Eclipse

Book: Eclipse
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Audience: Teen and Adult
In a Nutshell: bloodsucker or dog? Hot or cold? Human or in-?

Bella is counting down to graduation, when Edward and the Cullens have finally consented to turn her. She thinks she's ready, but as the day approaches she's starting to think there are things about being human that she still hasn't experienced- like sex. But Edward wants to get married first.

Jacob's pack is growing- and in a surprise twist of the legend, there's now a female wolf. Several of the wolves have developed bonds- irresistable links to people of the opposite sex outside the pack- sometimes romantic, sometimes just totally devoted. There have been many mysterious killings in Seattle which seem vampiric, but the culprit is a mystery. Soon the high-profile nature will bring the Volturi to clean up, the vampire world's own mafia, which would be bad. The true nature of the deaths forms a threat to both the Cullens and the La Push werewolf pack. With Bella and their turf at stake, the Cullens and the Jacob's pack form an uneasy alliance.

Jacob, Bella and Edward's relationship continue to develop, shift, and get yet more complicated. Ah, to be young and supernatural. But someday soon, Bella will have to make the Choice of No Return, if she's ready.

I still just eat these books up. I put them in the same category as Harry Potter: well but not spectacularly written, but oh-so-readable. I had a roommate who burned her way through Twilight, then turned immediately to the first page and started over. Then read it again a month later. Book Four is a-comin' in August 2008, and I'm already #28 on the waiting list of 80 and growing at my library. Advance entry into the catalog: a true sign that an author has Made It.

Clementine

Book: Clementine
Author: Sara Pennypacker
Audience: Grades 2-4
In a Nutshell: haircuts, ceiling snakes, and a war against the pigeons

Third grader Clementine is always paying attention, but not to what her teachers expect. She means well and tries to help, but always seems to end up getting in trouble, like when she helped her friend Margaret cut her gluey hair off and colored on some new hair with her artist mother's permanent markers. She is very familiar with the principal's office- so much so that she answers the phone- and she's a little worried that there are ceiling snakes because of how often Mrs. Rice looks up at the ceiling when Clementine is in there. She calls her toddler brother a variety of vegetable names because it's not fair that she got stuck with a fruit name and he didn't (we never do learn his real name). She helps her dad, the apartment building manager, in his daily war against the pigeons, and that may be what keeps her week from being really crummy.

Very funny, sweet, and spunky. Good for the Ramona or Junie B. crowd.

Good reading by Jessica Almasy.

As Simple As Snow

Book: As Simple As Snow
Author: Gregory Galloway
Audience: High School to Adult
In a Nutshell: narrator has a free-spirited goth girlfriend who disappears, but no name

Anna Cayne, who prefers Anastasia, moves to town one August, and by February she has killed everyone in town- at least on paper, when she finishes writing their obituaries. She dresses goth but defies definition when she starts going out with a normal, almost invisibly ordinary guy. He considers himself more boring than milk- more like water. His mom is incompetent at everything, his dad hides in his den most of the time, and his older brother barely ever visits their stifling home. He has one friend, Curt, who is the friendly, well-liked school drug dealer- mostly prescription stuff like Ritalin. His and Anna's odd couple relationship is the talk of the school, and her zest for mystery and knowing her world is beginning to rouse him from his mediocre life. Then a week before Valentine's Day, she disappears. The only evidence she leaves behind is a hole in the ice of the river and a dress, carefully laid out next to the hole. No one knows if she's dead or alive. She used to constantly send him cryptic notes and mix CD's, and that doesn't end after she's gone. The narrator- who remains unnamed the entire book- becomes obsessed with figuring out what her clues mean and where she is, even if that means asking TV and phone psychics he doesn't really believe in and trying to catch them out like Houdini did. He and Anna had a code phrase they would use to know if the other person was trying to contact them: "as simple as snow." Now he is seeing and hearing it several places. Even when he seems to be getting nowhere in solving her mystery, his life is changing along the way, mostly for the better.

Very good mystery- although I'm warning you, a lot goes unresolved in the end. Many questions are left with only the smallest hints of answers, but by the end the narrator's life and outlook have changed in such a way that I didn't hate the ambiguity.

This book won an Alex Award in 2006, and for good reason. For whatever mysterious distinction that New York devised, it was published for adults, but it's really a high school book. I mean, really. High school characters, authentic high school voice, some language and mention of sex, but nothing explicit (not that that bars it from the teen shelves). All part of cashing in on the YA book market's enormous growth, I suppose.

Since the hardcover and paperback covers are so different, I included both. Which do you like better? I can't decide.