Upcoming Carnival!

The Deadline for the Nov. Carnival of Children's Literature is tomorrow at 9 am --head over to Mother Reader, this month's host, for more information!

Peak, by Roland Smith

Peak, by Roland Smith, is a YA book I wouldn't have read if it hadn't been nominated for the Cybils Awards. Not that I only read books that are pink, but I am drawn more to books about girls, and the only girls here are two six-year old twins who get very little page time. However, there Peak was, fresh from its publisher (Harcourt Children's Books--thanks!), and after spending about a week's worth of reading in American high school settings, a book about a teenager climbing Mount Everest seemed, as it were, a breath of cool air.

Peak is a 14 year old New Yorker, the child of two great mountain climbers (now divorced), with a penchant for climbing himself. There being rather few mountains in New York city, he practices on sky scrappers, and as the book opens, he is about to complete one of his trickiest climbs yet. But he gets caught, the media gets a hold of his exploits, and another kid is killed trying to copy him. Getting Peak out of New York seems like a good idea to both parents, so his father (who organizing climbs up Everest) whisks him off to the Himalayas, and basically says--Son, you will be the youngest person to ever reach the top.

What follows is Peak's journal about training for the climb, enduring a great deal of cold boredom, and the fits and starts process of making it up the mountain. At the same time, he's doing some hard thinking about his relationships with his family, and about the people with whom he is climbing (in particular Sun-jo, a Nepalese boy a few days younger). The ending is satisfying, and the journey is educational for both Peak and the reader.

I don't know a darn thing about mountain climbing, but it seemed to me that Smith knows his stuff--at least he convinced me with his wealth of detail about the people and process of climbing Everest. There's also a dollop of geography and history here too. I like this sort of thick description in a book--when well done, as it is here (ie not heavy handed, intrusive, and condescending)it makes a story that has been told many times before (boy grows up when faced with physical challenge) fresh and rewarding.

Here's a link to Roland Smith's website, for more reviews and information. His new book, Elephant Run, sounds pretty good too...It will, however, have to wait while I read the 85 or so books nominated for the YA Cybils Award that I haven't read yet.

For Poetry Friday: Epistle to be Left on Earth

Here's a poem I love that always comes to mind this time of year. I love it for the utter beauty of the pictures the words make...

I am having trouble formating it as the poet intended, so please take a look at it here, because the formating really does matter. But here it is anyway, without the indentations:

Epistle To Be Left In The Earth

by Archibald MacLeish

...It is colder now,
there are many stars,
we are drifting
North by the Great Bear,
the leaves are falling
The water is stone in the scooped rocks,
to southward
Red sun grey air:
the crows are
Slow on their crooked wings,
the jays have left us:
Long since we passed the flares of Orion.
Each man believes in his heart he will die.
Many have written last thoughts and last letters.
None know if our deaths are now or forever:
None know if this wandering earth will be found.

We lie down and the snow covers our garments.
I pray you,
you (if any open this writing)
Make in your mouths the words that were our names.
I will tell you all we have learned,
I will tell you everything:
The earth is round,
there are springs under the orchards,
The loam cuts with a blunt knife,
beware of
Elms in thunder,
the lights in the sky are stars --
We think they do not see,
we think also
The trees do not know nor the leaves of the grasses hear us:
The birds too are ignorant.
Do not listen.
Do not stand at dark in the open windows.
We before you have heard this:
they are voices:
They are not words at all but the wind rising.
Also none among us has seen God
(... We have thought often
the flaws of sun in the late and driving weather
pointed to one tree but it was not so.)
As for the nights I warn you the nights are dangerous:
The wind changes at night and the dreams come.

It is very cold,
there are strange stars near Arcturus,

Voices are crying an unknown name in the sky

And as usual I am left wondering what the dreams and voices out there are, and I tell myself that Macleish is offering a bit of hope at the end of his narrator's denial of anything Beyond.

And as usual I wonder if "we are drifting" nowhere in particular, or if "we are drifting north by the Great Bear" and if it makes a difference. Probably the former, but the later is how I read it first, and it stuck.

NB: I present the poem as punctuated and laid out (well actually I am still working on this part, grrrr. 10 minutes later-- I am giving up--HOW DOES ONE GET BLOGGER TO ACCEPT THE FACT THAT ONE REALLY WANTS SPACES EVERYTIME ONE TYPES THE SPACE BAR???? Is there html code for this?) in The New Oxford Book of American Verse --there really is no final period. Which I think makes a difference...

Poetry Friday is being hosted at Susan Writes today--thanks Susan!

Kiss & Blog

Kiss & Blog, by Alyson Noel (2007, 227 pp), is a good read--good entertainment, with a smidge of thought-provoking-ness. The entertainment comes from the brisk first person present narrative of Winter--would-be member of the alpha girl clique at the beginning of her sophomore year, older and wiser at the end of the book. The thought-provoking-ness comes from the important messages that the really cool people aren't necessarily the ones at Table One, and that it's not so great a thing to rat on your ex-best friend all over the internet.

Winter and Sloane start their sophomore year having studied the ways of the beautiful girls intensely all summer--but whereas Sloane leaps right into the peppy smily-ness of it all, Winter can't embrace the de rigour cuteness/hyena grinning hypocrisy necessary to succeed at this paricular school, and is left behind in unpopularity. Hurt by Sloane's cruel rejection of her, Winter starts to blog about the dark (well, not all that dark) and sometimes gross past of "Princess Pink," --things that only a best friend would know, and that friends are never supposed to tell. Especially not on a blog that everyone at school starts reading...(a tad unbelievable, but a necessary plot device).

Along the way, Winter makes friends much more interesting than Sloane's new group, ventures into the realm of relationships (nothing too racy), gets drunk for the first time (and gets horribly sick, and decides it's not for her), and becomes a more interesting, wiser person herself.

Alyson Noel is the author of four other books for young adults, including Saving Zoe, which I am in the middle of right now...Both Kiss & Blog and Saving Zoe have been nominated for the YA Cybils awards, and the publisher (St. Martin's Griffin) very kindly sent all of us on the committee copies to review. And today is the last day to submit your recommendations, so go! now!

(spoiler) Sloane is left totally un-redeemed, which was too bad--but in real life, people don't suddenly see the light in the last pages of a book, so one can't really expect it of fictional people). It did leave me feeling that she was a straw man, however--so much a caricature of snotty A list girl that it weakened the book as a whole. But there's lots of room for a sequel here, and I am quite prepared to believe that Noel has the writerly skills necessary to pull a person out of Sloane if she so desires...

Another problem I have with this book is that some of the the things that Winter posts about Sloane are really rotten--I'm thinking of her post about Sloane's father. The consequences of posting things like this are a a hugly important issue, but this isn't dealt with meaningfully here.

Ballet Shoes on television -- 1975 and 2007

The new Ballet Shoes television movie is due out in the UK around Christmas...lord knows when it will be shown over here. And what's with the high billing of Sir Donald Houghton (played by Peter Boyles) in the cast list? A very minor minor part in the book, but perhaps he has been transformed into a Love Interest for Sylvia? Pauline? Nana?

In the meantime, the 1975 BBC television version of Ballet Shoes has been posted on You Tube --here is a link that should take you to all the episodes in order (thanks, Emma, if you ever read this!). My first copy had a picture of Posy from this series, and I've always been curious about the show (and peeved that her hair didn't seem to be read), so I shall be checking it out with interest.

Adults across the pond revisiting children's books

Here's a link to a bbc article about adults re-reading children's books, and the boom in nostalgia publishing. It touches on the tricky issue of bringing to children's attention books that embody racist or otherwise hurtful ideas that (one hopes) are not going to be with us forever. I'm a bit wishy washy on this one--as a social historian, cleansing the past (by re-writing books) is a repellent idea, but as a mother, reading out loud to my own kids, I do often alter the text so as to make it less racist, sexist, or just more inclusive...oh well. Doubtless there will still be plenty of really repellent stuff for them to read when they are ready to leave the family sofa. But I'm not going to buy them Tintin in the Congo.

Robert's Snow-- Time to bid!

Yesterday was the last day of snowflake blogging--the links to last week's snowflakes are still up on the right. Hundreds of snowflakes, created by children's illustrators will be auctioned off to benefit cancer research, and most of these have been featured at various blogs in the past few weeks. For me it has been a wonderful introduction to illustrators whose work just blows me away, and it has also been great to visit new blogs.

And I hope that it encourages people to go off and bid on the little darlings! The first auction begins today (November, 19), here!

A big big Thank You to Jules, of Seven Impossible Things, the mastermind behind the mass blog-flaking, for her tremendous vision, patience, and organizational wonderful-ness!

Dramarama, by E. Lockhart

I am a huge fan of English author Noel Streatfeild (Ballet Shoes and the like)--stories of kids going on stage, with struggles, vivid descriptions of the theatre, and ultimate triumph. In fact, I'm a sucker for books about kids pursuing careers in the performing arts in general (although Helen Doyle Boylston's Sue Barton books about nursing are much better than her theatre series about Carol). So once I realized that Dramarama, by E. Lockhart, was going to take me off to a summer theater camp crammed with incredibly talented teens, I was very hopeful. From the first pages I enjoyed the voices of the narrator (Sarah aka Saydee) and her best buddy (Demi) immensely, so I just sat back happily to enjoy the show.

Saydee and Demi are best friends, one girl, one guy, one straight, one gay, one white, one black (making Demi the only black gay guy I've encountered this year in my YA reading, but in Lockhart's skilled hands he is far more than the sum of these labels). Both are panting to escape boring Ohio for the razzle-dazzle of the theatre, with the Wildewood Summer Institute their first stop.

Dramarama did not disappoint. Lockhart does a great job balancing her descriptions of the theatre aspects of the story with character development and interpersonal relationships. Sayde's ups and downs with her performances and her friendships are neither so up as to be unrealistic nor so down as to depress sensitive readers such as myself. I had a great time reading this book, and briefly toyed with the idea of running of to go on stage myself...although I really don't want to move to New York...

E. Lockhart is also the author of several other books, none of which I have read. Yet. Here's her website.

Dramarama has been nominated for the YA Cybils award--thanks to the publisher, Hyperion, for sending us review copies! And if you haven't nominated your favorite books of the year for the Cybils, head on over and do so!

Here's another review, over at Interactive Reader.

Remembering Raquel, by Vivian Vande Velde

Remembering Raquel, by Vivian Vande Velde (Harcourt Children's Books, November 2007, 160 pp).

When this book opens, 14 year old Raquel Falcone has changed from a metaphorically empty space in her freshman classroom to a literal one -- she has been killed in a traffic accident. How did she die, people wonder; was it really an accident? How did she live? In short, first person vignettes, the people around her react, reflect, and remember—and as they do, the shape of Raquel emerges, and she becomes in the reader’s mind a person worth knowing, and worth caring about (although not all the people who remember her did care much). The moments of Raquel’s sudden death, also an empty space at the beginning of the book, get filled in along with her life—the reader must take the one with the other.

This is a fast read, and it is told by a wide variety of well-characterized narrators, some very sympathetic, others less so. I think that because it is written in such a un-narrativly dense style (which I can’t think of a way right now to say more gracefully, but it isn’t a criticism), this might be a book to give to younger teens who aren’t the keenest of readers. The central question—how would one be remembered, oneself?—has a universal applicability that might also draw in reluctant readers. But this isn’t to say that this is an easy or superficial book. It is not; it is very moving, thought-provoking, and graceful in its creation of Raquel’s life and death.

And it ends on the hopeful note of a new friendship arising from a meeting at her funeral, which would probably have pleased Raquel.

This book has been nominated in the YA category of the Cybils Awards. The publisher sent copies to all of us on the Nominating Committee--thanks.

Happy 100th birthday, Astrid Lindgren!

Today (November 14) would have been the 100th birthday of the famous Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren. She's best known for her Pippi Longstocking series, which have just gotten a new illustrator (see Cheryl Rainfield's blog and A Year of Reading), but other books of hers are well worth reading. The Brothers Lionheart, for instance, is a fantastical quest story that was a favorite of several of my college friends.

After her death, a very strange memorial was constructed near her home in Vimmerby. It had originally been intended for the city center, but the townsfolk objected--with reason, because it is rather disturbing. The main part of it consists of a decapitated child's head at the corner of a water feature of twisted metal:



Here's a brief list of some of her better known books:

The Pippi Longstocking series (Pippi Långstrump)
Karlsson-on-the-Roof series (Karlsson på taket)
Emil of Maple Hills (Emil i Lönneberga)
The Bill Bergson series (Mästerdetektiven Blomkvist)
Madicken
Ronia the Robber's Daughter (Ronja rövardotter)
Seacrow Island (Tjorven på Saltkråkan)
The Six Bullerby Children / The Children of Noisy Village (Barnen i Bullerbyn)
Mio, my Mio (also known as Mio, my Son) (Mio, min Mio)
The Brothers Lionheart (Bröderna Lejonhjärta)

Reading Cinderella to my boys--Glass Slipper, Golden Sandal

After being struck dumb by Julie Paschkis' snowflake over at the Excelsior File, I couldn't say no when one of the books she illustrated caught my eye at the library. Glass Slipper, Golden Sandal, by Paul Fleishman, illustrated by Julie Paschkis (2007, 32 pp), is subtitled "A Worldwide Cinderella" which sums it up nicely (and, for parents who like books to multi-task, it promises geographical as well as literary benefit for the Young)--basically, it is bits of Cinderella stories from around the world, joined together in a single narrative: the cow "poured honey for her from its horn...and a fairy gave her figs and apricots...and Godfather Snake gave her rice." Each place has its own beautiful illustrations, which are a cross-cultural education in themselves.

"Here, boys," I said when I got home from the library. "Come read with me."

"Read what?" they asked, suspiciously.

"This book about Cinderella!"

Their jaws dropped. "Cinderella???" they whined. Unspoken, the words "disney" "princess" and "pink" hung in the air.

"Yes," I said, "Come here."

Miraculously, they came, and we read the book. And they loved it, and I loved it, and it was indeed both a literary and a geographical trip. Because the story moves from place to place, tale to tale, culture to culture, making no attempt to explain or apologize for discongruities, it has a surreality to it that makes it freshly magical to people like me (who have in fact seen Disney's Cinderella) and makes it enchanting for people like my boys (who haven't). They have asked to have it read repeatedly (and what higher praise is there), and they think it would be a nice Christmas present for their girl cousin. And, of course, her little brother.

So now the ice is broken, and I shall try reading them other princess stories...

Borderline, by Bonnie Rozanski

Borderline by Bonnie Rozanski (2007, Young Adult, 224 pages).

A mother of young children (which is what I am) is not the target audience for Borderline. The book starts with a parent's worst nightmare-- a sweet, charming baby boy, falling away into autism; the mother becoming so caught up in trying to bring him back that she has little to give to her older son. That older son is Guy, the narrator of this story-- now an adolescent, struggling in school, struggling to keep going with little support from his family, but with a good friend, Matt, and a wolf he befriends in his father's lab. The younger son is Austin, now five, inarticulate and unresponsive.

The wolf is part of a study that Guy's father is working on exploring the evolution of domesticity--how many generations of breeding the most dog-like wolves must pass before you end up with a dog. Wolf is not doing well on the "being a dog" tests, and in the climax of the book, Guy, Wolf, Matt and Austin (the only one able to open Wolf's cage), head out into the woods before Wolf, deemed a failed experiment, is euthanized.

Within this plot, Borderline explores the complex relationship between development and environment. Guy's mother is obsessed with figuring out what caused Austin's autism, his father is obsessed with his work on the wolves . And Matt is also struggling with a toxic environment--in his case, a life centered around fast food, that is killing his overweight father and putting him at risk too. At times, the issues get a bit in the way of the story--at the funeral of his father, for instance, Matt stands up to deliver a diatribe against fast food that seems a tad over the top. But these issues are real, and Bonnie Rozanski's knowledgeable exploration of them adds a thought-provoking dimension to the book.

(I received a review copy of this book from its publisher, Porcipine's Quill).

Robert's Snow: Snowasaurus

Here is Snowasaurus -- I think this is the only snowflake with a dinosaur on it! It comes from the brush of James Gurney, the creator of Dinotopia. The first two books Dinotopia: A Land Apart From Time and Dinotopia: The World Beneath



have been joined by new book in the Dinotopia series, Journey to Chandara (just released in October).


Mr. Gurney has an absolutly fascinating blog , full of instructive detail about the painting process. Here is my favorite post, which describes the four stages of the architecture painting process (I wish I had his way with styrofoam. Maybe he has a stronger kind of glue than the Elmers we use). Here is the magnificant end result:


Here at the Dinotopia website, you can find lots of information about the creative process behind the books. I was interested to learn that Mr. Gurney was an archaeology major, which does not surprise me given the loving attention to material detail in his paintings.

James Gurney is currently on tour, promoting his new book--here are some upcoming appearances, with more details to be found via his blog:

Nov 7 Three Rivers, MI
Nov 9 & 10 Mentor, OH
Nov. 12 SUNY Fredonia
Nov 13 RIT, Rochester NY
Nov 14, Syracuse, NY
Nov 14 PM Albany, NY
Nov. 15 WAMC Radio

Going back to High School

I spent part of my day in high school, talking to several large groups of kids about the Revolutionary War, shipwrecks, etc. But I didn't want to talk. Instead, inspired by all the YA books I've been reading recently for the Cybils Awards, I wanted stare at them and ask them questions. Like--"So, which of you are the Mean Girls?" I looked for nerds, but couldn't easily find them. Are they getting better at blending? Is this school just one big happy collective? Or am I so out of it that I can't recognize them anymore...

What I've been doing today--the British raid Prudence Island (January 12, 1776)

A few months ago, it seemed like a great idea to give a talk about Rhode Island in the Revolutionary War (from an archaeological perspective) to a local high school. Now that it's tomorrow, it seems like a rather less great idea.

However, I am going to show the students my favorite historical drawing of all time:
This is a sketch by the Rev. Ezra Stiles (President of Yale from 1778-1795) who was a phenomenal recorder of information.* It shows the British Marines (the little stick figures marching from the boats) invading Prudence Island, in Narragansett Bay, meeting resistance from the Sons of Liberty. The sidebar says: "Here one left killed" "Here one taken wounded" and "Houses burnt. 8." The only house on the island not burned belonged to Thomas Allin and his family. His wife and seven of their eleven children were blind, and the British commander took pity on them and spared their home. The family moved west after the war, and all that is left of the Blind Allin house is its collapsing cellar hole, surrounded by brambles.

That is just one of the many thrilling stories of Rhode Island in the Revolution that I hope will keep my audience interested. I am also going to bring a few cannon balls with me. Nothing breaks the ice like a cannon ball.

*from Abbass, D.K. 2006 Rhode Island in the Revolution: Big Happenings in the Smallest Colony. The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project, Newport.

The Boy with Two Belly Buttons, by Stephen Dubner

The Boy with Two Belly Buttons, by Stephen J. Dubner, illustrated by Christoph Niemann (2007, 32 pp, ages 4-8), is, surprise surprise, a picture book about a boy with two belly buttons. Solomon doesn't realize he has an extraordinary tummy until his baby sister arrives on the scene, and she only has one! And his parents, busy coping with the crying baby, aren't able to talk to him much about it. So off he goes on a quest for information-- to the hospital, the swimming pool, and the local college- and only ends up feeling stranger than ever. Then a chance encounter with a famous movie director, who is excited by Solomon's uniqueness, makes him feel that being different is not so bad after all (which ties in nicely with a lot of the YA books I've been reading recently). This is (surprise surprise) the Message of the book, but it's not delivered in too much of an in-your-face way, so any cynical adults reading the book should be able to cope. I was. This is a fine story, with fine illustrations, and my boys enjoyed it. But what they enjoyed most was when we all studied our own belly buttons after reading it...

And what I liked best about this book is that it falls into the valuable category of "books a seven year old who is not an especially skilled reader might enjoy reading out loud to his four year old brother." This, at the moment, is my favorite type of book.

(I got this book as a review copy from HarperCollins).

dismay, and a warning, and finally, an answer

The first paper I ever wrote in college was returned to me with the following comment: "There are so many typographical errors that it is difficult to assess the severity of your spelling disorder." It was entitled "The Influance (sic) of Saturn on Events in the Knight's Tale." Spell check helps some, of course, but not for everything, as readers of this blog on Jacket Flap will have found out.

For I have just realized, to my utter horror, that the first version of a post one posts stays on Jacket Flap even if one revises it and corrects the horrible infelicities of language and the utterly mortifying spelling/punctuation errors that are blindingly apparent to the meanest intelligence so why didn't one see them the first time. So my post on Red Glass, as it appears on my home blog, is a much, much nicer thing than the Jacket Flap version, and I am sad about it.

BUT, Tracy the Goddess of Jacket Flap came to my aid, and told me that if I just deleted the post, Jacket Flap would pick up the new version the next time it did its Sweep of Blogs. So all is well. Thank you Tracy!

Red Glass, by Laura Resau

Red Glass, by Laura Resau (2007, 288pp)

Sophie drives an hour south from her home to sit alone in the desert, where she thinks of her life as an amoeba -- a nobody, sickly and pale. 5 year old Pablo was in the desert alone too, found there by the boarder patrol after his parents died of thirst. "We will take him," says Sophie's aunt, herself an immigrant from Bosnia. Now, living with Sophie's family, he will barely speak. Waiting for Pablo to unclench himself, Sophie hopes that she too can somehow find an identity.

A year passes--Pablo sleeps outside, next to the chickens, Sophie reads to him from The Little Prince. Then one day, a chicken lays its first egg, and Pablo, so proud and happy about it, is able to tell who he is. Now that he has a name and a place again, he must go back to his family in Mexico- for a visit, hopes Sophie, who does not want to lose him. So Sophie and her aunt set off to take Pablo over the boarder, sharing a van with teenaged Angel and his father, off on a quest of their own. They are on their way to Guatemala, which they had fled in fear for their lives about 10 years before. They are looking for the wife and mother they lost, and the jewels she buried.

Leaving Sophia, her aunt, and Pablo in Mexico, Angel and his father continue south. But disaster strikes them. Sophie must set out on her own, following Angel and his father into Guatemala. She must leave Sophie the sickly amoeba behind, and become, as she tells herself, Sophie la Fuerte, the strong and brave. She must find her beloved and bring him safely home. Which she does, and I won't say anything more about her journey and what Angel finds on his own quest because I don't want to spoil it, but it is nerve racking and rings absolutely true. I'm not going to say what happens to Pablo either, but this storyline is also treated in a tenderly realistic way.

I've been reading a lot of YA recently--lots of books set in and around high schools. Red Glass is a different sort of book--it is an Epic Journey, into wonderful, scary new places (very well described), where ghosts from the past and present dangers must be confronted (don't leave the path to see the beautiful flowers more closely, warns one character. There are land mines).

Personal Note:

Picking up this book again to refresh my memory before writing this, I found myself reading it all over again. And poo to anyone who says blog reviewers don't think deeply about the books they read. I seem to have been thinking so deeply about Red Glass that I dreamt last night that it had been made into a movie, and I grew quite agitated as they veered from the story as written.

Here are some specific things I liked lots:
--I am a great believer in learning through fiction reading. This is a great book for providing information and provoking thought about immigration, Mexico, and Guatemala.
--The fact that some people speak Spanish and English interchangeably is treated matter of factly, with enough actual Spanish thrown in to make the reader aware of it without being overwhelming.
--I liked Sophie's introspection, and I liked the budding romance between her and Angel, which was tender and suitable for all ages.
--I liked that Sophie had a stable, loving family life in which conflict with parents was not an issue.

Here's Laura Resau's website, which is well worth visiting!

This Week's Edition of Fun with Metaphors

The piece of red glass that gives this book its title was brought to American by Sophie's aunt, who held tightly to it while a prisoner of war in Bosnia. It is metaphor for many of the themes of the book -- it is the color of blood, with a sharp edge--a weapon, a treasure that gave a trapped mind strength, an echo of the buried jewels of Angel's lost mother. And I like to think that it's a metaphor for a window into the past, with the glass colored by memories of violence and loss. At the book's end, when peace has been made with the dead, there is a celebration of bright colors and new beginnings. Sophie wears a white sundress she bought on impulse in Pablo's home village, with metaphorical implications of its own...

Which leads to another thing I really like about this book--it pays re-reading. The second time through I found myself finding still more images and metaphors to ponder. And I liked the characters as people so much that it was a pleasure to spend more time with them.

Red Glass has been nominated for the YA Cybils award.

Blood Brothers

Blood Brothers, by S.A. Harazin, is one heck of a page-turner. The "brothers" are Joey, a guy with everything--money, family, friends, off to Duke in the fall, and Clay, who has so little he can't imagine a happy ending for himself. The closest he comes is planning a cross country bike trip with Joey. Joey is one thing that's keeping Clay's life together; the other is his job at the local hospital, where he has found adult support and approval. Then one day, in the summer after the two boys graduate from high school, Clay heads over to Joey's house, and his friend and his job and his one dream are thrown into jeopardy.

Joey, the golden boy who doesn't do bad things, is off his head. Violent. Hallucinating. And then, after Clay pushes him hard in self defense, he's on life support at the hospital where Clay works. What happened to Joey is a mystery Clay must solve.

Blood Brothers is told in the first person present, with flashbacks to the boys' shared past. It moves quickly back and forth, and there always seems to be something happening, which gives the book a snappy feeling. This may add to its appeal to teen readers (and, perhaps going out a limb here, boy teen readers in particular), and it certainly kept my attention focused. But it's a trade off--in a book like this, where the action moves at a rapid pace from scene to scene, past to present, the reader and the narrator have little time to reflect, appreciate, empathize.

The first person present is not the easiest voice in which to tell about secondary characters- some in this book didn't convince me at all (especially Clay's father). One memorable exception is the local sheriff--the description of the dusty pictures of long-gone foster children in his living room made him suddenly real to me. Much of this book is set in the hospital where Clay works, and here the first person present combined with Harazin's personal knowledge of nursing made for compelling reading.*

For more about this book and its author, here's a link to an interview with S.A. Harazin at the YA Authors Cafe.

ps: This book comes with the added benefit of an anti-drug message that is powerful without being didactic!


*I know that book reviewers shouldn't whine because the author didn't write the book the reviewer wanted to read, so this isn't a whine. But-- if S.A. Harazin were ever to decide to write more books about high school kids considering careers in the medical profession, or books set in hospitals, I'd read them in a shot! Where is the Sue Barton, Student Nurse, for today's teen readers? I mean this, and am now rifling through my head trying to thing of contemporary YA "career" stories and failing.

Link to a report on the Particles of Narrative conference, featuring Megan Whalen Turner

Last weekend, up at the University of Toronto, there was a conference called "Particles of Narrative: Language, Metaphor, and Children's Literature." I really really would have liked to go, mainly because Megan Whalen Turner was giving a talk. But it was impossible. So I was happy to find this account of the conference, with quotes from MWT, here, at Cheryl Rainfield's blog.

If there are fans of MWT out there who don't already know, there is a most active discussion forum about her books here, with lots of detailed discussion about very specific scenes and sentences, along with a touch of frivolous fan chatter.