Gated, Amy Christine Parker

Gated, Amy Christine Parker.  9780449815977.

YA dystopia/cult thriller:
Read September 27, 2013

Lyla is the "Little Owl" of the community - always watching and observing, staying a bit apart.  She's a gentle soul, who fights against her lingering qualms about the necessity of the sacrifices that the Chosen have made.  Life in the community is peaceful, but they all know that when the End comes, the Unchosen will attack the compound to steal what they need in a desperate attempt to escape their predestined destruction.

Pioneer is the leader of this community, and he's been watching Lyla carefully.  As the end grows ever closer (3 months and counting) he's begun to realize that this one questioning girl could unravel his entire plan.

Cody is the son of the local town sheriff, and he's determined that Lyla realize that she and the community have all been had by Pioneer's careful indoctrination over the years.

Lyla's mom is the true tragic figure of this story, broken and defeated after the unsolved abduction of Lyla's young sister, just days before the Towers fell.  Even now, years later, she yearns for the destruction of the world, and even the dissolution of her own being, to be with the Brethren and experience eternal life with her missing daughter again.  

Excellent story, well-crafted plot, and believable people.  Overall suitable for younger teens, except for the death and violence at the end.  (very graphic in two instances, and many other deaths alluded to)

The end is left a bit unfinished, not in a "to be continued" sense, but in the real-world sense that life goes on but stays connected to the past, and nothing is ever entirely tied up in a nice pat bow.  

Ella's Big Chance, Shirley Hughes

Ella's Big Chance: A Jazz-Age Cinderella, Shirley Hughes.  ISBN: 0689873999

Re-Read Sept 26, 2013

Fairy-Tale Retelling Picture Book: 

 

Plump and beautiful redheaded Ella and her father run a stylish dress shop together with Buttons the bellboy, until a snaky bony stepmother and her two snaky bony daughters take over everything.  

Ella ends up in the basement working her tail off until the day of the big ball, when she is dis-invited by her bony steprelations for not having the right "look" for the event.  

The stylish flapper fairy godmother shows up (parasol instead of wings, of course) and Ella is be-flapperized to within an inch of her life.  She has a grand old time at the ball, and the Duke is smitten.  

Sadly for the Duke, Ella's already taken, and this Cinderella politely declines the Duke for her very own Buttons.  The only way this would have been better is if she had rescued her poor father from the harpies, because it won't be long before his tail is in the cold basement working all day and night.

Very much reminded of Thoroughly Modern Millie: "raspberries!"

Mailing May, Michael O. Tunnell & Ted Rand

Mailing May, Michael O. Tunnell, illus. Ted Rand.  ISBN: 0688128793 Library Edition.

Read Sept 26, 2013

Nonfiction Picture Book: 

Poor Idaho family takes advantage of the newly instated US Parcel Post rate to "mail" their daughter by train in the keeping of her uncle the rail-postmaster to visit her grandmother across the state.  Adorable, beautiful painterly illustrations, and even more interesting because it's true!  No real drama or tension except a short tiff with a conductor, quickly resolved.  Excellent Americana.

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick; Joe Schreiber

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick, Joe Schreiber.  ISBN: 9781547577388

Read Sept 25, 2013

YA thriller.  Perry Stormaire is trying to live his life. His overbearing high-power-lawyer father is trying to control his choices, his band, his swimming, his college options.  His mother is trying to recreate her own childhood, and that's where Gobi comes in.  Mom's lifelong friendship with her own foreign exchange student means that she has high expectations of Gobi and Perry.  Sadly, Gobi is sallow, shy, and quiet.  A wallflower.  Now, on her last night in America (also Perry's prom, also Perry's band's first gig in New York) she's decided that she wants a taste of the American life, and Perry has to take Gobi to the prom.  On the plus side, Dad sweetens the deal with the Jag!

Sadly, no one in the family has quite realized just how world-changing Gobi's visit will be, and it will all take place on this one last night.  

The story is told with chapter-headings taken from college-application essay-questions, which is a fun quirk.  Perry's "voice" is wry, self-deprecatory, and ironically aware.  Gobi is almost a force of nature in contrast: the perfect la femme nikita, goddess of vengeance, the incarnation of Death.

Lots of standard YA ground is covered; the family scandal, the father-son conflict, seeing beyond the physical, social awareness, revenge vs vengeance, but they're all dealt with in tiny little flashes between violence and thrills and car-chases.  

Nifty read, totally implausible, lots of fun.

The Half-A-Moon Inn, Paul Fleischman & Kathy Jacobi

The Half-A-Moon Inn, Paul Fleischman, illus Kathy Jacobi. ISBN: 0060219181

Read Sept 25, 2013

Juv Chapter Book: medieval setting, light fantasy.  (Similar to GRRM's The Ice Dragon)

Aaron is mute, and his mother has always been there to help and shelter him at their isolated house by the sea.  But now he's 12, and mother thinks he's old enough to stay home for a night and a morning while she makes the quarterly trip to the nearest village to sell her weaving and buy supplies.  

A freak snowstorm hits, and Aaron waits at home for an extra night before venturing out to find her.  He's lost quickly, and discovers the Half-Moon-Inn.  The devious and thieving proprietress takes his clothes and shoes to prevent his escape, and beats him into submission to work for her.   The tension rachets up as his every attempt to escape (many of them plucky or quite bright ideas) is thwarted by the proprietress, or by fate itself.  Finally, fate intervenes again, and the baddies get what's coming to them through no fault of our protagonist, and mom appears at the end to fetch him safely home again.

Very good story for beginning readers, good plotting and quick storytelling.  Frightening, but never too intense.  Excellent for giving to confident young readers, or for bedtime/daily reading.   

My Wicked Vampire, Nina Bangs

My Wicked Vampire, Nina Bangs. ISBN: 9780843959550

Read September 24

Paranormal Romance: Plant experimenter Cinnamon (Cinn, obviously) has developed plants that feed on human pheromones, cast "love spells," recognize and attack intruders, and in the case of Vince the periwinkle, developed sentience.  That's enough to get her hired by the Castle of Dark Dreams (obviously the through-line for this series) to add to the atmosphere for their kinky patrons looking for fantasy.  Also new to the Castle is Dacian the "night-feeder" vampire, who was rescued from a couple of centuries of self-imposed exile and off-and-on murderous rages at the request of his brother, another Castle employee, and also a vampire.

The supernaturals (nonhumans, according to the book) are many: the aforementioned vampires (of which there are strong indications of other types, but they don't come into this story), wizards, a trio of chaos spirits, goddesses, emissaries of goddesses, and various flavors of demons.  Oddly enough, nothing too weird really comes of all these nonhuman protagonists, other than the ability to take and dish out wild amounts of violence to each other.  

The only true weirdness here is Cinn's plants.  Good thing too, because they form the lynchpin of her side of the plot (the more interesting one, to my mind) - her goddess-ancestor is pissed that she's overstepping her authority to create plants that are more like animals, and wants her to stop it, and to kill off her already-created plants. 

On Dacian's side, there's a veneer-thin conflict between his sociopath creator and Dacian's unwillingness to play beta to someone weaker than him (of course his creator is weaker than him).  

The characters are amusing, their dialogue flows well, and the interactions are fun to read through.  I especially enjoyed the doomed love triangle between Asima, Vince, and Tommy, and the bemused attentions of Wade the outdoorsman.  

The plotline is serviceable.  I thought the ending was overdrawn, and Cinnamon's plot antagonist was co-opted into solving Dacian's on a totally predictable level, but the inclusion of a clueless peanut gallery actually worked fairly well.  "Run, kitty, run!" was funny as hell, and nameless "professor guy" gets a good bad-ass line: "Hey!  Leave the plant alone!"  

The love story suffers from the same flaw that most romance novels have - the characters meet in dangerous and uncertain circumstances, fall madly in love, and within pages/hours are defending each other against opponents that any sane person would flee.  At this point it's so entrenched that I can't get too worked up over it.  However, when the worst affront to suspension of disbelief in THIS particular novel is the love story?  That's saying something.

Cute, but I'm mostly fond of the plant angle, so I think I'll be giving the other "Castle" books a miss.       

Tell Me a Story, Elaine Reese

Tell Me a Story, Elaine Reese, ISBN: 9780199772650

Read Sept 23, 2013.

Nonfiction: interactive story-sharing.

Excellent parenting/professional guide discussing how reading and literacy and oral language skills improve children's mental stats, their ability to learn, and their emotional skills, metacognition, and theory of mind.

Not a bad slate of improvements for a fairly simple technique - involving the child in telling (or sharing) a recitation of story - either from actual books (from wordless picture-books on up through adult-level fiction and nonfiction) or from telling and re-telling stories of your own family (from the time you went to the zoo, to the time grandpa ended up in the hospital) or from allowing the child to create stories of their own (from fictional "and then I grew wings and flew to the moon" to chapters-long created adventures cribbed from Star Wars or Warhammer.  

Nice balance between scientific study and child-development milestones (listed at the end of each chapter with real-life implications and indications) and actual transcripts of kids and parents/researchers using the techniques with actual kids (some of whom we see over and over again between infancy and teenagerhood).  Very interesting resource, but not complicated enough or profound enough to feel like I need to own it.

If you're already devoted to literacy and language skills, it's pretty much a simplified and straightforward set of examples to make sure you're loading as much language into every encounter with your kids as is humanly possible.  Knowing my husband and me, I doubt that's going to be a problem.