YA

• The Reluctant Heiress by Eva Ibbotson
• Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers
• Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore
• The Cup of the World by John Dickinson
• The Sweetheart of Prosper County by Jill S. Alexander
• Fat Cat by Robin Brande
• Hamlet: A Novel by John Marsden
• The Tricksters by Margaret Mahy

Middle Grade

• Operation Yes by Sara Lewis Holmes
• Greenwitch by Susan Cooper (re-read)
• Eighth-Grade Superzero by Olugbemisola Rhuday Perkovich
• The Grey King by Susan Cooper (re-read)
• Silver on the Tree by Susan Cooper (re-read)

Graphic Novels

• Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness by Reinhold Kleist
• Bone Vol. 1: Out From Boneville by Jeff Smith
• Leave it to PET, Vol. 1 by Shenji Konishi
• Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute by Jarrett Krosoczka

Adult Fiction

• Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

Currently Reading

• The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Kidnapped by Yxta Maya Murray
• The Bride’s Farewell by Meg Rosoff
• The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution by Dave Kusek

Ever since Nimira came to the country of Lorinar with the intention of making her fortune, she has been leered at, exoticized, and made to feel inferior by virtually everyone she meets.  While dancing with a troupe of fellow dark-skinned “trouser girls” from Tassim who are treated as a salacious novelty act, she dreams of being discovered by a gentleman who will care for her.  Nimira cannot imagine the turns her life will take when it actually happens.

Enter Hollin Parry: handsome gentleman, scholar, rich benefactor to young singers.  Nimira cannot believe her luck when Hollin asks her to accompany him to his manor house to sing along with his automaton, a strangely realistic mechanical man who plays tunes on the piano.  When she arrives, Nimira finds that her life at Hollin’s is not all it seems, and she begins to unearth his many secrets.

I was really excited when I thought that Hollin was going to be the bad guy.  Despite having made a couple of really bad choices in his life, he’s a genuinely likable character who seems to love Nimira for all the right reasons.  And there’s nothing I like better than a well-intentioned bad guy.  But there’s a much bigger villain pulling the strings – one who’s not likable in any way.  Hollin is still a believably conflicted character, both in his thoughts and actions, and I enjoyed seeing him struggle with his decisions.  Interestingly, I feel like I came away from the book with a better understanding of Hollin than either of the romantic leads.

The biggest secret Nimira unearths is the true nature of the automaton, which is really a fairy who is trapped inside a mechanical man by a curse.  It is not a surprise that Nimira, who has been made to feel like something inhuman for most of her life and now feels indebted to a man who she does not love, is immediately attracted to Erris, who is similarly trapped and without agency in this world.  However, I didn’t feel that love develop since their conversations were so short and stilted – for reasons that make perfect sense in the plot, but it still left me wanting more.  And let’s be honest, creating really great sexual tension is tough when one of the characters is made of metal and can’t move.  This was one of a few places where I would have liked a little bit further development, which would certainly have been possible in this very short book.  I didn’t find their budding romance unrealistic, I just didn’t feel like I saw it grow.

Despite the fast-moving pace of this short book, the world-building is really well done.  The reader gets a good sense of both Nimira’s home country and of Lorinar, and they are each given their own specific character and customs.  We haven’t seen much of the fairy world at this point, but I’m sure that it will be similarly developed in later books.  Dolamore did a really nice job of using the characters’ cultural backgrounds as a base for their personal viewpoints and choices – you could see the differences between the countries in the way that characters reacted to a situation, even when they are going against tradition.  I would have loved to hear more about the politics of Dolmore’s world.  Many political intrigues are hinted at in the book, and I hope that they will move to center stage as Nimira and Erris’ story continues.

I was surprised, only a few months after the cover change to Justine Larbalestier’s Liar, to see Bloomsbury publish another book featuring a dark-skinned, black-haired protagonist with a very white-looking girl on the cover – especially since this looks like it is a cover that was created with a dedicated photo shoot rather than using stock photos.  (I could, of course, be wrong about this not being a stock photo.)  I think it’s probable that the cover for Magic Under Glass was finalized before that controversy took place, but it’s still disheartening to see. I hope that we will see changes when the paperback comes out.

Review copy provided by publisher.

Jaclyn Dolamore on the web.

Walter Dean Myers has written a new novel that will strongly appeal to teens who loved Monster.  I don’t really have to say anything else, do I? You’re going to buy this book and put it in your libraries and share it with your teens.  I know I can’t wait to do exactly that.

Like Steve in Monster, Reese is a kid who made a mistake and is facing consequences that are much bigger than he ever anticipated.  Now he’s finding out firsthand how one mistake can spiral into a lifetime of them.  Reese is in a juvenile prison for stealing prescription pads from a doctor and selling them to a local drug dealer.  He’s a good kid who was in a tough situation, trying to care for his younger brother and sister while also trying to keep any money he made out of his drug-addicted mother’s hands.  And he has committed what he saw as a victimless crime – if all went well, the doctor might never even notice that the pads were missing.

Reese is a pretty self-aware young man, and even considering his difficult family life he recognizes that it is ultimately his own choice that put him in his current situation.  What he did not anticipate is the repercussions of ending up in a jail system that seems designed to drag inmates further down.  And it’s not just the dimmed job prospects and difficulty of finishing high school after he gets out – so many decisions he must make every day do not have a good option.  Should Reese ignore it when gang members brutally beat up a defenseless younger kid, or defend him?  Reese cannot be passive in situations like these, and by trying to do the right thing he ends up making enemies of other prisoners while also getting himself labeled a troublemaker by guards and risking being sent to a more dangerous facility.  Reese is quickly finding out the truth behind some of his dad’s words: “One time when my pops wasn’t being too stupid he said the streets were like quicksand covered with whip cream. You knew when they were slowing your ass down, but it always came as a surprise when you got sucked under” (pages 98-99).

At least one person in the prison system recognizes some potential in Reese and presents him with an opportunity to keep from getting sucked under.  When Reese is selected for a program that sends young, nonviolent prisoners into the workforce during the day, he makes a connection in the nursing home where he is assigned to work.  Like Steve in Monster, Reese is starting to look at his life and experiences through a new lens – not through the literal lens that Steve used in his screenwriting and movie planning, but the lens of another person’s life experience.  Reese and Mr. Hooft, a grumpy old man who at first pushes Reese away with racist comments and needling remarks about prison, are both surprised by the similarities they discover in their lives.

And while Reese’s relationship with Mr. Hooft is illuminating, it is in his interactions with his younger sister Icy that he really shines.  Even in the times that Reese is most hopeless about his own future, he is determined to protect and support his funny, precocious baby sister in achieving her goals.  And we’re not talking about just any goals – we’re talking Princeton, following that up with the White House, and finally stopping war by giving everybody free food.  This girl is going places – and her big brother is going to make sure of it.  Reese’s life never feels hopeless as long as he sees the promise in this little girl who he loves so much.

Walter Dean Myers’ ability to channel the voice of urban black teenagers is second to none, and it is this skill even more than his choice of subject matter that makes his novels appeal so strongly to urban teens.  The really astonishing thing is that he doesn’t do it by using lots of slang or dialect, which would date the book quickly – it’s almost entirely in the rhythm of his writing, and it comes through both in the dialogue and in Reese’s narration.  The reader can hear Reese’s voice, and it makes his story so much more immediate and compelling.  And Reese’s voice and story are both worth hearing.

Walter Dean Myers on the web.

Review copy provided by publisher.

YA

• Andromeda Klein by Frank Portman
• A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper

Middle Grade

• Faeries of Dreamdark: Blackbringer by Laini Taylor
• Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper (re-read)
• The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper (re-read)

Graphic Novels

• Y: The Last Man Vol. 5: The Ring of Truth by Brian K. Vaughan
• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller
• Sin City Vol. 1: The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller
• Sidekicks Vol. 1: The Tranfer Student by J. Torres
• Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham

Plays

• The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare (re-read)

Poetry

• Familiar Stranger: New and Selected Poems 1960-2004 by Brian Kennelly
• Sweethearts of Rhythm by Marilyn Nelson

Children’s and YA Nonfiction

• Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman
• The Daring Nellie Bly: America’s Star Reporter by Bonnie Christensen

Adult Nonfiction

• The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction 1909-1959 by Raymond Chandler

Currently Reading

• Operation Yes by Sara Lewis Holmes
• Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
• Greenwitch by Susan Cooper

• MIG Writers collected a bunch of answers to the question “what the heck is the difference between middle grade and YA fiction?” (Hat tip to Confessions of a Bibliovore)

• Library Journal had a great article this month on how reading is changing and how libraries and other content providers can keep up with and adapt to those changes.

• Are readers harder on female characters than male ones?  Justine Larbalestier thinks so.

• Questionable Content takes on the YA novel.  That’s right, Jimbo has moved on from romance novels to “vampire steampunk young adult romance.”  If you tell me you wouldn’t read it, you’re clearly lying.  And also on the webcomics front, Jon from Garfield without Garfield provides a moment of library-related pathos.

• Margo Lanagan reminds herself that not everybody loves her books.  Ouch.

• Books with Flair is a new website that lets you know where you can buy signed kids and teens books from independant bookstores.  Perfect for the holidays!

• Public libraries in Hayward are trying some interesting new circulation models based on Netflix.

• The Police Blotter Shakespeare is just plain brilliant.  Hand this baby to anybody who tells you that modern teen literature is any worse than what you’d find in the classics.  (Hat tip to Gratz Industries.)

Theo is bored with his room.  He is bored with the millet and greens that he eats for every meal.  He is bored with his one yearly visit to the outside world -  a birthday trip to a deserted cemetary.  He is bored with the three people who he has met in his boring, boring life.

But Theo has a terrible disease, and so he must be kept locked away from other people, he must wear gloves at all times, and he must submit to horrible medical treatments every day inside the Mercy Tube.  And so nothing interesting ever happens to Theo - until he finds a strange package during his birthday trip to the cemetary.  A package with his name on it.  And suddenly Theo finds himself out in the world, and learning some alarming things about his disease and the people who have kept him prisoner for so long.

Theo’s world is a strange and wonderful one, and the reader has the fun of discovering it along with him.  The strange creatures, diabolical machines, and very unusual people who Theo meets would already be enough to leave the sheletered young man breathless and confused, but the people in this world also have a maddening habit of giving things very misleading names.   The Society of Good Works, led by Dr. Saint?  Yeah, they’re the bad guys.  On top of all this, Theo must quickly learn about his strange powers – and what exactly they have to do with the mysterious newspaper clippings about an old hero named the Candle Man.

Theo grows into self-reliance very quickly in the second half of the book – too quickly for me to believe after getting to know him as a completely ineffectual young man who has almost no knowledge of the world.  And honestly, I missed the early version of Theo later in the book.  Watching Theo learn how he world works after his isolation was the part of the book that drew me in most, and also provided some of the funniest moments.  There was some implication that his sudden transformation into the kind of hero who gets things done is tied up into his powers – perhaps this is something the reader will learn more about in later books.

In the end, this is a good old-fashioned adventure story of the kind that has plenty of mystery and doesn’t forget how to be funny.  I did find it a little bit meandering and occasionally too caught up in all the cool creatures that exist in the world.   But since most of the meanders (and the creatures!) are genuinely interesting, I don’t think the target audience will be bothered.  Readers will be curious about Theo’s further adventures – I know that I’ll be looking forward to learning more about the myth of the Candle Man.

Glenn Dakin on the web.

Review copy provided by publisher.

YA

• Going Bovine by Libba Bray
• The King’s Rose by Alisa Libby
• Mare’s War by Tanita S. Davis
• Front and Center by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
• Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
• A Girl Like Me by Ni-Ni Simone
• The Dead & the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer
• Wide Awake by David Levithan
• Lips Touch Three Times by Laini Taylor

Middle Grade

• Candle Man, Book 1: The Society of Unrelenting Vigilance by Glenn S. Dakin

Graphic Novels

• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 1 by Alan Moore
• Ex Machine Vol. 1: The First Hundred Days by Brian K. Vaughan
• Calamity Jack by Shannon Hale
• Daredevil Legends, Vol. II: Born Again by Frank Miller
• My Neighbor Totoro, Vol. I by Hayao Miyazaki
• Ex Machina Vol 2: Tag by Brian K. Vaughan
• Ex Machina Vol 3: Fact v. Fiction by Brian K. Vaughan
• Amelia Rules! Vol. 1: The Whole World’s Crazy by Jimmy Gownley

Adult Nonfiction

• The Curse of the Good Girl by Rachel Simmons

Currently Reading

• Familiar Stranger: New and Selected Poems 1960-2004 by Brian Kennelly
• Andromeda Klein by Frank Portman

I had heard a lot of great things about Maggie’s Stiefvater’s first book, Lament.  Bad faeries, celtic music, romance – sounded right up my alley.  But I admit it – I am a deeply shallow person.  I couldn’t get past the cover.  After reading and enjoying her second novel, Shiver, I heard that Lament had been reissued with a new cover – still not one that I loved, but at least I’d be willing to read it in public.  So I gave it a shot, and found a beautifully written book that didn’t really do it for me.  Just one of those books where I didn’t make a connection with the main characters – happens to us all.  But there was this one character – James – who I couldn’t get enough of.  Great snarky voice, loaded with insecurity and unrequited love, wicked sense of humor that he uses to mask his vulnerability, plays the bagpipes – admit it, you love him too.  And now Maggie Stiefvater has given him a whole book of his own.  Excellent choice.  This is a main character who can carry a book in a way that Dee never could, and James makes Ballad shine.

Dee and James are now attending Thornking-Ash, a school for students with exceptional skills in music performance -  a school that has the added task of protecting especially vulnerable teenagers from the faeries who found Dee and James in Lament.  Fortunately for the readers if not the students, the school does not do an especially good job at that task.  James quickly attracts the attention of a leanan sidhe, a faerie who feeds on the creative energy of geniuses.  A collaboration with Nuala guarantees that James will use his talent to it’s fullest – she acts as a muse, inspiring her partners to works of creative genius.  On the other hand, it also guarantees his early death.  Nuala and James are both characters who are working through a multitude of insecurities, vulnerabilities, and other issues, and their growing genuine care for each other is tentative and fraught.

While telling the new story of James and Nuala, Ballad also shows Dee and James dealing with the repercussions of the traumatic events that they experienced in Lament.  Both characters are hurting, and lingering underneath the distance between them is a strong desire to reconnect with each other.  Stiefvater uses Dee’s unsent text messages to James to bring this to the surface – a device that works well here.  And James still feels deeply for Dee – sometimes seemingly against his will.  It’s a difficult, testy relationship, shown right at the moment when all the things that have been buried deep in the past are right on the surface.  Stiefvater does not shy away from the difficulty of it, letting her characters be awkward, contrary, and downright cruel to each other.  Assuming that there will be another book, I looks forward to seeing their friendship continue to grow and change.

Maggie Stiefvater on the web.

Review copy provided by publisher at BEA.

• Kristin Cashore shares a few conversations with her Korean translator.  I love getting glimpses into the process of things like this.

• The National Education Association and the Cooperative Children’s Book Center have published a list of 50 multicultural books that every child should read, split into several age levels.  A lot of wonderful things on here – and I look forward to discovering some that are new to me. (Hat tip to Neesha Meminger, who points out that this list is in no way complete and suggest some important additions.)

• If Michael Bay took on a beloved children’s classic…

• Shannon Hale has shared some really wonderful thoughts about book reviews, and particularly the practice of rating books.  She ends her post with some great questions that every book blogger should put some thought into.

• I think we can all agree that watching a really long dominoes formation go tumbling down is one of life’s true pleasures.  How ’bout when it’s made entirely out of children’s books?  Three cheers to HarperCollins Children’s UK.  (Hat tip to 100 Scope Notes)

• Transforming an underutilized library corner into a welcoming tween space.

• The YALSA blog highlights a return on investment breakdown as a way of highlighting the value libraries provide in the community.  This could be a wonderful advocacy tool.

• LeVar Burton won’t be encouraging children to read anymore.  Thank god.

• There’s been a some good discussion recently on white authors writing characters of color.  I think it started over at Justine Larbalestier’s blog, and as usual she has a great no-nonsense take.   After reading Justine’s post, take a look at this thoughtful response from Neesha Meminger.

• The kidlit blogs have been buzzing in response to the FTC’s new endorsement guidelines, and Edrants explores some of the issues that the guidelines bring up with Richard Cleland of the FTC in this post.  This is an important post for anyone who accepts ARCs for review, or uses a program like Amazon Affiliates.  (Hat tip to A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy)  Chasing Ray has also had consistently good questions and frustrations about the FTC policy.

• I have loved Awful Library Books from their inception, but this is the winner.  I am finding that book.  Then I’m going to memorize it and be as cool as that guy.  But maybe not as awesome.

• A brilliant idea for library orientations.  I am stealing this big time.

A conversation about metaphysics between a teenage scientist and her husband, who is a giant talking polar bear.  Right now you’re either pulling a face at me or you’re hooked, right?

I was pretty hooked.  This is not a story that pulls punches with the absurdity of it’s premise.  Durst’s novel is a re-telling of the fairy tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon.  Now, the original is a strange and compelling story that leaves a lot of strange gaps in the plot – gaps that are just begging to be filled in and explored by an enterprising YA author.  So it’s no surprise that this story has already been tackled multiple times, most memorably in Edith Pattou’s exquisite East. The strangeness of this particular story is brought into sharp relief by Durst’s choice of a modern setting, and it can be jarring – both for the reader and the characters.  But if you’re willing to suspend a little disbelief, you will find a wonderful love story and an epic adventure in Ice.

Durst’s take brings in some unexpected elements.  Myth and science are married in many ways in this novel – most literally in the actual marriage between Cammie, an 18-year-old arctic scientist, and Bear, a giant mystical polar bear.  Durst also throws an interesting touch of religion into her explanation of Bear’s strange powers.  It’s a wonderful mix, especially when Cassie and Bear find an elegant way to bring their talents together, using Cassie’s scientific expertise to help Bear’s magical purpose along.

In the original story, the heroine saves the polar bear through her exceptional laundry skills.  Cassie brings a little bit more to the table.  She is a dedicated scientist even at 18, and her passion for the arctic is palpable even at times when the brutal wilderness is moments away from killing her.  She is a risk-taker who will throw herself whole-heartedly at a problem, usually without much of a plan.  But her determination and ingenuity see her though, making her a pleasure to read.

I did sometimes find the plot of the book fragmented.  Cassie’s goals change several times over the course of the novel, and some of those goals feels much more urgent and are better at driving the story.  I felt this most in the parts of the story that dealt with Cassie’s mother, who Cassie is so dedicated to saving in the book’s beginning, but who never becomes an important part of the story after she has been saved.  I would have liked to see more growth in that relationship.  The second half of the novel gives Cassie one clear goal – to find Bear and bring him home.  This brings the story into sharper focus, and also brings Cassie’s best qualities – her determination and fortitude – to the forefront.  Cassie is a kick-ass girl, and she gets to show her grit when this thoughtful story turns into an epic survival adventure in the frozen north.

Sarah Beth Durst on the web.

Review copy provided by the publisher at the author’s request.