Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage

Moses (Mo) LoBeau has been looking for her Upstream Mother ever since infant Mo washed up in Tupelo Landing, North Carolina during a hurricane.  Not that she's unhappy with her life with the Colonel and Miss Lana and helping to run the cafe, far from it.  The summer's looking great, but then one of the regulars turns up murdered.  Of course Mo and her best friend Dale are convinced they will solve the case before the questionable city-slicker detective.

Three Times Lucky had been on my "to read" list since it came out.  Everyone was saying how fabulous it was, and it did get a Newbery honor.  It was just as great as everyone said.

What wonderful character voices!  For everyone!  Each character, no matter how important they were to the main plot, had a rich, distinct voice.  From Mo herself to Grandmother Miss Lacy Thornton.  The fact that this small town was a close-knit community was important to the story, and it was clear right away that this was the case from the way the different characters spoke to each other.  Everyone knew everyone else.  Everyone knew everyone else's business, troubles, secrets, problems.  They annoyed each other and were there for each other.  It was like a gigantic family.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Review

This is the review to the sequel to The Hobbit: There and Back Again (which we didn’t review). I think Ari and I felt that this deserved something extra because of our strong feelings about this movie adaptation. So let’s start with a little personal history lesson:

I am a big Tolkien fan; not a dress up, name my children after a character, read all of Tolkien’s books fan but I’ve read The Lord of the Rings series more than four times and The Hobbit twice. I’ve seen the cartoon adaptations of both of these books that were made back in the 80s and have seen the Peter Jackson adaption of The Lord of the Rings more times than I can count. It’s a love that stems from my dad, who ‘discovered’ Tolkien before anyone else did in the 1970s while perusing a paperback spindle in a drugstore in South Dakota. So yes, I was excited to hear that The Hobbit was getting its own adaptation. Super excited when it was originally announced that Guillermo del Toro was going to direct, and understanding when it was announced that the movie was going to be split into two. Then the changes happened. I thought it would be okay that Peter Jackson was directing, I have faith in him after the LOTR. Okay, I get the financial reasons why they split the movies into three and I’m sure in Peter Jackson’s capable hands that there will still be some amazing storytelling going on….

I liked the first Hobbit. It was fine, not exceptional but fine. I thought there were some unnecessary things (like the necromancer storyline, working the infatuation Gandalf has for Galadriel, the white orc) but it was okay. Still beautiful cinematography, and the actors were great. Who doesn’t love Martin Freeman? There was a hope that we would see more character development with the dwarves because of the extra movie and they wouldn’t just be hood colors. It was all very optimistic with the first movie, there were some let downs but so much hope tied to it too.

Then we got to The Desolation of Smaug. There will be spoilers following.

Waiting on Wednesday: Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor

"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 Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor.

By way of a staggering deception, Karou has taken control of the chimaera rebellion and is intent on steering its course away from dead-end vengeance. The future rests on her, if there can even be a future for the chimaera in war-ravaged Eretz.

Common enemy, common cause.

When Jael's brutal seraph army trespasses into the human world, the unthinkable becomes essential, and Karou and Akiva must ally their enemy armies against the threat. It is a twisted version of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people.

And, perhaps, for themselves. Toward a new way of living, and maybe even love.

But there are bigger threats than Jael in the offing. A vicious queen is hunting Akiva, and, in the skies of Eretz ... something is happening. Massive stains are spreading like bruises from horizon to horizon; the great winged stormhunters are gathering as if summoned, ceaselessly circling, and a deep sense of wrong pervades the world.

What power can bruise the sky?

From the streets of Rome to the caves of the Kirin and beyond, humans, chimaera and seraphim will fight, strive, love, and die in an epic theater that transcends good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy. 

At the very barriers of space and time, what do gods and monsters dream of? And does anything else matter?

Dreams of Gods & Monsters comes out April 8, 2013.

Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein

American ATA pilot Rose Justice is flying an Allied fighter plane from Paris to England for repairs when she is captured by the Nazis.  She is sent to Ravensbruck, a women's concentration camp where women have been used like rats for medical experimentation.

This was a companion book to Code Name Verity.  It picks up not long after the events of Code Name Verity, in 1945.  It focuses on a new character, Rose, but Rose works for the same Air Transport Auxiliary organization that Julie did and where Maddie still is.

I had some issues with Code Name Verity, mainly the framing device.  I just couldn't buy into it, and while I thought it was great how it all came together, I never really got into it because I found the whole premise completely improbable.  I was worried it would be the same with this one.  The book blurb tells us that Rose is captured and sent to a concentration camp.  I was worried that Rose was actually going to be journaling from the camp!  But she was not.  The diary starts before she's captured, and after she escapes uses her journal to tell her story.

There were a couple instances that took me out of the story and didn't seem to fit in with the terrible realism the story was showing.  The dramatic sacrifice one of the girls makes for Rose, for example.  Rose's number is called and she knows that means she's going to sent to be gassed.  This happened to other girls before, and they were hidden, which is what happens for Rose.  But this time, for some reason, another girl has to sacrifice herself by wearing Rose's number.  Why didn't they cause confusion, like the other times they hid people?  Why didn't they just let the count come out wrong, like the other times?  It seemed like that scene was just there so Rose would feel the weight of someone else's death personally.

The escape was also kind of overly dramatic and unlikely, with Rose and Irina stealing a plane and dragging Roza aboard and crash landing in Belgium.  It would have been more realistic if they had hidden in the outer camp and waited until it was liberated by the Soviets.

Despite that, it was well done.  And it looked at a camp that doesn't often get a lot of attention, Ravensbruck.  This is probably because Ravensbruck wasn't actually a death camp, but a work camp, but was also where experimentation of prisoners went on.  The conditions of the camp were horrifying, as is the story of the Ravensbruck "rabbits," the women who were experimented on.

Something that Rose struggles with afterwards is her promise to tell the other girls' stories.  She wants to, but she's afraid.  She doesn't know how to make people understand what went on there.  The things that she saw, and the things that she did herself, no regular person could ever, ever possibly understand.  She promised to tell the world, but she can't even tell her closest friends.  

Rose finds her strength when she attends the Doctors' Trials in Nuremberg and sees her friends testifying against the people that did the terrible things to them.

Those who liked Code Name Verity will love that they can find out what happens to Maddie, as well as continuing on with the story that takes them through the end of the war.  Rose Under Fire stands well on it's own, and is a great recommendation for lovers of historical fiction.

Reality Boy by A. S. King

Gerald Faust was an angry little kid, but his family being part of the reality show Network Nanny, supposedly designed to help families with problem children, made things even worse.  Now Gerald is 17 and as angry as ever.  In his small town, there is no way to escape the child that everyone saw acting out on TV.  Gerald has been working to control his anger, but it doesn't matter.  Everyone is just waiting for him to do something crazy, and Gerald is becoming tempted to give it to them.

It's hard to describe this book.  It's hard to describe the level of fucked-upness that is Gerald's family.  His older sister, Tasha, who tried again and again to kill him and his other sister, Lisi.  His mother, who seems to have no real feelings for him.  His father, who has long ago given up trying to make any changes.  Gerald is trapped in this world.  And he is so, so angry.  It's easy to see why.  Who wouldn't be?  The people around him expect him to fail and to end up in jail. Gerald is clinging to the idea that if he can just get through high school he can get away like Lisi did by going to college.  Except his mother finds the idea of him going to college laughable.

The book does a good job of showing how reality TV is far, far from reality.  We only see what the producers want us to see.  Everything else, they cut or manipulate.  They can make people look a certain way.  Make people look good or bad.  And then we think we actually know something about these people we see on TV, when we know nothing at all.

Gerald meets a girl, Hannah.  I was worried at first.  I was worried Hannah was going to be Gerald's manic pixie dream girl.  The one who would lift him up and show him how to live and solve all this problems.  And then probably die in some tragic way.  And yeah, she was a little manic pixie dream girlish, but not full on.  Not in the main way, which means she didn't fix everything.  Gerald and Hannah wanted each other to be able to fix each other's problems.  But of course they couldn't.  Due in part to that they weren't being completely open about what their problems actually were.  And in part because you can't just fix people.  People aren't broken things that can be easy repaired.  Hannah and Gerald were able to help and support each other, but they had to take actual action to make their lives better.  They had to make hard choices and difficult decisions.  And sure, they did it all while on a wild and crazy road trip that involved staying with a circus family, but it was still there.  There was work involved.  Not everything was perfect.  They did stupid things to each other and had fights.  Hannah was dealing with stuff that she wanted to run away from too.  She wasn't just there to make Gerald feel better.  She wanted things from him too.

The book didn't turn away from difficult topics, like Hannah admitting to Gerald that she was afraid he might hit her.  Gerald is so angry, of course he would never hit her!  But then thinking about and realizing that he just doesn't know.

Excellent.  Probably the best YA I've read all year.

Doll Bones by Holly Black

Poppy, Zach and Alice have been playing the game for years.  With actions figures, dolls, and toys of their own creation the three friends have been telling an ever-expanding fantasy story.  And ruling over them all is the Great Queen, a bone-china doll in Polly's house no one is allowed to touch.  But now the three are in middle school, and Zach's father wants him to spend more time with his guy friends and playing basketball.  Before the game came can end, Polly insist the Great Queen has come to her in a dream, and the three must head out on a final quest.

This was a perfect mix of realistic fiction and a tiny bit of horror.  It's never clear if, in fact, the Queen really is speaking to the children.  Is she really moving around in the night?  Is she really sending them dreams?  Do other people really see her as a person?  It's not clear.  It might be all pretend.  Or something creepy might be going on.  You get to decide.  So it's a little dark and spooky, but not too spooky.  It can be as spooky as you make it.

Each of the three kids are dealing with their own private family issue.  Alice's parents are dead, something she doesn't talk about very much, and her grandmother is so over protective it's hard for Alice to do the things that she loves.  Alice envies Polly, whose parents are hardly ever around and aren't very involved in Polly's life.  Polly, however, feels this parental lack of interest in what she does.  Her parents can't even come and get her after she's disappeared.  And Zach is dealing with his father returning to his life, after growing up with just him and his mom.  Zach resents his father suddenly trying to act like a father and tell him what to do.  The nerve of this man saying he knows what's best of Zach, when he's been gone for years.  Despite their years-long friendship, the three can't tell each other what's really happening.

When Zach's father throws away Zach's characters, he can't bring himself to tell Polly and Alice.  Instead he just says he doesn't want to play anymore, that it's a baby game and they're too grown up for it.  Polly, always the leader, then tells Zach and Alice that the bone-china doll has appeared in her dreams and told her a terrible story.  Zach and Alice are both skeptical, but use to following Polly, agree to go along.

Things, of course, do not go as planned.  Strange things happen, and ultimately, the three end up revealing secrets to each other they have been keeping.

Toward the end, the three are sleeping in a library (where they go to try and figure out the location of the graveyard they're trying to find) and are discovered by the librarian.  The librarian with pink hair and green glasses.  Thanks, Holly Black.  Thanks for sending the kids to the library when they need to figure something out and having a librarian who isn't a 80-year old women with a bun and orthopedic shoes.  Thank you.

Great, slightly creepy middle school read.

News

In memoriam 2013.   We remember the authors and illustrated who died in 2013. From SLJ.

An agent's perspective on trends in YA books.  From PW.

Changing characters in books to female until the children's publishing industry catches up.  Thoughts?  From Slate.

Why are YA books divided up into genre in bookstores?  From Bustle.

Page to screen: a year's worth of adaptations.  From SLJ.

Nostalgia drives Polish children's book boom.  From Publishing Perspectives.

Inside stories about memorable books.  From PW.

The Fault in Our Stars movie tagline, too glib?  From Entertainment Weekly.

Why kids think reading sucks.  From SLJ.

PW's Best Children's Books of 2013. 

Seeking  wonderful young adult novels that deal with race.  From NPR.
Can problematic vintage texts still be valuable for kids?  From Tablet.

Colorado school librarians hopefully and wary after education tax bill defeat.  From SLJ.

What your favorite children's book series says about you.  What if you were into a bunch of those series?  From The Huffington Post.

Reading a novel changes the brain.  From SLJ.

10 beloved book series we still get nostalgic about.  From BuzzFeed.

So you want to be a librarian?  Why don't school librarians get a number!  From Book Patrol.

Kate DiCamillo is the new National Ambassador for Young People's Literature.  From SLJ.