Review: Don't Stop Now by Julie Halpern

Julie Halpern totally won me over with Into the Wild Nerd Yonder, so even though Don't Stop Now didn't promise me nerdy D&D hijinks, I still needed to check it out. There may be no D&D, but I love road trips, so I thought this would be worth a shot - and I was totally right.

When Lillian's sorta-friend, Penny, leaves her a weird voice mail at 4:30 in the morning, Lil doesn't think much of it. "I did it?" What does that even mean? But then her parents started calling. And then the cops. Apparently Penny has been kidnapped?

Except Lil is pretty sure Penny faked it - she kind of mentioned that once. And Lil has a feeling she may have run away to Oregon. So she calls up her BFF (and major-crush) Josh, and the two set out on a road trip from Chicago to Portland with nothing but Josh's dad's credit card and the clothes on their backs. Along the way the dynamic duo stop at all the great tourist-attractions of fly-over country - the Badlands, Wall Drug, the Corn Palace, etc. And Lil keeps hoping that this trip, probably their last great adventure before she moves away for college and Josh starts pursuing his music career in earnest, will be the trip that makes Josh see her as more than just a girl friend.

In between the chapters of Lil and Josh's antics, we also get short, heartbreaking scenes from Penny's life over the last year or so. Glimpses of a family that uses her as nothing more than a baby sitter, and boyfriend that uses her as a doormat - and a punching bag. It's not hard to figure out why Lil might have decided to run away - but did she really fake that kidnapping?

This story is a road trip and story of friendship first and foremost - the long term friendship between Lil and Josh, as well as the lengths Lil will go to in order to help someone who didn't have a lot of options in the friend-department. The romantic angle was played just right. There's some angst here, because Lil has pretty much always loved Josh but he's never seen it, but that never overwhelms their friendship. Even when she's a little disappointed that they only literally slept together in a cozy motel bed, she still has fun with their zany road trip.

Even though for most of the story we only get small insights into Penny, I really liked her as a character, too. Who didn't have a friend/acquaintance that they knew just well enough to say "hi" to at parties and work on projects together if there was no one else in the class? And a lot of us have probably been in friendships like that where one person clearly read a lot more into it than the other did. The vignettes also painted a clear picture of why someone might stay with a boyfriend (or girlfriend) who clearly isn't right for them - who can be outright abusive. It's terrifying and played exactly right - Penny's story lends some gravitas to what would otherwise be a light romantic comedy.

Julie Halpern is two-for-two with me so far. Her characters are always dynamic, funny and honest. I can't wait to see what she comes out with next!

Review: Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland

My first introduction to Susan Vreeland was in high school when I read The Passion of Artemisia. At the time it was being considered for the BBYA list because of the teenage protagonist. It didn't end up making the list, but it was a powerful story - based on the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, a 17th century painter who often depicted strong women of the Bible and mythology. A haunting and captivating story. So when I heard that Vreeland had a new book, I knew I needed to get it - I didn't even look to see if it was based on a real person this time around and just dove in!

Like Artemisia, Clara Driscoll is an artist constricted by society's attitudes about what women can and should accomplish. Instead of paintings, however, Clara works in glass, and is responsible for creating some of the most famous designs for Louis Comfort Tiffany's innovative glass lamps.

While working for Tiffany is a dream come true in some ways, it's incredibly stifling in others. The unionized male glass workers don't appreciate the women's department, headed by Clara, getting some of the greatest commissions. And while Tiffany is rather forward thinking in hiring women at all, he has old fashioned notions about married women, namely that they shouldn't be working. Clara resigned from Tiffany's once before to get married, but returned upon the death of her husband. She longs to have a romantic companion in her life again, but is also loyal to Mr. Tiffany, and then there's the matter of her life's passion in being an artist. How is Clara supposed to choose?

There are also wonderful subplots and minor characters - Clara has several gay friends she interacts with throughout the story, growing quite close to some of them, but my favorite recurring subplot had to be Clara's burgeoning social consciousness and labor organizing. When the male glassworkers start grumbling about all the work the women are doing, Clara organizes all of the women to march to work in solidarity under the banner of labor rights and women's rights. She counsels many of the young women in her department to improve their skills so they can earn more money to support their families, and delay marriage as long as possible to be sure they can start their married lives with a bit of money of their own. She also gets a bicycle, which just makes me want to read Wheels of Change even more (NYPL, Queens Library: WHY DON'T YOU HAVE IT YET?!). I have a feeling Clara's bike rides really illustrate a lot of what that book is talking about.

Clara has some thoroughly modern attitudes, but they're tempered by some truly Victorian attitudes that keep her from coming across as too 21st century, such as buying into the "benevolent" stereotype that women are more attuned to color so it's okay that they are segregated in their own department in the glass factory. She's overall a great character because she has so many different interests, passions, and problems that she truly comes to life. The same can't be said for all of the side characters, as especially some of the men in the periphery of Clara's life are hard to distinguish from each other.

So was Clara Driscoll a real person? Absolutely - though no one knew it until 2006. Because I'm a huge geek I would have liked a longer author's note at the end about Vreeland's research. While she relates the discovery of Clara's letters that led to the re-evaluation of the design of Tiffany lamps, I wondered how much of the characterization of other historical characters were based on fact - especially Louis Comfort Tiffany himself. But hey, I suppose I can find a biography of him on my own and try to learn for myself what may have been fact and what was fiction in Vreeland's complex depiction.

Review: Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

I know it's only March, but I think we have here our first serious awards contender of 2011. If Between Shades of Gray were a movie, it would be a December-released prestige picture, an obvious ploy for an Oscar win, but one it would surely deserve.

It's 1941, and Lithuanian Lina leads a comfortable life. Her parents dote upon her and her younger brother, she has friends and family and crushes, and amazing skills with pencils and paintbrushes that are opening doors to her future education.

But that idyllic life comes crashing down around Lina late one night, when armed men break into the house and pull Lina, her mother and her brother from their beds without explanation.

And so begins Lina's journey - one that stretches thousands of miles, from the quiet suburbs of Lithuania into the frigid depths north of the Arctic circle, as Lina and her family become victims of Stalin's march in Lithuania and the Baltic states at the outbreak of World War II. Her only comforts are her family, her artwork, and her hope that her furtive sketches and notes will be passed hand to hand until they reach her father and he'll escape from wherever he's being held to come find his family.

Lina's and Lithuania's story was totally new to me. I vaguely knew that Stalin's Soviet Union wasn't a great place to be, but had no real idea about the elimination tactics that he used. It's horrifying to think that in some ways this man was our ally - and yet he was using the same tactics as Hitler. Sepetys does an amazing job portraying the dehumanizing tactics used by the NKVD (the predecessors of the KGB) - it's gut churning and horrifying.

Lina is an amazing artist and Sepetys uses her artistic eye to add some beautiful language to a story of hardship and terror. Lina doesn't draw strictly realistic - she's inspired by Munch - which gives Sepetys many opportunities for perfect metaphors, like the snakes crawling out from the neck of one particularly horrid guard's jacket.

I read this book over the course of just one day - and not even a weekend. Even when I had to take breaks, my mind was still in the book. At one point I paused to eat dinner with my husband, and I felt a bit of guilt sitting down to a full hot meal when part of my brain was still in Altai, the first camp Lina is sentenced to. And then when I could get back to reading and reached the end of the book I was crying - almost sobbing. And I don't easily cry at books.

While on the surface Lina's story isn't terribly different from any other fictional Holocaust account, I still feel it's an important contribution to the genre of WWII titles. The writing alone makes it worth a read, but it's also important to remember that in most any conflict there are indeed shades of gray - that even while we may call someone an ally, that doesn't make them (or even us) perfect examples of our ideals.

Reviewed from an ARC picked up at ALA Annual 2010. Between Shades of Gray is available today!

Review: Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

Two weeks ago I reviewed Donnelly's Printz honor winning A Northern Light as the inaugural book in my What I Missed reading challenge. I chose A Northern Light to go first because I knew Donnelly had another book out that was getting rave reviews, and I figured I might as well read the books in publication order. I am happy I didn't delay any further, because wow, was Revolution ever a trip.

Andi is one angry, troubled young woman. After losing her brother, her father took off and her mother is still having difficulties coping. Andi lashes out at anyone who tries to come close to her and refuses to put any effort into her schoolwork, even as the due date for her thesis approaches. The only thing Andi cares about anymore is her music - and sometimes even that isn't enough to keep the demons away.

Incensed by his daughter's near failure in school, Andi's dad insists she spend Christmas break with him in Paris so she can focus on her schoolwork while he works on a centuries-old mystery: identifying the owner of a heart long said to belong to Louis-Charles, the young prince who was imprisoned during the French Revolution. Though Andi's determined to finish her thesis in record time, she's distracted by the discovery of a diary written by Alex, a young woman who served the royal family right at the height of the Revolution. She is drawn to the diary and can't escape until she reads Alex's chilling final entries. That is, until an ill-fated trip into Paris' famed catacombs leads Andi to re-emerge into Paris in 1795, where everyone seems to think that she's Alex. Is it a bad drug trip, or has Andi actually stepped into the past? And if she's really there, can she change the future?

Wow, is Andi ever a painful person to read about. She is just so angry and hurt by her brother's death and her parents' reactions and Donnelly's writing made her ragged emotions just jump off of the page. Just devastating and heartbreaking. Donnelly also does an excellent job of describing Andi's rapidly declining mental state as Andi relies more and more on anti-depressants to keep her world in focus. Operating under the theory that if one is good, more is better, Andi takes an increasing number of pills throughout the novel and it's never quite clear if some things are happening because she is on too many drugs - or not enough.

It took me to get about halfway through the book before I was totally comfortable with using Alex's diary as our viewpoint into the past. Part of me wanted this to be a straight-up historical novel without all of Andi's angst. Or perhaps the story could have alternated chapters so we were fully immersed in Revolutionary-era France. But as Andi herself became more invested in Alex's story, so did I become invested in Andi as a character and the ways her and Alex's stories complemented and contrasted with each other.

Music fans of multiple stripes will have a lot to love in this book. I was never that great at musical theory, so some of the subtleties of Andi's obsession with the composer Mahlerbeau were lost on me, but this is an extremely musical novel filled with descriptions of both classical and ultra-contemporary music. Bigger music fans than me will probably enjoy sifting out all of the various musical references.

As she proved in A Northern Light, Donnelly has a gift for bringing the past to life through her excellent writing. With much of Revolution set in the 21st century, she proves that she's equally gifted with contemporary characters and problems, but by weaving in elements of history she helps illustrate just how timeless many stories are.

Review: Nothing by Janne Teller, translated by Martin Aitken

Nothing wasn't on my radar at all. And then it walked out of ALA with a Printz Honor, along with the Batchelder award for best translated novel. Suddenly it was a must-read, and that was even before I saw the summary

Set in a fictional town in Denmark, the lives of a class of seventh graders is turned upside down on the first day of school when Pierre Anthon seems to suffer an existential crisis. He stands up and declares that "nothing matters" so he isn't going to continue going to school. Instead he starts spending his day in a plum tree, pelting his former classmates alternately with plums or barbs about the uselessness of life.

So the class decides they need to prove to Pierre Anthon that there is meaning in life. They start collecting items that have meaning to them, and piling them up in an abandoned saw mill. When the heap of meaning doesn't seem to be impressive enough, the real challenge begins, as the students individually challenge each other one at a time to give up something meaningful. It starts small and simple - a pair of earrings, a pair of shoes, boxing gloves - before quickly escalating into hair, pets, adoption certificates and beyond.

The writing in this is just devastating and absolutely beautiful. The design is also top notch, as space is used with great effect. Every couple of chapters there's a page where Agnes foreshadows or drops a bomb on the reader that is only a line or two long and centered in the middle of the page. It's like a punch to the gut. Nothing good comes from of these pages.

Agnes is an excellent choice for a narrator. She is at once an outsider and a complicit accessory to the collection of meaning - her tribute is made fairly early so she gets off relatively easily, but she also plays a part in ramping up the escalation. She has a somewhat distant voice, and about halfway through she starts unexpectedly engaging in silly word play that made me wonder if a psychotic break was imminent. And then there's her aforementioned empty pages. An excellent and haunting choice.

The number one comparison this book seems to elicit is to Lord of the Flies, and I have to admit I haven't actually read that one. But from what I've heard, the comparisons are accurate. "The Lottery" is another one, though at least the violence in this one is explained, if no less senseless. It's not a happy book. I had to put the book down a couple of times, just for a moment to compose myself, as the tributes to the heap of meaning escalated. This is a book that will haunt its readers, and it's no wonder it was showered with multiple awards this year.

Nonfiction Monday Review: Frozen Secrets: Antarctica Revealed by Sally M. Walker

Found via: Bookends

Last Monday, the big talk in New York City was how it was colder in Manhattan than it was in parts of Antarctica. Which probably isn't the fairest comparison considering it's summer in Antarctica right now, but the point was made: it was freaking cold here. As we're in a brief lull between snowstorms, and temperatures are thankfully back into the 30s, I thought it was high time to settle in with Frozen Secrets, Sally M. Walker's in-depth look at the mysterious continent.

Walker methodically walks us through numerous aspects of Antarctic exploration, from the first humans to attempt to cross the continent, back to the dinosaurs that once called it home, and looking ahead to what clues Antarctica can give us about Earth's future.

There's a little bit of something for everyone in here - geology and climatology, paleontology and even robotics. Every couple of pages I was coming across new stunning facts and photographs that I just had to share with my husband - who is going to read the book next and use it as research for the survival-horror role playing game he's setting up for our friends that will now be taking place in an Antarctic research station.

Teen readers I'm sure will feel a connection with the middle school scientists featured in the book - their science teacher goes scuba diving with Antarctic research teams, and gave her students the chance to build a robot that was actually used in an Antarctic dive. How cool is that?!

Walker does an excellent job of explaining complex scientific theories and experiments in plain language for the non-Antarctic-expert. The explanations are accompanied by amazing photographs and excellent charts and drawings when applicable, making everything extremely easy to understand, but not feel condescending.

This is also an absolutely stunning book. I can't find a picture of it online, but the cover image that Amazon has isn't the actual cover - the same picture is used, but the title is moved up above the mountains and is in a blue font, while the subtitle is in roughly the same position but faces from yellow to light blue, like the overall photo does. Visually stunning, and I just love the font as well - it comes back for the chapter headings throughout the book. Almost every page has at least one picture, from portraits of research teams to stunning landscapes to historical photographs of early Antarctic explorers. This is absolutely a must-read for any sort of science geek.


This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by The Miss Rumphius Effect. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

What Have I Missed? Review: A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

Recommended by: Bob

A Northern Light is one of the books that inspired me to start this challenge. Bob had recommended it to me ages and ages ago, but I never got around to it because I wanted to keep up with all of the new titles coming out. When I started seeing people rave about Jennifer Donnelly's Revolution I knew her name sounded familiar...all because A Northern Light was still in the back of my mind as a book I needed to read! So I decided this needed to be the first book I challenged myself to - and that my reward for getting this challenge under way would be getting to read Revolution next!

In 1906, in a small farming community and summer tourist town, Mattie Gokey dreams of going to New York City to study writing, to share her stories of everyday life with the rest of the world. But realistically, Mattie knows she's never going to leave North Woods. Her mother has recently died, leaving Mattie and her three sisters alone with their father, who can barely bring in enough money to keep food on the table through the winter. Even if she could get a scholarship to cover her tuition, where would she get the money for lodging, clothes and books? And then there's the fact that handsome Royal Loomis has come courting, and Mattie is feeling a surprising impulse to stay at home and settle down.

Taking a summer job at a big tourist hotel to help out her family and put away a little savings for herself, Mattie is implored one day by guest Grace Brown to burn a bundle of letters. Mattie takes the letters, but keeps them hidden, just in case Grace ever asks for them back. Until Grace's drowned body is pulled from the lake, the apparent victim of a boating accident. The young man she was traveling with is nowhere to be found. Mattie begins reading the letters, hoping for a clue as to who Grace was, and maybe for a little guidance from beyond the grave for who Mattie should be.

Donnelly weaves lots of complicated themes into what is on the surface a basic coming of age story with a bit of mystery. Classism is big, ranging from the rich tourists coming in to land that's been settled by poor farmers, to the poor farmers looking down on those who are even poorer. Sexism is the other big one, and all the myriad ways it rears its ugly head. There's the expected views that women shouldn't be educated, but also ideas about what is appropriate for women to be writing about and how to handle sexual harassment. Mattie's best friend is African-American, and she gives us a first hand look at the ugly realities of racism in a Northern state 40 years after the end of th Civil War. Want more? There's also wonderful questions about decency and obscenity, both in people's actions and in literature through the books Mattie's beloved teacher surreptitiously loans her.

My one irritant in this book is the use of Mattie's dictionary word of the day. On the one hand, it's a fun trope and is used well to indicate when a particular chapter is set (the story goes back and forth between the discovery of Grace's body and the months leading up to Mattie taking the position at the hotel). On the other hand, the bit began to wear thin about halfway through the novel as Mattie often would struggle with how the word did or didn't fit how her day was going. I felt that the idea was well established enough at that point that it could have been left to the reader to figure out how a word did or didn't fit thematically, and only have Mattie mention it when it was an important comment on the story.

Huge thanks to Bob for recommending this to me! Next on my list? Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, winner of the Printz in 2005 and recommended by Rachel!

Review: Taking Off by Jenny Moss

There's a superstition out there that whatever you do on the first day of a new year is something that you'll be doing often for the rest of the year. I'm kind of hoping that I can apply that superstition to books: the first book you read published in the new year should be indicative of how the rest of the year's books will turn out. So I'm really, really glad I chose and AWESOME book to be my first published-in-2011 read.

Annie is a senior in high school in a suburban Texas town facing large, looming questions. Like where is she going to college and what will she do with the rest of her life. Surrounded by engineers who work with NASA, and fellow students who know that college is the next step, Annie isn't even sure she wants to go to college. She loves poetry, and has tried her hand at writing a few times, but is pretty sure she's actually terrible and knows there's no money in the endeavor. She hides her passion from everyone - her divorced parents, her best friend Lea, and even Mark, her boyfriend of two years.

When Lea, the daughter of NASA engineers, invites Annie to yet another dinner party featuring NASA personnel and astronauts, Annie drags her feet until she learns the Teacher in Space, Christa McAuliffe, will be there. She maneuvers her way to sit next to Christa at dinner, and even though the conversation is rather routine, Annie finds herself inspired by Christa's passion for life and following her dreams. While Annie doesn't know the answers to her big life questions yet, she knows she wants to see Christa's launch into space.

Meeting Christa, and roadtripping with her dad and his handsome young friend Tommy to see the Challenger launch, and ultimately the disaster after takeoff, inspires Annie to start taking risks. Small ones first, but bit by bit Annie draws strength and inspiration from Christa's memory, and is finally able to take off for herself.

First of all, I have to give massive props to Jenny Moss for how she carries off the climactic scene of the Challenger's explosion. I knew going in that it was going to happen, and yet when the shuttle finally launched, and then broke apart, my heart was in my throat. I felt like I was right there with Annie, even though Challenger happened when I was barely a year old. 

The romantic subplot in Taking Off is absolutely superb - because it reflects a lot of the indecision that can happen in relationships, especially young ones. I've gotten burned out on the number of YA books that end with the teens finding their soul mates. Annie is content with Mark, but knows they're not soul mates. So refreshing to see a girl exploring her options!

This Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, meaning this book is set at a very specific time that is close enough to feel contemporary but long enough ago that the book's intended audience wasn't even born yet. This is historical fiction that will still appeal to people who think they hate the genre, because aside from the Challenger and a few mentions of cassette tapes, Annie's personal struggles are truly timeless.