bookshelves of doom

The Grand Plan to Fix Everything -- Uma Krishnaswami

Eleven-year-old Dini loves Bollywood movies, and she ESPECIALLY loves Bollywood star Dolly Singh. But she just realized that there's something unusual about Dolly's most recent movie: there are no happy songs. Not a single one. And now, according to her Filmi Kumpnee magazine, something IS up with Dolly, and scuttlebutt says that that something is HEARTBREAK.

So when her mother is awarded a grant that will allow the family to move to a small town in southern India for two years, Dini is devastated about leaving Maryland and her best friend Maddie behind... but she's excited about the possibility of finding and meeting Dolly Singh, too! 

Pros:

• It's about the difficulty of long distance friendships, and about the importance of staying true to your friends, but it also shows that there's room in our hearts for more than one good friend. It's about love of home, about the pleasure that comes from exploring a new place, and about how new places can eventually feel like home. Coincidences abound—Dirk Gently would approve of The Grand Plan to Fix Everything, because it very much supports his theory about the interconnectedness of all things—and there is charm and warmth and humor on every page.
• Krishnaswami's rhythm is really distinct, and while it took me a little while to get used to it, I ended up loving it. And I loved how she put words together. I loved that instead of saying that Dini moodily flips a page, she said Dini flips a moody page. And I loved Maddie's first line upon learning about Dini's big move: Maddie is flipping through the pages of the Filmi Kumpnee magazine without seeming to look at anything. "Maybe you'll get to meet Dolly," she says in a small, brave voice. OH, SHE JUST BREAKS MY HEART. (In a good way.)
• As in Penny Dreadful, Abigail Halpin's illustrations are spot on: they echo the lighthearted tone of Dini's adventures, and include lots of details from the text. Love.
• In addition to the illustrations, there are magazine articles and texts and letters and so while it's primarily a straight-up novel, fans of the scrapbook and journal-type books are likely to enjoy.

Cons:

• I've got nothing.

Nutshell:

 It's a hug in book form. Also, MONKEYS. PEACOCKS! INTERESTING CAPITALIZATION! AND CAKE.

Book source: ILLed through my library.

"Not everybody knows what it’s like to read a book and, for the first time, feel like there’s hope for your future."

From The Hub:

That’s when I cried. It’s hard to articulate to someone when you’re standing in front of them that their book probably saved your life. It’s even weirder to look back and think that he probably doesn’t remember and certainly hasn’t thought about our meeting since, while I’ve turned it over in my head a dozen times. Because, of course, I had this really eloquent speech all prepared and then when I stood in front of him I think I managed to say, “I just want you to know that I read Boy Meets Boy when I was a teen and it was the first book with gay characters where nobody died and it changed my whole life and I didn’t feel sad anymore this was back before the Internet was a gay mecca so these books were all I had and Julie Anne Peters is also an author who is important to me and I’m a grown woman I’m so sorry I will stop this now.”

*sniffle*

Two Dollar Read: Jellicoe Road.

The Kindle edition of Melina Marchetta's brilliant—YES, BRILLANT—Jellicoe Road is currently $1.99.

So, if you haven't read it (or if you want yet another copy), snag it while you can.

From my long-ago post about it:

Melina Marchetta's writing is top-notch, spot-on, perfect-a-mundo, beautiful, her characters are believable, so real that less than twenty pages in, I forgot I was reading a novel—both because I was so involved in the story that I felt like a bystander and because the characters were so immediately real to me. 

Mafia Girl -- Deborah Blumenthal

When I picked Mafia Girl up, I was CONVINCED that it was historical fiction.

As it opens with the main character and one of her best friends getting pulled over while A) driving a stolen Porsche 911, B) looking for an outlet that sells Louboutins (our narrator hilariously tries punching 'Louboutins' into the GPS), and C) after a dinner comprised solely of beer and Ritz Bits, I put my critical thinking skills to good use and concluded OH WAIT, THIS IS A CONTEMPORARY.

Ahem. ANYWAY.

Gia loves her father and she loves her family, but all she really wants is to be out of the life. While being the daughter of a powerful mafia don has its perks—most notably that she can get her hands on pretty much any commodity she wants—she hates that her peers both look down on her AND fear her (although, to be honest, the latter comes in handy sometimes, too), and she's uncomfortable with the violence and death that are connected to her own personal comfort and economic status. 

Pros:

• Gia's voice. Readers who don't like stream of consciousness or digression will DEFINITELY dislike it, but as I like both of those qualities, it worked for me. She comes off as honest, too, even in talking about moments that don't put her in the most flattering of lights.
• Gia's sexual appetite. Props to Blumenthal for allowing Gia to lust after someone and for allowing her to pursue that feeling without branding her a slut. I do have some issues with that storyline, but I did appreciate that aspect of it.
• Her best friend, Clive, who she describes as a "totally unique, asexual, standout person who looks, acts, dresses, and thinks differently from everyone else on the planet." Their friendship is by far the strongest and most interesting one in the book, and I loved Gia's blasé acceptance of Clive's sexual orientation.

Cons:

• The cultural depictions in the book—both Gia's Italian heritage and the mafia stuff—reads as cartoonishly stereotypical.
• The love story—between Gia and a cop—is problematic on two major levels, neither of which is addressed. #1: She's underage and he's got to be in his early twenties at LEAST. #2: Her pursuit of him is extremely uncool, especially given that he asks her to stop. Animal magnetism doesn't justify stalking, and her choice to ignore his discomfort was just... yuck. If you're having difficulty seeing the yick factor, just reverse the gender roles. See? Yick. 
• Also, we're supposed to care about and root for things to work out between them, but we never get to know him at all. Criminy, Gia hardly gets to know him at all, and she's the one who supposedly falls in love with him. The physical attraction, I buy—there are some extremely effective steamy moments—but the LOVE? Not so much.
• There are loads of plot elements—bullying; the school election; collateral damage related to her father's work; the romance; depression, loneliness, and suicide—but they never gel into a cohesive whole.

Nutshell:

Gordon Korman's Son of the Mob was a far better fit for me.

________________________________________

Book source: ILLed through my library.

Related articles

By the catalog: Albert Whitman, Spring 2014.

Reading, reading, reading. #rawhide

Jane -- April Lindner

Pilgrims Don't Wear Pink -- Stephanie Kate Strohm

"So, what do we do when something bad happens? When someone calls us sluts? We make slutty, slutty lemonade, that's what."

Extended trailer: The Fault in Our Stars.

 

Two deals from Publishers Lunch.

From Publishers Lunch:

Children's: Middle grade
Author of BEA 2013 Middle Grade Buzz Panel title Magic Marks the Spot Caroline Carlson's THE WORLD'S GREATEST DETECTIVE, about a city with more sleuths than crimes to be solved, and a boy who enters his hapless uncle for the World's Greatest Detective competition in hope of avoiding being sent to an orphanage, only to discover his own knack for investigation when the contest host turns up dead, to Toni Markiet at Harper Children's, for publication in Winter 2017 and a second book in Winter 2018.

Children's: Young Adult
NYU Musical Theater Writing MFA Heidi Heilig's debut THE GIRL FROM EVERYWHERE, in which a 16-year-old, whose father uses vintage maps to time-travel the world, must determine whether to journey with him to 1868 Honolulu to save her mother's life, knowing that changing history risks her very existence, to Martha Mihalick at Greenwillow, in a pre-empt, in a three-book deal, for publication in Winter 2016.

To be honest, I'm FAR more intrigued by the middle grade title. MORE SLEUTHS THAN CRIMES! A MURDER AT THE WORLD'S GREATEST DETECTIVE COMPETITION! Lots of potential hilarity there.

YALSA wants your help.

From the YALSA blog:

In conjunction with National Library Legislative Day, YALSA has created an online campaign to raise awareness of the important role libraries play in helping teens succeed in school and prepare for careers.  We need your help in getting the word out about it!  We are using a platform called Thunderclap to flood Twitter and Facebook with our ‘take action to support teen literacy & libraries’ message.  The Thunderclap allows people to pledge a Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook message that is unleashed at the same time.  It’s completely safe and will automatically post exactly one message on your behalf at 11am, eastern, on May 6th.

Click on through for more info.