Orleans by Sherri L. Smith

Ever since the deadly outbreak of Delta Fever, the entire Gulf Cost has been cut off from the rest of the Outer States.  The people on the outside assume that almost everyone in Orleans is dead.  But that is far from the case.  Fen de la Guerre lives in Orleans. In Orleans, you live with a tribe that corresponds to your blood type.  Blood is the most precious commodity in Orleans, and you need a tribe to protect you.  But Fen's tribe has just been attacked, and now she has her leader's new born daughter, and the promise that she will give the baby a better life.  Daniel is a scientist whose brother died of the Delta Fever.  Daniel is so close to finding the cure.  He believes that going into Orleans itself will help him get there.

I liked the set-up for this story a lot.  No, it's not at all new that there was a deadly outbreak of some kind and part of the U.S. gets quarantined and young people must struggle to survive.  BUT!  Sherri Smith went beyond the rather old and tired trope and created a really interesting way of life.  Delta Fever appears to be a kind of blood disease, and different blood types are effected different ways.  Fen is an O-Positive, and that's a good thing to be.  She has the Fever, but it's not going to make her go crazy, unlike some other blood types.  Because having "clean" blood is so important, back market blood farms have sprung up, and it isn't unusual go tribes to attack each other for their blood, or to sell them to a blood farm.  It's super creepy, and yet, totally fascinating.

White Lines by Jennifer Banash

Cate is 17 and in the Lower East Side during the 1980s.  Having been removed from her mother's abusive home, Cate is under her father's guardianship, but he's put her up in an apartment of her own, and Cate lives alone and isolated during the day.  At night though, she is royalty, helping to throw the wildest party as part of the New York club scene.  Drugs and alcohol help Cate forget her problems for a time, and she can feel like she belongs.  But Cate is beginning to feel like things might be slipping out of her control, and there isn't anyone she can go to for help.

So first of all, I think kids are going to have trouble with a sense of place.  It never explicitly says what year we're in.  There's lots of references to music I doubt most teens will have ever heard of, with the exception of Madonna, and movies they've never seen.  Will they know we're supposed to be in the 80s?  Clearly it's not present day, what with the lack of cell phones and Internet.  You know what tipped me off about the time period?  Paying for the subway with tokens.  I don't think we can make the assumption that a story about clubs and drug use immediately says "1980s" to a teen reader.  I think it would have been helpful to explicitly say that somewhere.

If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch

15 year-old Carey didn't always live in the woods, but it's been her home for the last ten years.  She used to live with her mother and father in a house, but that was before her mother saved her from her father and took her to live in a trailer in the woods where no one could find them.  Now Carey cares for her little sister Jenessa during the long stretches when their mother is away.  Then one day, a man appears in the woods.  It's Carey's father, who never stopped looking for her and has come to take her and Jenessa home.  Everything Carey thought she knew is thrown into confusion, and she struggles to keep the many terrible things that happened to her and Nessa secret.

It turns out that Carey's mother sent a letter to child services, telling them where the children were, then vanished.  Despite all she knows about her mother, Carey still had a hard time believing that her mother would just give them up like that.  And now she's with her father, someone he hardly remembers, who she's always been told hit her and her mom and was so terrible they had to run away from.

Her father doesn't seem so terrible, but Carey does not feel she can trust him.  But she wants a better life for Nessa, who she loves with all her heart.  Nessa, much younger than Carey, has an easier time adapting into this new world of clean clothes, plentiful food, and people who love and care for her.  It is not so easy for Carey.  She cannot help missing the woods, where are least she felt like she fit in.  Her father has a new wife and a stepdaughter, Delaney, who is just a little older than Carey.  Delaney seems to have so much anger toward Carey and she doesn't know why.

The Different Girl by Gordon Dahlouist

Veronika has lived on an island for as long as she can remember, with three other girls, Caroline, Isobel and Eleanor.  Their teachers are Irene and Robbert.  They observe thing.  They are warned to never, ever go near the water.  One day, pieces of a shipwreck wash up on shore, and along with them a girl, May.  With May's coming, Veronika realizes just how different she and the other girls are, and how dangerous the outside world can be.

This was...whoa.  There is no way to talk about this without lots of spoilers, so just be aware that there are lots of spoilers.

It doesn't take very long to figure out that Veronika, Caroline, Isobel and Eleanor are not quite...normal.  They are not regular girls.  Their attention to detail is so focused.  The questions that Irene and Robbert ask them are so specific.  They take "naps," which seem to happen whenever Irene and Isobel and Robbert need to attend to other things.  They don't eat.

What was interesting about the framing of the book is that as the reader, you never know more than Veronika does.  Ever.  Not even at the end.  It is completely through Veronika's perspective, which is, of course, a very analytical one, devoid of unnecessary emotion.  The term "robot" is never used.  Neither is "artificial intelligence" or anything like that.  It's not clear if Veronika is completely mechanical.  I think so?  We don't know how the girls were made, because Veronika does not know.  We don't know how they function, because Veronika doesn't know.  It was frustrating at times, not knowing.  I wished for an omnipotent narrator who could answer my questions, but I never got one, and a lot of my questions didn't get answered at all.

The pace of the book is very slow.  Veronika and the other girl's lives revolve around observing and telling others what they have observed.  And that's what much of the book is.  May shows up, and is frustrated with the slow pace of life.  She doesn't have the patience to sit and observe and then explain in detail what she's seen for hours.  The plot very, very slowly unfolds, and while there is a dramatic, and in many ways, unsatisfying conclusion, even that part felt slow, deliberate, like the lives of the girls.

Toward the end, Veronika is able to learn more about where she came from than she ever has known before, but even that information is sketchy and full of holes.  And by the end of the book, there is no one to ask, and the girls must figure out how to carry on and care for themselves.  And then it ends.

In many ways, totally unsatisfying.  In other ways, totally fascinating.  Give it to your kids who like to think about things and ponder life's many questions.

In Darkness by Nick Lake

 A boy lived in the Site in Haiti, a place of extreme poverty and violence.  Injured in a gun fight, he is in a hospital when the earthquake happens, trapping him beneath the building.  He remembers all that has happened to land him in this darkness, and his memories are interspersed with the memories of Toussaint l'Ouverture, the revolutionary leader who helped to free Haiti.

In Darkness just won the Printz award, so I had high expectations.  And it was a good book.  It was brutal and honest and thought provoking.  It told the story of modern Haiti, as well as telling the history of Haiti.  Despite this, it was just a good book, not an awesome, amazing book, at least for me.  It took me a while to get through it, because it just wasn't a book the grabbed me and held me riveted.  It was easy to put down.

You know what was really interesting?  I only realized that the main character's actual name is never given when I went to write this review and realized I didn't know what to call him.  He's called a variety of things throughout the book, but none of them are his actual name.  In the book blurb, he is referred to as "Shorty," which he is often called by the member of his gang, so I guess I will call him that too for lack of anything better.

Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick

Arn is young when the Khmer Rouge comes to power in Cambodia.  Along with his family and all the residents of his city, he is forced out to the countryside, separated from everyone he knows, and sent to work in the rice fields.  All around him Arn watches as people begin to starve.  When the children are asked if anyone knows how to play an instrument, Arn says he can, even though he's never played anything before.  Perhaps this will be they way that he can survive.

I'd never read any fiction about Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge, and now within a year I've read two excellent ones.  Much like In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner, Never Fall Down is a novel that is based on a true story.  Patricia McCormick worked closely with Arn Chorn-Pond to tell his story.  But just as Ratner felt, Chorn-Pond thought there were too many holes in his childhood memories to write a memoir.

Arn is not well off when the story begins, he and his brother beg for food on the street, but they used to be rich.  Arn has to make sure that no one ever finds this out, because rich people, academics, royals, government soldiers, all were systematically killed by the Khmer Rouge.