It’s been ages since I last blogged here so I’m not sure how many people will read this, but a couple of updates:

I’ll be at the ALA annual conference this weekend. If you’re also attending, let me know so we can meet!

I’ve written a couple of reviews at Guys Lit Wire which I haven’t cross-posted here. I know, I know, bad blogger! Anyway, the reviews were for The Freedom Summer Murders by Don Mitchell, Fake ID by Lamar Giles (great mystery!), and Ninety Percent of Everything by Rose George.

Some other reading highlights so far this year, in the order in which I read them

• Hank Finds an Egg by Rebecca Dudley (picture book; sooooooo cuuuuuuuute)
• Crash Into You by Katie McGarry (didn’t finish her first two books, but liked this one)
• Command and Control by Eric Schlosser (freaked me out! too bad it didn’t make the Outstanding Books for the College Bound list)
• These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner (okay, so I admit I had really low expectations for it going in and didn’t actually think I’d read the whole thing, but then I couldn’t put it down and ended up loving it)
• The Tyrant’s Daughter by J. C. Carleson
• The Martian by Andy Weir
• Josephine by Patricia Hruby Powell, illustrated by Christian Robinson (I hope I can make Robinson’s signing at ALA)
• Salvage by Alexandra Duncan

This is one of those books filled with so much fascinating yet disgusting information that you can’t help but read parts out loud to other people so they can be grossed out right along with you.

Or maybe that’s just me. Because I started reading this book at work one day and just had to read some sections aloud to my co-workers. Like when Rebecca L. Johnson explains how a certain fungus grows inside the corpse of a type of carpenter ant, until “a long, skinny stalk erupts through the dead ant’s head.” Or the description of a wasp laying an egg on a cockroach, then the egg becoming a larva that slowly eats the roach’s internal organs while the roach is still alive. (And then I absolutely had to show my co-workers the accompanying pictures, as well. I mean, just look at page 24.)

Maybe you think zombies aren’t real, but zombification of sorts actually exists in nature. In Zombie Makers: True Stories of Nature’s Undead, Johnson explains how parasites like hairworms and the jewel wasp, among others, reproduce by infecting their host and making them act in weird, practically zombie-like ways. Vacant stares and stilted movements? Check. Unresponsive to pain, injury, even loss of body parts? Check.

Johnson (whose Journey Into the Deep I reviewed several years ago) focuses on just a few parasites in this short but, uh, engrossing book. Her writing is vivid, the design and photo selection effectively complements the text, and a lot of information is packed into this short book. Besides describing how the parasite infects its host and reproduces, Johnson also briefly discusses the scientific observations and experiments that informed our knowledge of the parasites. Back matter includes an author’s note, glossary, and bibliography. Whether you’re interested in science or just want to read a good gross-out book, or both, I highly recommend Zombie Makers.

Book details:
Middle Grade nonfiction
Published in 2012
ISBN 9780761386339

Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.

I’ve neglected to cross-post my last few reviews for Guys Lit Wire (Bomb by Sheinkin and Sumo by Pham, if you’re interested), but Spillover. Oh my god, this book was awesome and I loved it. If I’d read it when it came out last year, it would have easily topped my list of favorite books of 2012. But since I didn’t actually have a chance to read it until this past March, I’ll have to settle for putting it on my 2013 list.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pick an infectious disease.

Influenza. Ebola. Bubonic plague. SARS. AIDS. I could go on.

Whatever disease you chose, there’s a good chance the pathogen that causes it originated in an animal and then jumped to humans. “This form of interspecies leap is common, not rare; about 60 percent of all human infectious diseases currently known either cross routinely or have recently crossed between other animals and us,” writes David Quammen. Such pathogens are known as zoonoses, and the moment when a pathogen jumps from one species to another is called spillover.

In Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, Quammen investigates a handful of zoonoses and how they spilled over, traveling all over the world and going into the field to speak to doctors, scientists, and survivors. He joins a biologist in Gabon who is conducting a biological survey of Central African forests, visits the “wet markets” of Guangdong, China, and helps trap monkeys and bats in Bangladesh. Along the way, he talks to men who were in the village of Mayibout 2 when Ebola struck in 1996, the doctors in Singapore who treated patients suffering from what was later identified as SARS but at first seemed merely a severe case of pneumonia, scientists who identified previously unknown diseases and tracked them to their original hosts, and many others.

Which would make for compelling reading on its own. Yet what really pushes this past compelling to outstanding is Quammen’s prose, sometimes wry (as when he notes “If you’ve followed all that, at a quick reading, you have a future in biology” after a paragraph-long description of the life stages of the Anopheles mosquito, and later “Mathematics to me is like a language I don’t speak though I admire its literature in translation.”), always sharply observant and erudite.

But for all the in-depth sections explaining scientific, medical, or epidemiological terminology, this is not a dry, detached scientific discourse. In a way, Spillover is about the human experience of infectious zoonotic disease–both those who are stricken and those who investigate it. And I could not put this book down. It’s timely and relevant, endlessly fascinating, and eloquently written.

Spillover happens to be one of three shortlisted titles for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, along with Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan and The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death by Jill Lepore. The winner will be announced at the ALA annual conference on June 30.

Book source: personal (purchased) copy.

* If, like me, you are into books about pandemics, David Dobbs put together a reading list at Slate. I haven’t yet read everything he recommends (must work on that!), but I also want to plug one article he didn’t mention, “Death at the Corners” by Denise Grady from Discover magazine. It’s not about a pandemic, but it is about a zoonotic disease outbreak, and probably THE article sparked my reading interest in infectious diseases.

I finished up my 48 hours by listening to a couple chapters (roughly 1 hour 14 minutes worth) of The Exiled Queen audiobook by Cinda Williams Chima.

Total reading + listening time: 15 hours 11 minutes
Total blogging time: 2 hours 25 minutes
Pages read: 1727

So I met my 12-hour goals, even with having to work yesterday. Yay!

And a big thank you to Ms. Yingling for organizing this year’s Challenge!

My Beloved Brontosaurus, concluded

• As I said earlier, I’m not interested in dinosaurs. A few hours ago, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you much more than Tyrannosaurus had short arms, Triceratops had horns, Archeopteryx had feathers, and Velociraptor were those scary dinosaurs from Jurassic Park.
• But! Quoting from p. 121: “However, what we think of as Velociraptor was really Deinonychus. … An actual Velociraptor wouldn’t have been very threatening. While exceptionally well armed, the predator would have been about the size of a turkey, too small to consider a full-grown human a meal.”
• So, needless to say, I learned a lot reading this book. I did struggle to keep all the different dinosaur names and categories straight, and had to stop and refer to the index several times before I could remember what a sauropod was, so some kind of dinosaur ID chart would have been handy (though I suppose that’s what the internet is for…).
• But that’s just me. Otherwise, Switek’s writing is thoroughly engaging, with humor and pop culture references to keep it entertaining, but without overshadowing the solid science. And it’s not so scholarly that I couldn’t understand what Switek was saying.
• It’s about how we know what we know about dinosaurs. So not just this is what we know about dinosaurs, but also how early paleontologists may have reached the conclusions they did, and how scientists since then have come to different conclusions. I think it will interest both dinosaur aficionados and the general science reader.

The Summer I Became a Nerd by Leah Rae Miller

• The book in brief: for the past five years, Maddie has been determined to hide her geeky interests. She’s a cheerleader, dating the quarterback of the football team, and everyone seems to have forgotten the Spectrum Girl incident from sixth grade. Until, desperate to read the final issue of The Super Ones, she sneaks in to her local comic book store and the cute classmate working their recognizes her.
• This is one of those books I’d struggle to review, because while it was a pleasant, temporarily diverting read, and not a bad book, it also didn’t make much of an impact on me. I don’t really have much to say about it.
• There is a support small businesses! angle (Logan–the cute classmate–works at the struggling comic book store his parents own) and Maddie learns that her friends are more tolerant than she thought they’d be, but otherwise… Yeah, I don’t know what else to say about this one.

Today’s stats
Reading time: 4 hours
Blogging time: 35 minutes
Pages read: 404

I was very indecisive this evening and could not decide what book to read. I picked up Martha Wells’ Emilie & the Hollow World but wasn’t feeling it, so put it down after reading the first chapter. Maybe I’ll get back to it later.

I did finish the next book I tried, which was

Itch: The Explosive Adventures of an Element Hunter by Simon Mayo (fiction)

• The book in brief: Some people baseball cards. Others collect books. {looks around} Itch collect elements. You know, as in lead, sulfur, phosphorous. His collection is pretty small, since he has to buy what he can’t scavenge from home and other elements are too dangerous to sell. When Itch gets his hands on what he thinks is uranium, but turns out to be an extremely radioactive unknown element that could change the world, he must figure out how to keep the rocks out of the villains’ clutches.
• Continuing the trend of reading long, 400+ page books for this year’s challenge…
• It’s overly long. It takes a while before the radioactive rock part of the plot is introduced, and I thought the denouement dragged a bit. Also, there’s reluctant reader appeal in terms of plot and characters, but I think the length will turn off some potential readers.
• On the other hand, how often do you see a middle grade/YA fiction storyline with this much science that doesn’t involve cloning, genetic engineering, or extreme weather? If you can think of other recent books, let me know in the comments!
• Another thing I liked: kids in school think Itch is weird, so he is very close to, and has positive relationships with, his younger sister and a female cousin.
• Includes an author’s note with some background information about the scientific topics that are mentioned during the story.
• Possible readalikes: The Project by Brian Falkner (which is a much shorter book), the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowtiz (except Alex is a trained spy and Itch is not), maybe Icecore by Matt Whyman. And Digit by Anabel Monaghan has a similar geek-whose-love-of-math/elements-leads-them-to-a-discovery-with-serious-like-we’re-talking-national-security-here-implications plot.

which put me in a scientific mood, so I followed that up with the first third of

My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs by Brian Switek (adult nonfiction)

• I’m not actually interested in dinosaurs per se, but how and why our knowledge of them has changed? And what “they’ve begun to teach us about evolution, extinction, and survival”? I’ll give a book about that a try.
• Hey, he quotes Mike Brown in How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming.
• Switek is a genial paleontological tour guide, part of what I’m beginning to consider the Mary Roach Road Trip School of Science Writing. Case in point: chapter three, “Big Bang Theory,” about dinosaur sex.

Then I decided I needed to go to sleep and will finish the book in the morning.

Today’s stats
Time read: 4 hours 9 minutes
Blogging time: 50 minutes
Pages read: 511

I think my book reviewing muscles are out of shape, so back to the bullet points.

This Is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith

• The book in brief: an email accidentally sent to the wrong address sparks a relationship between two strangers. Ellie lives with her single mother and doesn’t know the guy she’s emailing is movie star Graham Larkin. So what will happen when the movie Graham’s filming goes on location in Ellie’s small hometown in Maine?
• Great choice for a book challenge like this one. I don’t know how memorable it’ll be in 48 (well, 46) hours, after I’ve hopefully read a bunch more books. But it was a very fast read. Fun, charming, and sweet, without being heavy or making me feel like I need to take a break.
• Liked it better than Smith’s last book, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, which I thought was pretty meh. Maybe because the time span of this one covers more than one day? Or the third person narration being less distant? Or, even though Graham is a movie star, it seemed more grounded (no pun intended).
• Possible readalikes: Shooting Stars by Allison Rushby, Teen Idol by Meg Cabot

Maid of Secrets by Jennifer McGowan

• The book in brief: Meg was raised in an acting troupe. Although women are not allowed to perform on stage, Meg has learned how to disguise herself, to act, to pick pockets. Which catches the attention of Queen Elizabeth I and Sir William Cecil, who press Meg into the Queen’s service as a spy.
• A typo (smell instead of small on p. 26) and some anachronisms, or what I think might be anachronisms (e.g., Meg calling herself an actress, when, at least according to this, the word didn’t come into use until 1580-90 and the book is set in 1559, though of course it could have been used in speech prior to it appearing in print…) took me out of the story several times.
• Which, yes, is totally nitpicky, but otherwise, the book is enjoyable. I mean, the last Elizabethan-set YA novel I tried was The Other Countess by Eve Edwards, and I don’t think I got more than a fourth of the way through it before giving up. Maid of Secrets, on the other hand, features spy girls. (Which, obviously, is a point in its favor.) Plus a complex plot, a sympathetic and engaging narrator, and female friendship.
• Possible readalikes: Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers (although Maid of Secrets doesn’t have as much swoon, or depth), the Lady Grace mysteries by Patricia Finney (although the series is for a younger audience)

Reading time: 4 hours 58 minutes
Blogging time: 50 minutes
Pages read: 812. Yeah, besides being written by an author named Jennifer, both books are 400+ pages and, though they don’t feel bloated, could still be tighter.

I know, I haven’t been around the blogosphere much this year. But it’s 48 Hour Book Challenge time, which is always a lot of fun. Although I do have to work on Saturday, which I haven’t had to do the previous times I participated, so we’ll see how this goes.

My goal is to read for at least 12 hours, reading primarily YA fiction. If I need a break from the YA, then head to adult romance (the new Tessa Dare book is just begging to be read…) or nonfiction. Or listen to an audiobook instead, since I’m up to chapter 13 of Cinda Williams Chima’s The Exiled Queen, read by Carol Monda, and really want to know what will happen next.

Starting: Friday, 7 pm
Ending: Sunday, 7 pm

That’s my one-word summary of this morning’s ALA Youth Media Award announcements.

Who cares if more than half of my predictions were wrong? The sheer number of surprises (not to mention, completely unknown titles) in this year’s announcements was incredibly exciting.

Okay, I did get Tamora Pierce winning the Margaret A. Edwards correct, but I’ve been saying that for a couple of years now, and I think it was inevitable that she would win it at some point—such a huge influence on YA fantasy (there’s a reason so many YA fantasies with strong heroines are compared to Alanna or another Tamora Pierce book, right?), plus very diverse casts of characters—that it’s not like I was going out on a limb with this one. I’d be super happy about it even if I hadn’t predicted it.

And Seraphina by Rachel Hartman winning the Morris and Bomb by Steve Sheinkin the Excellence in Nonfiction were not surprising. But the rest of the awards?

After Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secret of the Universe won the Stonewall, I suppose it’s Printz Honor didn’t come as a shock. Lots of people loved Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity. Terry Pratchett previously won a Printz Honor for Nation, and Dodger did earn excellent reviews. Then came the two shockers: White Bicycle by Beverley Brenna as an honor book and In Darkness by Nick Lake as the big winner. I was like, “White Bicycle? What is that?” because I’d never heard of it. According to Whitney,

https://twitter.com/yalibrarians/status/295934303030870018

Seriously, I think it must be the most unknown Printz title since One Whole and Perfect Day in 2008. In Darkness did get a couple of starred reviews, but it had no Printz buzz. (In other words, if I do Printz predictions again next year, I am definitely going under, if not completely off, the radar.)

Which would have been surprising in itself. But then, no Pura Belpré illustrator honors? Three overlapping YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction and Sibert books? (Though I would argue that a lot of the best kids nonfiction these days is aimed toward that overlapping ALSC/YALSA middle school age range.) Weston Woods not winning the Carnegie? Five Caldecott honors? Jon Klassen getting a Caldecott Honor (for Extra Yarn) AND the medal (for This is Not My Hat)? Oh, and the Batchelder committee giving an honor to a graphic novel (A Game for Swallows)! And the Stonewall Book Award – Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children’s & Young Adult Literature Award* (Drama), too.

Check out the full list of winners and honors.

Just, wow.

What do you think about the books that were honored, or snubbed?

* the title of which actually makes YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults look short in comparison

Last year, my predictions were mostly wrong. We’ll see if I do better this year.

The Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature
So, Code Name Verity: you are a complex, beautifully written novel, outstanding in story, characterization, structure, and voice, to name just a few of the Printz criteria. But until a Printz committee surprises me by actually awarding the medal to the book most people considered the odds-on favorite, I’m going to keep predicting an underdog will win. This year, that underdog is

Bonus points for Lanagan being 1) a two-time honor winner and, most importantly, 2) Australian.

For Printz Honors, I’m going with

The William C. Morris YA Debut Award
The Morris Award was one of the few I correctly predicted last year. This year, I’m picking Seraphina by Rachel Hartman to win.

YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults
Having predicted Seraphina as a Printz Honor and Morris winner, you may think I’ll likewise go with Steve Sheinkin’s Bomb: The Race to Build–and Steal–the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon for the Nonfiction Award. And, well, Deborah Heiligman’s Charles and Emma won a Printz Honor and the Nonfiction Award back in 2010, so I can see Bomb winning here. Still, another part of me wonders if some of the issues regarding Bomb‘s presentation and style that came up at Heavy Medal will also be problematic for Nonfiction Award committee. It didn’t seem to have been a problem when Sheinkin won last year for Benedict Arnold, though that was selected by a different committee.

But then again, I have no idea what the award criteria actually are. Compare what’s on this page to the Sibert Terms and Conditions, and…yeah. Am I just not seeing it, or is “The title must include excellent writing, research, presentation and readability for young adults” the only thing on the YALSA Nonfiction Award policies and procedures page that even comes close to defining anything? So I’m torn between picking Bomb and

Margaret A. Edwards Award
I said it before, but I’ll say it again: I’d love to see Tamora Pierce win. Who knows if it’ll happen, but I’ll be very happy if it does.

The Odyssey Award
I got nothing. Especially after being so sure Beauty Queens was going to win last year.

As for the other, non-YALSA Awards, the Sibert committee’s really got their work cut out for them, with so many great books published last year. I hope Jason Chin’s gorgeous Island is honored somehow, and I do have a soft spot for Elizabeth Rusch’s The Mighty Mars Rovers. I think Sharon G. Flake has a pretty good chance of being recognized by both the Coretta Scott King and Schneider Family awards for Pinned. I’m not well-read enough in children’s books to even think about predicting the Newbery or Caldecott, but I have to say that I absolutely loved Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen’s Extra Yarn.

What books do you think will win on Monday?

From On Steubenville and where we go from here… (Trigger warning)

Months later, I was speaking about this experience and one of the guys in the audience came up to me afterwards and said he was a high school teacher and he was quite certain that if I told that story to his classroom, most of the guys would just laugh and call the girl stupid.

Background reading: “Rape Case Unfolds on Web and Splits City” in the New York Times, updates at the Atlantic Wire.

* because I thought I scheduled this post to publish earlier, but I guess not.

As you can probably tell by the lack of posts, I’ve been in a major reading—and blogging—slump for most of this year. Well, to be more specific, the reading slump has been very YA fiction-centric (though I haven’t read many adult mysteries this year, either), since it hasn’t affected how many adult romances I’ve read and I’ve also read a lot of nonfiction, both YA and adult.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that when the YALSA Nonfiction Award and Morris Award shortlists were announced, I’d read all of the Nonfiction finalists (and reviewed two of them, Titanic: Voices from the Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson and We’ve Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March by Cynthia Levinson) and read all of…1/3 of 1 Morris finalist. To me, the only shocker on the Nonfiction shortlist is Karen Blumenthal’s Steve Jobs bio. It’s solidly written, but I didn’t think it was outstanding.

There were some YA novels this year that I did like and which I should have reviewed, including Cinder by Marissa Meyer (though I did mention it over at Stacked), Black Heart by Holly Black (on the to do list, assuming I get back in the habit of blogging: a Cassel Sharpe/Jazz Dent comparison), Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore (though Janine discussed some of the same things that stood out to me—namely regarding reconciliation and South Africa—in her review at Dear Author), and A Midsummer’s Nightmare by Kody Keplinger (because in a year in which so many people raved about YA romances that did nothing for me—on the rare occasion I even made it through the book—this was about the only one I really liked).

The only recent YA novel that truly hooked me was Speechless by Hannah Harrington. (It also broke through Sarah’s reading slump, so you know, if you’re also struggling to find something to read that you just can’t put down…) It’s told in the first person by Chelsea, an inveterate gossip, who stumbles upon a secret at a party and drunkenly announces it to her friends. The consequences are disastrous and, knowing she made a huge mistake, Chelsea takes a vow of silence. And remains silent, even as all her friends turn on her. It kind of struck me as a cross between Some Girls Are (though much less visceral) and Just Listen, with a bit of Kody Keplinger thrown in, along with more caring parents (compared to all three). Harrington made me care about Chelsea—who is not always likable, especially at the beginning of the book—and convinced me of her determination to change. While, objectively, I can pick out aspects of Speechless that could have (maybe should have) detracted from my enjoyment of it, they ultimately didn’t matter.

My top non-YA books? Sherry Thomas’s Tempting the Bride. Loved it, even though I usually don’t care for amnesia plotlines. Which again goes to show that in the right hands, trite or clichéd plot elements can be turned into great books. AND, Thomas packs so much emotion into only 278 pages that it made so many YA books seem even more bloated and overlong in comparison. (Yes, The Diviners, I’m looking about you.) So I’m really hoping that her upcoming YA trilogy (!) retains these same traits that made Tempting the Bride so good.

What else?

A Week to be Wicked by Tessa Dare was my second-favorite historical romance of the year. Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry was my favorite contemporary. Scorched wasn’t my favorite of Laura Griffin’s romantic suspenses, but I am totally hoping for a Derek and Elizabeth book soon. Favorite non-romance adult novel was probably Daniel O’Malley’s The Rook.

In nonfiction, I thought Jon Gertner’s The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation was fascinating and eye-opening. If you’re like me and don’t read business or management books, the jacket copy probably makes the book sound dull. And maybe it is instructive to people in those fields, but I read it primarily as a history of science and technology—about the history of Bell Labs and how its scientists developed the transistor, the laser, information theory, and a lot more—and was just amazed at the achievements of the Bell scientists.

I really wish I’d been able to read Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco’s Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt and Chrystia Freeland’s Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else closer together, instead of several months apart, because of how they focus on opposite ends of the wealth spectrum. I found the Hedges and Sacco book a more compelling read overall because of their anger and how it energizes the book, even if I was skeptical about parts of the Occupy chapter, but both books are extremely illuminating in their own way.

Also: Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders by Eric Etheridge (so stunning and moving. Etheridge found mug shots of Freedom Riders arrested in Mississippi, tracked down as many of them as he could, and photographed and interviewed those who were willing to meet him. Published in 2008 for adults, it would be a great companion to YA books like Ann Bausum’s Freedom Riders: John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movement.). Gilbert King’s Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America (because I don’t think I knew who Thurgood Marshall was until he died, and I was too young at the time to appreciate his legacy and impact and, maybe most of all, his bravery. And because in giving readers a sense of the racial and political climate at the time, King describes so many more appalling and heartbreaking miscarriages of justice in the same time period—not just just the four Groveland boys, not just Emmett Till, but other I’d never heard of before.). Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail–But Some Don’t (loved how Silver examined different fields, so I felt like I was not only learning about forecasting and prediction, but also geology, epidemiology, economics, etc. Except, what was up with that comment about predicting the weather in Honolulu vs. Buffalo? Because I’ve never been to Buffalo, but when I went to college in Ohio, I was shocked by how much more accurate the weather forecasts seemed. Though maybe that was because I wasn’t getting my forecasts from television meteorologists anymore.). And, of course, Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.

More than eight years before the Curiosity rover landed in Gale Crater, two rovers named Spirit and Opportunity landed on opposite sides of Mars. While previous NASA missions to Mars, such as the Viking landers, had carried scientific instruments, their capabilities were limited. To Steve Squyres, then a college student, it was obvious that the Viking landers were not the ideal way of studying the geology of Mars. True, valuable pictures and information had been collected, but so much more could be discovered—if only it could move around the planet and crush rocks or dig things up.

Perhaps it is therefore not surprising to learn that Squyres had arrived at college considering a major in geology. An astronomy course taught by a member of the Viking science team inspired Squyres to study planetary science instead, with the dream of exploring Mars. Sending an actual person to Mars seemed impossible, but what about a robot, “a rolling geologist, with the hammers and drills and tools of a human geologist”?

His idea was a tough sell. “Rovers are risky. They are expensive and difficult to do,” he admitted. “And people kept asking, Why do you need a rover when all the rocks on Mars look alike? But all you had to do was look at pictures from orbit and it was obvious that Mars is an incredibly scenic, diverse, and complicated planet.”

For eight years, Steve wrote proposals to NASA for a Mars rover.

For eight years, NASA refused to fund the proposals. (p. 12)

Then, in 2000, Squyres received a call from NASA. They weren’t interested in one rover. They wanted two. Oh, and he only had three years to build the rovers (and rockets and landers) instead of the typical five. Squyres, leading a team of 170 scientists, and Pete Theisinger of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, leading hundreds of engineers, rose to the challenge. Spirit and Opportunity became the centerpieces of Mars Exploration Rover Mission, with the primary goal of “search[ing] for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity on Mars.”

The Mighty Mars Rovers by Elizabeth Rusch is part of the the outstanding Scientists in the Field series. Although Squyres is the scientist whom Rusch focuses on, she also emphasizes the teamwork that was essential to overcoming challenges, from the technical difficulties of building the rovers to troubleshooting obstacles on Mars. Rusch keeps readers engaged throughout the book, even in the more technical sections, and especially towards the end, when the rovers have long exceeded their expected three-month life span, and the team must maneuver the rovers in tricky situations during the harsh Martian winter.

The book’s design is effective and inviting, with sidebars that take readers behind the scenes (like brief explanations of how to drive a rover) and captioned full-color images on every page. Back matter includes a source list, chapter notes, a “For Further Exploration” section, glossary, and index.

Readers looking for information about Curiosity should be aware that it is only briefly mentioned at the end of the book (which was written prior to Curiosity landing on Mars), but they—along with many others—will still find much to fascinate, inform, and inspire them in these pages.

Published 2012 by Houghton Mifflin (ISBN 9780547478814).

Book source: public library.

Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.

Here are the numbers:

• 2,208 people were on board the RMS Titanic on her maiden voyage
• of these, 891 were crew members and 1,317 were passengers
• yet she carried just 20 lifeboats that could have held a total of 1,178 people
• she sank, after hitting an iceberg, on April 15, 1912
• only 712 people survived

But numbers can only tell us so much. They don’t convey the excitement surrounding the largest and most luxurious ocean liner ever built at the time, the confusion and fear on board when disaster struck, the bravery of many crew members and passengers, or the heartbreak of realizing a loved one did not survive.

As the subtitle of Deborah Hopkinson’s Titanic: Voices from the Disaster implies, this is a human history of the Titanic. After describing the building of the ship and giving readers a sense of its massive scale, Hopkinson introduces some of the crew and passengers (from several countries, and different social backgrounds) who were on board. Their memories add depth and intimacy to events, engaging Titanic buffs as well as readers less familiar with the disaster. Hopkinson does an excellent job weaving multiple voices together—first describing, well, “normal” life on the Titanic for passengers and crew, then the chaos after the iceberg was spotted—with contextual information regarding different aspects of the Titanic (both in terms of what was known or custom at the time, and based on what we know now) into an organically flowing narrative.

Numerous images (photos, reproductions of telegrams, and more) spread throughout the book provide additional atmosphere; it’s one thing to read about some of the amenities on board, but seeing photographs of the gymnasium and a life preserver made of cork give the details even more impact.

The back matter is another thing to rave about here. Seriously, it is awesome, especially if you love back matter as much as I do. It’s comprehensive (comprising about a quarter of the book!), including a glossary, timeline, selected bibliography, source notes, additional biographical information about some of the passengers, and an excerpt from the British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry Report.

Book details: middle grade nonfiction, published 2012 by Scholastic, ISBN 9780545116749

Book source: public library.

Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.

As Cynthia Levinson notes in We’ve Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March,

Segregation in Birmingham wasn’t just a way of life. It was the law. The city’s Racial Segregation Ordinances, adopted in 1951, demanded almost total separation of blacks and whites.

Many southern cities mandated separate drinking fountains, bathrooms, scools, and seats on buses for blacks and whites. But Birmingham’s ordinances went even further… (p. 7)

Even after other Southern cities desegrated, Birmingham resolutely refused to do so. When segregation finally came to an end in Birmingham, it was due to the courage and strength of thousands of children and teens who would not give up despite a faltering plan to fill city jails and, therefore, impede the enforcement of segregation laws. Dwindling numbers of adults marched and were arrested in April. But in early May, thousands of young people protested, marched, and went to jail, bringing the nation’s attention to Birmingham.

We’ve Got a Job is moving and inspiring, with compelling firsthand accounts of the Birmingham Children’s March from several of the participants. Interviews with four people who participated in the march and went to jail form the core of the book. Not only does it give readers personal insights and a strong sense of immediacy into what the time period was like, it’s a great way of organizing information, especially since the four youths Levinson focuses on—Audrey Faye Hendricks (who was 9 years old at the time!), Washington Booker III (14 years old), James W. Stewart (16 years old), and Arnetta Streeter (15 years old)—came from a couple of different neighborhoods, economic backgrounds, and varying levels of family involvement in the Civil Rights movement. It allows Levinson to explain background issues in a natural way, building off of the relationships and experiences of Audrey, Wash, James, and Arnetta. Levinson also covers dissent among black leaders, who disagreed over strategies and methods to use in their push for desegragation, and briefly touches on the beliefs of several white teens living in Birmingham at the time.

The design of We’ve Got a Job is simple but effective. Chapters are broken into clearly delineated sections, and the majority of sidebars are placed in such a way that does not interrupt the flow of the text. The black and white photos, interspersed throughout the book, are not as arresting (no pun intended) as those in Elizabeth Partridge’s Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary but many are still striking and effectively convey the atmosphere and passion of the time.

Back matter includes a brief author’s note, source notes and bibliography, and an index. The notes are adequate, but I have to admit that I would have liked more details about how Levinson conducted her research and found her four informants (a la Marc Aronson—I mean, have you seen the notes in Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and America in the Age of Lies, which are comprehensive and just as fascinating as the main text itself? Chapter 10 of We’ve Got a Job briefly discusses how many Civil Rights leaders were suspected of being Communists, a subject Aronson covers in more detail in Master of Deceit).

We’ve Got a Job is one of several excellent books for older kids and teens about the Civil Rights movement published in recent years. If We’ve Got a Job piques your interest in the subject, you should definitely take a look at the aforementioned Marching for Freedom by Partridge, as well as Philip Hoose’s Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.

Book details: upper MG/YA nonfiction, published 2012 by Peachtree, ISBN 9781561456277.

Book source: public library.

Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.

No one in the town of Lobo’s Nod wants to believe that the dead girl in the field was the victim of a serial killer.

Jazz knows better.

Spying on the cops and crime scene tech gathering evidence, his father’s words echo in Jazz’s mind.

Most of these guys, they want to get caught. You understand what I’m saying? I’m saying most of the time, they get caught ’cause they want it, not ’cause anyone figures ’em out, not ’cause anyone outthinks ’em.

Anything that slows them down—even if it’s just by a few minutes—is a good thing, Jasper. You want them nice and slow. Slow like a turtle. Slow like ketchup.

Always check the hands and feet. And the mouth and ears. You’d be surprised what gets left behind.

And Jazz is sure that, despite the sheriff’s insistence otherwise, Lobo’s Nod has another serial killer on its hands. After all, Jazz knows the signs, knows how serial killers think—because his father was the most notorious serial killer of the century, and Billy Dent liked to share his wisdom with his young son.

Barry Lyga’s I Hunt Killers is one twisted, yet morbidly compelling, book. (Especially for one that was “accidentally” created!) The mystery aspect of tracking down the serial killer is very good, but what really elevates the book is Jazz and all his contradictions. He has a couple of troubling, misogynistic thoughts, yet it’s easy to see why, with Billy Dent as his father and teacher, he might think in such a way. Jazz knows how to read people and how to manipulate them, and takes advantage of this—just like his father. Even though he fears that most people think he’ll end up like his father. And deep down, he’s afraid they’re right.

Other readers have compared this book to the Dexter series by Jeff Lindsey (which I haven’t read or watched) and Dan Wells’ John Cleaver series (only read the first book), but I really think I Hunt Killers has a ton of appeal to fans of Chelsea Cain’s Archie Sheridan/Gretchen Lowell series. (Speaking of which, Cain’s newest book, Kill You Twice, is coming out next month.) I mean, the charisma of Billy and Gretchen, the grotesqueness of their crimes and their perverse genius, Jazz and Archie’s inner turmoil and the fact that their connection to Billy/Gretchen is public knowledge…

But getting back to I Hunt Killers, many of the crimes are gruesome and disturbing, and described as such. Not in a sensational way, but serving in part to emphasize how Jazz’s childhood—brainwashed into being an assistant of sorts to his serial killer father—continues to affect him.

Book source: public library.

Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.