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Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer's
I Am Not A Number, illustrated by Gillian Newland and due out from Second Story Press on October 4th of this year (2016), is one of the books I will recommend to teachers and librarians.
Dupuis is a member of the
Nipissing First Nation.
In 1928, Dupuis's grandmother, Irene Couchie Dupuis, was taken to a residential school in Canada. "Residential" is the term used in Canada for the schools created by the Canadian government. They are similar to the government boarding schools in the U.S. These were schools designed to "christianize" and "civilize" Native children. Some of them were mission schools where efforts were made to convert the children to whatever denomination ran the school.
I Am Not A Number opens with a frightening moment. An Indian agent is at their door, to take Irene and her brothers to residential school. When Irene's mother tries to keep Irene, the agent says "Give me all three or you'll be fined or sent to jail." Irene's parents, like many Native parents, were coerced into giving up their children.
When Irene arrives at the school and tells the nun (it is a mission school run by the Catholic Church) her name, she's told "We don't use names here. All students are known by numbers. You are 759." Irene thinks to herself that she is not a number, hence, the title for the book.
Her hair, as the cover shows, was cut. That happened to children when they arrived at the schools. It was one in a long string of traumatic moments that Native children experienced at residential or boarding schools.
Another was being punished for using their own language. At one point, Irene gives another girl a piece of bread. The girls speak briefly to each other in their language, Ojibwe. One of the nuns hits Irene with a wooden spoon, telling her "That's the devil's language." The nun drags Irene away for "a lesson." The lesson? Using a bedpan filled with hot coals to burn Irene's hands and arms. It was one kind of abuse that children received, routinely.
Irene's story ends on a different note than many of the residential and boarding school stories. She and her brothers go home for the summer. What she tells her parents about her time at the school moves them to make plans so that Irene and her brothers don't go back. When the agent shows up in the fall, the children hide in their dad's workshop. The agent looks for them, but Irene's dad challenges the agent, saying "Call the police. Have me arrested." In a low, even voice, he tells the agent that he (the agent) will never take his children away again. In the Afterword, Dupuis writes that her grandmother was only at the school for that one year. Her father's resistance worked. She was able to stay home, with her family.
Residential and boarding school stories are hard to read, but they're vitally important. In the back matter, Dupuis and Kacer provide historical information about the residential school system. They reference the report the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the TRC) released in 2015, too. The work of the TRC is being shared in Canada, and books like
I Am Not A Number should be taught in schools in Canada, and the U.S., too. In my experience, schools don't hesitate to share stories of "savage Indians" who "massacre" those "innocent settlers." In fact, the Native peoples who fought those settlers were fighting to protect their own families and homelands. Depicting them as aggressors is a misrepresentation of history. The history of the US and Canada is far more complex than is taught. It is way past time that we did a better job of teaching children the facts.
I'll end with this: I'm thrilled whenever I see books in which the author/publisher have opted not to use italics for the words that aren't English ones. There's no italics when we read miigwetch (thank you) and other Ojibwe words in
I Am Not A Number. Kudos to Second Story Press for not using italics.
By: KatherineS,
on 12/9/2015
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‘My first impression is of daybreak, light and colour and golden and purple fruits at the level of my shoulder.’ With this beautiful sentence, so characteristic in its fusion of poetry and physical, bodily detail, Rudyard Kipling evokes the fruit-market in Bombay, the city (now Mumbai) where he was born in 1865.
The post Something of myself: the early life of Rudyard Kipling appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Stacy Dillon,
on 7/28/2013
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I am a child of the 1970s, so of course I saw Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi in the movie theatres right when they came out. What kid didn't? I did not, however, keep up with the series and see the other movies. As my neighbor Nick (14yo) always points out, "Stacy, why do you keep saying you saw the first three? You really didn't, you know. You saw Episodes 4, 5, and 6!". Yes, I know. I put this out there to let you know that even though I am not particularly well versed in the new/old Star Wars movies, I got a tremendous amount of enjoyment out of this graphic novel/ illustrated novel hybrid.
Roan Novachez has always known that he is "destined to attend Pilot Academy Middle School and become the GREATEST star pilot in the GALAXY." (p. 1) But destiny seems to take a wrong turn for most of us in middle school, doesn't it? Roan's friends all start receiving their acceptances to the academy, but his letter seems to be taking longer than everyone else's. Instead of following his brother Dav's footsteps into the pilot life, Roan receives his rejection letter from the school. He is devastated.
Soon, however, he receives a letter from the Jedi Academy. Complete with a hand written note by Yoda himself, Roan is invited to attend the school even though most kids are accepted when they are toddlers and Roan himself didn't even apply. It seems rather curious.
When Roan gets to the academy, he really feels like a fish out of water. The other kids been there for a while, and they all seem to be able to use the force in controlled ways. Roan is working on figuring out not only the force, but how to navigate the typical middle school things that all kids deal with no matter what planet they are from. Things like dealing with bullies, figuring out where to sit in the cafeteria, opening his combination lock, and navigating a dance! There are some things unique to Roan's situation as well - trying to understand what the heck Yoda is talking about, wielding a light saber, surviving a camping trip involving Wookies!
This is a fun and laugh-out-loud look into middle school that happens to be situated in a Star Wars culture. Readers needn't be super well versed in Star Wars to enjoy Roan's adventures. The cover will definitely attract younger readers, but I do think that the audience that will get the most enjoyment out of the story are 4th-6th graders who are wading into similar waters.
Mind Games, by Kiersten White, is a book so gripping that it held my attention while I read almost all of it cover to cover while waiting for my car to be fixed--and given that I was in a hideously uncomfy plastic chair, in anxious circumstances viz the fate of the car, this says a lot, I think.
If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it would be "a psychological mystery/thriller, with a smart, fierce heroine, similar in vibe to
The Hunger Games but with a narrower focus viz world-building, cast of characters, and premise."
But since I generally allow myself three paragraphs, or so, here they are:
Two orphaned sisters, each with a psychic ability, are imprisoned in an institution masking as a magnificent school. For Annie, the older sister, who is blind, the "school" offered all the educational opportunities she craved. And so, though every preternaturally honed instinct in Fia's mind screamed that it was wrong, the sisters were enrolled.
Those who ran the school were at first only interested in Annie's ability to see the future. But when they realized just what Fia's gifts entailed, and how easily she could be controlled by threats to her sister, they knew they could never let her go. And so Fia is made into a tool of violence, sent out on criminal missions for her mysterious masters...and Annie is a hostage.
If it goes on much longer, Fia will break. But Fia is about to find out who she can trust...and to finally chose her own path for the first time since her nightmare began.
So the story is told in the present, as Fia is beginning to follow a path that might lead to escape, but there are plentiful flashbacks that tell of violence and tension and really gripping psychological manipulation verging on horror, and some scenes from Annie's perspective as well. By the time events come to a head, the reader knows both sisters pretty well, and I felt nicely invested in Fia and her situation, curious about the mystery behind the "school," and anxious to know how it all played out.
My one reservation is Annie. She's the older sister, but her parents set up (with the best of intentions) a kind of nasty dynamic of Fia being the one to look after her, because of Annie being blind. And Annie has lived her life accepting this, not fighting much against it. She does have spurt of being an Active Participant in events toward the end, but mostly she is "passive blind sister," and her journey to active participation isn't desperately well-developed. (In plain English, Annie annoyed me).
Once sentence summary: Gripping, disturbing, and a good one for the YA reader who wants wants a thrilling read, starring a kick-ass heroine, that is neither a Dystopian with a capital D (although the particulars are far from Utopian) or a paranormal romance (although there is a whiff of love story).
Will I read it again? Perhaps, though it isn't a book I'll keep assuming I will want to. I can easily imagine, though, being happy to read it again if, in two or three years, I went back to the car repair shop and someone has left a copy of it there....
disclaimer: ARC received from the publisher, left by accident in car repair shop (I think), finished with the help of a library copy.
Note on cover: I do not think the young woman on the cover is a good representation of Fia. Her eyes look a tad to limpid, and it is not clear that you are about to read a book about a teenage girl who is forced to kill. However, the UK publishers of Mind Games decided to make sure there was no ambiguity:
Sometimes, when you read a debut novel that also wins a Newbery, your expectations for next novel by the same author are way too high. That was exactly what I was thinking when I picked up Navigating Early at the library and I must say I was very pleasantly surprised when I began reading and realized that I was not to be disappointed.
The book begins just after World War II has ended in Europe and 13 year old Jackie Baker's father, a Navy captain, has returned home to Kansas, not because of the end of fighting, but to bury his wife. Not knowing what to do with their son Jackie, he enrolls him in the Morton Hill Academy for Boys, a boarding school in Maine.
Not happy about this and somewhat of a misfit in the school, Jackie discovers a boy living in the janitor's workshop instead of the dormitory. Early Auden, that strangest of boys, as Jackie describes him, is also a misfit, a boy who uses rituals to organize and navigate the world. He also has an extraordinary ability for mathematics. Numbers, Early tells Jackie, tell a story, specifically a story about Pi, that most mysterious of numbers: "The numbers have colors - blues of the ocean and sky, green grass, a bright-yellow sun. The numbers have texture and landscape - mountains and waves and sand and storms. And words - about Pi and about his journey. The numbers tell a story." (pg 66)
Early and Jackie becomes friends. And it turns out that Early, like Jackie, has suffered a loss of someone important to him. Fisher Auden, a hero and a rowing legend at Morton Hill, was Early's older brother who went to war right after graduation. But after a dangerous mission, Fisher is declared Missing in Action, presumed Dead. Early, however, is convinced that Fisher is hiding in the Maine woods and has decided to find him during a school break.
Jackie, disappointed that his father couldn't come to get him for the break, decides to join Early on his quest along the Appalachian Trail to find Fisher.
And what a quest it is. It is a story about how Jack, Early and Pi lost heir direction in life and how they tried to navigate their way back to it. And along the way, they meet all kinds of strange people, like the pirates searching for treasure, a Norwegian still pining for his first love, a 100 year old woman stilling waiting for her son to come home. As the boys travel along the Appalachian Trail, Early narrates his story about Pi's journey in an attempt to earn the name Polaris which his mother had given him.
And as the boys travel along, there are lots of coincidences, lots of twists and turns in Navigating Early, but never a dull moment. In the most enchanting language, Vanderpool weaves a taut, complex, entertaining story. I found myself anxious to get back to Jack and Early whenever I put the book down and, like Jack, I wanted to hear more and more of Pi's story.
Whenever a book is set in or after WWII, I ask myself why that time period. The war impacted everyone in some way or other. It brought Jackie's father home before it was over. But more importantly, it showed how lost some people were when it was over. Jackie's father knew the Navy, how the operate, organize, control his ship. But in Kansas, after his wife's death, he was faced with an inability to navigate his world there. And this led to his inability to guide Jack, who without mother and father, also has difficulty navigating the world. Fisher was also a lost soul because of the war, and Early completely lost his way of navigating the world when Fisher went missing. And so while Navigating Early is about navigating, it is also about finding your direction again, just as Pi must. Some many had to grapple with that after the war.
A lot of people have used the words autistic or Asperger's to describe Early. Yet, it is not for us to diagnose him and to her credit, Vanderpool does not label Early either, but merely has Jackie call him "that strangest of boys" which would be more apropos for the time.
This is a wonderful novel, and I think it is not to be missed.
This book is recommended for readers age 10+
This book was borrowed from the Webster Branch of the NYPL
I very much enjoyed The Name of the Star, the first book in Maureen Johnson's Shades of London series. It's the story of a southern girl, Rory, who comes to London for a year in an exclusive boarding school--only to find herself menaced by of a truly creepy killer who is recreating the murders of Jack the Ripper. Rory begins to realize that there is more to the murders than meets the eye, because it turns out that Rory can see ghosts...and ghosts are involved. She's not alone in that ability, and is recruited by the small unit (3 young people) of London's police force who are responsible for handling the ghostly crimes of London--but will Rory be able to help them track down the murderer, or will she end up dead herself? And in the meantime, there's the whole culture shock of life at a British boarding school....
The Madness Underneath (Putnam, Feb. 26) begins as Rory has more or less recovered physically from the knife wound she got at the end of book one. Her parents agree to let her return to school....but it's not exactly going to be a peaceful end of term experience for her. For one thing, she has a new, unique, ability--her touch can dispel ghosts--and since the devices that were able to do this all got destroyed in Book 1, she is the only actual weapon the small police ghost force has to work with. Her place within that force is uncertain, as Stephan, the leader of that team, is reluctant to recruit her and swear her to a life of secrecy and lies...
But when faced with murderous spirits, and a plot by some very sinister folks indeed to capture Rory and use her for their own ends (this was a slightly odd plot, a bit jarring), there's no way for her to just sit quietly at school and worry about her homework....
Though there are many creepy and exciting goings on, this isn't a book full of non stop action. I myself like this--non stop action gives me a headache. Instead, there is lots here about Rory as a person, struggling both with her feelings (toward boys and toward her new ability), and struggling academically. I must confess I became so worried about her academic struggles that I wanted to flip to the end to see if she flunked out or not. But then I got interested in the actual plot of ghosts and mysteries and bad guys, and since it was becoming all too clear that Rory was doomed academically, I was able to focus on what was actually Happening.
But oh, Maureen Johnson, why did you have to give me that one full voltage scene of beautiful romantic tension only to snatch it away from me?
Courtesy of the publisher, I have an ARC of
The Madness Underneath to give away (US only); please enter by next Wednesday, Feb. 13, at midnight! It's my first rafflecopter giveaway; I hope it works. Edited to add: It didn't work. For one thing, it made me answer the question "What makes you smile" which did Not make me smile and for another it gave extra entries for following rafflecopter on twitter. So I am going back to --Please enter by leaving a comment that includes some way to reach you!
The Atomic Weight of Secrets, or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black, by Eden Unger Bowditch (Bancroft Press, March, 2011, middle grade, 339 pages) is the first book of The Young Inventors Guild, a historical sci fi story of five brilliant children. Their parents were extraordinary too, so much so that one day in 1903, when the mysterious men in black came calling, they had to go. But the men in black had a plan for the children too, one that involved sending them off to rural Ohio, where they went to their own special boarding school, under the loving care of Miss Brett (the first adult to ever read out loud to them--the brilliant parents were too busy being brilliant to have much time for their kids).
Twelve-year-old Jasper Modest (a young inventor) and his six-year-old sister, Lucy (gifted with a perfect memory), were taken from London. Nine-year-old Wallace Banneker, determined to follow in the footsteps of his family of African American scientists, inventors, and mathematicians, was taken from New York. Twelve-year-old Noah Canto-Sagas, brilliant both mentally and musically, was taken from Toronto. And the oldest child, the thirteen-year-old Faye Vigyanveta, taken from the luxurious home of her parents, Indian scientists, is fiercely determined to find out the secret of the Mysterious Men in Black who have torn apart their lives for no clear reason.
And they are indeed Mysterious. "In black," for them, includes black tutus. Black bear suites. Black scarfs concealing their faces, which are shrouded by black sombreros, Easter bonnets, and the like. All manner of grab bag bits of clothing, concealing them utterly. And they are not exactly forthcoming to the children--which is to say, they don't say anything.
Although the children's strange school is a virtual prison, and their weekend trips to loving foster mothers carefully orchestrated to make escape impossible, this bizarre situation is one where the children can thrive, becoming each other's first true friends. All the delicious food they want, adult attention and love, and beautiful lab equipment.
Except that there is no getting around the fact that their parents are missing (and though they might have been distant, un-nurturing parents for the most part, this is still disturbing), the men in black are their jailors, and if they want answers, they are going to have to escape. And being brilliant young inventors, the answer comes to them--they must build a flying machine...
This is a book that requires from its reader an acceptance of the bizarre. The children's situation is like a dream, and the reader knows no more about the men in black then they do (although this reader, at least, has read more science fiction than the kids have, back in 1903, and has a theory....what do they actually look like, under all that black concealment???).
Acceptance is also required regarding the pacing of the book. We meet all five right at the start of things, just as they are about to try to escape. But then the author goes back to the start of things, but doesn't introduce us properly to all of the kids at once, instead, doling the introductions out at intervals. She doesn't rush it--we don't get Wallace Bannaker's back story, the last one, until page 182, which I found extreme. So it wasn't until the final third of the book that I felt I had a really firm handle on the kids, and could really appreciate their interactions and character arcs. Likewise, although the book starts with the escape plan getting underway, it then goes back to tell all the story up to that point.
So I read much of the book with a slightly uninvested feeling (though I liked the kids, enjoyed the details of their strange school life, and was curious to learn more about the mystery). It was not till the story catches up to closer to where the book begins, with the great escape project well underway, that the pieces all clicked for me. At that point, all the disparate gifts of the kids combine to make things really start humming, the tension grows, and the reader waits with baited breath for the Great Reveal....and realizes she's not going to get it. Nope, no little wrapping up the plot threads here, just waiting for the next book...
Still, though I have reservations, it never occurred to me to put it down. And I think it might work well for the right young reader--smart, lonely kids in particular!
(Thanks to Wallace and Faye, this is one for my list of multicultural sci fi/fantasy, and it's also one for my spec fic school list too!)
Variant, by Robison Wells (HarperTeen, YA, October, 2011) is a lovely example of dystopia writ small, all the more intense for the claustrophobia of its nightmarish setting.
Imagine an isolated boarding school. One where there are no teachers, where directives are issued electronically. One where breaking the rules means that you might disappear. One that where something is very, very wrong, and very scary.
This is the school where a foster kid named Benson is deposited one day, after winning a scholarship that he hopes will give him a chance at a new life. It is not the school he had had in mind.
The students have organized themselves into factions--those who are cooperating with a grim, self-righteous intensity (a gang of crisply dressed, stiff backed self-righteous rule under-liners), those who favor anarchy whenever possible (featuring self-drawn tattoos and as much bad ass attitude as circumstances allow), and the Variants--those who go against the grain, those who most often think of escape.
For Benson, the choice to throw his lot in with the Variants is easy. Escape from this insane school is clearly desirable. Unfortunately, it's also impossible. As the days pass, the depths of its dark wrongness become ever more apparent. Benson gradually discovers answers...but knowledge can be deadly. And there are no loving adults to come and rescue these trapped children...most, like Benson, have no family to care about their fate.
Boy did the plot twist in ways I didn't see coming! Obviously there was some Evil Scheme at work--the students themselves figured they were being tested in some way, for some unknown purposes. But they didn't have a clue what was going on...and neither did I! This one has all the tension of, say, The Maze Runner, but the surreal school setting, at once familiar and cozy, but also horribly wrong, made it all more subtly disturbing. It's a story of teenage orphans in psychological hell, but it's a hell made almost bearable by the rewards and treats bestowed from on high (tasty food, cool clothes, exciting games of combat style paint-ball), and by the friendships formed among the kids.
I devoured it in a fugue state of page-turning, slack-jawed enjoyment, and recommend it with great enthusiasm.
The sequel, Feedback, is coming out on October 2nd...I'm a little worried that now I have answers, and now that the action will be taking place on a a larger canvas, I won't quite enjoy things as much. But Wells did such a good job on this one that I am more than willing to chance it.
Note on age: If a kid is old enough for The Hunger Games, he or she is old enough for this one. I'd happily give it to a twelve year old.
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By: alethea aka frootjoos,
on 8/23/2012
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ISBN 10/13: 0375869433 | 9780375869433
Category: Young Adult Fiction
Format: Hardcover, ebook
Keywords: Camp, Murder, Mystery
Kimberly's synopsis:Calista Wood arrives at St. Bede's Academy half way through the year. She's been granted a free ride, but there's more than school on her mind. Ten years ago, her sister and another girl mysteriously vanished outside this school. Now Calista is back, searching for answers to her sister's disappearance.
Kimberly's review:
I'm sorry to say I didn't care for this book. While the opening chapter hooked me in, I felt pretty lost through the beginning half of the novel. Callie enters the boarding school with hope that this prestigious school will help her get into a better college. Within the first few chapters, many different characters are introduced, none of them very memorable.
I liked Callie's spunk and the dialogue was fast and fun at times. But for all of that, when confronted with her peers, Callie didn't feel complete to me. The story starts moving about half way when a body is found in the woods behind the school. It's not her sister's, but it starts a chain reaction that leads Callie to investigate everyone around her.
Her boyfriend Alex, is bland. The other boy she's interested in, Jack, is a little richer, but the relationship is so lukewarm for so much of the book, it's hard to see him as a romantic lead by the time it does come around. Everyone else, including Queen Bee Helen and the mean girl groupies, were really hard to visualize.
I had a real problem with a lot of the relationships in the book. None of them seemed healthy, and by the end when everything is revealed, it's so distasteful, I imagine this prep school is run by Jersey Shore grads. For me, all of that took away from the overall mystery of the sister's disappearance. I really wanted to like this book, but the mystery left me flat and the school politics were cold.
You can find the author at
www.mccormicktempleman.com.
Find more reviews by
Kimberly at
The Windy Pages.
At his blog, Matt Sakiestewa Gilbert offered a sneak peak at the cover of his new book The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue, due out in the fall of 2012.
The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue is not a children's book, but books like it are a must-read for people who work in children's literature. Given the growing body of children's and young adult books about boarding schools for American Indian children, critics of children's literature must know what the schools were like in order to accurately review books set in boarding schools.
In those schools, the goal was to "Christianize and civilize" American Indians, or, to use another phrase used to describe the schools, "to kill the Indian and save the man." The cover of The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue brilliantly demonstrates the import of the curriculum:
The children in the photo are shown reading
Peter's Family, a basal reader published by Scott, Foresman in the 1930s. Here's some inside pages from a teachers guide (source for the pages is Etsy bookseller PalabrasdeMaria). I wonder if Scott, Foresman thought Native children would be amongst the audience for their books?
On this page, the text on the right has the word "Help." We can interpret this page in at least two ways. Combined with the illustrations on the left, it suggests that this page is about how children ought to help out at home. That would mean it is didactic or instructional, a "how to be a good kid" sort of thing. Or, we could use today's metaphor of literature as a mirror and could read the page as a reflection of (White) children and what they do. (These early readers did not include children who weren't White.) Although the children shown in the book don't look like the child on the cover of
The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue, I bet that child knew all about helping out at home.
Part of the goal to "civilize" American Indians meant that they ought to move to cities where they could be Americanized and ride trains and buses or drive their own cars to their places of work. That idea became a federal policy in the 1950s with the Relocation programs by which Native families were moved to urban areas. This page of Peter's Family shows that work meant being a dentist, working at a gas station, as a lumberjack, or as a pilot.
The public perception might have been that American Indians didn't do anything at all, or, that they were hunters with nothing left to hunt. The fact is, Native men were statesmen and diplomats who signed treaties with their European and U.S. counterparts. They were doctors, too. A good case in point is Car
When Hex Hall, by Rachel Hawkins, (Hyperion, 2011, YA, 352 pp) first came out, I, like many bloggers, read it with great enthusiasm. But there were so many reviews of it, I never felt a pressing need to add my two cents. Now, however, I have a new page dedicated to fantasy and sci fi school stories, and I can't not include Hex Hall on that list. Especially since I just re-read it, in preparation for diving into the third, newly released book of the series, Spell Bound!
In Hex Hall, we meet young Sophie, a high school student whose attempt to work a well-intentioned love spell at prom goes horribly wrong. So wrong that the governing council of the Prodiguium (folks with paranormal powers--witches, shapeshifters, fairies, and werecreatures) insist that she go to an isolated school where every student has an episode in their past similar to Sophie's own disaster.
But Hecate Hall is not the most gently nurturing of environments. From the Publisher blurb (time is short, and the gist of things is well-expressed): "By the end of her first day among fellow freak-teens, Sophie has quite a scorecard: three powerful enemies who look like supermodels, a futile crush on a gorgeous warlock, a creepy tagalong ghost, and a new roommate who happens to be the most hated person and only vampire student on campus. Worse, Sophie soon learns that a mysterious predator has been attacking students, and her only friend is the number-one suspect."By the end of the book, Sophie is in seriously hot water. Unless she can solve the mystery, and make it through the final showdown, her stay at Hecate will come to an awful end...
Sophie is a gem. It's not that common for a paranormal heroine to have a sense of humor and a smart mouth, and I loved it. Here's Sophie addressing the headmistress, for instance: “I’m experiencing some teenage angst, Mrs Casnoff,” I answered. “I need to, like, write it in my journal or something.” If I had to go to a magical boarding school, I'd want Sophie as a room-mate. Her relationship with Jenna, her vampire room-mate, is based on delightful banter--they both use humor to buoy each others spirits when things go wrong (which they do, in spades!). Her romance (a hopeless...or maybe not...crush on a truly hot dude) is spot on in its tension and teetering hope, and because Archer, the dude in question, is also a smart-aleck, it's great fun to read their scenes together.
And on top of that, the mystery is gripping, and the
Laddertop (Laddertop, #1) by Orson Scott Card,
Emily Janice Card / Illustrated by Honoel A. Ibardolaza
Publication date: 27 September 2011 by
Tor/Forge
ISBN 10/13: 0765324601 | 9780765324603
Category: Middle Grade Science Fiction Manga
Keywords: Science fiction, space, aliens, middle grade, friendship
Format: Paperback, audiobook (ARC received from Tor/Forge)
Alethea's synopsis:
Based on Orson Scott Card's
Ender's Game series, this first volume follows Robbi and her rambunctious friend, Azure, when they are recruited to Laddertop--one of four space towers suspended 36,000 miles over the earth by a benevolent alien race called The Givers. Fierce competition tests the relationships between friends and enemies both. As Robbi contemplates what she is doing at the Academy, she begins to ponder the question too few people seem to be asking: are The Givers truly friends of Earth?
Alethea's Review:
I really loved
Ender's Game and so was excited to find out that a related manga was in the works. I found
Laddertop entertaining, but a bit of a let-down. It's certainly not as deep or emotionally abrasive as the original story. This is understandable not because Azure and Robbi are eleven (Ender is younger still when he enters Battle School) but because of the format and audience chosen, but still, it's generally disappointing.
The story starts at a fair pace then comes to a quick halt--this is meant to be a series after all, and it wouldn't do to give it all away at once. But this first volume gives hardly any data to process--only query after unanswered query. Who are the Givers? What is the Scan? Why can only children work in the tubes--yes, we know the
Vampire Academy (Vampire Academy #1) by Richelle Mead
Publication date: 16 August 16 2007 by
Razorbill
ISBN 10/13: 0316015849 | 9780316015844
Category: Young Adult Fantasy
Keywords: Vampires, Boarding School, Best Friends, Fighting
Format: Hardcover, Paperback, eBook
From
goodreads:
St. Vladimir’s Academy isn’t just any boarding school—it’s a hidden place where vampires are educated in the ways of magic and half-human teens train to protect them. Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, a bodyguard for her best friend Lissa, a Moroi Vampire Princess. They’ve been on the run, but now they’re being dragged back to St. Vladimir’s—the very place where they’re most in danger. . . .
Rose and Lissa become enmeshed in forbidden romance, the Academy’s ruthless social scene, and unspeakable nighttime rituals. But they must be careful lest the Strigoi—the world’s fiercest and most dangerous vampires—make Lissa one of them forever.
Kimberly's review:
Lissa Dragomir is a vampire princess and must be protected from another kind of vampire race, the Strigoi, who are fierce and dangerous vampires. Rose Hathaway, a half human-half vampire, is her classmate, her best friend and her partner in crime.
After two years of freedom, the BFFs are captured and dragged back to their exclusive boarding school where they have to train to become, respectively, a political figure and a fighter/bodyguard. But they soon realize that inside their school, it's just as dangerous as outside its gates.
Rose is a strong, fun and cocky character. She is quick-witted and throws herself into dangerous situations--my kind of girl! Her narration is very clear; you learn a lot about her character.
Lissa is seen through Rose's eyes and while Rose is the physically stronger and more aggressive of the two, Lissa is not a whimp. She has some special powers (not going to tell you!) and a few problems of her own. She is the last Dragomir princess alive. Um, that's a lot of pressure.
This is a great female relationship. They're totally loyal to each other. It's easy to see how they are best friends. It's refreshing to see a functioning, healthy friendship where the two characters genuinely care about each other, instead of other dramatic relationships where there is a lot of jealousy and backstabbing.
And oh, the boys! Dimitri, stoic, hot and Rose's instructor, is sexy and a lean mean fighting machine. The chemistry between them is ... whew. Sorry. Got hot in here. Lissa finds her match in an unlikely hero.
I want to stress that the story is about way more than boys, even cute vampire boys. It's about friendship, about growing up and finding oneself. Lissa and Rose may have been dragged back to St. Vladimir's unwillingly, but that doesn't mean they stop fighting for what they want, what they believe in. They continue to grow as characters, not just through the book, but throughout the series. Their relationships with each other grows and evolves, the best parts of each of them coming out to protect the other
Those of you looking for books for the 7th - 10thth grade boy who likes adventurous fantasy set in our world should most definitely try the Alex Van Helsing series. In this second book, Voices of the Undead (HarperTeen, 2011, 304 pages), 14 year-old Alex continues along the path he began in book one (Vampire Rising), as a new (and unusually gifted) member of a global anti-vampire organization.
Alex can sense vampires. These are not pink rainbow sparkly vampires, but vicious, immoral killers. Unfortunately for Alex, the Swiss boarding school he attends is practically on top of an ancient vampire school, so there is no shortage of potentially deadly encounters. Especially since he is in the cross-hairs of the vampire's leaders--he is not entirely sure himself of the scope of his abilities (neither is the organization that has taken him in), but it's no mystery that the vampires see him as a significant threat.
But Alex is not the target of the current plot being hatched...one that involves a mysterious vampire from the past, a vampire with the ability to mesmerize his victims and use them as players in his deadly games.
When Alex's school is burned down in a mysterious fire, the boys are moved into their sister school. Alex and his room-mates are pleased to have the chance with their pal, Minhi, and her room-mate, the mysterious Vienna (budding, or possibly even pre-budding, teen romance time), but what with murderous vampires planning mayhem, there's little time to socialize....
The action and adventure aspect of the story is front and center, as it was in book 1. Book 2 kicks off with a car chase in which Alex, on his cool motorcycle, must outmaneuver two car loads of would-be killers, one of whom then attacks him with horrible leech worm things, which ultimately leads to his school catching fire, destroying Alex's room-mate's irreplaceable collection of vampire books, as well as the building, which is less emotionally wrenching for us bibliophiles (and that's just the first two chapters!).
But I found that in Book 2 the story is more nicely balanced with mundane details concerning Alex's family and friends, and life as a boy in a girl's boarding school. The tension and danger are still there in spades, but Alex felt more three-dimensional in this book, and I appreciated that (I hope the target audience does too!).
Other reviews at Girl in the Stacks, Bibliojunkies, Ms. Yingling Reads (scroll down), and Sci Fi Chick (where both books are being given away here)
And here's a link to Alex Van Helsing: The Blog, where vampire fans will find much to interest them....
Disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.
By: Laura,
on 8/18/2011
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You’ve been bounced around from foster home to foster home, and it’s becoming clear that no one cares where you end up next. You’ve fallen between the cracks. So imagine your luck when you discover that you’ve been accepted to an exclusive private boarding school where you might have a chance to make something of yourself. Only…once you get to the school, you find out that there’s no leaving it. There are no grown-ups…only classes taught by fellow students who have received the lessons from mysterious adults on the outside. The students have formed their hierarchies so that you’re in or you’re out, and you’re constantly watching your back. Nothing is quite what it seems. What do you do? Fall in line? Try to escape? Only…those who try to escape aren’t heard from again…
And this is the hang-on-to-the-seat-of-your-pants, twist-around-every-corner story that Robison Wells has written with
VARIANT. As Heather mentioned in her
guest post yesterday, we – publishers, librarians, bloggers – read a lot of books and we’ve become rather jaded. But this one…this one is special. You won’t see these twists coming. In its
starred review,
Publishers Weekly says that “t
here are plenty of ’didn’t see that coming’ moments and no shortage of action or violence. With its clever premise, quick pace, and easy-to-champion characters, Well’s story is a fast, gripping read with a cliffhanger that will leave readers wanting more.”
We recently put the get-to-know-him-now-because-he’s-about-to-skyrocket-to-the-stratosphere author of VARIANT, Robison Wells, in the hot seat – well, since it’s summer, we actually put him in a hammock – and begged him to answer The Most Important Questions He’d Ever Answer. Here’s what he had to say:
What time is your alarm clock set for?
I know this sounds terrible, but when I’m writing I wake up at 4:00am. I still have a fulltime job, and I find that I write much better before work than after. It took a while to get used to the early schedule, but now I like it quite a bit. Everything is quiet and calm, and I don’t have a million stressors running through my head. I can really focus.
Favorite book from childhood?
I guess that would depend on the era of childhood we’re talking about, but overall I’d probably say THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH. I think I connected a lot with Milo, who was a little cynical and always bored. I was a smart kid and I was in advanced classes in elementary school, but I didn’t really like learning, or even reading. So, when the book starts with the main character saying “I can’t see the point in learning to solve useless problems, or subtracting turnips from turnips, or knowing where Ethiopia is or how to spell February”, I was immediately drawn in. And then the book was filled with clever wordplay that you would only get if you actua
By: Laura,
on 8/17/2011
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As book lovers, we all have something in common: there’s too much to read and too little time. When I’m having a hard time deciding, I’ll often as my colleague Heather Doss. She’s one of our National Account Managers and one of the most well-read and knowledgeable children’s/young adult folks I know. So when I asked Heather which teen books she was excited about for the upcoming fall season, here’s what she told me:
SWEET VENOM by Tera Lynn Childs
ISBN 9780062001818
On-sale 9.6.11
“I’m a sucker for anything that is a retelling or twist of classic myths so was drawn to this book from the initial description. With three main characters each having their own personalities, this is perfect for teens that have grown up reading Percy Jackson while watching reruns of Buffy.”
DEADLY COOL by Gemma Halliday
ISBN 9780062003317
On-sale 10.11.11
“A murder mystery with a snarky Heathers feel so funny I literally spit a French fry at a pigeon while reading…genius!
VARIANT by Robinson Wells
ISBN 9780062026088
On-sale 10.4.11
“As a voracious reader, I feel like I’ve read it all & can usually figure out the plot before page 100 (not that that will stop me from reading). This boarding school thriller had a plot twist that I did NOT see coming & still has me puzzled to this day as to ‘what it all means’.”
THE GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS by Rae Carson
ISBN 9780062026484
On-sale 9.20.11
“A fantasy for those who think they don’t like that genre, a setting that is lush & exotic, a romance that develops naturally & not instantaneously, a female protagonist who starts off unsure of herself & finds her inner warrior: this one has all the elements of my favorite books combined into one fantastic read!”
FROST by Marianna Baer
ISBN 9780061799495
On-sale 9.13.11
“Call it the ‘attack of boarding school thrillers’ but this one had a very different feel from VARIANT: deliciously psychologically creepy while leaving you wondering by the end who or what was behind it all.”
THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER by Michelle Hodkin
ISBN 9781442421769
On-sale 9.27.11
“I’d had this debut from Simon & Schuster on my GoodReads list for over a year & dived into it the second I got my greedy little hands on the ARC: a psychological mystery wrapped in a steamy romance & a hint of paranormal activity.”
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of
8 Comments on Teaser Tuesday: The Candidates by Inara Scott, last added: 7/26/2011
Beswitched, by Kate Saunders (Marion Lloyd Books, 2010, middle grade, 288 pages), is a Must Read for anyone who, like me, loves British boarding school stories and time travel, in as much as it combines the two in an utterly delightful fashion.
Young Flora, a modern English girl, is determined to be unhappy at the boarding school to which she's being sent while her parents are abroad. But when she falls asleep on the train, and finds that she's off to boarding school in 1935 (!!!!) her horror is even greater. Her three new room-mates brought her back into the past through an experiment with magic, and now she stuck in a world of nasty baths, worse food, and an educational regime far removed from the relaxed, student-directed learning she'd been promised at her new school.
But Flora manages, with the help of her new friends, to become an Asset to the School, and to save someone's life from going badly wrong....
So much fun! It is just enjoyable as all get out to see a 1935 boarding school through modern eyes, especially since Kate Saunders did such a brilliant job bringing it to life! Lots of description, lots of fully three-dimensional characters, and some nasty Latin verbs...with the threat of WW II adding a darker note (faintly, but it's there). Not a book in which Lots Happens, being more character driven, although I did appreciate the classical boarding school trope of the School Girl in Peril making its appearance!*
Flora's struggles with an alien time and its alien culture are convincing, making this my favorite sort of time travel story--one in which the time travel is the main plot element, but one in which it's the effects of the time travel on the main character and those around her that are the central point.
In short, I thought it was great!
Beswitched has been out in the UK for a while, and is coming to the US this December from Delacorte.
*Viz school girls in peril-- I actually won a prize for a haiku on this theme (10 pounds!!!), which I shall share with you now:
Hanging from the cliff,
I wonder when a school girl
Will come rescue me.
Several times on
American Indians in Children's Literature, I've written about Nicola Campbell's outstanding picture book about a little girl going to boarding school,
Shi-shi-etko. An award-winning book,
Shi-shi-etko was made into an award-winning
short film that is available from Moving Images Distribution for $40.
As you'll see, there are English subtitles in the film. Throughout the film, the language you hear is Halq'emalem, which is the language of the Sto:lo people of the
Sto:lo Nation in British Columbia. Across the US and Canada, Native Nations are using films like
Shi-shi-etko, and newer technologies (the Internet and Apple products) to teach their languages. Through
First Voices, there is an iPod and iPad app for Halq'emalem, available at no charge through iTunes. Preview the Halq'emalem app
here.
Here's the trailer:
I highly recommend that you order a copy of Campbell's
Shi-shi-etko today, and order the video, too.
CM Magazine review of Shi-shi-etko
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
Anna is not happy that she’s been sent to boarding school in Paris just because her bestselling author father decided it. She doesn’t speak any French at all, is missing out on her senior year in Atlanta, and just connected with a cute boy who works with her. Anna quickly meets a group of kids at the school who have been attending it for years. Most of them are American seniors, but one boy is part French, part English, part American and entirely perfect. Unfortunately, he is in a serious long-term relationship and Anna does have that boy back in Atlanta. So Anna and Etienne become good friends, watch movies together, and struggle to make sure that their relationship stays just friendly. Filled with lots of romance and plenty of romantic tension, this book is hot, never heavy, and pure bliss.
Perkins has captured the streets of Paris, creating the vibe and feel of a European city seen through the eyes of an American teen. Readers will enjoy discovering the city with Anna and will love living vicariously through her adventures. Perkins has also created teens who talk like teenagers, tease like bright teens, get drunk, get angry, lose control, but don’t destroy their lives. She has written authentic teens who react to real life as real people. Add to this mix of breathtaking setting and authentic voice, a beautiful love story and you have a winning read. Perkins has managed to avoid the cliché of the love triangle, instead focusing on two people who are drawn to one another but aren’t available.
Anna is a protagonist who grows throughout the book in many ways. She becomes more confident as she leaves her dorm room and walks the streets of Paris. She also becomes a lot more honest with herself, about the boy back in the states, her best friend in Atlanta, and her true feelings for Etienne. She is a wonderfully drawn protagonist who is filled with emotions but also plenty of self control. It makes for a dynamic and fascinating character. Etienne is equally well drawn with his great hair and handsomeness. He is not perfect though, he tends to be overly cautious, is desperately scared of heights, and is a tad short.
Highly recommended, this romance is much more than fluff but has plenty of heady romantic moments too. Appropriate for ages 15-18.
Reviewed from ARC received from Penguin.
By: Briar K.,
on 1/25/2010
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Lee Fiora is a modest girl from the Midwest, blessed by luck and hours of effort, who has won a place and a scholarship to the Ault school, a prestigious Northeastern boarding school. Vineyard Vines, Ralph Lauren and J. Crew labels are everywhere to be seen, while the school demands more academically than Lee has ever experienced. Awed and apprehensive, Lee begins her Ault career, unsure of her place in this affluent, preppy world. As the weeks and months continue, Lee becomes progressively more alienated, feeling friendless and very much an outsider. She is not privy to East Coast slang, the favorite brands; her hair is not long and sleek, her body not completely soft and slender. The novel follows Lee for her four years at Ault, during which time she becomes hardly more integrated. She spends the overwhelming majority of her high school years feeling self-conscious and rather miserable, because she feels that any thought, expression or action outside of the norm will alienate her further and cause others to think badly of her.
I liken this feeling of being scrutinized to the concept of the “panopticon,” in the book The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks. A panopticon is a circular jail, arranged around a central well so that the prisoners could be watched at all times. Because of the constant assumption that they were being watched, the prisoners behaved and little watching ever really had to occur. In Prep, and in The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks, the boarding school atmosphere makes for a sort of panopticon—an environment in which everyone feels as though they are always being watched, and behave accordingly. For Frankie, in Disreputable History, the panopticon serves to fascinate her and spark a rebellion within her. In Prep, the panopticon makes Lee miserable, for she feels as though her every move must be calculated to follow what the popular students are doing, and she spends more time desperately trying to fit in than she does nearly anything else. Life with a desperate and masochistic motivation such as this is not a happy one; Lee is constantly miserable and ends up allowing herself to be used sexually by a popular boy, for after wanting so long to be wanted, she grasps at the first possibility. Lee acts for almost the sole motivation of wanting not necessarily to be accepted –for being different is never desirable—but included.
Prep was written by Curtis Sittenfeld, sort of as a memoir. Sittenfeld attended a very prestigious boarding school as a teenager, and changed the name and a few key facts in the book, in order to somewhat protect its identity. Knowing this as I read was a little sad, for Curtis, alias Lee, has such an awful time in the text.
Prep is the bittersweet story of a girl who enters into a lavish world that seems ideal to her, but quickly learns that the pressure to be the unattainable elite is suffocating, and she finds herself barely gasping for breath over the four years of her life there. The really sad thing was that by the end of the novel, Lee does not seem to have really learned anything. She has not decided to be true to herself, or not care what others think of her. Perhaps this is more realistic, but it is still rather melancholy.
Prep is basically a depressing read. And though the insights on life at such an institution as Ault were interesting and well-explored, often the book lagged in Lee’s despair and alienation.
By: Stacy Dillon,
on 12/8/2009
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It's 8th grade year for the girls and changes are afoot. Jess is surprised to learn that she has just received a scholarship to snooty Colonial Academy. Jess could care less about the scholarship...she just wants to stay at Walden Middle School with her friends. Her parents, however, keep talking about opportunities, and college, and want to reach a compromise of having Jess board at the school during the week and come home to help at Half Moon farm on the weekends.
Without Jess at Walden, Emma is a bit sad. She misses Jess, and even though things are warming up with Stewart and she is editor of the paper, she still feels like something is missing. If only her parents would finally say yes to a dog...
Megan's grandmother has moved into the house and Megan finally feels like someone understands her. Gigi is totally into fashion and travel. She is an amazing cook who even uses meat (gasp!) in her dishes. But the closer Megan gets to Gigi, the more annoyed her own mother seems to get.
Among all of the changes, Becca and Cassidy actually have something common. Their mothers seem to be going a bit crazy. Mrs. Chadwick has discovered a whole new her, complete with outrageous outfits, spiky hair, and animal print glasses. Mrs. Sloane-Kincaid is always tired. She's nauseous and napping.
The book club is changing too. The club is reading Daddy-Long-Legs, by Jean Webster, but what is new to the club are the pen-pals. Mrs. Hawthorne has been in touch with her old college friend who has her own mother-daughter book club, and they thought it would be great for the girls to write to each other while reading the same book. Some of the girls aren't too pleased about this...after all, who even writes letters anymore. Texting or emailing would be so much easier. But the moms stand firm. Old fashioned letters with stamps will be sent!
What follows is a story complete with nasty room-mates, sleep-over pranks, road trips, first kisses and secrets kept from friends and mothers alike. Heather Vogel Frederick's latest installment in the series will not disappoint fans of the first two books. The girls are growing in real time, and their 8th grade problems are different form their 6th grade ones. Each character, though somewhat typed, brings something fresh to the table in Dear Pen Pal. Cassidy's growing away from her jock persona and Emma's geek is ascending the social ladder with the help of her girlfriend status. But the characters never lose their souls over it. The changes simply feel true to the tumultuous times of middle schoolers.
I can't wait to see what the book club reads next!
On this day, November 27, 2009, most people are out shopping. It is the day after Thanksgiving, known as "Black Friday."
But did you know that today is also Native American Day? Yep, someone decided that the day after Thanksgiving would be designated as Native American Day. Along with that designation, there's words to the effect that teachers provide children with information about American Indians.
But oops! Wait! No school on Native American Day! I know some teachers and librarians provide students with instruction and books about American Indians during the month of November because the entire month is "Native American Month." I'd rather all the info about us not be delivered or confined to this month... And I'd certainly prefer that Native American Day be on some other day, when school is in session.
It does strike me as pretty ironic that Black Friday and Native American Day are on the same day. Rant over....
My real reason for writing today is to send you over to Beyond the Mesas. It is a new blog, hosted by my colleague in American Indian Studies, Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert. Many times on American Indians in Children's Literature, I've written about boarding schools, children's books about boarding schools, and films about boarding schools. Today, I'm talking with you about Matt and his work.
Matt has a DVD called Beyond the Mesas. His blog is about about boarding schools. If you have not ordered his DVD yet, there's a link to get it on his blog. So on this day, Native American Day 2009, I'm not out at a shopping mall or store spending money. I'm reading Matt's blog.
The Poison Apples Lily Archer
Despite references to various fairy tales, this is NOT a fairy tale retelling, which is really hard to tell from the product description.
Once I got over that disappointment, I was very much able to enjoy this book for what it is. Alice, Reena, and Molly are three very different girls with one thing in common-- a totally evil step-mother (and apparently whackjob dads that let their stepmoms just treat them like utter crap). The three are exiled by these (metaphorical) witches to boarding school, where they meet and form an unlikely friendship.
Chapters switch POV between each of the main characters, allowing them to flesh out as we see their inner monologue and everyone else's take on them. A great and funny twist on the boarding school/friendship/learning to accept change type story.
Book Provided by... my local library
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I am a fan of girl's boarding school stories. I love the girl community aspect of them--the enforced social bonds of the setting, in which the individual personalities of the girls play out. And so Viola in Reel Life, by Adriana Trigiani (HarperCollins, 2009, YA, 282pp), was right up my alley.
Fourteen-year old Viola had no interested in being plonked in a girls' boarding school in South Bend, Indiana while her parents went off to shoot a documentary in Afghanistan. She was quite happy as a city girl in Brooklyn. But now she's sharing a room with three other girls, and has to decide if she wants to be defiantly lonely, filming life obsessively without living it to the fullest, or part of the group. Fortunately for Viola, she picks the latter, and her three room-mates, all very different, become her friends. And when Viola enters a documentary competition, each offers her strengths to the project, making it the best movie Viola's ever made.
In the meantime, there's the cute boy at the nearby boy's boarding school to distract her. But back in New York, her old best friend, Andrew, seems to be changing....
And who is the woman in red, who appears mysteriously in Viola's videos? Are the grounds of the school haunted? (This turns out to be a rather slight sub-plot, adding a bit of mystery and metaphorical point without pushing the story into fantasy).
A very pleasant, diverting read--strong on girl friendship, and with the added interest of documentary film making. It's all a little too good to be true (in fact, I kept misreading the name of the boarding school, the Prefect Academy, as the Perfect Academy). But a very nice younger YA to read when one is tired of Heavy, Issue-filled books. Viola is an engaging heroine, backed up by a fine supporting cast.
(disclaimer: copy received from the publisher)
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I'm not sure my die-hard SW fans will like this but it was interesting. Even though it is set in middle school, it does seem younger. I've actually never seen the first (or 4th!) movie all the way through, probably because my brother was so into the movies! Thanks for another opinion on this.