Children's & Young Adult book reviews by a rather odd duo.
Posts tagged family
Action-packed Fantasy (with a bit of history and mythology, too)
March 12, 2013
by Jenny
The Dragon’s Tooth by N. D. Wilson
In the middle of America (Wisconsin, to be precise), twelve-year-old Cyrus Smith and his older siblings Antigone and Daniel are living their everyday hum-drum lives. Of course, their version of “hum drum” involves living parent-less, managing a run-down motel, and eating pancakes for just about every meal while pretending to the outside world that all is well. But when a strange tattooed man claiming to know their deceased father shows up, a strange turn of events (and one wild taxi ride) takes them to Ashtown and the steps of the Order of Brendan, the secret society of famous explorers throughout history. Thrown headfirst into a world of conspiracy, secrets, and adventure, they fight to prove themselves and stay alive in what is a sometimes crazy, sometimes scary, and always entertaining journey.
N. D. Wilson, author of the 100 Cupboards series, has created an adventurous and magical world that could almost exist in your own backyard. Think Harry Potter but in America and with real historical people as characters. (more…)
Everything Is Not What It Seems
March 1, 2013
by Ruby
XVI by Julia Karr (Book 1 XVI Series)
Every girl gets one. An XVI tattoo on the wrist—sixteen. They say they’re there for protection. Some girls can’t wait to be sixteen, to be legal. Nina is not one of them. Even though she has no choice in the matter, she knows that so long as her life continues as normal, everything will be okay. Then, with one brutal strike, Nina’s normal is shattered; and she discovers that nothing that she believed about her life is true. But there’s one boy who can help—and he just may hold the key to her past. But with the line between attraction and danger as thin as a whisper, one thing is for sure…for Nina, turning sixteen promises to be anything but sweet.
The year is 2150 and women’s rights and the freedoms we enjoy today (at the moment) are just a memory. The world that 15-year-old Nina Oberon lives in is frightening to me. Frightening because it’s all too plausible. The Governing Council controls the populace through the Media. Through the Media girls are “trained” to become a sex-teen when they turn sixteen. There’s even a guide for this transition. How to dress and act to attract guys. Girls become adults at sixteen, identified by a tattoo on the wrist – XVI. This becomes an invitation (unwanted or not) that girls are ready for sex. Girls don’t have many choices, they either marry above them or get accepted into the FeLS (Female Liaison Specialists) program. (more…)
“If you had one day left to live, what would you do?”
February 20, 2013
by Ruby
Fracture by Megan Miranda (Book 1 Fracture Series)
By the time Delaney Maxwell was pulled from a Maine lake’s icy waters by her friend, Decker Phillips, her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. But somehow Delaney survived—despite the brain scans that show irreparable damage. Everyone wants Delaney to be fine, but she knows she’s far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can’t control or explain, Delaney now finds herself drawn to the dying, and when she meets Troy Varga, a boy who recently emerged from a coma with the same abilities, she is relieved to share this strange new existence. Unsure if her altered brain is predicting death or causing it, Delaney must figure out if their gift is a miracle, a freak of nature—or something else much more frightening….
The plot of this novel is very similar to The Body Finder Series by Kimberly Derting, but has thrilling psychological aspects that make it unique. The story is told from Delaney Maxwell’s POV as she tries to navigate the ups and downs of life after death, literally. Fracture is an apt title in many respects. Throughout the story we see the fracturing of Delaney’s home life, friendships, and her own sanity. (more…)
History Turns Into Itself in This Newbery Winner
April 18, 2012
by Jenny
Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos
Jack Gantos has a whole summer planned full of baseball, history books, and war movies when suddenly, caught in the middle of his quarreling parents, he becomes “grounded for life,” ruining everything. Even though he lives in the dying town of Norvelt (originally founded by Eleanor Roosevelt to help poor families) and there’s not much to do, when his mom volunteers him to help an aging neighbor type up the town’s obituaries, he’s less than thrilled. Soon, though, Jack finds himself absorbed in the town’s history and the “original” Norvelters, as his spunky neighbor calls them, and he’ll do anything to get out of house arrest and over to help her in her task. Soon he’s involved not only with the obituaries but in a feud with an old man who ride’s a trike, play-acting the Grim Reaper, distributing Girl Scout cookies, digging a fake bomb shelter, and a near-constant nose bleed, not to mention a potential murder. Suddenly his summer is anything but dull!
Described as “melding the entirely true and the wildly fictional,” Dead End in Norvelt is a most-times funny and sometimes heart-breaking story of a boy coming of age in an old town past its prime full of wacky yet believable characters. Both darker and lighter themes blend with Gantos’ humor as Jack finds himself imbedded in nearly everything going on in town. The relationships between Jack’s parents and himself are enough to fill a book, but author Gantos has woven an entire town’s worth of personalities and interactions together seamlessly. (more…)
A Beautiful & Authentic Midwestern Picture Book
April 18, 2012
by Jenny
It’s Milking Time by Phyllis Alsdurf, illustrated by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher
In the interest of full disclosure, I feel I should tell you something: I fell in love with It’s Milking Time before I opened it.
Based on author Phyllis Alsdurf’s own childhood on a Midwestern dairy farm, this book has a lyrical story, a description of the daily chores a daughter shares with her father each evening as they milk and take care of their cows. Each two-page spread is a beautiful illustration that supports Alsdurf’s simple, straightforward narrative, a step-by-step introduction to evening tasks on a small family dairy farm. The story goes beyond that, though, sharing not only chores but the loving relationship between a father and daughter as well as the relationship between humans and animals.
So you won’t think I’m overly infatuated with this book (and maybe I am), I’ll let you in on a secret: I showed this book to an authentic dairy farm girl, and she loved it too. My soon-to-be Mother in Law grew up on her father’s Wisconsin dairy farm, and she gave It’s Milking Time her official seal of approval and accuracy. (more…)
Let’s Go to the Mall!
March 27, 2012
by Ruby
No Safety in Numbers by Dayna Lorentz (Book One TBA Trilogy)
(Review based on Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of the book.)
Hundreds of people go to the mall everyday, but for 4 teens, a trip to the mall could be deadly. Marco, Lexi, Shay and Ryan have come to the mall for reasons all their own. Marco works as a busboy at a mall restaurant. After being chased by school bullies in the parking garage, he discovers a device attached to the AC unit for the mall. Lexi is out with her parents for some family time, which rarely happens because her mother is a state senator. Shay just wanted to escape the house her family has just moved into, but she had to come with her grandmother and sister. Ryan is running an errand for his older brother, a QB for the local football team, of which he is a member too.
Told from alternating points of view from these four teens, we start to get a picture of what each of them is like and how they handle the situation at hand as their world descends into chaos. We also start to get a feel for each of their personalities, which I hope the author will delve into more in the remaining two books in the trilogy.
The tagline for this trilogy in “Contagion meets Lord of the Flies in a mall that looks just like yours.” I haven’t read LOTF, yet, however I know the story. I thought Contagion was a huge bore. My favorite disease on the loose move is Outbreak. Dustin Hoffman rocks! Sorry, getting off topic a bit. (more…)
What If Your Mind & Body Were No Longer Your Own?
March 14, 2012
by Jenny
Starters by Lissa Price (book one in Starters series)
Review based on an Advanced Reading Copy (ARC)
In a dystopian world in which only the very old and very young have survived, sixteen-year-old Callie is trying to make it on the streets while taking care of her sick younger brother. After the Spore Wars tore the country apart–only the weakest members of society, old and young, received the limited vaccine and survived–there was a strong division between rich and poor. Starters (the young) have virtually no rights, while Enders (adults age sixty through their hundreds) control all. Callie is an unclaimed Starter, legally unable to take a job and with no surviving parents or grandparents as guardian, giving her and her brother little choice but to squat in abandoned buildings to avoid being rounded up and sent to a terrible institutions.
When Callie hears of a company willing to pay Starters under the table, she ends up at Prime Destinations where, with the technology of a neurochip, Elders can “rent” the bodies of Starters for recreation and be young again. Creepy? Yes. Easy money? So it seems. But when Callie’s neurochip malfunctions and she wakes up in the middle of a rental–in her own body but with the belongings and credentials of a wealthy Ender–she discovers that she has been rented for a malicious, illegal purpose, and the high-suspense race to the truth begins. (more…)
Surviving Stormy Seas & Family Alike
February 7, 2012
by Jenny
The Great Wide Sea by M. H. Herlong
When their mom is killed in a car accident, fifteen-year-old Ben Byron and his younger brothers Dylan and Gerry are devastated, struggling to put the pieces of their family back together even as their own father becomes distant. Unable to cope with the pain of memory, their father packs them off to Florida where he buys a 30-foot sailboat and insists that the family–broken as it is–sail around the Bahamas for one year. Ben is beyond angry at the loss of first his mother and now his familiar everyday life. Not only must he take care of Dylan and Gerry as his dad remains emotionally absent, but now he must follow the “captain’s” orders, maintaining the boat day in and day out in the middle of nowhere. Things are shaky at best between Ben and his father, and in these close quarters, tension and frustration flare. When the three brothers discover their father missing one morning in the middle of the ocean, they work together to try to find him until a storm carries them off course, shipwrecking them on a small, deserted island with little for food our resources. It becomes up to Ben and his brothers to survive the elements while piecing together their lives and relationships with one another, all the while hoping for a rescue.
The Great Wide Sea is a book of survival and force of will, but it is also a book of emotional frailty and relationships, focusing on a fractured family of boys and men, a husband who has lost his wife and children who have lost their mother and, for a time, any connection to their father. Herlong creates a compelling narrative on multiple levels in this coming-of-age story about resilience, love, and hope.
It’s Hard to Go Wrong with a Magic Castle
January 25, 2012
by Jenny
Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George
Castle Glower is a strange, magical place: one day the kitchen may be just next to the throne room, and the next it may be down three flights of stairs and through a winding corridor. Only the castle knows where things will be next, and only Celie–Princess Cecelia, youngest daughter of King Glower–bothers to chart the castle’s fluid blueprint. Celie is a combination archaeologist and architect, mapping out the ever-changing pathways and room arrangements of Castle Glower. She’s determined to be the first one ever to complete an atlas, and hers is stacked high with color-coded markings, for she knows the castle better than anyone. (The castle does, after all, like Celie best.) Along with her brother Rolf (heir to the throne), her older sister Lilah, and their parents (the king and queen), Celie lives happily with her royal family in their country of Sleyne.
When the king and queen, along with Celie’s eldest brother Brandt, go missing on an excursion to the wizarding college, a mutinous royal council declares them dead and their 14-year-old son Rolf to be king under a regency. Lilah, Rolf, and Celie, though, are not convinced, and as clues pile up–the castle itself continues to organize and decorate rooms as though their parents are still alive–they realize that something serious is amiss. When a foreign prince makes his way on the royal council and tries to become heir to the throne, the three Glower children must fight for the home–and country–that they love. Luckily they’ve got a magic castle on their side. (more…)
Oh my Zeus! Is that a Greek god in that book?!
January 21, 2012
by Jenny
The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan
Really? you must be asking yourselves. Rick Riordan? Hasn’t the whole world pretty much reviewed his books, like, years ago?
Well, yeah.
But hey, I loved the books! (Also, I’d rather review The Son of Neptune than clean my room.)
On the off chance that nobody here has read (or heard of) the Percy Jackson series, here’s a brief overview: ancient Greek gods and goddesses are real, and they never disappeared–they’ve followed the rise of Western culture and currently reside on Mt. Olympus over the Empire State Building. Percy Jackson–main character, obviously–discovers he’s a “hero” or Greek “demigod”, a half-mortal, and his father is Poseidon, which turns out to be problematic. After a brief time at Camp Half Blood, he and his new friends are off on a quest full of mythical beasts, minor deities, and worldwide catastrophe. It’s rollicking good fun, incredibly smart, and impressively accurate on the ancient history/mythology level. Alas, after five books, the series was done.
But wait! There’s more! (more…)