Review of The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman

Reading this book reminds me of why I love Pete Hautman (author of Godless, Rash, Sweetblood).  The writing is terrific: quirky, funny, believable.  The Big Crunch is divided into four sections, one for each season, and it follows the relationship of Wes and June.  June is the new girl at school, a role she knows all too well.  Her father is a workout specialist, which isn’t what you would think –he’s hired to come in and help companies that are in trouble get out of trouble.  So most of his jobs are temporary, and June’s mom and dad have a number of annoying phrases they use to try to get June on board with having to move all the time, things like, “There is no reverse gear in time machine.”  Wes spends the first part of the book running away from June, who he calls Aqua Girl because of the color of her eyes.  She tries to stay away from him, too, because her goal is to not get too attached to anyone.  In other words, find an ok, boring, but nice, boyfriend, who in this case is Wes’s best friend, Jerry.  Of course once Wes and June get together, it blows the friendship apart, and then June’s dad has to move for a new job, and she doesn’t even get to finish the year at her new high school.  Hautman gets the push/pull of Wes and June’s relationship just right.  One minute they’re doing crazy things so that they can be together, and the next minute they’re wondering what the heck they’re doing.  Even while you root for them to work everything out, you know how unlikely it is, given all the circumstances (including their age) conspiring against them.  Still, the ending is about as hopeful as you could ask for.  Review by Stacy Church

This month’s book: The Pluto Project by Melissa Glenn Haber

This book isn’t new, but somehow I just discovered it.  14-year-old Alan works hard at being unobtrusive (just one of the words his favorite teacher, Mrs. Perry, uses to describe him, others being misanthrope, cynic, curmudgeon), trying not to get noticed by Rory Frankel and his gang, who spend most of their time beating up Morris Kaufman, just like they have since elementary school.  Alan lives in a big empty house, almost empty even of furniture, with his dad and his aunt Trish, who moved in after his mother died.  Alan and his group of friends spend a lot of time hanging around in a culvert by the side of a road, listening to the conversations of passersby, and pretending to solve crimes by discovering clues to the activities of CRAP, Conspiracy Rule American People. “The whole thing had all started off as a joke.  Of course it still was a joke, but not the way it had been when they’d first started the game…”  In fact, Alan comes to believe it isn’t a joke at all, when he thinks they’ve heard a conversation linked to the assassination of the governor.  Alan is amazing at finding meaning in lines of poetry at school, and he becomes obsessed with finding meaning in the clues he discovers in the culvert.  I’ve just learned there’s a word for this: pariedolia, which means the tendency to ascribe meaning to random stimuli. Alan also becomes obsessed with the new girl at school, Juliet (“like the play), and as his obsession grows, he neglects his other friends.  Alan’s home life is pretty terrible, and the pressure of his father forcing his new girlfriend, Cheryl, into Alan’s life, along with Alan’s belief that he is the only one who can stop another assassination attempt, pretty much drive him around the bend.  I love everything about this book –the characters, the suspense, the sadness, Alan’s poetic interpretations.  Review by Stacy Church

Review of The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

The cover of The Replacement definitely wins the contest for creepiest book cover ever.  No one else at the library even wanted to hear me talk about the story after seeing the cover. Now I, on the other hand, love the cover, and it really matches the creepiness of the tale inside.  Mackie Doyle is different than everyone else in the small dismal town of Gentry.  Even though it says right on the cover that he’s a replacement (a changeling, if you will), it takes a while for the reader to really understand what that means.  Apparently, the town of Gentry has a dirty secret that no one has spoken out loud about for a long time, and Mackie is determined to make them face it.  Because he’s the one replacement who didn’t die young like he was supposed to.  Mackie can’t live with the horrors of his life anymore –his sickness at the smell of blood, the way his skin burns if he goes onto consecrated ground (awkward since his dad is a minister) – and he can’t stand watching other people suffer, like his classmate Tate, whose baby sister has just gone missing, so he finds his way underground to Mayhem and wages war with all kinds of demons to save the town of Gentry from their grasp.  The underworld creatures are so creepy, and there’s romance, too.  I don’t usually like horror books, but the combination with fantasy kept me from putting this one down.  Review by Stacy Church

Is It Really Reading?

Here’s a question for you:  If you read a wordless graphic novel like The Arrival, is it really reading?  What does “reading” really mean, anyway?  Well, here are the first four definitions of “read” according to dictionary.com

–verb (used with object)

1. to look at carefully so as to understand the meaning of (something written, printed, etc.): to read a book; to read music.

2. to utter aloud or render in speech (something written, printed, etc.): reading a story to his children; The actor read his lines in a booming voice.

3. to have such knowledge of (a language) as to be able to understand things written in it: to be able to read french.

4. to apprehend the meaning of (signs, characters, etc.) otherwise than with the eyes, as by means of the fingers: to read braille.

So I’d say yes, reading The Arrival really is reading.