The Plain Janes

Book: The Plain Janes
Author: Cecil Castellucci
Audience: Teen
In a Nutshell: Four Janes make art, not war

After she is a victim in a terrorist attack in Metro City, Jane's family relocates to the sterile suburbs. She finds a group of misfits- Jane, Jayne, and Polly Jane- and once she overcomes their resistance, together they form P.L.A.I.N. (People Loving Art In Neighborhoods) and secretly perform random acts of public art, what some consider art terrorism. She continues to write letters to a John Doe in a coma in Metro City, and when a letter is returned, she must go against her parents' orders and go back to see what happened.

Great graphic novel about the healing and bonding power of art.

Art by Jim Rugg.

Slam

Book: Slam
Author: Nick Hornby
Audience: Teen
In a Nutshell: teen pregnancy, skating, and a talking poster of Tony Hawk

At the age of fifteen, Sam Jones's girlfriend Alicia gets pregnant and Sam's life of skateboarding and talking to a poster of Tony Hawk (which talks back) changes drastically.
Sam also believes TH is responsible for the fast-forward dreams he has, dreams that accurately portray his near future as a father.

Sweet, funny, not overdramatic or idealized view of teen parenthood from a young father's perspective. TH's responses are quotes from his autobiography, which Sam has read dozens of times- quote choices that don't always match Sam's situation, which makes for the funny.

Defect

Book: Defect
Author: Will Weaver
Audience: Teen
In a Nutshell: the boy who could fly- or at least glide

David is tall, skinny, has bug eyes and a strange face, and wears hearing aids. Predictably, he's not had an easy life, bouncing from one foster home to the next after his mother turned him over to the system. But there's more, things that not his current foster family the Crutchfields, or his case workers, or anyone at school knows. The hearing aids are actually to block out sound, because his hearing is off the charts. But his biggest secret would have to be his batlike, functional wings. He often goes to Barn Bluff outside of Red Wing and glides down on warm nighttime drafts.

When he is transferred to an alternative school, he actually makes a few friends, and even gets a girlfriend, a girl who calls herself Cheetah and who's prone to grand mal seizures.
Things are going pretty well until an accident and a trip to the hospital exposes his secret, which leads to a stay at the Mayo Clinic. He faces a choice: stay who he is, or have corrective surgery on his face and body and become handsome, earth-bound New Guy. He also befriends a young terminal cancer patient named Brandon and finds himself in a position to help with the boy's very unusual Make-a-Wish wish.

Good "outsider finds his place and comes to terms with self" story.
His relationship with his foster parents is particularly nice- they're truly kind people without being cardboard saints. I really liked this one.

Undercover

Book: Undercover
Author: Beth Kephart
Audience: Tween to Teen
In a Nutshell: Cyrano girl learns how not to be invisible

Elisa is a poet, but nobody knows it. Or at least, only a select few. The guys at school know that if they're serious about wooing the girl of their dreams, Elisa is the one to go to. Like a high school Cyrano de Bergerac, she ghost writes poetry that wins hearts. She is an expert at being undercover, at staying invisible while she observes the world around her, both in nature and the social order of high school. Now she is writing poems from Theo, who she likes, to Lila, who is a beautiful but horrible girl. Elisa is also coping with the absence of her father on extended business, which is straining her parents' marriage. She's also teaching herself to skate in the privacy of her own hidden pond, but she won't stay hidden for long, either on the pond or from Theo.

This is a lovely little book, poetic and sensitive with lots of poetry incorporated, but I honestly had a hard time getting into it. Probably because the last book I read was a rollicking good time, and it was hard to downshift that fast. But if you're in the mood for poetic and sensitive, look no further.

This Is What I Did

Book: This Is What I Did
Author: Ann Dee Ellis
Audience: Junior High
In a Nutshell: boy who won't speak up becomes junior high pariah

Something bad happened to Logan, but he doesn't want to talk about it. He's always been kind of a shy kid, but now he avoids everyone, stays in his room as much as possible, and tries to stay out out of his new tormentors' way. After The Incident, his parents even moved across town for a "fresh start," but the first thing his mom does is call all the neighbors and tell them what happened and that he's deeply depressed, so it's not very fresh. It involved his best friend Zyler, and now people avoid Logan like the plague. The crueler ones call him a sicko, and crapstock, and a pervert. Boy Scouts is torture, especially since the Scout Leader is the head tormenter's dad, but Logan goes just so his dad thinks he's okay.

There is one girl, Laurel, who is nice to him. She's obsessed with palindromes, and they trade notes of new examples. Through his friendship with Laurel, his participation in the school production of Peter Pan (he's a Lost Boy), and the therapy his parents take him to, Logan is gradually able to come out of his self-imposed solitude and talk about Zyler, Zyler's abusive father, and what happened that night.

Quick, engrossing read with no real chapters. Short paragraphs are interspersed with silhouette icons that sometimes mean nothing at first, but gradually take on significance. Logan has an awkward, honest voice, and very sympathetic. He really is a lost boy through much of the book, which makes the steps he takes in the end toward knowing who he is and exerting himself very satisfying to read.

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Book: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
Author: Gabrielle Zevin
Audience: Teen
In a Nutshell: Lose your memory, find yourself

When she wakes up after her accident and head injury, Naomi has lost the last four years of her life. She can't remember how to drive, or where her new house is. Her best friend Will, their co-editing of the school yearbook, her boyfriend Ace, even her parents' divorce are all missing from her memory. And from some of the things she's learning, the person she was isn't someone she wants to be anymore. For one, there's the mysterious bad boy who first came to her aid, someone the Old Naomi would never associate with, but whom she is drawn to. There's the popular kids she eats lunch with by virtue of the fact that she's Ace's girlfriend, but she doesn't really like them, and they obviously don't think much of her. While she's waiting and hoping her memory will return, Naomi gets a chance not many people do: an excuse to start over, to reinvent herself.

A very good, often funny, book. It's divided into three parts: I was, I am, I will. Zevin has some great similes in here. I forgot to mark the exact page, but to paraphrase: "he looked confused and a little frightened, like Bambi after his mother gets shot." A great look at doubled-edged treasure and burden of memory and personal history. It can make us who we are, but also sometimes trap us there.

Guyaholic

Book: Guyaholic
Author: Carolyn Mackler
Audience: High School
In a Nutshell: girl with flakey mother issues is afraid to move from hook-ups to actual love

V rarely spends more than 2 weeks with a guy before she moves on. She figures she gets that from her mother, Aimee, who moved them all over the country following or fleeing from various boyfriends before she sent her to live with her grandparents. V is not interested in any more than she can get from a guy in 2 weeks until she gets hit in the head with a hockey puck and meets Sam. Now she doesn't feel bored with him, and it's freaking her out.

Stuff happens, and after graduation she heads out on a 2,000-mile road trip to visit her mother.

V first appeared in Mackler's Vegan Virgin Valentine as the main character's niece (even though they're only one year apart in age), and fans of VVV will be happy to see V again and root for her own happy ending.

The book is more on the high school end of the audience range than Mackler's other books, for language and non-graphic sex-related content. V is the kind of girl that many other girls hate for her boyfriend-stealing potential, but we get a better look at the inside of her head, and we find more than just a sex-crazed wild child. Slightly edgier than Sarah Dessen, but a good choice for fans of her books.

Shark Girl

Book: Shark Girl
Author: Kelly Bingham
Audience: Teen
In a Nutshell: girl's life goes on after losing an arm

If only. If only Jane had stayed on the beach. If only she had stayed home. If only her brother Michael had gone swimming with her. Any little factor and things might have been different. But things weren't different, and now Jane is trying to put her life back together after losing an arm and nearly dying in a shark attack.

Losing her right arm would be bad enough, but she's also a talented artist- and right-handed. If she can't draw anymore, who is she now? To make matters worse, it was all captured on home video and sold to the national news stations. Jane dreads returning to school and real life, where she's sure she'll be seen as Shark Girl, the one-armed freak.

This novel in verse draws you into Jane's tragedy, her grief, her anger, her slow recovery, and all the downs and eventual ups of figuring out who she is now. Sometimes she's not a very nice person to be around, and realistically so, but she remains a sympathetic character as you read and hope she makes it through the worst of it stronger- which she does.

King Dork

Book: King Dork
Author: Frank Portman
Audience: High school to adult
In a Nutshell: Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, Catcher in the Rye, and the mystery of a dead father

Tom Henderson has one friend, Sam Hellerman, by way of alphabetical order seating, and a nickname, Chi-Mo, he prefers not to explain. He and Sam Hellerman have a band together, although they have no drummer, no instruments, have never performed, and change the band name about once a week (there's even an index devoted to tracking all the names). Nevertheless, they practice nearly every day after school. Hillmont High School is your basic teenage nightmare: subhuman popular kids, teachers ranging from indifferent to vindictive, and a social ladder on which Tom may actually exist below the bottom rung, if that's possible. In one predictable bit of torture, he'll be reading The Catcher in the Rye again this year. He doesn't understand the cult following surrounding that book, but when he discovers a well-worn copy among his dad's things, he's shocked to discover that his dad, who died when he was young, was a member of the Catcher Cult, too. A series of cryptic notes in the book lead Tom to believe there is a code hidden by his father, and he obsessively tries to figure it out.

Add also life with his spaced-out mother, bitter sister, and well-meaning but parentally-challenged stepfather, a mystery girl he gets to second base with at a party and now can't find again, and the spinning devil-head that looks like his English teacher that pops up whenever he uses a vocab word, just to name a few of his issues.

Without getting into all the insanity, I'll just say that this is a very funny book, definitely for older readers. There's language, groping, a bit of drug use, and fairly regular blow jobs. So now I've either warned you, or sent you running for the library. The author, Frank Portman, is apparently known as "Dr. Frank" of the Mr. T Experience, and if I knew anything about old-school West Coast punk, that might mean something to me.

I leave you with a quote from one of my favorite episodes in the book: the Stratego Sex Inquisition:

"I had just been a participant in the most retarded version of the sitcom sex talk the world had ever seen... Maybe my mom...had told LBT [stepfather] he had to talk to me about sex. He was reluctant but couldn't refuse. And in the course of his research he got sidetracked by Stratego and-boom! My sexual awakening was suddenly all about Vietnam."

Hush

Book: Hush
Author: Jacqueline Woodson
Audience: Grades 4-9 or so
In a Nutshell: girl loses her friends, her home, and her name when her family enters the federal witness protection program

Her name used to be Toswiah. She loved her life in Denver, and her father loved his life as a cop. He was one of the only African-Americans on the force, but that didn't seem to matter. Then he witnessed two fellow cops killing a black boy. He testified against them, and life got hard for the whole family. Then it got dangerous. So in the middle of the night, they packed up a few small bags and moved to who-knows-where across the country. Now Toswiah's name is Evie, her sister is angry, her mother has become religious with the Jehovah's Witnesses, and her father just stares out the window all day. They may still be alive, but life as she knew it is over.


It's a lovely story, bittersweet and cautiously optimistic in the end. A pretty quick read, too.