Riding Along

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen is the story of Auden's summer after high school graduation. Auden has always been a very focused student and she comes to spend some time with her father and his new wife and baby at the beach with college text books in tow, planning to do a lot of prep work for the coming year. Slowly Auden finds herself being tugged into town life in this small beach community and starts on a quest to live all the experiences she missed in a childhood devoted to scholarship. At first she is just along for the ride but soon she is planning her own new route into adulthood. A Sarah Dessen book that I would recommend to adults as well as teens.

Couldn't Put It Down

Blade: Playing Dead by Tim Bowler, that is. Blade is a street kid with a history that is slowly but not completely revealed as the story moves along. Some time in his past, he did something that has caused him to lay low and not call attention to himself. But now his past is catching up to him. As he narrates his tale, you are drawn to him even when he refuses to paint himself in a flattering light. And even if he were completely unappealing the nonstop action would propel you through the story. I don't think I've ever finished a book feeling quite so breathless. Or with quite so many questions. I hear there will be a sequel. That is a very good thing.
Blade: Playing Dead, by Tim Bowler, 978-0-399-52186-3, coming May 2009

Reminded me of:
Alex Rider books by Anthony Horowitz somewhat but I can't think of another book off the top of my head with the same gritty, urban feel to it.

Sister Love

Lauren Myracle's Peace, Love & Baby Ducks is all about sisters, specifically sisters Carly and Anna. Almost all of their interactions are dependent on Carly being the big sister and Anna the younger. But then Carly comes back from a summer work study project to discover that not only is Anna about to start high school, but she's developed in a way that Carly never has. And suddenly she's getting attention at school because of Anna, instead of the other way around. As they redefine their relationship, both girls do some growing up and learn to see from the other's perspective. But this is really Carly's story. It's Carly whose friendships grow and develop during the story and Carly who has the aha! moments about her relationship with her parents. Although there is a little romance and a lot about friendship, this is ultimately a story about family. Recommended for middle and high school.
Peace, Love & Baby Ducks, by Lauren Myacle, 978-0-525-47743-3, available May 2009
Made me think of:
Mare's War by Tanita Davis (another sister story)
Let It Snow by Lauren Myracle, John Green and Maureen Johnson (this one is more about the romances but friendship and family are important too)
books by Sarah Dessen

Fairy Tales

Who doesn't like fairy tales? I can't think of anyone who does so it's no wonder there are lots of updated fairy tales out there. But it's fun to read a totally new fairy tale too. And that's what Patricia Wrede's Thirteenth Child is. As any reader of fairy tales can tell you, the seventh son of a seventh son is born to be a powerful magician. But did you know that the thirteenth child is supposed to be bad luck, a bringer of misery, someone to be avoided? At least that's the case in the world Eff and Lan are born into--Eff, the unlucky thirteenth, and Lan, her twin, the seventh son of a seventh son. But in Wrede's western style fairy tale, there is more than one kind of magic. When Eff's family moves out to the edge of the frontier, she meets a few people who challenge her ideas about the working of magic and mainstream magical traditions. She also learns to believe in herself and saves a whole community while she's at it. It looks like the beginning of a new series called Frontier Magic. I can't wait for more!
Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede, 978-0-545-03342-8, on sale in April 2009

Made me think of:
Rapunzel's Revenge by Shannon Hale--a graphic novel that also features the melding of fairy tales and cowboy westerns
Dealing with Dragons by Patricia Wrede--another girl trying to make a place for herself outside the conventions of fairy tale world

Moral Dilemmas Come in All Sizes

Emma lives in a small town. Everyone knows not only who she is but it seems like they even know what she ate for dinner last night. She hopes a track scholarship will get her out of there by way of Northwestern University but in the meantime she has to navigate the stormy waters of her evangelical high school. Things weren't too bad until she made the mistake of kissing her best friend's boyfriend. True, she and Colin have been friends since they were both two giving Emma longer friendship rights with Colin than with Joann. But kissing Colin, even by accident, totally breaks the best friend code.

Then things get complicated. Colin and Emma witness a popular girl from school getting sick from drinks and drugs. They can't tell anyone because it would make Joann unhappy to know that Colin and Emma were out together, even if it was innocent, and because Emma could be kicked off the track team for being anywhere near where people were drinking. So they don't tell anyone. And that's where the complications really start. Girls start to faint at school and somehow the town becomes convinced that terrorists are poisoning them. Fingers are pointed at everyone who seems a little different or unconventional. Should Emma come clean with what she knows?

Recommended for middle and high school.

Made me think of:
North of Beauty by Justina Chen Headley--another story about a girl runner among other things
Converting Kate by Beckie Weinheimer--another story about a girl struggling with religious choices

What Would Emma Do? by Eileen Cook 9781416974321

Memories

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford is all about memories. Mostly Henry Lee's memories of coming of age during WWII in Seattle's International District. But also the packed up belongs of Japanese families who left to be interned. These turn up in the basement of the Panama Hotel in 1986--memories lost and not recalled until the day they start to renovate. Some of those belongings are still there and you can go have tea and look down at them through plexiglas sections in the floor. ( http://www.panamahotelseattle.com/)

The story is told in alternating times--the 1940's and 1986. In 1986, Henry is a lonely widower but the discovery of what was left behind in 1942 renews his interest in the world around him. In the 1940's, Henry is the lone Chinese face at exclusive Rainier Elementary and all his white classmates persist in thinking that he is Japanese and the enemy. Even his father's insistence that Henry wear a button saying "I am Chinese" does nothing to dissuade the school's bully to pick on Henry. When Keiko Okabe comes to Rainier as well, at first he wants nothing to do with her--she is the enemy after all. But then they come to be friends and eventually, first sweethearts.

Beautiful, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford, 978-0-345-50533-0, on sale in February. Recommended for high school and adults.

Reminded me of
Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone--a Japanese American woman recalls growing up in Seattle and leaving to be interned

A Book Through the Ages

Geraldine Brooks' The People of the Book is the story of a modern book conservator and the people who made and used a particular book through many ages. But truly it is the story of a particular book, a haggadah made in the middle ages and discovered in Sarajevo in 1986. It's story includes a Moorish slave in fifteenth century Spain who painted the pictures, a Jewish partisan in world war II Serbia, the museum curator in modern Sarajevo who saved it from burning and the Australian who comes to Sarajevo to inspect the book and help maintain it. The people live on in my mind weeks after I've finished the book. I think it would be of interest to high school students as well as adults.
It reminded me of:
The Birth of Venus, by Sarah Dunant
The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak