Reviews from Bookshelf read

This book has a great opening sentence: "If this were a movie, I'd probably have to kill off my father in the very first scene."

Unfortunately, the rest of the book doesn't quite deliver on the promise of its opening. Dulcie's dad is dead because of a freak janitorial accident (mixing the wrong cleaners), and when her mom moves to L.A., Dulcie takes off back home in her dead dad's truck to find herself.

One of my beefs with the book is that Acampora doesn't show what Dulcie is up to while she is driving--instead, he weaves in (highly improbable) stories of her trip into the second half of the book. So in the middle of dinner with her grandpa and her new best friend (who conveniently has conflicts of her own that draw attention away from the lack of external conflict in Dulcie's life), Dulcie will suddenly reveal her experience at, say, the fainting goat farm, or visiting a reliquary and getting a bean stew recipe off of a nun. The biggest problem with this technique for capitalizing on responsible Dulcie's one chance to have madcap adventures is that it makes it seem like Dulcie's got nothing of interest to say in the "real" now.

All in all, I found the book to be a little too wholesome for my taste--pretty much altogether lacking in the hormonal woes and other complications that come with figuring out who you are in high school. Incidentally, the unfortunate image on the cover of the book also makes Dulcie look like a pre-teen.

(Listened to on audiobook.)

The humor rings absolutely true here, and Alexie has plenty to say about cultural identity and self. The protagonist has to negotiate his difficult role as an American Indian and a gifted student--by going to school off rez, he risks being seen as a traitor of his culture.

The more I think about _Twisted_, the more I think it is an effective--and unusual--contribution to any YA collection. Halse Anderson accomplishes two remarkable feats in this book. First, she gets the teenage male voice and preoccupations perfect; Tyler's hard-ons are just as much a part of his daily life as his social anxieties, crushes, and homework. And secondly, she manages to address the deep-level importance of family life, however dysfunctional, to adolescents.

The plot seems at first to offer only a predictable scenario: over the summer, ugly-duckling dweeb transforms into possibly-cool and sexy swan. But as Tyler's promising proto-relationship with super-popular Bethany gets twisted by one late-night party and a heap of false accusations, it becomes impossible to ignore the pressure from Tyler's asshole dad... and equally impossible for Tyler to ignore doing something about him.

Some elements--the reconciliation between Tyler and his father, for example--are a bit predictable, but all in all, this is a thought-provoking, worthwhile read that guys and gals alike will enjoy.

I'd describe this as Cormac McCarthy for kids. Set in the bayous of Southeast Texas where even today there are plenty of alligators and creepy loners who live in the sticks (as a Texan I can say these things), horribly sad, violent things take place in this book. Kittens are drowned, dogs are chained, daughters are betrayed by jealous mothers. I'm not sure I'd read this to my child, and it made me cry, but it also has a kind of lyric beauty that is rare in books period and rarer still in books marketed to children. Don't be fooled by the cartoony cover and illustrations. This is a serious, dark book.

This page-turner of a concept book definitely had me hooked--I mean, who doesn't want to find out what a girl who killed herself has to say on the seven tapes (two sides each) that she mailed out right before she did it?

We listen along with her classmate and crush Clay, who visits all the places that feature in her audio-tour account of experiences that just turned out to be too much for her.

This is a great title for more reluctant readers, and it's the kind of YA book that has a balance between guy and girl issues, so it should be appealing to both genders. The structure of the book--we only know Clay for the night, for example, and the author of the tapes is, for obvious reasons, done with her development--keeps us from seeing the characters change much. But all in all, a solid book worth recommending.

Fans of books like _What Happened to Cass McBride?_ might like this title.

A playful collection of thumbnail "confessions" to varied crimes. Aub always writes with a wink.

Drowning Instinct by Ilsa Bick takes hold of you and doesn't let you go until the very last page. I'm proof: I read it in two sittings. Even knowing that Liam would be up at 7:00, I stayed up till 3:00 in the morning to finish it. Here's the description, courtesy of NetGalley.com:

There are stories where the girl gets her prince, and they live happily ever after. (This is not one of those stories.)

Jenna Lord's first sixteen years were not exactly a fairytale. Her father is a controlling psycho and her mother is a drunk. She used to count on her older brother—until he shipped off to Iraq. And then, of course, there was the time she almost died in a fire.

There are stories where the monster gets the girl, and we all shed tears for his innocent victim. (This is not one of those stories either.)

Mitch Anderson is many things: A dedicated teacher and coach. A caring husband. A man with a certain...magnetism.

And there are stories where it's hard to be sure who's a prince and who's a monster, who is a victim and who should live happily ever after. (These are the most interesting stories of all.)

Drowning Instinct is a novel of pain, deception, desperation, and love against the odds—and the rules.

Where to begin? As an author, I stand in awe of the number of plot threads Bick weaves masterfully together here. As a reader, I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. And the writing--it's good. Really good. This book works on so many different levels. It's hard to know how to talk about it without spoiling things. So let me tell you about a few things I loved:

The conceit: Jenna Lord is telling her story aloud into a hand-held recorder given to her by a police detective who has asked her for the truth about what happened. She's in a hospital emergency room. There's been an accident; she doesn't know if she's in trouble or if she's the victim. And by the time she finishes the story--when we have all the pieces--we still don't know, exactly. But in a good way.

The nuances: As you can tell from the description, there's a teacher-student involvement in this novel. As a former high-school teacher, usually I steer way, way clear from these stories because they just piss me off. And at first, I wanted to shout at Mitch Anderson, "Never, ever, EVER have a student over to your house alone. Do NOT let her shower in your bathroom. Do NOT cook her breakfast." But gradually we come to see him in his flaws and his needs, to understand his motivations, however flawed. Also Blick deals with cutting, grief, sexual abuse, and lots of other serious stuff with subtlty and wisdom.·

The voice: Jenna Lord reminds me of the girl from Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why. Maybe it's the similarity of the conceit, the simultaneous closeness to the listener (Jenna addresses the detective directly from time to time) and distance from events since they're being narrated after the fact). But Jenna is smart, self-aware, and astute. The language of the book is just right for her.

The suspense: There was so much of it. Seriously. I had a list of questions about a mile long and it felt urgent to find out how everything could come together. Bick parcels out some of the secrets partway through, but there are always more brewing...

This book is one you don't want to miss.

Note: This review is of the uncorrected NetGalley proof of Drowning Instinct. The official release date for the book is February 1,·2012.

This book has been one of the most influential to my teaching, and it helped me to integrate my personal reading and writing life and my work in the classroom. Because of Bomer's book, I began each year by exchanging letters with my students about our experiences reading and writing. These were an amazing foundation for our work together. He also offers many manageable strategies for managing writing workshops and other classroom experiences targeted to turn students into readers and writers for life.

Steve Brezenoff's latest novel, Brooklyn, Burning, sets the bar high for punk-friendly, slacker-sweet, gender-indifferent YA. And it takes on the issues facing many LGBT teens in the wisest way possible: by refusing to make those issues all that the book is about.

Brooklyn, Burning's strongest statement about gender and sexual identity comes through what goes unsaid. The biological sex of the two main characters is never explicitly identified, and the "you" and "I" and strategic phrasing that make this possible work without calling too much attention to themselves. And yet, of course, the reader notices what has been strategically elided. But by the end, we're convinced (or at least I was) that a love story can be a love story without being the story of boy meets girl (or boy meets boy, or girl meets girl). It's kind of like Georges Perec proving that a novel can be written without the letter "e" (L'Apparition). Only maybe less extreme. And a bit more to the point. But you know what I mean.

I, for one, stand in awe. Brooklyn, Burning belongs in library collections, bookstores, and your bookshelf. So get on that.

This is a great title for improving your writing at the sentence level and upping your craft.

I tried to listen to this, but I couldn't get past the clutter in the narrative. I just didn't identify with the mother, and a tone of barely suppressed outrage can only be put up with for so long. Keri (the mother) never became human to me; it was as though I was supposed to be impressed by her awesome struggle and caring efforts on every page.

That got old fast.

Still, mothers who have struggled to get psychiatric services for adult children might relate to this story.

Diverse stories about teen love with protagonists of all sexual persuasions. Useful to me to see how many accomplished YA authors handle sex scenes.

I ended up staying up until 3:30 the night before a busy day because I just couldn't stand not to finish this book. It follows a Mexican-American family as they make the move from a working-class neighborhood in Fresno to a middle-class neighborhood in small-town Oregon. But it's really about an impressionable boy, Billy, and how the tendencies of his childhood self--and the influence of his brilliant but deeply disturbed father--shape him into a youth who wants to do right but finds himself adrift on the winds of his own lack of resolve.

There are melodramatic moments throughout the book, but the ending takes things to a level of crisis and failure so extreme that I fell right out of the dream that the rest of the book had spun for me. Just too over-the-top.

But this is still an important book, one that I think would be worth reading for anyone interested in Latino literature or looking for a spin on the typical "ethnic" coming-of-age story.

This book helps us see that there are multiple ways of communicating and experiencing love when interacting with others. It opened my eyes to the fact that I was showing love the way I wanted it to be shown to me rather than the way the other person would most fully experience that love. While you could get the concept of this book from a summary, it's worth taking the time to zip through this quick read to actually absorb the implications of the differences in our preferred love languages. So go on, love lots. But love with purpose, too: to make the people you care about feel how much you love them.

Journal-style writing with a narrator who sometimes doesn't grasp the full significance of things, which allows the reader to put together some of the pieces behind his story. Intriguing and endearing.

Aside from the silly title, this is a great title for readers fifth-grade and up. We get a couple of months in the lives of Kirsten and Walker, who--despite their different skin colors--have more in common besides both being late on the first day of school. Richly drawn main characters live and move surrounded by less-nuanced but believable secondary stock figures (librarian, 7th-grade mean girl, etc). There's a bit of a mystery to be unraveled, but the core of this book is about finding one's place and finding the way to stand up for one's self--not in some big, showy, moralizing way, but in smaller gestures: a note on the teacher's desk, a clever comment to avoid the mean-girl's intrusion into personal issues, a message scratched in a secret spot on the belly of a mom's sports car.

Looking forward to reading more from this author.

This historical novel is about the theory of maternal impression and one scientist willing to do anything to achieve greatness. There is real evil here, but we experience the narrator's attempts to resist it and celebrate when she achieves any measure of autonomy from male control.

This is the third book following the misbehaviors and adventures of Cyd Cherisse, which begin in Gingerbread and continue in Shrimp.

C.C. aggravates the hell out of me a lot of the time, being all rich-girl angsty and so on, but she ends up scootching toward “responsible” with each book without turning all goody two shoes. Plus, who wouldn’t eventually love an avowed bad girl in miniskirts and combat boots who also carries a rag doll (Gingerbread) around in a metal lunchbox and makes friends with old people with names like Sugar Pie?

If you enjoy snarky humor or are looking for books that unpack the real challenges of coming from a wealthy family and yet wanting to chart a unique course, check out this trio of novels.

Bonus: the narrator for the audio version of all three books is just great. Her voice is a cross between the Nanny (Fran something or other—you folks who grew up in the nineties know who I mean) and a sexy French teacher. So much better than my description would seem to suggest.

Playful fantasy (the description here is pretty on the nose) with a heart. I liked reading a YA book that focuses on the relationship between a young person and a crusty old man who's not particularly nice.