sylvia tells the story of her life with her brother (half brother, actually), Walter, and her father.  Her father has moved them to this cottage by the sea, supposedly to start a new life in a place not haunted by all those deaths, but after they move in, their father starts to obsess about fixing what’s wrong with the house (which is a lot).  Soon he’s not leaving the house at all, not even to do their annual back-to-school shopping trip, and it’s up to Sylvia and Walter to snap him out of it.  Review by Stacy Church

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

This month’s book: The Gravedigger’s Cottage by Chris Lynch

gravediggerCopies of this month’s book are available in the YA Dept.  Review to follow!

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Want to Read More Books Like Abarat?

Warriors of Alavna by Browne

Artemis Fowl series by Colfer

The Dark is Rising sequence by Cooper

The Named by Curley

Dingo by de Lint

Darkhenge by Fisher

Interworld by Gaiman & Reaves

Stravaganza series by Hoffman

The Dream Merchant by Hoving, translated by Velman

Firestorm by Klass

Magic or Madness by Larbalestier

Saving Juliet by Selfors

Gateway by Shinn

The Dreamwalker's Child by Voake

The Web of Fire by Voake

Clive Barker

clive2 Clive Barker was born in Liverpool, England, at 1:00 am on the morning of 5 October 1952. He grew up there and went to Dovedale and Quarry Bank schools - the same schools that John Lennon of the Beatles had been to a few years before Clive! He then studied English and Philosophy at Liverpool University. Whilst at school he wrote - stories, comic strips and plays - and together with his friends formed a fringe theatre group which mounted productions both in Liverpool and, later, in London. His first books, The Books of Blood, were published in 1984 in England and Clive began to concentrate on writing fiction rather than plays. Publishing both short stories and novels for adults, he moved to Beverly Hills in Los Angeles in 1991 where he next wrote his first published book for 'all ages' – The Thief of Always. Clive has directed and produced films, written for television and exhibited his paintings in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, as well as working on comics, models, video games and toys. The first volume of the Abarat series was published in 2002 and made the New York Times' bestseller lists, as well as winning a number of awards.Abarat II followed in 2004, winning a Bram Stoker award. Clive is currently working on both volume three of The Abarat Series for all ages and his next novel for adults, The Scarlet Gospels. –from www.clivebarker.info/youngfaq.html

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Some thoughts about Abarat

doodling Doodling

Remember how Candy doodled wavy lines on her notebook? And she kept thinking about them as she was leaving school? I love the description of the lines, and how in her mind they changed from being black lines on gray, recycled paper to being bright, and then moving: "The wavy lines were rolling across the darkness inside her skull, rolling and breaking, the brilliant colors bursting into arabesques of white and silver."

 

Destiny

When Candy is trying to decide whether to help John Mischief, to risk drawing the attention of the horrifying Mendelson Shape, she thinks about destiny and fate. "In a curious way it made sense that she was here because she had to be here...Why else, after living all her life in Chickentown, should she be here - in a place she'd never been before - today?"

More about Doodling

On page 52, Candy "thought of the doodle she'd made on her workbook; the way it had seemed to brighten in her mind's eye, inspiring her limbs to move. It was almost as though the doodle had been a sign, a ticket to this adventure." And then on page 63, we come across the symbol again, on the surface of the turquoise-and-silver ball Candy finds in the tower: "And elegantly engraved on its blue-green surface was a design she knew! There it was, etched into the metal: the doodle she'd drawn so obsessively in her workbook." There's a lot in this book about fate. Clearly, Candy was fated to have this adventure. How do you think the wavy-line doodle fits into this? Was it put there purposely (by someone?) as a clue to help Candy know what to do, a sign for her to follow? Or is it just a detail that is present in certain places, that Candy somehow tunes into?

Mendelson Shape

So what did you think of the first bad guy in the book, Mendelson Shape? I'm not sure which is scarier, the description of him ("…there was something spiderish about his grotesque anatomy. His almost fleshless limbs were so long, she could readily imagine him walking up a wall.") or the picture. I haven't encountered many scarier images than that of Shape climbing up the tower in pursuit of Candy, singing his horrid little nursery song.

Clive Barker

clive barker “In 1995 Clive began painting huge dream-images which were wholly unlike his previous paintings. He began to think of them as the illustrations for a collection of 25 tales; a 'Book of Hours' which would describe all the emotions of a day, hour by hour (with an extra, mystical 25th hour). The Book Of Hours became a whole world - The Abarat - and as the paintings kept coming, so the story grew and grew into a series of four, and then five books..”

To read more about Clive Barker and how he wrote the Abarat series, check out his website http://www.clivebarker.info/youngabarat.html

Saturday, October 2, 2010

This month’s book: Abarat by Clive Barker

abarat This book is the first of author/illustrator Clive Barker's promised four book series: The Books of Abarat. It took him 4 years to complete the original artwork (100 astounding, disturbing paintings) for this book, and the second book, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War, contains another 100 equally bizarre original paintings. I don't want to say much about the plot of the book because I feel that half of the fun is trying to figure out what the heck is going on. But I do want to give those of you who haven't started the book yet a piece of advice: skip the prologue and jump right in to the main part of the book. The prologue will just confuse you and possibly make you think you're going to hate the rest. I promise, it's nothing like the prologue. Clive Barker's genius is his imagination, and he shows it most in his characters. Take for instance the Lord of Midnight, Christopher Carrion. The lower half of his head is surrounded by a translucent collar filled with blue fluid, in which swim bright, flickering forms, which he clearly takes pleasure in, smiling if one of them grazes his face. The shapes? "Carrion had found a way to channel every nightmarish thought and image out of the coils of his brain and bring them into this semiphysical form. He breathed the fluid, the flickering forms ran in and out of his mouth and nostrils, soaking his soul in his own nightmares." Whew! Wait until you see the picture - page 125, by the way. Anyway, it's not really a horror book, despite the grotesque bad guys. The heroine is Candy Quackenbush, who is destined to save the Land of Abarat, an archipelago of 25 islands, each existing in one distinct hour of the day, and one for "the time outside time." That's enough for now. Start reading!

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

The Most Famous Case of Faking It: Pygmalion

pygmalion Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts (1912) is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. 

Check out these modern film adaptations of Pygmalion:

  • Pygmalion (1938), a film adaptation by Shaw and others, starring Leslie Howard as Higgins and Wendy Hiller as Eliza.
  • My Fair Lady (1964), a film version of the musical starring Audrey Hepburn as Eliza and Rex Harrison as Higgins.
  • She’s All That (1999): a modern, teenage take on Pygmalion.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Faking It or Reinventing Yourself

If you like Zen and the Art of Faking It, take a look at some of these:

Ten Things I Hate about Me Abdel-Fattah

Perfect Mistake: A Privilege Novel by Brian

Sara's Face by Burgess

Secrets of My Hollywood Life: A Novel by Calonita

They Never Came Back by Cooney

Burned by Hopkins

I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want To Be Your Class President by Lieb

First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover by Perkins

Missing Persons series by Rabb

Just in Case by Rosoff

Stealing Heaven by Scott

Fake ID by Sorrells

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Bio of Jordan Sonnenblick

sonnenblick “My favorite school subject was always English, although I was pretty good at everything except sitting still and being quiet. I’m pretty sure my teachers didn’t know what to make of me, because I got straight A’s, but got in trouble constantly. This didn’t stop until I was in my first semester at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. The girl of my adolescent dreams was in my freshman English class, and one day when I was making jokes nonstop, she turned to me and hissed, “Why are you so immature?”

At that moment, I instantly became a model citizen.

At Stuyvesant, I met a creative writing teacher who completely changed my life. His name was Frank McCourt, and my senior year was his last year of teaching. He taught me a ton, mostly through one Yoda-like saying that he repeated to me all year. I would write the funniest piece I could, and the class would be cracking up as I read my work aloud. Then, as soon as the noise subsided, Mr. McCourt would say, “Jordan . . . Jordan. Someday you’ll head for the deep water.” Head for the deep water – great advice if you want to be a writer. Or a salmon.

Mr. McCourt gave me a big creative writing award at graduation, and then retired to work on what would eventually be his Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Angela’s Ashes. His parting words to me, recorded in my yearbook, were, “Yes, you’ve got the comic talent. But there’s deeper stuff waiting to come out. You’re a born writer.” Admittedly, he probably wrote the “born writer” part in hundreds of yearbooks. But the part about “deeper stuff waiting to come out” became the marching orders for my entire writing
career.” excerpted from “A Little Bit About Me” http://www.jordansonnenblick.com/bio/

To watch a video interview with Jordan Sonnenblick: http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/collection.jsp?id=135

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

This month’s book: Zen and the Art of Faking It by Jordan Sonnenblick


San Lee is an 8th grader transferring into a new school in the middle of a semester, and, once again, he's the new kid in a new school in a new town. But he has the same old problems, only now they're worse than ever because his dad is in prison, and his mom is working constantly to try and support them. At every new school, San makes himself over to become someone who can fit in, but this time he says, "I was sick of pretending to be like everyone else --the artificial slang, the Internet research on sports I didn't care about, the endless watching of MTV so I could learn song lyrics, dance moves, cool clothing brands." Then, in the cafeteria on his first day, he meets a wild-haired girl who spends every lunch period singing and playing an old, beat-up guitar. Next, in social studies class (which he happens to have with the wild-haired girl, Woody), he just happens to know the answer to a question about Zen Buddhism, and his new identity as Buddha Boy is launched. Since he's the only Asian in the school, everyone takes his expertise for granted. So he rushes to the library after school to read up on Buddhism and begins to fake it. He gets paired up with Woody to do a project on Buddhism, and the time involved in their dual project of volunteering at a soup kitchen and learning how to shoot baskets the Zen way gets him into trouble with his mom, who suspects him of becoming a liar like his father. This is a very funny, heartfelt book by the author of some other terrific books: Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, it’s sequel After Ever After and Notes from the Midnight Driver. Review by Stacy Church

You Say You Want a Revolution… More Books about Rebels and the Overthrowing of Governments

The Pox Party: Taken from Accounts by [Octavius Nothing's] Own Hand and Other Sundry Sources; Collected by Mr. M.T. Anderson of Boston

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation. v. #2 The Kingdom on the Waves: Taken from Accounts by His Own Hand and Other Sundry Sources; Collected by M.T. Anderson of Boston

Chains: Seeds of America by Anderson

The Year of the Hangman by Blackwood

Rebel Angels by Bray

The Pale Assassin by Elliott

The Red Necklace: A Story of the French Revolution by Gardner

Just Jane: A Daughter of England Caught in the Struggle of the American Revolution by Lavender

Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom by Paterson

Woods Runner by Paulsen

Sovay by Rees

Or Give Me Death: A Novel of Patrick Henry's Family by Rinaldi

Cast Two Shadows: The American Revolution in the South by Rinaldi

Chanda's Wars by Stratton

Specials by Westerfeld

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Want To Read More Books like The Hermit Thrush Sings?

Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

  • The Hunger Games Collins
  • Catching Fire Collins
  • The House of the Scorpion Farmer
  • Gone Grant
  • Hunger Grant
  • Turnabout Haddix
  • Hole in the Sky Hautman
  • The cure Levitin
  • Tomorrow, When the War Began Marsden
  • The Host Meyer
  • Shade’s Children Nix
  • Z for Zachariah O'Brien
  • The Transall Saga Paulsen
  • Life as We Knew It Pfeffer
  • The Dead and the Gone Pfeffer
  • The Last Book in the Universe Philbrick
  • Nation Pratchett
  • How I Live Now Rosoff
  • Bones of Faerie Simner
  • Welcome to the Ark Tolan
  • The Uglies Trilogy Westerfeld

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

This month’s book: The Hermit Thrush Sings by Susan Butler

hermitthrush The Hermit Thrush Sings is a futuristic, post-apocalyptic science fiction novel that takes place in the state of Maine, which after a horrible disaster where a meteor crashes into the earth, is now a small country called Maynor. The meteor caused the release of radiation from nuclear power plants, and everything is thrust back in time. There’s no technology, people are ruled by an oppressive government, and there is no freedom. There are mutant species caused by the radiation exposure, and humans who have mutations are called “defectives,” and are sent to The Institute to live.  One mutant species is the birmba, a combination ape/bear that is thought to be very dangerous to humans.

Leora is an orphan who lives with her stepmother, who following the death of Leora’s father and sister, remarried the governor. She has a younger stepsister who torments her because Leora has webbed fingers on her left hand. She lives in constant fear of being sent to The Institute.  She keeps her hand hidden, except when she’s alone when uses it to draw amazing pictures which foretell the future.

When Leora overhears plans to send her to The Institute as punishment for setting free a baby birmba that was going to be sent to the government for experimentation, she decides to run away and try to find her long lost sister Reba. She’s heard rumors that Reba isn’t dead, and is in fact part of a band of rebels that is planning to overthrow the government.

This book is very suspenseful, and the reader feels carried along with Leora as she discovers her own bravery, and the special powers of her webbed hand.  Review by Stacy Church

Thursday, July 15, 2010

My Favorite Quotes from Shooting the Moon

"We were stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, a flat piece of real estate that threatened to burst into flames every afternoon from June through September." page 11

“The Colonel was born to run the show, and he had a drawer full of medals and ribbons to prove it.” page 11

“You wouldn’t think that some crazy thing Cindy Lorenzo said to you, something made up in her halfway working mind, could hurt your feelings, but Cindy’s words could pinch as hard as her fingers.” page  60

“But the Colonel seemed to want me to be happy, and he seemed genuinely pleased when I was happy, and that struck me as a pretty good definition of love when you got right down to it.” page 80

“…but usually having the Colonel in the house was like having an opera going on.  He was big, he was loud, he had a lot to talk about.” page 87

“He was a big talker, someone who liked words for words’ sake, the sound of them, the way you can pile them up in your mouth and make a poem if you spill them out the right way.” page 92

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Want To Read More about the Topics in Shooting the Moon?

Fiction about the Vietnam War

Search and Destroy by Hughes

Fallen Angels by Myers

Too Big a Storm by Qualey

Fiction about Photography

The Seer of Shadows by Avi

Born Confused by Hidiercamera

Shadow-catcher by Levin

Flash Burnout by Madigan

The Red Thread : A Novel in Three Incarnations by Townley

A Little Friendly Advice by Vivian

Razzle by Wittlinger

Teens as Photographers

Picture Perfect by Alphin

Prom Dates from Hell by Clement-Moore

Rain Is Not My Indian Name by Smith

Thursday, June 17, 2010

This month’s book: Shooting the Moon by Frances O’Roark Dowell

I was hooked on this book from the very first sentence, "The day after my brother left for Vietnam, me and Private Hollister played thirty-seven hands of gin rummy, and I won twenty-one." Jamie Dexter is a card shark, and an army brat. She and her brother TJ grew up in the army. Their father, who they call the Colonel, liked to say, "The army way is the right way," and they believed it. Jamie tells her own story, and she lets you know right off the bat how confident she is, but you can hear a hint of how much she will come to learn during the course of the story. "I was six months away from turning thirteen and I thought I knew everything." It's the summer of 1969, and TJ enlists in the Medical Corps instead of going to college like his family had planned. Jamie doesn't understand why her father isn't happy --she and TJ have always believed that going to war is the greatest thing possible. She thinks it must be her mother who is putting pressure on the Colonel to get TJ to stay home. She asks TJ to write her letters, but instead he sends her rolls of black and white film, and tells her to develop it herself at the rec center. Jamie started volunteering at the rec center just before her brother left, and has struck up a friendship with Private Hollister. He introduces her to another soldier who teaches her how to work in the darkroom. At first, TJ's pictures are of the landscape and some of the nurses he works with. But with each roll of film he sends her, the images become more disturbing, and she is reluctant to develop them. He also shoots pictures of the moon, his favorite subject. Things come to a head when Jamie finds out that her friend Private Hollister may be sent to Vietnam, where his brother was already killed. This story is about the war in Vietnam, but mostly it's about a family and a girl growing up in a difficult time. Review by Stacy Church

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

About Elizabeth C. Bunce

bunce “I write historical fantasy for young adults, and discerning not-so-young adults. “Historical fantasy” means my work is influenced by real places and cultures of the past, but I get to make up (or fudge) the details! Right now I’m working on a collection of stories based on Greek mythology, as well as a high fantasy novel about a thief mixed up in a religious civil war.

I’ve been writing as long as I can remember, even before I knew it was a job! I’ve always been interested in literature, folklore, history, and culture, so I studied English and anthropology in college. But I’ve only ever worked as a writer (although not all my writing jobs were as interesting as being a novelist).

I’m a native Midwesterner, currently living in the tall grass prairie near Kansas City with my husband and our dogs. When I’m not writing, you can find me with a book, a dog, or my needlework in hand, sometimes all of the above, which makes for some furry embroidery.” –from elizabethcbunce.com

A historical costumer who cuts, sews and embroiders, Elizabeth C. Bunce also has a strong interest in mythology, traditional stories such as myths, fairy tales and legends, and Egyptology, as well as the folklore of ghosts and folk magic.  She received her B.A in English and Anthropology from the University of Iowa, with an emphasis in traditional storytelling.  "My background in anthropology is a perfect complement to my work as a novelist," says Elizabeth.
"I've always been interested in fairy tales for their adaptability, and retellings such as Robin McKinley's classic Beauty really sparked my imagination as a young reader," says Elizabeth.  "The ironic thing is that, of all the fairy tales out there, Rumpelstiltskin was probably my least favorite-I was troubled by the anti-Semitic overtones in the Grimm version, and disturbed by the fact that the miller's daughter betrays the only character in the story who tries to help her."
"I was always fascinated by the fact that in a story about the power of names," continues Elizabeth, "the heroine is anonymous.  Unlike most fairy tales, the story is named for its ostensible villain, and the heroine doesn't have any name at all!  I wanted to know more about that girl-what she was thinking and how she found herself in such desperate straights.  I also wanted to find out about Rumpelstiltskin's back-story. Why was he so desperate to have the miller's daughter's child?"


"The heart of the story-spinning straw into gold-took on a unique resonance for me," says Elizabeth.  "As a needlewoman, I am very familiar with gold thread, and so it was natural for me to envision the mill, then, as a textile mill-not the traditional grist (flour) mill of the fairy tale.  My early research lead me to local period woolen mill museum, where the inner workings of Stirwaters came to life for me.  One of my favorite moments in writing A Curse as Dark as Gold came during my first tour of Watkins Woolen Mill.  The tour guide lead us past these huge spinning machines, and casually said, ‘These machines are spinning jacks.  The men who operated them were called jackspinners.'  Jack Spinner!  Suddenly, my Rumpelstiltskin character-the man who spins straw into gold-had an absolutely perfect name."

Elizabeth C. Bunce currently lives with her husband and their dogs near Kansas City, Missouri. – from Scholastic.com

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Interested in Reading More Fairy Tale Retellings?

 

Block The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

Dokey Golden

George Princess of the Midnight Ball

Haddix Just Ella

Hale Enna Burning

Hale The Goose Girl

Hale River Secrets

Harrison The Princess and the Hound

Hawes Black Pearls: A Faerie Strand

Lo Ash

McKinley Rose Daughter

McKinley Spindle’s End

Napoli Beast

Napoli Bound

Napoli Crazy Jack

Napoli The Magic Circle

Napoli Spinners

Napoli Zel

Pattou East

Pike Wings

Tomlinson Aurelie

Yolen Briar Rose

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

This month’s Book: A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce

curse dark as This is a wonderful retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale, which I'm sure most of you are familiar with (you know, the weird little man promises to spin a roomful of straw into gold in exchange for something which will be named at a later time, and the poor deluded girl agrees, never dreaming that what she will have to give up is her child. Or... she could guess the little man's name and be released from her bargain). So when I started reading this book, I didn't think there would be much suspense, what with knowing how the story ends and all. But the way the author tells the story is so intricate and the characters so engaging, that you never really see what's coming (although there were times when I wanted to shout at her, "No, he's going to take your baby!") The story reads like historical fiction --Charlotte Miller's father has passed away unexpectedly, and now she is in charge of the family's woolen mill, on which the entire town depends for their income, and which has been plagued by bad luck as long as anyone can remember. She has her younger sister to help, and a previously unknown uncle shows up to "help" them, although it turns out he has nefarious plans of his own. A banker that her father had secretly taken out a loan from turns out to be an unlikely ally, and in fact, he and Charlotte fall in love. But as things spin out of control at the mill, Charlotte refuses his help. Did I mention that her sister became so desperate that she followed some ancient instructions to summon fairy help and conjured up a strange little man (remember that from the fairy tale?) who agrees to spin a roomful of straw into gold in exchange for a cheap ring that Charlotte received from her mother. The money from the gold thread saves the mill, temporarily, but of course their involvement with the little man, Jack Spinner, almost ruins them. Instead of guessing his name, Charlotte has to figure out what Jack Spinner's history is in order to remove the curse from the mill. I can't say enough about what a great book this is. It's a very accurate portrayal of the industrial revolution and the magical part of the story is really pretty minor (although the plot hinges on it), so even if you don't usually like fantasy, it's a great read.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Review of Eli the Good by Silas House

eli There is so much sadness in this book. The first paragraph kind of tells it all:

“That was the summer of the bicentennial, when all these things happened: my sister, Josie, began to hate our country and slapped my mother’s face; my wild aunt, Nell, moved in with us, bringing along all five thousand or so of her records and a green record player that ran on batteries; my father started going back to Vietnam in his dreams, and I saw him cry; my mother did the Twist in front of the whole town and nearly lost us all. I was ten years old, and I did something unforgivable.”

Whew. The story lives up to all of that, too. In fact, there’s even more sadness. Eli’s best friend, Edie, is abandoned by her mother, and has to live with her alcoholic father. Eli finds out (by eavesdropping, which he indulges in whenever possible) that the reason his Aunt Nell moved in with them is because she has cancer. His mother and Nell are very close, but Eli's father and Nell --not so much. While Eli’s father was off fighting in Vietnam, Nell was protesting the war, and because of one very famous photograph, everyone in the country knows her, which Eli's father takes as a personal affront. Eli watches everything, and, despite the closeness of Eli’s family, he doesn’t really feel taken care of by anyone. He’s never forgiven his mother for something he overheard her say to his father once, “I love you too much. More than anything. More than anybody.” Eli’s great sadness is that he feels his mother doesn’t love him or his sister as much as she loves their father. The writing in the book is so beautiful, and it really captures the essence of the time (1976). Review by Stacy Church

Review of Wings by Aprilynne Pike

wings I have to say that despite what might be the most outlandish concept for a plot in the history of literature (ok, that’s overstating it a bit), this book is actually pretty good. Laurel is just starting to attend the local high school after being homeschooled all her life. She’s not happy, but things haven’t gone too badly on her first day –she’s made some friends, she’s not too far behind the other kids in her classes, and she even gets a cute guy named David to eat his lunch outside with her. But then she feels a strange lump in between her shoulder blades. For some reason, she doesn’t tell her parents, even though every day it gets bigger and bigger. Finally, one day it opens up into a huge….flower. That’s right, flower. She still doesn’t tell her parents. She binds the petals down and wears loose clothes. Wait, it gets even weirder. She goes back to visit her old house with her parents, and when she goes into the woods for a walk, she’s approached by a strange-looking green boy, who tells her that she’s a faerie, and that faeries are not animals/humans, they are plants. So if you’re willing to suspend disbelief long enough to accept that Laurel never noticed she doesn’t have a heart beat, or blood in her veins, and never thought it was that unusual that she doesn’t eat food except for canned peaches, you will enjoy this book. It has an exciting ending that involves trolls, Laurel and David being weighted down and thrown in the river, saving Laurel’s dad (who was poisoned by the trolls), and Laurel telling her parents the truth about her faerieness. Oh, and by the way, one of the pieces of information that the green boy passed on to Laurel is that, for faeries, pollination is for procreation, sex is just for fun. Review by Stacy Church

Review of Chasing the Bear, a Young Spenser Novel by Robert B. Parker

chasing If you haven’t read any of Robert Parker’s Spenser novels, you might be confused by the chapters of this book that are set in the present day, where Spenser is talking to his girlfriend Susan, and being prodded by her to recall episodes from his childhood.  But you certainly don’t have to have read the Spenser books to appreciate the great stories that he tells.  Spenser grew up in a completely male household.  When his mother died, his father’s two brothers moved in to share the parenting duties, so Spenser grows up being taught to think for himself, to cook, and how to throw a mean right hook.  When Spenser’s best friend, Jeannie, drives by in a car driven by her mean, drunken father, and mouths “Help” at him out the window, he knows he has to go after her.  He’s scared, but he knows that if he goes to get help he’ll lose them, so he follows them to the jetty, and then out onto the river in a rowboat, with only his dog Pearl for help.  It’s an exciting story, and my favorite one.  Throughout the book, Spenser tells Susan that he spent his life looking for his one and only love, and she is it.  The book is truly an adventure book for boys, but it doesn’t hurt to hear such a heartfelt message from so tough a guy.  Review by Stacy Church

Review of Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr

once This is a book about a young woman questioning her faith --and she has good reason to question it.  Her father is the pastor in a small town with one post office, one hardware store, only one restaurant that’s open on Sundays, but seven churches.  Even though everyone knows pretty much everything about everyone else, something no one seems to know is that Sam’s mother is a drunk.  Then Sam’s mom is in rehab, court-ordered after a drunken-driving accident, and Sam is left alone with her father, who seems to have infinite time for his parishioners’ problems, but no time for his own daughter or to visit his wife in rehab. The author describes Sam’s disillusionment perfectly when giving Sam’s reaction to a poster in the youth group room that shows a bunch of happy, multicultural-looking teens and the slogan: Community Happens! “I stared at that poster and pictured myself in it, smiling, knee-to-knee with the other youth group kids, who would be my best friends…Because, as we’re reminded all the time at church, community happens through sharing…I believed in  the theory, and expected that once I hit high school my life would be filled with all this understanding and friendship and spiritual bonding, and my faith would come alive, just like the poster promised.  It hasn’t really happened that way.”  Then, as if things couldn’t get any worse, a 13-year-old member of the youth group, Jody, disappears.  Sam’s lack of faith intensifies, and it’s clear that part of the problem is her lack of faith in her own father. As he’s getting ready to leave to visit the family of the missing girl, this is how Sam sees him: “He was strangely calm-looking, his tan face smooth, his hair in place, jaw set. It dawned on me that in a way he’s been prepping for a tragedy like this all his life; he’s like an actor getting his ultimate role.  For someone whose career is believing in God and convincing other people to, this is exactly the kind of thing that would give him a chance to really prove that everything he’s been saying is true.”  I absolutely love this book.  It’s a perfect combination of characters, setting and plot.  Review by Stacy Church

Review of The Death Collector by Justin Richards

death collector What could possibly be scary about an elderly man coming home for tea? Oh yeah, it’s because the man coming home for tea is dead –“Four days after his own funeral, Albert Wilkes came home for tea.” The dog certainly knows there’s something wrong.  He yelps and backs away from the nightmarish figure, but can’t escape being dragged out of the house for his daily walk.  Then there’s Eddie Hopkins lurking about trying to find a likely mark for his pick-pocketing skills, who sees the old man and his dog. “…as he passed, Eddie caught a whiff of him…Eddie could almost taste the smell that was coming off the old man.  A cloying, slightly sweet smell that spoke of decay and neglect.  A graveyard stench.”  The atmosphere in this book is great, and the characters are fun, even if they are a bit typical –the young thief with his own code of honor, the strong young woman who’s smarter and braver than most of the men in her life, and the naive but sincere young man who’s instantly smitten with said young woman.  Anyway, there’s quite a lot of adventure to the story, a bit too much for my taste in the second half of the book.  It seems like one chase is barely over before the bad guys have set upon the trio again.  There is a lot of ingenuity to the monsters constructed by the industrialist Augustus Lorimore in his quest to take over the world and readers who don’t like a dull moment will probably find the amount of action just right for them.  Review by Stacy Church

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Interview with M. E. Rabb from Teenreads.com

Author Information
M. E. Rabb was born in Manhattan, raised in Sunnyside, Queens, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband Marshall. She's published short stories and essays in various magazines including Seventeen, Mademoiselle, and The Atlantic Monthly. Her series of young adult novels, MISSING PERSONS, is about two sisters from Queens who run away to the Midwest and become private detectives.


INTERVIEW

July 2004
Q: Where did you get the idea for MISSING PERSONS?
MER: A few years ago, I gave a reading at a Barnes & Noble in Manhattan of a story that featured a teen narrator. An editor was in the audience and asked me if I had any ideas for a teen series. I then came up with the characters of Sam and Sophie Shattenberg, two sisters who've lost their parents and run away from home. Around the same time, I met a woman who was working for a private detective. She told me all sorts of funny stories, and I decided I'd make Sam and Sophie into detectives. I've always loved mysteries --- our father used to read Sherlock Holmes stories to my sister and me when we were little, and I devoured the Nancy Drew books and Sue Grafton's mysteries. And I always secretly wanted to be a detective myself.
Q: Why did you decide to have the sisters leave their home in New York City and run away to the Midwest?
MER: Sophie and Sam's experience in Indiana is based partly on my own experience attending college in Indiana. While growing up in New York City I'd always fantasized about living in a small town in the Midwest, near farms and horses and cows. (I think this fantasy came from reading too many Little House on the Prairie books as a kid.) When I first arrived in Indiana I was in for a major culture shock, but I quickly grew to love it.
Q: That seems funny that you longed to move to a small town, since so many girls in small towns dream of growing up in New York City.
MER: Even though New York City has a reputation for being such an exciting place, when you grow up there it's really not very exciting at all. It's just home --- a home that's often dirty, smelly, and way too crowded!
Q: THE ROSE QUEEN and THE CHOCOLATE LOVER are as much about the sisters and their relationships and romances as it is about the mysteries. Was this a conscious decision?
MER: My favorite parts of mystery novels are often the sections that discuss the characters' inner lives and relationships. In Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone mysteries, I love the parts that discuss Kinsey's personal life and romantic interests. And I often thought while reading Nancy Drew, "Enough about the clue in the diary. Are you going to kiss Ned or what?!"
Q: In THE CHOCOLATE LOVER Sophie struggles to come to terms with her Jewish identity. Was this an important issue for you too?
MER: I didn't think too much about being Jewish until I lived in Indiana. In New York City you can kind of take being Jewish for granted. There are a lot of Jewish people in New York, and Jewish culture is everywhere --- Jewish food is commonplace, and Yiddish is intermingled in most people's vocabulary. In Indiana I tried to make matzo ball soup for Chanukah and the man in the grocery store had never heard of matzo meal. He said, "Check in the ethnic section, near the salsa and the soy sauce." I knew in theory that Jews were a minority, but I'd never felt it until I left New York City. Being in a non-Jewish environment actually made me feel more Jewish than I'd ever felt before, and that was a surprise to me. I decided to put that experience in the books.
Q: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
MER: I've kept a journal since I was ten years old, and I've written in it almost daily since I was fifteen. Keeping a journal has been extremely important to me as a writer --- it's made me realize that I can't live without writing. Writing helps me make sense of the world. I'm often not sure what I think of an experience until I see it before me on the page.
Q: You also write literary fiction for adults. What's the difference between writing for adults and writing for younger readers?
MER: You can be goofier in young adult fiction. An asthmatic cat appears in the third MISSING PERSONS novel, THE VENETIAN POLICEMAN. It would be difficult to write asthmatic cat scenes in a serious adult story!
Q: Sophie in THE ROSE QUEEN discusses the books that have meant a lot to her. What books have been important to you?
MER: THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, and I CAPTURE THE CASTLE were very important books to me as a teenager. Anne Frank, Anne Shirley, Scout Finch and Cassandra Mortmain are such strong, inspiring role models. Those books helped me figure out who I was and who I wanted to be, and helped shape my dreams and ambitions.
Q: In THE ROSE QUEEN and THE CHOCOLATE LOVER there's a lot of humor mixed in with sadness over the loss of Sophie and Sam's parents. Is this based on personal experience?
MER: Unfortunately my sister and I also lost both of our parents early, although we weren't as young as Sophie and Sam were when they lost theirs. Part of our way of dealing with it was to try to keep our sense of humor as much as possible, even during the worst times. There's sort of an archetypal "orphan" character that appears in lots of young adult novels, but I wanted Sam and Sophie to deal with the loss of their parents in a real way. For instance, the loss is part of what makes the sisters so close, since they're the only family they have left. This was true for my sister and me also. And there are scenes where Sophie decides she needs to just put the grief out of her mind --- this was true for me, too.
Q: What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
MER: Never give up. That's the most important thing to remember. It's so easy to be discouraged, but you have to believe in yourself and keep writing no matter what.

-Teenreads.com

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Want to Read More Books about Teens as Detectives?

Abrahams Down the Rabbit Hole : An Echo Falls Mystery

Arnold Rat Life

Berk The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin

Dunlap The Musician's Daughter

Ferguson The Christopher Killer : A Forensic Mystery

The Dying Breath : A Forensic Mystery

Gratz Something Rotten : A Horatio Wilkes Mystery

Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Madison Lulu Dark Can See through Walls

Portman King Dork

Rabb The Venetian Policeman

Richards The Death Collector

Rushford In Too Deep

Scrimger From Charlie's Point of View

Thompson Creature of the Night

Wynne-Jones The Uninvited

Interested in Reading More Books about Missing Persons?

Try these other titles about missing persons:

Brooks Black Rabbit Summer

Green Paper Towns

Hautman, Logue Snatched

Sorrells Fake ID

Strasser Wish You Were Dead

Westerfeld So Yesterday

Wynne-Jones The Boy in the Burning House

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

How to Disappear

I found a surprising number of websites giving advice on how to disappear. 

http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/vanish.htm

http://www.escapeartist.com/efam/45/Disappearing.html

How to Disappear from Facebook and Twitter

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1954631,00.html

Here’s a great story about a writer for Wired Magazine who tried to disappear

http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/11/ff_vanish2/

Thursday, April 8, 2010

This month’s book: Missing Persons book one: The Rose Queen by M.E. Rabb

rose queen This is the first volume in a really fun and well-written mystery series: Missing Persons.  Sophia and Samantha Shattenberg have to make new lives for themselves after their father’s death if they want to avoid having to live under the rule of their evil stepmother Enid, a tall, wiry woman who, Sophia said, “Called us ‘the young ladies’ in the same tone she used for ‘the rodents in the subway.’”  Sophia and Sam’s mother disappeared years before, last traced to Indianapolis, so is it just coincidence that the girls head there to make their new start?  They are aided by Sam’s best friend Felix, who hooks them up with a not-very-scary minor criminal (he has a huge orange tabby cat named Cubby, pictures of Cubby and copies of Cat Fancy magazine in his office, and his nana sends him homemade ravioli) who helps them establish their new identities with fake birth certificates, social security cards, and a driver’s license for Sam.  Their new (old) car breaks down in Venice –”the Europe of the Midwest, see our beautiful canal” –and they decide they might like small town life.  Unfortunately for them, things are not as quiet in Venice as they thought they would be.  Noelle, local mean girl soon to be Queen of the Rose Parade, hates Sophia on sight (“As Rose Queen, I’m going to do my best to help Venice’s underprivileged residents. The dwarves, the pasty, the orphans.”), and when she’s murdered after last being seen getting out of Sam and Sophia’s car, Sophia becomes the prime suspect.  Of course they decide they’d better solve the murder themselves, before someone discovers their true identities (they did steal $300,000 that was supposed to be inherited by the evil Enid).  Review by Stacy Church

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Positively Poetry at the Westwood Public Library

Positively Poetry at the Westwood Public Library is a celebration of poetry that includes the publication of an anthology of original poetry by students in grades 3 - 12, a public reading from the anthology, and sometimes a writing workshop or two!

Send us your poems for The Westwood Library's 2010 Poetry Anthology. All students in grades 3 - 12 are invited to send one original poem for inclusion in our 2010 anthology. Poems should be no longer than 30 lines, and must have family friendly language and content. Deadline for submissions is April 16. Email us at westwoodpoetry@yahoo.com and include your full name, grade, name of your school, phone number and email address. Check out our poetry blog at westwoodpoetry.blogspot.com, where some of the poems will be published.

Looking for Reviews of Newly Released Young Adult Books?

Check out the Westwood Public Library’s other young adult blog, YA Show and Tell, for reviews of new young adult books.  Some recently reviewed books:

Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr

Chasing the Bear by Robert Parker

Salt by Maurice Gee

Eli the Good by Silas House

Wings by Aprilynne Pike

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Bio of Gary Crew, Author of Angel’s Gate

garycrew Dr Gary Crew, author of novels, short stories and picture books for older children and young adults began his writing career in 1985, when he was a high school teacher. His books are challenging and intriguing, often based on non-fiction. As well as writing fiction, Gary is a Associate Professor in Creative Writing, Children's and Adult Literature, at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland and editor of the After Dark series.


He lives with his wife Christine on several acres in the cool, high mountains of the Sunshine Coast Hinterland in Queensland, Australia. He enjoys gardening, reading, and playing with his dogs Ferris, Beulah, and Miss Wendy. In his spare time he has created an Australian Rainforest Garden around his home, filled with Australian palms. Gary loves to visit antique shops looking for curios and beautiful objects.

 
Gary Crew has been awarded the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the year four times: twice for Book of the Year for Young Adult Older Readers (Strange Objects in 1991 and Angel’s Gate in 1993) and twice for Picture Book of the Year with First Light in 1993 (illustrated by Peter Gouldthorpe) and The Watertower (illustrated by Steven Woolman) in 1994. Gary’s illustrated book, Memorial (with Shaun Tan) was awarded the Children’s Book Council of Australia Honour Book in 2000 and short listed for the Queensland Premier’s Awards. He has also won the Wilderness Society Award, the Whitley Award and the Aurealis Award for Speculative Fiction.


In the USA he has been twice short listed for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Mystery Fiction Award for Youth and the Hungry Minds Review American Children’s Book of distinction. In Europe he has twice been and twice the prestigious White Raven Award for his illustrated books. Among his many Australian awards is the Ned Kelly Prize for Crime Fiction, the New South Wales Premier’s Award and the Victorian Premier’s Award. He has been short listed for both the Queensland Premier’s and the Western Australian Premier’s awards for Fiction.

--from Goodread.com

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Interested in reading more fiction set in Australia?

Anything by Jaclyn Moriarty and John Marsden

Ten Things I Hate about Me by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Dreamrider by Barry Jonsberg

Dingo by Charles de Lint

Genius Squad by Catherine Jinks

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Am I Right or Am I Right? by Barry Jonsberg

Breathe by Penni Russon

The Sweet, Terrible, Glorious Year I Truly, Completely Lost It by Lisa Shanahan

Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Magic Lessons by by Justine Larbalestier

Undine by Penni Russon

Things You Either Hate or Love by Brigid Lowry

The Book Thief by by Markus Zusak

The Riddle by Alison Croggon

I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Interested in finding out more about feral children"?

http://listverse.com/2008/03/07/10-modern-cases-of-feral-children/

Take a look at this website for info on:

10 Modern Cases of Feral Children

The Syrian Gazelle Boy

Syriangazelleboy

Jean-Claude Auger, an anthropologist from the Basque country, was traveling alone across the Spanish Sahara (Rio de Oro) in 1960 when he met some Nemadi nomads, who told him about a wild child a day’s journey away. The next day, he followed the nomads’ directions. On the horizon he saw a naked child “galloping in gigantic bounds among a long cavalcade of white gazelles”. The boy walked on all fours, but occasionally assumed an upright gait, suggesting to Auger that he was abandoned or lost at about seven or eight months, having already learnt to stand. He habitually twitched his muscles, scalp, nose and ears, much like the rest of the herd, in response to the slightest noise. He would eat desert roots with his teeth, pucking his nostrils like the gazelles. He appeared to be herbivorous apart from the occasional agama lizard or worm when plant life was lacking. His teeth edges were level like those of a herbivorous animal. In 1966 an unsuccessful attempt was made to catch the boy in a net suspended from a helicopter; unlike most of the feral children of whom we have records, the gazelle boy was never removed from his wild companions.

Oxana Malaya

Windowslivewriterlosniossalvajes29-11111Malaya132

Oxana Malaya (Оксана Малая) (born November 1983) was found as an 8-year-old feral child in Ukraine in 1991, having lived most of her life in the company of dogs. She picked up a number of dog-like habits and found it difficult to master language. Oxana’s alcoholic parents were unable to care for her. They lived in an impoverished area where there were wild dogs roaming the streets. She lived in a dog kennel behind her house where she was cared for by dogs and learned their behaviours and mannerisms. She growled, barked and crouched like a wild dog, sniffed at her food before she ate it, and was found to have acquired extremely acute senses of hearing, smell, and sight.

Kamala and Amala

04Entsavage,0

The most famous wolf-children are the two girls captured in October 1920 from a huge abandoned ant-hill squatted by wolves near Godamuri in the vicinity of Midnapore, west of Calcutta, by villagers under the direction of the Rev JAL Singh, an Anglican missionary. The mother wolf was shot. The girls were named Kamala and Amala, and were thought to be aged about eight and two. According to Singh, the girls had misshapen jaws, elongated canines, and eyes that shone in the dark with the peculiar blue glare of cats and dogs. Amala died the following year, but Kamala survived until 1929, by which time she had given up eating carrion, had learned to walk upright and spoke about 50 words.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

This month’s book: Angel’s Gate by Gary Crew

angel's gate I first read this book years ago and have never quite forgotten it, so when I was thinking about a book for this month I decided to read it again. What a surprise to find that not only do I still love it, I think I appreciate it even more now. Angel’s Gate is a mystery, but it’s one of those mysteries that’s more than just a mystery. There is a murder, but the real suspense involves the existence (or not?) of two only-partially-glimpsed wild children, and the dangerous situation they are in. After a man is found murdered, rumors start to surface of him having a child living with him. Some people also claim to have seen another figure under a tarp in the back of his truck, and it is speculated that maybe he had two children living with him out in the bush. Everyone is looking for them, some to help them, but someone (the murderer) may want to silence them. The book takes place in the hills of Jericho, Australia, where Kimmy is growing up in an old building that also houses his father’s office and clinic (his father is the town doctor, his mother the nurse). Because the building used to be a barracks for soldiers, there are bars on the basement windows where the old cells are. When the first child is caught, the police naturally bring her to the doctor’s office, and she is kept in one of the cells while Kimmy’s parents try to nurse her back to health and rehabilitate her. Kimmy befriends her and is frightened by her obvious fear whenever she hears boots scrunching on the gravel outside the windows –she whispers, “Mister.” Is Mister the killer? The story is complicated by the bad nature of one of the local policemen, Ben Cullen. Angel’s Gate gives a very detailed picture of life in a small town in Australia, and also paints a vivid picture of growing up in a family with a controlling father and an older sister who refuses to give in to him.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Some of my favorite passages from Back Home

“Everybody needs a fort.

You can live without a lot of things in your life, things other people might say you need.  But all you really need is a fort.  It can be small, but it has to be sturdy.  It’s the place you can go when you don’t have anywhere else to go.  A place where there won’t be a lot of questions.  A place where people won’t be looking at you or making judgments or assumptions about you.  A fort is all about protection.” (page 1)

“My mother likes to make speeches.  She’s one of those people who believes she can get out ahead of things –bad things, I mean –by preparing everybody in advance, by speaking slowly and carefully about the sadness or confusion or frustration you’re about to feel.  It’s almost like she’s trying to put a frame around things, to sort of steer the world in the right direction, or at least have a say in how other people feel.  I don’t mind.  I know why she does that.  Adults need to have a lot of control over what happens.” (page 4)

“…the word accident was not the kind of word you could count on.  It wasn’t a word that held its meaning.  It changed.  It shifted.  It could be one thing in relation to one person; it could be something totally different in relation to another person.

Accident was just not a word you could ever trust.” (page 29)

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Traumatic Brain Injury

If you’re interested in learning more about traumatic brain injury, like what Rachel’s father suffered, try this website on preventing, treating and living with TBI http://www.brainline.org/landing_pages/Family.html.  The website is an off-shoot of the government’s Defense and Veteran’s Brain Injury Center, and includes videos of survivors of brain injury and people who are coping with and living with TBI. 

 

pearce Recently, snowboarder Kevin Pearce suffered a traumatic brain injury during training.  One month after his accident, Pearce was transferred from University of Utah Hospital to Craig Hospital, a world renowned center for specialty rehabilitation and research for people with traumatic brain injury.  Here are links to a couple of press releases about the accident and Pearce’s recovery. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/outposts/2010/01/snowboarder-kevin-pearce-1.htmlhttp://www.examiner.com/x-7400-Vermont-Amateur-Sports-Examiner~y2010m2d4-Vermont-snowboarder-Kevin-Pearce-moved-to-new-rehab-facility

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

If you like Back Home…

Interested in reading some other stories about people recovering from brain injuries?  I was surprised to find so few books, but here are a few:

Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman

Trigger by Susan Vaught

Finding Grace by Alyssa Brugman

This month’s books now available!

Copies of Back Home by Julia Keller are available for check out in the YA Dept. of the Westwood Library

Thursday, January 28, 2010

This month’s book: Back Home by Julia Keller

back home Back Home is the story of what happens to one girl’s life when her dad returns from the war in Iraq with sever injuries: he’s lost an arm and a leg and suffered a traumatic brain injury.  Rachel is 13, her sister Marcy is 8 and their little brother Rob is 4.  Their mom is the kind of parent who doesn’t keep secrets from her kids, even though she tends to give speeches, “My mother…is one of those people who believes she can get out ahead of things –bad things, I mean –by preparing everybody in advance, by speaking slowly and carefully about the sadness or confusion or frustration you’re about to feel.”  Rachel feels that she can’t ask silly questions like her little sister, but she wonders how much of a person needs to be intact to make you still the same person as before.  At first, her dad doesn’t seem to really be there at all. Not only does he not communicate, but he doesn’t respond to things going on around him.  The hospital said he should be able to do things for himself (like take care of his “personal needs”), but he doesn’t seem to want to.  Then Rachel realizes: “It’s not that Dad didn’t want to do things. It’s that the part of his brain that told him to do things was one of the parts that was injured. So what looked like laziness wasn’t laziness at all. When it looked like he just didn’t care, it wasn’t that he didn’t care. Caring, it turns out, comes from your brain. I know that’s a strange way to think about it, but it’s true: caring comes from your brain. The part of my father that wanted to do things wasn’t there anymore.”  This is a beautifully told story, and even though the ending might not be what you hope it will be, it is certainly realistic. 

Back Home will be available for pickup in the YA Dept. Monday, Feb. 1

Friday, January 15, 2010

Reviews of Bog Child

Interested in reading some other reviews of Bog Child?  Here are some links to a couple of reviews that I enjoyed.

Guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/mar/08/featuresreviews.guardianreview28

Teenreads.com http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/9780385751698.asp

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The Troubles

If you’re like me, you don’t know a whole lot about the political situation in Northern Ireland.  Here are some books to take a look at if you’re interested in learning more:

A History of Northern Ireland, 1920 – 1996 by Thomas Hennessey

The Committee: Political Assassination in Northern Ireland by Jack Holland

The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict between the IRA and British Intelligence by Tony Geraghty

The Troubles: Ireland’s Ordeal 1966 – 1996 and the Search for Peace by Tim Pat Coogan

The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence, 1967 – 1992 by J. Bowyer Bell

Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair by Padraig O’Malley

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

From an interview with Siobhan Dowd

siobhan Born of Irish parents, the youngest of four girls, I was raised in a South London suburb. Despite the red buses and red post boxes, Ireland was bred in the bone. We were brought up as Irish-Catholic, went to Catholic schools with other Irish-Catholics, and spent our magical childhood summers playing with our Irish cousins in Ireland’s County Waterford. While there, we lived in a remote cottage with no water or electricity. We washed in water collected in rain barrels and read by gaslight.

The four of us used to liken ourselves to the girls in Little Women, which meant I was the spoilt one, Amy–the short straw.

From the age of seven, I scribbled down poems, ghost stories, and mystery stories and completed my first novel at the age of nine. It was about Anne, the daughter of a harried innkeeper in Bethlehem, and very, very holey (yes, that is how I spelt the word). But it fixed my aim to write for a living when I grew up.


By a long and circuitous route, I’ve finally attained this goal. In between going to Oxford University and studying Classics, working to promote human rights for the writers’ association PEN, doing a Master’s degree in the social sciences, and living on both sides of the Atlantic (I worked for PEN American Centre in New York City between 1990 and 1997), I was always writing something. I wrote diaries, letters, entertainments for my nieces’ and nephews’ birthdays, as well as hundreds of nonfiction articles and reviews for newspapers and magazines. In a secret drawer, I kept a gargantuan adult manuscript-in-progress: I rewrote it four times before putting it aside.


Then I submitted a short story about a young Irish Traveller boy for Skin Deep, an anthology about racism aimed at young adults (Puffin, 2003). What joy when it was accepted! Encouraged, I wrote A Swift Pure Cry in three intensive months in the autumn of 2004.


The story was inspired by two shocking events that occurred in Ireland in 1984. The first was the tragic death of Anne Lovett, aged 15. Unable to seek help when she fell pregnant, she died of exposure and haemorrhaging while trying to give birth on her own in a grotto to the Virgin Mary in the village of Granard, County Longford. Her child also died. Members of her community pleaded in their own defence that they had been unaware of her predicament.


The second case was that of ‘the Kerry Babies.’ A baby boy was found with multiple stab wounds, abandoned on a beach out on County Kerry’s Dingle Peninsula. The Gardai accused Joanne Hayes, a woman in her 20s who was known to have been pregnant out of wedlock, of having murdered him. She said she had buried her own baby boy, who had died, in a local field. I won’t describe here the bizarre train of events that unfolded, but the result was an independent tribunal and a nationwide furore. To date, the murderer of the stabbed baby boy and his parentage remain a mystery.


Perhaps it was a haunting sense of something unresolved in these tragedies that impelled me to write A Swift Pure Cry. Certainly, the story seemed to write itself. Shell Talent and her (completely fictional) story of loss and discovery must have been germinating in the back of my brain for 20 years.


Today, every day I don’t write feels like a lost day. I never believe that a story will be finished until I’ve typed the last period. And it is always a miracle if I get it down before being run over by a juggernaut.


The calm beauty of Oxford, where I live, and a kind, witty husband prevent me from being so doom-laden that I can’t write at all. I’m currently halfway through my fourth novel . . . and I’m being very careful crossing the road.

From Random House: Teachers @ Random “Spotlight On Siobhan Dowd”

Liz’s Review of Before I Die by Jenny Downham

before Before I Die by Jenny Downham is a story about Tessa, a 16-year-old girl with only months left before she is killed by her cancer.  It is about a list Tessa made of things she wanted to do before she died.  The problem for Tessa, is that she has only a short period of time and her list involves as much time as she has.  Also, her list is kind of crazy (involving saying “Yes” to everything for a day, and committing a crime --shoplifting)  At first, when Tessa makes the list, she is eager to do it, but then, after her world gets torn apart, between her best friend hating her, the neighbor she fell in love with saying, “If anything happened between us, it would be like, what’s the point?” meaning, if they fell in love or hated each other or never met, why would that matter because she’s dying.  Tessa finds out she is even shorter on time than she thought, and that she is definitely going to die.  No miracle can save her now.  The problem takes a new turn when Tessa goes on vacation with her best friend Zoey, and find out that she is PREGNANT!  Tessa decides to cross off one of the things on her list so she can have the baby named after her.  Will she fall in love with the neighbor again??  Will she live to finish her list?? Review by Liz C.