Review: Little Blog on the Prairie by Cathleen Davitt Bell

I wasn't a Little House on the Prairie fan as a kid. Admittedly, I don't recall actually giving the books or the TV show a chance, I was just pretty sure I wouldn't like them and went on my way. Luckily, the Little House allusions seem to be primarily confined to the title, so don't think you have to be a fan in some way to enjoy this thoroughly entertaining book.

Gen's family isn't big on "family time," as each family member seems to be going in her or his own direction at any given time. Her dad doesn't even get involved with vacation plans, preferring to leave all that to her mom - which is how the family gets signed up for an entire summer at Camp Frontier - an immersive summer experience where families live, dress and work like they're on the Wyoming frontier in 1890.

To 13 year old Gen, this is the end of the world. She's supposed to be hanging out with her best friends and practicing soccer all summer so she'll be prepared for the high school's team in the fall. So her mom bribes her - come to camp without complaint, and get a fancy cell phone at the end of the summer. Gen agrees, but the allure of the phone is too much - she sneaks it to camp, promising to text her friends for as long as the battery holds out (after all, there was no electricity on the frontier - where will she charge the phone?)

Several families have come together to live the frontier life for the summer - and none of the kids seem terribly fond of the idea, including Nora, the daughter of Camp Frontier's organizers who has to live every day like it's 1890. Almost immediately, Gen bonds with Ka (short for Kate, rhymes with Saw, her favorite movie), the goth chick from a family of perky blondes set adrift without her supply of black  hair dye to keep her own blond roots at bay. And then there's the camp heartthrob, Caleb, who has just about every girl in the camp swooning in his wake, but doesn't seem to realize this.

The complicated interpersonal relationships, as well as the hardships and indignities of life on the prairie (three words: outhouse at night), are faithfully recounted by Gen via text message - which her friends back on the outside are faithfully translating into a blog. And not just any blog, but an overnight blogging sensation that has repercussions all the way back to the 1890s life of Camp Frontier.

This is a lighthearted, feel good book, totally entertaining book that is going to appeal to a variety of middle grade and young adult readers. Gen is only 13, and keeps her thoughts about Caleb on a totally PG level - when she discovers an illicit "electricity shack" on the farm, her first thought is about charging her phone, not about getting Caleb alone. Her sarcastic attitude is just enough to keep readers used to edgier fare interested in her misadventures on the farm, while being tempered with an innate sweetness that keeps her from coming off as a spoiled teenager. Gen isn't happy about being at Camp Frontier, but she does love her family, and is willing to put on a good face at least for their sake for the duration of the adventure.

The book is filled with great supporting characters as well. Even the adults have some personality - I about cheered when the moms threatened a feminist uprising when the camp owner tries to keep the women from speaking (Gen's mom is the first to point out that Wyoming had given women the vote well before 1890, meaning that women would certainly be used to speaking in their communities if nowhere else). Of course, bringing up that women were expected to fulfill 19th century societal roles gets a bit uncomfortable if you follow it to its logical conclusion - if you expect women to keep quiet, what would happen if an African- or Asian-American family signed up? It seems like some aspects of 1890 are best left ignored, like the corsets that aren't required thanks to liability issues. The feminist uprising is extremely brief, just a quick opportunity for some educational humor, and clearly isn't meant to be dwelt on.

Another educational bit is the mini-moral slipped in by the end regarding technology and expectations of privacy. It's not heavy handed, over the top, or totally obvious, but hopefully it will get younger readers thinking about privacy issues regarding e-mails and text messages - namely that once a message leaves your phone or computer, you no longer have much control over who else might see it.

While I know the summer is winding down, there's still a few weeks left for most people, and this would make an excellent last minute addition to your summer reading list!

Sci-Fi Friday Review: For The Win by Cory Doctorow

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 4/19

Image via Wikipedia

Gaming is a Big Deal in my family. As a kid, I loved our Intellivision II, until we finally upgraded to a Super Nintendo (still my favorite gaming system). In high school and college, I matured to playing table top role playing games (if you want to hear a story of the Worst Decision Ever made - like, the sort of decision that gets people killed in horror movies - ask about the first time I went gaming with my new college friends. Note: offer does not apply to my mother - I don't want to give the woman a heart attack). Through the man who's now my husband, I discovered MMORPGs - games like World of Warcraft and Second Life (not that he plays either of those - Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes dominate in our apartment). So when I heard Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother, one of my tops reads of 2008), was combining MMOs with the sort of social justice stuff I also love, I was all over it.

Set in the not-too-distant future, For the Win follows several gamers from around the world, all of whom are employed in different ways in gold farming. They work in sweat shop conditions, mostly in India and China, playing for hours every day in order to collect gold and other in-game valuables that can then be sold for real-world money to first world players too lazy or inept to collect the treasures for themselves. The conditions are deplorable, but a step up from the dangerous factory work these children and young adults would otherwise be forced into.

A young woman who goes by the name Big Sister Nor recognizes that the conditions these gamers work under are dangerous and abusive - slave wages, dark and crowded work environments, and threats to family members are all part of the gold farmers' lives. Nor is determined to unionize these workers across the world, gaining the support of real world unions to help protect local gamer unions. But Nor isn't only working against the systems in the game (as gold farming is clearly against the Terms of Service in any game) - after all, she's taking on whole governments when she tries to organize workers in China, and even the small-time bosses in India don't take kindly to children demanding better treatment. It will take the resources and determination of dozens, even hundreds, of players around the world, to give the new system even a hope for survival.

Doctorow clearly knows his stuff, both when it comes to games and to Marxism. Unfortunately, this didn't always come out in the best way. More than once I had flashbacks to college discussions about the benefits of Marxism and unions and the details of various economic theories as characters sounded just like my professors - or worse, the text books. I was glad some of these topics were being explained, as a lot of readers will lack a working knowledge of at least one subject integral to the story, but the way the information was presented was too heavy-handed.

Editing was also a huge problem for this book. Shortly before I read this, Cindy and Lynn at Bookends posted about "bloated 500+ page books," asking where they'd come from. For the Win definitely could have been much shorter - and needed an editor to go through at least one time with a fine-toothed comb, as this had far more than the average number of typos and several repetitive phrases, including repeated definitions of PvP (made more awkward because alternatives like PvE and role playing servers were never mentioned) and warnings of Terms of Service so dense they retained the right to kick you off at any time for any reason (or no reason at all).

There were also way too many characters in play, few of whom got any real development. The cast is as diverse and multi-cultural as you can get, but the lone white American boy was the closest to getting an actual character arc. Also, while I appreciated the attempt at cultural diversity, a lot of the characters from all around the world felt and sounded essentially the same, making the different countries little more than window dressing and not actually an integral part of the characters' backgrounds. It's almost as though the only reason this wasn't just set in America with a generic cast is because you'd have to go a little farther in the future before we'd really believe the military would come in and kill people over a union trying to organize, but we know that happens in China right now.

So while I found the initial idea to be intriguing, unfortunately it fell apart in the execution for me. However, if you're like me and find your curiosity piqued no matter how many critical reviews you see, know that Doctorow not only talks the talk, but walks the walk when it comes to copyright issues, and the novel is available for free download in multiple e-formats, from plain text to Kindle.

Review: By the Time You Read This, I'll be Dead by Julie Anne Peters

Found via: Best Fiction for Young Adults 2011 nominations

So Julie Anne Peters is quickly racing up my informal "favorite authors" list. Last year I loved the under-appreciated Rage and now she's taken on another sensitive and timely topic in By the Time You Read This, I'll be Dead.

Daelyn has had enough. After her last suicide attempt robbed her of her voice and forced her into a neck brace, she is determined that the next attempt will be successful. She finds the website Through the Light, which is for "completers" - people who are determined to kill themselves. The site provides support and ranks suicide methods by categories such as ease of completion and pain involved. The site also asks new members to choose the day they will complete their suicide, setting the minimum at 23 days away. Daelyn chooses the minimum, and so her countdown begins.

Daelyn continues to go through the motions of her daily life, showing up to school where she's the freak who won't talk, and quietly clearing out her closets and shelves to spare her parents the pain of getting rid of her things. Most of her communication is online, reading blog posts on Through the Light and contributing her own, revealing that she has been a victim of bullying for as long as she's been in school, targeted usually for her weight. Until one day after school, while waiting for her mom to pick her up, a boy named Santana sits down with Daelyn and begins talking to her. He's back the next day. And the next. Daelyn sends every signal she can that she doesn't want to befriend this strange homeschooled boy, but Santana is nothing if not persistent. As Daelyn's completion date nears, she finds herself struggling with fundamental decisions about trust, friendship, and just how valuable life may or may not be.

This is not exactly a happy, shiny novel, but it is a timely one. Suicide and bullying are all over the news these days, following the suicide of Phoebe Prince earlier this year. States are proposing anti-bullying laws in order to make sure they have the proper tools to deal with bullying (my home state of Michigan has even proposed one, and my hometown paper is all for it - even if they can't spell it in their headlines...). At the end of the book is a discussion guide - also found online at Through the Light (good job, Hyperion) - prompting readers to really think about bullying and connect Daelyn's struggles with what happens in their own schools.

I was very intrigued by the use of the website in helping Daelyn plan her suicide. The rules of the website explicitly state that it is a support group for those who are planning to kill themselves, and attempts to talk people out of it wouldn't be tolerated, which brings up some major free speech issues, doesn't it? And even this has a counterpart in real life - a former nurse is charged with assisting in two suicides after providing encouragement online.

Daelyn's voice is haunting, and reminds me in some ways of Melinda's in Speak, as both young women have been traumatized and react by not speaking (though Daelyn's silence is initially forced by an injury). Daelyn's story is painful and captivating as we glimpse not only pieces of the bullying she's endured, but the friendship the future may hold for her if she chooses to live. This is another highly recommended title that I hope gets lots of exposure.

Review: Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan

Today is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. Unlike other "international" action days, judging by their website this truly is an international event, with leaders in the EU recognizing today, rather than being an American-based project that welcomes participation from overseas. Yeah internationalism! I figured there was no better way to promote a day defending against hatred than highlighting a book that is about love in all of its forms.

Will Grayson has been best friends since 5th grade with Tiny Cooper - who is either the world's largest gay man or the gayest man in the world who is large (the name is ironic). While Will would prefer nothing more than to blend into the woodwork (his two life rules are 1. don't care and 2. shut up), with Tiny around that is effectively impossible. Tiny falls in love approximately once an hour, is determined that Will should be in love too, and is writing an epic musical about his life: Tiny Dancer: the Tiny Cooper Story.

On the other side of Chicago lives another will grayson, who writes all in lower case as a sign of his existential angst (or an easy way to tell the alternating Wills apart if you're cynical). will is gay, though about as closeted as Tiny is out. He has only one friend in real life, the extremely fragile and manipulative Maura, but online an epic romance is blossoming with a boy named Isaac. will's life looks like it may finally be looking up when he and Isaac decide to meet in Chicago.

Once in Chicago, will doesn't find the boy he was looking for - instead running into his namesake, Will Grayson, and being absorbed into the orbit of Tiny Cooper whether he wants to be or not. What follows is an adventure almost as epic as Tiny Dancer about the meaning of life, friendship, and love, platonic and romantic and everything in between.

First of all, I demand that the libretto of Tiny Dancer be released in full. I don't care whether it's only released as an e-book or maybe Green & Levithan could write it for charity a la JK Rowling and her Hogwarts school books, but Tiny Dancer is clearly a masterpiece that deserves its day in the sun. Also I have to thank Green & Levithan for giving me a book that so clearly shows what it's like to be in theatre without making me sit through Shakespeare.

Tiny Cooper is seriously a revelation as a character. Rarely do we meet someone who is so...in love with life but also has deeper layers that are revealed as the story goes on. At first it looks like Tiny is going to be on big (sorry) stereotype, jolly and partying and breaking out into song at the drop of a hat, but it's clear even before we get to see Tiny Dancer that there's a lot more to Tiny than being fabulous. Part of me wants to see a book about him, but in a way Will Grayson, Will Grayson already is, as he's such a major catalyst in the lives of everyone around him - and it's clear they affect him as well (a true sign that someone is more than just a caricature).

While on the one hand having will grayson write all in lower case seems like a cheap and easy way to differentiate the two Wills, the way the two boys talk and think is really what makes the alternating chapters work. Just a few sentences into the first will grayson chapter made me feel like all the air had been sucked out of the room (or subway car, as it were). Will Grayson seems to love life in comparison to will. will can get a bit "woe is me" dramatic at times, but so can Will, and if you can't be melodramatic at 16, when can you be?

As I said above, this is a novel that is about love. There are hookups and breakups throughout the story, and those are certainly a type of love, but really this story is about the type of love that binds people together, whether you want to be or not. After you've been through a lifetime of ups and downs (or even if it only feels like it's been a lifetime), you develop a bond with another person that can't be broken easily. I couldn't help but grin when Will would declare that he loves Tiny (in a totally platonic sense) because we don't see people (especially boys) talk about their friends and family in such a way very often. I've said this is why I love the show Glee, because every time Kurt's dad shows up we're guaranteed at least one "I love you" that you don't really see anywhere else - on what other TV show do you have a father and son who will hug each other and cry and talk explicitly about their feelings? Will and will and Tiny never get quite to that point, but there is a lot of open talk about love, which is absolutely the message the world needs to hear.

Review: IraqiGirl ed. by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field

Found via: Galleycat Blog

In elementary school, I loved reading diaries from girls in war-torn areas; I had a strange preoccupation with war, actually. I read Anne Frank's diary, of course, and I actually bought Zlata's Diary at a book fair (I didn't, and still don't, actually buy many books, thanks to finite shelf space). So even though it's been a long time since I read either of those books, I figured I'd devour IraqiGirl with the same enthusiasm.

Not quite true.

IraqiGirl is a compendium of the blog kept by a girl called Hadiya (a pseudonym) from mid-2004 through the end of 2007. She lives in Mosul, Iraq, which of course has been a hotbed of violence since the beginning of the war in Iraq. Hadiya writes often of the effect the war is having on her life - car bombs blowing out the windows of her house and curfews cancelling exams - as well as her attempts to pursue a normal life: babysitting her niece, studying for exams, worrying about her grades as she nears the end of high school and must choose where to study in college.

While an on-the-ground perspective is always interesting, there is so much that is foreign about life in Iraq that goes unexplained in the book that I quickly grew tired of trying to keep track. It seems like Hadiya is constantly taking exams, and then there are idiosyncrasies like every student in the country taking their Islam exam on the same day. In the US we all take the SAT exam around the same time, but that of course is a multi-subject exam. It's also difficult to follow how much time has passed, as Hadiya isn't a consistent blogger (for multiple reasons - after all, it's hard to blog if your neighborhood doesn't have any electricity).

Occasionally there are notes in the text about events Hadiya references, explaining about the rash of doctors being kidnapped or a prominent blogger who was punished. There are also a few excerpts from the comments in Haidya's blog and chat transcripts with the people who eventually arrange for her blog to be published. Haidya's whole family actually blogs, so there's even a blog post from her father. I actually think it would have been most interesting to compile the blogs of the whole family into one book (Hadiya's mother, father and one of her sisters all blog, as well as various extended family members) since Hadiya will sometimes say something like "you can read this on my sister's blog"...but since books don't have hyperlinks and the editors didn't choose to add the pertinent entry from her sister, we don't get any further information.

Current fans of the diary format might find more to enjoy in this one than I did. And anyone who's interested in more of Hadiya's story can continue to follow her blog here.

Thanks to Great Kids Books for hosting Nonfiction Monday this week!

Review: My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins and Fenway Park by Steve Kluger

It was definitely the subtitle that got me to read this book. Love, Mary Poppins and baseball (and not just baseball, but the poor Red Sox)? I had to know what it was about.

The story of TC's, Augie's and Ale's freshman year of high school is told mainly through diary entries, but also IMs, private chatrooms, text messages and e-mails. It's a sprawling story, chronicling more than a year in their lives, which makes summarizing this hard, but let's give it a shot.

TC and Augie have been best friends and brothers since elementary school when, shortly after TC's mother died, Augie was the only kid willing to talk to him. Since then they've done everything together, from sleepovers to family vacations. Augie puts up with TC's obsession with baseball, while TC tries to follow Augie's passion for musicals (turns out that Augie is gay and everyone but him knows it).

Ale, meanwhile, is the daughter of US diplomats - though she's more likely to start an international incident than follow in the family business. After her father retires from his position as ambassador, the family moves to Brookline, Massachusetts at the beginning of Ale's freshman year. TC is immediately smitten with Ale - who initially is determined to discourage TC's attention. She does, however, strike up a friendship with Augie when it comes time to produce the freshman talent show (Augie is director, Ale is producer). And of course where Augie goes, TC follows.

While TC is trying to woo Ale, he is also finishing up his baseball season where he has picked up a six-year-old deaf fan who tells TC when to swing at pitches. The boy, Hucky, is an orphan who has been bounced from foster home to foster home and has trust issues, but TC is as determined to bring this kid out of his shell as he is to get a date with Ale.

As Augie directs the freshman talent show, he not only befriends and mentors Ale, but also Andy - soccer player, swimmer, football fan and totally cute. Augie finds himself falling head over heels for the boy before he even realizes that it is a boy he is lusting after. Luckily, Andy feels the same way about Augie.

Ale takes dancing and singing classes, trying to keep her parents in the dark about her new-found hobbies. When not practicing or driving TC crazy, she pursues various social justice issues, from getting some of the more execrable songs cut from Kiss Me, Kate to building a baseball field at a memorial for the US Japanese internment camps of WWII (TC is helping with that one).

Yeah, like I said, there's a lot going on here, but most of it really works out. Sometimes I wondered about the convention of including e-mails and letters sent by parents and teachers - would the kids really have access to these to include them in a school paper? But other items, like Augie's mother's play reviews (a woman after my own heart - we're in agreement that Henry Higgins may be the worst character written for the stage EVER) add another fun level to the story. Also, sometimes it seems that Kluger got his electronic formats mixed up - when the kids were sending e-mails back and forth they would cut each other off. Which you definitely can't do in e-mail, and can't even do in most IM programs now (back in the day when I used ICQ there was a chat version that let you see what the other person was saying as they typed it, so theoretically you could cut someone off in that)

I do have to say I caught the book in a (relatively) big continuity problem. The book explicitly states that their freshman year was 2003. Yet Ale implies that Augie only discovered the musical Chicago in December of that year. Trust me, any musical fan worth his or her salt saw the movie version of Chicago back in 2001.

The relationship between Hucky and TC feels perhaps the most authentic in the book, followed closely by Ale and TC. The lengths TC goes to to make Hucky's life better are heartwarming. And the development of Ale's and TC's relationship definitely feels real.

And now, because this is a running theme for me, commentary on the gay characters: on the one hand, Augie and Andy are treated like any other couple. Augie's parents don't care (I don't believe we ever heard what Andy's parents thought), TC says "Duh" when Augie comes out over IM, and in their private e-mails Augie's dad wonders if "this generation" has made coming out superfluous. On the other hand, Augie is one big stereotype. He addresses a "Diva of the Week" in his diary, writing to Liza Minelli or Judy Garland (TC addresses his mom in his diary, and Ale spends most of her time writing to Jackie Kennedy, when really Eleanor Roosevelt seems like a first lady after Ale's own heart). Yes, he can also kick a soccer ball around, but after he starts going out with Andy it seems most of the sports drop out of his life. So points for treating a gay character like everyone else, but I would love to see a gay boy who is, I don't know, a big academic geek or something. They all seem to be either queens who love mince around singing show tunes or, in an effort to buck that stereotype, athletes. Here, Augie tries to be both of those (with more emphasis on the show tunes), but still comes off as a stereotype.

And yet, while Augie is quite stereotypical in some regards, I did appreciate the glimpses at his and Andy's relationship. In some ways it's not as well-rounded as TC's and Ale's, but that's partly because with Augie and Andy we only get Augie's diary on the relationship, while both TC and Ale contribute their own halves to the story.

So while on one level I can find lots of things to nitpick about this story, overall it comes across very well and was extremely enjoyable.

Review: Exodus by Julie Bertagna

I think it says something about me that I am continually drawn to books about dystopian future societies. Sure, I hope that our future is all sunshine and roses - after all, I don't want to be a Handmaiden like in The Handmaid's Tale or have brain lesions implanted during radical plastic surgery like in Uglies - but when it comes to books, I'll take the end of the world/government is evil scenario over almost any other.

Exodus takes place in the year 2100, after global warming has melted the polar ice caps and apparently drowned all of the land on Earth. As far as Mara Bell is concerned, all that is left of the world is her tiny island, Wing, which is rapidly being swallowed up by the still-rising waters. In order to escape the monotony of being trapped inside her small house during the storm season (a season which seems to get longer every year), Mara uses a piece of antique technology - a cyberwizz - to explore the ruins of a virtual-reality-type internet called the weave. It's while exploring these ruins one day that she makes a startling discovery: the citizens of Wing aren't the only people left alive on earth. After years of exploring weave in solitude, Mara stumbles across another entity, a person who has taken the cyber-form of a fox. He tells Mara he lives in the New World, a city called New Mungo that has been built on stilts high enough to rise above the waters and sturdy enough to support a civilization through the thrashing storms brought on by global warming.

When Mara tells her family and the rest of the community about her discovery, they are hesitant at first, but quickly realize they have no other choice but to try to reach New Mungo. The alternative is drowning with their tiny island.

A traumatic journey across the ocean leads to more trauma: a refugee camp made of boats, an uncountable number of people who are desperate for shelter within the safety of New Mungo, but aren't allowed in - not unless you are chosen during the Picking, a fate which no one is sure is a good or a bad thing.

Mara, wracked by guilt for having led her community into the horror of the refugee camp, makes a desperate attempt to gain entry into the city. She falls short of her goal, but is rescued by a "sea urchin," an orphaned boy who lives a wild life among the support pillars of New Mungo and on small islands that haven't succumbed to the rising ocean. Also living on the islands is a small civilization of Treenesters, people who live in what are possibly the last trees on earth, and believe they will be rescued from the islands when the Face in the Stone appears and can fulfill a prophecy. The Face in the Stone, it turns out, bears an uncanny resemblance to Mara.

Mara's adventure continues as she tries to devise a way to save not only the people of Wing from the boat refugee camp, but the treenesters as well. And when he treenester friend Gorbals, as well as the sea urchin who saved her, are taken by the New Mungo police in a Picking, Mara's quest leads her into the heart of danger: New Mungo itself.

Overall I found this to be a fun book, though there were some small problems with it. There wasn't always a lot of plot development leading up to a major event, so sometimes it felt like catastrophe upon catastrophe was befalling Mara with little reason. Also the beliefs of the treenesters seemed a little forced: the oldest of their clan is a woman who was a scientist before New Mungo was built; why would she suddenly start believing in some prophecy that was apparently made up of whole cloth? Legends and religions generally don't just spring up over night, but that's apparently what happened with the prophecy of the Face in the Stone.

At the end of it all, Exodus covers a lot of ground, but still leaves lots of questions unanswered. I just checked Wikipedia, source of all knowledge, and it says a sequel was published in 2007. Considering Exodus was originally published in 2002 and it just made it to America this year, who knows when we'll get the rest of the story.

The high point of the novel for me had to be when Mara was exploring an abandoned university that hadn't quite been submerged yet. The greatest legends, artists, thinkers and inventors throughout history were written about and depicted on the walls of the university - and there were hardly any women among them. When a woman appeared she was often a legendary figure, like the warrior queen Boudica. Hopefully in whatever future Mara builds for herself in Zenith, she will be remembered as a great and brave person.

Review: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Finally, a novel about the not-too-distant-future that rings frighteningly true! So many stories that take our current attitudes to their "logical" conclusion, really seem to focus on only one small part of our attitudes, ignoring how other parts of our national psyche might affect each other (I'm looking at you, Rash). In Little Brother, Cory Doctorow doesn't take our ideas about security to their logical conclusion, but rather to the logical next step, examining what happens in the aftermath of the next big terrorist attack in the United States.

Marcus is a 17 year old hacker living in the Bay Area of California. He's not one of those evil hackers one hears about, sending out viruses and stealing sensitive information; rather he hacks in order to make his overly-observed life more bearable. He hacks the school computers so he can IM during class, he knows how to disable tracking software in library books, and can avoid detection by the gait sensing software used by the school (it's charmingly low tech: put gravel in your shoe and you're untraceable by this "high tech" security).

Marcus has just used his hacking skills to break himself and his best friend, Darryl, out of school in order to participate in their favorite Alternate Reality Game with two of their friends Jolu and Van, students at other local schools, when the ground begins to slip out from under them like an earthquake, and air raid sirens begin to sound. In their panic to find safety, Darryl is injured, and Marcus steps out in front of the next vehicle he sees in order to get someone to stop and help his friend. "Help," however, is now in the guise of the Department of Homeland Security, who now view Marcus and his friends as potential enemy combatants and suspects in the bombing of the Bay Bridge.

After days of detainment and interrogation, Marcus, Jolu and Van are released into a new world with new security everywhere: video cameras are at the front of classrooms, passes for the subway and toll booths have RFID tags that are traced constantly (even when the user isn't near a subway or toll booth) to detect suspicious movements, and even Marcus' personal laptop has been bugged with a keylogger to track his every digital movement. So Marcus begins his own personal crusade to evade the all seeing eyes of the DHS. It starts by hacking an Xbox to run Linux, but grows to jamming the RFID chips, fighting with his parents, gaining a better understanding of the bill of rights and hippies, and finding an awesome girlfriend (who is all the more awesome because her name is Ange).

The book got a little talky at times, with paragraphs, or even pages, dedicated to explaining everything from the yippies to LARPing (note to Marcus: people who play in the basement are infinitely cooler than LARPers ;-) Though I agree people who are painting miniatures take nerdiness to a new level. I say this with all the love in the world, people!). However, a lot of the technical explanation was necessary - all of the technology Marcus experiences and hacks is readily available (and used) today, but unfortunately too many people don't understand what it means (or could mean) to have a Radio Frequency Identification tag broadcasting you whereabouts to anyone who inquires. Rarely does the exposition stop the action, however, and overall I felt it added a lot of credibility to the book. Additionally there are two afterwards to the book that added to the credibility: one from a security technologist and another from Andrew "bunnie" Huang, the first to hack the original Xbox, and on top of that a bibliography that covers practically every topic brought up in the book for further reading.

Ultimately this book works because it's not hard to imagine ending up here. Various organizations are constantly fighting to add more surveillance/security equipment into public places in order to protect us. But are we actually any safer for it? When cameras are placed in the front of classrooms, Marcus openly asks how on earth that is going to protect the students from terrorists - if a terrorist came in with a bomb, the camera certainly wasn't going to stop him.

I absolutely loved Marcus' interactions with his parents following his return home from his interrogation. After being threatened by the DHS if he tells anyone where he was for five days, Marcus concocts a story about his friends and himself being trapped while out camping - an experience many people did have. His father, meanwhile, is a different person upon Marcus' return. He had spent five days convinced his son was dead, perhaps buried at the bottom for the bay under the rubble of the bombed bridge. He seems to be pretty okay with the increased surveillance - even after he is stopped twice on the way home from work one day to be questioned by police about his movements. He truly believes that if the security will prevent another attack, if the security will keep his son safe, then his privacy is a small price to pay. Marcus, obviously, feels completely differently and makes impassioned arguments to his dad. These arguments reminded me of many a conversation with my own parents, both as a teenager and today, since on most issues we are miles apart in our views. The idea that a teenager is just too young to understand, and their opinion will change (to the correct view of her or his parents) in time will be familiar to many readers.

Review: Unraveling by Michelle Baldini and Lynn Biederman

The jacket copy on Unraveling makes it sound like this is another Teen Sex Book, filled with morals about what teenage sexuality is like versus what it should be like, and how you shouldn't be pressured into sex, etc etc.

That is not at all what Unraveling is about.

Yes, the specter of teen sexuality hangs over the whole thing - Amanda is, after all, in a hurry to grow up and wants to go "all the way", either during a vacation to Myrtle Beach with the boy she met there last year, or back at school with her mortal enemy's boyfriend. But that's merely background chatter for what this book is really about: one teenager and her mother struggling to understand each other.

Amanda seems to always be at odds with her mother, aka The Capitan, a former English teacher who insists on proper grammar and word usage at all times with an almost slavish devotion to rules. The relationship is exacerbated by The Capitan's relationship with Melody, aka Malady, Amanda's younger sister who can apparently do no wrong. Everything and anything that goes wrong in the Himmelfarb household is apparently Amanda's fault, from stressful vacations to terrible family dinners to an unfortunate Shirley Temple (the drink) meets Chanel dress accident.

After a disastrous family vacation, complete with ill-timed periods and her mother discovering a secret tryst, Amanda returns to her usual life as a social outcast in high school. But when Rick Hayes, the boyfriend of Amanda's arch nemesis, begins to show an interest in her, Amanda is sure that everything will change.

In the meantime, her relationship with her mother continues its downward spiral. After setting up an e-mail account for her mother so she could keep in touch with her best friend, Amanda periodically checks in on what her mother is writing about her. The e-mails between the Captain and her best friend seem to confirm all of Amanda's worst fears: her mother hates her. This discovery leads to Amanda having to balance two precarious relationships: the burgeoning relationship with Rick, and the unraveling relationship with her mother. Helping her sort out her feelings are Amanda's cool aunt, the sister whose advice the Captain has never trusted, and her trusty notebook filled with poems about her feelings and eerily prescient fortune cookie fortunes.

Amanda's a very chatty narrator, and her voice was incredibly believable. Her feelings were completely authentic, from the bratty sister (I absolutely love the nicknames in this book - Malady might be the best annoying-sister-nickname ever) to worries over whether Rick actually likes her.

The harder part for me to read was the mother. I know I'm incredibly lucky to have grown up with a mother that I have always had a great relationship with. I honestly can't remember a single big fight we had. Sure, sometimes I don't completely "get" her (ie, she thinks George W. Bush is probably the best president ever while I...don't), but otherwise life has been pretty good. But like I said, I know I'm lucky, so I understand there are lots of books out there that look at mothers and daughters who have trouble connecting, for a variety of reasons.

This one, however, took the cake for me. The Captain isn't just mean in Amanda's opinion - we get to see e-mails The Captain sends to her best friend where she complains about how incompetent her daughter is. At first I thought, since this is a first person perspective where you can't always entirely trust the narrator's perspective, that Amanda was exaggerating her mother's horribleness. Nope. Mom's a bitch, plain and simple. Oh she apparently had an angsty past that has colored how she interacts with Amanda, but that doesn't explain why she so blatantly favors her younger daughter, or why she's so self-centered around her husband.

On a positive side for the book, I did like the "multi-genre" quality of it. Interspersed with fortune cookie fortunes, poetry written by Amanda, and e-mails sent back and forth between the Captain and her best friend, the variety of story telling methods give a well rounded view of what is going on for Amanda at this point in her life.

Review: Audrey, Wait by Robin Benway

When Audrey decides to break up with her aspiring-rockstar boyfriend, Evan, she doesn't think anything big will come of it. Girls and boys break up all the time, after all. As she's leaving him and he calls out "Audrey, wait!" she keeps walking - unaware that she was about to inspire the country's Next Big Song.

Evan turns the break up into his band's break out song. As they start jetsetting around the world, Audrey finds her small world - which extends to school, working at an ice cream shop, and going to as many awesome concerts as she can make it to - suddenly invaded by the paparazzi and crazy fans. While at first her newfound celebrity affords her some awesome opportunities - hello VIP backstage passes! - it also has a number of downsides: paparazzi photos of her sleeping in class and blog posts calling her ugly are just the beginning.

While Evan has made her an instant celebrity, Audrey just wants to continue on with life as usual: going to concerts with her best friend, finding a new boyfriend, and studying for the SAT. But as it becomes clear that life, at least for as long as "Audrey, Wait!" is on the Billboard top 100 charts, will be anything but normal, how will Audrey, her family and, most importantly, her friends handle the change?

I thought this was a great read overall. For the first few chapters Audrey's voice and slang kind of grated on me - it came across as the author trying too hard to be young and hip. But eventually the story became so engrossing that I hardly noticed it for the last half of the book.

There were some plot points that were obvious from a mile away, but it was still enjoyable to see how the plot got to that point.

Audrey is a very smart young woman, who knows how to take care of herself. Sure she makes some dumb moves sometimes (giving sarcastic interviews to journalists, for example), but at the important times she does the smart thing. When a pair of creepy wanna-be musicians show up at her door and try to steal a kiss so Audrey can become the inspiration for their next song, she holds her composure and tells them to scram. Additionally, Audrey isn't afraid of showing she's book-smart either; throughout the book she's pointing out the SAT and PSAT words she keeps using. It's a small addition, but I love it when books aren't afraid to blatantly show that their female characters are academically smart.

Also awesome: Robin Benway is one of the few authors I've seen who actually seems to get how text messaging/IM/message boards/blogs all work. And yet her characters are smart enough that when we see IM conversations it's not all "lol i c u l8r." They use a realistic combination of full sentences and some shorthand (for example, Audrey says over IM at one point "got 2 go, dinner"). It's such a small thing, but the internet has been such a major part of my life for so long that it's just jarring to me when people don't get it (Audrey at one point mentions her parents don't understand how she can talk on the phone, IM and e-mail all at once and she doesn't understand how they can't. I can't do quite all of that at once, but my parents sure don't understand how I manage to type as fast as I do, or understand why someone might text rather than call someone).

Ultimately, this is one of those books I found impossible to put down. I read it over the course of an evening, on the subway and on breaks at work, and found it a quick and very fun read.