new posts in all blogs
Viewing Blog: I've got blisters on my fingers!, Most Recent at Top
Results 1 - 25 of 150
Random thoughts about writing, books, and current events from a children's book writer.
Statistics for I've got blisters on my fingers!
Number of Readers that added this blog to their MyJacketFlap: 2
The Diviners by Libba Bray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Jazz-era New York City comes to live in supernatural thriller
Once again, Libba Bray has sprinkled whatever magical fairy dust she employs onto her computer keyboard and come up with something utterly new and compelling. In the past, she has written Gothic fantasies (the Gemma Doyle trilogy), a book about a dying teenager who goes on a road trip with a loopy punk angel that somehow manages to be both wacky and heartbreaking (“Going Bovine”), and a novel about teen beauty queens stranded on a desert island (“Beauty Queens”). While her subject matter appears to be all over the literary map, her books have this in common: they are wildly inventive.
Libba Bray’s latest, “The Diviners” (Little, Brown and Company, 2012) is no exception. That said, “The Diviners” strikes me as even more ambitious in its attempt to make a statement about the American psyche in a particular place and time: New York City in the jazz age.
Seventeen-year-old Evie O’Neill has a party trick lands her into trouble: she can divine information about people from their personal objects. When she reveals an inconvenient secret about the son of a well-to-do family in their Ohio town, she is sent to live in New York City with her uncle, who runs The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. Not that Evie, a party girl and would-be flapper, minds leaving her boring hometown for the bright lights, nightlife, and shopping of the big city; she’s “pos-i-toot-ly thrilled.”
But when a paranormal serial killer (“Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with this apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells ‘em off for a coupla stones.”) begins to terrorize the city, Evie uses her power of divination to help catch the murderer—if he doesn’t get her get her first.
Bray brings 1920’s-era New York to sparkling life, from the slang of the era (Gossip is “chin music,” and a gullible young woman “was a real tomato who was not hitting on all sixes.”) to the speakeasies. But Bray brings in larger issues as well, touching on eugenics and the uneasy and sometimes ugly race relations of the time, the aftermath of World War I, and the intense interest in the spiritualist movement of the late nineteenth century. What brings it all to life are the amazing characters, many of whom, like Evie, have some supernatural power. There is Memphis Campbell, a seventeen-year-old numbers runner who once had the power to heal; a con man named Sam Lloyd who can make himself disappear; Theta Knight, a Ziegfeld girl who falls in love with a certain Harlem poet; and Henry Bartholomew Dubois IV, possibly the next George Gershwin.
“The Diviners” is the first in a planned series, made evident by the many dangling threads Bray neglects to wrap up by the end of the book. They only serve to make you tap your foot impatiently until the next installment in the series appears.
Sara Latta is a science writer and author of 17 books for children and young adults. You can learn more about her work and link to past reviews at http://www.saralatta.com. This review originally appeared in the April 28, 2013 edition of The News-Gazette. (www.news-gazette.com).
View all my reviews
Poison by Bridget Zinn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A fresh rom-com adventure
A lot of YA literature is about dystopia, dysfunction, and darkness. I’m not knocking dystopia, dysfunction, and darkness—some of my favorite books are pretty grim. But sometimes a funny, action-packed fantasy with just the right amount of romance thrown in, the kind of book that you devour with a silly grin on your face, is a very welcome breath of fresh air.
Let me introduce to your next breath of fresh air: “Poison” (Hyperion, 2013), by Bridget Zinn. Sixteen-year-old Kyra is a highly skilled potion master. She is also a would-be assassin who tried—and failed—to kill her former best friend, the Princess Ariana. Kyra knows that someone is intent on destroying her kingdom, and that somehow, Ariana is involved.
But when Kyra, a master sharpshooter, somehow fails to kill Ariana with her poison dart, she goes on the lam. Now, with the Princess in hiding and the king’s soldiers and her former business partners on her trail, she sets off to find her former friend and finish the job.
A book about a girl who tires and fails to kill her best friend is not dark? Indeed not! In her quest to find her friend, she acquires an adorable little pink, Rosie that can track like a bloodhound. She encounters a charming, funny, and outrageously handsome young man named Fred and his dog Langley as she is fording a river wearing only her embarrassingly frilly underclothes.
The two develop one of those classic, screwball romantic comedy relationships over the course of the book: they flirt, they quibble, they stomp off in anger, and yet…they can’t stay away from each other. She can’t tell him her secret, but, as it turns out, Fred has a secret of his own.
Full of twists and turns, cliffhanger chapter endings, evil characters and people who are distinctly not what they appear to be, “Poison” is a rollicking adventure from start to finish. Kyra and the Princess are strong female characters, and Fred is the kind of very cool guy who isn’t threatened by independent chicks. The ending is happy but not in the least bit sappy.
Sadly, readers who enjoyed “Poison” and look forward to this debut author’s next book will be disappointed. Bridget Zinn died, far too young, before she got a chance to see her book published. So cherish “Poison,” because it’s all you’re going to get from this talented young author.
Sara Latta is a science writer and author of 17 books for children and young adults. You can learn more about her work and link to past reviews at http://www.saralatta.com. This review was originally published in the Sunday, April 7, 2013 edition of the News-Gazette.
View all my reviews
The Book of Jonas by Stephen Dau
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The lives behind collateral damage
Fifteen-year-old Younis is injured and orphaned when a U.S. military raid gone awry hits his village in an unnamed Muslim country that resembles Afghanistan. With the aid of an international relief organization, he is sent to the U.S., where he is assigned to a well-meaning but rather clueless foster family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He changes his name to Jonas on the plane: “He suspects this will cause trouble; he does it anyway.”
“The Book of Jonas” (Blue Rider Press, 2012), Stephen Dau’s debut novel, is a powerful story examining the human costs of war. Younis—now Jonas—attends high school in Pittsburgh. He is a brilliant outcast, finding refuge in the school library, “an oasis of wooden bookshelves and learning.” The target of merciless bullying, Jonas at last snaps and hands one of his tormenters a savage beating. Jonas is sent to a counselor named Paul, who helps him work explore the trauma that destroyed his family and home.
Jonas is awarded a full scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh, where he makes friends and falls in love with a beautiful pre-med student from India. “Where do you go in your mind,” Paul asks Jonas repeatedly. In dreamlike fragments that punctuate the present-day narrative, the story of what happened in the days following the attack unfolds. Jonas’s story is interspersed with that of Christopher Henderson, an idealistic American soldier who found him in a remote mountain cave and nursed him back to health. Christopher’s story is told in excerpts from his diary; one of the entries tells the story of a baby gazelle that was adopted by a lioness—a parable that encapsulates the heart of this novel.
Jonas meets Christopher’s mother Rose, who has dedicated her life to finding her son, now missing in action. As she presses him for answers about the disappearance of her son, Jonas is forced to confront his emotional trauma and the knowledge of what really happened to Christopher. Things begin to disintegrate as he begins to drink, often to the point of blackout. The ending is both heartbreaking and emotionally honest.
The book’s structure recalls a church service or mass, with short chapters within sections titled “Processional, Invocation, Remembrance, Communion, Confession, Atonement, Benediction, Recessional.” And in fact “The Book of Jonas” is a kind of prayer for the survivors of “collateral damage,” soldiers and civilians alike. Recommended for older teens as well as adults, this brilliant and timely novel is a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand the consequences of war.
Sara Latta is a science writer and author of 17 books for children and young adults. You can learn more about her work and link to past reviews at http://www.saralatta.com.
This review originally appeared in the March 17, 2013 issue of The News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois).
View all my reviews
Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Love and grief in the time of AIDS
“Tell the Wolves I’m Home: A Novel” (Dial Press, 2012), by Carol Rifka Brunt is a coming of age story of love, grief, and renewal as two lonely people become unlikely friends. The only person who really understands fifteen year-old June Elbus is her uncle and the renowned painter Finn Weiss. June is shy at school; her older sister Greta, with whom she was once close, has turned mean and nasty. Finn, her godfather, confidante, and, to her shame, secret crush, shares her love of the medieval era and introduces her to the glories of Mozart’s Requiem.
June’s world is turned upside down when Finn dies of a terrible disease that her mother initially talks about only by tracing the letters A-I-D-S onto a table. At the funeral, June glimpses a strange man lingering at the edge of the crowd. June soon learns that the man, Toby, was Finn’s “special friend,” as her mother puts it.
Despite her initial mistrust, June forms a clandestine friendship with her uncle’s partner, since her family hates Toby and blames him for Finn’s illness. They work through their grief, talking about Finn’s art and passion for life. June comes to learn more about Finn, herself, and the nature of love.
Rifka Brunt absolutely captures the attitudes toward AIDS and the gay community in the mid-to-late 1980s: the homophobia, the stigma surrounding AIDS, the ignorance, and of course the pain of losing so many loved ones. Readers today who are not old enough to remember the AIDS crisis may shake their heads at June’s worry that Finn might have infected her by kissing her on the top of the head, but it’s important to remember that misinformation about the transmission of the virus was rampant at that time.
It was international news in 1987 when Princess Diana visited an AIDS hospital and shook hands with one of the patients without wearing gloves, to make the point that the virus could not be transmitted though normal contact; that same year, however, police wearing long yellow rubber gloves arrested protesters at an AIDS conference.
Tell the Wolves I’m Home is a 2013 winner of the Young Adult Library Services Association’s Alex Award, given to books written for adults that have special appeal to teens. Be forewarned: this beautiful book may very well have you doing the ugly cry.
Sara Latta is a children's science writer and author of 17 books. You can learn more about her work and link to past reviews at http://www.saralatta.com.
This review originally published in Sunday, February 24, 2013 edition of The News-Gazette.
View all my reviews
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A Stellar Read—or Listen
I hadn’t originally intended to write a review of John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars” (Dutton Juvenile, 2012). Not because I don’t adore John Green (I do) or his books (ditto), several of which I’ve reviewed for this paper. But I like to spread the love to authors who may not have received the attention they deserve. John Green’s fans, a.k.a. nerdfighters, are legion. I thought I’d give some other deserving authors a few column inches.
Sorry, other deserving authors. I’ll get to you later. You might say it was in the stars that this week’s review is for the audio version of “The Fault in Our Stars” (produced by Brilliance Audio, 2012; narrated by Kate Rudd). I generally write about print books in this column, but I had hardly removed the earbuds after listening to Green’s most recent gem when I learned that it had just won the American Library Association’s Odyssey Award for best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults. Well done, judges, well done.
Hazel Grace Lancaster, the narrator, is sixteen. She has cancer, and must carry an oxygen tank with her wherever she goes. Despite an experimental drug that has bought her a few years, she is terminal. She meets Augustus Waters, who has lost a leg to cancer (“I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago…”) at a support group. The two kindred spirits, sharing an irreverent sense of humor and a searching intelligence, eventually fall in love.
Augustus manages to arrange a trip to Amsterdam so that Hazel Grace can meet the author of her favorite book, “An Imperial Affliction,” to find out what happens to the characters after the book’s abrupt ending. What happens during the trip should remain a surprise, but it’s significant.
In the hands of a lesser author, a story about two teens with cancer would be sentimental and maudlin. While “The Fault in Our Stars” deals quite honestly and often heart-wrenchingly with the problems of kids with cancer, it is also filled with Green’s trademark humor and intelligence.
As any listener of audiobooks knows, the narrator can make or break the listening experience. Kate Rudd does a wonderful job of bringing the characters, especially Hazel Grace, to life. At 31, she is young enough to sound quite convincing as a teenager. In an interview, she admits that there were at least 100 pages where she is actually crying as she’s reading. So that explains Hazel’s very convincing breathlessness and the frequent catches in the voices of the parents.
Listen to this book in a place where you won’t mind if anyone catches you weeping or laughing out loud. If they do, just share one of your earbuds.
Sara Latta is a children's science writer and author of 17 books. You can learn more about her work and link to past reviews at http://www.saralatta.com.
This review originally appeared in the Sunday, February 3, 2013 edition of The News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois).
View all my reviews
The Vanishing Act
Near the beginning of Mette Jakobsen’s debut novel “The Vanishing Act” ( W.W. Norton, 2012), Minou, the story’s 12 year old narrator tells the reader “You might not believe my story. You might read it as a fairytale, a fable straight out of my imagination.”
Despite what Minou says, this quiet, slim novel is very much a fable, a tale of love, loss, and aching loneliness. Minou, her father; a kind, mad Priest; a magician named Boxman; and a dog called No Name live on an island “so tiny that it can’t be found on any maps.” One year earlier, her mother walked out into the cold morning with her umbrella and a turtle and disappeared from their lives. While everyone else on the island has given up hope of finding Minou’s mother, the girl is convinced that she is alive, off on an exciting adventure from which she will soon return.
Jakobsen throws the reader into Minou’s world with the novel’s opening sentence: “It was snowing the morning I found the dead boy.”
Minou, and her father carry the frozen boy to their house, laying the body out on the mother’s empty bed for three days until the delivery boat could come to pick him up. The boy, Minou is sure, holds the secret to her mother’s disappearance, and she confides in him, a silent confessor.
So, too, does her father, a philosopher who believes that he is a descendent of Descartes. Logic and reason, in his mind, is the key to finding the ultimate truth—a belief that Minou has adopted and fervently hopes will help her untangle the mystery behind her mother’s disappearance. In flashbacks, we learn more about her mother, an artist who arrived on the island with just one red suitcase filled with “five dresses, eight jars of paint, two brushes, and a white enamel clock that didn’t work,” as well as a peacock nestled in a golden bowl. Both Minou’s mother and father were scarred by a war that, although unnamed, seems very much like World War II.
The other characters in this sparse narrative are equally enigmatic. There is Priest, who performs Tai-Chi like exercises every morning, bakes pretzels that no one wants to eat, and sends out origami animals during his sermons to Minou and No Name. The Boxman, a retired magician, now makes the boxes the magicians use when sawing women in half. All are a part of the story of the disappearance of Minou’s mother.
Jakobsen’s writing is lovely and captivating. After reading this book, you may find yourself revisiting Minou on her island “so tiny that it can’t be found on any maps.”
This review originally published in the Sunday, October 21 edition of The News-Gazette.
.
Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Southern Gothic Fantasy Hits the Big Screen
I always prefer to read the book before seeing the movie. I think it’s more fun to imagine what the characters look like before some casting directors do it for me. If the filmmakers do a good job of bringing the book to the big screen, it adds to the fun. Harry Potter, anyone?
So when I saw that the movie “Beautiful Creatures,” based on the book of the same name (Little, Brown and Co., 2009) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, was coming out this year just in time for Valentine’s Day, I knew I had to read the book first.
All I can say is this: if the movie lives up to the book, I’m going to enjoy it.
Sixteen-year-old Ethan Wate lives in the small southern town of Gatlin, South Carolina, where nothing ever seems to change and old folks still refer to the Civil War as “The War of Northern Aggression.” The biggest event in town is the yearly Civil War reenactment that everyone—save Ethan and his family—seems to relish.
Nothing changes, that is, until Lena Duchannes comes to town. She is, literally, the girl of his dreams. For months, he had dreamed of a beautiful girl he had never met. She is falling, and he must save her. When Ethan meets the mysterious Lena on their first day of sophomore year, he knows it’s her. It is also clear that she is no ordinary teenager. She moves into the town’s oldest and most infamous plantation with her uncle Macon Ravenwood, the town recluse.
Ethan falls for this strange new girl who is unlike any of the perky, blonde, fake-tanned cheerleader types who dominate the school’s social scene. She’s dark-haired, pale, wears all the wrong kind of clothes, and drives a hearse to school. Yes!
As Ethan quickly discovers, Lena’s differences go way, way beyond her looks. She is a Caster, which is something like a witch. Although, as Lena points out, “That’s such as stupid word, really. It’s like saying jocks. Or geeks. It’s just a dumb stereotype.” Ethan and Lena begin to fall for each other, even as they learn that their pasts are inextricably bound together. And Lena is struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations.
Authors Garcia and Stohl do a terrific job of describing the atmosphere, culture, and secrets of a small southern town, creating a gripping ending that will have you wishing for more. Wish granted: there are of course sequels—not to mention the movie!
Sara Latta is a children's science writer and author of 17 books. You can learn more about her work and link to past reviews at http://www.saralatta.com. This review originally published in the Sunday, January 13 edition of The News-Gazette.
View all my reviews
Sailor Twain by Mark Siegel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Mystery, Romance and Legend on the Hudson
Let’s get one thing straight: the mermaid in Mark Siegel’s graphic novel “Sailor Twain, or The Mermaid in the Hudson” (First Second, 2012) is no cute Disney creature wearing strategically placed seashells. She’s beautiful, all right. She’s also seductive—and, quite possibly, dangerous, more like the Sirens of Greek mythology than the Little Mermaid.
The year is 1887. Elijah Twain, a young steamboat captain, rescues an injured mermaid from the waters of the Hudson River. He carries her to her cabin and nurses her back to health. Twain is a poet, and she becomes his muse. He keeps her a secret from the rest of the boat, from his wife, and most especially, from Lafayette, the ne’er-do-well womanizer and owner of the ship. But Twain suspects that Lafayette may have a secret of his own—and that it may have something to do with mermaids. A meeting with C.G. Beaverton, enigmatic author of “Secrets and Mysteries of the River Hudson,” propels the story forward to its unexpected and deeply satisfying ending.
Siegel weaves together legend, local history, intrigue, and romance in a kind of fairy tale for young adults. His gorgeous, moody charcoal drawings capture the feeling of New York’s Gilded Age perfectly. In an interview with the “Los Angeles Times,” Siegel said that the idea came to him on his morning train rides to work in Manhattan alongside the Hudson River. Of the appeal of mermaids, Siegel said “...a song that we can’t resist, even though we know it’s going to pull us down—anyone who’s lived a bit on this planet knows mermaids. Some people can be mermaids to us. We can be mermaids to others, sometimes. And chemical siren-songs too, like crack, or smack, or alcohol, even coffee (not all mermaids spell disaster for us sailors, of course.)”
In the tradition of a 19th century novel, Siegel began serializing “Sailor Twain” in 2010 ahead of book publication. You can read the opening chapters, along with Siegel’s commentary, at http://sailortwain.com/chapters/.
“Sailor Twain” is one of those books that compelled me to turn back to the first page as soon as I read “The End.” It does include some nudity (and not just the mermaid’s bare breasts) and a few sex scenes. I’d recommend “Sailor Twain” for older teens and adults.
Sara Latta is a children's science writer and author of 16 books. You can learn more about her work and link to past reviews at http://www.saralatta.com. This review was originally published in the Sunday, December 23 edition of the News-Gazette.
View all my reviews
Never Fall Down
Arn was eleven years old when the Khmer Rouge, a radical Communist regime, came to power in Cambodia. He was a happy, mischievous kid who hustled for spare change by singing and dancing with his brother, selling ice cream, playing games of chance.
And then the peasant soldiers, wearing black pajamas and hats, came to town. Arn would never be that happy, mischievous boy again.
“Never Fall Down” (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, 2012), a National Book Award finalist by Patricia McCormick, is based on the true story of Arn Chorn-Pond, a survivor of the genocide inflicted on the Cambodian people. Tens of thousands of people died from starvation, overwork, and disease; many more were tortured, killed, and buried in mass graves.
When the Khmer Rouge soldiers first come to his town, Arn was happy; the war, they said, was finally over. But soon those with education or money disappear; those who remain are marched into the countryside. Arn is separated from his family and assigned to a child labor camp, where they work punishing hours under the blazing sun. He watches other children, weak from hunger, disease, or exhaustion, die before his eyes.
McCormick uses Arn’s distinct and beautiful voice to tell the story of how he survived those brutal years: “I see some kids die in the field. They just fall down. Maybe it’s malaria. Or maybe they starve. They fall down, they never get up. Over and over I tell myself: never fall down.”
One day, the soldiers ask if any of the kids play an instrument. Understanding that this may help him survive, Arn volunteers to play in the band—even though he’s never played a note in his life. Under the tutelage of an old musician, he quickly learns to play a traditional stringed instrument called the khim. The beautiful traditional Cambodian songs are forbidden. Instead, he and the other boys play revolutionary songs to bolster the spirits of the workers and, increasingly, to drown out the sounds of soldiers killing people they suspect of being traitors.
Arn is forced to watch, and later, take part in, the brutal murder of innocents. He learns to key to survival: “I make my eye blank. You show you care, you die. You show fear, you die. You show nothing, maybe you live.” Just as the country is about to be liberated from the Khmer Rouge, he is handed a gun and forced to become a soldier.
Arn escapes from the army; he ends up in a refugee camp in Thailand, very near death from disease and starvation. An American minister adopts Arn and two other Cambodian boys. The final section of the book describes Arn’s struggle to overcome the guilt and trauma of his experience with the Khmer Rouge; he has dedicated his life to humanitarian causes around the world.
“Never Fall Down” is not an easy read; there are many scenes of death and graphic violence. But it is also a beautiful and important book.
This review originally published in
The News-Gazette, Sunday, December 12, 2012. Sara Latta is a children's science writer and author of 14 books. You can learn more about her work and link to past reviews at
http://www.saralatta.com.
Frank Thompson wasn’t your ordinary Civil War soldier. For starters, Frank was extraordinarily versatile, serving as a nurse, mail carrier, and a spy. By all accounts, Frank was unusually brave. And while Frank was slight of build, with cheeks as smooth as a girls’, the same could be said of many underage boys who enlisted to help fight for their country.
But Frank was no underage boy. Frank’s real name was Sarah Emma Edmonds, a young woman who had been living as a man for three years before enlisting in the Army. “A Soldier’s Secret: The Incredibly True Story of Sarah Edmonds, a Civil War Hero” (Amulet Books, 2012), by Marissa Moss, is an unflinching account of the life of a Civil War soldier—one who must hide her true identity.
Sarah Edmonds grew up on a farm in New Brunswick, Canada, skilled at hunting and riding a horse. When her abusive father arranges for her to marry an older man when Sarah is sixteen, she cuts off her hair, dresses in her brother’s clothing, and runs away from home. She gets a job as Frank Thompson that allows her to travel, selling books door to door—and finds that she’s very good at it. But when President Lincoln calls for volunteers to fight for the Union, Frank is among the first to enlist.
Frank helps amputate limbs, carries out the wishes of dying soldiers, slips into enemy camps disguised as a slave and a peddler woman, and delivers letters and messages to the troops. But she also has to grapple with being a woman in a man’s army, and finds herself falling in love with another soldier.
Moss’s meticulous research comes to life in her graphic descriptions of the brutality of war: “Wildflowers dot the fields with yellows, blues, and purples, while birds chirp in the trees as if all is right in the world. But all around me I see horror after horror, dead men, broken men, men crying over the bodies of brothers, fathers, sons, and friends.”
The book is not all so grim. Some passages are downright funny: “Really, I don’t know anything about men’s bodies except what I’ve seen in the hospital. I can’t imagine sitting on a horse with that extra bit in the way. My God, I think, Jerome has that problem, and so does Damon, and Dr. Bonine, and the chaplain, and the officers right in front of me. I can’t look at any of them now without wondering which pant leg holds that extra central leg and how does it keep from getting squashed when they sit down?
Older teen and adult readers who like “A Soldier’s Secret” might also want to read “The Secrets of Mary Bowser,” by Lois Leveen (William Morrow, 2012). “The Secrets of Mary Bowser” is based on the true story of an escaped slave who poses as a slave in the Confederate White House to spy on President Jefferson Davis. And as a special bonus, Moss has written a picture book about Edmonds for younger readers: “Nurse, Soldier, Spy: The Story of Sarah Edmonds, a Civil War Hero” (Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2011)
This review originally appeared in the Sunday, November 11 2012 edition of the News-Gazette.
In his book “Writing Science Fiction” (St. Martin’s Press, 1988), author Christopher Evans says, “Perhaps the crispest definition is that science fiction is a literature of ‘what if?’ What if we could travel in time? What if we were living on other planets? What if we made contact with alien races? And so on. The starting point is that the writer supposes things are different from we know them to be.”
Karen Thompson Walker, in her debut novel “The Age of Miracles” (Random House, 2012), asks the question “What would happen if the rotation of the Earth begins to slow, if the days and nights alike grow longer and longer?” Like all good science fiction, Walker’s book goes beyond “what if” to “what does it mean?”
Walker’s prose is flat-out gorgeous. Julia, who in the course of the story turns 12, opens the story: “We didn’t notice it right away. We couldn’t feel it.
“We did not sense at first the extra time, bulging from the smooth edge of each day like a tumor blooming beneath skin.
“We were distracted back then by weather and war…. Bombs continued to explode on the streets of distant countries. Hurricanes came and went. Summer ended. A new school year began.”
Set in a southern California suburb, Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has begun to slow. At first, Julia feels not “fear but a thrill…a sudden sparkle amid the ordinary, the shimmer of the unexpected thing.”
But as the extra minutes of the days and nights stretch into hours and then days, the grave consequences of the slowing become apparent. Birds fall from the sky, whales wash up on beaches, people fall ill—all victims of the Earth’s changing gravitational and magnetic fields. Food supplies are threatened. To preserve order (and the stock markets), the government tells people to stay on the 24-hour clock, even though that would mean falling out of sync with the sun. The few “real-timers” who insist on trying to maintain their own circadian rhythms are shunned by the “clock-timers.”
Despite the widespread implications of the slowing, “The Age of Miracles” is very much Julia’s coming of age story. She watches as her parents grow apart, divided by their responses to the slowing; suffers the rejection of a friend who believes that the apocalypse is near; and falls in love with a quiet, thoughtful boy named Seth.
The catastrophic upheaval of the Earth’s natural rhythms can be read as a perfect metaphor for the transition from childhood to adulthood. Julia ponders, “…the slowing triggered certain other changes too, less visible at first but deeper…. Perhaps my adolescence was only an average adolescence, the stinging a quite unremarkable stinging…. Maybe everything that happened to me and my family had nothing at all to do with the slowing. It’s possible, I guess. But I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”
This review originally published in the Sunday, September 30, 2012
News-Gazette. Sara Latta is a children's science writer and author of 14 books. You can learn more about her work and read past reviews at
http://www.saralatta.com.
What if you woke up every morning in a new body? One morning you are a white teenage boy; the next, a sixteen year-old Asian-American girl. You wake up in the body of a clinically depressed girl who wants to commit suicide, or a boy whose beloved grandfather who has just died. You may be gay, straight, desperately underfed, or morbidly obese. Each morning, you check in with your host, accessing the facts of your new situation. It’s been like this your entire life, and you’ve learned to live in the body of strangers, always your age, one day at a time. Never get attached, don’t interfere, and try not to screw up your host’s life.
That is the premise of “Every Day,” by David Levithan (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2012). As the book opens, A (the name the character has given him/herself) wakes up in the body of Justin, a handsome but selfish jerk. A meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon, and A’s rules for living fly out the window. Because A has fallen in love—and wants to be with Rhiannon every day.
In the days that follow, A finds ways to see Rhiannon when possible. (One of the quirks of A’s condition is that his/her soul can’t travel across long distances. The only way A can move from one part of the country to another is when that day’s body goes on a trip—which poses a big problem the day one host is supposed to fly to Hawaii for a wedding.) It takes some doing, of course, to convince Rhiannon that A jumps from one body to the next on a daily basis. But she does, and then she’s faced with the dilemma: can you be in love with a single person who inhabits a different body every day?
“Every Day” is a love story, but it also raises provocative moral and philosophical questions. How do attributes like race, gender, sexuality, or class define us? A particularly likes and identifies with host body Vic, who is “biologically female, gendered male. Living within the definition of his own truth, just like me. He knows who he wants to be. Most people our age don’t have to do that. They stay within the realm of the easy.”
Need I add that Levithan writes like an angel? He pulls off his implausible premise with aplomb, and the ending is both bittersweet and satisfying.
This review was originally published in Sunday, September 9, 2012 edition of
The News-Gazette.
On July 16, 1945, a fireball 600 feet wide exploded in the sky above a top-secret site in New Mexico bearing the code-name Trinity. Years later, the chief architect behind the experiment recalled, "We knew the world would not be the same."
In "Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb" (Hill and Wang, 2012), Jonathan Fetter-Vorm has written and illustrated in vivid detail the race to build, test, and drop the first atomic bombs.
The effort began in 1939, with the discovery that subatomic particles called neutrons could be used to break uranium atoms into pieces, a process called nuclear fission. Scientists around the world soon realized that nuclear fission, which releases seventy million times more energy than a chemical reaction, could be used to create an enormously powerful bomb.
American scientists--many of whom came from Europe--were concerned that the Nazis might be developing an atomic bomb. They convinced Roosevelt that it was essential for the U.S. to build the weapon before Hitler did so. The U.S. resolve to build the bomb--one of the most expensive undertakings that humans had ever attempted--was solidified when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December, 1941. The man they recruited to lead the effort, which came to be known as the Manhattan Project, was a brilliant physicist named J. Robert Oppenheimer. For many, he would become the face of the atomic age, even as he came to have grave doubts about developing nuclear weapons.
Fetter-Vorm's explanations and illustrations of the fundamental science of nuclear reactions and the making of the bomb are among the clearest I have ever read. The historical details are equally compelling, and Fetter-Vorm does not flinch from the political and moral consequences of the atomic bomb that have shaped our lives even to this day.
Readers who want to dig a little deeper into the history of physics will enjoy another graphic book, "Feynman" (First Second Books, 2011), written by Jim Ottaviani and illustrated by Leland Myrick. This biography captures the colorful life and scientific achievements of Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, who also worked on the Manhattan Project.
The science in "Feynman" can be a challenge for some readers, but Ottaviani and Myrick manage to channel Feynman's gift for explaining difficult concepts to non-scientists. And it is no challenge at all to appreciate Feynman as the wise-cracking, safe-cracking, bongo playing genius who lived life to its fullest.
This review originally appeared in the Sunday, August 19, 2012 edition of
The News-Gazette.
After years of drifting around the country, seventeen year-old Penelope and her single mother Linda ("'Flotsam and jetsam,' she always said."), have returned to her mother's hometown of Killdeer, Oklahoma. Having inherited a house and bar and grill from her broken, alcoholic father, Linda struggles to deal with the betrayal of a mother who left when she was just a child.
But for Penelope--Penna to her friends--the move to Killdeer brought her to her soul mate, a fellow artist named David. But now, in the summer between her junior and senior year, David is shipping off to Iraq--and Penna is about to become an Army girlfriend.
"While he was away," by Karen Schreck (Sourcebooks Fire, 2012) is Penna's story, but it is much more than a chronicle of young sweethearts separated by war.
Sure that their love will last, Penna is determined to do all the things that Army girlfriends are encouraged to do: write constantly, always have have your phone nearby, send care packages, keep busy, stay positive.
Penna does everything she's supposed to do, but it's not always easy. For one thing, her mother is making her work at the Red Earth, the family bar and grill--and she's a hopeless waitress. Fortunately, she makes friends with Caitlin, another waitress at Red Earth; Jules, another Army girlfriend; and Ravi, David's troubled boyhood friend. ("...when they were young, they were just about the only brown-skinned kids in school. On bad days, David got called 'Spic' and 'Beaner.' Ravi got called 'A-rab' and 'Towelhead. ... They were loyal to each other.")
Penna also vows to find out more about the mysterious grandmother, Justine, who left Linda when she was only a toddler. Justine's first husband--and true love--was a soldier she married at the age of eighteen before he left to fight in World War II. He never returned--a fact that deeply resonates with Penna. Justine remarried and had Linda, but, as Linda bitterly recalls, "she left us for a ghost."
Even as the war changes David in ways that Penna only gradually comes to understand, Penna, her friends and family are transformed by events at home. This story about cross-generational love, loyalty, and forgiveness is a reminder that the fingers of war reach past the battleground and into the hearts and lives of everyone involved.
This review was originally published in the July 29, 2012 issue of the News-Gazette. To learn more about Karen Halvorsen Schreck and her writing, visit http://www.karenschreck.com/.
“Kill Bill meets Buffy in this supernatural samurai tale.” If the publisher’s blurb grabs your attention like it did mine, then you’ll love “Katana,” by Cole Gibsen (Flux, 2012).
Rileigh Martin is a skater chick who just wants to go to her junior class’s end-of-the-school-year party, maybe hook up with this cute guy she’s had her eye on for the past year. But when Rileigh and her best friend Quentin witness a mugging in a shopping mall parking lot, something—someone—is awakened inside her. Rileigh foils the thief and defends herself against the thug and his two buddies with impressive martial arts skills she never knew she possessed.
Rileigh would like to believe that her fighting skills were powered by pure adrenaline, but that doesn’t explain her the voice inside her head giving her battle tips and warning her of danger, or her incredible fighting skills. And if definitely doesn’t explain her strange, vivid dreams of fifteenth-century Japan. She thinks she might be going crazy—not the way she was planning on spending her summer.
As it turns out, she’s not crazy—just the reincarnation of a female samurai warrior named Sensi who died 500 years ago. Or at least that’s what a handsome martial arts instructor named Kim tells her. And now that others know of her powers (her fight was caught on a security camera), she is very much in danger. An enemy from her past would like to see her dead.
Rileigh wants none of this. She simply wants to be a normal teenage girl who—finally!—seems to have caught the eye of the guy she has a crush on. And, truth be told, it takes her longer than I’d like to embrace her samurai self. But when she finally does, Rileigh becomes the great, kick butt-character you want her to be.
Rileigh learns to master the katana, a deadly Japanese sword that’s also the key to her past. As the spirit of Sensi grows stronger, she also finds herself falling for Kim.
“Katana” isn’t perfect. Although Quentin is a terrific character, the stereotype of the gay best friend is getting kind of old. The dialogue is sometimes kind of awkward. Even so, “Katana” is a lot of fun. It’s jam-packed with action, and the fight scenes are incredibly well written. Romance? Check. We’re talking soul-mate love. Add to that a good dash of humor, and you’ve got a great summer read.
Gibsen is a talented young author from southern Illinois. A second book in the series, “Senshi,” is due out in 2013.
This review was originally published in the News-Gazette on July 8, 2012. To learn more about Cole Gibsen, check her out: http://www.colegibsen.com/
I'm shocked, shocked to see that it's been so long since I've posted something on this blog. Blame it on the book on Invasive Species I just turned in for Capstone (Burmese pythons! Asian carp! Killer kudzu!) and the biography of Percy Spencer, the inventer of the microwave oven, I'm working on for Enslow. (Did you know that 90% of American households have microwave ovens?).
I'm behind on posting book reviews. Coming in the next couple of posts.
You may have noticed that I've fallen behind in updating my blog. I just posted three back reviews! Things have calmed down a bit, and should get better once I'm finished teaching mid-May. I'm still here, still reviewing. If you'd like me to review your book, either for the News-Gazette or on my blog (I do cross-post to GoodReads and LibraryThing), please shoot me an email. I can't promise a review, but if I like it, I'll do my best!
If the TV show “Veronica Mars” and some 1940s-era Nancy Drew books got together and had a love child, it might be “The Girl is Murder” (Roaring Brook Press, 2011), by Kathryn Miller Haines.
It’s the fall of 1942, and fifteen year-old Iris Anderson’s world has turned upside down. Her father (“Pop”), a private detective, lost his leg at Pearl Harbor. Her mother, a German Jew, killed herself a short time later. Her mother’s inheritance has run dry, forcing father and daughter to move from their comfortable Upper East Side apartment to a house shared with their Polish landlady in the Lower East Side. Pop’s disability makes it difficult for him to carry out the physically challenging side of his detective work, and they are perpetually behind on the rent. No more posh private all-girls school for Iris; she’s attending a public school for the first time.
Iris longs to help her Pop, especially when she learns that he is investigating the disappearance of Tom, one of the few people at her new school to show her some kindness. Pop steadfastly refuses her help (“This isn’t a business for little girls.”), but Iris is determined. Soon, good-girl Iris is sneaking out behind her father’s back and cozying up to the tough crowd at school. Lies pile upon lies as Iris, determined to crack the case, double-crosses even her friends.
“The Girl is Murder” crackles with 1940s-era slang (“Our Benny thinks you’re murder. . . . “You know—marvelous.”), the tough boys wear oversized Zoot Suits, and they all do the jitterbug at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. I did have some problems with the plot, particularly with an improbable coincidence that I hoped would be somehow explained in the end (it’s not). Nevertheless, Haines successfully captures the race, religion, and class issues of wartime New York City while delivering a fast-paced page-turner. Recommended for readers 12 and up—there is drinking, some drugs, and an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. If you like this book, you might want to check out the sequel, “The Girl is Trouble,” coming in July 2012.
“The Girl is Murder” was a nominee in the YA category for the prestigious Edgar Award, presented by the Mystery Writers of America. I’ll review the YA winner of the Edgar Award, “The Silence of Murder,” in my next column, but for now, you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got to take a powder.
This review originally appeared in the Sunday, May 6 print edition of
The News-Gazette.
I just received my author's copies of my latest books from Enslow! Check them out!
All three are available in both library binding AND as very affordable paperbacks! More about them later...
I'm working on integrating my website (http://www.saralatta.com) into the blog, so things are a little messy and incomplete here right now.
I know that I promised in last month’s column that I’d write about the Edgar Award Winner in the YA category, but once I read it, I wasn’t all that crazy about the book. Since this is a recommendation column, I’ll tell you instead about a book that I am crazy in love with.
“I am a coward. I wanted to be heroic and I pretended I was. I have always been good at pretending.” These are the opening words of “Code Name Verity” (Hyperion, 2012) a stunning new novel by
Elizabeth Wein. Verity, a.k.a. Queenie (and a number of other names, it turns out), is a Scottish spy who was captured by the Gestapo after a crash landing in occupied France during World War II.
She is imprisoned in a once-elegant hotel that now serves as the Gestapo headquarters in a small town in central France. After being tortured by her captor, SS-Hauptsturmführer von Loewe, she agrees to write down everything she knows about the British war effort. Like Scheherazade, the storyteller in “One Thousand and One Nights,” Queenie will live only as long as it takes to write her confession.
And so she tells the story of how she came to her predicament. “The story of how I came to be here starts with Maddie,” she writes—Maddie Brodatt, the pilot who flew her into France.
Through Queenie’s report, written on creamy hotel stationary, on prescription forms, in between the lines of flute music that once belonged to a Jewish flutist, and on recipe cards, we learn the story of the unlikely friendship between the two young women. Maddie Brodatt is English, a secular Jew and a commoner; a natural pilot and airplane mechanic, she is one of the few women to become an Air Transport Auxiliary pilot for the British (in an author’s note, Wein writes that there were in fact female ATA pilots during WWII). Queenie is of Scottish nobility; her German is flawless, thanks to an education at a Swiss boarding school. She’s gorgeous and cool as a cucumber under pressure: ideal qualifications for a spy.
And now for the hard part of the review: I can’t really tell you much more about “Code Name Verity.” This book is so intricately plotted, with so many twists and turns, that a plot summary would ruin the surprises that await the reader. I can tell you that this book is chock-full of vivid historical details about WWII pilots, spies, the Gestapo, the French resistance, and more. I can tell you that it made me cry. Most importantly, I can tell you that this is a book about the friendship between two smart, strong and courageous women (yes, Queenie was lying about being a coward). “It’s like being in love, discovering your best friend,” Queenie writes. “We’re still alive and make a sensational team.” So they do.
This review originally appeared in the Sunday, M
Like many writers, I discovered Ray Bradbury when I was young--perhaps 12 or 13. His extraordinary imagination and use of language carried me off the farm as surely as any rocket ship carried people to Mars. I think this video of him reading a poem at a 1971 Caltech symposium captures his charm and talent. RIP, Ray.
Three Bradbury posts in a row. I know, I know! But I'm not obsessed, I promise. Well, maybe just a little. But I just had to share this. I'm preparing to lead a yoga for writers session at our upcoming writers retreat (Words in the Woods 2012: Moving Your Story Forward, with Author/Illustrator/Publisher Marissa Moss, Simon & Schuster Editor Alexandra Penfold, and Writer's House Literary Agent, Kristy "Ty" King. Sorry, registrations are closed! But I'll post something about it, promise.). I was looking for inspirational words to begin our practice, and came across this passage from Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing:
What do you think of the world? You, the prism, measure the light of the world; it burns through your mind to throw a different spectroscopic reading onto white paper than anyone else anywhere can throw. Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper. Make you own individual spectroscopic reading.
Throw your prism light onto paper!
The following review appeared in the Sunday, June 17 edition of the News-Gazette.
The whole world, it seems, is mourning the loss of Ray Bradbury, who died on June 5 at the age of 91. One of the greatest American science fiction and fantasy writers of the past century, Bradbury has inspired countless readers and writers. Count me among them. For many people, the initial encounter with Bradbury’s genius is Fahrenheit 451 or perhaps The Martian Chronicles, both of which are staples in the high school classroom.
I don’t want to diminish the impact of those two books—both are wonderfully accessible and thought-provoking—but the one that has stuck with me throughout the years is Something Wicked This Way Comes (Simon & Schuster, 1962). This may be due to the fact that it was the first book of Bradbury’s that I read. It may have been because, at 13, I was the same age as the book’s two protagonists, Will Holloway and Jim Nightshade. All I know is that I found it both beautiful and terrifying.
Will and Jim are best friends, born just two minutes apart: Will, at 11:59 p.m., All Saint’s Day, and Jim, at 12:01 a.m. on Halloween. Light and dark personified. A carnival rolls into Green Town (based on Bradbury’s home town, Waukegan, Illinois) in the middle of the night, on the heels of a storm predicted by a strange lightning rod salesman named Mr. Fury.
Will and Jim are eager to experience the thrills of the carnival—until they discover its sinister secrets. Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show is not just any carnival, although it contains the usual collection of sideshows, rides, and freaks. Mr. Dark, the mysterious ringmaster, lures unsuspecting townspeople with the promise of granting their heart’s desire. Is it, like Will’s father, to become young again? Ride the carousel in reverse, and the years melt away. Ride it forward, and Jim can be a grown man. But there is a price, of course—your soul. Can the boys resist joining Mr. Dark’s haunted band of freaks?
Bradbury’s lyrical writing style owes much to Shakespeare, and indeed, the title of the book comes from Macbeth: “By the pricking of my thumbs/Something wicked this way comes.” This atmospheric book will have you turning the pages far too long into the night.
Near the end of the book, Will’s father muses, “Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts.”
You made it count, Ray.
View Next 25 Posts
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1133766421547054673-794351905898
</p>
<div class="post-comments">
0 Comments on <em>Kill Bill Meets Buffy</em> as of 1/1/1900
</div> <!-- end post-comments -->
<a name="commentsforpost1118754target" id="commentsforpost1118754target" style="text-decoration:none;"></a>
<div id="commentsforpost1118754" style="display: none;" ></div><a class = "leavecomment" title="Click Here to Add a Comment" href="/redirect.asp?kind=3&value=1329&t=http://saralatta1.blogspot.com/2012/07/kill-bill-meets-buffy.html" onclick="window.open(){kind=small}
Add a Comment
Libba Bray is an amazing writer. :) Thanks for covering this book. I love your blog here, since I don't get the newspaper in St. Louis. . . :)