"Raymie Nightingale" by Kate DiCamillo

Kate DiCamillo hits it out of the park again, in my humble opinion, with this very odd little book, which is about everything and nothing all at once.  Raymie Clarke's father has just taken off, leaving her mother depressed and Raymie with a plan.  She will win a local beauty contest, get her picture in the paper, and her father will see the picture and call her.  First, however, she needs to learn how to twirl a baton.  The funny thing is, at the baton class, which goes bizarrely astray, she meets two other girls and they end up having a journey or two -- physically and psychologically.  As part of her application for the contest, Raymie needs to do a good deed, and that is where the story really lies.  "Why were good deeds such murky things?" she cries at one point.  Leave it to Kate DiCamillo to write a book which is innocent, simple and accessible but also layered, complex, symbolic and spiritual.  I sped through the short chapters, listening to Raymie's plaintive voice throughout, reaching for something she cannot name and feeling her soul rise and fall with each triumph and loss.  At ten, the character is at a magical age where she is still a child, but a growing awareness of the world is beginning to intrude.  It all actually ties together, but it isn't what you might expect.  A gentle, refreshing, quiet book which will make you think.  Brava.

"It Ain't So Awful, Falafel" by Firoozeh Dumas

Sigh.  Here we go.  Again.  Another "fictionalized memoir".  As readers know, I don't like these.  An author who writes a fictionalized version of themselves in a teen book does everything a good writer should not.  The events are idealized, the plot pat, the characters two-dimensional.  And so it is with this book.  Zomorod, a sixth grade Iranian transplant to Newport Beach in 1978, wants to be American so badly that she tells everyone her name is Cindy -- like Cindy Brady.  She is embarrassed by her parents, her culture, the family's poverty, and this is the overriding theme for 300 of the 377 pages.  She whines.  And whines.  She doesn't get the puka shell necklace she wants, and she whines.  Not much happens, with each chapter being a little vignette of Cindy/Zomorod's life as time passes.  The Iranian revolution, under Khomeni, is just irritating at first, as it draws attention to Cindy/Zomorod's differences.  Eventually, we get a teensy bit of character growth.  People start being mean to the family because they are Iranian, and Cindy/Zomorod tunes into the fact that she is lucky to have her family, and grateful that things (of course) work out okay.  Young girls will love the book.  It's a fun, shallow read and reflects all the desires of your average middle school student to fit in and make friends, but "real" didn't even cross my mind while reading it.  If you want a "real" book about a young girl dealing with the struggles of Iran in the late 1970s, read Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis."

PS -- Odd note here.  Ms. Dumas spells out her parent's speech phonetically throughout the book, highlighting their accents.  If anyone else did this, they would get called on for stereotyping or worse.  Why is it that people from a given culture are allowed to diss that culture?  Sorry, this one doesn't go into my file of "diverse books".

"My Life With the Liars" by Caela Carter

In your average YA novel, the parents are either absent or evil, and the teen protagonist has to learn to rise above and find a way out.  This book turns that narrative on its head, with Zylynn, an "almost 13 year old" starting out with a great family -- one she rejects at every turn, since they took her away from her home, a limited existence in an Arizona cult.  Told in first person narrative, Zylynn's voice is strong and compelling.  Her natural confusion at a world turned upside down is aching for the reader, and gave the book a page-turning quotient.  I read the whole thing in one day, hoping that Zylynn would learn to accept the love and healing directed at her.  Think the story is improbable?  Think again.  Look at recent news stories of failed attempts by the US Government to remove children in a very similar compound.  The lines between religious freedom and child protection are fragile, and sadly, they allow many children like the fictional Zylynn to be abused.  This isn't a dark tale, however, it is one of promise, and of family.  Enjoy.

"A Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, A Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home" by Steve Pemberton

Another one of those memoirs about a horrific childhood, this one is both well-written and engaging.  A video of Mr. Pemberton speaking (http://frontrow.bc.edu/program/pemberton/) illustrates an interesting point ... the abuse he suffered as a child in the foster care system isn't actually his main story.  For him, as a biracial child with no knowledge of his past, the more compelling part of his personal narrative was to find out where he belonged.  The answers, which take up the second half of the book, are more complex than he ever imagined.  In an era where we talk a lot about "resilience" this is a story of a young man who had his focus on the right things.  He was determined and a survivor.  The tale unfolds with a certain amount of humbleness.  Mr. Pemberton realizes, along his path, that he was "graced" in some ways that those around him were not.  In the end, one might say he finds home within himself. 


While satisfying and a good read, I have some minor bones to pick.  The publisher is the Christian publishing arm of HarperCollins, and, while it is not an evangelical novel, in the final chapters there is a significant emphasis on God, and that may make some readers somewhat uncomfortable.  Also, even though it is a major publisher, the quality of the book is poor -- the pages thin, the typeface old-school.  Editing, also, could be improved, as there are occasional jumps from chapter to chapter, a break in flow that seems clunky. 


All that being said, this was another one of those books which was a difficult read on a personal level, as I recognized much of what he said, having experiences similar, at times, to his.  Unhappy homes are far more frequent than many think.  A book like this does what I always wanted to do as an adult -- it lets people who live through this know they are not alone. 

"The Red Pencil" by Andrea Davis Pinkney, Illustrated by Shane W. Evans

This powerful verse novel is evocative of both "Caminar" and "Sold", with a young child in a different culture growing up in a simple, gentle world, then that is ripped away by various circumstances.  In this case, author Pinkney chronicles the genocide of Darfur in southern Sudan in 2003 and 2004.  The poems are delicious and flow beautifully from one to another.  Ms. Pinkney's ability to capture everyday life is obvious from the get-go in a couplet from one of the first pieces: "Words flap from her/like giddy chickens escaping their pen."  Later in the book, the images and words mingle to create a strong feeling of grief as Amira's world collapses.  The images, too, are smart, in that they are not overdrawn.  The idea is that these pictures are ones created by Amira, not a professional artist, and they help to convey her tale without overwhelming the story.  Like in "Caminar" the words begin to fall apart, drifting away from each other, as war enters the village of the young girl.  Amira is hugely dimensional, and it is in this that she jumps off the page as a real person, even though she is a fiction.  It was a lovely book, and one that would have had me reaching for tissues if I hadn't been reading it in public (the "Sudan Flowers" are, in actuality, plastic garbage bags -- which is heart-wrenching in the telling of it), but there was one thing that bugged, a bit.  The ending was abrupt, and circumspect.  It came in a matter of pages and I can't tell you exactly what it meant, or what happened.  Aside from this, the book is a treasure which should touch students who read it, and Ms. Pinkney is successful, I think, in her stated goal of helping kids understand this tragedy without overwhelming them.  The afterword and notes are very helpful to those who wish to learn more about the story, and this culture.  A "human", touching tale, overall.

"Leviathan" by Scott Westerfeld

Because this is Westerfeld, it is awesome, because he is awesome.  This also may be one of the best of his works I have read (Uglies, Peeps).  But.  It can be hard to get into, and it takes a certain commitment.  Here's the thing -- Scott Westerfeld has created this incredible Steampunk/alternative history version of World War I.  At first, I was like, "WHAT is going on?" but then, as I pushed into it, I started getting it.  Reading the afterward before the book -- not a bad idea, as it gives you some context, and my WWI knowledge was a tad rusty.  But that ain't all.  Westerfeld includes Evolutionary Science, Feminism, a drop of sea-faring adventure, along with warcraft technology, in this complex, layered novel.  As an American, his "dialect English" for one of the main characters was so accurate I had to double-check to see if he really, really wasn't born in the UK.  Westerfeld's writing ability is always strong -- his work is rich, lyric and very visual, but here, his world-building is exquisite.  Nearly everything in this wild tale, told in alternating chapters by two protagonists, is alien.  It got better when I just kind of let go and accepted all the ideas coming at me which I wasn't wholly familiar with (and thank goodness for the detailed and lovely pencil drawings throughout).  Eventually, it all made sense, although it did have me scrambling for Wikipedia to look stuff up by the end.  The first of a trilogy, you WILL want to read the next two.  As far as I am concerned, this guy can't write a bad book.