"Hurricane Dancers" by Margarita Engle

It must be verse novel month. Award-winner Margarita Engle has done it again with this lovely verse novel about the first pirate ship crash in the Caribbean. Filled with the voices of a plethora of characters, it seems to center on Quebrado, a young boy, "broken," who is a slave on the pirate ship. There is the arrogant captain, his equally noxious captive (the Governor of Venezuela), native peoples on the island of Cuba and a love match that cannot be denied. With the exception of Quebrado, most of the characters are based in fact. It is set in the early 1500s. A liberal set of notes at the end give context to the history and the culture.

The book moves quickly, as most verse novels do, and the poetry is rich and pretty, reflecting both the emotional tone and the setting. It is well-told and engaging. As a reader, I yearned to "fly" with Quebrado. Minor quibbles include a couple of poems that seemed incomplete ... I read them over several times and couldn't discern meaning. The other concern is how caricatured the villains of the piece were. It's possible that Ojeda and Talavera were simply horrific human beings (history certainly supports this) but when you are reading internal monologue, it's hard to imagine anyone thinking in such a two-dimensional way. We will never know. In any case, it is an excellent book bringing light to a different time and place, and it is worth getting swept away.

"The Strange Case of Origami Yoda" by Tom Angleberger

Adorable. Fun. Smart. Unexpected. Refreshing. Great. Inspiring. Awesome.

What a terrific little book. A fast read, this tells the story of a middle school loser with a finger puppet and the geeks and nerds around him who seek guidance from said finger puppet. The presentation is terrific. Set up as "case files" on the mystery of origami Yoda, each chapter comes from a different student perspective. The stories are typed in an old-style font, with seeming "handwritten" comments at the end of each section. The background looks a lot like the crumpled paper found in every kids' backpack and the doodles throughout give a nice sense of context.

Do they believe? Well, yes and no. Will you? Read and find out.

"Under the Mesquite" by Guadalupe Garcia McCall

I've been so blessed with verse novels. It wasn't a format that I ever thought I would like -- but then I read Virginia Euwer Wolff and Sonya Sones, and I was drawn in. This book, winner of the Pura Belpre Writing Medal and a Morris Honor for 2012, echoes my favorite verse novel writer, Karen Hesse. Like good haiku, the economy of language portrays a richness that can never be found in prose. In this story, spanning both years and nations, we see the coming-of-age of Lupita, a young girl who revels in her Mexican heritage but is American in her dreams of independence. The oldest of eight, she struggles through high school as her mother's cancer decimates a warm, loving woman who is also her best friend. The roses in their Texas garden symbolize her mother's beauty, but the stubborn mesquite that towers over the flowers show Lupita's determination to hold life together despite overwhelming odds. Words flow across pages like the "mighty Rio Grande" with such strength and color that you can't help but turn the page and see what happens next, even as you ache to soak up the stunning images portrayed by these seemingly simple phrases. It is a book to be fully savored -- find time to read it without interruption (difficult in my life). It is also a book you could read and re-read, finding new insights each time. Brava, Ms. McCall.

"Dead End in Norvelt" by Jack Gantos

I had heard Jack Gantos read from this book at the National Book Festival last fall, but hadn’t gotten around to it before it won the Newbery Award. When I asked colleagues about it, the universal response was “ehh.” My response is not so much “ehh” as a plain old “didn’t like it.” Some of my issues were based on expectations. I’ve read the Joey Pigza books and liked them a lot. I was expecting another laugh-out-loud fiction book. Instead, I got a thinly-veiled memoir with few ha-has. For me, there was an occasional smirk, but no laughs. The lack of humor, however, was not my biggest complaint. As mentioned, the book is categorized as fiction but reads like memoir. The story isn’t really progressive, rather, it is a series of snapshots of a summer when Jack was grounded. As a result, there are many threads left hanging and not a lot of growth or closure. The “voice” of the book often feels like an adult reflecting back, rather than an 11 year-old actually experiencing it, which drags down the narrative even further. I should have read this book in a matter of days, but it took me weeks because I didn’t feel any pressing need to “turn the page and see what happens next.” The various endings are highly contrived, and don’t fit with an otherwise realistic feel for the book. ***Spoiler Alert*** -- Jack’s father abandons his plans for a fallout shelter (but we are never clear as to why), a random murder plot is thrown in demoting one character to the level of a mustachioed villain, a beloved character “goes to sleep” at the end (is tomorrow another day or is she dying?) and there is a preposterous plan to fly a crop-duster plane from Pennsylvania to Florida (with how many stops??). Even Fantasy and Science Fiction books can have believability if they are consistent in the worlds they create. As a reader, this world had too many random elements I couldn’t reconcile. There was also the issue of connecting to the characters. Jack has an almost flat emotional affect. He reacts the same way to almost every event. Many of the other characters felt two-dimensional to me – there is a tomboy, a pretty girl, sniping parents and a cranky old man. Jack’s mother talks about how sniping is a sign of love, but I didn’t buy it. The parent relationship felt more George and Martha than Tony and Ziva (yes, I’m mixing classic literature with a pop culture reference). The one character I fully enjoyed was not the protagonist, but his odd-ball neighbor, Miss Volker. In many ways, the book feels like an homage to this woman. She is colorful, interesting and irascible. The scenes where she is dictating history-filled obituaries to Jack are the best parts of the story, IMHO. Given that this is a Newbery, teachers are likely to flock to it. It’s the kind of story teachers love and kids, well … We will see if others find gems within its pages that eluded me.