bookshelves of doom

Kiki Strike has a fan club in Kennebunk!

I lent my copy of it to a couple of young ladies (13 and 14) and they didn't want to give it back!

Kiki Strike ROCKS.

Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2006 -- Longlist.

Here it is:

Clay by David Almond -- I've been dying to read this for months.  Still need to snag a copy.

Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce -- Still haven't even read Millions.  I suck.

Blown Away by Patrick Cave -- Looks interesting, but is the second in a series.

A Swift Pure Cry by Siobhan Dowd -- Don't know.  I'll have to research it further.

Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge -- Everything I've heard about this book is wonderful. 

The Worst Witch Saves the Day by Jill Murphy -- I've still never read any of these.

A Darkling Plain by Philip Reeve -- I'm so behind on this series.  I adored the first book, though.

The Survival Game by Tim Wynne-Jones -- I admit it.  I've never read any Tim Wynne-Jones.  Is it because of the hyphen?  I don't know.

Wow.  If someone read this list without knowing anything about me, they'd think I wasn't much of a reader.  How discouraging.

The Looking Glass Wars -- Frank Beddor

Alyss Heart is the young heir to the throne of Wonderland -- she's charming and mischievous, has a loving family and her powers of imagination are stronger than anything anyone has ever seen before.  Her best friend is Dodge, the son of a high-ranking palace guard.  She spends her time playing practical jokes on her tutor, Bibwit Harte, and running from the only other child of her station, the dreadful Jack of Diamonds. 

Life is good.

Until her Aunt Redd, exiled for years on Mount Isolation, returns to Wondertropolis.  With the help of her smiling shape-shifting nine-lived assassin, The Cat, and her army of cards, she murders the King and Queen. Alyss is forced to flee for her life with the help of the Royal Bodyguard, Hatter Madigan. 

During their rapid journey through the Pool of Tears, they are separated.  Alyss ends up in Victorian London, where no one believes her story.  Eventually, she meets the young Charles Dodgson, who promises to write it all down.

Lewis Carroll got it all wrong in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland -- even the heroine's name.  The Looking Glass Wars is Alyss' real story.

I wanted to like this book a whole lot more than I actually did.  I was looking forward to it so much. 

But, as much as I liked the idea and the plot, the actual writing didn't do a whole lot for me.  (Rather like my reaction to Jasper Fforde books, actually.)  For the most part, I didn't develop any sort of affection for the characters. 

I liked the idea of Hatter Madigan's weaponry, and even the idea of him as a character, but he himself didn't do much for me.  (Although -- there's a comic book miniseries starring Hatter Madigan with art by Ben Templesmith which looks extremely cool. If nothing else, the marketing campaign for this book is outstanding.)

It's a great, rip-roaring action-adventure novel.  If that's what you're looking for, you'll be very happy with it. 

I was just hoping for something more than that.

[However.  Let it be known that the fabbity-fab Colleen Mondor loved it.]

The Hidden Staircase: Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, #2 -- Carolyn Keene

Okay, in The Hidden Staircase, we learn that Nancy gardens, is good with tools, knows how to glean information from footprints in the mud and has read up on hidden passageways and secret doors.  She also knows how to deal with a wild owl in the house, of all things.  She still loves speeding -- what's the point of having a new blue convertible if you don't participate in a few car chases? 

She also has the amazing ability to determine a very detailed judgment of a person's character after a two-minute conversation:

Nancy had taken an instant dislike to Gomber and now it was quadrupled.  She judged him to be the kind of person who stays within the boundaries of the law but whose ethics are questionable.

I mean, really.

Carson Drew is supposed to be one of the smartest guys in River Heights, right?  I find it interesting that he gets what basically amounts to a death threat, then a few pages later he is almost run over by an "out of control" car, yet makes no connection whatsoever between the two events.  He also continues his totally icky flirtation with Nancy:

In a flash, Nancy was out the back door and running to meet her father.  "Oh, Dad, I'm so glad to see you!" she exclaimed.

She gave him a tremendous hug and a resounding kiss.  He responded affectionately, but gave a little chuckle.  "What have I done to rate this extra bit of attention?" he teased.  With a wink he added, "I know.  Your date for tonight is off and you want me to substitute."

Dirk Jackson is the date that Carson Drew mentioned above.  He's a "red-haired, former high-school tennis champion" -- no word on what he does now.  He "doesn't like to be kept waiting" -- especially, Nancy says, "by any of my mysteries".  No wonder no one remembers him. 

Regardless of the fact that the narrator always stresses Hannah Gruen's position as "part of the family", she continues to do all of the work around the house.  She also gives Nancy advice -- probably whenever the writer felt that the "Nancy decided/exclaimed/deduced" bit was getting a bit repetitive.

Poor Helen Corning.  She's around to:

A) Tell Nancy about the case.
B) Ask all of the reader's questions, no matter how obvious and lame. 
C) Get dirty.  She's the one who opens the damper in the fireplace and gets all sooty, falls through the hole in the old stable, and gets covered in plaster when the ceiling collapses.  (Nancy, romantically, gets knocked out during the ceiling collapse episode.  No mention of dust mussing up her titian hair.)
D) Be the boy.  When Nancy and Helen dress up in old costumes to entertain the old ladies with an old-fashioned dance, Helen has to be the boy.

Remember the flapping-jaw syndrome I mentioned in Book One?  Well, apparently, Nancy has it, too.  At least everyone is consistently jabbering, I guess.  Speaking of, this book features the Wimpiest Henchmen Ever.  The police aren't able to get anything out of them, but Nancy bats her eyelashes and they spill almost immediately.

The Hidden Staircase continues the trend of old ladies being portrayed as doddering -- but sweet -- old bats who can't remember anything.

Book One had lots of descriptions of clothing.  This one has lots of food: 

"...the delicious dinner of spring lamb, rice and mushrooms, fresh peas and chocolate angel cake with vanilla ice cream..."
"...steak and French friend potatoes, fresh peas, and yummy floating island for dessert..."
"...cup of steaming chicken bouillon, a thin slice of well-toasted bread, and a saucer of plain gelatin."

Since when do police officers ENCOURAGE young women to continue their amateur sleuthing?  The cops in this book rival Abe Carver and the Salem Police Force for the Worst Cops Ever award.

And, I'm happy to say:  The unintentional humor continues!  This next bit is from a scene where Nancy is trying to track down clues about her missing father at a train station -- she just happens to run into a nurse who just happens to have taken the train at the same time her father rode into town and who just happens to have seen him get into a taxi and just happens to overhear Nancy questioning taxi drivers and just happens to recognize Carson Drew from Nancy's description and just happens to realize that one of the taxi drivers is lying (the strange spelling of kidnapped is from the book, not me):

When the man did not reply, Miss Skade said, "Now look, Harry.  This girl's afraid that her father has been kidnaped.  It's up to you to tell her all you know."

"Kidnaped!" the taximan shouted.  "Oh, goodnight!  Now I don't know what to do."

Nancy had a sudden thought.  "Has somebody been threatening you, Harry?" she asked.

The cab driver's eyes nearly popped from his head.  "Well," he said, "since you've guessed it, I'd better tell you everything I know."

With comedy like that, who needs realism?

Take that, Leslie Pinney.

Yeah, so... Her book challenge didn't go so well.

From nbc5.com:

A meeting at District 214 that began Thursday night lasted into the early-morning hours. Fire officials were called in to control the crowd of about 1,500 people who gathered for the debate at District 214 -- the largest school district in the state. Its schools include Hersey, Prospect and Buffalo Grove.

At 1 a.m., the school board voted 6-1 to keep the books in the district.

Super news, right?  Here's the absolute-best part of the article:

"I think most of us instinctively know that sex with an animal is 'eww,'" Penney said.

But Thursday night, most students and teachers disagreed.

The Sea of Monsters -- Rick Riordan

This is the sequel to The Lightning Thief, which I raved about last week. I had bemoaned the fact that I, stupidly, didn't pick up The Sea of Monsters for way-cheap at the Scholastic Half-Price Sale recently, so you can probably imagine my joy at finding an ARC of it in a pile of books at home. (Once I found it, I remembered picking it up at PLA -- I just hadn't read it yet due to my must-read-books-in-series-order issue.)

Anyway.

It was great. While Riordan provides the background that makes it possible to pick up the series from here, I'd still suggest beginning at Book One. (Mostly because it's so much fun.) 

Percy's school year has gone pretty uneventfully -- oddly enough, no monsters have tried to kill him and he hasn't been expelled from his new, "progressive" school:

The whole middle school had to read this book called Lord of the Flies, where all these kids get marooned on an island and go psycho. So for our final exam, our teachers sent us into the break yard to spend an hour with no adult supervision to see what would happen. What happened was a massive wedgie contest between the seventh and eighth graders, two pebble fights, and a full-on tackle game.  The school bully, Matt Sloan, led most of those activities.

Due to the almost disturbing lack of monster attacks, Percy has spent most of his school year defending his new friend Tyson from the aforementioned bully:

Tyson was the only homeless kid at Meriwether College Prep. As near as my mom and I could figure, he'd been abandoned by his parents when he was very young, probably because he was so . . . different. He was six-foot-three and built like the Abominable Snowman, but he cried a lot and was scared of just about everything, including his own reflection. His face was kind of misshapen and brutal-looking. I couldn't tell you what color his eyes were, because I could never make myself look higher than his crooked teeth. His voice was deep, but he talked funny, like a much younger kid--I guess because he'd never gone to school before coming to Meriwether. 

Then, the night before his last day of school, he has a nightmare about his friend Grover the satyr. Things start to go downhill from there. When he and Annabeth (and yes, Tyson) arrive at Camp Half-Blood, they find it under attack. Once that threat is dealt with, they are informed of an even greater threat -- Thalia's tree (which usually protects the camp from attack) has been poisoned and Chiron has been blamed, fired and replaced by Tantalus.

So begins the quest for the Golden Fleece.

Everything I said about The Lightning Thief still goes, and then some. Rick Riordan continues to come up with brilliant chapter headings:

• 2.  I Play Dodgeball with Cannibals

• 6.  Demon Pigeons Attack

• 11.  Clarisse Blows Up Everything

• 14.  We Meet the Sheep of Doom

I continue to be reminded of the Harry Potter books, but again, only in basic structure. Percy & Co. meet Chiron's centaur relatives, and they are the complete opposite of the JKR centaur -- frighteningly enough, they reminded me of some guys I hung out with during my college years.

The series continues to be smart, funny, exciting, and sure to please. Book Three is probably (I hope, I hope!) coming out next year.

_____________________________________

Sea of Monsters: Amazon | Indiebound.

Lord of the Flies: Amazon | Indiebound.

Poetry controversy in Kansas.

Although I guess it isn't much of a controversy, considering the fact that it was teacher who originally complained, and that no one seems to be defending the books.

The books are Things I Have to Tell You : Poems and Writing by Teenage Girls and You Hear Me? : Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys.

Every review I've read has:

A) been quite positive and
B) been very upfront about the gritty content.

And, DUH.  They're collections of poetry written by TEENAGERS!  What do they think the books are going to be like?  Emily Dickinson?

Horns & Wrinkles -- Joseph Helgerson

It's SO CUTE!  Adorable, even.  I don't mean cute and adorable in a precious way, because the book has bite.  The illustrations are beautiful and funny and shadowy and spooky and the story itself is so well-told and I loved the characters.  It's one that I'll re-read again and again.

I just loved it:

My cousin Duke's trouble on the river started the day he dangled me off the wagon wheel bridge.  It's an old stone bridge, abandoned now, except for bullies and the occasional river troll in need of a hideout.

Horns & Wrinkles is a must-read.  In fact, I think I must read it again and write a more detailed review.  (Oh, sometimes I crack myself up.  But, really.  It's a must read.)

Spy High: Mission One -- A. J. Butcher

Set in the year 2060, this is the story of the Bond Team, six recruits in their first year at Deveraux Academy -- otherwise known as Spy High.  Basically, Spy High: Mission One is a B-movie in book format. 

It has the stereotypical (almost to the point of being offensive) characters:

Ben T. Stanton, Jr.: The blond team leader is a privileged rich-boy jerk who doesn't have the team's welfare at heart due to his dreams of personal glory.

Lori Angel:  Yes, that's her real name.  Brilliant and beautiful (and yes, blonde), she wants to be appreciated for her brains.  Of course, that doesn't stop her from almost immediately hooking up with Ben and cooing over him every few pages.  It's heinous.

Jake Daley:  The dark-haired farm boy with the chip on his shoulder.  He's the one with the real leadership capabilities.

Jennifer Chen:  The one Asian on the team.  Yep, you guessed it.  She's a martial arts expert.

Eddie Nelligan:  The red-headed Irish comic relief.  Also an excellent SkyBiker.

Cally Cross:  The only black member of the team, she was delinquent and homeless before being offered a place at Spy High due to her amazing computer capabilities.

It has the requisite amazingly bad dialogue:

"And you know what's the strangest thing?  When I saw you fighting, I could see only you, not the holograms.  You were the only one who could see them.  To me, you weren't battling anyone -- only thin air, only yourself.  I know you feel bad, Ben, but you've got to let someone in, someone real.  Let me help you."

That piece of sparkling wit belongs to Lori Angel -- you remember, the brilliant one?

The book also has a couple of megalomaniac bad guys (one holographic, one real), gadgets, the aforementioned SkyBikes, the Tutor that Believes in His Team -- no matter how crappily they work together, and a descendant of V. Frankenstein who owes at least some credit to Dr. Moreau.  If someone ever decided to make a graphic novel version of MST3K, this would be the perfect book to adapt and mock. 

Most of the time, it just felt like a really, really bad James Bond rip-off.  Occasionally -- very, very occasionally -- I had glimpses of the super-fun spoof it could have been.  But those oh-so-brief moments weren't enough to make me want to even bother reading the teaser for the second book in the series.  But hey -- once again, what do I know?  There are 6 books in the first series (and it has spawned an entire second series), so someone is obviously reading them.

Students in Illinois take a stand.

There is now an online petition that was created in an effort to combat the literary witch hunt begun by Leslie Pinney.

(via ASIF!)

Hot Men of Children's Lit: Part 15 in a Series

Don't miss him.

If you need a refresher, he wrote Funny Little Monkey.  He also did a SDQ Interview here a while back.

Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City -- Kirsten Miller

Whoever wrote the teaser on the back of the book is brilliant:

Five delinquent Girl Scouts,
a million hungry rats,
one secret city beneath Manhattan,
and a butt-kicking girl superspy--welcome to the world of
KIKI
STRIKE

I was hooked from the first paragraph.  Our narrator is Ananka Fishbein:

Until the age of twelve, I led what most people would consider an unexceptional life.  My activities on an average day could be boiled down to a flavorless mush:  I went to school, I came home, I took a bath, and I went to bed.  Though I'm certain I didn't realize it at the time, I must have been terribly bored.

As she tells it, one morning, she looked out of her bedroom window at the park across the street.  Well, she looked at what used to be the park across the street.  Overnight, the park had disappeared into a (what looked to be) bottomless sinkhole.  As if that wasn't strange enough, she saw what looked like a "highly intelligent monkey or a troll of some sort" haul itself out of the hole, wave at her (with a cupped hand like British royalty) and scamper off into the mist:

Looking back, it's hard to imagine what my life might have become if I hadn't shoved my bare feet into a pair of furry pink snow boots, and run outside for a closer look.  I've found that such opportunities are few and far between.  If you miss them--or like most people simply fail to recognize them--there's no guarantee that another chance will ever come your way.

It doesn't take long for Ananka to team up with Kiki Strike and her band of delinquent Girl Scouts:  Oona, the forger and lock-picker; DeeDee, the chemistry/explosives expert; Luz, the attitudinal electronics queen; and Betty, the team's mistress of disguise.  (Are you thinking of Uma Thurman's monologue about "Fox Force Five" in Pulp Fiction?  Because that's what I thought of -- except of course, these girls are twelve.  Which just makes them that much cooler.)

Their adventure involves a secret network of tunnels and rooms under Manhattan, a bank robbery, very hungry (and murderous and huge) rats, loads of skeletons, a Chinese smuggling ring, a princess, kidnappings, explosions, a sack of gold doubloons, and a leader that they aren't sure they can entirely trust.

After my recent fun with Nancy Drew, this passage was especially welcome:

She handed Mrs. Young a business card.  I almost laughed when I saw that it read:  Kiki Strike, Detective.

"So you're a detective now?"  I teased Kiki once we were inside the creaking elevator.  "Like Nancy Drew?"

"Nancy Drew was just an amateur," Kiki sniffed, as if insulted by the comparison.  "I'm the real thing."

It's super fun.  The story is peppered with passage from Ananka's secret diaries -- there are instructions for everything from dealing with snakebites and frostbite to recognizing when someone is lying and how to actually lie effectively to planning an escape route to getting away from a kidnapper.  With good reason, the publisher covers their butt on the verso page with a (strangely hilarious) disclaimer:

The advice given in this book, including first aid information, is meant as a literary device and an amusing sidebar.  The author and publisher are not responsible for any accidents or injuries that may occur by following it.  Refer instead to the American Red Cross.

The Dracorex hogwartsia.

More info here and here.  (Thanks to Chrissy and Jeremy for the links.)

The Lightning Thief -- Rick Riordan

Yeah, so The Lightning Thief was just kind of... AWESOME:

In a way, it's nice to know there are Greek gods out there, because you have someone to blame when things go wrong. For instance, when you're walking away from a bus that's just been attacked by monster hags and blown up by lightning, and it's raining on top of everything else, most people might think that's just really bad luck; when you're a half-blood, you understand that some divine force really is trying to mess up your day.

Super fun. Potter fans will really like it. I know, I know.  Someone says that about every single fantasy novel that's been published (or re-published) since HP, but dammit, it's true. 

The similarities are mostly just broad plot points -- odd things happen to a boy throughout his childhood, he ends up at a summer camp for special kids where his immediate support group is comprised of another boy and a girl. 

The tone is different, though. It's much more snarky and breezy than the Potter books, and the details are very different: It turns out that Camp Half-Blood is a summer camp for kids who are directly descended from the Greek gods. (Directly as in: The Children of.) I especially loved this fact: Due to his bloodline, Percy's brain is hardwired for Ancient Greek and battle -- which translates to dyslexia and ADHD in a regular classroom.

As there's a trident on the front cover and Percy shows his power over water pretty early on, it isn't particularly difficult to figure out Percy's dad's identity. I also had the turncoat identified, but not the Big Bad.

The book's wonderful chapter headings ("I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher", "Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Pants", "I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom", "I Ruin a Perfectly Good Bus" and (my favorite) "I Battle My Jerk Relative"), brilliant character descriptions:

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

and fresh and original action descriptions:

Grover went flying sideways down the hill like a possessed lawn mower, heading toward the van.

all made me wish I'd gone ahead and bought the sequel for super cheap when I had the chance.

_____________________________________________

Amazon | Indiebound.

Another one.

I.  Can't.  Take.  It.  People just aren't satisfied with challenging one book at a time anymore.

The books this time are:

Are You in the House Alone?, by Richard Peck

Rainbow Boys, by Alex Sanchez

Rats Saw God, by Rob Thomas

Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love, by Maryrose Wood

The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver

The Bean Trees, Teacher's Edition

The Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean Auel

The King Must Die, by Mary Renault

The Power of One (abridged), by Bryce Courtenay

Boy's Life, Robert McCammon

A school board member was approached by "people from a local radio station" who were concerned about the district's book orders.  She took it upon herself to research the books online.  The sites she used?  "Two Web sites devoted to challenging the propriety of books in school libraries".  (My guess is that they were ClassKC and PABBIS, because god forbid that she would use objective sources for her research.)

[Later:]  Maryrose Wood, author of SK&HDFIL, is covering the challenge at her blog.