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Spring Semester '12 from mimagirl on 8tracks.

a playlist of songs for your new beginning, from me.
h a p p y n e w y e a r !

When an elderly woman passes away, she leaves her three cats and her deck of tarot cards to her young neighbor Anna and her two best friends, Eve and Syd. Each girl narrates one book of the In the Cards trilogy, which is best read in order:

#1 Love (Read my mini-review)
#2 Fame (Read my full-length review)
#3 Life (You are here!)

In the Cards: Life

You can't control what life is going to throw at you, but you can control how you catch it and how you deal with it.

The quietest of the three friends takes the reins in the third and final volume. Syd likes to play piano, but is reluctant to play in front of other people. She used to love practicing with her father, who is also a pianist, but they haven't played together in a little while. Her dad isn't acting like himself lately. He's had trouble at work and seems sad almost all of the time now. Syd thinks he's drinking when she and her mother are gone or asleep.

Meanwhile, Syd has become like a mother to her elderly cat, Beesley. He has special medication that he must take regularly, so Syd takes extra special care of him. When Eve gets the chance to audition for a televised talent program, Syd wants to go, but she also wants to stay home to be with Beesley. Her father swears he'll give Bees his medicine, and her mother tells her to trust her dad and that everything will be okay. Syd almost cancels her plans, but ends up taking the trip. When she comes back home . . . it's horrible.

This is a great conclusion to the trilogy, which I highly recommend to ages 10 and up. I really wish this were an ongoing series! Each girl has a strong voice and sense of self, and they acknowledge the fact that their relationships with each other are different (Eve and Sydney are friends by association, because they are both Anna's friends, but they aren't really that close) and evolving (Anna and Syd are neighbors, but Syd doesn't go to private school with Eve and Anna; they each worry about how things will be when they go to high school). Kudos to author Mariah Fredericks for continuing to deliver insightful and realistic books for kids and teens.

My favorite quotes and passages from the book include:

I will never think of my dad as a person again. I don't know what he is now. But he's not the person I decided he was when I was five years old or whatever. - Page 152

By the time I get home, the anger's burned up all my energy. I'm exhausted, empty. A strong wind could blow me anywhere. - Page 172

When I open the door and Beesley doesn't come creeping down the hall to greet me, I fight hard not to start crying again. - Page 172

Now I get it, what the cards meant. I've been living in a fantasy. Because nowhere is safe, not even your own little corner.
I miss Beesley in the worst way.
I miss everybody. - Page 185

I'm not crying. I'm not screaming. But it's not because I'm being so strong or together; it's just that I don't feel anything. Just shut off somehow. - Page 191

And now I'm in the world. Now I know the things I was scared to find out. - Page 199

"We can't live on what if. We just have to do what is." - Syd to Eve, Page 237

Related Booklists:
But I DO Want to Be Famous!
But I Don't Want to Be Famous!
Cats Cats Cats

Total Knockout: Tale of an Ex-Class President by Taylor Morris mixes sports with school, popularity with politics.

As thirteen-year-old Lucia prepares to run for class president, she expects to have a landslide victory and a great year. After all, she's already been class president two years in a row. Sure enough, she wins - but after she bends some rules, she gets impeached! She refuses to go down without a fight. As Lucia tries to regain her title and win back her friends, she also struggles with her stubborn streak. It's very hard for her, but she has to face the truth of the matter: she did bend the rules, and she knew it when she did it.

With her second novel, Taylor Morris comes out swinging. Lucia's story isn't only about her pull for the class presidency; it's also about her hobbies (she boxes regularly with her best friend Cooper) and her family (her father is out of work, which changes their family dynamic and his personality). I liked that Lucia had to deal with the consequences of her actions, and that, even with all of her smarts, she had to stumble and learn a valuable lesson: sometimes, you have to admit what you did was wrong before you can figure out how to make it right.

There's an interesting article in today's New York Times about the future of internet searching, at least as perceived from Microsoft's vantage point. At Techfest this week, a Microsoft researcher demonstrated a new service called "Mix," which (if it works as demonstrated) would allow users to organize their results more efficiently. Mix may be available within six to nine months, according to the article. You can find a brief description of Mix if you scroll about three-quarters down this page.

Another service, Web Assistant, (no release date given; this name has been kicking around Microsoft for at least 10 years) would be even more intuitive, driving you to results that could distinguish whether your were looking for a football team, an automobile, or an exotic cat when you search for "jaguars." It manages this legerdemain by learning from your previous searches and by those of other searchers who have looked up the same topic.

It seems to me that the better the search function gets, the more we as librarians should be rethinking our mission. We have already lost the ready reference trade to Google and its kin; where will we seek refuge when the search engines can actually deliver substantial, unambiguous results right to the desktop?