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Archive for the ‘Society-Challenging’ category

Genesis Alpha by Rune Michaels

November 25th, 2007

Before I review this awesome book, I wanted to share this other library gem:

Don't mess with Tubman

I will avoid the obvious “Harriet the Spy” references. But doesn’t she look like she should play opposite Keanu Reeves?

Keanu: Tubman, look out!

Blam!

Harriet: He just bought a one-way ticket.

Thought you might appreciate what comes across our scanners daily.

Genesis Alpha (almost as exciting as the Underground Railroad) is about a young boy who was created for his stem cells. His birth was sped up at month 8 to be able to save his older brother who had cancer.

Flash forward to his teen years and now his brother is on trial for murder. Should the older brother have been saved at the expense of the victim? Crazy questions arise throughout the entire book. This is suspense in the M. Night Shyamalan sense, less Clive Barker or Darren Shan. The reader constantly has to guess who’s crazy, who’s hurting, and who’s a mix.

One of the coolest parts for me is that the killer, whoever it is, left clues inside a World of Warcraft-esque MMORPG. The main character has to investigate in game (but it’s not one of those lame, “If you die in the game, you die FOR REAL” books). What’s really cool is that violence in video games is brought up but discussed quite eloquently. Yay! (for a change)

Questions of if we are more than just our DNA show up as people freak out about the genetic similarities between the two brothers.

Unlike my in-person library reviews, I can’t give too much more detail. It would be like saying, “Bruce Willis is already dead.”

D’oh.

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Posted in Sci-fi, Society-Challenging, Suspense

Tags: azla clones thriller

Ranger’s Apprentice: The Icebound Land by John Flanagan

November 22nd, 2007

John Flanagan, please come to my library.

If you have not read book 1 and 2, don’t read this review. There will be spoilers.

I am usually a big fan of fantasy, but as I’ve become a librarian I’ve seen so many fantasy books recycle the same concepts/plots. When Ruins of Gorlan came out, it breathed life into the genre. Amidst all of the Eragon-wannabes (which Eragon, by the way, borrowed heavily from some earlier works), Ruins of Gorlan took classic themes and added a modern feel. Icebound Land continues this success (which is good to know that as a librarian the series that you are updating/stocking is still quality literature).

Straight Shot

The mentoring relationships that endear the series to me continue, but take on new forms. Since Will was captured in Burning Bridge, Halt decides to go rescue him. Horace and Halt develop a bond revolving around loyalty to kingdom and friend. Seeing the two of them traverse the towns and countrysides in a constant battle between chivalry/tradition/sanity and individualism/community is awesome.
The theme of sacrifice runs throughout. Halt is important to the current clean-up from book two, so Baron Arald and the king can’t spare him the trip to Skandia to rescue Will. Halt has to figure out what to sacrifice, gets himself banished, and may have lost all that he worked for as a ranger to save Will. (Total Jack Bauer moment when he gets banished, by the way.)
Slavery, gender stereotypes, and drug use are all challenged in Icebound Land. What I love about Tolkien I love about Flanagan. You can write socially challenging books that make readers comfortable until they realize it’s no longer about orcs/wargals and instead about the reader’s own dark world. Will gets poisoned by someone slipping him some warmweed. As people are trying to help him, he struggles with addiction. The shakes, listlessness, friend disappointment, and a general lack of motivation for anything other than the next fix show a natural consequence for drug use (besides just ‘You’ll get arrested.’ Our students are invincible/immortal, didn’t you know that?).

Off the Mark

Not much misses the target in this book, which makes sense that book one was a Grand Canyon Award book. The reading level is listed as high, but Flanagan does a decent job of using context to show what ‘poultices’ and ‘jarls’ are.

If you have not read the first book because it was ‘another guy with a cowl and a bow on the cover’, give it a shot. A fan of fantasy or not, many of my students have these books on hold (and are very jealous that I have an advanced reading copy of Battle for Skandia). Once you get to the epilogue, sit back, relax, and listen for the dramatic music during the credits.

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Posted in Action, Fantasy, Society-Challenging

Tags: azla

Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

November 19th, 2007

What I love about the character of Stargirl is how she struggles to act in unconditional love in each situation. If you are not familiar with the character, Susan Carroway (Stargirl) tries her best to cheer up the people around her. The first book is told through Leo’s perspective as he struggles with maybe having a crush on her, wondering what people think. In Love, Stargirl, Stargirl is writing letters back to Leo.

Take happy stones out of your wagon

There’s not as much funny high school drama. Susan wanders around town to interact with people.
It’s told from Stargirl’s perspective, so it appears like she’s clueless instead of the average person just not knowing what to make of her.
Some people are uncomfortable with a weird protagonist.

Add happy stones to your wagon

Whether it’s the middle-aged woman who won’t leave her house, a widower who sits daily at his wife’s gravesite, or an angry young girl ready to explode.
In the beginning of the book, her dad (who’s up at 4:30 in the morning) leaves a light on for her to find her way home. As she impacts more and more people, more lights come on on the porches to help her get safely home.

Final conclusion: Light-hearted, makes you feel good about living.

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Posted in Drama, Society-Challenging

Tags: relationships

Boot Camp by Todd Strasser

November 14th, 2007

In 2005, over 100,000 teens were held in boot camp facilities. Until they are 18, those kids are treated like the property of the camp. Many camps hire transporters to bring in detainees (as featured in Nadya Labi’s Want Your Kid to Disappear? ), kidnapping them from their own homes.Returning with the same research style that made Give a Boy a Gun and Can’t Get There From Here work, Todd Strasser gives us a scary glimpse of one boot camp in the northern part of the United States through the eyes of Garrett.

A Great Escape

This book screams of Shawshank Redemption and 1984. Garrett may have been wrongly thrown into the camp, but since the police are not involved there is no trial. Once Garrett is inside the camp, all rights are forfeit.
Garrett struggles with maintaining his integrity and compassion in such a harsh environment. Many times he chooses not to retaliate but instead to try to understand what is going on.
The camp members will beat him until he recants. The adults may be under contract, but what is to stop other detainees from getting in a couple of cheap shots to move up. Detainees are ranked by levels of merits, earning more by selling out other camp members. More than once Garrett points out that the guards (much like Hitler’s soldiers) are still responsible for their actions, even if they were “only following orders”.
There is a chase scene where Garrett and his transporter are face to face and it distinctly reminded me of the face-off between Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive. Throughout that chase the level of suspense is expertly maintained. I honestly didn’t think that the book would have that type of action in it, but it still added to the plotline.
The book will challenge students to compare to their own lives and then to expand their worldview, much like Dave Pelzer’s A Child Called It got students talking.

A Shiv in the Back

The book is rough. Namely, someone gets stabbed in the back by a homemade toothbrush shiv.
The topic of boot camps is controversial, especially when the parents in the book could be very wrong.

I personally love the book. The students that have read it so far have been very gripped by what’s inside.

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Posted in Drama, Society-Challenging, Survival

Tags: camp Survival

Having three kids is illegal

October 28th, 2007

When I first started teaching, there was a “trouble” student (he did wear a nail through his ear and he did have a penchant for destroying things) who was reading this book called Among the Hidden. The cover had this scared looking boy looking from behind the shadows. I thought it was a horror book.

These 8th graders didn’t know anything about Shakespeare or The Odyssey, unlike my freshmen honors class from student teaching, so how would I reach them? The Outsiders continues to sell itself for student appeal, but what do you teach the other eight months of the year? (especially when students need an independent reading novel as part of the curriculum)

I sat down to read this one Saturday morning in my apartment when my wife and I were first married. (Before lawns, diapers, and dog food – no particular order.)

I read the entire book that Saturday morning. I was very surprised that it wasn’t a Goosebumps/R.L. Stine or Christopher Pike-type book. This was a book that challenged the extent of the government, what freedoms we sacrifice to be comfortable, and told a great story interwoven through the ideals. Sure, I knew that The Giver and A Wrinkle in Time were young adult books that we learned about in college (a woot! to my Transall Saga group from Jean Boreen’s class is in order), but could current authors educate beyond an Avedra Kavedra curse?

The Awesome:

Luke is your typical YA hero that gets caught up in a story that is bigger than himself, but this one broke the mold when main characters can actually die (no actual spoilers in that statement, I swear). This realism pulls on kids.
Students love to read a series. This is my “go to” book to get a student hooked on reading. Many will love this, just like The Outsiders has staying power.

The Hidden:

There’s not much action in the first part of the book. The exposition sets up an idyll lifestyle on a farm that gets trashed when the Barons bring in their malls and uber-suburbia. I remember having to tell my student, Dallas, “No, I swear it’s a good book. Just wait ’til the people start dying.”
The series really comes into its own in Among the Betrayed, Among the Brave, and Among the Enemy when the reader follows different characters. If you read the series too quickly, you’ll realize some similarities start to become cliche in the stories around Luke, but they’re so minor that students could care less. (Series of Unfortunate Events in point: orphans are brought in by idiot relative, idiot relative is offed by Olaf, Olaf escapes, orphans still have Unfortunate life – truth in advertising) Give some time between the books and you realize that Haddix is re-hashing things for students to remember what type of world Luke lives in. We have the luxury now of reading all seven at a glance. Imagine having to wait a couple of years to find out what Luke did after he fell down the shaft when Vader revealed that he was the father. (I have Luke obsessions.)

Overall: Still my “go to” book throughout the years for both boys and girls.

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Posted in Margaret Peterson Haddix, Society-Challenging

What, are you brain-missing?

October 28th, 2007

I must admit that part of why I’m kicking this feed is to boost my facerank.

Extras...dreadfully mysterious!

Extras by Scott Westerfeld is the fourth book of the Uglies/Pretties/Specials trilogy (yes, very Hitchhiker’s Guide in that regard). This is one of those books, though, that I waited for the release date like it was a summer blockbuster. I can tell you that I was more satisfied with the book than Transformers/Die Hard 4, but in both cases the hot product suffers from mega-expectations.

The book takes place after the events of the first three books (makes sense) but follows a different character, Aya, on a different continent. Each book in the series tackles a key social issue that teens face. Issues like betraying your friends to be pretty, parent-child expectations, and an environmentally insatiable lifestyle are all laid out in an easy to understand format alongside hoverboard fight scenes and hot air balloon bungeeing.

In Extras, Aya’s society has money. No longer can you get your clothing for free from the wall. The governing board, however, does not want anyone to starve like in the Rusties days, so they set up a system where you can requisition the cooler items based on one of two factors: merit and facerank.

Merits are earned by doctors, teachers, (even lawyers), and anyone who serves the greater community. This takes effort. You have to do homework/babysit kids and that takes time. Facerank, on the other hand, can happen overnight. Think about some of those celebrities who fight custody battles on the E! network or hide their baby girl for months only to end up making her a BabyGAP model.

Aya is ranked 400,000+ in her society (that’s bad). Her brother Hiro is approaching 1,000 (that’s good). Hiro is an experienced kicker (blogger) and Aya wants to gain fame like her older brother. She finds the Sly Girls, a group of teens who want to avoid public scrutiny to enjoy their favorite hobby: surfing on top of 300 mph maglev trains.

Aya has other plans. She’s going to kick a feed so big that everyone will know her name. What she doesn’t realize is that by following danger some of it is going to follow her. “What would you do for fame?”-type thing.

As I’ve talked with students and staff (and after reading it myself), here’s what I’ve heard:

The Nervous-making:

Tally’s not a main character. Students grow to associate with her and just like in the Shadow Children series, it’s tough to build new connections.
It’s more sci-fi. Things get strange as Aya follows the Sly Girls on an Earth-changing discovery.
If you don’t know Japanese culture, some of the jokes/references are lost. Some of the kids get manga-eyes surges, soccer no longer exists – only giant robot suits that fire foam darts

The Kick:

There’s still lots of action, and not all of it revolves around crash bracelets (a complaint I had about Pretties and Specials).
Tally does show up, and she’s not happy.
If you are familiar with the annoying side of myspace and YouTube (people who vlog what their cats ate, users who spam for friends), your annoyances are vindicated.