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Chopsticks
Jun. 27th, 2012 02:35 pm
Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral. This is a story told mostly in pictures which is curiously shelved as a regular novel rather than a graphic novel. That’s maybe because it’s told in photographs rather than drawings, though drawings and paintings that the characters make also show up. There are also programs, instant message conversations, homemade mix albums, and Youtube links (which I didn’t have time to look at), with just a touch of actual spoken dialogue. (If you buy it as an iPad app instead of a print book, the links are live and let you click right through.) In that way, it’s slick and modern and cutting edge of fiction, kind of. The story, though, is a twist on the age-old story of lovers whose families don’t approve. Glory is a 16 year old piano prodigy, famous for improvising mixes of classical pieces and modern rock on the stage. She is known, puzzlingly, as the “Brecht of the Piano” and has her first world tour lined up. But somehow, despite her father’s strict practice schedule, she finds time to fall in love with the boy next door, a new immigrant from Argentina called Francisco at home and Frank for Anglos. He’s an aspiring artist, but failing at school, mostly because he doesn’t care enough about America to put in the effort. With Glory, though, he is all sweetness and consideration. Glory’s father, however, sees nothing but a bum and tries to sever contact between Glory and Frank. The separation leads to madness – the less contact Glory is allowed, the less she can think about anything else. This directly impacts her on the stage, as she starts playing nothing but variations on “Chopsticks”. The tour is cancelled; she is sent to the Golden Hands Rest Home for Young Prodigies. The book begins with the ending: Glory has gone missing from the home, and no one knows where she is. It looked to me like she found a way to rejoin Frank, now 18 and able to return to Argentina. However, the back cover implies ambiguity and a potentially untrustworthy narrator. I’m not sure if that’s the authors being hopeful or me not having the patience to figure out puzzles, reading as I do in my chronically sleep-deprived state. I’d be happy to hear thoughts from anyone else who’s read this; otherwise, it’s an interesting scrapbook-style book that lets the reader put the story together.
The Piper’s Son by Melina Marchetta. Read by Michael Finney. 
Jinx: Little Jinx Grows Up Written by J. Torres. Pencils by Rick Burchett. Inks by Terry Austin. 
12 Things to Do Before You Crash and Burn by James Proimos Herc was nicknamed Hercules by his father when he was six. But his father has just died in a plane crash. He was a popular self-help expert, loved by his audience, but a terrible father. Herc, definitely up there on the difficult teen scale, gives this eulogy at the funeral: “He was an ass. My father was a complete and total ass.” Following this, and no doubt further trying incidents at home, his mother ships Herc off to his uncle in Baltimore for two weeks. In the train on the way there, he sits by a Beautiful, Unattainable Woman who is reading Winnie the Pooh. When she leaves the book behind, he determines to track her down to return it. Meanwhile, his uncle, busy working long hours, gives him, like the Hercules of legend, twelve tasks to accomplish: Choose a mission. Find the best pizza joint in town. Clean out the garage. Muck the stalls at Riverbend farm. Read a complete book under a tree. Go to a place of worship and pray. Go on seven job interviews. Spend the day thinking big thoughts. Write them down. Eat a meal with a stranger. Make your uncle something. Recite a poem at Blake’s Coffee shop Midnight Poetry Reading. Complete your mission. Somehow, the force of his uncle’s personality is enough that Herc goes with it, forming most of the book. 
Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner. Read by Jeff Woodman Most of this book is told in the first person, narrated by Sophos. He was in The Thief, which I apparently don’t remember as well as I thought, because I didn’t remember him at all. Other characters that I remember from the other books do come in, though – the King and Queen of Attolia and the Queen of Eddis. Sophos is a young man exiled to an island by his uncle, the King of Sounis. He never wanted to be the heir to the kingdom, and knows that he is a disappointment both to his father and to his uncle. Then he is kidnapped and sold into slavery. It is only when he learns of treason against the king that he makes up his mind to escape and try to claim his kingdom from the Mede Empire and from the rebel barons. Turner does her usual excellent job of mixing the political with real human characters. I didn’t find that the plot had that same kind of unexpected twist that I found with the first couple, though there was certainly plenty of plotting and double-crossing. There are also the workings of the gods, which in realistic fashion are never entirely clear. The narrator, Jeff Woodman, has a perfect voice for a boy coming into manhood, which works perfectly for most of the book. He shares the downfall of many male narrators, unconvincing female voices. They either sounded very young or ancient, and he made the odd choice of giving the love interest the old lady voice. Fans of Turners other books will want to make sure to read this. Newcomers might want to start at the beginning – it’s a series well worth getting into.
Going Bovine by 
Smile by Raina Telgemeier. Smile is the true story of a girl navigating middle and high school with the dreaded braces. Already somewhat insecure, Raina is horrified when two of her front teeth get knocked out. The solution is oral surgery, braces, and even headgear at night. How can she even have a chance at looking cool? Along the way, she deals with band, an earthquake, starts to get interested in boys, and navigates the decidedly treacherous waters of friendship. Though it’s solidly set in San Francisco in the early 1990s, anyone who’s experienced middle or high school will find common ground with Raina. Here, the graphic novel format really helped the setting stay in the background while the characters stood out. This is a disarmingly honest story of a journey from insecurity to self-discovery, with braces. It is well deserving of its recent Eisner award. 
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld Australian YA author Westerfeld of Uglies fame takes a turn toward a steampunk alternate history with this first in a trilogy. The year is 1914. Prince Alek, son of the Archduke Ferdinand, is woken in the middle of the night by his tutor, who takes him for what he thinks is a midnight training ride in one of the two-legged walkers that Austria-Hungary is becoming famous for. Except that it turns out not to be training. His parents have just been assasinated, his people have turned against him, and Alek must run for his life. Meanwhile, Deryn Sharp is posing as a boy so that she can join the British Air Service, where genetically engineered ecosystems of animals create large dirigible-like ships that float through the air. Unlike Jacky Faber, Deryn finds the constant jockeying for position among the midshipmen wearing, but she is already experienced in the air, brilliant and courageous. She ends up serving on the Leviathan, a very large airship that is carrying Dr. Nora Darwin Barlow and some precious cargo on an urgent diplomatic mission to the Ottoman Empire. The world is on the brink of war between the Darwinists and the Clankers – can two young people from opposite sides prevent it? The action is non-stop, the characters a delight, and the technology intriguing. We have it in teen, but so far I haven’t seen anything in to make it inappropriate for middle graders, while it’s deep enough to work for adults as well. I’ve already devoured the first two books and am now waiting for book three to come out in September.
Zombies vs. Unicorns edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier. Zombies are in right now. Really in, and I personally really don’t like them. That’s why I’m so glad that this anthology of short stories has come out, so that everyone can see once and for all why unicorns are so much cooler than zombies. That would be my way of looking at it, anyway. The book is geared towards a teen audience and has twelve stories, six each zombie and unicorn, each team headed by a separate editor. Here are the authors that I’ve heard of: Garth Nix, Naomi Novik, Maureen Johnson, Diana Peterfreund, Scott Westerfeld, Meg Cabot and Libba Bray. These are very good authors, though I admit that the only zombie story I made it all the way through was Alaya Dawn Johnson’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, and that only because the opening comments described it as funny. Every story is preceded by an argument between the two editors on the background of the story, tidbits about zombies or unicorns (depending) and the relative merits of zombies and unicorns. Even when I didn’t read the story, the notes were priceless. A thoughtful feature of this book is that every story is marked with a zombie or unicorn icon so if you are a diehard member of one team or another, as it turns out I am, you can avoid the stories from the other side. Some of the stories are dark, like Kathleen Duey’s “The Third Virgin”. Some, like Naomi Novik’s “Purity Test” (what if the girl the unicorn picks isn’t really a virgin?) and Meg Cabot’s “Princess Prettypants”, where the unicorn literally farts rainbows, are hilarious. I hear the zombie stories were pretty good, too. 
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. Read by Jeff Woodman This has been on my reading list for a while, though, as our teen librarian thought I would enjoy it, and she has Magic Powers regarding knowing what books I will like. Our hero, former child prodigy Colin Singleton, is heart-broken, feeling like he has a hole in his gut. He has just been dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine. His best friend, Hassan, who doesn’t believe in dating at all, takes him on a road trip to help him recover. They wind up in tiny Gutshot, Tennessee, where they are hired to help with an oral history project for the factory there. They make friends with the owner’s daughter, Lindsay Leigh Wells, while Colin tries to make a mathematical formula to predict the future of relationships. Green makes the book thoughtful and very very funny, and I loved every minute of listening to it (except for one or two minutes when I knew that Colin was about to do something really stupid.)
White Cat by Holly Black The more I read of Holly Black, the more a couple of themes come across: Magic is real and scary. Family is not to be trusted. This book is set in a slightly different modern-day than her other books. Teenaged Cassel wakes up on the snowy roof of his boarding-school dorm room, knowing that his cover is blown. He’s been trying to pass for normal, even though he comes from a family of curse workers, all of whom work for one of the big five crime families. Cassel himself isn’t a worker, but con games are in his blood. Even lying low at boarding school – trying to escape some truly dark memories – Cassel is supporting himself as a bookie, running betting schemes all over the school. Now that the school sees him as a danger to himself, he’s sent to stay with his family until he can get a doctor’s consent to go back home. Once with his family again, the plot thickens. His oldest brother, a strong man for the crime family, is clearly up to something, and his young wife is suffering from some kind of spell. His next oldest and favorite brother is losing large amounts of his memory – is someone doing memory work on him, or is he doing such large amounts of memory work that the blowback is tearing holes in his own memory? All magic is called cursing here, and all the magic Cassel sees is used for cursing, controlled by the crime families ever since it became illegal shortly after Prohibition. Then, at his mother’s house (abandoned until she gets out of jail), he finds a white cat, the same white cat that he was following in the dream which ended up with him on the roof. In the dream, the cat’s name was Lila, the same name as his childhood best friend, the daughter of the head of the crime family; Lila, around whom his terrible memories center. Cassel needs to figure what is going on, and decide if there is anyone he can trust or if there is such a thing as real friendship. The plot is full of twists in the main plot, and has some nice subplots as well. The overall tone is dark and sarcastic, the plot fast-moving, and Cassel a likeable character despite his repeated assurances to the reader that he is not a good person. Fans of Holly Black’s other work will enjoy this, of course. The urban setting calls to mind Charles de Lint, though Black’s work is less dreamy and much faster paced, while the crime world fantasy is reminiscent of Stephen Brust’s Jhereg series, but less comedy than some of those works. It’s good stuff, and the cover makes it look like there will be more. 
The Entymological Tales of Augustus T. Percival: Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone by Dene LowThis one I picked up just based on the title. It’s funny and light, set just after the turn of the last century. Petronella, a plucky British lass, is just about to have her coming out party, having just turned sixteen. However, two unfortunate events occur. First, her uncle Augustus accidentally swallows a beetle and develops an insatiable and most improper appetite for bugs. Secondly, two foreign dignitaries who showed up at her coming-out party uninvited are kidnapped from it. Despite rival factions of eccentric relatives trying to prevent her from doing so, Petronella sets out to solve both of these mysteries. She is aided by her best friend Jane and Jane’s brother James, a beautiful specimen of manhood. (If only James would notice Petronella as anything but a younger sister! Alas!) Petronella and her Uncle Augustus are both charming characters whom I would love to see more of. This is a romp for middle school and up both as historical fiction and for the mystery, at an age level where mysteries are in short supply.
Front and Center by Catherine Gilbert Murdock I know that I wrote about 
Under the Jolly Roger by L.A. Meyer. Read by Katherine Kellgren Several years ago, I read the first book in this series, Bloody Jack, a rip-roaring tale of adventure on the high seas, as Mary “Jacky” Faber, street orphan, disguises herself as a boy so as to make an honest living as a ship’s boy. I read it in print at the time, which was fun. Now my love and I are rediscovering the series on audiobook. I think that someday soon I will have to write Katherine Kellgren a fan letter, because she is such an amazing reader. The books are full of people and accents from all over, from Jacky’s Cockney to Irish to Jamaican and American, which Kellgren brings beautifully to life. There are also a number of folk songs, and Kellgren not only has a fine voice for singing them, but also manages to make the different character’s singing voices different. This series is winning her all the major audio book awards, and rightly so, but I also loved her work on the Enola Holmes series, where Enola putting on a Cockney accent still sounds different from Jacky in this one.
The Princess and the Bear by Mette Ivie Harrison Here’s one I grabbed randomly off the teen new book shelf, rather than finding through reviews or from being previously familiar with the author. It turns out to be a second book, and so is somewhat mistitled to match better with the first book, The Princess and the Hound. Really, this book is about a hound (who was for a while in the previous book turned into a princess, and who becomes human partway through this book) and a bear, who really used to be a prince. If you got all that, I think that The Prince and the Hound would have been a more accurate title. They have been companions for a long time, living peacefully in the forest, and the chapters alternate perspectives between these two characters. As the story opens, the hound meets a cat-man who is spreading magical and literal death in the forest – unmagic. The hound and the bear reluctantly decide that the only way to stop this is to visit the Wild Man in the mountains, who first turned the prince into a bear a couple centuries previously. The bear who was a prince has a bear come to realize how terrible he was at being human, so that he is ashamed and even more reluctant when the Wild Man says that the only way to stop the problem is to go back in time to when he was prince and try to undo some of the harm that he did. The premise does not come off quite as convoluted as it sounds, though there is a bit of set-up. Anyway, the hound and Chala, when she is a woman, reflect a lot on the various natures of humans and animals, how they are alike and how different. The Bear/Prince, on the other hand, thinks about the nature of magic, gifts, and power. If the ending felt a little sudden and tidy to me, it’s still both exciting and thoughtful. Animal lovers especially will enjoy this tale of animals, humans and magic.
Ash by Malinda Lo It’s fairy tale time! Here is Cinderella re-envisioned both more modern and more magical. It’s set on the edge of Woods, and there are rumors of Faeries in the wood. The modern Philosophers discourage belief in them, but the old Greenwitches still do. Our heroine Aisling’s mother was once apprentice to the local Greenwitch, but Aisling’s education in magic is limited to the fairy tales her mother tells her. (A note for those not familiar with Gaelic: Aisling is pronounced ASH-ling, so that Ash is a natural nickname.) Then her mother dies, and Aisling is grief-stricken. She takes to spending all her time on her mother’s grave, much to the concern of her father and the local Greenwitch. They’re afraid she’ll attract the Fairies, but she is too young and too absorbed in her grief to care. He remarries, probably hoping that new sisters and a new mother will help. And then he dies, debt-ridden, and the new stepmother, never overly kind, takes out her disappointment and anger on Ash. They move closer to the capital, hoping for a rich husband for the oldest stepsister, and Ash is forced to take the place of the household servants to repay her father’s debt. But all this time, Ash has been sneaking to the Woods whenever she can, occasionally meeting with a handsome but eerie Fairy lord. In spite of the new Philosophers, the Hunt, led by the King’s Huntress, is an ancient tradition still kept, and the town where Ash now lives is the starting point for the Hunt. Gradually, during her occasional escapes into the forest, Ash comes to know the young Huntress, Kaisa, who teaches her to track and ride. Increasingly, Ash is pulled between the inhuman and powerful attraction to her fairy lord and the complete escape from the human world that he promises and her attraction to the Huntress. 
Fire by Kristin Cashore. Read by Xanthe Elbrick Fire is set a few decades before Graceling on the other side of the nearly impenetrable mountains. It was a little slow to pick up, as we start with the back story of the odious Lek, the villain in Graceling, then peaceful times with our new heroine at home. This side of the mountain, there are no Gracelings. Instead, there are monsters, especially beautiful, brightly colored and bloodthirsty animals and people, which can mesmerize victims with their beauty and call victims to them with their minds. Fire, so named for her vivid hair, is the last human monster. She tried to live below notice, making up for the life of her wild monster father, Canceril, who as adviser to the previous king, deliberately let the kingdom sink into chaos and lawlessness, now verging on civil war. Fire struggles with her feelings of mixed love and loathing for her now-deceased father. She lives near her adopted father, Brocker, a former commander, and his son Archer, her best friend and sometime lover. Fire can see into minds, though she tries not to, and as her story opens, she is accidentally shot by a strange man whose mind is filled with a strange fog and who is shot himself before he can be questioned. Still, somehow, the story is slowish, until at the request of the king, Fire journeys to King City to help with the questioning of an especially troublesome prisoner. She agrees, despite the king’s brother’s violent suspicion that she is only going to take over the king’s mind and continue her father’s work. Briggen, though only a few years her senior, is commander of the king’s armies and second in line for the throne. Now Fire finds herself wrestling with the moral limits of her powers, trying to keep from falling in love with someone who hates her, and enmeshed in trying to stop multiple plans to topple the kingdom, some more obvious than others. Once again, Cashore brings us vivid characters with real problems, both personal and political. Xanthe Elbrick does a fine job with the narration, though her male voices sounded a little fuzzy to me. Still, this is a wonderful story for reading and listening to, and I look forward to hearing more from Cashore. I hope she is able to continue either Katsa or Fire’s stories at some point, as neither one feels as if her story should be done.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Read by the author. I’m guessing that most of my readers don’t need me to tell them to read Neil Gaiman. That, and this book winning both the Newbery and a Hugo… but there it is. I read it and it was cool and now I feel like writing about it. The tale of Nobody Owens, raised by ghosts in a graveyard after the murder of the rest of his family, is still too dark for me to share with Lightning Bolt. However, Gaiman handled the opening murder scene delicately enough that a slightly older child probably would be ok with it. I liked the way he used characters that experienced fantasy readers would probably recognize without ever using the standard label. For example, Bod’s guardian, Silas, who is neither quite alive nor dead, is seen only by dark, doesn’t eat the same kind of food as Bod, and has unusually strong powers of persuasion. I loved the way the stories of isolated incidents at various points of Bod’s childhood built up stealthily into a plot. I appreciated that Gaiman didn’t settle for the easy resolution to the story. And I was smitten by his narration. I have heard some authors read their books quite badly, others passably. Gaiman ranks up there with some of the best professional narrators I’ve heard. Neil Gaiman rocks. But then, we knew that already.
Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnik Here we have a book of beautifully witty book reports on the books that women my age read in their teen years. Somehow, Skurnik manages both to find depths in books that a) the average teenager probably didn’t notice and b) when old enough to appreciate said depths, one might not see a reason to go back to all those trashy-looking teen paperbacks. And yet, here they are – so many of the books I read as a teen: The Moon by Night and Harriet the Spy, Jacob Have I Loved and Clan of the Cave Bear. There are also chapters devoted to the books that I looked at and never read – the whole realistic teen fiction oeuvre of Judy Blume, the Lois Duncan and V.C. Andrews thrillers. I still don’t read books just to be scared. But still, Skurnik writes so enthusiastically about all of these books that I found myself reading numerous bits aloud. Madeleine L’Engle has a “vision of Christianity that an atheist devotee of the Flying Spaghetti Monster would find it hard to object to.” The sex scenes in this particular V.C. Andrews book are not really steamy enough, but still provide welcome relief between the scenes where the characters hit each other with back story like brickbats. Why has teen literature lost sight of the parents who truly deserve to die? Oh, yes, and some more well-known writers of chick lit contribute some book reports as well – Laura Lippmann, Meg Cabot, and others. But it’s mostly Skurnik, and she is delightful on her own. Go on, now. Get the book. Read a book report. I dare you to stop at just one. Me, I have some teen books to read.
Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon Ai Ling was a scholarly girl who mostly stayed properly home with her mother. Then, her father gives her a jade pendant before leaving for a month at the emperor’s palace. Months later, their family finances dwindling, Ai Ling decides that it’s time to go find her father. It’s not easy for a girl of marriageable age to travel alone in China, but Ai Ling finds herself facing one demon after another, recognizing them from the book that she’d thought her father forbade only because the stories were so frightening for a young girl. Early on, she is rescued by the handsome and exotic Chen Yong. He’s travelling in search of his real parentage, a secret even from his adoptive parents. They start travelling together, and are joined on the way by Chen Yong’s adoptive brother, the openly flirtatious Li Rong. Their straightforward journey to the palace takes unexpected turns as mountain paths lead them to strange lands mentioned only in the classical texts that Ai Ling and Chen Yong have read. Eventually, they are given a deeper quest by the Goddess of Records. Ai Ling is a delightful and sympathetic heroine. Though she finds the courage she needs to fight off the demons attacking her, she also never develops Amazing Martial Arts Prowess, instead finding her own magical abilities. She also has a refreshingly large appetite, which gives plenty of opportunity for vivid descriptions of the food. This was a delightful adventure with a Buffy meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
