Unforsaken by Sophie Littlefield

Hailey is one of the Banished. The women are healers and the men are seers. Hailey, her aunt Prairie and her adopted brother Chub are in hiding. Not from the other Banished, although they’d like avoid them too, but from researchers who want to use their powers as healers. If Hailey or any other healer touches someone who has died, they can bring him or her back to life, but the person’s soul will be gone. They will be like a zombie. There are men who want to sell these zombies to foreign military forces. Hailey and her boyfriend Kaz burned down the last laboratory, and they thought the man who knew how the zombies were created was burned with it. But the lab has been rebuilt, and now Prairie and Chub have been taken. It will be up to Hailey and Kaz to free them.

Unforsaken is a companion to Banished. I’m not totally sure what makes this a companion and not a sequel. It seems to have picked up shortly after the end of the last book, and involves all of the same characters. I guess you don’t have to have read the first one to understand the second, but it still seems to be more of a sequel.

Americus by MK Reed, art by Jonathan Hill

Neil and Danny are growing up in a small American town.  Their favorite books are a fantasy series called The Adventures of Apathea Ravenchilde.  Unfortunately, Danny's mother hates the series, and forbids Danny to read it, saying that reading about witches is blasphemous.  When he's caught reading the newest book, Danny gets set off to military school, and now Danny's mother is trying to get the town library to ban the whole series.

When I first heard about this book, I was intrigued but cautious.  I wanted to know how it was going to be handled.  Was it all just going to be a gigantic stereotype with crazy religious fanatics trying to ban fantasy books because they might lead the children astray?  And yeah, it pretty much was.  But as I read it, I was thinking, "Well, it's certainly the extreme, but that doesn't make it untrue."  Because sadly, in some places, this totally happens to the kind of extremes portrayed in the book.  Harry Potter, anyone (which I assume is what Apathea Ravenchilde is suppose to parallel)?  There were absolutely groups that tried to get Harry Potter banned because learning about witchcraft was satanic and it was going to turn the children into worshipers of Satan.  It's sad and unfortunate, but it's true.  So yes, an extreme picture of someone who is religious and intolerant of other people is shown, but I don't think it was an untrue point to make.

News

YA comes of age.  From PW.

Defining the Printz award.  From SLJ.

This looks great: Tales for Little Rebels.  From Brain Pickings.

Q & A with Philippa Gregory about her new YA series.  From USA Today.

Sigh.  Meg Rosoff event  gets cancelled over her "blasphemous" book There is No Dog, and a Russian priest is calling for schools to ban books by Vladimir Nabokov and Gabriel García Márquez because they "justify pedophilia." From The Telegraph and The Guardian.

Waiting on Wednesday: How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Breaking the Spine to spotlight an upcoming release that we're excited about. This week I'm waiting on How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr.

Jill MacSweeny just wishes everything could go back to normal. But ever since her dad died, she's been isolating herself from her boyfriend, her best friends--everyone who wants to support her. And when her mom decides to adopt a baby, it feels like she's somehow trying to replace a lost family member with a new one.

Mandy Kalinowski understands what it's like to grow up unwanted--to be raised by a mother who never intended to have a child. So when Mandy becomes pregnant, one thing she's sure of is that she wants a better life for her baby. It's harder to be sure of herself. Will she ever find someone to care for her, too?

As their worlds change around them, Jill and Mandy must learn to both let go and hold on, and that nothing is as easy--or as difficult--as it seems.

How to Save a Life comes out October 18.

Chaos Walking to Be a Movie

Patrick Ness' amazing awesome Chaos Walking series is going to be a movie.  Since it will produced by the same people who are doing The Hunger Games, The Hunger Games movie will help me to determine if I'm upset about this our not.

I mean, of course they were going to turn it into a movie.  It's a popular YA dystopia series.  It's just that I loved this series so much.  So, so, so much.  Like, seriously loved.  Like was sobbing the last forty pages of the third book.  Not because I was sad it was ending (although I was), but because I just connected with the characters that much.  What happened to them really mattered.

What I'm saying is, don't mess this up, Lionsgate, or I will find you.  It'll be personal.

My Grandparents are Secret Agents by Scott Christian Sava

Alyssa and Nicholas' grandparents are taking care of them for the weekend while their parents go to New York.  They're expecting to have fun with the grandparents, but they had no idea how exciting things were going to get!  It turns out that their charming old grandma and grandpa are actually secret agents, and Alyssa and Nicholas end up tagging along with them when an emergency case comes up.

This was cute and quick.  It was very simple and drawn with bold, bright colors.  Grandma and Grandpa are trying to stop the evil Purple Haze, who's trying to make it the 1960s again by stealing different components to make a time machine.  Alyssa and Nicholas take the news that their grandparents are fighting crime very well, and off they all go on their adventure!  Their grandparents provide the children with a robot dog to look after and protect them, and the robot dog ends up saving the day.

There wasn't a whole lot to it, but it was certainly fun and I think would be a great read for elementary students.  And we get to learn about how things aren't always what they appear, and that your old grandma might actually be a kick-ass crime fighter!

Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories

I feel like the title pretty much sums it up.

I had a major problem with this anthology: most of the stories weren't Steampunk.  This, of course, requires that I define Steampunk as a genre, which is harder then it should be.  When I think of Steampunk, the sense of place is very strong.  What makes a book Steampunk, rather then science fiction, is that it takes place in a place where there shouldn't be advanced technology.  I often link Steampunk with alternate history (although alternate history is not always Steampunk) because by going back in time to a period where there wasn't this sort of technology and then placing it in, gives it a very strong sense of place.  I have difficult accepting something as Steampunk when we're on a planet after Earth has been destroyed, because they would have already had advanced technology.  I have a hard time accepting something can be Steampunk when it's set in the modern day.