A Review of Page by Paige by Laura Lee Gulledge

The July/August Horn Book Magazine features the ALA awards winners and their acceptance speeches. I was especially touched by Caldecott winner Erin E. Stead's speech and her husband Philip C. Stead's article about his wife. It turns out Erin is painfully shy and has experienced periods of extreme self-doubt about her abilities as an artist. As Erin put it in her speech:

Philip always knew I should make books. I did not. I thought I was too serious, my pictures too tiny and quiet to hold their own on a bookshelf. This was a career I deeply admired and respected but felt I did not deserve. And maybe couldn't handle.

I was reminded just a little of Erin E. Stead when I read Laura Lee Gulledge's graphic novel, Page by Paige. Actually, it's closer to being a graphic journal than a novel, and I definitely don't mean that in a Diary of a Wimpy Kid way.

Introspective teen Paige has just moved to New York City from Virginia, and she is struggling to adjust. She is also struggling with her desire to define herself as an artist. This book is a record of her journey. (All done in black and white, by the way.)

What's really nice is the way Gulledge has Paige mix visual metaphors into her storytelling. For example, when Paige says, "I've been giving myself a lot of pep talks in my head lately," we see in the next drawing that the sign over the high school entrance says "BE AN EXTROVERT" instead of the school's name. On the next page, as Paige goes up the hall, she sees a hand-lettered sign on the wall reading, "Psst, Paige, You Belong Here." Below, as Paige writes, "I tell myself that everyone else feels alone, too," we find a drawing of a lake with dozens of teens paddling around in very small boats, each isolated though surrounded by others. These images ebb and flow nicely as Paige goes about finding her way in a new place.

The detailed depiction of Paige's worries and self-analysis might strike more confident readers as self-absorption, but I'm guessing many teens (and adults!) will relate to her self-consciousness. Paige's conflicts with her well-meaning but intrusive parents are another plot thread that will feel familiar to a lot of young readers. This relationship is not unrealistically one-note, though: At one point Paige shares a joke and a hug with her dad, and her parents are fairly sympathetic characters as they try to understand how their daughter is doing.

Happily, Paige falls in with a great little group of new friends who not only help her to feel less isolated, but who support her blossoming as an artist. With Jules, Longo, and Gabe cheering her on, Paige starts up an art blog and even designs some guerrilla street art projects. For example, at one point she and her friends leave a bunch of plastic Easter eggs around town, each filled with a message or a small token like a Hershey's Kiss or a feather.

Paige's friends are appealing individuals in their own right: Jules, the lesbian singer whose lyrics combine things like vampires and robots; her brother Longo, a goofball and, like Paige, a closet artist; and Gabe, a quiet boy and a writer.

This is not a rowdy book, but the low-key humor adds dimension. For example, as the four compare backgrounds and we find out with Paige that Gabe is Japanese-American and Jules and Longo are Italian-Latino, our English-Scottish-Irish-German-Swiss girl remarks, "Wow, you guys are so exotic! Me, I'm just like if all the pale countries got together and had a big orgy."*

Paige continues to struggle with self-doubt in the face of setbacks, but mostly she quietly grows more confident both as an artist and as a person. Her budding romance with Gabe is especially lovely: their kindness to each other is what you really want to see in a teen relationship, or in any relationship, really. Paige's joy in her new boyfriend and in their tentative kisses is, of course, depicted in part by more symbolic drawings.

Paige also works things out—to a reasonable extent—with her parents. This book is basically a coming-of-age story, as Paige goes from a place of fear to a place of becoming her promised self. Each section of Paige's sketchbook begins with a "rule" Paige assigns herself as she tries to be more adventurous, more confident, and more open about her artwork. For example, Rule #3 is "Shhh... quiet... listen to what's going on in your head." Here's a complete list of Paige's art/life rules all in one spot.

I would especially recommend Page by Paige for shy, thoughtful, and creative teens.

Note for Worried Parents: This is a Young Adult book. I don't think younger children would be particularly interested in the quiet angst of a girl artist. There is some kissing between Paige and her very nice boyfriend. The orgy joke above is about as off-color as it gets.*

Check out Laura Lee's blog, which should give you a hint that the book is fairly autobiographical, at least when it comes to art, self-doubt, and depression. Gulledge is also involved in doing some very cool community art. We've got a "motion comic" book trailer for Page by Paige, body painting (PG-13), new drawings, and live mural painting—and that's just mid-July through mid-August! That's more of a blog for grown-ups, though, actually; another one is aimed strictly at teens and other people interested in this YA graphic novel (and future projects for YA readers).

A Review of The False Princess by Eilis O'Neal

This book reminded me a little of Palace of Mirrors by Margaret Peterson Haddix, which also deals with the idea of decoy princesses. Here we meet Princess Nalia the day after she turns sixteen, when she learns that, despite her upbringing and training, she is not really a princess, let alone the heir to the throne of Thorvaldor. Because of a dire prophecy, she has been merely a placeholder until the real Nalia can be brought to the palace.

The king and queen scarcely do right by Nalia, now known by her birth name of Sinda. They send her to live with her aunt, who turns out to be a dyer in a small village. Sinda's aunt can hardly stand her, and that's even before Sinda turns out to be inept at the smallest task involved in creating dyes. Aunt Varil's hostility is only one of the reasons Sinda suffers in her new life: she misses her best friend, a young aristocrat named Kiernan. But she is so miserable about her suddenly-low status that when he comes looking for her, she turns him away with harsh words.

For a time it seems that Sinda will be comforted by a village boy named Tyr. Ultimately, however, what changes is that Sinda learns she has magical ability. She returns to the capital, hoping to study in the college of wizards. Instead she winds up working as a scribe/apprentice to an eccentric magic-maker named Philantha. In time Sinda reconnects with Kiernan and even meets her replacement. In doing so, she discovers a conspiracy so convoluted that it will require the help of her friends as well as her own efforts to untangle all the skeins. Along the way, her peril grows greater, as does the danger to everyone else involved—until the day comes when she must face the entire court and tell the truth without losing her life.

This is a good story, a sort of fairy tale for teens. It's interesting to see an inversion of that childhood fantasy, "Am I really a misplaced princess, adopted by these commoners?" Looked at the other way round, the question seems especially pertinent for teens, who worry, "Am I really anything special?" By the time this story is over, Sinda has made a new place for herself in the world, though not one she would have anticipated a few years or even a week or so earlier, when she was struggling to get along with her resentful aunt. In fact, she plays at least five distinct roles in The False Princess, reminding me a little of the way young adults change their college majors, let alone their life plans. I doubt this is what the author specifically had in mind, but I do think the book is well suited to representing the kind of transitional uncertainty often felt by, say, sixteen- to twenty-three-year-olds.

Because Sinda is pretty unhappy for large chunks of the book, she is sometimes a bit depressing to hang around with; however, she guts it out, and that makes her rather appealing. Here's Sinda arriving at her aunt's cottage:

My aunt was a tall, thin woman with an angular set to her bones. Her hair was light brown, with strands of gray running through it, and her nose was long and sharp. I didn't see much of myself in her. We studied each other for a moment, and then she exhaled a puff of breath through her nose.
"You look like her," she said. "Your mother."
In my mind, I saw the queen, who was all softness and grace, whereas I had always been small and dark.
As if she could see my thought, my aunt pursed her lips. "I mean your real mother." It was a dry voice; it reminded me of reeds clacking together.
"I hope..." I licked my lips to wet them. "I hope that I have not inconvenienced you too much. It seems that you are my only living relative, and they could not think where else to send me."
My aunt looked at me for a long time, then barked at the footman, "Bring her things in, if she has any." Then, to me: "Well, you might as well come inside, too."
She turned, the light from the lantern suddenly hidden behind her body, and I followed, wanting whatever scrap of brightness I could find to push back the dark.

Solving the mystery behind Sinda's role as a substitute princess takes us in various surprising directions, some of them more fast-paced than others. (The part about researching the prophecy dragged a little for me.) In general, one of the best things about this book is the plot twists, but I also enjoyed Sinda's friendship with Kiernan, which is obviously heading toward something more. Though I wasn't completely surprised to see it, I was still pleased to note that Sinda's change in station had absolutely no affect on Kiernan's loyalty and affection.

In addition, I was intrigued by Sinda's relationship with her adoptive mother, the queen, who must give Sinda up without looking back after raising her for sixteen years. The glimpses O'Neal chooses to show us of the queen's feelings are poignant, all the more so because the queen tries so hard to keep her struggles in this regard to herself. There's some nice character work in The False Princess, alongside pleasing dollops of magic, adventure, and romance.

Note for Worried Parents: You'll find a little oblique talk about sex and some kissing at one point in this book for teens.

A lot of bloggers have weighed in on this one. Here's a review at Charlotte's Library that provides links to a few other reviews.

A Review of Trickster's Girl by Hilari Bell

This book is going to make you want to get on a motorcycle and take a road trip to Alaska, which, coincidentally enough, is pretty much what the author did when writing Trickster's Girl (though maybe she drove a car).

Now, we've seen a lot of dystopian YA fiction over the past few years, but it doesn't often include fantasy elements. Bell comfortably marries a damaged human future with the mythological beings who want to make things better. Well, some of them do. The rest think it would be great if all of the humans thoroughly destroyed themselves.

Even though Bell's premise, set on our planet a century from now, at first glance seems environmental, it also includes terrorism: someone has unleashed a biological weapon that kills off trees as well as giving people a particularly powerful form of cancer, and its influence is slowly spreading northward from South America.

Raven, that ancient trickster, decides to save the planet he finds so entertaining, so he scrounges up an unwilling recruit to run the human side of the spells needed to heal various crucial power spots (having to do with ley lines and nexuses, if you know your sci-fi/fantasy tropes). Naturally, as the book begins, Raven disguises himself as a hunky teenage boy and infiltrates a high school, where he stalks Kelsa until she agrees to listen to him.

Don't mistake this for one of those current YA paranormal romances, though. You know, where the hot supernatural guy falls hard for an oh-so-ordinary girl who is his junior by a century or two and then spends the rest of the book alternately protecting her and making out with her? Right. This isn't that book.

So Kelsa isn't interested in what Raven has to say except—her father has died from the cancer and she is not getting along with her mother one bit. To help solve the problem that killed her father, she grouchily agrees to accompany Raven to just one place. Whereupon they break into a museum in the dead of night in order to steal a medicine bag. Again, not what Kelsa had in mind! Then Raven tells her he wants her to go on a road trip to Alaska on her motorcycle. The girl has no intention of cooperating at this point, but he cleverly argues her into it.

Of course, Raven is still withholding information, like the little fact that he has enemies, beings like himself who don't want the problem fixed. And those enemies have recruited humans to stop Kelsa. That's aside from ordinary problems like what to eat and dealing with flat tires and whether they will be able to cross the Canadian border without getting caught (in a world where DNA-based personal identity cards make it hard to do that sort of thing). Or the problem of Kelsa figuring out how to work a brand-new kind of magic when she doesn't even really believe in magic except that this irritating boy turned into a raven and back right in front of her to prove it.

Little by little, Raven and Kelsa succeed, and soon the enemies' efforts escalate, till it's not certain Kelsa will live, let alone finish her part of this task. It takes the last-minute help of another kid to pull off Kelsa's final defeat of her enemies, and then the magical torch is passed to that boy, a Native American who will be the main character in Bell's second book in the Raven Duet.

One thing I've discovered in reading Bell's previous books (Goblin Wood and A Matter of Profit, among others) is that she isn't interested in black-and-white storytelling. Bell goes for ambiguity and nuance whenever she gets the chance, e.g., in a discussion of faith healing and why Kelsa's father died. Those of you who feel that fantasy is too often morally simplistic will appreciate the complex humanity of her books, including this one.

Kelsa is not always cheerful or appealing and her motives are sometimes petty, but she hangs in there and gets the job done. I appreciate seeing that her grief for her father doesn't render her saintly; far from it, in fact. I also like Bell's version of the mythological trickster figure, whom she envisions as changing names and faces over the centuries, depending on what myths the humans create.

Setting is important in Trickster's Girl, both in a solid, functional way and in a spiritual sense. Here's a sample, as Kelsa is about to heal a glacier:

Like the glacier itself, the dip was bigger than it had looked from a distance. Kelsa stared curiously, for this shallow trench was nothing like the water-cut gullies and canyons she was accustomed to, just a slightly deeper groove amid hundreds of others the glacier had carved into the mountain's stone....
Kelsa could see nothing now but a wall of white curling away, for its top was far higher than her head. It didn't look very inspiring, but this dirty snowbank was just one branch of an ice field that could be seen from space, and that even now was carving away the peaks that towered around her.

The question arises: How well does Bell's blending of science fiction and fantasy work? I think she succeeds. The science fiction is simply an extension of our modern world, with slightly more sophisticated technology and believable social/political developments relating to terrorism and other concerns. The mythology is also extended, centered around Raven and a barely glimpsed pantheon of mostly Native American gods and nature spirits.

Trickster's Girl is a focused story compared to some of the cast-of-thousands books we've been seeing, in part because the quest/road trip format gives it a fairly linear shape. It doesn't have the over-the-top intensity of something like The Hunger Games, yet it has its own quiet kind of intensity. I think you'll find it's easy to get on that motorcycle with Kelsa and head to Alaska, attempting to heal a troubled Earth with the help of an unreliable mythological being.

Note for Worried Parents: There's some peril here, with motorcycle gangs and talk of guns and drug smuggling. Trickster's Girl is pretty wholesome, albeit mature. Its intended audience is teens.

This book is due out on Monday, January 3rd. I requested a review copy from the Amazon Vine Program.

Also: My interview with author Hilari Bell is now up at The Enchanted Inkpot.

A Review of Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences by Brian Yansky

Ah, a horror-comedy alien invasion book for teens! Just what you wanted to start off the new year, right? The Sanginians are a little goofy here, except for what they do to the humans. Lord Vertenomous and his people conquer Earth in ten seconds flat, saying non-apologetically of the billions they have killed, "I am sorry for your loss." The remaining humans, preserved because of their latent psychic abilities, are referred to as "product" and enslaved. Jesse is one such human, and he is the first-person narrator of Yansky's cheerfully odd new story.

Jesse is sitting in history class one day when everyone in the room but him "falls asleep." Jesse hears a message inside his head informing him that his planet has been conquered by "the greatest beings in the known universe" and that it only took ten seconds. His first thought upon hearing the voice is that he's losing his mind.

The world is conquered in ten seconds? Come on. Also, the voice itself isn't particularly scary. Not like the breathy, booming voice of, say, Darth Vader. It's more of a whisper and a little squeaky around the edges. In fact, I'm kind of disappointed that the imagination of my damaged mind couldn't do better. But then I notice what I've been too freaked out to notice before. No one is moving. Every single person, including Mrs. Whitehead, looks sound asleep. I feel a shadow over me then, and it practically knocks me off my feet. I struggle to breathe. I force deep breaths. Then I do what you do when people are sleeping at a totally inappropriate time and in a totally inappropriate place. I try to wake them. I shake Carlee Thorton, who is the best student in school and would never, ever fall asleep in class. I punch Jackson on the arm.
"Jackson, dude, it's me, Jess. Wake up," I plead. He doesn't....
I try my cell but it's dead. I go out into the hall and try some good old-fashioned screaming. No one screams back.
I'm all alone.
It's so quiet.

As the story progresses, Jesse is taken to work in Lord Vert's compound, where he cautiously makes a few friends among the other slaves and finds his own psychic powers growing to the point that he starts hearing another human's mental voice in his dreams. As Jesse loses some of his fear of his captors, he begins to plan an escape. The action ratchets up from there, as Jesse and a few companions do get away and the aliens use their technology to try to hunt down the missing product.

Yansky does some interesting things with the idea of colonialism that should bring to mind what European nations did in places like Africa and Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century. That is, in Sanginian society, sentience is measured on the basis of psychic ability. Anyone lacking that ability is considered an animal and can be killed without compunction. But when Lord Vert's people recruit human servants with a little psychic ability, their interactions prompt that ability to blossom. This means that a planet full of humans with negligible sentience is becoming a place with signs of greater sentience. The answer to Lord Vert's dilemma is, of course, to create a cover-up so that product-rights activists back on his home planet won't take up the cause of the humans on Earth. (Compare his decision to limit the evidence of psychic skills to the efforts of colonial Europeans to prevent native peoples from learning to read and write, which might indicate that they were as intelligent as their conquerors.)

We get the Sanginian point of view from Lord Vert's correspondence, mostly with his politically powerful and intimidating father. Because Vert is comically afraid of his father and of making bureaucratic screw-ups, it's easy to forget that Vert is himself very powerful, has personally committed genocide on a scale of billions, and uses the humans as slaves, including sexual slavery. If you take the time to think about it, this juxtaposition is a little jarring. But Yansky's point is a good one: we tend to imagine alien invaders as soulless monster-machines. Yet isn't there something even more terrifying about a rather ordinary personality with such power over others? A guy like Lord Vert, who happily justifies doing horrible things and then worries about what's for dinner?

The human point of view in Yansky's book is also poignant, as people who thought they were pretty independent and relevant are suddenly treated like animals. (Again, slavery and colonialism would have felt like that. Or the way Jews were treated by the Nazis.) As Jesse tells a fellow slave, a girl he's starting to like, "We matter." And she asks, "Why?"

Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences is fast-paced, often funny, and deeper than it seems at first glance, when it appears to be just another action-adventure tale. The book ends with a little group of human rebels in place as Jesse's powers take a surprising turn, clearly setting us up for a sequel. I hope that Brian Yansky can sustain his clever balance of humor, suspense, and even philosophy in the second book.

Note for Worried Parents: This isn't exactly a happy scenario, and Lord Vert has taken one human character as a concubine, a fact that, while it is never exploited, is quite clear (as well as necessary to the plot). A book for teens.

A Review of Pod by Stephen Wallenfels

Gritty-cool. That's the term I've decided on for Pod. This book pulls off what all kinds of alien invasion and action films have failed to achieve in recent decades: it's the ultimate sci-fi suspense thriller. All this without ever showing us a single alien—just their ships.

There are two stories in Pod as we follow a couple of kids whose lives implode when the aliens come. Josh, apparently a high school sophomore, is living a happy suburban life with his parents in a town near Seattle, only his mother is away at a medical convention in L.A. Then early one morning, Josh is woken by a horrible screeching noise and all of the radios and TVs in the house lose power. He and his father see a huge black pod descend from the sky. More pods descend, until they can be seen floating in every direction. Beams from the pods start to disintegrate all of the cars and trucks. Next the newspaper girl, who is running towards Josh, is gone in a flash of blue light as Josh's father holds him back from going out the door to help her.

Cut to Los Angeles, where twelve-year-old Megs is living a very different life from Josh. She and her mother have a car, but that's about it, ever since they ran away from the mother's abusive boyfriend. Megs's mom talks big, though it's pretty obvious she's making it on prostitution gigs. On this particular morning, she goes off with a man she's met, leaving Megs in the car, which is parked in a hotel parking garage. She promises to take Megs to Denny's when she comes back and blows her a kiss, telling her to lock the doors. Only not long afterwards, Megs hears a terrible screeching sound, and all hell breaks loose.

From there, we go back and forth from Josh to Megs, watching how they react to the situation in which they find themselves, now that anyone who goes outside will be disintegrated. In many ways, Megs's experience is the more horrific, since a group of thugs led by the chief security guard takes over the hotel and terrorizes the occupants under a pretense of creating order. Megs continues to hide in the parking garage, where she creeps from car to car, trying to find food and water. Unfortunately, two of the hotel thugs also come to the garage, looking for valuables in the cars. They become aware of Megs's presence, and she must play her already awful game of hide and seek even better. Megs has found a kitten, and even though she knows she probably shouldn't, she tries to keep it alive. Megs becomes more aware of how bad things are inside the hotel and even tries to help, especially after the kitten is captured by her enemies—whose preferred means of killing people is throwing them outside so that they will be destroyed by the alien pods.

Josh's troubles seem more subdued by contrast, but they are powerful in a quiet way. His father immediately starts worrying about water and supplies, becoming increasingly obsessive about counting every bite of food in the house. He and Josh bicker as they consider the future, if there is a future at all. And should they eat the dog? If it comes down to it, should they eat each other? This portion of the story slowly grows in intensity, made all the more horrifying as Josh sees what happens to the people in the apartment building across the street.

Yet in the midst of all this, animals can roam outside without being killed, which might lead readers to suspect that the aliens are pretty much against humans and their technology. (Various aspects of technology are destroyed along the way.) Are we talking ruthless environmentally concerned aliens?

At any rate, things get worse and worse for Josh and especially for Megs. Here's a sample of what it feels like to be Megs in the parking garage:

This is my new address:
Megs Moran
Level 6 Orange
Row J, Space 12
Los Angeles, California
Here are the directions. You go to Level 6 Orange—orange because all the levels have different colors. If you have kids, avoid the bloaters on levels 3 and 5. The smell is so bad they might puke. Find Row J—you can't miss it, there's a little brown Toyota truck at the front with muddy monster tires that Richie slashed. Walk all the way down to space 12, that's two cars up from the end. If you go too far you'll be staring at three huge spaceballs. I'm next to the White Ford Focus with dangling side mirrors (be careful not to step on the broken glass—there's lots of it). Knock three times on the trunk of the blue Volvo. I'll pop out like a weasel and say Nice to see you!—unless you're Richie or Hacker, in which case I'll scream my head off. Like I did an hour ago when I woke up from a dream about Richie cutting into the trunk with a chainsaw.

FYI, Richie and Hacker are the thugs who are looking for cash, guns, and Megs, AKA "the Parking Lot Pirate." "Spaceballs" are what Megs calls the pods. Bloaters are dead bodies, of course.

I said this is the ultimate sci-fi suspense thriller, but Pod is more than that. While most suspense thrillers tend to be more plot-driven than character-driven, here the suspense is all the more powerful because Josh and Megs feel so real and important to the reader, as do some of the secondary characters.

Although this book is easily classified as science fiction and is specifically an alien-invasion story, it is also a work of dystopian fiction. Only Pod takes place right when things fall apart. (See the author's ironic use of a Ronald Reagan quote at the beginning of the book.)

The kinds of threads Wallenfels leaves hanging at the end of Pod will make you really want to read the sequel. Even small details, like the brief exposure Josh has to one of the alien rays, though not the killing kind, make you wonder what might happen next. (Megs appears to have been exposed, too.) Besides which, we get a glimpse of how the two stories could eventually tie together.

I'll confess that Pod came out nearly a year ago, but I recently got around to reading it and had to wonder why I waited so long!

Note for Worried Parents: This is tough stuff, and not just because it's easy to infer that Megs's mother is prostituting herself. The alien invasion results in numerous deaths, and this somehow manages to pale by comparison to the misery and violence unleashed by the thugs who take over the hotel in L.A. Definitely a book for teens.

Poetry Friday: Teens Heart Poetry

By night, I'm a children's book writer and kidlit blogger, but by day, I teach kids in K-12 who are homebound with medical conditions (e.g., cancer). This gives me a unique little window into how kids think. So let me tell you about a couple of my students. I recently worked with a 17-year-old boy I'll call Alex who was the rocker type, with skinny black jeans and tee-shirt, purple sneakers, and long dark hair covering everything but his nose. As we studied U.S. History, I did a lesson with him on the blues, tying it to the works of Langston Hughes.

This kid wanted to borrow the book of Hughes's poems that we read from during class. (We weren't studying English, unfortunately.) A few months later, when he was about to return to his regular school, Alex asked me, "Can you recommend some more poetry books? I really like poetry."

Then there was a girl I'll call Misha. She was in a group home, having been in juvie and a psych ward already by the age of 14. Misha let me know she was tough. The only books she would agree to read were the Goosebumps series, which I felt were a little young for her. But as we studied English, I quickly discovered that Misha wrote poetry. Here was a door into this girl's world!

I suspect there are a lot of secret poetry buffs among teens, although they may not bring it up in the group setting of a full class. So, moving past the younger standbys of Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky, what kind of poems do you give a 16-year-old? Sure, there are famous published poets whose work I happily share with students, e.g., Maya Angelou for Misha. But the secret weapon here is actually well-written poems by other teens. When I gave Misha one of Betsy Franco's poetry anthologies, she was thrilled. I recommended Franco's anthologies to Alex, as well, along with the work of other, more well-known poets.

Betsy Franco has put together four collections of poems written by teens. I haven't read Night Is Gone, Day Is Still Coming: Stories and Poems by American Indian Teens and Young Adults, but I will present the other three in brief below. I should note that one strength of these collections is their inclusion of young writers of many races and ethnicities.


Things I Have to Tell You: Poems and Writing by Teenage Girls

Illustrated by black and white photos of real (non-glamorized!) girls, featuring poems and short essays. Here are a few samples:

Let's see if the high school can offer me an English class that will make me sweat. Then I'll be willing to rethink my criticism. Otherwise, I'll be back to my usual hobby of picking through the trash in hopes of finding the Holy Grail.
—from "A Girl Snapping, or My Application for Advanced Placement English," by Marijeta Bozovic, age 16

All I wanted was a cup of coffee
but when I asked for
"a tall single, please"
the guy at the coffee stand
thought I was asking for him.
—from "Tall Single ISO Coffee," by Anonymous, age 16

my friend and i
got caught in a storm
with tears for rain,
and shouts for thunder,
lightning fists
lashing out.
—from "Clouds Rolling In," by Melissa Leigh Davis, age 14


You Hear Me? Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys

I wish this book had black-and-white interior photos, too, but I think it's an even stronger collection than Things I Have to Tell You. Here are some examples:

May I ask you something?
Why are you following me?
Every time I turn around
You are there telling me
something to wish for:
his blue Mercedes
his caramel girlfriend...
—from "Envy" by Kyle L. White, age 17

He shaved his head to release his imagination.
—from "He Shaved His Head," by Rene Ruiz, age 13

The trombones slap me in the face with their high-life beats, and the piano's glamorous tunes tap me on my shoulder and whisper in my ear. As I look down into the Juke-Joint from my bedroom floor, rotted house, rotted life, plain rotten seems forgotten as the music plays and the beats go down to the rhythm of my heart's pound. There's a Harlem Renaissance in my head, there's a Harlem Renaissance in my head.
—from "There's a Harlem Renaissance in My Head," by Maurice E. Duhon, Jr., age 17


Falling Hard: 100 Love Poems by Teenagers

As the flap copy puts it, "The writers are straight, gay, lesbian, bi, or transgender; they live next door or across an ocean; they are innocent or experienced. Poetic explorations range from new love to stale love, from obsession to ennui, from ecstasy to heartbreak, and every nuance in between."

I do remember your mouth,
how it curled up on the right in Puck-like pleasure
because you knew exactly what I was thinking
(I never was a very good actress).
—from "Making Love to Shakespeare," by Ellie Moore, age 16

She's my motorcycle
She's my cigarette
When the night's this quiet I think I can hear her thinking
—from "New Friend in Mexico," by Nick Ross-Rhudy, age 17

In the presence of people
Packed in boxes,
Each wanting to be
Held.
—by Thomas Andrade, age 17


Aside from the obvious (poetry's great!), I believe teens like poetry because of its immediacy and the intensity of its emotional content. A poem may also seem less intimidating, yet more intimate, than a full-length prose novel. After all, there's a reason novels-in-verse are increasing in popularity among Young Adult readers.

Two other books of poems along these lines are Paint Me Like I Am, teen poems from WritersCorps, and a collection edited by Naomi Shihab Nye, Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25. (The poems in the latter are great, but sound more like college writers, which they probably are.)

Note for Worried Parents: Betsy Franco's poetry collections contain mature themes, such as drug use, cutting, and sexuality. Some poems also contain profanity, including the f-word. In general, best for older and more sophisticated teens.


POETRY FRIDAY

Please submit your links in the comments, and I'll start listing them Friday morning. I do have comment moderation, but never fear, I'll get your links! (I will be gone in the middle of the day at a funeral, but will continue to add to this post as soon as I get back.)

--First off, Amy LV of The Poem Farm shares #14 in her series of poems about poems, a mask poem called "Love Me Real."

--Next, Charles Gigna sees "Sidewalks" as magic carpets at the Father Goose blog.

--Kelly R. Fineman gives us an original poem, "Letter to Mum" at Writing and Ruminating.

--Julie Larios offers up "an original left hand/right hand poem" (and a challenge to post your own) at The Drift Record.

--Mary Lee from A Year of Reading explains that in order to share a poem about laryngitis, she had to invent a new poetry form, the Twitter Search Poem.

--The Stenhouse Blog weighs in with Kenn Nesbitt's school-themed poem, "Perfect."

--Toby Speed reminisces about summer with a poem called "Day Lilies, Night Lilies, Night-Light Lilies" at her blog, The Writer's Armchair.

--Tabatha Yeatts experiments with book spine poems at The Opposite of Indifference.

--Laura Salas offers us "We," a selection from Lee Bennett Hopkins's memoir in poems, Been to Yesterdays. She is also the host of a weekly photo-poetry challenge, 15 Words or Less. (I often participate in this particular event.) Here's this week's post.

--Triple threat Diana Mayr has a post about "bandit signs" poetry at Random Noodling, Walt Whitman's "Did You Ask Dulcet Rhymes from Me?" at Kurious Kitty's Kurio Kabinet, and a Walt Whitman quote at Kurious K's Kwotes.

--Jeannine Atkins discusses the balance between giving readers information and letting readers guess when writing poetry.

--Hooray for B.J. Lee, who just had a poem published yesterday at A Handful of Stones!
--Carmela Martino gives us an original poem by April Halprin Wayland saluting summer at the Teaching Authors blog. She also reminds us that Naomi Shihab Nye has published a book of poems by younger writers called Salting the Ocean. (I do own that one, Carmela; it's wonderful!)

--Jama Rattigan shares Barbara Crooker's poem, "Patty's Charcoal Drive-in," over at Alphabet Soup. Jama's posts always make me hungry!

--At There Is No Such Thing as a God-forsaken Town, Ruth offers up "The Patience of Ordinary Things," a poem by Pat Schneider.

--In a very nice coincidence, Elaine Magliaro of Wild Rose Reader reviews a book of school poems by Betsy Franco, Messing Around on the Monkey Bars and Other Poems for Two Voices. She then goes on to list several other books of school poems, providing links to those previous reviews, including Stampede by Poetry Friday participant Laura Salas (see above). But wait; there's more! Over at Blue Rose Girls, Elaine shares some beautiful vacation photos plus Marilyn Kallet's poem, "Fireflies."

--Kerry Aradhya of Picture Books and Pirouettes reviews a rhyming picture book, Miss Tutu's Star by Leslea Newman, with illustrations by Carey Armstrong-Ellis.

--At Little Kid Lit, Erin Oakes is "admiring Allan Ahlberg," especially his poetry collection, Please Mrs Butler.

--Janet Squires of All About the Books spotlights The Fastest Game on Two Feet and Other Poems about How Sports Began, written by Alice Low and illustrated by John O'Brien.

--Then at Liz in Ink, Liz Garton Scanlon gives us Pablo Neruda's poem, "Poet's Obligation."

--Karen Edmisten (The Blog with the Shockingly Clever Title) shares her love of Billy Collins and her dog with a Collins poem, "Dharma."

--Danika Brubaker of TeachingBooks talks up Ashley Bryan's ABC of African American Poetry, even providing an audio clip.

--Chicken Spaghetti's Susan T. tells us about Natasha Tretheway's book of poems and memories, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

--Ms. Mac of Check It Out posts Naomi Shihab Nye's poem, "Boy and Egg," in memory of a former student who died unexpectedly at a young age two weeks ago.

--Heidi Mordhorst presents Mary Ruefle's school-themed poem, "The Hand," at My Juicy Little Universe.

A Review of Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

What's interesting about this book is the juxtaposition of a heavy-duty paranormal scenario with a relatively upbeat teen protagonist. Having escaped the foster care system at the age of ten, Evie thinks being raised by the International Paranormal Containment Agency is pretty cool. After all, director Raquel is kind of like a mom, and mermaid computer expert Lish makes a nice best friend, even if she is older. Evie does watch a TV series about high school kids on her computer and wish she could go to a normal school, but then, she's too busy going on missions for the agency to have time for that.

Evie has a unique ability. She can recognize any supernatural entity, no matter how well their nature might be disguised. The agency sends her out with fairy guides to locate rogue paranormals, who can then be "contained." It never occurs to Evie that this might be a harsh approach, or that she herself might be considered something other than human. About her only problem is a male fairy named Reth, her high-handed sort of ex-boyfriend. He believes he has a right to her, and he also has ominous plans for Evie that he's too arrogant to share. Although Evie has the equivalent of a restraining order against him, she's beginning to get the feeling the IPCA doesn't have nearly as much control over the fairies as they seem to think.

Then a teenage shapeshifter is captured sneaking around inside the IPCA compound, and Evie is fascinated by him. Someone her own age, finally! Okay, so maybe he puts on a different face every time she does her own sneaking so she can visit him in his cell, but Evie can see past all of that to his true form. Little by little, she comes to trust Lend, despite Raquel's harried and unsuccessful efforts to keep her away from him.

Only something terrible is happening, and it seems to be connected to Evie somehow. Paranormals are being killed, consumed by a fiery entity that has taken an interest in Evie. But why? When the center comes under attack, Evie escapes with Lend, trying to find answers from a whole different segment of the paranormal world.

Now, I have to admit, it's getting hard to tell some of these paranormal suspense love triangle books apart. Then again, if you adore this subgenre, you have a wealth of choices right now!

So how does Paranormalcy distinguish itself? The book's strength is definitely Evie and her narrative voice. She's a pretty hopeful kid for someone in her situation. Sure, we get her doubts and pouts, but she's also kind of funny, and she makes the best of everything that comes her way. You might find yourself cheering for her relationship with Lend, but more than that, you'll be cheering for Evie herself as her odd life gets even odder.

Of course, for those of you who prefer the fairy bad boy to the shapeshifting boy next door, there's always Reth.

I will mention that some plot points are a bit uneven; e.g., the opportunity for Evie to attend prom like a normal girl really feels shoehorned in. But I like White's style, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she does with the next book in this series.

(Visit Kiersten White's blog to read a very fun post that will give you a taste of her voice. In "You Can't Kill the Undead: Or, Paranormal Romance Isn't Going Anywhere," the author "perform[s] literary analysis on an entire genre.")

Note for Worried Parents: This book for teens has some violence, including murders. It shows a little kissing with a nice boy and pressure from an ex-boyfriend who seems emotionally abusive.

FYI: I requested an ARC of this book from HarperCollins. Paranormalcy will be published on September 21, 2010.

Overheard in a Bookstore

A few months ago, I was browsing in the children's section of my local bookstore when I heard a conversation between a mother and daughter. I'm pretty sure the mother was trying to interest her child in a book called The Mother-Daughter Book Club (which I have not read).

The daughter responded, "No, that's too mushy-mushy!"

Then this past weekend, I was in the YA section of another bookstore when I saw a trio of girls who looked like they were 14 or so saunter up and pause to scan the book display. The alpha girl announced, "I always judge a book by its cover."

The second girl said, "Me, too!"

And the third girl said, "Me, too!"

Ah, the interests and tastes of young readers...

Have you eavesdropped on any young readers lately? If so, what were they saying?

A Review of My Invisible Boyfriend by Susie Day

Unlike the sister in the review above, Heidi's boyfriend is invisible because she invented him. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, however, she does a pretty good job of convincing her friends he's real, a long-distance love that she met during the summer break while they were all out of town.

Heidi attends boarding school, though she lives at home—her father works at the school as a night security officer. Now summer has ended, and Heidi is dismayed to find that her cozy little group of fellow students-on-the-fringe has changed: all of them are pairing up except her. Chirpy Ludo, goth Fili, and even former fatman Dai (who's gay) have found love. Leaving Heidi on the outside looking in, with only the parents she calls the Mothership and Dad Man, or, more important, her imaginary friend/crush Mycroft Christie, the main character in a now-defunct TV series that resembles Dr. Who, left on her side.

Heidi also works at a cute little tea-and-pastry shop with a very nice lady and her son, Teddy, but Teddy has a girlfriend and it seems the shop might be closing down. Another subplot deals with Heidi and her friends' involvement with the school's 80's-style production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Heidi has a strong first-person narrative voice that reminds me a little of Georgia in Louis Rennison's series (Angus, Thongs, and Full-frontal Snogging, etc.). Heidi's quite a character, and it took me a few pages to get into this book. But once I did, I enjoyed it. Here's a sample:

Boarding school Dining Halls are not what you imagine. I've seen six, and put all Hogwarty thoughts from your mind. There will be no mahogany paneling, or portraits of old dead guys, or feasting on roasted wild boar by candlelight. The Finch Dining Hall is strip-lit, smells of beans, and looks a bit like a posh McDonald's. The food is just as enticing: Oil Pie, Lettuce in Soup, and the ever-popular Armored Pizza. (If the Mothership's Red Peppers stuffed with Red Lentils, Red Onion, and Red Cabbage don't kill me, their Fish Surprise will.)

Once Heidi invents Ed Hartley, she has to back him up, which includes putting him on the Internet. "Ed" ends up having e-mail conversations with Heidi's friends, which gets a little complicated, especially when Heidi sets out to solve their problems: Ludo and Peroxide Eric are having relationship troubles, Fili is desperately unhappy and won't say why, and Dai keeps doubting rich-boy Henry's love. Then someone who calls himself "E" and "a real boy" starts e-mailing Heidi, saying he knows Ed's a fake and why doesn't she choose him instead? Heidi tries to guess who "E" is, selecting just about everyone in sight and getting it wrong every time.

You, the reader, will probably figure out who "E" is right away, as I did, but it's sort of fun watching Heidi flounder. You might even appreciate her ongoing conversations with "Mycroft Christie," or watching the gingerbread man who represents Ed Hartley slowly going stale. (Um, symbolic much?) This book is very post modern and self-conscious, but it's also very funny. If this kind of style doesn't drive your teenage daughter crazy, she'll probably like My Invisible Boyfriend!

Be sure and check out the book jacket, or rather compare it to the cover—the full jacket shows three couples on a couch, including Heidi with a ghostlike figure, while the cover shows Heidi sitting alone. Nice design.

Note for Worried Parents: There's quite a bit of kissing going on, also teen angst and some mention of teens smoking and drinking.

A Review of A Walk Through a Window by kc dyer

I’ll start with my bias alert: This book is by a member of my writing group, kc Dyer! kc is the author of the Eagle Glen trilogy, about a girl named Darrell Connor who travels through time to Scotland, Italy, England, and Spain at crucial points in history and deals with villainous intrigues; she is also the author of Ms. Zephyr’s Notebook, about three kids who share a teacher—and secrets—on a hospital ward.

With A Walk Through a Window, Dyer returns to time travel, this time in her native Canada. Our intrepid traveler is Darby Christopher, a teenage girl whose parents send her to a small town on Prince Edward Island for the summer. Darby stays with her grandparents, but as the book begins, two things are apparent: Darby doesn’t want to be there, and something is wrong with her grandfather.

While exploring the neighborhood on her skateboard, a cranky Darby meets a boy named Gabriel who apparently lives in an abandoned house. After hearing her complaints about being stuck in a small town instead of Toronto, Gabriel pulls her into a series of time travel adventures. A shadowy Darby joins the Inuits crossing the Bering Strait, the Irish fleeing the Potato Famine to worse troubles on a coffin ship, and finally some later immigrants who turn out to have a direct connection to her own family.

Along the way, Darby loses her attitude, caught up in her curiosity about the past. She also grows a little more patient with her grandpa, who is beginning to suffer from Alzheimer’s. In fact, the subplot with Darby and her grandfather, which at first seems less important in the book, eventually takes center stage, becoming especially poignant in the final chapter or two.

This book is about history, but it is also about family. As the author gently reminds us, our families make us who we are. Like the inuksuk, a small Native Canadian sculpture made out of a hodge-podge of rocks and used to good symbolic effect in A Walk Through a Window, our lives are composed of bits and pieces of experience and heritage. Take a walk with Darby, and discover what it means to come from somewhere.