Nothing Like You, by Lauren Strasnick, Audience: teen
Nothing Like You is a quick summertime read about Holly and her relationships with a pseudo-boyfriend, a boy best-friend, and her father. It begins with Holly losing her virginity to the pseudo-boyfriend (who has a real girlfriend) and the secret that this creates. As the story unfolds we learn that Holly's mother died less than a year ago and because of this has become emotionally numb. While the story is intriguing and the relationships that Holly has with the men in her life are interesting there is something in the writing that is a little grating. Maybe the writer is just trying to channel the way teenagers talk but parts of Holly's inner monologue such as: "Jeff is my dad, FYI" can be twinge inducing.
What saves this novel is the story and honesty of the characters and the knowledge that Holly will eventually be ok due to the support of her best friend and father.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Review #2 - Long Past Standing
Long Past Standing, by Oran Canfield, Audience: teen-adult
Long Past Standing is a memoir about a young man who is addicted to heroin and the crazy path his life took before his addiction. The chapters alternate telling stories about his childhood and about his addiction and recovery. Throughout most of this book the stories of his childhood: learning to juggle, joining a circus, living in Guatemala and Mexico and many others are the more interesting parts of the story. The chapters dealing with his addiction felt vaguely familiar as if I had read them before, which is partly true: any story about addiction tends to have similarities. Towards the end of the book a shift of interest evolves where the stories of his childhood (by this point his high school years) have less interest as his obvious need to kick heroin for good become more and more important.
Having recently read another memoir about drug addiction and crazy family life it seems this story has been told many times. However this particular one was written well, which does not always happen and was able to inspire continued reading.
Long Past Standing is a memoir about a young man who is addicted to heroin and the crazy path his life took before his addiction. The chapters alternate telling stories about his childhood and about his addiction and recovery. Throughout most of this book the stories of his childhood: learning to juggle, joining a circus, living in Guatemala and Mexico and many others are the more interesting parts of the story. The chapters dealing with his addiction felt vaguely familiar as if I had read them before, which is partly true: any story about addiction tends to have similarities. Towards the end of the book a shift of interest evolves where the stories of his childhood (by this point his high school years) have less interest as his obvious need to kick heroin for good become more and more important.
Having recently read another memoir about drug addiction and crazy family life it seems this story has been told many times. However this particular one was written well, which does not always happen and was able to inspire continued reading.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Review #1 - The Mysterious Benedict Society
As promised here is my first book review:
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart (2007), Audience: tweens.
The Mysterious Benedict Society instantly calls to mind Harry Potter and The Series of Unfortunate Events. Reynard (Reynie) Muldoon is a gifted child living in the local orphanage. Due to his high intelligence he is educated not with the other orphans but with a tutor. While he and his tutor are having breakfast he notices an advertisement in the local paper for "gifted child[ren] looking for special opportunites." This ad lead him to a series of tests that he and three other similarly orphaned (or runaway) children pass.
These four become the Mysterious Benedict Society led by Mr. Benedict who sends them on a spy mission to foil the plans of a mad scientist. Each of the four children have unique qualities that help them along the way. Reynie is the natural leader, George "Sticky" Washington remembers everything he reads and can read in many languages but cannot speak them, Kate Wetherall with the help of her bucket full of equipment can get into or out of any situation, and Constance Contraire is very stubborn.
While the tropes may be familiar the story is definitely not boring or usual. This is a story full of highjinks and adventure and with two follow-up novels is sure to become a beloved series and perfect for the reader who read all Harry Potter and Series of Unfortunate Events and is looking for something similar.
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart (2007), Audience: tweens.
The Mysterious Benedict Society instantly calls to mind Harry Potter and The Series of Unfortunate Events. Reynard (Reynie) Muldoon is a gifted child living in the local orphanage. Due to his high intelligence he is educated not with the other orphans but with a tutor. While he and his tutor are having breakfast he notices an advertisement in the local paper for "gifted child[ren] looking for special opportunites." This ad lead him to a series of tests that he and three other similarly orphaned (or runaway) children pass.
These four become the Mysterious Benedict Society led by Mr. Benedict who sends them on a spy mission to foil the plans of a mad scientist. Each of the four children have unique qualities that help them along the way. Reynie is the natural leader, George "Sticky" Washington remembers everything he reads and can read in many languages but cannot speak them, Kate Wetherall with the help of her bucket full of equipment can get into or out of any situation, and Constance Contraire is very stubborn.
While the tropes may be familiar the story is definitely not boring or usual. This is a story full of highjinks and adventure and with two follow-up novels is sure to become a beloved series and perfect for the reader who read all Harry Potter and Series of Unfortunate Events and is looking for something similar.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Conferencing
In the past week I was lucky enough to attend two library conference, at least in part. I went to one program at the Association for Jewish Libraries and spent two full days at the American Library Association conference.
The program I attended at the Association for Jewish Libraries conference was about German libraries' (specifically the Berlin State Library) possession of books that were formerly owned by Jews prior to the Holocaust. In the case of the Berlin State Library they are trying to find the past owners of these books (or their heirs) and return them. While I feel this is a noble deed it is creating hours of research and sometimes does not gain any return. The director of the Berlin State Library was the speaker at this program and she said she will not keep any stolen books in the library. The problem with this statement is that if a library were to truly uphold that statement there would be no antique books in the library because at one point or other they were all stolen.
Also as a Jew who has grown up with the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and World War II thrown at me from every angle I am tired of hearing about it. There is more to Judaism than the Holocaust and there comes a point where we need to find a happy medium between remembering what happened and moving on. Perhaps it would be better for the Berlin State Library to put a bookplate each "stolen" book to commemorate how it came to the library and make a note in the online catalog that corresponds with the bookplate. This allows the memory of these books and their previous owners to live on but also allows us to move on.
I was able to spend more time at the ALA Conference because it was held over the weekend. I attended sessions on Saturday and Sunday as well as visiting the exhibit hall. This was my first ALA Conference and I was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer amount of librarians that were all in one place.
Each day I was there I spent the mornings in the exhibition hall and the afternoons in programs. The exhibits are full of anything a library might need from book publishers to shelves to put them on. I spent most of my time in the publisher exhibits seeing what was new in children's and YA books. I ended up taking home about 20 new books, some for free and some for a nominal price, many of them were also signed by the author. I would have loved to spend more time in the technology pavilion but since I was not working in a library I did not have a technological need that needed to be met.
The two programs I attended were sponsored in part by the Office of Intellectual Freedom. The first one was called Libraries, Librarians, and America's War on Sex and talked primarily about how difficult it is to educate children about sex because a large part of America wants to demonize sex. The book It's Perfectly Normal was used as an example. Many adults believe this book is pornographic because it shows drawings of naked men and women with different body types and at different ages. The point of these drawings (really cartoons) is to demonstrate how everyone's body is a little different and that is ok.
The second program was titled Why is Tango So Scary? and was about the brilliant children's book And Tango Makes Three. This book is a true story about two male penguins from the Central Park Zoo that fall in love and raise a penguin baby (Tango). The couple that wrote it was at the panel (along with their own baby girl) as well as some librarians who have experience dealing with outraged parents who try and attack this book. GLBTQ children's books have always been challenged but this book in particular gets a lot of challenges. Perhaps it is because it is a real story or maybe because it is about penguins and this shows that homosexuality is in nature and not a choice. But most likely it is because it is a book that is about a happy gay family that does not in any way depict sex, which is perhaps even harder for the homophobes to deal with than one that does depict sex.
I attended the GLBT Roundtable Social on Saturday which was also part of the ALA Convention. Here I met two wonderful YA librarians who were fairly new librarians. They were very encouraging about my quest to find a job and I was very excited that they read Garrett's column in Public Libraries magazine (which makes them a-ok in my book). The three of us also got together to meet for lunch the following day, it was really fantastic to make some friends.
I have decided that with all of the free books I got last weekend I would use this time to read and learn to write book reviews (a good skill for a librarian) which I will post here for all to see. So hopefully I will start updated this blog a bit more and have some useful information for others to read. If I can't be a librarian in a library I will try to be a librarian online.
The program I attended at the Association for Jewish Libraries conference was about German libraries' (specifically the Berlin State Library) possession of books that were formerly owned by Jews prior to the Holocaust. In the case of the Berlin State Library they are trying to find the past owners of these books (or their heirs) and return them. While I feel this is a noble deed it is creating hours of research and sometimes does not gain any return. The director of the Berlin State Library was the speaker at this program and she said she will not keep any stolen books in the library. The problem with this statement is that if a library were to truly uphold that statement there would be no antique books in the library because at one point or other they were all stolen.
Also as a Jew who has grown up with the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and World War II thrown at me from every angle I am tired of hearing about it. There is more to Judaism than the Holocaust and there comes a point where we need to find a happy medium between remembering what happened and moving on. Perhaps it would be better for the Berlin State Library to put a bookplate each "stolen" book to commemorate how it came to the library and make a note in the online catalog that corresponds with the bookplate. This allows the memory of these books and their previous owners to live on but also allows us to move on.
I was able to spend more time at the ALA Conference because it was held over the weekend. I attended sessions on Saturday and Sunday as well as visiting the exhibit hall. This was my first ALA Conference and I was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer amount of librarians that were all in one place.
Each day I was there I spent the mornings in the exhibition hall and the afternoons in programs. The exhibits are full of anything a library might need from book publishers to shelves to put them on. I spent most of my time in the publisher exhibits seeing what was new in children's and YA books. I ended up taking home about 20 new books, some for free and some for a nominal price, many of them were also signed by the author. I would have loved to spend more time in the technology pavilion but since I was not working in a library I did not have a technological need that needed to be met.
The two programs I attended were sponsored in part by the Office of Intellectual Freedom. The first one was called Libraries, Librarians, and America's War on Sex and talked primarily about how difficult it is to educate children about sex because a large part of America wants to demonize sex. The book It's Perfectly Normal was used as an example. Many adults believe this book is pornographic because it shows drawings of naked men and women with different body types and at different ages. The point of these drawings (really cartoons) is to demonstrate how everyone's body is a little different and that is ok.
The second program was titled Why is Tango So Scary? and was about the brilliant children's book And Tango Makes Three. This book is a true story about two male penguins from the Central Park Zoo that fall in love and raise a penguin baby (Tango). The couple that wrote it was at the panel (along with their own baby girl) as well as some librarians who have experience dealing with outraged parents who try and attack this book. GLBTQ children's books have always been challenged but this book in particular gets a lot of challenges. Perhaps it is because it is a real story or maybe because it is about penguins and this shows that homosexuality is in nature and not a choice. But most likely it is because it is a book that is about a happy gay family that does not in any way depict sex, which is perhaps even harder for the homophobes to deal with than one that does depict sex.
I attended the GLBT Roundtable Social on Saturday which was also part of the ALA Convention. Here I met two wonderful YA librarians who were fairly new librarians. They were very encouraging about my quest to find a job and I was very excited that they read Garrett's column in Public Libraries magazine (which makes them a-ok in my book). The three of us also got together to meet for lunch the following day, it was really fantastic to make some friends.
I have decided that with all of the free books I got last weekend I would use this time to read and learn to write book reviews (a good skill for a librarian) which I will post here for all to see. So hopefully I will start updated this blog a bit more and have some useful information for others to read. If I can't be a librarian in a library I will try to be a librarian online.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)